Melanie’s Comments (group member since Sep 01, 2014)

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

The countdown timer is up, so I'm assuming that means we can start? It's only a little after 8pm here on 4/30 so that was unexpected.

I will be starting The Road to Rose Bend by Naima Simone in a few minutes to squeeze one last book in for April. But I guess because the timer is up, it will count as my first book for TT.

A little late with my recommendations, but here you go! Some favorites from the last couple years.

Romance


Mystery Thrillers


Sci-fi

Just hoping to make some kind of progress this month.

Start of month:
Books on shelf: 49
Feedback Ratio: 86%

Books (ordered by pub date):






Added:


Finished:



The Girl from Silent Lake | My Review
Never Conspire with a Sinful Baron | My Review
Sweet Wild of Mine | My Review
Improper | My Review
What a Widow Wants | My Review
Deep River Promise | My Review
A Duke Will Never Do | My Review
One Tough Cowboy | My Review
Duchess by Deception | My Review
The Earl Next Door | My Review
Once Upon a Cowboy Christmas | My Review
The Virgin Who Humbled Lord Haslemere | My Review
The Perfect Murder | My Review

End of Month:
Books on shelf: 40
Feedback Ratio: 89%

Hello team! I'm Melanie, I live in New Jersey (EST) with my husband and our two cats. Last year was the first time I'd played TT and it was a lot of fun. I had heard about it for a few years when I played WAT or UNO and finally decided to jump in last year.

I primarily read romance (historical, contemporary, and suspense being my favorite subcategories) as well as mystery/thrillers. I also pick up urban fantasy occasionally but generally steer well clear of high/epic fantasy. I have never read a Discworld book but I will try to read the 3 BOMs since they're available on Scribd and I do love bonus points. So we'll see how that goes since they're not a genre I enjoy.

Here is my shelf.
https://www.goodreads.com/review/list...

Shelby wrote: "I have yet to see one single person say they like the new beta. I know I sent them a scathing review myself. It's just plain awful. Hopefully they're getting enough negative responses they'll recon..."

I also sent them a very lengthy review of the page pretty much tearing the whole thing apart.

I will say they do seem to be listening to feedback as a number of things I complained about that were missing or needed to be moved/changed/etc. were actually changed.

One complaint I included and I know a lot of others did as well they don't seem to want to address though is that everything is huge. You can't see nearly as much on one screen as you can on the existing book pages.

Camilla wrote: "I made the mistake of changing into the beta version and couldn't get out of it fast enough. As I have librarian status I do a fair amount of editing of book data, and I didn't even see where I cou..."

There actually isn't even a way to edit the book from the beta page. They forgot the edit button...

Cat wrote: "@Melanie Wow! I've vaguely heard of that condition before, but never thought about how that would impact on someone's reading. That must get frustrating - you can read that an author is building (o..."

...so I just had to ask my husband if he can actually hear/smell things described to him as I didn't know that was a thing. I don't get that at all.

Probably the best way for me to describe it is that I associate everything with words in my head. So I can know what something looks like but I don't actually see it, I'll just remember words that describe it. Like I know what my cat looks like (my profile picture), but I don't actually see a picture of him in my head. I'll have descriptors like orange fur, pink nose, white belly, stuff like that. But I don't actually see any of that, I just have the words.

The reason I don't really read fantasy outside of UF is that I can't picture anything that's going on or mentioned.

I have aphantasia which is the inability to mentally picture anything, like I can't even conjure up a picture of the cat sitting next to me right now. I know what it is I'm thinking about, but there's no picture.

So that pretty much rules out most fantasy books for me as I have no idea what the world is supposed to look like or anything which is why I prefer stuff set in the real world as I can just google what a place looks like to get a general idea. It's also why I tend to dislike books that are overly descriptive as I get nothing out of those sections.

I'm also not big on fantasy. I can do urban fantasy as that is at least set in our world, but high/epic fantasy is out for me.

Moderators of NBRC wrote: "We have decided to have extra BOMs for the first books in three of the sub-series, rather than having a free for all of nominations.

So in May we'll have Equal Rites; June will be Mort and July Guards! Guards!"

Hmm.. All three of these are available as ebooks on Scribd which means I can read them and not have to buy them. I may have to pick these up for the BOM points despite not really liking fantasy.

I've never read a Discworld book (not a big fantasy reader outside of UF), but I'm always excited for TT!

Ok so I may have just spent way too long zooming in on this picture to see it better only to realize I could right click it and open it in a new tab to view it in a larger size...

No real goal this month other than to make some kind of progress.

Start of month:
Books on shelf: 50
Feedback Ratio: 85%

Books (ordered by pub date):






Added:


Finished:


When a Cowboy Loves a Woman | My Review
The Unexpected Wife | My Review
One Got Away | My Review
Near You | My Review
A Cowboy Kind of Love | My Review
The Road to Rose Bend | My Review

End of Month:
Books on shelf: 49
Feedback Ratio: 86%

No real goal this month but maybe try to get to some of my pre-2021 backlog (currently at 28 books).

Start of month:
Books on shelf: 47
Feedback Ratio: 86%

Books (ordered by pub date):






Added:


Finished:

End of Month:
Books on shelf: 50
Feedback Ratio: 85%

I'm pretty happy with my Netgalley reading this month. I read 8 books, added 6 (1 of which I read already), so decreased my shelf by 2. Plus of the ones I read, 6 of them were part of my pre-2021 backlog bringing that down to 30.

Start of month:
Books on shelf: 51
Feedback Ratio: 84%

Added:


Finished:


The Princess and the Rogue | My Review
Tempting the Laird | My Review
Wildflower Graves | My Review
A Tourist's Guide to Murder | My Review
Someday My Duke Will Come | My Review
Wedding Bear Blues | My Review
Justified | My Review
The Virgin Who Ruined Lord Gray | My Review

End of Month:
Books on shelf: 49
Feedback Ratio: 85%

My goal for the month is to get through the 1 January title I missed, my February titles, and to read some of my pre-2021 backlog (currently at 30 books).

Start of month:
Books on shelf: 49
Feedback Ratio: 85%

Books (ordered by pub date):






Added:


Finished:


A Good Old-Fashioned Cowboy | My Review
The Duke Heist | My Review
The Night Before | My Review
To Tame a Wild Cowboy | My Review
The Virgin Who Vindicated Lord Darlington | My Review
The Echo Wife | My Review
The Project | My Review
Hit Me With Your Best Scot | My Review

End of Month:
Books on shelf: 47
Feedback Ratio: 86%

The other Sandy wrote: "Melanie wrote: "I have an exclusive shelf on GR for my owned unread books so I am unfortunately confronted with that number every time I go onto my shelves here..."

I have one of those, too. I also have one for books I want to read but don't own. Each one of those shelves is kind of depressing in size, but if I put all of them on one shelf, the number would be horrifyingly large."

Yeah, that's one of the reasons I separate them. The number would be ridiculous otherwise.

I have one for physical books I own, one for ebooks I own, one for audiobooks I own, plus the general want to read shelf which is for anything not in my possession in some way that I want to read.

I have an exclusive shelf on GR for my owned unread books so I am unfortunately confronted with that number every time I go onto my shelves here.

Despite it making it easy to look for books for challenges without having to go upstairs to my book room, I sometimes question my decision to create that shelf when I look at the number...

Finished my second one A Lady by Midnight by Tessa Dare, rated it 4 stars.



Whenever I enjoy one of the ones I put off for years it makes me wonder why I waited so long to read it.

I finished my first book, A Duke by Default by Alyssa Cole which I rated 4 stars.



I also finished 2 others not on my list in direct opposition to my goal. For 2021, I'm working on series I physically own that I've already started and the other 2 I finished are ones I own but they were me starting the series rather than continuing.

But hey I got one off of my initial list and that's what matters.