Tabitha’s Comments (group member since Jan 05, 2017)

Tabitha’s comments from the Behind the Name Book Club group.

Reposting what I posted in the BtN forum about how the book club would potentially be ran, and I hope there's someone else who might be interested in helping to run it with me.

There would be four quarters:
Jan - March
April - June
July - September
October - December

A post on GR or BtN (or both?) would be made a month prior to vote on the 3 genres for the upcoming quarter. Poll would be open for a week, answers required on poll. Poll example: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FA...
(Just because one genre is chosen, by the way, doesn't necessarily leave a book out, because books are multiple genres of course - it could be both fantasy and mystery for example but if fantasy is chosen, that should be the main genre)

A post on GR or BtN (or both?) would then open the next week for suggestions for each genre. Poll will be open for a week, answers NOT required on poll. Poll example: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FA...

A post on GR or BtN (or both?) would then open the next week to vote for the top three of each. Poll will be open for a week, answers NOT required on poll. Poll example: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FA...

Then we'd have 3 months to read, with a final discussion post at the end of the quarter.

Welcome to any and all new members, hoping to revive this group!

So I'm not sure what I'm reading for this month (still behind on April, ah!) but I was thinking about Maria Snyder's Poison Study. How about you guys?

For May we're reading "sword and castle adventures"! Basically, books with a medieval-ish setting. It can be historical, fantasy, anything, so long as there are swords and castles! hehe

You're welcome to read the same book as others if you want. Here are two lists for some ideas, but of course you don't need to pick something from any list so long as it fits the theme.

https://www.goodreads.com/list/show/4...
https://www.goodreads.com/genres/medi...

Share what you're planning to read here!

So while I still need to finish March's challenge, for April I plan on reading, finally, Good Omens: The Nice and Accurate Prophecies of Agnes Nutter, Witch. I've had this book for years, been meaning to read it for years, and just never got around to it! So this is a great reason to finally tick it off my to-read list :)

So I am super behind lol Totally haven't finished this month yet, been too busy watching my niece... and maybe with also playing Watch Dogs 2 haha I plan on finishing before starting April though!

For those of you who did finish the challenge, what did you think of your choices?

@Jessica

Wow, getting it done! I probably won't get around to it till April or May myself... that lack of suspense disappoints me a bit but if it's still good I can forgive lol

This month I'm reading An Autobiography by Agatha Christie. She's a fascinating woman and was a tremendously gifted story-teller so I'm excited to read her biography, as written by her own self!

I'd originally wanted to read Zelda (thanks to Amazon Prime's show about her), but it wasn't available at my library and I didn't have the funds to get it this month :/ I've got hopes for Christie's book though, which I'm sure will be great!

@Sadie-Janae

That one of the things that's so great about themed challenges :D

(also, Lyra Genevieve is gorgeous and was also on my list of combos lol)

@Sadie-Jane

So that was the first time you've read His Dark Materials? Oh, wow! I'm sure you'll love the other two books just as much, the whole series is great.

You're actually starting it at the perfect time too because Pullman is releasing a new sequel soon: The Book of Dust

I'm so ridiculously excited for it lol That series is one of my absolute favorites, I love Lyra, and the world, it's just so, so awesome. And definitely why I love the name Lyra hahaha

I wanted to make a thread to explain the group book shelf. I'm fairly certain I've made it so anyone in the group can add a book to the shelf-- I encourage you all to add the books you read for each challenge to the appropriate shelf (>read >theme challenge 'month' 'year'). Make sure the appropriate discussion is selected as (Monthly Theme 'Year'). Add your thoughts on the book, whether you liked it or hated it, and don't forget to add yourself as discussion lead, so we know who recommend (or doesn't recommend, hah) the book.

All I ask is you not add anything to the 'currently-reading' shelf as books on that shelf appear on the main group page and I want to reserve that for the book club reads.

Thank you, and get adding! :D

I will, of course, be joining in this quarter's book club :)

I'll go searching for a copy in the next few weeks.

Our first book club read has been chosen! Let us know here if you plan on joining us for the read and discussion for Ruth Ware's The Woman in Cabin 10. We'll be reading until the end of June, to give everyone plenty of time to get through it!

As the discussion gets going as more people start reading, please put any spoilers inside a spoiler tag:

spoilers in between here

omg omg omg

Just finished Fortune's Pawn, wrote my review (https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...) and now I'm here... I loved this even more than Soulless, honestly, and it fit the theme much better too! I'm just so happy I made a good read (ha!) decision for this theme!

Deviana is a skilled warrior who rises through the ranks of her soldier outfit through sheer dedication and strength-of-will, putting anything that could distract her on the back-burner. She struggles in a male-dominated profession but doesn't let her peers or supervisors know, and takes great pride in the work she does and the effort she puts in, knowing she has to do more than her male colleagues. Her end goal is to join the best-of-the-best, the Devastators, but she's too impatient to put in the time like a normal soldier and decides to sign up for a year as a guard on a cargo ship called The Glorious Fool, which has a reputation so scary and intense that one year service on it is equal to 10 years as a normal soldier.

The book only covers a couple of months (a month?) of her term and in that time she kicks major alien pirate ass and does much protecting and is generally awesome, if impulsive and impatient. The action scenes in the book btw are phenomenal. Like a pulse-racing good time. The sci-fi-ness of the story, even with it taking place in the future, isn't hard to read either (definitely a soft, rather than hard, sci-fi).

There is romance, of course, and it does fuel much of the plot of the second-half of the book but not quite in the way you would expect. I don't know how to go about explaining this without spoiling it... suffice to say there's the typical back-and-forth, a surprising sex scene that, well, surprised me, and some confusing feelings and then the end just pissed me off. In a good way! I'm so super eager to read the sequel I'm legit off to get it now once I post this.

I seriously can't recommend this book enough if you're into sci-fi, action, and badass ladies.

I figured this would be a great place to talk about e-reading apps, especially since ebooks tend to be much more cost-friendly!

Aside from the Kindle app, which makes kindle books readable on your desktop or a tablet that's, you know, not a Kindle, what are some of your favorite apps?

My favorites are:

Calibre (https://calibre-ebook.com/) - I keep this on my desktop. Great for multiple formats; f you find you've switched e-readers or buy from various sites it's super helpful. I also like how it's organized, though the GUI could admittedly be much prettier!

Mantano Reader (http://www.mantano.com/) - This is my go-to app for reading books on my tablet. It's got a great layout, it's pretty, it has a lot of great features like allowing you to adjust the backlight, font size, etc easy to organize and navigate, very smooth reading... just all around great! And that's just the free version!

ComicRack (http://comicrack.cyolito.com/) - For fellow fans of digital comics ComicRack is, in my opinion, the absolute best comic reader. I keep it on my tablet and desktop. The free version's ads have become a bit more intrusive over the years but still, for a free program, it's amazing. It allows me to organize the comics in the file viewer when I plug my tablet into my computer, navigating the comics in the reader and when reading is super clear and easy (and I love how it tracks how much you've read!), plus it just looks great.

Ok good, I agree as well with option 2, I just didn't want knock out others' suggestions without reaching out!

These sound great! I like there's some unusual ones.

The unreliable narrator one I think is best unspecified and it could bring some interesting conversations. From discussions I've had in the past they always seem to bring up a lot of feelings lol

OK, so I am still totally planning on reading Fortune's Pawn but somehow I just read the entirety of Soulless lol You can see my full review of it here: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...

Overall I loved the book, even with it's problems. I will say I was reading Gail Carriger's choice of voice as a satire of tropes and genres but other reviewers took it more seriously. I think it's a lot more enjoyable (and less problematic) when read as a satire. It's really a pretty funny book and the writing is what makes it so charming.

After finishing it though I don't know that it really fits the theme like I had thought it would. Alexia is definitely a heroine and I suppose she sort-of didn't need rescuing and sort-of rescued the hero but, then, she also sort-of didn't do either of those things. lol. It's such a weird thing to explain! I suppose you could just say in the end the effort required both of them, but it is set in Victorian times and part of Carriger's humor lies in the fact that regardless of supernatural creatures and weird science the world is as it was, social norms and all so I guess that's not such a bad outcome considering all that.

I did manage to spoil myself on the plots of the sequels when reading reviews for them and from what I read I don't know that the series gets better :/ I am loving Alexia and Conall though so I'm giving Changeless a shot once I've finished the book I actually intended to read for the challenge lol!

I thought about keeping all the discussion in one thread but I then I thought about possible spoilers and decided it'd be best to make a separate thread!

So -- reader beware -- there may be spoilers ahead!

;)

So currently we have a tie between two books with the poll ending on Saturday. I'd like some thoughts on everyone thinks we should do-- we have two options:

1) Extend the poll a week and hope more people vote
2) Create a new poll that lasts one week and is just the two tied books

I'm going to take whatever recommendation as guidance for what we'll do in the future should this ever happen again, by the way.

So what would you all prefer?