The Reading Challenge Group discussion

Hi all,

There has been some recent discussion in the Suggestions/Improvements thread, and all us Moderators have started planning things for next year. I know, it still seems ages away! I'll split this post in half.

Part One - Changes to the Current Challenge
Anyway, there has been talks about changing things for the Genre Challenge. Me and Faye originally set up this years as a general one, so everyone would be reasonably happy, but now we have your input.

What genres do you guys want to see added? What are your least favourite genres right now?

There will probably be a poll going up finalising all this, when we have a better idea of what you guys want.

Part Two - A New Non-Fiction Genre Challenge
This was originally discussed some time back, but we instead decided to simplify it and go for a general non-fiction group read. In 2015, we'd really love to do a Non-Fiction Genre Challenge, incorporating all the sub-genres of Non-Fiction. We do have a list going, but ultimately, we want to know if people will be interested?

Do you want a separate non-fiction genre challenge? Would you participate?

You can check out the poll for this here. We'd love to have your input!

Thank you!

This is my first year in the group as well as GR, so I don't think I can really talk much about Part One. I am enjoying the challenge as the whole concept is new to me. Moreover, I enjoy all genres, so really appreciate the challenge as it has made me read a variety of books this year, while also challenging my creativity.

As for the second part - A RESOUNDING YES!!! I love reading Non Fiction but somehow this genre always takes a back seat in view of the numerous books that I read as part of fiction, which makes me feel really bad. So a Non Fiction Genre Challenge will not only help me read more from this genre but will also open new areas of interest, which are otherwise lesser known. I would definitely participate in this challenge.

Srividya, this is the first year the group has run, so we welcome any and all opinions about which genres to keep/remove/replace with!

This is a list of Non-Fiction Categories which I've put together. I thought it might help us to sort out the ones for which we, as a group, have a preference. You could look it over and talk about your favorites. Also, Please feel free to suggest other categories that I may have overlooked.

-biography
-memoir/autobiography
-history (world, 20th C.)
-current events
-travel
-finance/business
-psychology
-personal improvement
-relationships
-family/parenting
-sport related
-science
-nature
-sociology/social history
-religion/spirituality
-health/wellness
-skill related (writing, car mechanics, painting)
-hobby (collecting, gardening, jewelry)
-arts related (art, film, tv, photography, theater)
-career related (law, medicine, etc)
-true story/true crime
-animals/pets
-scholarly reference
-essays
-philosophy

I'm throwing down the gauntlet on Dystopia. It's just too depressing for a full month!

Humor was hard for me, initially. But it pushed my envelope and I found some things I truly enjoyed (and some i truly loathed). Overall, I thought it was successful but might be one that could make way for something else

The same is true for me with Contemporary. It was a hard genre to pin down.
I ended up reading things with a contemporary setting, but I may have interpreted too narrowly.

Adventure is coming up in December and I'm not sure what goes in this genre. Not mystery or thrillers, since they have their own month. True crime? Travel? Maybe both?

I'm guessing that we are replacing Non-Fiction since we are turning that into a whole different challenge.

I'd like to see LBGT get a month. Also, perhaps, a month of plays. A month of short story collections. SciFi/Fantasy could each get their own month, and Dystopian/Utopian/Speculative could be melded into them.

@Holly - Okay. :)

In that case, I would also like Plays to be included as one of the genres. This is one genre that I would like to read more of but sadly don't.

Sci fi and Fantasy - I would like to go with Renee's suggestion and give them separate months as there is so much to read in that. Also agree with her on the short story collections as its fun.

Also Children's classics - something like those that we read as kids, would be a fun trip down memory lane. I don't know maybe its me but I prefer those to the Young Adult genre that exists as it is today. However, this doesn't mean that we do away with YA as it does have some interesting stuff.

@Renee - about the non fiction sub genres - Would it be possible to include Philosophy as a separate sub genre or is it included under spiritual/religion.

I agree with adding Children's Classics.
I'm not personally a fan of YA.

I don't likre Horror either, but a lot of people do, so I don't mind it staying.

Sci-fi and fantasy could get a month each as there's a lot of choice in both categories.

As for classics, we could have:
- classic by a male author
- classic by a female author
- 18th/19th/20th century classic
- classics of the world (as in not American or British)
- classic that has been banned at some point

For me contemporary is easy, because I think it entails a large scope of books from Housekeeping, Burgess Boys, and other genres (like mysteries and YA) work under contemporary, so it is a chance to winnow down the TBR shelf. On the other hand, sci-fi/fantasy/dystopian is a stretch for me, but these genres did open up a couple of reads that I would have otherwise avoided.

So I'm saying maybe we could have a general genre challenge and also have a more specific genre challenge. The broader would maybe appeal to people just joining this group and the second for people to narrow their focus on their faves. I'm not sure how it would work. :)

Renee, The Three Musketeers falls under Adventure Genre, otherwise I'd have to look up that one, too.

Iasa, that would be great idea about the Latin American, and so on; how about doing a World Challenge next year, for every continent.

I like the idea of a World Challenge! There are a lot of great reads from around the world that don't get much attention, this would be a great way to highlight them.

Then each person could decide whether they wanted to break each continent into countries. This is a great way to be exposed to new authors and to learn about countries, traditions, ideas, and world views.

Just agreeing in a wordy way. :D

Literature of the world would be a good idea, or we could have the Americas, Asia, Africa, Oceania, Europe, but that would take up a lot of months. Would Russia count as Europe or Asia? Culturally it is closer to Europe.
We could do a World Challenge or run it in parallel to the other monthly reads so we could nominate books each month. What do we think of this?

This year we had:
- Historical
- Romance/Chick-Lit
- Young Adult
- Humour
- Fantasy/Science-Fiction
- Contemporary
- Utopian/Dystopian
- Crime/Mystery
- Classic/Literary
- Horror
- Non-Fiction
- Adventure

If we have Non-Fiction monthly reads, we can remove this genre. We can also have Utopian/Dystopian together with Fantasy/Science-Fiction, although it's pushing it a bit.

I would personally remove Humour, Romance, YA (we have monthly YA reads anyway for those who like YA), Horror, but that's just because I'm not too fond of them.
Or how about having Horror together with Crime and Mystery?

I also love the idea of a World Challenge. In fact, I was planning something on those lines at a personal level for next year but to do it with a group is simply awesome! :)

Ill participate in any challenge. My first yr in the grp

Folklore/Mythology and Manga/Graphic Novel are great ideas. What ia Urban fic?

If we do a world challenge over 12 months, we could do:
- North America
- Central America
- South America
- Western Europe
- Eastern Europe
- Northern Europe
- Middle East
- Africa
- Oceania
- South-East Asia
- Indian sub-continent

Any idea on how to divide Africa in two parts? North of the Sahara and sub-Saharan?

I do have some ideas about a world tour mini challenge but will probably unveil it once we get some of the other things going. I may do two travel related challenges next year, one continental and one US. (I know, but it's my home country and I know it's regions best.)

I don't want to divide the thread. Just letting your know, so we can continue the genre discussion.

Sonya wrote: "Ill participate in any challenge. My first yr in the grp"

Welcome Sonya!!! You'll have fun with all of the challenges and great discussions! :)

- Historical
- Romance/Chick-Lit
- Young Adult
- Humour
- Fantasy/Science-Fiction
- Contemporary
- Utopian/Dystopian
- Crime/Mystery
- Classic/Literary
- Horror
- Non-Fiction
- Adventure

Of the 2014 genres, I would remove YA, Non-fiction and Classic/Literary, as they all have monthly group reads of their own.

I would also remove Humour, not so much because I don't love the genre (I do!), but because I noticed a lot of members struggled with it. I think humor is a tricky genre because we can find fiction from different eras appealing, but humor less so as it tends to be very topical and humor used to be about punching down, rather than up.

I'd remove Contemporary, because the definition bred a lot of confusion and people ended up going with different concepts.

So that leaves:

- Historical
- Romance/Chick-Lit
- Fantasy/Science-Fiction
- Utopian/Dystopian
- Crime/Mystery
- Horror
- Adventure

To these, I'd add poetry for April, since April is National poetry Month.

I also suggest Experimental Novel as a genre. These would be books which experiment with form and style, aren't narrated chronologically, etc. Some ideas: Pale Fire (story told in the form of a poem and its corresponding critical commentary), Time's Arrow (story told backwards, it starts with the narrator's death and goes back in time), Hopscotch (story that can be read according to two different sequences of chapters) . . . the list goes on! I think this could be a very interesting challenge and provide lots of fodder for discussion.

Lastly, I would suggest that Historical is made a stricter genre by making eligible only novels that deal explicitly with a historical event. I.e. Les Miserables, war novels, etc. rather than just novels set in the past.

How about Classic/Literary instead of Contemporary?

I can stop commenting on this thread any time!

Anyway, for me a LGBT month (June!) and Manga/Graphic Novel month are definite Yeses!

I quite like YA but it could be combined with children literature to make its span broader.
Another one that I would like combined is Horror with Crime/Mystery.
I tend to agree also that Utopian/Dystopian could be combined with sci-fi or fantasy.
I'm not too sure what to choose for adventure, maybe this also could be combined or perhaps transformed in travel and adventure? Thanks Sandy I would love to see your list to pick ideas from :-)

I'm one of the people who struggled this year with Humour, so I would vote for that slot to be replaced by another genre, but I quite like the idea of funny books, maybe it's just a matter of more effort on my part to pick something better.

Contemporary is a genre which got me confused, I initially thought it meant books published recently, maybe new-releases could be a popular genre?

I'm also keen on books originally published in different languages as new genre.

I personally do not like erotica or LGBT, we could have this genres as a separate interest group read much similar to the buddy reads we already had

Not overly fond of Romance/Chick-Lit, but it is quite a popular genre to keep.
I would definitely keep Classic/Literary. Poetry as a separate genre would be undoubtedly challenging for me, especially finding enough books to fill a whole month, perhaps can be included in Classic/Literary?

I would also keep non-fiction as a month genre, and I'm also interested in the separate non-fiction 12-month challenge.

Finally I would not like to make the Historical genre not too restrictive but keep as it is to appeal to a broader audience.

[edit] One last suggestion, to have a individually selected "out of jail free" genre to be used in case someone really struggles or does not like the group selected month genre. The books read during the month will still count towards the group tally and the "out of jail free" is only to be used once in the year

I am good with whatever you guys decide you want to do. I saw this challenge this year as a way to step outside of my comfort zone and read books that I wouldn't normally read. With that in mind I only read one book per month for the genre challenge. I intend to do the same thing next year so I am going to be ok with whatever everyone wants.

As far as the nonfiction genre challenge, I think it is a great idea for those who like nonfiction. I personally don't like nonfiction and will most likely not participate in that one.

I don't love the idea of putting Horror with Mystery/Crime. How about Horror/Thriller for October? That way we could branch it out into regions beyond vampires and monsters. And into ancient curses, terrorists, nuclear subs, and adrenaline.

I also think of Poe and Hawthorne in this category because of their mastery of eerie-ness.

Renee wrote: "I don't love the idea of putting Horror with Mystery/Crime. How about Horror/Thriller for October? That way we could branch it out into regions beyond vampires and monsters. And into ancient curses..."

Ooooh, I like that idea a lot!

Renee and Sandy, tell me more about these names, is this really a book club? :D

Toodles for now -- love all of your ideas for next year, Miss Brazen and Mistress M-C! Hahahaha

Good Job! Still grinning! :)

great mod names. Mine at the RFP book club is Book club hostess. :)

I think these are the standouts so far...

- Historical
- Romance/Chick-Lit
- World Lit
- Contemporary/Literary Merit
- Manga/Graphic Novels
- Crime/Mystery
- Poetry/Plays
- Horror/Thriller
- Fantasy (including Utopian)
- Science-Fiction (including Dystopian)
- Adventure/Travel
- Traditional Lit (Mythology/Folktales/Legends/Fables/Fairytales/etc)

Replacing:
-Young Adult
-Classic
-Non-Fiction
-Humor

That sounds good Renee.
This "out of jail free" card suggestion is great. I know I could read any of these genres but Thriller/Horror - it's not my cup of tea. So I could still participate and just skip the genre :)

Another option similar to the wild card idea would be to have a "pick your poison" month where we could choose from a few genres. This might be a good option if the upcoming poll reveals that we don't have 12 clear winners. We could simply combine the ones with the lowest votes into one month.

For example, one month could be "Manga/Children's literature/Plays" in which we could pick the specific genre (or genres) that we'd like to focus on.

Oops. I meant to say "out of jail free" card, not wild card. :-)

I would like to see a month for plays/poetry and an LGBT genre, I would include traditional lit in fantasy though.

I think a "Get out of Jail" option is already present.. But as an understanding. There are NO PENALTIES for choosing not to participate one month. I always try to find SOMETHING that fits the genre (especially if I'm not gonna read the groups Genre Challenge Choice for that month.) but you can always step away from the buffet and jump back in line for the following month.

The schedule of genres just keeps us from getting stale each month. It helps engender conversation and makes us try new things.

Renee, I agree that there always the option for a person can opt out from the group selected genre. My suggestion was to provide a alternative genre (to be used once a year at most) that still would count towards their genre challenge goal. People would still feel included and the counters keep people motivated :P

Caroline, I like the idea of "pick your poison" from restricted selection, this way people with similar dislikes can still participate in discussions on an alternative of their choosing

I agree with Kiwi, because there are at least three months of genres that don't interest me at all.

To me it makes sense to replace YA, Classic, and Non-Fiction since those are separate monthly reads.

I'll be fine with what everyone decides, especially since I've only been committed to 1 book from each month's genre this year.
But here are my thoughts anyway:

My inclination is to make the categories broad to accommodate people who want to participate but just don't read (fill in the blank). Maybe use mini-challenges or tiered challenges for people who really want to dig in to an area.

Science fiction, fantasy, utopian, dystopian, horror and Traditional Lit Mythology/Folktales/Legends/Fables/Fairytales/etc) are all part of the speculative fiction genre. So someone's horror read could be a few of those original fairy tales :)

Crime and mystery genre are sometimes thrillers. Maybe spy novels are similar enough to share the category.

Books with literary merit can be found in lots of genres. So can world literature. I just have to say that, but it's also an example of where a mini challenge or tiered challenge makes sense to me.

Perhaps there's a way to broaden the manga/ graphic novels category, if for no other reason than that fewer libraries may carry those.

Thanks for clarifying, Kiwi

It sounds like Traditional Literature and manga/graphic novels aren't particularly popular choices. What are some other options?

How about Traditional/Children's' Lit?

I really like Kiwis idea :D Especially 'cause I only spotted like 6 genres I'd acutally participate in. :/

I'd love to see Manga/Graphic Novels in the challenge, but I guess I'm more or less the only one liking them :) If someone's worried about Mangas/Graphic Novels not being available in their libraries... I know it's not the "nice" way, but mangas can be found and read online. I don't know about graphic novels though...

Traditional/Children's Lit sounds nice, too. And it has a wide range 'cause a lot of stuff I read as a teen or even now still seems to count as lit for kids :)

I'm thinking that the current challenge has been quite successful so it might need just a few adjustments rather than big alterations.

How about setting up a poll for the 3 least favourite genres and then another poll for 3 possible replacement genres, so that all group members can have their say?

We could leave this thread open till the end of the month to collect everybody's opinions of course and have the polls at the beginning of next month?

I would also like Manga/Graphic novels to be included. I am really intrigued after reading one very recently.

Traditional/Children's Lit is a perfect combination as there are several books that I would like to read in this genre.

I like reading all genres, so I personally don't have a problem. However, some times it is not possible to read as many books as you want to, especially when you are engaged in a massive tome.. And in such cases Kiwi's idea of picking an alternative genre once a year, will really help.

I know I am taking a short cut here by saying it but well can't help it :)

I love the Traditional and Manga/Graphic novel additions. In fact I am quite fine with Renee's list. Admittedly, not everything is quite my usual tastes, but that's the point isn't it?

Broad categories I think really help us all find something in the genre to read. I tried reading horror a couple times this year and it hasn't really clicked. However since it's combined with Thrillers (which I take to include suspense) that opens up a lot more choice and I will find something. It's also important to remember that there's so much variety and cross-over within genres that with a little creativity you can probably find something that touches on your usual tastes. For humor this year, books written by comedians just didn't appeal to me. Instead I wound up reading a funny sci-fi/fantasy novel and a light-hearted crime caper thing. Worked for me :) This year I also discovered how broad the Graphic Novel category can be: Boxers for example is about the Boxer Revolution, which I wouldn't have imagined being a subject of a graphic novel. So while on the surface a genre may not seem interesting a history/non-fiction reader can find a GN, or a sci fi buff can find a humorous book :)

I think Brenda made some really good points, and if I may, perhaps as a monthly mini challenge within the genre can be set up as a kind of treasure hunt for points. The only competition is against yourself, so if there's a genre that you like then participate, otherwise don't. However perhaps it could encourage even those who like a genre to explore within the genre.

For example say Romance/Chick Lit month:
- Read a LBGT romance - 5 points
- Read a book about an inter-racial/inter-cultural relationship - 5 points
- Read a book with conflict over children as a central theme - 3 points
And so on..

Personally, I've enjoyed both manga and graphic novels and I think it wails make a great Challenge category. There is just so much out there to explore. However, this is a genre which probably needs a poll before inclusion. I'm just trying to keep the discussion focused.

I love the idea of the 'Challenge Within the Challenge, Karen. You are so creative!!

Kiwi wrote: "I'm thinking that the current challenge has been quite successful so it might need just a few adjustments rather than big alterations.

How about setting up a poll for the 3 least favourite genres..."


I ditto Kiwi, that we keep the Genre Challenge broad for the wider appeal, but maybe we could have a separate challenge with the more unique genres for exploration or for the people who love them.

Yeah I found The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Pastand read that one for free online and it was pretty good. so you can find manga to read online for free.
Here's one place where you can read manga for free at cuz that's where I found the Legend of Zelda A Link to the Past:
http://www.mangahere.co/

and graphic novels you can read them at books a million and hastings and barnes and noble too if the local library doesn't have a good selection.

I just read Last Game 33

I'll take any idea that incorporates LGBT, because it is way more broad than just M/M erotica.

Sandy wrote: "Amber wrote: "Yeah I found The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Pastand read that one for free online and it was pretty good. so you can find manga to read online for free.
Here's one..."

No problem Sandy. Enjoy! ^_^

Sandy, how about Books Written by Minorities? (Racial, Sexual or Gender) If members have no interest on racial minorities, then . . . I have no idea.

Aitziber, I think it is a great idea; count me interested!