Keely’s Comments (group member since Aug 30, 2013)

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

I will be starting with The Paris Apartment as that one needs to be done sooner and then I will hopefully move onto The Four Winds.

I haven't had a chance to looks at next month's BOMs yet, but I will see if I can get a hold of those too.

I'm only taking carry on luggage this time as I have a lot of stuff at my boyfriend's place so I won't have to go through security several times which will be nice. I had a bad experiance once with a delay causing me to miss my next flight (there's a whole story there including trains not running and the bus replacement breaking down). So I make sure I have lots of time between flights incase there is a delay.
I really hope it all goes smoothly too!

I had adequate internet and a little bit of time to add a few meals from my longer book I finished. There's still more to do when I get more time (and internet). I also added the books I'm currently reading to the spreadsheet.
And I admit that I totally forgot about the BOMs. I'll do my best to read them both by the end of the month, but I might only manage one and the other might roll over into next month.

I have a loooong day of travel on Thursday. 3 fairly short flights and several hours between each one, which will be plenty of time for reading. I've got both audiobooks and ebooks ready. Is it strange I'm kinda looking forward to sitting around reading in the airports?

I hope everyone had a pleasant weekend!

Thank you. When I had told him I had signed up for another team challenge he was initially all "Urgh" about it, but then he realised it wouldn't affect him that much as we would be apart for most of it. We're both happy to just stay in and chill out together. He lives in a fairly small town so there isn't a great deal to do nearby anyway. And while we both enjoy each others company, we also like to have our alone time. He also works, only part time at the moment, but it's still a bit of time I'd have to read.

I hope you all have a good weekend. Mine is set to be a busy one, but with a few hours travelling about in the car (as a passenger) and I am fortunate enough to be able to read in the car so hopefully I'll make some really good progress on at least one of my books.

We're going to see what the state of things are tomorrow. They found the boiler tank had been leaking so that needs to be replaced which means there is no hot water (not that there was a bath or shower installed when we last went). We were hoping to move this weekend, but it's not looking likely unless the builders have performed miracles since we last went.
I'm off to Norway for about 3 weeks to visit my boyfriend from next Thursday so mum would like to be in the house before that so I can help set some stuff up before I go and also to help with the cat.
The builders probably won't be working on Monday now as it is going to be a public holiday here in the UK for the Queen's funeral so I can't see us moving before I go away, but we will see.

On the upside, my boyfriend is very much aware that I am doing this challenge and that I want to read a lot while I'm there. As long as I give him some attention and watch things or play games with him occasionally, he's happy to go do his own thing while I do mine the rest of the time.

I'm giving up for now. I hope what I did manage to do saved.
I've only got a bit of The Rose Code left so I will finish that tonight. Because it is over 500 pages, we can use it for some drinks/desserts. They drank quite a few different alcoholic drinks.
I'll try and sort some of it out tomorrow.

I have been trying to add some of the stuff I found onto the spreadsheet, but the wifi here is terrible at the moment. It let's me in for about a minute and then kicks me out for about 5. I'm close to giving up. We are going to the new house tomorrow which now has wifi so I might take my laptop and spend a bit of time adding things then.

I've been very busy the past couple of days so I haven't been able to make much progress. We are planning to stay in tomorrow so I'm hoping to finish one of my audiobooks and maybe make some progress on an ebook.
I keep finding lots of things like water, tea and coffee. Not really anything more useful like vegetables yet, but still plenty of time.

Don't worry about it Camilla, just look after yourself!

I'm currently reading at least 4 different books (in different formats/devices). One is set in a bistro and at 14% has already had so many food references and I hope there will be many more.

I dont think I will over-read this month. The only way I would get anywhere near 20 is if I read a load of short books which I don't really want to do. As I have said, I should have more time towards the end of this month and I'll mostly try to keep to mid-length books. 2 I am currently reading are about 500 so that will be lots of options for us.

We hope to be actually able to move in next weekend. There will still be some finishing touches from the builders and then it will just be decorating which we will do ourselves and unpacking.
I'm hoping once we are there I will have more time to read mostly because we won't have to travel around as much. It will be nice to finally be able to relax a bit.

I hope everyone has a good weekend!

I'm planning to read some longer books in the later half of this month when I should have more time. I've been reading some shorter books so I could say I've read some things.
I should also work on Vanity Fair but I haven't really been in the mood for it. I've been after things with a bit more excitement. I will try and finish it soon though.

I found Vinegar in Scars if we want to do another fish and chips with vinegar. I don't know if there is any benefit to us doing another one of those. There was plenty of fish types mentioned in The Water Babies that it could be a different fish from the one already done.
I'll be honest, I'm still a bit confused about how the meals work.

Happy late birthday, Heather! I hope you had a nice day :)

My weekend was busy. We went to our new house to do some bits and pieces on Saturday. It was a long day, but worth it. And Sunday we did a bit of food shopping and then just chilled.

I haven't been able to do as much reading as I hoped because things have been so busy, but I promise to make up for it in the later half of the month when things should calm down a bit.

I found a lot of different fish in The Water Babies. I'm not the biggest fan of fish so I don't really know any special fish dishes.

The Accident doesn't look like it's going to have much food in it so might be better to use for spell-it-outs. I've only come across "water" in the book, but I still have quite a bit left so maybe some more food will appear. It's a short-ish book so hopefully I will finish it today.

Oh yeah, in The Water Babies, I found 'sea-apples', 'sea-oranges' and 'apple-orchard'. Does anyone know if we can use just the word apple or orange in this case or because they are hyphenated they count as one word? I put them separately for now in case we can't use them. I meant to check the rules and Q&A for an answer while I was on my laptop but ran out of time.

In my experience, not all books have characters listed on the book page, but if they've changed/moved/deleted it then that's annoying. I'm on my phone right now so I can't have a look for you. I remember getting emails about a few changes they were going to do from the 1st September, but I dont remember seeing those changes on it.

I added my words for The Water Babies and what I have found in Vanity Fair so far. I'm glad to have found things like onion, pepper and chilli in Vanity Fair. They will be very useful in some dishes. Feel free to use whatever you see for any meals you want to create.
At the moment I'm more focused on just finding food/drink items in my books and also trying to find time to actually read.

I finished The Water Babies last night. I found quite a lot of items we can use. Is there somewhere we are going to list our items or just make a post with them. I'm planning to go somewhere with some free wifi and my laptop tomorrow so I'll list what I found then. I've also began Vanity Fair which is a longer book and in the first 6 or so chapters have found quite a few food/drink stuff too.

I made it to my grandparents lodge. My cat too. She meowed most of the way but seemed to enjoy exploring the lodge when we got here.
There is wifi here but they've changed it so you have to pay to use it (before they had a free option). We might pay for a couple of days but I will see what my parents think when they get here. Either way, I'll still check this thread at least one a day.

On the book front, I finished the audiobooks I was listening to last night. I won't start any until the challenge starts now. I still have some ebooks still on the go and some very short ones if I get bored, but I am ready to begin this challenge!

From what I can tell, there will be a lobster at some point in the book and I'm sure fish will be mentioned so we don't have to use water, but as it was staring me in the face, it seemed silly not to put it in there for now.

I just put my first book in the spreadsheet. I wanted to test adding something to it. I hope I've done it correctly. It was easy as the word "water" is in the title. I keep wanting to pick up the book and read it, but I have to remind myself to wait. Not long now though.

Hello all, just a quick update on my moving situation. I may not be as off the grid as I thought next week. The builder is nowhere near as done with the house as we thought. There is currently no shower/bath and the only toilet is an old one that doesn't work the best. He was meant to have the kitchen and the downstairs bathroom ready when for when we are moving in on Tuesday. As Monday is a public holiday here it is doubtful he will be working and we can't see him finishing everything he needs to on Tuesday.

To cut a long story short. My grandparents own a hoilday lodge which is about an hours drive from the new house. We are thinking of staying there until next weekend to give the builder more time to finish what he needs to. The upside to this, other than being more comfortable, is that I would have access to wifi. It's not the best wifi, but it should be enough for me to update any books I've finished and keep up to date without using my mobile data.

The downside to the lodge is that I have to drive my cat 2 and a half hours from the old house and then when she is just getting settled we'll have to move her again. She has never liked the car and at 19 (it's her birthday today!) I'm a bit worried about stressing her out too much.