Nothing But Reading Challenges discussion

Team Members
❅Sophie
❅Nicole
❅Devann
❅Christine

TEAM SPREADSHEET
Current Points Spreadsheet

r

Work in progress spreadsheet

Tasks

10. first published on the 10th of a month
9. with at least nine characters (need to have a speaking part, do not need to be main characters)
8. that has a carnivorous animal on the cover
7. written by an author who has published at least seven books (as listed on Goodreads)
6. that is number six in the series
5. that was first published in the 1950s
4. where the audio version has at least four narrators
3. that is part of what was originally a planned trilogy, but became a longer series (can include .5 books added later)
2. that has two authors (as credited on Goodreads)
1. which is the author's debut novel

R

Hi everyone! I'm excited to get started with this.

I'm sure I've seen most of you round NBRC before now but I can't remember if I've been on the same teams (sorry if we have, my memory isn't great sometimes)

Sophie if you don't have access to the team spreadsheet to edit- PM the mod account please with your email.

Our spreadsheet

I normally find it easiest for everyone to have access to a tracking spreadsheet that is added to as we go or everyone is trusted with the master spreadsheet - what would you all like?

Hi Teammates ~

Sophie - thanks for being are fearless leader. You are a brave woman! As far as the spreadsheet goes, I'm happy to try and do it however you prefer. I might ask you to check me in the beginning as previously my team captains did the spreadsheet work, but I'm happy to make the attempt.

I do feel like I need some clarification on stages 2 & 3.

As far as the first set of tasks, I have a book picked out of each of them except:

3. that is part of what was originally a planned trilogy, but became a longer series (can include .5 books added later)

I wasn't sure how to determine when a series was originally meant to be only a trilogy. I might be reading more into it and it is simply a series of more than 3. In that case, I have a ton.

Nicole and Devann, I'm going to send you friend requests shortly :)

i'm good with us all having access to the spreadsheet. in the past ive been on teams where only the captain updates the spread sheet but right now in wheel i'm on a team where we all do and it seems to work well. although yeah i also feel like i need some clarification on the later stages lol i haven't picked out books for the first set of tasks but i'll try to look through my tbr and see what i have this week. kind of hard planning for this while i'm still doing wheel but i'll just have to multi-task!

I only started to figure out some books because I am getting ready to ramp up my reading/listening. I am training for another half and full marathon and that means many hours a week running where I can listen to books. This challenge corresponds nicely with my training.
I'd hate to blow through books over the next two weeks that I could have used in the challenge.

Hey team,

I'm good with having access to the spreadsheet as well. I haven't looked at the tasks properly but will do so soon. I am participating in so many challenges. Hopefully I have books that can cross over.

I'm currently on holiday and only return to work on the 25 August. So my reading will be off the charts till then. Right now I'm reading 3-4 books a day. All dependent on whether I feel like being an adult or just ignoring the outside world 😂

Have been a captain for the Harry Potter tower team, I'm hoping this will be simple in comparison!

Christine- good work on looking at books for the tasks already! Audiobooks while running is a great idea to keep it interesting.

Spreadsheet - I'll probably create/copy the mods sheet into a version that we can put things on and move them all about without worrying, then transfer it to the master spreadsheet later. We've got a couple of weeks until we start so I'm not going to rush things yet.

Nicole that sounds like an awesome holiday! Would love some solid reading time.

We need to be a bit careful about how many books we read in a 2 week patch so that we don't accidentally go into the next category up for one week but none of the rest. Probably the simplest way to deal with this is for us to stop at 40(?) books in the 2 weeks. I'll double-check our maximum later.

Yes. Just read through the rules agin, and it's similar to the individual challenge. And it also looks like timing and planning are vital. I'll start hunting down books and then we can all divvy up the tasks dependent on what we have?

Nicole what a great holiday. Sounds wonderful!

Sophie - thanks for the "working" spreadsheet. I'm normally pretty good with that stuff but you just never know.

I get sticking to 40 books. In past challenges I have been able to start a book during one week and finish and use in the next week/segment of the challenge. Can I assume it works the same for this challenge? So if we get our 40 we can get a jump on the next set as long as we don't finish them until then.

I also have one book that works for Group 2 task 1. If I am reading it correctly. That is as far as I have gone.

Christine wrote: "Nicole what a great holiday. Sounds wonderful!

Sophie - thanks for the "working" spreadsheet. I'm normally pretty good with that stuff but you just never know.

I get sticking to 40 books. In pas..."

i agree that i don't really want to go up into the next level, so i figure if one of us is just reading way more than normal one week we can always pick and choose which books we will include in the actual challenge. that will keep it lower stress as well and maybe let us read a few books we want to read but don't necessarily fit into the challenge [i'm having so much trouble with wheel right now, it's like nothing i want to read fits what i need for it lol]

looking at the first set of 10 tasks i think the hardest for me will be number 6 in a series because i usually either drop longer series because i'm lazy or i read the whole thing immediately lol anyone in the middle of a series right now and think they will be at book 6 in a few weeks?

So I've double checked the rules and it looks like 40 books should be our max for the 2 weeks. Should mean that we can read some stuff for fun/other challenges while working on this one.

I struggled with having to make things fit the last time I played wheel so gave it a miss this time.

I think it works out that we need to get the 1st 10 tasks sorted before we start on the'safe zone' groups, so will look at what I've got for those soon - though it sounds like Christine and Devann would have it covered if I had a bad week!

I will have a 6th book in a series for that task :) The one tripping me up is the trilogy that turns into a series. How does one know that? And I'm not a fan of audio. I manage maybe two in a month (for car rides and when I force myself to get on the treadmill) so I wouldn't know any books that fit that criteria of 4 narrators.

And just for interest sake, where is everyone located in the world?

for the audio one they said you didn't have to actually listen to the audio, just that the audio needed to have more than four people, so i'm sure we'll figure out something. i actually think i have a doctor who audio drama that should work - has a full cast and is five hours long so i will save that!

and i'm in america [eastern time zone]

I'm from South Africa but live and work in Abu Dhabi. Currently in SA for holiday :)

I've got one for the trilogy that I've been looking forward to. Will hold off another few weeks for it.

That's good to know about the audiobook task. I tend to listen to them when I'm alone in the car so it's slow progress now.

I'm in the UK, just south of London.

6th in series might give me the push to buy the next Kate Daniels I've got to read. Have been waiting in the hope that Audible will have it in the UK but doesn't look like it's going to happen anytime soon

I have the 4 narrators covered and I love audio books. Keeps the mind busy while running or doing house work.

I'm in White Bear Lake, Minnesota in the Unite States

Oddly I normally listen to podcasts when I'm cleaning rather than an audiobook (unless I'm completely absorbed in the book!)

Looks like we're v spread out round the world

i've been getting distracted by podcasts a lot recently which is really cutting into my productivity for wheelathon but oh well, i can't force myself to listen to something if i'm not really feeling it lol

Btw, Nicole has access to the sheet now.

Cat wrote: "Btw, Nicole has access to the sheet now."

Sorry 🙈 I thought it was the one Sophie did. My bad.

In terms of strategy, I think doing group 2 tasks after we've done the countdown tasks will maximize our points. Each of the 4 tasks are worth 50 points. But they're not easy:

i. Read a book with red writing on the cover where the title contains the letters L-A-V-A (doesn't need to be in that order)

ii. Read a book with a red cover (>50%) where the author contains the letters H-O-T (doesn't need to be in that order)

iii. Read a book with something hot on the cover (open to interpretation) and that contains the word LAVA in the text

iv. Read a book with something hot on the cover (open to interpretation) and that contains the letters L-A-V-A in the author's name (doesn't need to be in that order)

i can read and depending on which cover we use it could be red writing w/ lava on the cover or something hot with lava in the name. maybe better to use it for the lava in name since that seems like it would be harder to find.

Devann wrote: "i can read and depending on which cover we use it could be red writing w/ lava on the cover or something hot with l..."

Great finds! I have a series I've been meaning to get back into that has firefighters in it. Maybe the word lava comes up in the text. Will search. If it does, could we say a half naked man is considered as something hot on the cover? 😂

I'd certainly agree with half baked man as something hot. Sure covers like that have been used for similar tasks in the past.

I've just had to pick up my toddler from nursery with a temperature. Hopefully he'll do lots of sleeping so that I can look at the spreadsheet and my books

Sophie wrote: "I've just had to pick up my toddler from nursery with a temperature. Hopefully he'll do lots of sleeping so that I can look at the spreadsheet and my books"

Oh no! Wishing him a speedy recovery.

haha i mean surely a shirtless firefighter is hot on at least two levels ;) they do say be creative

Nicole wrote: "Sophie wrote: "I've just had to pick up my toddler from nursery with a temperature. Hopefully he'll do lots of sleeping so that I can look at the spreadsheet and my books"

Oh no! Wishing him a spe..."

Fingers crossed! Feel v sorry for him as we're having a heat wave here. Currently 30 degrees which probably sounds like nothing to you guys but we're really not set up for it.

Devann wrote: "haha i mean surely a shirtless firefighter is hot on at least two levels ;) they do say be creative"

I'd worry about them going into the fire still shirtless

his ~manly muscles~ obviously repel the fire lol ;)

Handsome fireman - definitely HOT!

Sorry to hear about your son. Well wishes sent his way.

The book name is
Contagion
A novel of the Living Dead.
I think it works for task 1 in group 2. But I guess I would like agreement that the "A Novel of the Living Dead" is part of the title.

Christine wrote: "Handsome fireman - definitely HOT!

Sorry to hear about your son. Well wishes sent his way.

The book name is
Contagion
A novel of the Living Dead.
I think it works ..."

We could ask if subtitles count towards the title?

He's doing better today. Sounds like he smokes 40 a day which I'm finding funny (probably not the reaction I'm meant to have).

Those suggestions both sound great and means that we meet the need to have at least 2 members of the team read for the group.

If we want maximum points group 1 would probably be the next thing to do afterwards but it might be nicer to go to group 3 and have a bit more freedom

I found lava in the following books:



Anyone meet our "something hot on the cover" criteria? Unfortunately none of the firefighter books had the word 😭

i have MANY urban fantasy books with someone holding fire on the cover so i can do that if someone else doesn't pick it up. i found 4 in the first 100 books of my tbr alone lol.

also i've got for 8 for the initial countdown. and probably have a few more with wolves on the cover as well, because urban fantasy just be like that sometimes ;)

Work in progress spreadsheet is basically the mods sheet with an extra column for if books work for multiple tasks (probably only useful for the spell out). If everything is going smoothly after the first 2 weeks it might then just make sense for everyone to have access to the main sheet to streamline things.

Thinking ahead a little bit...
Given that we can't start the safe zone tasks until our countdown books are finished and that I'm likely to finish fewer books in 2weeks than the rest of you, I'll probably only reserve one or maybe 2 of those if that's ok.

Similarly with group 2 they have to be finished before any of the next group are finished so it might make sense for the 3 of you to read for those 4 books and I'll start something for the next group.

Obviously if I get more reading time than expected we can juggle that a bit.

Christine wrote: "Handsome fireman - definitely HOT!

Sorry to hear about your son. Well wishes sent his way.

The book name is
Contagion
A novel of the Living Dead.
I think it works ..."

The mods have just said that lava has to be in the title, not the subtitle.

I've just found on kindle unlimited that I'll happily read.