Judith’s Comments (group member since Apr 15, 2015)

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

ChrisP wrote: "If someone drops out I would be interested in joining. I read 2-3 books per week."

Go ahead and fill out the sign up form and it'll get you on the reserve list

Note: found books on tracking spreadsheet that weren't assigned to a mini task yet that worked for both new tasks (yay!)


Also, there is a filter on the book tab to hide the books we've moved to the official spreadsheet. if you need to view all the books, just click the filter thing in Column J and it will reveal the hidden rows.

New Mini 2 Task

Read a book 600+ pages

For the few people who do the BOM participation tracking, I pulled the tokens from the official tracking sheet and added them to our team spreadsheets. There is a space for them on the Summary tab.

3 tokens equals one extra entry. Any time a nomination from our team wins the BOM vote, we have a guaranteed DQ day (so no point on using extra entries for those). My nomination won for the June Adult/nonfiction BOM (yay for guaranteed bonus points!).

We don't have a guaranteed spot for The Berry Pickers.

Discussion Questions Day 2
Part One, Chapter 6 - Part One, Chapter 12

6. In this part Inez spends some time with Mr. Hayes. What did you think of their afternoon in Cairo? Did you enjoy their banter?
It was fine and relatively predictable. I find their chemistry lacking though. I'm not liking either character all that much, though Inez is very much acting her age. Which I don't mean as a compliment.

7. After sensing familiar magic from an old trinket, Inez buys it and later has a vision of Cleopatra. What do you think this vision means? Do you believe Cleopatra’s burial site can only be found with Inez’s help?
I think it means that trinket also came from Cleopatra's burial site. And Inez will help them find what they are looking for. Whether it can only be found with her help? I don't know enough to understand the vagueness of the magic system that exists in the story.

8. Every now and then, the point of view shifts briefly to Mr. Hayes. Do you enjoy these moments from his perspective, or would you prefer the story to stay entirely with Inez?
I think the shifts are helpful, there is a lot going on under the surface that Inex knows nothing about. I think those snippets will be important to understand the bigger picture.

9. Inez finds a letter from her mother, in which she suspects that Tío Ricardo is involved in illegal activities. Does this letter, along with the boat conversation Inez overhears, make you suspicious of Tío Ricardo? Or do you think he’s not responsible for Inez’s parents’ murder?
Not any more than I already was. I'm assuming his doing some smuggling of some sort or digging where he's not supposed to be. Or other similar shady type things. My guess is his sister and BIL didn't approve and were judgy about it (right or wrongly). But I don't think Ricardo killed them but secrets in the circles these people travel in can get you killed and I think that's more what Ricardo meant. Also, are we all sure her parents are dead? No bodies have been found, maybe they are trapped in Cleopatra's tomb or something.


DQ Links

Day 1: https://www.goodreads.com/topic/show/...
Day 2: https://www.goodreads.com/topic/show/...

Erin *Proud Book Hoarder* wrote: "A book I added to my list happens to start with One for the sentence, "One road in, one road out." It's based on the TV show Broadchurch, which I've seen both versions of and enjoye..."

Oh nice. And that was such a great show!

Discussion Questions Day 1
Prologue - Part 1 Ch 5

1. The first line is “A letter changed my life.” Would you say this was a good start, cheesy start, or are you indifferent?
I'd have to go with indifferent. With the blurb about the book, I had an idea as to what was going to happen and nothing was all that surprising.

2. Why do you think Tio Roberto wanted to immediately send Inez back to Egypt without even seeing her? Do you think he’s hiding something? Or do you think it’s just typical of men at that time to dismiss young women and enforce them being chaperoned and taken care of?
Well I think he's up to shady things and doesn't want her there for safety reasons. Nor does he really know her or used to dealing with a 17 year old girl who has no practical experience living on dig sites or in Egypt. I honestly wouldn't want her there either. I just wouldn't want to be bothered. But there is likely shady things going on because otherwise the story would be boring.

3. The ring scene with Thomas Sterling was definitely outrageous; I felt Inez's outrage and all of her shock. Do you expect to see the ring later in the story? Any guesses to its significance?
I definitely think the ring and the dude will made a later appearance. I'm guessing it lets you into the tomb? Reveals it's location? Something like that, it also has weird magic that Inez can feel/absorb. So I don't know how that factors in either.

4. What do you think of the writing style and the pacing so far? Are you enjoying the lyrical, rich descriptions or do you prefer a more fast paced story?
It's fine for now but I have a feeling Whit and Inez and going to start getting on my nerves at some point. And I'm worried Inez is either going to be some sort of spunky Mary Sue or TSTL. Or both. I hope I'm wrong.

5. In Ch. 5 we see politics at play, and we can tell this is just the beginning. How do you think this will affect your enjoyment of the book? Will it enhance the story for you or will you feel bogged down by the details?
I love political drama, especially when it's routed in issues that are real. And those very much are, I'm curious to see how the author runs with it in the story.

DQ Links

Day 1: https://www.goodreads.com/topic/show/...

As of a few hours ago, we’ve officially started the 11th Tower Teams

Happy Reading everyone!

A task I’m struggling with is the task in mini 2

“Book starts with the word One”.

I’ve lost count how many books I’ve looked at and it’s nothing. Not the easiest to search for either.

And yay for Cathy and Diane for finding books for our more random tasks.

Yeah, I cleared the decks today and just reading a few novellas until tomorrow when I need to start the BOM.

I have a book that works for 'features a bull' but I have to read some other library books first so if someone finds a book that works for that task first, please take the task :)

No worries, there's a lot of different pieces. It's hard for me to keep it all straight sometimes. And I wrote most of the posts and am the one who made the team spreadsheets. LOL

Also, what Erin said :)

I'm not expecting that all of our itineraries will be so heavily weighted towards level 3 countries.

We can keep an eye on how people are doing with their itinerary 1 reads and move things around if people may finish books in a different order.

Good communication will be the key and with how this team has come together so far, I'm confident we'll do just fine.

Lexi, Erin, and I will try and keep an eye on things and will likely ask for status updates as we are close to finishing off an itinerary and can shift things as needs be.

I am quite excited and think we are in for a fun few months.

Another back up for Team Belem

Yay, my nomination won! Team Belem

I’m good with my day, thank you randomizer 🙂

I should clarify we can bank books for mini 2, just not 1 & 3.

So people get as confused as possible 🤪

Yay! the whole team is here

keep any questions you may have coming :)

With the chaos of getting this up and running settling down, I'm getting excited about the challenge starting!!