The Seasonal Reading Challenge discussion

30.4 Delicious Dee's Task: Trusty Shellback
There is a tradition in the Navy that when ships cross the equator, crewmembers are greeted by King Neptune and Davy Jones and go from being "slimy wogs" to "trusty shellbacks". When I became a Trusty Shellback, I was off the coast of Africa.

For this task you will read 2 books:

Book 1
Read a book by an author who's initials are in the word SHELLBACK
**Letters do not have to be sequential- ex. Laura Esquivel is OK. If the author uses initials, has more than 2 names,or is written by multiple authors, then ALL initials must appear in Shellback
**Both of the authors initials must be represented in Shellback - for example, Sharon Sala would NOT work because there is only one S in Shellback, but Lora Leigh would because there are 2 L's.

Book 2
An even rarer shellback celebration is the Emerald Shellback which is when you cross the prime meriden and the equator at the same time (in the Gulf of Guinea). We were planning on attempting this feat on my second deployment off the coast of Africa, unfortunately, plans changed. Read a book that has a gemstone from the following link in either the title/subtitle or the author's name:
Gemstones

**if you click on the chosen gemstone it will include additional information about the stone - those names are also approved - for example, Tiger's Eye can also be spelt tigers eye, tiger eye, tiger iron - all of which are acceptable variations of the Gemstone name - REQUIRED - in your post, if you use a variation, identify the original gemstone

If the gemstone has two (or more) words (i.e. Tiger's Eye) - then all words need to appear in the title but they do not have to be sequential, ex. The Eye of the Tiger is OK. For gemstones made out of compound words, such as Moonstone, the entire word has to be included - so "Moon" or "stone" would NOT count, but Moonstone would - Moonstone.

Plurals and Possessives count, but no other deviations. No compound words may be derived from the gemstone names. Series titles are EXCLUDED

Approved

If you are international and cannot access the Bernadine's website - here is the wikipedia one - just be sure to post which website you used when you complete the tast - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_...

If your author has a diacretic (accent) on any of the letters in their name, they can be ignored for the purpose of this task

reserved disapproved

This task thread is open!

Love the task Dee!

Going to read Ruby Tuesday for Book 2.

glad you like it Fran - its a huge navy tradition that was awesome to be part of ;)

Hi Dee, I can't access the gemstones link for some reason - it keeps showing up as 'Error 403 - Access Denied! You don't have permission to access this area.'

Just an FYI on links - we've found that almost every link we've posted has been fine when we post it, then not working the next day. When we re-enter the same info that was there in the first place, it works again. Since this keeps happening, I have to guess that it's something going on with Goodreads.

So, keep alerting us, but be patient! DLMRose will have to edit this, and she'll take care of it as soon as possible.

It works for me, but let's see if we can go another way- Try

http://www.bernardine.com/

On the right, (under the paypal link) there's "Other Stuff:" gemstones information/facts

Hi Dlmrose,

I suspect that there is a problem with people of IP addresses outside of the U.S. accessing the site, because I tried on a few different browsers, and now I am getting a 'Test Page for Apache HTTP' message. However, I do have a VPN thingy and tried logging on with a U.S. IP address, and it worked.

OK, I am going to read Major Pettigrew's Last Stand (H,S - SHELLBACK) and Daughter of Smoke and Bone (Bone) for this task :D

I'm going with either Honolulu by Alan Brennert or The Physick Book of Deliverance Dane by Katherine Howe for Part A (SHELLBACK) & The Last Dickens by Matthew Pearl for Part B.

Ok so I was thinking Winter Garden for part A and still deciding on my second book.

yep - Winter Garden works for Kristin Hannah (K,H)

Does the gem word have to be a standalone word? Can I use Rubyfruit Jungle for "ruby"?

Plural's and possessives only - no other variations, so rubyfruit wouldn't

Okay, thanks!

Amanda wrote: "I'm doing The Good Earth by Pearl S. Buck for part two. :)"

I read that this summer challenge and loved it. I'm hoping to read the next in the series for this task.Sons

I had a problem with that link in Internet Explorer, but found it worked fine in Google Chrome. Perhaps try a different browser if you're having difficulty accessing the gem page.

For the first book, if a book has more than one author, is it sufficient if only one author's name's initials are withing SHELLBACK?

all author's initials must appear

Fran wrote: "Love the task Dee!

Going to read Ruby Tuesday for Book 2."

That was the first book I thought of too Fran. I really liked that series. But I already read it, so I tried to go with something new!

I was thinking of using R.U.R. by Karel Čapek for book 1, but I had forgotten that the C in Capek's name is accented - will this still work?

yes - that still works - diacretics (accents) can be ignored

Thanks for the quick response! I've been meaning to read this for ages.

Would Ember work for Part B? [It's almost like the gem Amber]

Ember isn't a gem sorry

Thank you for the quick reply!

Would Pearl of China work for the second part of this task?

yes - pearl works - it is on the provided link :)