The Perks Of Being A Book Addict discussion

Completion Post
Book title: One Summer in Paris
Author: Sarah Morgan
Completion date: 23th Feb
Pages: 354
Possible cards: See tracking sheet
Mini challenge: Characters: Grace, Audrey, Elodie, David, Phillipe, Mimi

Spreadsheets all up to date and we have 9 hands complete and 1 that only needs 1 more card.

We also have the first task for the mini complete so we can request our first clue if anyone wants to take a shot at guessing who dunnit.

Completion post!
Little Fires Everywhere
Celeste Ng
Finished 2/24/19
Page count: 338
Works for the following cards:
0 - standalone
1 - setting Ohio
2 - character Trip Richardson
5 - character Isabelle Richardson
6 - setting Shaker Heights, OH
8 - character Elena Richardson
9 - author Celeste Ng
Skip - character Pearl Warren

Feb. Mini Spellout letters: T - character Trip, R - character Moody Richardson, S - character Serena Wong, E - character Ed Lim, N - author Celeste Ng



Could our beloved Captain please add this to our spreadsheet? Thank you in advance!

Completion post:

Eclipse
For whatever reason it shows that I added the book on Jan 31 but I started reading it on Feb 2. I can’t fix it on good reads I hope it still counts!
T
2 card- has a character name with T = Bree Tanner
3 card- has a character name with H- Jasper/Rosalie Hale also it’s the 3rd book in a series
4 card- has a character name with F- Felix
Also is set in a place with F- Forks
6 card- characters and author names starts with an S- Stephanie, Seth, Sam, Swan
7 card- character name that starts with a V- Victoria
8 card- has a title with E- Eclipse
Also character name E- Esme, Emily, Emette, Edward, Eric
9 card- has a character with N- Mike Newton
Skip card- character names Paul

Can someone add this one on the spreadsheet for me, thanks!

MARCH HANDS ARE UP!!!

I know we're still trying to finish off our hands for February but just in case anyone likes planning ahead hands are now up for March. You can see them on the team spreadsheet and I've also set up new sheets on our tracker.

Doesn't look too terrible however we do have the return of yellow 7 and yellow 9 and quite a few green covers to find too.

Completion Post!

Book: Girls of Glass
Author: Brianna Labuskes
Pages: 352
Completed: 2/23/2019
Cards: See SS

Mini: T-Trudy, G-Title, R-Ruby, S-Sterling, E-Enrique, N-Nathan

Also I would like to get the clues to mini and try to see if I can figure out who dunnit

I've requested the Housekeepers statement Jessi, will PM you once we get it.

If anyone else wants to see it let me know and I'll send on to you too

Completion post

Please update spreadsheet for me! Thanks in advance!


If we were villains

0 card- stand alone
1 card- has a character with the letter O- Oliver Marks
2 card- has a character with letter t- Frederick Teasdale
4 card- has a character with letter F- fillipa, Frederick, James farrow
6 card- character with letter s- Richard stearling
7 card- Character with letter v- Alexander Vass

Completion Post:

Title: Honor Bound
Authors: Rachel Caine & Ann Aguirre
Pages: 480
Completed: Feb 25, 2019

Updated in tracking sheet

Completion Post
Book title: The Wicked King
Author: Holly Black
Completion date: 26th Feb
Pages: 336
Possible cards: See tracking sheet
Mini challenge: Characters: Orlagh, Nicasia, Cardon, Jude, Vivi, Oak, Madoc, Balekin, Ghost, Bomb, Roach

Countdown

Just over 1 day and 17 hours till the end of February -
countdown - so just checking in to see how everyone is doing.

I've just updated the tracking sheet and we need 19 books to finish off all hands (mostly 3s). In terms of the mini, I've done a little bit of re arranging and we have two tasks complete so I've requested the statement from the Attending Nurse. To finish off the mini we need an MPG science book, letters R E N S I S to finish the Forensics spell it out and the Swedish author/based book.

I'm hoping to finish off my current read tonight which will fit an E or R in the spell it out and I'll see if there are some little novellas I can pick up to knock off a few more tomorrow.

Completion Post!

Book:Bag of Bones
By:Stephen King
Pages: 736
Finished: 2/25/19
Cards: see SS

Book:Dexter By Design
By:Jeff Lindsay
Pages: 304
Finished: 2/26/19
Cards: see SS

Mini: R-Rita (Dexter), E-Edgar (Bag of Bones), N-Noonan (Bag of Bones), S-Sara (Bag of Bones)

Double Completion Post!!

Nature Girl
Carl Hiaasen
Finished 2/27/19
Page count: 306
Covers the infamous Yellow 9 card with
the title Nature Girl!



Feb. mini Spellout letters: S - Sammy Tigertail, E - Eugenie Fonda

A Charmed Death
Madelyn Alt
Finished 2/27/19
Page count: 289
Fits the following cards:
1 - character Maggie O'Neill
2 - 2nd in series
3 - character Charlie Howell
4 - character Felicity Dow
6 - location Stony Mill, IN
7 - character Genevieve Valmont
8 - character Evie Carpenter
Skip - character Erlin Price

Feb. mini Spellout: E - Evie Carpenter, S - Steff, R - Randy Cutter



Could our lovely Captain please add these to our spreadsheet for me? Thank you!

Completion Post
Book title: Palm Beach, Finland
Author: Antti Tuomainen
Completion date: 27th Feb
Pages: 300
Possible cards: See tracking sheet
Mini challenge: Characters: Jan Nyman, Esa, Olivia Koski, Nea

Hi all,

I'm just doing shelf checks in advance of the end of the month and have added a few more books to the sheet. We now have 11 hands completed and are 1 book away from hand 12.

Vanessa -
I spied Twisted Love on your shelf so have added it to the tracker (so no need to add it - although feel free to check characters etc)
I also spotted the 0.5 in series book - would be good to use it but I couldn't find a page count anywhere. Have you managed to find anything?

Yvette
I've found and added The Guernsey Literary & Potato Peel Pie Society to the sheet

Other than that it's just me with books missing - which I'm off to sort just now.

Close of February is just under 20 hours now and at a bit of an awkward time for me (8 am) so can you let me know if you think you'll finish anything else before then.

Thank you

Thank you Allison!!

Allison, can you add if we were villains for me?
I made a completion post on that

Completion Post!!
Book title: Britt-Marie Was Here
Author: Fredrik Backman
Completion date: 27th Feb
Pages: 337
Possible cards: See tracking sheet
Mini challenge: Swedish author!! Swedish challenge complete!!

^Sorry it took me so long... the book was not really my thing, so it took me a little longer than usual to finish. The writing wasn't bad or anything! Just the story wasn't my thing- lots of soccer

Yvette wrote: "Allison, can you add if we were villains for me?
I made a completion post on that"

It's already on, or at least it should be (I remember using it to fill a 5). I'll double check.

Allison,

I don’t see it on there but I am checking it on my phone, idk if that’s why?

Lauren wrote: "Completion Post!!
Book title: Britt-Marie Was Here
Author: Fredrik Backman
Completion date: 27th Feb
Pages: 337
Possible ca..."

Whoop!!! I'm going to try and speed read something for the MPG science task and then we can start submitting guesses to claim the bonus.

We're still waiting on that book for the third clue but we have the first two. I think it's safe to post here as most of the other teams already have them and I've actually seen all three clues on one of the other teams threads.

THE HOUSEKEEPER’S STATEMENT
“They all live here together, you know, like a bunch of
inmates at some kind of institution, fighting and swearing…. The
old man’d throw open the door every morning and come down to
the library where he’d take his coffee. Then onto the veranda for
lunch, rain or shine, and he’d sit in the rocker and fall off sleeping
during the afternoons. Supper in the dining room, then off to bed
by nine when he’d lock himself in again.”

ATTENDING NURSE’S STATEMENT
The following statement was taken from Ms. Annette
Jones, duty nurse when the victim was hospitalized for an
angioplasty two weeks before his murder.
“I wasn’t surprised that he’d have heart problems — he
weighed close to 300 lbs., and there was so much stress in that
family. I mean, his three grown children just fought all night like
little kids. The waiting room was next to the nurse’s station and
they got so loud that we couldn’t stand it. We spent the night
doing rounds instead of hanging out at the desk, just coming back
when a patient needed drugs or something. We’ve got a closet
behind the station where we keep all the drugs for surgery and
recovery.”

If you have any ideas who dud it you can PM me. Unfortunately there's no butler :)

Final clue for the mini.

FROM THE FORENSICS REPORT
The fact that the victim was apparently unable to rise from
bed to summon help indicates that a large dose of the toxin was
administered. However, the body was too decomposed to
determine into which part of the body the injection was delivered.

All books are complete for the mini so we're free to start guessing and get those 50 bonus points. We need to work out the following
- Who killed Faustus Dutton?
- How was it done?
- What was it about the killer that gave him or her away?
We can make three guesses and we have 12 hours after the end of the month, so around 22 and a half hours from now. Slightly less of a panic than I thought.

Completion Post
Book title: Do Polar Bears Get Lonely?: And 101 Other Intriguing Science Questions
Author: New Scientist
Completion date: 28th Feb
Pages: 224
Possible cards: See tracking sheet
Mini challenge: MPG science

@Alison: Thanks for adding Twisted Love. I will get my completion post up soon. As for the 0.5 book, are you talking about the one by Annette Marie? Because I cannot find a page count for that one. It was only 12 chapters and it was a novella that I purchased within an anthology so there were other books inside that I didn't read.

Vanessa wrote: "@Alison: Thanks for adding Twisted Love. I will get my completion post up soon. As for the 0.5 book, are you talking about the one by Annette Marie? Because I cannot find a page count for that one...."

Yep that was the one. It was worth a shot. Sometimes you can use stories within an anthology if they're also listed on their own so I'd kind of hoped we could do that with that one but if there's no page count and it doesn't sound like it's long enough probably not.

Is there a list of guesses to choose from? I'm not sure what to do with the statements... please help, im confused...

Sorry Lauren there's a mystery in the mini challenge thread which we have to solve. I've repeated below under a spoiler tag (cos it's long)
(view spoiler)[Story - The Corpulent Corpse
~writer unknown~

Donna Livingston, Esq., rushed into Detective Tubert’s office like a charging bull. “I know. I’m late.” She plopped herself on his torn leather chair. “Elaine Dutton was an hour late dropping the letter off at my office. Some sort of evening gown emergency… she’s a seamstress, you know.”

“Donna Livingston, I presume.”

“Gosh, I never heard that one before.” Tubert felt foolish as she pulled an envelope from her purse.

“It’s been a year since their father’s death,” said Tubert.

“Why did it take so long for this letter to surface?”

“The day Faustus Dutton died, his three kids started fighting over how to split up his autograph collection, which is probably worth about $25 million.”

Tubert whistled. “What’d he have? A posthumous Elvis?”

“A love letter from George Washington to Martha, an original Beethoven score, an alleged Shakespeare poem, a smattering of Kings and Czars… that sort of thing.”

Tubert whistled again.

“One of them wants to sell the collection immediately,” she continued, “another insists it’ll double in value if they hold onto it for a few years, and the third one doesn’t want to sell the it at all. And of course they’ve all got favorites they want to keep as mementos.

“As the executor, I’ve been trying to work out a solution ever since. In the meantime, they decided to padlock his room and give me the key for safekeeping to make sure none of them could slip anything out of the collection until matters were settled.

Yesterday, they finally came to an agreement. When we opened the room to retrieve the collection, I found this letter in his desk.”

Tubert pulled the folded page from its envelope. “To Whom It May Concern,” it began in a jagged scrawl, “In the event of my death, I, Faustus Dutton, hereby formally request a police investigation. The reason for this is simple: I know that one of my children murdered me.”

Tubert looked up. “You think this is true?”

“His kids do. They just don’t know which one of them did it, so they asked me to turn the matter over to the police.” After a year, Tubert knew the trail would be colder than an Eskimo’s sole, but the dead man’s plea intrigued him. “I guess we’ll have to exhume the body.”

Tubert lifted the heavy bronze knocker on the massive oak door and let it drop.

Donna answered. “Welcome to Dutton Manor.”

She waved him into an enormous foyer and led him into a two-story library where he found two men and a woman waiting.

“Lieutenant Tubert, allow me to introduce my clients,” she said, “Sam, Jack and Elaine.”

Tubert made the rounds to shake hands, noting that the siblings were sitting as far from each other as possible. There was no love lost in this family.

“We were so pleased that you decided to dig up the body,” said Elaine. I know Daddy’s letter was bizarre, and the police are so busy…”

“Cut the crap, Elaine.” Jack said impatiently.

“No need to get snippy,” she chided.

Sam interrupted, “Can we just get on with it?” Tubert was only too happy to.

“I called this meeting because the autopsy results came back last night and confirmed your father’s fears: he was murdered.”

The three siblings exchanged glances.

“The body was significantly decomposed,” Tubert continued, “but they were still able find evidence of succinylcholine.”

“Succi-what?” asked Donna.”It’s like a synthetic curare,” said Sam, “paralyzes the muscles. We use it in anesthesia.”

“Sam’s an ICU nurse,” explained Elaine.

“Which makes Sam the only one with access to the stuff, eh nursie?” Jack sniggered.

“It’s not a controlled substance like narcotics are,” interjected Tubert. “Someone motivated enough to commit murder wouldn’t have much trouble lifting the stuff from a hospital.”

Sam pounced on this: “Especially someone with a history of shoplifting like Jack.”

“I was a teenager, for chrissake.”

“I hate to interrupt the lovefest,” said Tubert, “but I’d like to see where your father died.”

They mounted the stairs to the fourth floor.

“This was Faustus’ bedroom,” said Donna. “It’s been locked since the police broke in except for when we came in to get the collection and found the letter.”

She took a key out of her purse and unlocked a massive padlock that sealed the room. As she swung open the door, she said “They found him in bed, on his back. It looked just like a heart attack — he had a history of angina.”

Tubert surveyed the room. It was octagonal in shape, with windows looking out in all directions, not only locked but double- bolted.

He checked for signs of tampering on the windows. He rummaged through the bedside drawers. He knelt and examined the bed, lifting the sheets to check the mattress. He looked through the dresser and the closet. He stood on a chair to check the swag lamp hanging over the bed. Nothing unusual anywhere.

Turning to examine the door, Tubert saw three arrays of splintered holes on the doorjamb.

“There used to be three deadbolts there,” explained Donna.

“The police had to use a battering ram to get in.”

“Daddy locked himself in every night,” said Elaine.

“Bastard didn’t even trust his own kids,” Jack muttered.

“He apparently had good reason,” remarked Tubert.

“What was it?” “Money. What else?” said Jack.

Elaine explained, “The Friday before he died, Daddy told us he was going to Donna’s office on Monday to give his entire autograph collection to The Smithsonian.”

“We all knew he’d been thinking about it,” added Sam, “but this was the first time he’d actually told us he was going to do it.”

Jack scowled bitterly. “Just like the old weasel to tell us before he did it so he could watch us beg for our inheritance.” “So someone tried to stop him by slipping the poison into his food that weekend?” Donna asked.

Tubert shook his head. “I’m afraid not. Succinylcholine is poorly absorbed in the intestines. Someone had to inject it. Depending on the dose, death could have occurred within seconds.”

“But that’s impossible!” said Donna. “How could someone have done that if the room was securely locked from the inside?” “That’s the question, isn’t it?” replied Tubert. “But I’m pretty sure I know who did it and how. And a simple search will prove it.” (hide spoiler)]

We can make three guesses as to who the murderer was, how they did it and what gave them away. If we get it right we get 50 bonus points.

Each of the tasks we completed for the mini allowed us to access additional clues, the statement from the housekeeper, a statement from the nurse and a forensics report which should help us figure it out.

Jessi has come up with an idea which sounds pretty convincing so I'm very tempted to submit as our first guess. We do have a bit of time though so I'm going to do what some of the other teams have done and set up a private group for anyone who wants to discuss. Give me five mins and I'll send through an invite.

And it's March!!! I've submitted our guess for the mini so we'll see if Jessi has cracked it.

All books completed from now on will count towards our March hands

I've just heard back from Pixie and our guess was correct so 50 bonus points for us.

Well done Jessi (or should we call you Sherlock from now on) your deductions were spot on.

First March book from me. I was kind of hoping to finish it last night but kitty cat decided 11pm was a good time to be sick (and he likes to run through the house while throwing up for max mess).

Completion Post
Book title: Enthroned
Author: K.M. Shea
Completion date: 1st March
Pages: 126
Possible cards: See tracking sheet

Woohoo!! I can’t believe I got it!! Lol it was just my best guess!

It’s Holmes. Sherlock Holmes

Just checking in. I’m in the middle of this book but things have been so busy lately I haven’t been able to read as often as I’d like too.

Double Completion Post!

Book: - Is this blue enough?
Author: Vi Keeland & Penelope Ward
Pages: 301
Read: March 1, 2019
Cards: See SS

Book: - It's Yellow!!!! and will fit our yellow 7!
Author: Ashley Saunders & Leslie Saunders
Pages: 258
Read: March 1, 2019
Cards: yellow 7

- is this yellow to you Alison? When I checked it on tin eye it says yellow but to my eye it's a bit orangey. If it's considered yellow enough hopefully there will be a N character to fit our yellow 9

Jessi wrote: "Double Completion Post!

Book: - Is this blue enough?
Author: Vi Keeland & Penelope Ward
Pages: 301
Read: March 1, 2019
Cards: See ..."

Fantastic. Can't believe we've got the infamous yellow 7 done already. I'm going to say yes to Shades of Sunshine for yellow. It looks a bit orangey to me too but I think we can go with tineye which has it very clearly yellow.

Tineye does also say blue for hate notes but I'm gonna double check that one in the captains group.

Sounds good to me!

Completion Post
I seem to be on a series binge this weekend

Book title: Enchanted
Author: K.M. Shea
Completion date: 1st March
Pages: 119
Possible cards: See tracking sheet

Book title: Embittered
Author: K.M. Shea
Completion date: 1st March
Pages: 101
Possible cards: See tracking sheet

How do you like that series so far? I saw it’s on KU and I’m tempted to read them too

I love this series. It's actually a re read for me. I only meant to read the first one but I haven't been able to stop. They're just so fun and a bit silly.

Also really quick reads. I've just finished book 6 and am diving into book 7 next.

Oh, other a couple of other captains have come back and I think we're good to use Hate Notes for blue. Another colour card bites the dust.

Yay!! I’m glad it works! I didn’t read it because it’s blue I just realized when I posted the cover that it might work for a blue card!

Completion Post

Book title: Embark
Author: K.M. Shea
Completion date: 2nd March
Pages: 119
Possible cards: See tracking sheet

Book title: Enlighten
Author: K.M. Shea
Completion date: 2nd March
Pages: 105
Possible cards: See tracking sheet

Book title: Endeavor
Author: K.M. Shea
Completion date: 2nd March
Pages: 106
Possible cards: See tracking sheet

Book title: Endings
Author: K.M. Shea
Completion date: 2nd March
Pages: 296
Possible cards: See tracking sheet

Dang Alison you're killing it!

Unfortunately it's only cos they're 100 pagers. I'm back on a full size book so that'll slow me right down.

I also started an audio today, Armada by Ernest Cline. It's narrated by Wil Wheaton and it is awesome. Has anyone else listened to him narrate? I'm tempted to go back and listen to Ready Player One, and I didn't really like that book.

Sorry I haven’t been reading as much as usual- March might be slower for me. I just found out a week ago that my cat has cancer- and today we had to put her down; the tumor was rapidly growing through her mouth and pushing on her eye, and it’s supposedly very painful. I’m really sad.

Oh, Lauren I'm so sorry! I lost my kitty last year so I know the pain of losing a loved pet!

Thank you Jessi! It’s been really hard... I’m sorry you lost you cat as well