Apoorv ’s Comments (group member since Nov 23, 2013)

Apoorv ’s comments from the The Perks Of Being A Book Addict group.

OMG! WE HAVE TAKE OFF!!
Let's gooooooooooooo...

YOU HAVE A PERSONAL READING SPREADSHEET!
Yesss! Me tooooo! :D

This makes me soo happy.

Also, it seems like you are having a fun time towards the end of the month sorting everything out. Haha! :P

Kelly wrote: "usually when the kids are asleep because it’s quite the challenge to get anything done when they’re draped over me like scarves!."

This can be a great opening line to a horror novel! :P

Lilly wrote: "Hello teammates! Sorry I'm a bit late to the party, I usually use Goodreads on my phone and the app experience is confusing to say the least, so I didn't even know you had gotten started already...."

Hey Lilly! You made it!
We were worried you got lost in the wonderful aisles of GoodReads looking for books. Haha.

But, totally hear you. The GoodReads app is just plain painful. I still don't prefer using it for pretty much anything, because half the time it crashes on me and the remaining half, I spend time searching my team :P

Thank you for sharing your top reads. This is the second mention of Remarkably Bright Creatures - that's it! I am sold. I am reading it for this year's UNO. *searches library's bookshelves*

It's great to have you on the team. Don't worry about any hiccups.
We are all here to have fun. So feel free to throw any questions and we will try and find an answer for you. I hope the game is exciting this year (like every year) and you become an UNO veteran very soon. Haha! :) Welcome again!

Becky wrote: "Hi team!

(Just a note I started writing this two day ago... lol. My life is one constant distraction 😂)

This is my second year doing UNO. I'm based out of Colorado, a full time administrative ass..."

Lover of Chocolate!! You get a lifetime free pass to be on the team at all times because of that, Becky. Haha!

Welcome to the team. I am going to totally turn to you for all Romance recommendations - the books that you listed were all new to me (except looking at the beautiful face of Tom on one! :P). I am definitely going to try and see if my local libraries have any of these books available. I mean there is V.E. Schwab in there, so chances are I am going to be a happy camper reading it. :)

I am glad that between all your work, keeping tab on the two littles (which I am sure is quite a task on its own!), crafting something new, AND eating chocolate you are here to have fun for the next three months!

Welcome again, Becky!
And now I need to go eat me some chocolate! :P

JoJo_theDoDo wrote: "Hello Teammates! : )

I am in the US. South Carolina, originally from California though.
I tend to be more of a mood reader lately, like Maddy. I used to read a lot more books in the past years, h..."

Hey Jo, welcome welcome! I loved how you went from one end of the country to the exact geographic opposite end. Historical Fiction and Magical Realism are some really cool genres - wonder if we have a book that mixes the two - without making it a fantasy book that is. Hmm! Need to search!

Still Alice is just a gut-punch of a story. I have been holding on to reading Remarkably Bright Creatures for a while now - glad to see it up on your top list. Definitely helps me bump it up my TBR. I can take all the help I can with that. Haha. :)

Happy to have you on the team, Jo.
Only a day more to go - sooooo excited! :)

Maddy wrote: "Oh, dear. Most books per month in the whole team... No pressure huh? :D

Okay, today I have more time, so...

Hi everyone! I am Maddy. I am from Latvia, which is in Europe. Don't feel bad if you d..."

Hello Maddy, I was hoping to plan a trip across parts of Eastern Europe sometime later this year and Riga was definitely on the cards. The manors, castles, houses just look so picturesque! So, excited to have someone from Latvia on the team this time.

Oh and don't feel stressed about reading the most books per month. Haha. Read as you normally would and everything would happily fall into place. And also don't worry about reading anything you don't want to read - this is a fun challenge and we totally plan on enjoying every bit of it for the next three months.

The best thing about UNO is pretty much any book we read tends to have something that fits in one of our letters - the only thing that would be helpful would be if we could just note down the character names and other specific things in the spreadsheet as you go. Everything else is pretty much whatever you feel like reading in the moment. :)

Hope this can be a much more fun and relaxing experience for you this time around.
Welcome again! :)

Hey folks, sorry - my week just ran away from me, couldn't be around for the last couple of days.

I will have more time to sit down and engage a little bit better later today. Kelly, thank you for being an awesome co-cap and answering all the questions so seamlessly!

Which means, you will do it for the next 3 months too. HAHAHA! :p

Maddy wrote: "Checking in

Uno shelf - https://www.goodreads.com/review/list..."

Hey Maddy, welcome! Thanks for checking in.
You are going to be our pillar for the team in this challenge with all the reading you do (which is seriously impressive!!) - excited to have you as part of the team. :)

I would consider myself a winner if I even finish reading the titles of all the books that you would actually read throughout the challenge. Haha!

LucyReads wrote: "hello everyone! I'm so excited to get started with this and to meet you all :)

I'm Lucy and I'm British but living in Sweden now. I did uno last year and I've been in a bit of a reading slump ove..."

Hey Lucy, welcome! Hope the winters in Sweden have not been too harsh this time around. And don't you worry - we will get you out of that reading slump. UNO tends to have that power with fun challenges that trigger that sleepy reading slump.

I am going to totally ask for Horror recommendations from you. Rare to find someone who reads horror as a preferred genre, so I am excited. :)

Feel free to add in books to the Tracking Spreadsheet when you have picked your first reads. Hope you have fun - welcome, again! :)

Minor Housekeeping

Please check if I have linked your UNO shelves in the Tracking sheet correctly (in the members tab). If not, please drop your link here, so I can update that across the spreadsheets!

Kelly wrote: "I use my phone a lot for chats because parenting and working haha so I can’t link, but you would be SO JEALOUS to hear I have a personalised signed copy of The Lightning Struck Heart AND he signed ..."

Kelly, you make me so jelly! :P (sorry, I couldn't stop myself! :P)
But Kelly! I thought we were friends - and here you go making me really jealous. FINE! TJ loves you more than he loves me! Happy? Haha!

But, I am so stoked for you that you have it.
I HAVE TO read a TJ book in this challenge now. :P

Jax wrote: "Hi everyone,

I'm Jax from the NW corner of the USA. I think this is my fourth year doing UNO. I have done a lot of challenges and have seen some of your names but like Apoorv I don't think I've be..."

The NW corner of the US is one of my favorites parts of the country. Seattle is love! :) Welcome, Jax and so glad to have you join the madness!

The series you are trying to complete are genuine chunksters - I hope you are enjoying your journey through them. Sometimes when the book is good, it doesn't even matter how long it is - it just flies past. But when it isn't, oh boy! :O

The Shinigami Detective series sounds like a lot of fun - I am going to look it up. Although, I am always weary of starting a new series - because I have a weird need to complete everything and if I don't like the series, I feel compelled to complete it no matter what. Tricky, tricky! But, this I will check out. Thanks for the recommendation.

Feel free to add your books in the tracking spreadsheet as you go if that helps in planning stuff - that sheet is for all of us to play around in - so don't hesitate at all.
Welcome again, Jax! :)

Ansel wrote: "Hi,everyone, I was actually waiting in the pre-challenge thread to wait for our team spreadsheet until I saw Melindam shared the link to Itn. I missed a few days, butI cant make this up.

So, I am ..."

ANSEL!! Welcome. You are right on time and have not missed anything (apart from my long messages here :P).

Would love to hear more from you about the reading club that you ran and how different the styles are. It is so exciting to read about how everyone got into reading or continue reading, so please do share when you can! :)

And I had not heard of Douban before. Sounds very interesting - and aw, it is named after the street the founder lived in. How cool!
Will definitely go read about this. Thanks for sharing!

Oh and as for the gif, go to the (some html is ok) option on the right hand top of your comment box. Once you click on it, it will open a list of things you can add to your messages while typing - 5th from the top is the one for images. Select the entire line, copy it, and paste in the comment box you are typing in. And then copy the image of the gif you want to share and paste that in that html link that you already copied. You can change the size by adjusting the numbers in the width/height section and then you are done! Voila! :)
Let me know if you need me to explain a little more and I would be happy to help!

You have some very interesting books in your top reads, thanks for sharing them! I am certainly going to check out Discipline and Punish. And ofcourse, if you have any recommendations for books not written it English, most certainly share them too - if there are translations available, I would love to check them out too.

Oh and do not worry about all the rules. I am sure you will catch on as we get started. But please do not hesitate to ask any questions you run into - I will answer all the easy ones, and Kelly has promised to make up answers for the difficult ones. LOL! :)

The only aim of the challenge is to read, read, read and have fun while doing it!
Welcome again! :D

ltn wrote: "Hi everyone! finally found my team and am so excited to participate in my first year of UNO!"

Yaaaay! You made it! Welcome, welcome, Itn!
Happy first UNO - I am sure you will have a blast the next 3 months. Its easy, relaxed, and a whole lot of fun.

Edit: Since your profile is currently locked, I did send you friend request, so it would be easier for me to go through the books you read during the course of this challenge, so I have our spreadsheets updated correctly. Do please accept it when you get a chance. Thanks! :)
Let me know if you have any questions at any time, ofcourse!

Kelly wrote: "I dont know if I can pick my five best books from last year - that's an ask and a half - but I can pick five I really rated.

[book:In th..."

OMG! You have TJ Klune in there! <3
I love him so much - all his works either make me have maniac laughter episodes or full-blown sob fests or both AT THE SAME TIME!! :o

I have been meaning to read Camp Damascus, this was the push I needed - off I go to my library! :)

Kelly wrote: "I can make up the answers to the hard questions, I guess!."

TOTALLY!! No one would know.
We make our own rules - we are Zaphodians (Zaphos? Zaphies? Zaps?) - anyway, so yeah, go for it! :P Hehe

Melindam wrote: "Apoorv wrote: "I am Apoorv (he/him) - the captain! (I know! I know! Sometimes the Mods mess up! :P)"

Excuse me, but were you just hinting at us being ...ahem... incompetent (apart from scary)? We ..."

NAAAAAAW!! I would neeeever! :P
Woudn't even dream of it!

Didn't I tell you fellow Gargle Blasters?
THEY. ARE. EVERYWHERE!

Well then, now that you folks have all the information you need I am going to go to the beach (in the middle of the winter! :P) - call me if you need me. ;=)
How you ask? Ah! Ofcourse!

I am Apoorv (he/him) - the captain! (I know! I know! Sometimes the Mods mess up! :P)
I live in Boston, Massachusetts in The United States and my association with the game goes as far back as 2015, which was I think the first edition of UNO! This is my 9th year doing this - so, yeah - I'm the old horse in the barn! :P

I am genuinely surprised that I haven't shared a team challenge with any of you before. So, I am so excited to make new friends and I can feel like this is going to be an absolute fun UNO season! I always end up finding some exciting new reads from everyone's read books, so my TBR is going to be happily fed by all of you! :)

I try and read almost everything (genre no bar), so it's always an exciting aspect of this challenge for me to see all the plethora of books my teammates read.
So, as an icebreaker, how about, if you don't mind, each of you share your top 5 books that you read in 2023?!

I'll start:
1. In Memoriam | Alice Winn
2. This Is Our Place | Vitor Martins
3. These Violent Delights | Micah Nemerever
4. Big Gay Wedding | Byron Lane
5. The Last Word | Taylor Adams

Please feel free to ask any questions that you may have.
As I like to say, I promise I'll answer all the easy ones, and make sure our wonderful co-captain, Kelly, answers all the difficult ones! :P

SUPER-EXCITED! Let's do this! :D