Dev’s Comments (group member since Sep 09, 2017)

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

@Megan i agree with you that we should HAVE to have a list of characters next to us at all times to understand what is happening in the book. i thought it was a decent book and i will admit that keeping track of many characters at once is something i sometimes struggle with [whether in print or in audio] but also i feel some of the blame has to be on the author as well [especially when so many people are having the same issue] because really a story should stand alone and you should be able to follow it without lists or diagrams in my opinion. i agree that the writing STYLE itself is good though.

i never really managed to keep up with who most of the characters were, but i feel like that would have been an issue for me even if i was reading the print version of the book just because i am AWFUL at large casts, especially when many of them are similar [i.e. they are all either necromancer or cavaliers]. there were a few that stood out a bit - the twins, the two who were teenagers, the 7th house woman ...i guess there was a pair that were married? - but overall i was just listening like 'cool, don't remember who that is so finding it hard to care'

Day 1: Chapters 1-7

1. What were your initial impressions of this world?
well i'm at chapter 20-something at this point so i'm a bit past first impressions but it definitely seemed like a very bleak and depressing world. i do appreciate that she took some time to lay out some background information though. a lot of the time i end up dropping books like this if the author offers no explanation for anything at the beginning because i feel like then i just start off confused and never catch up. at first i thought this was a high fantasy world but as it went on it seemed more of a far future thing. i guess that explains why sci-fi was on the top shelves, i was a bit confused by that before i started!

2. Harrow tricked Gideon when she talked about her offer of freedom. Gideon seemed to have the upper hand, but then Harrow won the fight through her earlier planning and planting that day. What do you think that says about their relationship?
despite her MANY escape attempts gideon does not really seem like a 'planner' and even when she does something very clever like hacking the shuttle schedule it seems like she doesn't necessarily think things all the way through, or maybe it's just that she isn't very good at adapting and changing direction when things go differently than she planned.

3. So Harrow wants Gideon to be her guardian as she travels to the other houses. Seems like a good opportunity to get off the Ninth, and become a Cohort. Gideon does take the position. Do you think that was a good choice for her?
i guess that remains to be seen but it is definitely turning out to be more interesting than staying home, if not as safe.

4. I liked when Gideon’s sword instructor said “anyone can learn to fight, not anyone can learn to think”. Do you think that Gideon needs to do more thinking than fighting?
i absolutely love that she does more fighting than thinking but yeah it would probably be helpful for her to learn to think more, especially since it seems that a lot of people around her have ulterior motives.

5. What do you think about the House of the First? The world seems like the exact opposite of the ninth in terms of light and sky, rather than everything grey. All the houses are there - do you think Gideon is going to get into trouble or save Harrow from trouble?
definitely interesting to see the differences in the houses and how they all live, reminds me a bit of all the different districts in the hunger games although it doesn't seem to be quite as bad as that. and i'm still unsure about who is more 'trouble' between gideon and harrow, maybe a bit of both lol

i will probably start book 5 tomorrow. i still have a few hours to listen to on gideon the ninth but after that i'll be ready to go.

i was planning on reading My Life as a White Trash Zombie sometime this month if you guys wanted to try that series? i'm not usually much on zombies but it looks fun.

i also don't read a lot of non-fiction - and there aren't really a lot of non-fiction 'series' anyway - and really only like romance if it is M/M or F/F because like you said so much of the M/F romance genre now is just so outright abusive and i don't want to deal with it. although really even if i am reading a queer romance book i still like there to be an actual plot and JUST romance.

i do read some mysteries and thrillers but i find that much of that genre has a plot that starts with a woman being murdered which isn't always a dealbreaker but if it's like ~beautiful young women are being brutally murdered and this asshole cop has to figure out why~ then i'm just like dear god why lol.

i've had a bit of a slow start this week but should finish two books tomorrow.

its for why the book fits the task. so if you had something for sloth - blue cover then in justification you would put '75% blue cover per tineye' or whatever [or at least that's what i assumed]

that sounds good to me with checking in on fridays so we have a little bit of time to adjust our numbers if we need to.

I would think we should be able to take books off the sheet if we want to - as long as we do it before any sort of deadline - but we'll see what the mods say. also in planning our strategy we really need to know if there will be periodic 'check ins' for staying on track or if we just need to have the correct number at the very end of the challenge

i was wondering if they were going to do points for buddy reads as well since they did last year. but that was my first tower teams so i thought maybe it was just something they tried that one time

@Mary it started about an hour ago so Carmen had the right time

that is weird, although even if you have to wait til the 19th it will still count for points because you have a month after the start date to read it, although it does suck not to be able to be doing the questions when everyone else is

@Vicki i really like all of Riley Sager's book but Lock Every Door i thought was especially good. possibly because i actually more or less figured out what was going on and it makes me feel smart lol

i read a lot of horror and urban fantasy so i've got no shortage of grey/black covers lol

i'm in indiana which i think is on eastern time? at least some of the time we are, daylight savings is awful and should be abolished. also there's like parts of the state that don't do daylight savings and are therefore sometimes in a different zone than the rest of the state??? awful. anyway it's 2:36 pm here right now so whatever timezone that is ;)

i really wish there were black or gray color options lol

@plethora i actually finished my last lava book this morning but yeah if we had needed another one i was planning on waiting til towers started so i could use it for both lol i guess an overlap of 14 hours is not a lot but i'm sure it is still stressing some people out!

@vicki you have to use tineye with the book cover image from goodreads to verify cover color

haha i know i didn't think we'd be able to do 60 each round! i'll admit it was a bit exhausting but the short page limit helped. i'm [probably naively] hoping lava will be a bit less nuts this year since there are the penalties for over-reading but i guess i'm about to find out! and yeah you all were great, would definitely be on a team with you again if there's another one where we can choose teammates

i'm just worried i won't like dresden and you both will and i will be like #oops lol. but i do want to at least read the first one so that i can know for sure since everyone and their mother recommends it. we could do other genres besides urban fantasy too. i'm honestly kind of getting a bit fed up with urban fantasy. seems like i drop most UF books i try after a few chapters because it's like they're all the exact same book.

im done too so we are all good to go

im listening to mine now so will be done in less than 2 hours. unfortunately kind of boring so far but i don't want to try to find something else lol

i'm going to read gideon the ninth - been waiting for the last month so i can get BOM points lol. unfortunately i already read wilder girls back when it came out. i've also already read two can keep a secret but i might try the other november BOM even though it isn't really something i would normally read.