Books I Read and Other Assorted Oddities

This was another book club book for my neighborhood book club. It's our middle grade choice, and I found the title and summary for it really intriguing. Coyote and her dad, Rodeo, live on a refitted school bus they've called Yager. They drive across the country in search of any adventure with the exception of Washington state. Washington is a "no-go." It was in Washington, five years earlier, that Coyote's two sisters and mother were killed in a car crash. In a weekly phone call with her grandma, Coyote finds out that the neighborhood park is about to be paved over. It was in that park, five years ago, that Coyote, her sisters, and mother buried a memory box, a time capsule that they promised they would dig up in ten years time. Can Coyote get Yager and Rodeo across the country without Rodeo knowing. I really enjoyed this book. It was cute, emotional, and funny. I found Coyote to be a really fun main character. She was witty, well-read, and sarcastic. I very much ...

 OK, I'm combining this... Man... two bad rolls in a row 😭 OK, I have the same issues with this adaptation as I did Treasure Island , which I was worried about when I started. Neither of these experiences are what I'm looking for in an audiobook. I'd rather listen to the full text novel than a dramatization. I'd rather watch a movie than listen to one. This book felt that way, and it is called an audioplay, so I can't even blame myself for not realizing it. Maybe I'll come back to these, but for now... this is a DNF. I swapped dice sets, and now I'm back on a roll. I again rolled a D10 and a percentile. 47 is the result. 47 on my list is ReDawn  by Brandon Sanderson. This is part the Skyward  books that I've been meaning to read, so I'm excited for that. I'm actually going to start with the first novella Sunreach  though. I didn't realize that I needed to read them in a particular order. I've fixed that on my sheet.

 Since I DNF'd Treasure Island , I need another book to read. I rolled a D10 and percentile: I got a 13. That translates to Ender's Game . This is called Ender's Game Alive and is another full cast adaptation. I'm a little nervous about it considering how Treasure Island went... I might have to roll for a second time in two days...

 I... DNF'd this after an hour. I'm not going to bother summarizing this book, because I didn't get very far. I have read Treasure Island  before, back when I was in college and took an entire class on the author. Of his books, this is probably the best one. I picked up this Audible Original because it was free and a classic. I didn't realize that it was a dramatization and not a faithful reading of the book. I felt like this isn't really what I'm looking for in an Audiobook. There were a couple of issues with it besides the fact that it was a dramatization. I didn't love the accents (though probably pretty realistic). They were hard to follow. Sometimes the dialogue got lost in the background stuff, and it just didn't feel like a book. I have nothing against this style of adaptation, but they're not for me. I will definitely be avoiding these in the future if possible. I gave this a ⭐ and did not finish at 21%.

 OK, since I finished The Women , I need to roll for a new book to read. I rolled a percentile dice and a D10 to get my answer. I originally rolled 80 on the percentile and ended up rerolling and getting 50. On this die, the face is the "0," so I read this as 50. On my list that corresponds to Treasure Island  by Robert Louis Stevenson. I read this a long time ago in college, but have it in my audiobook collection. We'll see haha. Hopefully I'll get through this one fast too.

 I've heard a lot of good things about this book, so I picked it up on Audible before I'd finished The Nightingale . This is what I rolled last time for an audiobook. I finished it really pretty quick for as long of a book as it is. The Women  follows the story of Frankie McGrath as she fights for her parents' approval. It starts with her father's "heroes wall" in his office: a wall of pictures depicting men in service of their country, and women getting married. When Frankie's brother leaves for war, his friend tells her "women can be heroes too." This sparks something in Frankie, and she joins the army as a nurse. She ships out to Vietnam shortly after learning of her brother's death. There, she serves in two evac hospitals, treating wounded soldiers as a surgical nurse. Frankie serves two tours in Vietnam, then returns home to find a country unwilling to recognize the service of any Vietnam vets, and especially the women. First of all, I d...