Nothing But Reading Challenges discussion

322 pages,★★★★
tennis The MC plays tennis in an amateur doubles tournament. This is a major plot point.

This is my first time reading this author. I was browsing the library and it just jumped out at me. It's an older book, published in 1999. I like the way the mystery unfolded, and even when I could see the disasters coming I wasn't exactly sure where he would go with it. Quite suspenseful.

From a Buick 8 by Stephen King 496 pages 1/24/15 ★★★

Fish - the Buick's trunk came unlatched and the lid sprang up on its hinges and the FISH fell out.
location 3291

Spreadsheet updated to here (post 426) with Buddy Reads and Page Overrides where necessary.

We have 16180 points

|| ★★★★★ || 280 pages

BRIDGE (Scavenger Hunt)
"This time they held, and the whole bridge twitched and bent." -p 252

The Other Woman by Hank Phillippi Ryan 416 pages 1/24/15 ★★★

Grass - Jake's flashlight scraped across the brown GRASS page 40

Finished by Emily St. John Mandel 24/01/2015 - ★★ - 304 pages (and still too long)
I already ranted in my review space. Just saying that I didn't enjoy this book, it's overrated, I don't understand the hype and it was a chore to read. It was shallow, plotless, and the characters felt disconnected. Also I didn't enjoy the repeatedly switching timelines. Disappointed in the GR Choice Awards again.
--> It's a Buddy Read and I intend to comment more in the discussion thread once I have nicer words to say.

WiFi - "...remembered the stories they'd been told about WIFI and the impossible-to-imagine Cloud,..." - page 37

I wish you had enjoyed it more, Audrey Jane. It was my GCA vote, but I think it's not for everyone. I love Post Apocalyptic, and this was a very unusual one. I find the GCAs are very hit and miss. I've only read 5 of the books in the general fiction category so far, but The Bone Clocks is the only book I couldn't finish.

381 pages, ★★★★
Scavenger Hunt: dog This is an omnibus of 2 Atlanta Burns books. The plot of the 2nd book beings with Atlanta being hired to solve a dog murder.

The book is very intense, with rape, murder, gay bashing, child molestation, dog fighting and torture, drug use. I almost feel bad saying I enjoyed it, but it is thought provoking and addresses issues faced by a lot of teens.

485 pages, ★★★
Scavenger Hunt: Geoffrey Early in the book, a member of Allison's (the MC) scavenging group named Geoffrey fails to return from a scavenging run outside the city and is presumed dead.

Kathleen wrote: "I read this Mindfulness 365 Days of Mindfulness Daily Mindfulness Tips and Quotes (Over 365 Pictures) (With BONUS Over 365 FREE Mindfulness Tips & Quotes) (Mindfulness - Meditation - Exercises - For Beginners) by White Lemon I got from Amazon... I have no idea how many pages it is. If it's so much a bother, it's okay we don't have to include it. "

I can't seem to find the page count for this. How much text did it have in it? I'm just trying to figure whether it will count or not.

We're going into this week with 16405 points - I'm just about to submit the spreadsheet now.

Way to go, team!

404 pages, ★★★
3rd book in the Unwind Dystology. I don't feel like I came out of this book knowing much more than I did prior to reading it. The information revealed could have been put into a short story, and the time spent running/chasing/hiding/etc was nothing new and a bit tiring.

Scavenger Hunt: Desert p. 283
'Nor is it the infected bites on his arms an legs from various unidentified desert wildlife.'

◆ In a Dark House by Deborah Crombie 384 pages 1/25/15 ★★★★ - MATE


MATE - At the invitation of a MATE in the fire service, Kincaid had once suited up and gone into a burn house. location 459

Cynthia wrote: "I wish you had enjoyed it more, Audrey Jane. It was my GCA vote, but I think it's not for everyone. I love Post Apocalyptic, and this was a very unusual one. I find the GCAs are very hit and miss...."

It felt more like a literary fiction to me, the post-apocalyptic setting was just a mere afterthought and didn't make sense. I understand what the author tried to do, I really do, she wanted to show the importance and hardships arts and culture in general has to face. Unfortunately I didn't think it was well done, and I was mostly bored. I analyzed it, and at the end of the day there isn't much left when it comes to characterization and plot. Oh well, better luck next time :) I'm doing the GR Choice Awards Challenge, so far I've read I think 7 of them from various categories, and only one was good imo (and the book was a sequel in a series I really like). Next up is The Martian!

390 pages,★★★

I wanted to enjoy this one more than I did, but it just wasn't a very exciting mystery. In fact, the mystery seemed secondary and the majority of the story was focused on personal matters. Boring.

Scavenger Hunt: Britain p. 17
'Here it is, The Reader's Digest Atlas of Great Britain.'

Interestingly - Ruth's neighbor is Australian, but he refers to himself as 'Indigenous Australian' and that's not on our list! So Britain it is.

Love that series. It's a series buddy read too Cynthia.


Ruth Galloway

I only have the final one to read and have been waiting for someone to catch up.

Sheila wrote: "Love that series. It's a series buddy read too Cynthia.

I only have the final one to read and have been waiting for someone to catch up."

Are you waiting to read ? I'm not quite ready to start it yet. My library has it, but I'm determined to get my library book pile down below a dozen before I check out anything I'm not waitlisted for.

I didn't grab the BR points because I didn't feel like discussing it much. It was dull. I hope the next one is back to form.

320 pages, ★★★★★

Days after their wedding, Rosetta follows her husband into the Union Army and fights at his side. Her first person account is harrowing, and is based on the true stories of women that fought for both the Union and the Confederacy during the Civil War.

Scavenger Hunt: Farmers p. 242
"Even now, I can cover near to twenty miles a day if I walk hard, maybe more if I can find farmers willing to take me along in their wagons."

Finished I'll Give You the Sun by Jandy Nelson, 371 pages, ★★★★ 1/26/15, BOM + I did a set of DQ's

"Sun" in title for Australia challenge.

Audrey Jane wrote: "I'm doing the GR Choice Awards Challenge, so far I've read I think 7 of them from various categories, and only one was good imo (and the book was a sequel in a series I really like). Next up is The Martian! ..."

I've just got that on audiobook so I'll be interested to hear what you think.

OK, I think we're updated to here.

by Abbi Glines, 292 pages, ★★, 1/26/15,

"Beach" for Australia Challenge - series name is Rosemary Beach and book is set in Rosemary Beach, Florida

Doesn't look like all the books I have posted so far for the Australia challenge have made it to the spreadsheet. Here is what I have previously posted.

◆ The Good Girl by Mary Kubica 1/23/15 ★★★★- Colin

◆ From a Buick 8 by Stephen King 496 pages 1/24/15 ★★★ - Fish

◆ The Other Woman by Hank Phillippi Ryan 416 pages 1/24/15 ★★★ - Grass

◆ In a Dark House by Deborah Crombie 384 pages 1/25/15 ★★★★ - MATE

◆ The Good, the Bad, and the Emus: A Meg Langslow Mystery by Donna Andrews 320 pages 1/26/15 ★★★ - Emu

Emu in Title

The first word I posted for the scavenger hunt is missing:

322 pages,★★★★
tennis The MC plays tennis in an amateur doubles tournament. This is a major plot point.

Ok, all fixed now ladies - sorry Sheila, I thought they had all been added.

no problem. I just wanted to make sure the team got every point it deserved.

209 pages, ★★★★★
Scavenger Hunt: Beer p. 6
"Healy parties basically consist of people sitting around the living room drinking, texting each other from across the room, watching television, and every once in a while someone goes into the kitchen to get another beer."

328 pages, ★★★★★
Excellent thriller! I couldn't put it down. Just picked it up from the library this afternoon. I needed a good thriller.

Scavenger Hunt: English p. 315
"If you're thinking of some little village in the Ivory Coast where you can help dig wells or teach English, you better pick some place where Western newspapers never show up."

Finished - quote for scavenger hunt: One of the local farmers cuts down any overgrown saplings

Finished - quite for scavenger hunt: We know Hugh Gordon is prone to violence

Death of a Chimney Sweep by M.C. Beaton 251 pages 1/27/15 ★★★ - Lamb

Lamb - I've got a nice LAMB casserole in the oven. location 2581

Finished by Lindsay Buroker - 27/01/2015 - ★★★ - 103 pages

Scavenger Hunt: "That SNAKE is giving you the eye." - Loc. 754

480 pages, ★★★
2nd book in the Pure series. I'm more interested in the SF/PA aspect than the romances, and in this installment the romances were a bigger part of the story. I hope the next one has less emphasis.

Scavenger Hunt: spider p. 75
"Another spider - thick and metallic - darts in front of the car."

Them Bones by Carolyn Haines 318 pages ★★ 1/27 - Tennis

TENNIS - He was taking TENNIS lessons and planning a trip to Florida

by Jessica Daniels, 305 pages, finished 1/29/15, ★★★

Word: BANANA - "The house specialty is my banana nut muffins that I spent five years perfecting the recipe on. "(Page 32)

I haven't posted for a couple of days, but I have been reading.

432 pages, ★★★★
Another great mystery from Mo Hayder. This is a standalone, totally unrelated to the the Jack Caffery series.

Scavenger Hunt p. 140
"The sound of birds singing came through it, with the bleat of lambs and the distant noise of traffic on the motorway."

321 pages, ★★★★★
I loved this book! A frightening peek into Alzheimer's and a good mystery as well.

Scavenger Hunt p 160
"...and James and I ate lobster risotto and veal chops, and eggs Benedict in the mornings."

530 pages, ★★★★
2nd book in the Will Trent series, and a very good mystery. It lagged a bit in the end, but I think that's because I thought I knew something but it turned out I was wrong. Wrong!

Scavenger hunt:page 17
"..had exiled Will to the north Georgia mountains, where he had spent his time..."

◆ The Missing by Chris Mooney 404 pages 1/29/15 ★★★★★

FOOTBALL - Tom Brady - He plays FOOTBALL. He's a quarterback for the Patriots. page 247

512 pages, ★★★★★
I'm a sucker for a love story - not a romance, but a story of unconditional love and hope and perseverance.

Scavenger Hunt - p 102
"You're already looking at summer school."

Sheila wrote: "◆ The Missing by Chris Mooney 404 pages 1/29/15 ★★★★★

FOOTBALL - Tom Brady - He plays FOOTBALL. He's a quarterback for the Patr..."

This series is excellent!

◆ Judgment in Death by J.D. Robb 368 pages 1/30/15 ★★★★

POOL - She didn't have to know you were dipping back into the POOL, did she? location 5180

368 pages, ★★★★★

The goddess Athena decides to implement Plato's idea of the perfect society described in Republic. Answering the prayers of her acolytes, she pulls them out of time and gathers 300 of them to build this Just City. It's populated with 10,800 ten year old children bought at slave markets. And also her brother Apollo, who has been been made mortal, born into a family in Delphi, and sold into slavery.

I loved every minute of this book, and I haven't read any Plato since high school so you don't have to be a philosophical scholar to enjoy it. This is the kind of book I'd like to buddy read!

Scavenger Hunt: p 356
"Why did you decide instead to put it on an island far away from other cities and with no contact with the outside world?"

457 pages, ★★★

I'm so proud of myself for finishing this. I started it ages ago in audiobook format, and the female MC was narrated in such a whiny tone of voice that I couldn't listen to it. I would have rated the book 1 star if I had finished it.

Scavenger Hunt: page 479 (I read the large print edition, but took credit for the regular. That's why the page#s off)
"He swallows them with two long gulps of water from a bottle I hand him."

Updated to here with books, BRs and Scavenger hunt points. We are now at 17555 points

Cartwheel by Jennifer duBois 384 pages 1/31/15 ★★★

BANANA - She'd taken a lot of pictures of fruit: guavas and BANANAS and weird melons. page 11

by Margaret Atwood, 468 pages, 1/31/15, ★★★★

Word: BEER - "Having had several glasses of BEER, he now began to make sheep's eyes at me .... " (page 227)

624 pages, ★★★★
Third book in the Daughter of Smoke & Bone Trilogy, but it leaves as many new questions unanswered as old questions resolved. So I suspect there's more to come.

No scavenger word. I've been reading it off and on since before the scavenger hunt started, and nothing jumped out at me.

Yes! Book #60 of the year. I had no idea I was so far along in it. Those e-books are sneaky!

301 pages, ★★★★★

This book is strange and beautiful, and sorrowful. I loved it. It's magical realism, which is relatively new to me and I'm finding out that it's one of my favorite genres. I picked this book for it's beautiful title and to fill out my GCA challenge, and I'm so glad I did.

Scavenger hunt: first page of chapter one(no page numbers on my 3M e-book)
"Since each child was born under the sign of the fish, it would be easy to assume that the Roux family was full of rather sensitive and remarkably foolhardy individuals."

Scavenger hunt updated to here. It ended yesterday so I think we're done.

Well done Thundercats!

Great job all. I was up reading until well after 1am last night so I didn't get to update the scavenger for those books I finished yesterday (before midnight!) I'll do that and then do a final check over then submit for the week.

We're very, very close to the finish line!

|| ★★★★★ || 796 pages || Buddy Read but slow traffic, a captain came to comment once and that was it.

What are the odds that both books I read today were 352 pages long?

352 pages, ★★★★
It took a few pages for me to get into this book. It has a lot of obscure references to past events, and the present passages are interrupted by diary entries from an unidentified person. I need to learn to focus on what's on the page and not spend so much effort trying to figure things out (which I did, quite early, but it was still very suspenseful).

352 pages, ★★★★
The follow up to the much better The Rosie Project. I give this 3.5 stars, rounded up to 4.

I connected with Don Tillman in the first book, or Don 1.0 as I think of him. Don 2.0 is not someone I feel any kinship with, and I suppose that's part of my disappointment. It's a good book, but I miss Don 1.0.

◆ Untraceable by Laura Griffin 404 pages 2/2/15 ★★★★