Beth’s Comments (group member since Aug 12, 2014)

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

Finished A Thousand Darknesses: Lies and Truth in Holocaust Fiction

Completed

Completed: Subtle Blood

Finally finished The Lost Orphan which I had almost forgotten about. I suppose it's too late to go back and answer the questions?

Lorna wrote: "I have a few books to add to the spreadsheet, can someone help me with what I need to write given all the tasks are taken?"

I'm very confused to this as well. Should I toss off things that could work for the story? If so, what?

Finished

Finished The Witness for the Dead.

I see some books are being used for the Jackanory -- I look forward to seeing our story!

Finished .

We should use her inventing new chocolate baking goods as part of the story, because they sound delicious.

Completed and added to spreadsheet. I'm trying to throw in details that might be used for the story.

Also finished but it's too new to have a word count.

Completed:

I found a website called How Long Would It Take, and it gives the word count as an estimated 119,600.

Does that work?

https://howlongtoread.com/books/73321...

That's a web page that handles adult books, so if we have to give word counts for books mistakenly filed as childrens it might be good. Otherwise I have no idea where to look -- adult books tend not to have word counts as part of their descriptions.

Michelle wrote: "As for any book tagged Children, we have to verify the word count, even if we know it's incorrect. If it isn't on the AR site, I know a few people have actually reached out to the author to ask. Even if we know it shouldn't be, we have to get an "official" count for this particular challenge.."

Wow, that actually just drained out about 75% of the fun of this challenge game. I certainly don't want to bother Pamela Dean with such a stupid question. I'll untag it, and this is probably the last time I'll do a challenge with the group. Ouch.

I don't know if captains give feedback afterwards, but that really killed a lot of the joy and fun I get from this team event. If the expectation is that people will cheat than it really doesn't feel like the place for me. I get it for children's books; it didn't feel bad to not count that children's book (Rival Magic that clearly passed but didn't have the numbers because it was a children's book. But this is not that; this is them saying they don't trust us. That the rules are made because they expect people to cheat. It feels different, and it feels really bad.

I'll finish this game of course and our team is a lot of fun, but if you give feedback please let them know that I've just been driven out of this group. I'd rather play games/challenges where we assume everyone is playing fair.

I just finished The Whim of the Dragon, and when I went to mark the page count I saw that it has 4 votes for tag Children on main page.

But I don't know where to go to look for the word count, because it's clearly not a book for children and I'd be astonished to find it in a school library. I mean, I guess people might think it was YA, because many of the characters are teens, but it's not appropriate for kids younger than high school and it's aimed at adults who like fantasy books.

Does it really not count? Children is the 8th tag on the page page, and then Childrens> Middle grade is the 10th, with a total of 7 tags for both. I assume the 127 votes for Fantasy are from people who actually read the book. It's 400 pages, unillustrated.

Finished my book club book, The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue, which is conveniently going to be a BOM, so I should go answer some questions.

Should I go pick up Eleventh Gate or are we going to use one of the Death books?

Lorna wrote: "Would the cover of One Last Stop work for mini skirt?"

This one?

That is totally a mini skirt!

Lorna wrote: "I saw in the comments something about points for pages, even if we already covered the task. Is that right?"

Yes! Also we have to somehow write a story.

I'm not clear on what (if) we should be listing about our books to help with the story.

Finished Murder Must Advertise and I'll put it on the spreadsheet.

As soon as I finish my book club books I'll see if I should start The Eleventh Gate.

Any particular books we should read for the story?

(Edited: Also finished my first book club book, America for Americans: A History of Xenophobia in the United States, so only one more to go! Updated the spreadsheet.

Michelle wrote: "Unfortunately we can't use it since it has children's as a MPG and the word count is too short."

Ah! I think I had us confused with another challenge where if the book were also tagged YA then you didn't have to check the count. So I went back to check any other books of mine that have the children tag, and all the ones tagged for tower8 are long enough.

Kristen wrote: "Hey I just want to let everyone know I started the BOM The Invisible Life of Addie! I’ll be posting to the questions as well!"

I forgot that was the BOM, and I'm reading it too! I will go answer the questions.

I just finished Yang the Youngest and his Terrible Ear, which I consider a kids book and as a kids book it doesn't have the necessary word count. But it's also tagged as YA on the main page, so I guess technically it could count.

What do you think? Should I list it?

Finished The Girl Who Drank the Moon. Maybe it can be in the story?