Alysa’s Comments (group member since Jun 27, 2015)

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

Bernadette wrote: "Here are two new monsters....

Manticore

Read a book with the letters MAN EATER in title (any order).."

If I am not mistaken, one of the books I read last week fits this!:
Penric and the Shaman
Can someone put it in if that task hasn't been claimed?

I finished Ariadne, if someone can update the spreadsheet please.
I will do more BOM answers for it in the next couple of days.
If more information is needed about it (more character names or whatever), LMK!

I tried posting in the Completions thread for Battleship so hopefully someone will take pity and get that stuff updated properly too!

Thanks!
Will definitely need my DQ answers for Ariadne added. In fact I just posted for Day One… just in time for boarding the plane, lol.

DQs Day 1

1. Excited about the book, or just here for the points? Were you familiar with the myths behind the story before starting this book?

I was excited enough about this book to get a print ARC of it mailed to me during an ALA conference, but then my excitement waned as my overall reading free time went down, but eventually my excitement for it grew again!

2. "Let me tell you a story..." I don't know about you, but I love opening lines like that. Do you have a favourite opening line? Have you ever bought a book on the strength of the opening line alone? (I have!)

Can’t think of any favorites, but I have definitely bought (or downloaded free for Kindle etc) based on the first line. Sometimes to my great regret if the rest of the book turns out to be bad compared to the opening.

3. Asterion: The early years. I bet no-one was fooled by the few paragraphs of almost sweet baby and toddler descriptions: This was always going to end with a monster in a maze of course.
But do you think it served well as a way to establish Ariadne's character?

It was very evocative, and therefore did the trick to help establish character. I did not find the baby and toddler descriptions anywhere close to sweet.

4. What do you think of the writing so far? There's a lot of description and narration and very little dialogue, which tries in with the idea that Ariadne is telling the story to the reader. It allows for a lot more depth and detail than more dialogue-heavy storytelling does. Is that a style you enjoy, or do you prefer the faster pace of a book that is more about character interaction?

I like it so far. It’s a bit purple but I kind of expected that to be the case. I agree about this method allowing more depth and detail.

I will be not very far from Snezana, for 2 weeks! Yay.

Beginning! 😁

3.) Read a book where something physical is destroyed (e.g., building burning down and not a relationship being ruined)

In Planetfall which I finished yesterday, a barn is destroyed in a laser battle!
I am at the airport and can’t update spreadsheet just now…

Yes, it's already been claimed in the Battleship thread.

I don't get it, but I am SO HAPPY that other people do. XD

I'll start Ariadne as soon as the challenge begins, and probably finish it on Sunday -- I hope that will help with "Greece" or whatever...
Should I go ahead and put it in??

Tricia wrote: "Sorry!!! I'm pretty new to book challenges and was just trying to help."


Oh gosh, no worries!
It's hard to get a good sense sometimes as to whether a fellow reader already knows various tips and tricks around here, especially for people with whom one hasn't interacted much before :)

See, that's why I would make a terrible Mod, because I am infamously hard-ass and would have disputed some of those with Team Pandora, LOL.

In any case, it would be nice to have my book cover that one "Trickery" task, since it's already read, i.e., "banked", and I've barely been able to contribute to the Mini challenges :)

I found something!!!

Now I just have to figure out when I can get it from the library, and which library. My work library has it in Print Reserves with a 4-hour loan maximum, which is obviously not great. If the public library has E version, I am golden... *fingers crossed*

I would rather have gone West than North, but at least I won't be stuck!

3.) Read a book where a character engages in some sort of trickery (your interpretation).

I think either of the books I finished the other day would work for this, but especially Black Sheep:
Antagonist character Jakob West double-crosses (tricks) the MC

ETA: It works better than the book that's slotted into that task now (Wee Free Men -- the Feegles are pretty straightforward folks, not really engaging in trickery unless you count hiding from humans most of the time). Actually I don't think Wee Free Men works for Island or Farmer either, though Farmer is debatable; i.e., MC is a child who helps her parents on the family farm.
But it's only an Island in the sense that any very large continent is technically an island. Doesn't really get the spirit of the task.

If others disagree, cool. This is all just IMHO :)

It is so annoying that GR only lets you look through the first 25 or so pages of these lists. I remember the days when you could look at all of the results, like going to Page 100 and working backwards. That was great for "top shelves" tasks.

Yep, I know that (thanks Lexi 😉 and thanks for looking at those 2 books!), and indeed that's not true about what moves a tagged book higher on the list.

Next I think I will try sorting my TBR by lowest total number of reviews and hope that by some miracle one of those super obscure titles is currently tagged "started" by someone or other. But most of my super obscure books only have a handful of tags and this is not one of them.

I will probably be forced to do a SKIP.

I did that already!!!
The problem is that there’s not really anything there that has the right tag on Top Shelves. Only way way down 😩
I checked a gazillion books on that list, and I also checked random books on my TBR that I thought might have it, and I also checked various brand new books that people might have just tagged “started”. All to no avail.
I did not check on books that I have already read, because I don’t want to do a reread, though at this point I doubt any such book would have it on Top Shelves either.

CANNOT FIND ANYTHING!!!! Been looking for almost 2 hours, ARGH!

Has anyone else had this task and found something???

Again, it's:
"Read a book shelved (listed on the first page on GR) as started - plurals and spelling acceptable"

Has to be odd # of pages, or title A-M

I got the task "Read a book shelved (listed on the first page on GR) as started - plurals and spelling acceptable"

I'm having a really hard time finding something with "started" -- but I did find something with " series_started"

Is that okay?

ETA: Nevermind. That book is neither North nor West, gosh dang it, and those are my direction options.

I finished my 2 books and updated the spreadsheet, but it doesn't look like either of them fit the open Mini tasks anymore. Oh well!
I'll keep an eye out in case something else gets moved around, or we try for an additional monster.

I am going to try squeezing in one more short (>150 page) book before Battleship starts on Fri.

Starting Fri afternoon I will be on a 2 week vacation!!! Hoping to read more than usual, especially since I can enforce reading on long plane flights by not downloading any movies LOL.

I am going to read Ariadne for the BOM and apparently if I don’t start until Fri 9pm UK time, it can be used for this new mini Battleship thing that I am not going to try wrapping my head around at the moment. It is tagged “Greece” if that helps!