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

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

@Alysa well i mean it's watching a dude play a video game while rambling and answering fan questions so it's not like ...i don't really need to keep up with a plot lol but i generally read graphic novels while also watching something bc graphic novels are not as like intense as prose books and i find it pretty easy to split my attention that way most of the time. also lumberjanes is just a really light read so i find it's great for reading while watching something.

im guessing from the lack of comments that this was a total bust with both of you? not sure if you want to try something else or just take a break for a few weeks?

i started on audio and i need to finish reading my ebook of later as well [think i'm about 1/3 of the way through]. i have a video game stream i want to watch later today but i'm hoping to get through while i'm watching. i haven't been reading much for the past few days so hoping i can make myself make progress today.

ok i finished and gave it a 2.5 but rounded up. also i checked back through all the chapter headings and it does just move backwards linearly, think i was just kind of confused at first which is why i didn't necessarily pick up on it right away. gotta say the timeline is one of the things about the book i actually liked and i wasn't really expecting to bc a lot of my friends on here rating it poorly and cited the timeline as one of the reasons. usually im the first person to be confused by 'non linear' timelines but also like ...this was linear, just reverse linear lol

anyway, back to the actual plot (view spoiler)[it was pretty much exacty what you think it's gonna be once you figure it out so that's why i went with 2.5, but it's also extremely readable and it was interesting to see like just how far all of her deceptions went as more and more of the earlier timeline was revealed so that's why i bumped it up to 3 instead of down. (hide spoiler)]

it wasn't great but it wasn't awful and it was kind of nice as just a fairly quick read

about 2/3rds of the way through now and (view spoiler)[womp womp i was right lol. kind of disappointed honestly bc it seems at this point to be a fairly standard jealousy stolen identity murder thing going on but i guess there is still time left (hide spoiler)]. trying to remember if things skipped around more at the beginning bc now it seems like it is going directly in reverse order ...

so i did actually read about a third of this yesterday but didn't get over here to comment. i'm enjoying it so far but also not *entirely* sure what is really happening, with the weird timeline and unreliable narrator and such, i am enjoying it but i'm kind of wondering why (view spoiler)[she felt the need to like ...become a criminal? i mean she had the money and it seemed all legal and i can understand moving it around i guess just in case the mom decided later that she wanted to challenge the will or something, but i'm still like why was all this necessary?? you could have just bought a nice house somewhere and chilled out ... (hide spoiler)] clearly there is something we haven't been told yet (view spoiler)[i'm kind of wondering the MC actually killed her friend but that seems like the obvious twist so i wonder if something else actually happened (hide spoiler)]

Yeah it's been awhile since I read that one but that is definitely a possible explanation. Despite the kind of confusing ending though I would definitely say that In The Penal Colony is one of the few that has stuck with me even after I have gone on and read other things. LIke some of these I don't remember what they are minutes after I stop reading, but that one will stick for awhile!

ok thread is up but i'll probably wait till monday anyway, or sunday at least

@Mods can we get a thread for for 4/5?

mmm i'll request it for monday but we'll just see when they put the thread up and how we feel lol

alex rider sounds interesting as well

maybe we should do a few standlones though and like you said go back to series in may

do you guys want to start with genuine fraud? magnus archives just started up again so i might need something that is not horror first up lol

tbh i haven't been reading a ton either. i've mostly been watching great british baking show and talking to people on discord for the past couple days.

can't remember what all we talked about before but i think one of you said genuine fraud looked good and also last year i think we talked about mr. splitfoot some? so those are both standalones.

i've been thinking about trying animorphs bc i never read them and someone on discord that i've been talking to really loves them but that's a long series and also middle grade which can be amazing but can also be weird like this series ended up being.

or was kind of thinking about rereading the magnus chase series. that's middle grade but definitely more grown up middle grade / verging on young adult and it's only 3 books.

so do we want to try a standalone or take a break or try another series?

ok, sliding in with my last 3 of the month just in time:

★★☆☆☆ “Sanatorium under the Sign of the Hourglass,” 1937, Bruno Schulz

um ...i read this one like 3 days ago and i don't remember it? oops

★★☆☆☆ “Far Below,” 1939, Robert Barbour Johnson

this one was kind of interesting i guess but anything so heavily lovecraft inspired honestly just bored me to tears. ~oooh there are weird monsters in the tunnels~ ok thanks for the info!

★★★☆☆ “Smoke Ghost,” 1941, Fritz Leiber

i liked this one a bit more, definitely had an interesting concept and i thought the part where he was talking about how modern ghosts would not look the same as ones from the past was a very interesting point of view.

i think right now we are firmly in the lovecraft era of writing where it's all like ~ooooh inhuman monsters~ ~body horror~ ~people going slowly mad~ and i kind of ...hate all of those. i mean the way a lot of writers in the past - and even today still - deal with writing 'insanity' is just really ableist and i find it hard to overlook in most cases. and as for weird monsters, i am a monster lover so i'm just like 'ok but is the monster hot?'. lovecraft would hate me [and i am totally fine with that]

how are you guys doing? next month seems to be about half as much reading as previous so maybe you can catch up some depending on how your IRL lives are going?

i don't think i would have been that into it as a kid either honestly, and i still read a LOT of middle grade now and i feel like most of it is better than this. #oops

agree that it seems really weird to call it the artemis fowl series when it's much more of an ensemble cast. i guess he was in this one a lot more than the last one but still, there just seem to be so many characters and i was like wait who is doing what now the entire time

so i literally just listened to the whole thing this morning and it went in one ear and out the other. i'll just copy and past my review, no spoilers bc again apparently i am incapable of paying attention to this series. definitely stopping after this one

review:
I literally just listened to this and I doubt I could tell you a single thing about it that wasn't in the summary. I don't know why but the entire thing just went right in one ear and out the other. I should have liked this better than the first one since my main complaint was that Holly and Artemis were hardly even in it and they are in this one a lot ...but I'm just so meh about the whole thing. There's so many character and so much going on and I cannot bring myself to care about any of it. Really wanted to like this series but I think I'm gonna drop it now.

ok did three more, i think i might start posting a few at a time here bc the ones i don't like i don't really have much to say about

★★☆☆☆ “Genius Loci,” 1933, Clark Ashton Smith
★★☆☆☆ “The Tarn,” 1936, Hugh Walpole

genius loci was another one where i just did not remember what happened at all immediately after reading. the tarn was a bit better in that at least i absorbed the plot but i didn't find it particularly riveting.

★★★★☆ “The Town of Cats,” 1935, Hagiwara Sakutar

this one i liked, it was a good length and easy to follow and i liked the idea that you could literally end up in a different place or kind of mirror dimension just from approaching a place from a different angle etc. very cool.

sounds good to me

yeah everything is just crazy right now.

i don't care when we start the next book though. if one of you starts just pop in here to say so and then i'll pick it up as well. im in the middle of several books right now but im jumping around a lot