Mount TBR 2018 discussion

Wow! Three months into the year already. Well, you know what that means...Your mountaineering guide is calling for the first quarterly check-in post. Let's see how our challengers are doing. Made it a couple of miles? Camping out in a cave 1/3 of the way up the mountain face? Taking refuge in a mountain hut along the way? Let us know how you're doing. For those who would like to participate in this checkpoint post, I'd like you to do two things:

1. Tell us how many miles you've made it up your mountain (# of books read). If you're really ambitious, you can do some intricate math and figure out how the number of books you've read correlates to actual miles up Pike's Peak, Mt. Ararat, etc. And feel free to tell us about any particularly exciting adventures you've had along the way.

~I have read 30 of my pledged 100 books for Mt. Everest...which means I'm slightly off-track to plant that flag on the peak. [And I'm a bit behind on my pace for last year too...]


2. Complete ONE (or more if you like) of the following:
A. Post a picture of your favorite cover so far.

Here's mine (one of my beloved pocket-size books from the pulp era):



B. Who has been your favorite character so far? And tell us why, if you like.

Mine: I'm actually going to choose the detective from The Odor of Violets (pictured above). Captain Duncan Maclain is a blind detective who lost his eyesight due to gassing in World War I. His heightened abilities (other senses) are much more believable than those of Max Carrados (a blind detective who first appeared in 1914). Where Carrados's ability to smell spirit gum and to read newsprint by touch seem more like parlor tricks, Maclain's abilities are explained through careful training.

C. Have any of the books you read surprised you--if so, in what way (not as good as anticipated? unexpected ending? Best thing you've read ever? Etc.)

The Best of Science Fiction & Fantasy 8th Series edited by Anthony Boucher was a huge surprise, but not in a good way. I respect Boucher's opinion in both SF/Fantasy and mysteries and I was surprised to find how many of the stories he selected for this collection were sub-par.

D. Title Scrabble: See if you can spell a word using the first letter of the first word in the titles of some/all of the books you have read so far. Feel free to consider "A," "An," or "The" as the first word or not as it helps you with your word hunt.

My word: Compact

Catalog of Unabashed Gratitude by Ross Gay
Odor of Violets by Baynard Kendrick
Murder Out of Turn by Frances & Richard Lockridge
Payoff for the Banker by Frances & Richard Lockridge
About the Murder of Geraldine Foster by Anthony Abbot
Cuckoo's Calling, (The) by Robert Galbraith
The Sign of the Book by John Dunning


And what do you get for all that hard work (and distraction from the actual climb)? Comments will close at 11:59 pm on Sunday, April 8. On Monday, April 9, I will crank up the Custom Random Number Generator and pick a winning climber. He or she will have the chance to add to their TBR stack via my gently-used book vault (prize list will be sent). Just think, if you win a book you can start up a pile for next year's Mount TBR Challenge.

Even if you're not in the mood for a prize or if you've only got one leg of the journey under your belt, I'd love to have you check in and tell us how your climb is going!

***Please note--comments are for Checkpoint posts only. If you would like to cheer on your fellow climbers or comment on particular books they mention, please go to their climb file. This will help me more easily track a winner. Thanks!

Mountaineering Checkpoint #1

1. Tell us how many miles you've made it up your mountain (# of books read).
I'm on track with 9 out of 36 books read or 1/4 of the way up Mt Vancouver= 1,204 m

2. Complete ONE (or more if you like) of the following:
A. Post a picture of your favorite cover so far.
I loved all three covers in this series:


B. Who has been your favorite character so far? And tell us why, if you like.
Veronica Speedwell - She is the main character in a series by that name. The MC is a butterfly hunter and world traveler in Victorian England. Veronica is wise, savvy and resourceful at times, naïve and clueless at others. Her repartee with colleague and friend Stoker is often hilarious. Delightful character and a fun series.

C. Have any of the books you've read surprised you? If so, in what way?
The book I'm reading now is surprising me. It's a Young Adult novel (I can't remember reading this genre since I was a young adult). The writing is excellent, the story is spellbinding, the subject is vitally important and the perspective is one that never gets heard. This book is outstanding!!!
The Hate U Give by Angie Thomas


D. Title Scrabble: See if you can spell a word using the first letter of the first word in the titles of some/all of the books you have read so far.
Since I'm climbing a mountain, the word I decided to spell is sweat.
S - Stowed Away
W - We Should All Be Feminists
E - Enter a Murderer
A - The Alienist
T - Terror in Taffeta

Mountaineering Checkpoint #1
1. Tell us how many miles you've made it up your mountain (# of books read).
~I have read 24 of the 48 needed for Mt. Ararat, which is this year's goal. I'm so excited to have already reached Mount Blanc, which was last year's goal. I could just burst. I haven't done a good job of maintaining the 2 Mount TBR/1 New Book ratio, especially in March, but I'm still well on my way to meeting my goal, so YAY!!


2. Complete ONE (or more if you like) of the following:
A. Post a picture of your favorite cover so far. These are my favorite covers so far:




C. Have any of the books you read surprised you--if so, in what way (not as good as anticipated? unexpected ending? Best thing you've read ever? Etc.)

I've had a couple that I was really looking forward to, that had a lot of positive hype, end up being completely disappointing. IQ by Joe Ide and Bluebird, Bluebird by Attica Locke were crushingly awful, IMO. I know most people have loved them, but I felt IQ had too much gratuitous profanity and Bluebird was marketed as a thriller, but read more like a sad, tawdry piece of literary fiction that just happened to feature a Texas Ranger.

Thanks for doing this challenge! I am really enjoying finally getting around to some of the books that have been languishing on my shelves. :)

1. I'm on 19 out of 48 books for Mt. Ararat - I thought I'd be a bit further up by now but I'm still doing not bad.

2A. I don't really know what my favourite cover would be, there are a lot of options. These are some nice ones though:


2B. I loved Cora from Beneath the Sugar Sky because, well, I relate.
For real people, I read a biography of Princess Sophia Duleep Singh (Sophia: Princess, Suffragette, Revolutionary) and everyone in that book is a fascinating historical figure.

2C. Home Fire, The Grapes of Wrath, and Sophia: Princess, Suffragette, Revolutionary all surprised me somewhat by being a lot more interesting and accessible that I'd imagined they might be. Sophia in particular just blew me away, I wished I'd read it years ago and couldn't believe I'd known almost nothing about that particular facet of history beforehand.

1. I've read 6 out of 24 books, so I'm actually on pace to summit Mont Blanc by the end of the year.

2A. My favorite cover was also my favorite book so far - Where the Mountain Meets the Moon.


2B. I continue to love Matt Murdock/Daredevil, especially the way Mark Waid writes him. He struggles with a lot of stuff, but keeps caring, and keeps going.

2C. The Daredevil TPB collection I just finished (Daredevil: West-Case Scenario) surprised me with its frank discussion of the realities of depression, which was spot on. Not what I was expecting when I picked it up, but in a good way.

2D. I've only got one vowel in my books so far, so my word is very short.
My word: BOW
Beautiful One
Out of the Dust
Where the Mountain Meets the Moon

Checkpoint #1

60 books completed out of 150 so happy with that! My favourite character is Meg from the Orchard Series of books ( is the final one in the series)

P - Pinned for Murder
R - Rotten to the Core
O - One Bad Apple
T - The Tombs of Atuan
E - The Essential Wok Cookbook: A Simple Chinese Cookbook for Stir-Fry, Dim Sum, and Other Restaurant Favorites
C - Cruel Winter
T - Twelve Angry Librarians

I'm a little late replying, but I'm also 42% of the way up Mount Everest, so it looks like I'll be jumping to Mount Olympus before the end of the year as long as I keep reading older books and not new ones

When it comes to Scrabble, I'm going to play WAFFLE and hope it's on a triple word score!

We All Looked Up by Tommy Wallach
Apex by Ramez Naam
Firelight by Kristen Callihan
Future Queens of England by Ryan Matthews
Lethal People by John Locke
Every Ugly Word by Aimee L. Salter

1. I have read 5 of 36 (4 books behind) but I feel like I can still meet my target!

2A. My favorite cover: - I love that everything is blue!

2B. My favorite character is Daisy from Winter of the World. She was a real brat at the beginning, as the spoiled rich American girl, but her experiences during WWII result in incredible personal growth!

2C. Have any of the books you've read surprised you?
I was disappointed with Flatland: A Romance of Many Dimensions. It's considered a classic but I thought it was mostly boring! Fortunately, it was very short.

1. I’ve read 16/48 books (5618’ of 16854’ to the top of Mt Ararat) which means i’m about 1/3 of the way already! It’s nice to be ahead of schedule!
2a.My favorite cover
2b. My favorite character: in the last book I read there was a character named Vicki Holden, since I have a friend by that same first and LAST name, I couldn’t help picturing My friend as that character the whole time I read the book.
2c. Bob Honey Who Does Stuff-surprised me at how truest terrible this book was. I can’t say anything good about it.
2d. I couldn’t come up with a word!

1. I'm almost at the top of Mount Blanc (only 1 book to go!), and my GR goal this year is somewhere along 52 books, so Mt. Ararat it is for this challenge - I'm almost 50% done and am 12 books ahead in my GR challenge, so I'm feeling pretty good! March has been a good reading month, let's hope I can keep it up in April! I may even move on to higher mountains!

2. A. My favorite cover so far is by Leigh Bardugo. Not only the cover is BEAUTIFUL, with the jacket with a fabric like texture and bronze embossed details, and the naked book with bronze engravings (the grishaverse logo is just gorgeous), but the book itself is illustrated in magenta, sea-green and black. The most beautiful book I own, no doubt.

B. My favorite character has to be Amani, from the "Rebel of the Desert" trilogy by Alwyn Hamilton. She's strong and fearless and brave and I love her development through the books.

C. Definitely "Dealing In Deception" by Samantha Joyce was my surprise of the year so far - not the best book I've read this year, mind you, but the one that I was not expecting much and ended up being really good! I was expecting a light romance novel full of clichés, but I got a book that dealt with the romance in a very mature way, it was developed naturally and it also dealt with some very 'dark' issues relating to the background of the main characters. I liked it a lot.

D. Title Scrabble:

Daughter of the Pirate King by Tricia Levenseller
Emerald Green by Kiersten Gier
Annihilation by Jeff Vandermeer
Dealing in Deception by Samantha Joyce

I’m only 4,934 feet up Everest’s 29,029 feet as I took some detours with new and library books and only read 17 TBR books this quarter. Looking forward to a lot more climbing!

My favorite characters are the two children in Rock Crystal by Adalbert Stifter, especially the little girl.

I was surprised how much I enjoyed Blood Sympathy by Reginald Hill. I’ve tried to read it before but couldn’t get into the story. This time the mix of characters, action, and humor was just what I needed, and I look forward to more adventures with Joe Sixsmith and his cat.

S — The Summons, Peter Lovesey
H — Honegoing, Yaa Gyasi
R — Rock Crystal, Adalbert Stifter
I — Invisible Cities, Italo Calvino
E — Elements of Jazz, Bill Messenger
K — Kitchen Essays, Agnes Jekyll

1. I have read 13/36 books, so I'm making good progress, but I read all of them in January and the first week of February. I've read nothing (even new books) since then! So we'll see how my progress continues-- why does no one really talk about how stressful buying a house is??? Or trying to predict my reading moods when packing books?

2(A). My favorite cover of the books I have read thus far is this, by far:

1. I have read 9/12 so I'm three quarters of the way up Pike's Peak. In an ideal world I'd have made it up by now and moved on to Mt Blanc but I'm happy enough with that.

2 A. My favourite cover so far is



B. And my favourite character is Vasya from the same book as she made her own fate despite all the obstacles in her way.

C. The book that surprised me is Catilina's Riddle by Steven Saylor. I started reading it almost 20 years ago and couldn't get into it at all. This time I could hardly put it down.

D. Title Scrabble

C - Catilina's Riddle
O - The Outcast Dead
M - The Miniaturist
B - The Bear and the Nightingale
E - Enemies at Home
D - The Devil's Feast

Something I will probably need to do to my hair after coming down from my TBR mountain.

1. Tell us how many miles you've made it up your mountain (# of books read).
I read 15 books in Q1 for Mt Ararat (48 books), so I'm making good progress so far :)

2A. Post a picture of your favorite cover so far.
There were no true standouts, but I like and . I have better covers coming up.


2C. Have any of the books you read surprised you--if so, in what way (not as good as anticipated? unexpected ending? Best thing you've read ever? Etc.)
I was surprised at how much I loved Beasts of Extraordinary Circumstance. Got a rare 5 stars from me. Same with Never Let Me Go, though this one made me really sad, which I wasn't expecting. For The Watchmaker of Filigree Street I didn't know what to expect going in, so I guess the story itself was a surprise, especially one element in the story that caught me off guard. I was excited for Tom Hank's Uncommon Type: Some Stories but it was underwhelming for me. Kindred surprised me in the fresh, contemporary feel of the writing; I will be reading more by Octavia Butler.

2D. Title Scrabble: UNMAKE

U Uncommon Type: Some Stories
N Never Let Me Go
M Memoirs of a Geisha
A Another Day
K Kindred
E Every Day

1. So far I've read 48 out of 100 promised. Erp, not sure how to equate that into miles, but math never was my strong suit!

2A. Some of my favorite covers are in the Passport to Peril series, two of which are on my TBR mountain trek this year. Another series with cool covers is Aloha Lagoon.



2B. My favorite characters, as they have been from book 1 of the Florida Keys/Paradise series, are Madison and her best friend/detecting partner, Fab. They are fearless, adventurous live-wires. They may grouse and snipe at each other periodically but they remain steadfast and true. Their significant others are pretty cool, as well. I always feel as if I've come home whenever I pick up the next in the series; in fact, I have #14 in the queue!

2C. The book that surprised me was Remix. It was one of my oldest Kindle downloads, and it simply got buried when I went nuts downloading stuff after it. I was very pleased with the book, from characters to setting to plot to ease of reading (i.e., good flow). A fun read, which may sound odd for a mystery, but it was.



2D. Title scrabble:

T - Tangled Up in Brew
H - Heroes and Hurricanes
A - Ambushed in Paradise
N - No Money Down
K - Knot In My Backyard
F - Fast Track
U - Uncertain Terms
L - Lending a Paw

1. I had finished 42 books for my climb up Mt. Kilimanjaro by the end of March, so I am doing well :)

2C. I think that the book that has surprised me the most was If on a Winter's Night a Traveler. I had not liked the only other Calvino I had read so wasn't expecting to like this but found it wonderful.

1. I'm only 20 books into to a 60 book climb, but by page count I'm probably about where I was last year. I've felt little urge to read lately, though, due to stress and upset.

2A, It's so pretty!

2B. My favorite character was probably Erasmus from Anathem, but less because of anything inherent to him and more because I relate to him in a very personal way.

2C. Again, probably Anathem! It's been over a week since I finished it and I'm still mulling over it. Was I annoyed by its pretentiousness and difficulty with emotional moments or overcome by its language and premise and pacing? Who knows! I can't say I expected such mixed feelings, though.

1. I have read 15 out of 60 books so I am exactly where I need to be. Currently reading number 16.

2A. I have not had very many brilliant covers this year. My favourite is probably


2B. I have a slight Cesare Borgia obsession and have read a small biography of him and read Machiavelli's The Prince, in which he features. However, if we are talking about fictional characters nobody has really stood out but I felt quite sympathetic towards Annabel in Just Listen

2C. A surprise was how much I loved The Decameron

I've completed 14 books out of my goal of Mt. Ararat of 48 books. Means I'm about 30% the way up the mountain; great progress for me.

My title scrabble word is PORTAL. As books are a portal to: other worlds, different experience, knowledge and more.

P - Point of Direction
O - On Writing
R - Ranger Games
T - This Side of Paradise
A - An American Marriage
L - Little Fires Everywhere


PS: no prize desired, just wanted to join in checking progress.

I've read 6 books on my way up Pikes Peak, which translates to 7,057 ft up the mountain (easy math--50%!) or 1.336 miles.

My favorite book cover is

I can't decide at this point whether I will try to change mountains or just stay with Pikes Peak! Guess I'll see where my fancy takes me!

Q1 Checkpoint

Doing well, read 16 books from my TBR so almost halfway. I am doing a team challenge so I've been reading a bit more than usual. I expect to do some longer books in the second half of the year.

2A) No cover really blew me away so I will pick . I do love this cover of Pachinko, but my version had a different cover:

2B) Favorite character: The count from -- he wasn't very Russian like, but was memorable and endearing.

2C) I was extremely disappointed in . A book about books and ex-pat experience are things that I normally love, but this didn't work.
should be required reading -- it's the story of Elie Wiesel's experiences during the Holocaust. Heart-breaking!

1.
I've read 9 of my 12 books! I'm already eyeing the next peak, but I still have 1075.5 meters to go before I make Pike's Peak :D

2.
A. Post a picture of your favorite cover so far
Easy:
B. Who has been your favorite character so far? And tell us why, if you like.
Peter from the play Peter and Alice by John Logan broke my heart. I could boil this down to the fact that he is unable to enjoy his life. But this summary doesn't do him justice. Logan's portrait is so delicate and beautiful.
C. Have any of the books you read surprised you--if so, in what way?
There were a couple of surprises: One of them being the speed with which I read The Earthsea Quartet. I didn't love it, which makes this all the more surprising. The Prestige and Cat's Eye were unexpectedly good reads.

1. Tell us how many miles you've made it up your mountain (# of books read).

I'm 3 books into my Pike's Peak climb - so 25% finished at the 25% checkpoint.

2. Complete ONE (or more if you like) of the following:
A. Post a picture of your favorite cover so far.



B. Who has been your favorite character so far? And tell us why, if you like.

Susannah Cahalan from Brain on Fire: My Month of Madness
Since this is non-fiction, she was both the author and main "character" of the book. She developed a rare form of encephalitis. The book is the story of her own personal journey as well as the backstory of how the treatment for her condition was very recently found.

She was and still is an amazingly strong person. I would never want to go through what she experienced, but I would hope to have 1/2 the strength and grace she exhibited.


C. Have any of the books you read surprised you--if so, in what way (not as good as anticipated? unexpected ending? Best thing you've read ever? Etc.)

So far I've really enjoyed all three books I read. And I'm glad I had this challenge to encourage me to read them.


D. Title Scrabble: See if you can spell a word using the first letter of the first word in the titles of some/all of the books you have read so far. Feel free to consider "A," "An," or "The" as the first word or not as it helps you with your word hunt.

I'm going with: DAB. I thought about BAD, but DAB is the order I read these in, so that seems like the right choice.
D: Divisadero
A: Await Your Reply
B: Brain on Fire: My Month of Madness

1. Tell us how many miles you've made it up your mountain (# of books read).

As of 4/7/18, I've read 49 of my goal of 150 books, which puts me reasonably ahead of pace (which would be roughly 39-41 right now.)

2. Complete ONE (or more if you like) of the following:

A. Post a picture of your favorite cover so far.



This wins for good use of typography. And it was a great book.

D. Title Scrabble: See if you can spell a word using the first letter of the first word in the titles of some/all of the books you have read so far. Feel free to consider "A," "An," or "The" as the first word or not as it helps you with your word hunt.

SNOW (since it's still snowing here, Spring, where are you?)

S: Save the Date
N: Night Pleasures
O: Oryx and Crake
W: Wintergirls

Hello! And I'm just getting in on the checkpoint deadline...

I'm within spitting distance of my first mountain, Mt. Blanc, with 23 books finished.

B.
I think I found the Unnamed Midwife my favorite character so far. She was surprising in her nameless fortitude when the world ended. _The Book of the Unnamed Midwife_ by Meg Elison was a startling read.

C.
_The Road_ by Cormac McCarthy was unearthly, stark and beautiful. Haunting in grey ash. Bleak with only a lightning bolt of hope.

1. I have read 22 out of 36 books. I'll probably end up on the next peak, but who knows. So far, not many of the books have really floated my boat. I'm still waiting to be wowed... though it seems to take a lot these days to do that for me.

A. These are my favorite covers so far:



B. My favorite character is definitely Harry Dresden. I like his spunk, his "take life as it is" and his willingness to take a risk on people even though doing so has burned him time and again. There are other characters I know I was supposed to like- namely those found in the "Outlander" book, but I found both main characters in that book to be either extremely selfish (Claire) or completely cliched (Jamie). I am currently reading a YA book called "Love Letters to the Dead" that has an amazingly rich character. I would have to say that it is my favorite so far on this mountain, but since I haven't finished it yet...



C. The book that surprised me most was "The Poet's Corner" by John Lithgow. I expected to be bored, but I found it to be insightful and witty. I loved Lithgow's take on the poetry he collected, and his taste in poems matched my own. I got to re-explore some favorites and read some new material. I was pleasantly surprised to be left wanting more when I had expected to drudge through it. Of the books I've read so far this year, the one that sits with me the most is Born With Teeth by Kate Mulgrew. Her prose is absolutely beautiful, as I would expect it to be from what I know of her. It's probably the most well-written memoir I've read in a long time. I don't necessarily agree with all of her life choices (nor do I agree with all of mine), and she comes across as real, passionate, and extremely wise.

Nell wrote: "Mountaineering Checkpoint #1

1. Tell us how many miles you've made it up your mountain (# of books read).
I'm on track with 9 out of 36 books read or 1/4 of the way up Mt Vancouver= 1,204 m

2. C..."

I downloaded "The Hate U Give" a couple weeks ago. It can't go on the mountain because it doesn't follow the rules. :0) I can't wait to read it!

I just realized that I have some prize-giving to do! Busy day at work--completely drove the drawing out of my head. I'll go warm up the Random Custom Number Generator and be back shortly with a winner!

Okay--after getting my act together after the busy day at work, I dragged out the Custom Random Number Generator, fed in all the entries and our winner is Link #8, Hilary S! Congratulations, Hilary! I'll be contacting you shortly with a prize list and instruction for claiming a prize.

Thanks to everyone who checked in and to those who are busy climbing and missed the checkpoint. See you all in a few more months!

Congrats Hilary!

Oooooh! thank you!

Yay,congrats Hilary!

Congrats, Hilary :) :)

1. Tell us how many miles you've made it up your mountain (# of books read). If you're really ambitious, you can do some intricate math and figure out how the number of books you've read correlates to actual miles up Pike's Peak, Mt. Ararat, etc. And feel free to tell us about any particularly exciting adventures you've had along the way.

I am 29 miles up 75-"mile" El Toro. I was going to do the intricate-math thing but I can't seem to find the actual mountain :o I only found Monte Toro on Majorca, but that one is a meager 357 meters high and thus hardly above Mt. Kilimanjaro ...? So ... which real-life mountain corresponds to the El Toro used here in the challenge?


2. Complete ONE (or more if you like) of the following:
A. Post a picture of your favorite cover so far.

English, hardcover:

It really fits the mood of the book, with its midbight-blue hue and mystic swirls of fog around the mysterious tree.

German, ebook:

The book is a cute and cuddly winter read with a diverse cast of quirky characters, which the cover communicates brilliantly.

B. Who has been your favorite character so far? And tell us why, if you like.

I have several, but if I have to pick one, I'd go for Irene Winters, interdimensional book agent, from the "Invisible Library" series by Genevieve Cogman. A thoroughly underappreciated series, if you ask me, part Doctor Who, part Jasper Fforde, and most of all, for book lovers. Irene is clever, witty, can hold her own in a fight, but she is not a superwoman, she is flawed (and I don't mean that in the "even my flaws are super cool" way of Anita Blake et al.), and she has the coolest job in the world^^

C. Have any of the books you read surprised you--if so, in what way (not as good as anticipated? unexpected ending? Best thing you've read ever? Etc.)

I was a bit disappointed with , but I still thought it was a very good book. It was just a bit too predictable to be as shocking as I had expected it to be.
I was positively surprised by , which I got for free during some Kindle promo or other, because it was a really solid thriller with several surprise twists I did not see coming.

D. Title Scrabble: See if you can spell a word using the first letter of the first word in the titles of some/all of the books you have read so far. Feel free to consider "A," "An," or "The" as the first word or not as it helps you with your word hunt.

Too many of my books have started with "The"/"Der/Die/Das" (German articles), so the most I get out of the full titles is DUSK:

Day Four
Und am Morgen waren sie tot
Sleeping Beauties
Kasperle auf Burg Himmelhoch

If I omit the articles from book titles, the best I can get is MUSKRATS. The anagram solver has other words to offer which I've never heard in my life, so I'm sticking with the one I actually know:

MASKED CITY, THE
UND AM MORGEN WAREN SIE TOT
SONG OF THE QUARKBEAST, THE
KASPERLE AUF BURG HIMMELHOCH
ROANOKE GIRLS, THE
AMULETT VON SAMARKAND, DAS
TANNÖD
SELFIES

Are we doing the quarterly check point? I thought I missed it, but I couldn’t find one.

I've been looking for the check-in too. I'm assuming that Bev's away and will post it later. She hasn't been on the site recently. Hopefully she's ok and just on vacation.

Nell wrote: "I've been looking for the check-in too. I'm assuming that Bev's away and will post it later. She hasn't been on the site recently. Hopefully she's ok and just on vacation."

This is from her blog header at the moment: "Attention All Challengers! I am currently on vacation and will be online very little. Challenges that need July's monthly review sites will be up and running once I get back home. There will also be Check-in Posts for the Just the Facts & Mount TBR challenges. Stay tuned!"

I saw a note on her blog saying she's away

Oh good, glad I didn’t miss it!

Hi folks--Yes, life is a mess right now. I went on vacation right at the time our offices moved at work. I came back to no computer in my office. Then my laptop died. :-( Office computer is now up and I currently have limited personal time on a computer--but I plan to to get a checkpoint up at the end of this month...if all the planets align right. :-)