The Sword and Laser discussion

Here are the details for the 2020 Challenges. If you have any questions, first check the FAQ, and otherwise post them here.

Main Challenges
Sword Challenge: Fantasy Books
Laser Challenge: Sci-Fi Books

Side Challenges
Graphic Novel Challenge: Comics/Manga/Etc
Short Story Challenge: Short Stories

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Challenge FAQ

General Questions

What are the Group Challenges? The group challenges are a feature of Goodreads that allows a group the ability to create various challenges for members to participate. Sword & Laser first started doing group challenges in 2018.

How can I sign up? Click on one or more of the links above to sign up for the challenge(s) you wish to participate.

Which Challenges Should I Join? As many as you want. That includes none for those of you who are uninterested. It's totally optional. Although if you're reading along with the group each month, you could pledge 6 sword and 6 laser picks for the year even if you won't read any others. But no pressure!

Why aren't my books being counted?
The main reasons I've seen is that either:

1) Your challenge isn't pointing at the correct shelf
2) Your book isn't on the correct shelf
3) You didn't mark the book with a read date of 2020

I completed my challenge, why isn't it being counted? In past years we found the count of challenges completed was buggy. As such that number is unreliable. The book counts should be correct however assuming you've shelved your books and marked them as read.

Does this relate to the monthly pick? Nope. The types of challenges we do, the books we read, have no impact on how the group is being run. It's the same as always. This is more of a side thing for people to participate in.

Sword/Laser Challenge Questions

How Many Books are We Trying to Read? This year we're not shooting for a specific goal, rather we're simply challenging our members to see how many books we read as a group. The previous targets were kind of arbitrary and I don't think they had much effect on our results.

What Books Qualify? We're asking you only count Novella length books or longer. That's 17,500 words, 50 pages or 2 hours of audio.

The format doesn't matter (physical book, ebook, audio book).

We are asking you not to count graphic novels or short stories. Those have their own challenges.

What Should I do if I'm not sure the genre of a book I'm reading?
You can ask in the thread, but in general I always suggest to use your best judgement. If something isn't clearly Sword or Laser, or you think it's both. Count it however you think makes sense. We're not auditing the books you contribute, we just ask you try to follow the guidelines.


Graphic Novel Challenge Questions
I read trades, should I be shelving/tracking Issues? No, please only count books by trade.

I only read issues/there is no trade, what should I do? If you're reading issues and a trade exists/has been created, we ask you to track by that. If none is available or you don't want to shelve comics twice, we're going by a rule of thumb to shelve every 5th issue to roughly simulate a single trade. As with most things, use your best judgement.

Does Manga Count? Yup! We just ask you count the trades, not individual chapters. If you're reading online via Crunchyroll or Shonen Jump, etc often times there will still be a trade book created on Goodreads even if the English translation isn't listed yet.

Short Story Challenge Questions
Should I count individual stories? That's the idea, although I've been told Goodreads tends to remove any individual stories in favor of collections/anthologies.

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2019 Survey Challenge Results
In December 2019, I posted a short survey to get a general sense of feedback.

Here are the final results (I'm putting the results in spoiler tags simply to keep this post shorter/focused on this year's details):

(view spoiler)[
2019 Survey Stats
These stats focus on the survey results and not the stats provided by goodreads. I did however use some of the numbers from goodreads to help summarize the survey.


Sword Survey Participants: 114 (44.9% of survey participants; 26.6% of Sword challenge)
Sword Challenges completed: 98 (86.0% of survey Sword participants; 22.8% of Sword challenge)
Average Sword books pledged: 21 (Sword challenge Average: 18)
Average Sword books read: 28 (Sword challenge Average: 13)

Laser Survey Participants: 118 (46.5% of survey participants; 27.8% of Laser challenge)
Laser Challenges completed: 86 (72.9% of survey Laser participants; 20.2% of Laser challenge)
Average Laser books pledged: 18 (Laser challenge Average: 23)
Average Laser books read: 21 (Laser challenge Average: 12)

2020 Preferences

Challenge Feedback
There weren't a lot of suggestions this year beyond changing the goals to something more reasonable, more updates on the podcast (something I can't change/control) and more stats (something I'm honestly not motivated enough to do). So the main change for 2020 will be dropping the count goals. We'll see what that looks like compared to past years.

I've added the challenges to our monthly newsletter but overall participation seems to be down from 2018, so I'm not sure it helped anything.

With regards to which challenges we should do next year:

* 174 said they’d join a Sword challenge (68.5% of survey participants)
* 179 said they’d join a Laser challenge (70.5% of survey participants)
* 71 said they’d join a Graphic Novel challenge (28.0% of survey participants)
* 58 said they’d join a Short Story challenge (22.8% of survey participants)
(hide spoiler)]

For 2020 I'm drastically reducing my pledges:

15 fantasy (compared to 40 and later 35 in 2019)
10 sci-fi (compared to 15 in 2019)
5 comics (compared to 10 in 2019)

I figure this way I should meet all my goals and possibly exceed them without the pressure of trying to finish them next December.

Please note the change that we're no longer shooting for a specific amount, so people should pledge what they think they will/want to read for the year and not worry too much about the final numbers.

Let's see how we do as a group in 2020!

I kept my sword number at 100 but reduced my laser to 35 and comics to 50. I wanted to reduce the pressure too.

I set my goals lower this year, but still higher than the averages from last year. Recently I have been gaming more and reading comics less. I will not be adjusting my goals up like I did last year, so I can help the overall numbers more. I'll probably read a lot more than this:

Sword, Laser & Graphic Novels: 24 each.
Short Story collections: 6.
Last year I read: 35, 40, 87 & 11.

Is there a way to make one of these challenges don't count against Goodreads' 2020 Reading Challenge? I want to read a more Graphic Novels, but personally I don't count them as book reads.

This year goals
Sword Challenge: 25
Graphic Novel Challenge: 100

Last year was terrible, only 88 graphic novels and 4 Fantasy books. I don't think this year is going to be as busy as the last one, so I'm keeping the same goals, I think these are achievable.

Xacur wrote: "Is there a way to make one of these challenges don't count against Goodreads' 2020 Reading Challenge? I want to read a more Graphic Novels, but personally I don't count them as book reads.

This y..."

Not that I know of. The group challenges are tied to the read date, so once you mark them as read in 2020 they'll count towards your main challenge too.

I am going to set the same number I used in 2019 of 40 for both sword and laser. 2019 was a good reading year so I was well above the number (sword - 53/40 and laser - 71/40). We will see how this year goes...

I’m not doing the short story one this year because the loosey-goosey nature of counting them bugged me. Other than that I’m going with the same as last year.

January 1:

Comic: 0/50
Laser: 0/15
Sword: 0/15

Also doing a “Hindsight 2020” thing this year. It’s all about rereading old favorites. That one is just for me.

Trike wrote: "Also doing a “Hindsight 2020” thing this year. It’s all about rereading old favorites...."
Now there's a good challenge topic! I started wading thru
Isaac Asimov's Robot series
Marion Zimmer Bradley's Darkover series
Anne McCaffrey's PERN series
towards the end of the year with most to occur this year.

Before I was confused and it was low on my priority to figure out how to participate. Now that I've done it for this year, I feel silly because it's incredibly easy. :P

I'm pledging 15 for each.

I'm counting anything that I read more that 50% of in 2020 to be a truly 2020 read. Even though that's not exact.

Good luck!

I'm dropping my goals a bit this year, for the S&L challenges and the main Goodreads 2020 challenge. I'm just getting through a lot fewer books recently due to changed work circumstances.

If things pick up and I end up over-achieving then that's fine!

Doing 10 for both. Along with other challenges I think this should be more tenable than the 15 I shot for last year.

Quick question for anyone with a strong opinion either way. Do you count horror in these lists? A lot of horror falls in the realm of sci-fi, fantasy or a combination but sometimes people seem to just delegate horror as a separate entity (in categorization, not specifically anything I've seen here). I realize this is mostly just a choose-your-own adventure as far as what you decide to count but just curious how others view it. Personally I am entirely using them starting with the Troop as a sci-fi slashie (slashie as in half horror half sci fi to use the term from Zoolander, not slashie as a cutesy way of saying slasher haha).

Genre is sometimes fun to argue with, but since horror to me is usually more atmosphere/tone, I usually classify the few horror books I read as fantasy, scifi, mystery/thriller, or general fiction, depending on the nature of the threat / the way the story is structured.

A genre discussion? Hello!

Horror comes in two basic flavors: Chiller and Thriller. Chillers are supernatural or science fictional scary stories, while Thrillers are straight fiction.

Examples of Chillers are movies like Alien, The Ring, The Wolfman, etc. Books with vampires or zombies or demons, such as The Stand, World War Z: An Oral History of the Zombie War, Who Goes There?, Dracula, etc.

Examples of Thrillers are films like Wait Until Dark, where a blind woman is mistaken by criminals as having their heroin so she has to defend herself, or stories like The Tell-Tale Heart or books like The Silence of the Lambs.

So for me, Horror is like Comedy, in that it flavors another genre. If I’m reading Frankenstein, then it’s Science Fiction-Horror. Dracula is Fantasy-Horror. Red Dragon is Fiction-Horror.

Trike wrote: "A genre discussion? Hello!

So for me, Horror is like Comedy, in that it flavors another genre. If I’m reading Frankenstein, then it’s Science Fiction-Horror. Dracula is Fantasy-Horror. Red Dragon is Fiction-Horror.
"

ooooh I like making horror a sub genre. This is spot on!

Trike wrote: "So for me, Horror is like Comedy, in that it flavors another genre. If I’m reading Frankenstein, then it’s Science Fiction-Horror. Dracula is Fantasy-Horror. Red Dragon is Fiction-Horror."

Yes, this is a sensible approach for me too.

I kind of wish we had a separate Horror category to pledge, but I suppose some S&L members don't read any horror.

I read a lot of horror & usually think afterwards, can I call it a sword or a laser. Same rules as Trike above. I also do this with Star Wars novels. Some contain no actual scenes with force powers, so I call those ones lasers. I never thought of Star Wars as fantasy before joining this book club, btw.

Ian wrote: "I never thought of Star Wars as fantasy before joining this book club, btw."

Yah, we’re kind of evil that way around here.

I’m not sure I had completely thought about it until someone mentioned it here either, but as soon as some one did, it made total sense, at least for the movies. I agree some of the EU, still feels more like SF to me.

Oh, and my arch villain power is I forget things I said on this forum all the time. So it is entirely possible I did put up a fight about weather Star Wars was SF or fantasy when it was first brought up. But in my current personal head cannon, it made total sense. ;-)

Ian wrote: "I also do this with Star Wars novels. Some contain no actual scenes with force powers, so I call those ones lasers."

John (Nevets) wrote: "So it is entirely possible I did put up a fight about weather Star Wars was SF or fantasy when it was first brought up.."

One of the reasons I made this: https://www.goodreads.com/photo/user/...

Can we not turn this thread into yet another discussion about genres please?

I laughed.

I'm joining the less pressure team and only pledged 30 of the big two and don't think I'll pledge any graphic novels this year. I've got a large backlog of popular fiction and mysteries I'd like to spend more time with.

I'm keeping it at 12 each this year but dropping my graphic novels to 5 since I only did 3 last year. I'd like to do the short story but the counting issue is keeping me out of that one.

Last year I had to really tailor my reading getting into Nov - Dec so this year I am scaling back my challenges to 15 for both Sword and Laser. Have a few graphic novels lying around so I am going for 7 this year. Shorts I am not bothering with.
If things go well, I may increase the numbers later in the year.

Trying to keep my goals motivating but achievable this year. I will miss the detailed stats, but I certainly understand the cost/benefit equation for "fixing" that is all out of wack.

Sword: 10
Laser: 10
Graphic Novel: 12
Short Stories: 36

People who do the short story challenge how do you register them so they count towards the challenge? I’ve been listening to a short story a day with the Lightspeed Magazine podcast but the individual stories aren’t listed on goodreads.

Yeah, short stories are hit or miss. I feel like maybe 66% of the ones I actually read or listened to (shout out to the Escape Pod podcast) are on Goodreads. There were definitely some short stories that I added successfully which were later replaced/merged by Goodreads with the magazine/anthology issue they were published in. Not a huge fan of that (especially since I didn't get any notification when it was altered).

Yeah Goodreads doesn't allow short stories to be posted that have not been published on their own (outside of a magazine/anthology/collection), so that was one reason why I thought the short story challenge would be problematic because your shelvings could disappear or be combined/merged. (This is one reason I never add short stories I read on their own on GR.)

If you're listening to the Lightspeed Magazine podcast, you could probably synchronize the stories with whatever issue they came in, so once you read all the stories, just mark the magazine complete.

Short stories that are part of an anthology or magazine, only available via subscription or registration, or bundled with another work, are not valid book records. See https://help.goodreads.com/s/article/...

Short stories published online are considered valid book records. See https://help.goodreads.com/s/article/...

That means, for example, that all the shorts from sites like Tor.com can have their own book record. Every time I've looked up a Tor.com short to mark it read, there has always been a record.

So, there are lots of shorts that can be easily counted, but not all. Since most of the shorts I read fall into this category, it's a pretty simple challenge to take on. My guess is, more people read shorts in anthologies and magazines, so you'll have to decide how you want to count them.

Thanks for the info. I’ll have to check out the Lightspeed Magazine and see if I can match them up like David said. If I can’t do that I’ll probably just go with a real low goal and see how I do on anthologies and collections.

It will be pretty disappointing if I can’t figure out a way to get the 300+ short stories I intend to read counted towards the challenge.

Yeah, I don't know that I plan to do anything with either the Short Story or Graphic Novel challenges this year. I was already running out of steam by the end of last year just collecting/reporting the numbers each month.

I honestly considered just dropping the Short Story challenge since there didn't seem to be a ton of effort, but it wasn't like it took me very long to create the thing so I figured people who wanted to could still participate.

Thanks for setting the challenges up for 2020.

This year I am planning to do more reading than last and think I can keep up with the group and add a few extra on for good measure.

So :

Laser: 9
Sword: 9

Trike wrote: "January 1:

Comic: 0/50
Laser: 0/15
Sword: 0/15"

February 1:

Comic: 4/50
Laser: 1/15
Sword: 0/15

Nice Trike, nice.

Feb 1

Overall: 2/24 (Goodreads challenge)
Laser: 0/9
Sword: 0/9

Continuing last year's trend, still leaning more Sword than Laser...

Sword 4/24
Laser 3/24
Comics 1/24
Shorts 0/24

Strange month, January was.

Sword 5/40
Laser 1/30

Silvana wrote: "Strange month, January was.

Sword 5/40
Laser 1/30"

Mandalorian, withdrawal from?

Sword: 11/100 +3
Laser: 10/35 +8 might have to up this one a bit
Comics: 7/50 +3
Shorts: 3/12 +2 The 3 were collections but I also did 41 short stories this month but none listed on GR.

Sword 6/40
Laser 1/20
Graphic Novel 1/12
Short Story 6 of 20 My search for worthy Hugo nominees.

January Results:

Sword Challenge
Total Participants: 210
Total Read: 320
Average Books Read: 2
Total Committed: 3,929
Average Books pledged: 19
Total Challenges Completed : 0 NOTE: This number is terribly inaccurate. However there is no way for me to verify/get the correct numbers, so I have to take what Goodreads gives me.


Laser Challenge
Total Participants: 215
Total Read: 298
Average Books Read: 1
Total Committed: 3,590
Average Books pledged: 17
Total Challenges Completed : 0 NOTE: This number is terribly inaccurate. However there is no way for me to verify/get the correct numbers, so I have to take what Goodreads gives me.

So I'm not going to do stats for the group Graphic Novel or Short Stories challenges this year. It just proved too time consuming.

Participation in the main challenges this year is down from the same time in 2019, which was down from 2018. I'm not sure if says something about the group as a whole, or just the group challenges. Participation in last year's survey was also less. But I did run it later in the year and for shorter than 2018's survey so they may be part of it too.

We'll see how the year goes.

I'm not sure how interesting people find these stats in general. I personally find it interesting how there seem to be more participants in the the laser challenge, but the sword participants always read way more books.

For my own personal challenges, I'm finished with:

Sword: 1/15 (7% complete, on track)
Laser: 3/10 (30% complete, 21% ahead of schedule)
Comics: 2/5 (40% complete)

This month I've added 1 Sword, 3 Laser, 2 Graphic novels.

As I drastically reduced my goals this year I'm off to a really strong start. I may end up exceeding all of them, but I won't be increasing my pledge regardless.

I've been doing some non genre stuff already, and just taking a lot more days off where I don't read at all. It's been nice to not feel "pressure" to read, something I've been dealing with a lot the last year or so. It was starting to make reading feel more like a chore than recreation.

I was traveling for PAX in January, but I didn't read as much as I normally have in the past when traveling. Still I "cheated" a bit by binging four of the Expanse novellas. Although 1 (The Butcher of Anderson Station is more of a short story, so I didn't count that one. They were good, but not nearly as good as the books have been.

I also did the 2-parter comic on Kanan Jarrus from Rebels that someone here mentioned. I enjoyed that, but it felt a little incomplete to me.

Mark wrote: "Silvana wrote: "Strange month, January was.

Sword 5/40
Laser 1/30"

Mandalorian, withdrawal from?"

I read so many fantasy compared to SF :D
This February should be more balanced.

Rob wrote: "January Results:


Sword Challenge

Total Participants: 210
Total Read: 320
Average Books Read: 2
Total Committed: 3,929
Average Books pledged: 19
Total Challenges Completed : 0 NOTE: This number..."
Thank you Rob for the stats.
I think you could omit the stats on total challenge completed since it is so inaccurate.

I personally only pay attention to the total books pledged vis a vis total books read and average of read book each month.

yeah, that's probably a good point. I just keep copy/pasting those. I'll just drop them next month.

1 March 2020

Overall: 5/24 (Goodreads challenge)
Laser: 1/9
Sword: 2/9

Trike wrote: "Trike wrote: "January 1:

Comic: 0/50
Laser: 0/15
Sword: 0/15"

February 1:

Comic: 4/50
Laser: 1/15
Sword: 0/15"

March 1:

Comic: 10/50
Laser: 3/15
Sword: 0/15

I am not exactly tearing through the pages this year.

February Results:

Sword Challenge
Total Participants: 238 (+28)
Total Read: 746 (+426)
Average Books Read: 3 (+1)
Total Committed: 4,311 (+382)
Average Books pledged: 18 (-1)


Laser Challenge
Total Participants: 242 (+27)
Total Read: 652 (+354)
Average Books Read: 3 (+1)
Total Committed: 4,016 (+426)
Average Books pledged: 17 (0)

For my own personal challenges, I'm finished with:

Personal: 15/50 (32% complete)
Sword: 3/15 (20% complete, 4% ahead of schedule)
Laser: 6/10 (60% complete, 44% ahead of schedule)
Comics: 4/5 (80% complete, 64% ahead of schedule)

This month I've added 2 Sword, 3 Laser, 2 Graphic novels.

I finished up the Expanse novellas in February and padded out my Sci-Fi stats a bit as a result. I will probably finish my Laser and Comics challenge pretty early, but I'm not going to increase my goals. I'll help compensate for the overambitious participants instead.

I just picked up a bunch of non-genre stuff (and a bunch of genre stuff) that I plan to read later this month so that will probably slow my momentum a bit.

I'll likely add 1-2 sword and 1 laser in March.

two months into the year, I've had lots of time to read and I'm overswording again...

Sword: 13/24
Laser: 6/24
Comics: 10/24
Shorts: 6/24