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

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

You can start them now if you want but need to wait to finish them until Dec 5 (Dec 4th 9 PM UK time)

If you are up to reading all of them than we would take all three. Those have good page numbers too.

I have a tons of Us and at least one Q.

The BOM for next round has a green item on the cover and works for colored cover -

For letters, we need 5 Qs, 5 Us, 15 Is (Maddy we need those Is next round), and 5 Xs. As always, longer books are better.

Our easiest genre tag is childrens (which means all will need wordcount checked). We also have smart, idealistic, and naive as tags (we need 10 total).

We are good on most letters, esp I. Great job there. We also have 65 of the 74 books claimed so far, which is a good place to be in for Tuesday evening. We will take all books at this point and if there are extras, I will remove the short ones.

Also, we have all the tags we need for this round for both genre and color. Great job everyone

- Last one for Nov and up to 75%, not quite the desired 80%

This one was a mess for me with the ending being 2 stars but I rounded up for the rest of the book

Lisa - (Aussie Girl) wrote: "My copy of came in at the library in time as well so I'll be able to read the last BOM. So hopefully it fits to include in the last round. Lex..."

We have done really well on BOM points so far, good job everyone

While we wait, anyone have a favorite phrase:

ROUND 5 WORDS, TAGS, COLOURS:
1) Extreme Quality Pizza Tags: cheese, sports, award, pineapple Colour: Red
2) Nut Crazed Chipmunk Tags: rodent, nutty, hallucinogenic, tree Colour: Brown
3) Jewelled Umbrella Squid Tags: jewellry, ocean, ink, rain Colour: Purple
4) Jurassic Park Visit Tags: dinosaur, zoo, trip, movie Colour: Black
5) Snow Covered Mountain Tags: snow, mountain, cold, winter Colour: White
6) Zombie Unicorn Queen Tags: unicorn, royalty, fairy/fae, brain Colour: Yellow
7) Lovely Alexandrite Tags: pretty, gem, teal, glitter Colour: Purple
8) Exercise Wheezily Tags: run, sweat, gasp, exercise Colour: Orange
9) Spandexed Jezebel Tags: fabric, 1980s, biblical, neon Colour: Yellow
10) Quixotic Kid Tags: childrens, smart, idealistic, naive Colour: Green
11) Jukebox Jam Tags: music, jam, 1950s, diner Colour: Pink
12) Zany Zygote Tags: crazy, pregnant, egg, asylum Colour: Orange
13) Maximum Chutzpah Tags: hebrew, last in series, self confidence, teen Colour: Blue
14) Hydroxychloroquine Tags: COVID, medicine, malaria, insects Colour: Grey
15) Frobscottle Whizzpoppers Tags: green, fizz, fart, giant Colour: Green
16) Squeeze Pouch Tags: fruit, vegetable, baby, bag Colour: Red

This should be the correct link: https://www.goodreads.com/topic/show/...

Well, that was an eventful Thanksgiving. The oven broke (thankfully post turkey) and then my 2-year-old niece dumped shampoo on the cat's head. At which point, I was holding a foaming at the mouth cat while my mum tried to help me wash him in the sink. Not a happy cat.

On the pie front, I prefer sweet potato pie to pumpkin pie. I think it has more flavor and texture. I do not like pumpkin pie personally very much.
Here is the recipe for the one I made: https://theviewfromgreatisland.com/cr.... You can make it with other berries if you don't have cranberries. I bake more than cook but can do both.

Happy Thanksgiving to the US folks. I made a gingersnap cranberry pie yesterday. Do people have favorite pies (Thanksgiving or otherwise)?

Good job everyone on Round 3 and you may now finish books for Round 4. We are in a very solid third place and tied for most BOM participation points so great job.

I think we are good to go for this round. However, if anyone finishes or have finished a book over 270 pages, please add it to the SS, and I will switch a shorter book out. Otherwise, please don't finish any books for the next just under 5 hours.

Cat wrote: "@Lexi re female authors: he's mentioned Susan Cooper but no others, to my recollection - Diana Wynne-Jones, le Guin would be two obvious ones he could have included. And I agree about the race - be..."

I think E. Nesbit was also mentioned but yes, lots missing. On accents, I went to college in Alabama and my classmates did the same. Accents were consciously turned off by those who had strong accents until they called home.

Jenny, I like the Abhorsen books better, but I found this fun too but no, subtle is never Nix's style.

Jenn wrote: "I can finish my last book on the spreadsheet tonight if it is needed. Otherwise I can hold off and finish it tomorrow so it counts towards the next round."

That would be great. Thank you, I'll move it to next round on the SS.

That is great, Lisa. I have one more to go as well and it is an X and then on to next week.

SandyL wrote: "I finished the book I had on the spreadsheet and added a few more - not sure where you are on substituting books for higher page counts - it you can use them, great and if not, no problem."

Great, can you please put all 5 of them on your wheel shelf? Thank you

DQ4: Chapters Thirteen - Sixteen

14. Each of the chapters has been headed with a poem or snippet of a poem, in varying styles. Do you scour these for meaning, and if so, what meaning have you wrung from them? Do you like them - as poems or as elements of the book structure? And critically: who is going to take on the challenge of writing one for review of the book? (Jenny's position as NBRC poet laureate is under strong challenge after Kaley's backroom haiku)

I liked them and they vaguely give a heads up for the chpaters but mostly I thought they set tone.

15. Okay... theories on Reg Holly and what is up with him?!
I have finished but again I go with my comment that Nix tends not to be subtle with his bad guys.

16. The Fenris wolf and the well-spirit - what do you think of these additions to the Old World creatures we've met? Do you think Susan did the right thing by removing the sword?
I liked both creatures and how they were both fair and harsh. They were more ambiguous that the earlier corpseborn and goblins. I think Susan did right by her own morals and her bloodline.

17. We have another gender-swap in pop culture, with the characters from The Professionals being switched to female from male. Together with the political figures that have been gender-switched, and a comment earlier about how Britain took early steps to achieve equality, this is clearly an important part of Nix's world. Does the subtly of this work for you? Is there a deeper point to it than simply wanting gender equality? Why hasn't he gender-swapped any authors?
This is a really interesting question. I noted the gender swapped characters and had not connected it to the authors. Nix may feel that he included enough female authors as is but from the sentence included in DQ3, I don’t think there is a single female author. Maybe, Nix is more attached to the books and didn’t want to mess with something he cared about. It does somewhat make it feel surface only for the worldbuilding. I also wish race played more of a part in this book.