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

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

Right now, we have room for 3 more books.
1. Sandy (you can finish)
2. Sophie - already said may or may not finish
3. Maddy

If anyone has a book that they have already finished, please add to sheet, and I will move things around. Otherwise, if you are not one of the three above, please try not to finish any book before Round 2.

Countdown Here: https://www.timeanddate.com/countdown...

Wonderful. Thank you

We only have three book spaces left, if Sophie and Lisa finish theirs in time.

Maddy, that would work great

Update for End of Round 1

We have 24 hours to go. We have room for 8 more books.
Of those, Sandy has two of them currently reading, and one each for Sophie and Lisa.

This means there is room for FOUR more books. Please post if you have books not on the SS or have ones you will finish by tomorrow, so I can keep track of letters. Otherwise, I don't think we need too many tiny books if people want to start next week books.

Sandy, can you add your two added books to you Wheel shelf.

Jenn wrote: "Hello! I finished my book and got it on my shelf. I started my next book too and I noticed a page discrepancy. Goodreads has Mystic Pieces at 209 pages for the kindle edition, but m..."

Got the page numbers updated and fixed it on the SS so we got points for all 236 pages.

We have our Round 2 word for those who like to plan reading or just like knowing what's next:

Our word is: GRIM REAPER

The bonus this round is different, we'll need 10 books tagged (shelved) at least 10 times as Urban Fantasy. I think we should be able to do that without too much trouble.

I'll get Round 2 added to our tracking sometime today.

Countdown to end of round and start of next round: https://www.timeanddate.com/countdown...

Sana wrote: "I have ."

That would work if you think you have time before Saturday.

DAY 4 - CHAPTERS 15-19

13. Getting closer to the end now where all will be revealed. Does the character of Agnes Young and hearing the story of Tyler's near drowning shed any more light on the sister's story?
No, the whole thing was just starting to annoy me at this point. Coming back from the dead on why immune is not that interesting. Honestly, I wish Tyler got to be more of a person and more rounded but really no one really made me care too much what happened.

14. I enjoyed reading the research Iris did into the masked man. Who do you think he is and what is his agenda regarding the three sisters?
I already finished, but I did not guess it, though I wish it was something else.

15. "Outside Edinburgh was steeped in predawn darkness. We headed toward Saint Giles' Cathedral...We walked, shivering through the Old Town's warren of narrow lanes.."
" The ruins of the chapel sat on a squat hill overlooking a small loch in Holyrood Park... The ruins were two stories tall; only the corner of the chapel remained now the walls tendered in rough stone in some century long passed. "
How does the setting in Edinburgh's Old Town contribute to the spookiness of the tale? Would the story work equally as well in a more modern city or urbanised area?
Edinburgh is often used as haunted so not really that original. I did not mind the description but felt the author used scenery in place of character development.

16. Finally Iris and Tyler make a break through entering the strange place through the doorway.
"The Halfway.
It's putrid. It's a slowly rotting canker somewhere between the realms of life and death."
Your first impressions of this place? Is the story following the path you expected and how does the language contribute to your feelings of The Halfway and what happens there?

This was a major fail for me. It should have been the peak for horror elements with dead bodies everywhere, but I could have cared less. I just did not connect with the description. Somehow this was less creepy than Hollow Place’s willows.

Day 3: Chapters 11-15

9.Let’s talk about Cate. What could Grey have possibly said to her to make a mother hate her child? (If she is her child.) What do you think of Cate and Iris’ relationship?

I have finished the book since the library wanted my copy back but I had guessed part of it.

10. What do you think causes the sisters to have the power of suggestion, or the power of the kiss, or whatever you call it?
I think this is playing on the fae theme.

11. How do you feel about Grey's actions in the hospital and during the escape?
It wasn’t the best written scene to me. It seemed rushed and did not build up much suspense. I cannot help comparing this to Kingfisher’s Hollow Places, as this one is really lacking to me on the horror front.

12. The girl says “It is in me…In her…In you.” What is in them? And, may I say, yuck. This story seems very myth-laden. Has anyone recognized the myth yet, or do you think this is an original one? Are you enjoying the story so far? (Is anyone else having a flashback to the creepy video in season one of True Detective, or is it just me?)
It plays with fae in general and I kept hoping for more originality or specifics. Everything looks beautiful but is hollow or rotten within is very common.

And, just out of curiosity, has anyone done a Google search on the flowers yet?

Not yet, but familiar with the family

Day 2: Chapters 6-10

5. Grey leaves her sisters a note that reveals the creepy guy is really a very bad person...that she's in peril. She provides a key and sends them to a super creepy apartment...'The missing sister, the dead body, the burned apartment, the gunshot wound, the armful of stolen artifacts. Even harder: the man in the skull, the flowers growing rampant in all the soft parts of a corpse.' What is your conclusion so far?

I think Grey has always wanted to go back and not sure why now from skull dude. Debating between being changelings or just changed by the experience.

6. Vivi and Iris find a diary from their father...his notes supporting the Vogue article with all kinds of rumors about the girls. What do you think about their father? Was he crazy? Are his girls dead?

See above on unsure but I think he was on to something being not right, and no one believing him must have been really hard.

7. What is with the flowers and vegetation found in the girls and around the girls? This organic, smelly stuff keeps showing up? What do you think is behind it?

Still voting on fae and certain flowers are linked to doorways and/or death.

8. Tyler shows up at the end of this section of our reading. There's an article referenced with mention of a disappearance. Someone else came back. What do you think is next? What will Tyler's role be...hero, bad guy, or is his appearance a cameo/distraction?

I think Tyler could be great addition, less naive and hopefully does not introduce any love triangles. I will take back anything I said if there is lots of moping about him being hot. Otherwise, I think he is a good person and innocent of Grey’s disappearance because that would leave this as a normal book and not paranormal.

Day 1 - prologue - Chapter 5

1. What sort of stuff do you like in your horror books? Do you like the slow pacing here?
I like creepy, abnormal ones and get disappointed a lot by reveals at the end. I like ones that keep a letter of mystery. So far, this one is good with the set-up of characters and unknown creepiness. I will see how it goes.

2. What do you think of the sister's and their relationship with each other?
The younger two seem to do ok with each other. I think their relationship with the older may not be entirely healthy.

3. We are getting hints about the strangeness around the Hollow girls, and at what happened to them. What are your suspicions? Would you be like Cate with her daughters, and not push at the memories overtly or dig actively?
This start with the standard no one can remember past childhood event. Here it seems to be fae. I think Cate fits a spot for the plot but does not entirely seem like a real person so far.

4. The descriptions (of Grey's clothing in particular!) is very atmospheric. Are you enjoying the descriptive language used?
I am, but I could see it get a bit much depending on how much it goes on.

Great, Sandy. I know it was a long one this year.

I have work to do this weekendg but may drive to do some walking at a nature preserve tomorrow morning to look for Sandhill Cranes.

Good job everyone, I moved our first full spelling of NEON CARROT to our official SS so we are on the board.

Jenn,

When that happens, you need to use the GRs page number if it is only a few pages off, or I can ask a GR librarian to fix it. I have asked a GRs librarian in this case to fix the page number and will tell you if I hear back. This is also true if a book is missing page numbers.

Maddy wrote: "Captain, oh Captain, is this wheel enough? "

That is clearly a ship's wheel to me so yes

BOM Update
I also updated the post at the top of our thread:
Here

November BOM:
Adult: The Only Good Indians by Stephen Graham Jones
Starts: 2 Nov, 2021 DQs Here
YA: The Left-Handed Booksellers of London by Garth Nix
Starts: 16 Nov, 2021 DQs Here

We still need a second person to volunteer for DQs for the adult Nov book. It helps out odds of getting the DQs if two people volunteer.

Dec BOM Nominaitons are open:
Adult
YA

Vespertine by Margaret Rogerson

The dead of Loraille do not rest.

Artemisia is training to be a Gray Sister, a nun who cleanses the bodies of the deceased so that their souls can pass on; otherwise, they will rise as spirits with a ravenous hunger for the living. She would rather deal with the dead than the living, who trade whispers about her scarred hands and troubled past.

When her convent is attacked by possessed soldiers, Artemisia defends it by awakening an ancient spirit bound to a saint’s relic. It is a revenant, a malevolent being that threatens to possess her the moment she drops her guard. Wielding its extraordinary power almost consumes her—but death has come to Loraille, and only a vespertine, a priestess trained to wield a high relic, has any chance of stopping it. With all knowledge of vespertines lost to time, Artemisia turns to the last remaining expert for help: the revenant itself.

As she unravels a sinister mystery of saints, secrets, and dark magic, her bond with the revenant grows. And when a hidden evil begins to surface, she discovers that facing this enemy might require her to betray everything she has been taught to believe—if the revenant doesn’t betray her first.

Harlem Shuffle by Colson Whitehead

rom the two-time Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Underground Railroad and The Nickel Boys, a gloriously entertaining novel of heists, shakedowns, and rip-offs set in Harlem in the 1960s.

“Ray Carney was only slightly bent when it came to being crooked…” To his customers and neighbors on 125th street, Carney is an upstanding salesman of reasonably priced furniture, making a decent life for himself and his family. He and his wife Elizabeth are expecting their second child, and if her parents on Striver’s Row don’t approve of him or their cramped apartment across from the subway tracks, it’s still home.

Few people know he descends from a line of uptown hoods and crooks, and that his façade of normalcy has more than a few cracks in it. Cracks that are getting bigger all the time.

Cash is tight, especially with all those installment-plan sofas, so if his cousin Freddie occasionally drops off the odd ring or necklace, Ray doesn’t ask where it comes from. He knows a discreet jeweler downtown who doesn’t ask questions, either.

Then Freddie falls in with a crew who plan to rob the Hotel Theresa—the “Waldorf of Harlem”—and volunteers Ray’s services as the fence. The heist doesn’t go as planned; they rarely do. Now Ray has a new clientele, one made up of shady cops, vicious local gangsters, two-bit pornographers, and other assorted Harlem lowlifes.

Thus begins the internal tussle between Ray the striver and Ray the crook. As Ray navigates this double life, he begins to see who actually pulls the strings in Harlem. Can Ray avoid getting killed, save his cousin, and grab his share of the big score, all while maintaining his reputation as the go-to source for all your quality home furniture needs?

Harlem Shuffle’s ingenious story plays out in a beautifully recreated New York City of the early 1960s. It’s a family saga masquerading as a crime novel, a hilarious morality play, a social novel about race and power, and ultimately a love letter to Harlem.

But mostly, it’s a joy to read, another dazzling novel from the Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award-winning Colson Whitehead.

We got BOM discussion questions for the Oct YA BOM: House of Hollow. Lisa your day is Oct. 19, and I am backup if anything comes up.