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

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

Lexi wrote: "I have 23 that need reading and 2 are embarrassingly from 2018. I'll be back to update my post."

I think I've cleared my 2018 ones, but still have a few from 2016-2017. *hides*

I AM SO IN.
I have been waiting for this post to go up. At the start of summer I felt like I was in a good place w/my NetGalleys. I had less than 30 to read. Since then I've accumulated at least a dozen more...

Beginning of Month:
46 books, including 1 currently reading but not including 2 books read but still lacking reviews (not pictured)
Feedback ratio: 91%

Read:
Plain Bad Heroines (my review)
Raybearer (my review)
Stakes Is High: Life After the American Dream (my review)
Black Sun (my review)
Daddy: Stories (my review)
Fable (my review)
The Secret of White Stone Gate (my review)
The Trials of Koli (my review)

DNF:
The Zoo (my review)



End of month:
39 books -- including 1 currently reading and 1 new addition; not including 4 books read but still lacking reviews [went back and added later]
Feedback ratio: 92%

Hah! Apparently I just hit my 30 book target! Yay :)
But I haven't updated the challenge since hitting 22/30. So here are the additional old TBRs that I read:


Entertaining YA time travel, if you are really good at suspending your disbelief and don't mind when the heroine is a little bit dumb.


Meh. I understand why this was an important book in its day, but I had a lot of problems with it. I'm sure I'd have liked it more if I'd first encountered it as a kid.


I had a level of unease during the first 100 pages or so, stemming from the meta aspects. On several levels. But after that I got pretty into it!


Not sure I learned anything really new to me, but this was a good encapsulation of the subject matter and kept my attention.


Meh. This had a few things going for it, and the writing was fine. But I guess I am just sick of adolescent Alice-in-Wonderland retellings/reduxes. Also I am sick of unhealthy relationships being touted as romantic.


Guiltiest of guilty pleasures. Especially because... see above re unhealthy relationships.


I went into this for the love I bear for every other book I've read by Robin McKinley. This one is not her best -- not because of the disturbing storyline, but because it has pacing problems, and some dropped threads, and Way Too Much Anthropomorphizing of Dogs. And I like dogs! But even a so-so book by Robin McKinley is still a good book.


Hilarious and informative as usual, Mary Roach!

Last year I didn't continue updating this challenge after I hit 100% of my target, but this year I probably will just because it's fun watching the number go up. :D
However, I'm not going to raise my official goal on these older books because for months I've been severely neglecting my new NetGalleys like whoa.

Btw @Chava, I’ve not read past chapter 12, just let me know where you’re at. I will probably read a bunch over the weekend.

Burn Our Bodies Down by Rory Power

From the author of the New York Times bestseller Wilder Girls comes a new twisty thriller about a girl whose past has always been a mystery—until she decides to return to her mother’s hometown . . . where history has a tendency to repeat itself.

Ever since Margot was born, it’s been just her and her mother. No answers to Margot’s questions about what came before. No history to hold on to. No relative to speak of. Just the two of them, stuck in their run-down apartment, struggling to get along.

But that’s not enough for Margot. She wants family. She wants a past. And she just found the key she needs to get it: A photograph, pointing her to a town called Phalene. Pointing her home. Only, when Margot gets there, it’s not what she bargained for.

Margot’s mother left for a reason. But was it to hide her past? Or was it to protect Margot from what’s still there?

The only thing Margot knows for sure is there’s poison in their family tree, and their roots are dug so deeply into Phalene that now that she’s there, she might never escape.

Sin Eater by Megan Campisi

For the crime of stealing bread, fourteen-year-old May receives a life sentence: she must become a Sin Eater—a shunned woman, brutally marked, whose fate is to hear the final confessions of the dying, eat ritual foods symbolizing their sins as a funeral rite, and thereby shoulder their transgressions to grant their souls access to heaven.

Orphaned and friendless, apprenticed to an older Sin Eater who cannot speak to her, May must make her way in a dangerous and cruel world she barely understands. When a deer heart appears on the coffin of a royal governess who did not confess to the dreadful sin it represents, the older Sin Eater refuses to eat it. She is taken to prison, tortured, and killed. To avenge her death, May must find out who placed the deer heart on the coffin and why.

The Sin Eater walks among us, unseen, unheard
Sins of our flesh become sins of Hers
Following Her to the grave, unseen, unheard
The Sin Eater Walks Among Us.

The Handmaid’s Tale meets Alice in Wonderland in this gripping and imaginative historical novel about a shunned orphan girl in 16th-century England who is ensnared in a deadly royal plot and must turn her subjugation into her power.

Oh, haha! I hadn’t noticed that yet!
I need to go over and make some nominations too...

No worries 🙂 I like the book but I get why others don’t.
Maybe we could BR Truly Devious sometime in the fall?

@Chava : please chime in soon if you want me to wait for you before I continue on with Forbidden. Otherwise I guess I will just resume in another day or two.

Ch. 9 & 10.
The back and forth perspectives are becoming a little more interesting. Like, not learning Maya’s actual perspective on the dancing scene until after Lochan’s already obsessed over it. I think Lochan puts Maya on a bit of a pedestal but they are both only human of course.

The scene where all 5 of the kids are at the table talking against each other (beans, homework, Kit stirring up trouble, Maya not helping...) was really well done. It was the most palpable show of family-stress yet.

So....
Should we wait for Chava to catch up? I don’t mind at all.
@Chava — hoping you are okay!

Aiswrya wrote: "Just finished Chapter 8. this is some depressing stuff, Alysa :( It's making my heart break. And honestly, I can't bring myself to sympathize with Kit at all. If I saw my mom wasting her life away ..."

I just finished Ch. 8 too.
I hate the mom so much. Sometimes the way she’s described is sexist, but unfortunately that seems like the author’s way of painting a particular picture. Like, it’s not because she insists on skimpy clothes and whatnot that she’s a bad mother. It’s because her alcoholism, immaturity, and insecurity make her selfish and neglectful that she’s a bad mother.
Re Kit... I disagree. Like, I don’t agree with his poor, adolescent decision-making but I sympathize because I do understand it. And it is pretty common for kids like that to follow their parents shitty paths even when they have seen the outcome, sometimes unconsciously, and sometimes because they think they are superior and it won’t happen to them.

Food + books = love.

Also, @Aiswrya — congrats on becoming a Mod! I didn’t know until now :)

I am just now debating whether to read chapters 5 & 6, or go to sleep and save them for tomorrow. I guess I will wait... I am taking tomorrow off work, so I can probably read 5-8 if we do want to stay on the original schedule :)

Eh, he is 13 and caught in a bad situation, and biting the hand that feeds him.
This mom. Kind of a stereotype, the way she is written, but no less awful.

I wish I could say that no school would let kids out to a stranger without verifying they’re on file or hearing directly from the parents about it first, but unfortunately it can happen. So bizarre that apparently this Sandra has been asked to pick up the kids several times before and yet still the school had nothing in their files, so clearly the teacher is a a moron, even before her nasty comments to Lochan and Maya.

Just read the first 2 chapters. Aw, these poor kids!

Happy End of Wheel, everyone!

Congrats on good reading, everybody!

Me too! Resumed my Scribd membership because library doesn’t have it!

Yay!

Cool.
I'm going to keep reading my book, and I can always add it back later if I pull off the improbable and finish it in time.

Otherwise, it feels really weird to be basically done with Wheel two days early. I do not like this feeling!