Nothing But Reading Challenges discussion

I am going to read one of my Z books next. It's going to be repossessed by the library in 4 days and has as wait list. Hopefully Mom, aka my boss will leave early as usual and I can listen while I file and shred this afternoon.

My step father recently passed away and she seems obsessed with going through stuff in the house. He was a bit of pack rat. I know his sister is going over there tonight to bring her dinner. She was complaining that people seem obsessed with bringing her food still even though it's been 5 months already. Wow. I just realized he's been gone 5 months. It still hurts. Anyway, she's notorious for hating to cook so I wonder why she's surprised we all want to feed her.

Mary C wrote: "I am going to read one of my Z books next. It's going to be repossessed by the library in 4 days and has as wait list. Hopefully Mom, aka my boss will leave early as usual and I can listen while I ..."

Good luck with the listening Mary and I'm so sorry to hear about your step father. Mine has been gone almost 2 years and my mom is still going through all of this things and I completely understand the hurt. If you need a friend or someone to talk to, I'm here! I have the added complications of being an only child and my family not being close to each other. Positive energy headed your way!

I have 4 siblings and that adds complications too. 3 are from my mother and 2 are from him but my mother raised his 2 sons and they call her mom. They've been kind of pushy with each other about who gets what of dad's. But they've been great to my mother. I was very close to him and I've really close to his sons and their kids so it's been hard. We were lucky in that it happened before all the shut downs. So we could do our initial grieving and have the wake and funeral together. He was a really popular, well loved man. There were a few hundred people at the wake and funeral. So we had a really good support system for the initial impact of his loss. That helped a lot.

They have a huge house and a small farm and she wants to sell it.

I lost my 1st step mother 13 years ago and I still miss her so I guess it never really goes away. I was really lucky in that when my parents split when I was 13, they both ended up with really wonderful people. My daughter ended up with 3 full sets of grandparents who loved her. Plus my step-father's 2 sons as doting uncles and his huge family that loves us.

Mary C wrote: "I am going to read one of my Z books next. It's going to be repossessed by the library in 4 days and has as wait list. Hopefully Mom, aka my boss will leave early as usual and I can listen while I ..."

I'm really sorry for your loss

Sorry for your loss Mary. It's never easy losing a loved one. My maternal Gran passed at the end of last February and I still miss her. She was like a second mum to me. But in a way I'm glad she hasn't had to live through this pandemic. Even though she had no health problems, it would still have been worrying as she'd be in her late 90s. Sorting through things is hard. Mum takes notions to sort through Gran's stuff. She was an only child, and I'm the only grandchild. In ways it's easier, but in ways it's harder. You're lucky he didn't pass during lockdown, I can't imagine how hard that must be for any family. Even continuing to grieve through this time must be hard as well, even when someone passed before it.

Yes it was hard. I couldn't see my mother for 3 months because she went back to Florida and then got stuck there. I haven't seen 2 of my nieces for 4 months now. I did see my nephew and another niece a couple of weeks ago. We met at my mother's and sat far apart outside. But no one close to me has gotten sick so that's where I like to focus. My youngest brother works in a home for young people with drug and mental health issues. So he comes in contact with a lot of people from the streets. But so far they haven't had an issue with Covid there. Same for my best friend who works in a nursing home. I think in her case, because it's a home for severely mentally handicapped women, they were able to put it in lock down quickly. Most of the patients there have no clue if they've received visitors or not. So she said when this first started, they immediately banned visitors.

I finished several books over the last two days - including a book for G.

My husband is out of town so I will be reading a ton of books this week....I listen to audiobooks at work as well.

I'm so sorry for your loss Mary. And yours Vicky, I also lost my grandmother in February and while we were all heartbroken she passed away we are also a bit grateful it was before the shutdowns. My brother and I live in Europe and my dad was in Asia at the time and we were lucky we were able to even get to NY, but had it been a few weeks later we wouldn't have been able to. Though my aunt has continued to break isolation to see my grandpa after as he's been struggling being on his own.

Jenn wrote: "I finished several books over the last two days - including a book for G.

My husband is out of town so I will be reading a ton of books this week....I listen to audiobooks at work as well."

Great job! I pretty much crashed after work last night so haven't had a chance to check the spreadsheet, but excited to see all the books everyone's been reading.

I'm so sorry, everyone who has lost someone in the last months. It's so hard not to be able to comfort family in the same way you normally would.

My mum died 5 years ago (how has it been that long already?!?) and last week my dad was still sorting out some of her things from the house and asking if we wanted them. As Mary said you never stop missing them, but things get a bit easier with time

Just updated the SS and we are 1 book short of our second spell out! Z is the letter missing at the moment, we've got several on the sheet so sure we will get it soon.


That puts us at 3rd in the main rankings at the moment. We're storming ahead in terms of toughest letters with 13 - the nearest other team has 5!

I’m half way through a z book and should finish today. Dog woke me up an hour early. I guess she knows I need more reading/audio book time.

Clever dog! Hope that it wasn't too ridiculously early a wake up

I'm going to be writing DQs for Five Feet Apart which will give us some more BOM points.

She sleeps with us so it's hard to ignore her if she wants to get up. It's usually a tongue in the ear or 60lbs of mutt laying on you. Most mornings she's still snoring under the blankets when I get out of the shower.

Finished Guarding the Notorious Lady. Works for I. I used it for the proposal task. Maybe I should have used it for celebration because it had a birthday party. I can't decide which is harder to find.

I should finish my Z book, Jump the Gun, on my lunch break.

Next I need to read Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo before it gets repossessed. I waited quite a while for that one.

I should hopefully finish my first book today and will start on a second book tonight or tomorrow.

I finished that Z book and updated the spreadsheet.

Woohoo! We're doing great, everyone :)

Would you all consider this a townhouse on the cover

So is the max of 10 books for genre/tag points, per tag or per round? Wondering if it's worth worrying about getting more in or not. I might have an insect book with a yellow cover. I haven't checked how it works for the spell out yet.

Mary C wrote: "So is the max of 10 books for genre/tag points, per tag or per round? Wondering if it's worth worrying about getting more in or not. I might have an insect book with a yellow cover. I haven't check..."

Yes, it's max 10 books per round. We already have 15 tags planned (of which six completed) for this round, so I don't think there is very much to worry about.

ETA: I would suggest, if you're not sure what to read next, if possible to find something that works for the most difficult, letters, i.e. Z and Q.

I have another Z book and the potential for more. I might return the yellow insect book back to the library. It's a collection of short stories but doesn't work for any letters this round from the description. I don't want to waste time on it if it doesn't work. It's not a hard to get book.

I'm working on my 2nd book. It's a long one so should give us some extra points :)

I am reading a book for Z....but it's kindle so it's taking me a little longer - I can listen to audiobooks at work, so that's why I'm finishing these.

Jenn, I'd say yes to townhouse (having done an image search for what they look like!)

As Camilla says, we're doing great in terms of tags. It's 10 total and we're half way through that which is great.

Any letters you can read for at the moment are great. We've got enough for 4 complete spell outs so far. Q is the limiting factor, but I'm sure they'll turn up

Sophie wrote: "As Camilla says, we're doing great in terms of tags. It's 10 total and we're half way through that which is great.

Any letters you can read for at the moment are great. We've got enough for 4 comp..."

I can listen to more of the Coffee Shop series. Detective Quinn is in all of them...and I can get them on audio so something I can listen to at work.

If you're happy doing that, great! If you'll get fed up with too many in a row, don't worry. Between the team we'll find others (Julia Quinn for example)

Sophie wrote: "If you're happy doing that, great! If you'll get fed up with too many in a row, don't worry. Between the team we'll find others (Julia Quinn for example)"

Oh! I read The Duke and I for book club a couple months ago. But there were a couple parts that definitely made me a bit uncomfortable. No spoilers! Is the rest of the series better?

Let me see if what Julia Quinn books I can get quickly from the library. Also I think I have a Q book that was a Kindle freebie.

Samantha, if it was the more adult scenes that made you uncomfortable, then I suspect all the rest of her books will have a similar problem.

Sophie wrote: "Samantha, if it was the more adult scenes that made you uncomfortable, then I suspect all the rest of her books will have a similar problem."

It wasn't so much the adult scenes but this --
(view spoiler)[The scene where Daphne basically rapes the main character (can't even remember his name anymore... lol) and tries to get herself pregnant with her baby. (hide spoiler)] Maybe uncomfortable is not the right word. Just kind of icky?

Added a Q book to the spreadsheet. But I might have to finish a couple of wait listed library books first. But between my library and Hoopla, there's a lot of books coming up under searching "quinn".

In that case I think the rest should be ok. It's been about 5 years (at least) since I read them so apologies if I'm wrong about that.

Hello there Hobbits!

Having just finished The Art of Fielding (a book I can heartily recommend!), I am left in the mood for more sports-themed books, so have come to see if any of you have any recommendations in the genre.
Just to be clear, I'm not looking for a trashy romance that happens to have a sports backdrop (you know the kind I mean...), but the kind that has a sport at its heart. (any sport, I'm open to learning about new ones! lol)

Thanks in advance!

Sammy - Team HP

Greetings from Team Pants! I've come to request recommendations from you all 😊 Lately, I’ve been in the mood for some great nonfiction. Any favourites? I don’t have a genre preference – biography, memoir, history, science are all fine! Thanks in advance!

Navi wrote: "Greetings from Team Pants! I've come to request recommendations from you all 😊 Lately, I’ve been in the mood for some great nonfiction. Any favourites? I don’t have a genre preference – biography, ..."

Last year I read Helga's Diary: A Young Girl's Account of Life in a Concentration Camp which I'd recommend.
Totally different but Bought and Sold was also an interesting read

Even if you aren't an Allman brother's fan, I recommend both of the above books. One is written by Dwayne Allman's daughter. He died whens he was a baby and she was out to find out the real man and not the musical myth about him. The other is by Greg Allman and is about their father's murder and the sort of rough childhoods they had.

Here are the links for my participation in The Jetsetters BOM discussions

Day 1 participation

Day 2 participation

Day 3 participation

Day 4 participation

Day 5 participation

I updated the tracking sheet with my current books I finished.

A suggestion. On the task page could the tasks that have been used be highlighted so its easier to find the ones that are available?

That could be tricky as each person can do each task, hence the individual lists. Feel free to highlight the ones down your column though

Or if you'd like to highlight the list, feel free to make a tab for tracking your tasks

thanks sophie...I didnt realize that we each have 200 tasks to do...

You really aren't expected to read them all!! There's no way I'm going to get through all of them.

I love that the mad it so we can all do whatever tasks we want. No calling dibs on tasks.

@MaryC yes I like that as well....

Mary C wrote: "I love that the mad it so we can all do whatever tasks we want. No calling dibs on tasks."

I like it too, I feel this is a good combination of working together as a team as well as everybody having their own "turf".

Navi wrote: "Greetings from Team Pants! I've come to request recommendations from you all 😊 Lately, I’ve been in the mood for some great nonfiction. Any favourites? I don’t have a genre preference – biography, ..."

Lately I have been into essays and memoirs. Some of my favorites lately have been: (sorry the link thing is temporarily not working)

Waking the Witch by Pam Grossman (she talks about witches through history and pop culture).

So You Want to Talk About Race by Ijeoma Olou

Everything is Trash by Phoebe Robinson

Idiot by Laura Clery

Stay Sexy Don't Get Murdered by Karen Kilgariff