Lexi’s Comments (group member since Jul 27, 2016)

Lexi’s comments from the Nothing But Reading Challenges group.

Spun for a new Dr. Who

Snowmen (The Great Intelligence)
350 to 450
Letters of CLARA in title
Snow on cover
Teeth visible on cover
"nanny" or "governess" in text

No worries. The level of unacknowledged privilege is kind of amazing and unexpected. I didn’t realize her socioeconomic background before I started. I usually read about trying to do environmental friendly farming from much lower resources. I should have just nominated Wendell Berry.

Also, some of the science in this book is questionable

DQs Day 1
Introduction and Chapter 1-5

1. Why did you want to read this book? Are you familiar with some of the books that it quotes, such as Wendell Berryor Aldo Leopold?

2. This book focuses on re-wilding as compared to ecological farming or balancing crops and conservation, as is mentioned in the first chapter from other farmers. What are your thoughts on the idea and how it fits in the context in England? Did you know England had such biodiversity loss and low protected land?

3. Giant oaks. What is your experience with them and do you want to visit any now that you have read this chapter?

4. The introduction of domestic (feral) species to replace wild animals is interesting to me. What do you think of this as a concept, and how it is handled differently in their plan versus the one in the Netherlands? Had you heard about the closed canopy theory before?

Probably my favorite poem: https://www.scottishpoetrylibrary.org...

I have met him. I worked at a vet in Henry Co, where his farm is, and his sheep was sick. I recommend his poetry and essays on farming first, but his fiction is good too. My sister's dog Wendell is named after him.

Also, it looks like I have to get all the way to Chapter 6 for the cattle and ponies, which is why I wanted to read this book.

DQs Day 1: Part 1
Introduction and Chapter 1

1. Why did you want to read this book? Are you familiar with some of the books that it quotes, such as Wendell Berry?

2. This book focuses on re-wilding as compared to ecological farming or balancing crops and conservation, as is mentioned in the first chapter from other farmers. What are your thoughts on the idea and how it fits in the context in England? Did you know England had such biodiversity loss and low protected land?

3. Giant oaks. What is your experience with them and do you want to visit any now that you have read this chapter?

I will post a few questions tonight, but I have not got all 100 pages read yet. I agreed to help read some international applications, and I thought they were 2-3 pages each and not 50.

The Gameshouse by Claire North

The World Fantasy Award-winning author of The First Fifteen Lives of Harry August presents a mesmerizing tale of a gambling house whose deadly games of chance and skill control the fate of empires.
Everyone has heard of the Gameshouse. But few know all its secrets...

It is the place where fortunes can be made and lost through chess, backgammon - every game under the sun.
But those whom fortune favors may be invited to compete in the higher league... a league where the games played are of politics and empires, of economics and kings. It is a league where Capture the Castle involves real castles, where hide and seek takes place on the scale of a continent.

Among those worthy of competing in the higher league, three unusually talented contestants play for the highest stakes of all...
This novel was originally published as three digital-only novellas: The Serpent, The Thief, and The Master.

The Last Murder at the End of the World by Stuart Turton

From the bestselling author of The 7 1/2 Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle and The Devil and the Dark Water comes an inventive, high-concept murder mystery: an ingenious puzzle, an extraordinary backdrop, and an audacious solution.

Solve the murder to save what's left of the world.

Outside the island there is nothing: the world was destroyed by a fog that swept the planet, killing anyone it touched.

On the island: it is idyllic. One hundred and twenty-two villagers and three scientists, living in peaceful harmony. The villagers are content to fish, farm and feast, to obey their nightly curfew, to do what they're told by the scientists.

Until, to the horror of the islanders, one of their beloved scientists is found brutally stabbed to death. And then they learn that the murder has triggered a lowering of the security system around the island, the only thing that was keeping the fog at bay. If the murder isn't solved within 107 hours, the fog will smother the island—and everyone on it.

But the security system has also wiped everyone's memories of exactly what happened the night before, which means that someone on the island is a murderer—and they don't even know it.

I'm back in the US and have a copy. I can do the first day.

Am E or I doing day five? I’m phone only and forgot how hard it is to answers questions but I can try.

Great, thank you. I finished Hot Prof if someone wants to spin a new one. I’m phone only for the rest of March.

Judith, since it’s your task, would you accept for MC cries a lot, MC used to cry a lot as a child if it is plot revalent?

Our towers don't tend to directly attack each other but you probably could do a tower defense game with books

Sammy wrote: "Nice one Jenny!

I tend to do the same Sophie.

I blame team challenges not being compatible with my tbr 😂"

I am barely over the line. I was hoping to try for this strategy too, Sophie, but I seem to be going with the barely making it strategy instead.

For 99 cents, I am in as well. I thought I would miss it because my library does not even seem to know the book exists. I can also help with DQs, E, if you can't find a copy for the last day.

I don't think we've read this one as a BOM

Project Hail Mary by Andy Weir

A lone astronaut.
An impossible mission.
An ally he never imagined.

Ryland Grace is the sole survivor on a desperate, last-chance mission - and if he fails, humanity and the earth itself will perish.

Except that right now, he doesn't know that. He can't even remember his own name, let alone the nature of his assignment or how to complete it.

All he knows is that he's been asleep for a very, very long time. And he's just been awakened to find himself millions of miles from home, with nothing but two corpses for company.

His crewmates dead, his memories fuzzily returning, Ryland realizes that an impossible task now confronts him. Hurtling through space on this tiny ship, it's up to him to puzzle out an impossible scientific mystery-and conquer an extinction-level threat to our species.

And with the clock ticking down and the nearest human being light-years away, he's got to do it all alone.

Or does he?

The Tainted Cup by Robert Jackson Bennett

In Daretana’s most opulent mansion, a high Imperial officer lies dead—killed, to all appearances, when a tree spontaneously erupted from his body. Even in this canton at the borders of the Empire, where contagions abound and the blood of the Leviathans works strange magical changes, it’s a death at once terrifying and impossible.

Called in to investigate this mystery is Ana Dolabra, an investigator whose reputation for brilliance is matched only by her eccentricities.

At her side is her new assistant, Dinios Kol. Din is an engraver, magically altered to possess a perfect memory. His job is to observe and report, and act as his superior’s eyes and ears--quite literally, in this case, as among Ana’s quirks are her insistence on wearing a blindfold at all times, and her refusal to step outside the walls of her home.

Din is most perplexed by Ana’s ravenous appetite for information and her mind’s frenzied leaps—not to mention her cheerful disregard for propriety and the apparent joy she takes in scandalizing her young counterpart. Yet as the case unfolds and Ana makes one startling deduction after the next, he finds it hard to deny that she is, indeed, the Empire’s greatest detective.

As the two close in on a mastermind and uncover a scheme that threatens the safety of the Empire itself, Din realizes he’s barely begun to assemble the puzzle that is Ana Dolabra—and wonders how long he’ll be able to keep his own secrets safe from her piercing intellect.

Featuring an unforgettable Holmes-and-Watson style pairing, a gloriously labyrinthine plot, and a haunting and wholly original fantasy world, The Tainted Cup brilliantly reinvents the classic mystery tale.