Checking in with our challenge participants!
Abby
Tracking her reading: at Goodreads
Read so far: 8 of 25
Comments: I got behind in my reading this week. I’ve started Bomb, Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe, and Somebody Please Tell Me Who I Am.
Up next: I’m working on Bomb and then will be moving on to Dodger, because Terry Pratchett is the best.
Emma
Tracking her reading: at Goodreads
Read so far: 20 of 25
Comments: Doesn’t everyone read more than one thing at at time?
I’m up to 20/25 but, A.) I read a lot of graphic novels and re-read some books (which go faster), and B.) I get completely driven when I have a task like this and have been doing almost nothing (no, not even work) for the last month.
Up next: Dodger.
Gail
Tracking her reading: at Goodreads
Read so far: 6 of 25
Comments: I have started three books (Stargazing Dog, In Darkness and The Round House) and finished Mr. Penumbra’s 24-Hour Bookstore. I thoroughly enjoyed Sloan’s novel and we are now reading it for both my adult book club and my young adult book club (all adults reading YA literature; we have been going strong for over two decades – a ya lit course in library school that did not want to go away!).
Petra
Tracking her reading: here at NFNT
Read so far: 10 of 25
Comments:
Prom & Prejudice (Popular Paperbacks):
Cute. It stuck a little too closely to the original story for me – I like it was just translating P&P to modern setting without actually doing a lot of work to create new characters. I thought placing it in a prep school was clever, and the big prom as the central event worked for me. It was fun and fast, but I wasn’t blown away by it.
Love & Other Perishable Items (Morris)
I was less bothered by this book in retrospect than I was while reading it – this is mostly because I now know how it ends, whereas I didn’t while I was reading. I think part of my problem was that the reviews/blurbs I saw for this book all presented it as a kind of Sarah Dessen-y romance, and I spent 5/6 of the book being really creeped out by the idea of a 21 year old guy hooking up with a 15 year old girl (and, since he does in fact engage in a sexual encounter with a 16 year old co-worker – it’s Australia it’s legal there – I wasn’t sure where the book was going with the central relationship). SPOILERS . . . . in the end he doesn’t hook up with the 15 year old protagonist – he recognizes that they have a connection, but that she is too young and that he is moving backward not forward if he tries to wait for her. I found his story arc more compelling than hers – she felt like a very generic teen character in that kind of novel – but I didn’t find either story arc all that interesting. In the final analysis I was somewhat underwhelmed by this book – it was fine, but nothing particularly special.
Up next: Mr. Penumbra’s 24-Hour Bookstore (Alex) 48 pages in, and I’m enjoying it.
Robin
Tracking her reading: at her library tumblr
Read so far: 5 of 25
Finished In Darkness, which I thoroughly enjoyed, and am very glad to have been forced to read by this challenge. This was a book that I kept looking at and thinking, “great cover!,” and then never actually picking it up to read. The writing was top notch (as is to be expected for the Printz winner), and I enjoyed the way the two threads of the stories intertwined. Like Petra, I’d be curious to know how the book was received in Haiti, or by Haitian readers, just because I wonder how representative they feel it is.
Started listening to Monstrous Beauty, and I am enjoying it, although not totally blown away. Creepy and a refreshing change from magical mermaids — this one is more harsh, more horrific, and I like that.
Up next: possibly Boy21 by Matthew Quick, or one of the others from the stacks accumulating on my floor!
Sarah
Tracking her reading: at Goodreads
Read so far: 3 of 25
Comments: I’m also reading a few at a time, so I only finished Enchanted. However, I’m reading In Darkness, Trinity, and Bomb. I’m loving Bomb, but I’m not getting into the other two yet. I really enjoyed Enchanted, though. It was a clever blending of fairy tales, although I didn’t find the second half as compelling as the first.
Sheli
Tracking her reading: here at NFNT
Read so far: 3 of 25
Comments:
Up next: Code Name Verity. It hasn’t grabbed me yet, but I’ve been assured that it will. So, I’ll just keep reading!
Snow
Tracking her reading: at Goodreads
Read so far: 3 of 25
Comments: I finished Somebody, Please Tell Me Who I Am, which I liked, but I wonder if that was mostly because there really isn’t anything else like it (yet). I felt there were too many points of view for such a short story and wished that some of the characters had had a little more room to breathe. But, other than that, I did enjoy getting to know them all.
Up next: I’ll be on vacation next week and I won’t be able to check in. I’m taking The Diviners, Code Name Verity, and The Raven Boys with, but I’m also taking a stack of review copies I need to get through, so who knows what I’ll actually finish.
