Buddy Reads discussion

Only for Moderators!
To facilitate conversations.

Member posts will not be welcomed here.

Hey Aqi and Darcey!

Welcome Darce to the team! I know this is a long awaited welcome but I appreciate you joining the team, especially with Aqsa on hiatus (take your time girl! We look forward to your return :D)

Darcey, I hope you have had a read through some of the important discussions such as

Moderator Guide
https://www.goodreads.com/topic/show/...

As you can see, it is half done but it should give you the gist of everything.
And since it is me running the group, I have not done most of the challenges or the nominations properly :/ Aqi might kill me when she returns

But I hope with a little help we might be able to bring the group back to life!

So, with the buddy reads, I reckon together we do a good job! We read and discuss and what not and its amazing! If we continue to do this and encourage others to join it should be great.

With the nominations, what did you think of the way I chose to do the nomination straight from the polls? Was this a good idea? Or should we go back to when we nominated on the threads?

Also I saw this on another group, I think they nominate books for the first 3 and/or 6 months of the year. So there nominations, and chapter discussions threads are created in advanced and they begin to encourage their members to get the book, prepare for it, have discussion of what might the book be about etc. Should we try something like this?

Sorry if it is a little overwhelming, let me know if you need me to slow down a bit! If you have any questions and/or suggestions, shoot away! I'll answer them with all honesty :)

Thanks again for wanting to help out!

thanks for the kind welcome, Karen :))

*❆ Kαɾҽɳ ❆* wrote: "So, with the buddy reads, I reckon together we do a good job! We read and discuss and what not and its amazing! If we continue to do this and encourage others to join it should be great."

yep, we're definitely good with the buddy read section, if i can encourage some of my friends to join then we should be able to have an active buddy read section of the group! we should work out our next buddy read by the way ;)

*❆ Kαɾҽɳ ❆* wrote: "With the nominations, what did you think of the way I chose to do the nomination straight from the polls? Was this a good idea? Or should we go back to when we nominated on the threads?"

i like the idea of nominating buddy reads via polls, that seems like a smart way of handling things, however it does make people more likely to choose a book from the current selection, rather than writing in a new option. however, there's nothing we can do about that! i still think that nominating via polls is a good idea :))

*❆ Kαɾҽɳ ❆* wrote: "Also I saw this on another group, I think they nominate books for the first 3 and/or 6 months of the year. So there nominations, and chapter discussions threads are created in advanced and they begin..."

ooo yeah that sounds interesting. i think organising buddy reads 6 months in advance is a bit too much, but 2 or 3 months could definitely work. that way there's more time for people to organise getting the book, and more time for us to spread the word! i reckon we should definitely give it a try, how are you thinking of organising it? still the poll system, but simply a bit earlier, and then we can make the thread and encourage people to join?

*❆ Kαɾҽɳ ❆* wrote: "Sorry if it is a little overwhelming, let me know if you need me to slow down a bit! If you have any questions and/or suggestions, shoot away! I'll answer them with all honesty :)

Thanks again for..."

all good, i'm here to help! i was wondering if you needed any help with the monthly messages etc, because i've seen that you've been a bit behind lately (which is not your fault - i know work is super busy for you!)? but anyway, just let me know if you need any help :))

Darce wrote: "yep, we're definitely good with the buddy read section, if i can encourage some of my friends to join then we should be able to have an active buddy read section of the group! we should work out our next buddy read by the way ;)"

Sounds great! If you can do that, it will be amazing! What do you feel about Discussion leaders? Like each of us lead a book discussion?
Also yes, what’s our next read? Surprise me and nominate one for the March BR!

i like the idea of nominating buddy reads via polls, that seems like a smart way of handling things, however it does make people more likely to choose a book from the current selection, rather than writing in a new option. however, there's nothing we can do about that! i still think that nominating via polls is a good idea :))

Yeah I noticed that as well, maybe I won’t add my suggestion and just add two comments as the options, like “write in your suggestion” and hopefully this might encourage people’s vote?
If we see it doesn’t work out we can always try a new way

ooo yeah that sounds interesting. i think organising buddy reads 6 months in advance is a bit too much, but 2 or 3 months could definitely work. that way there's more time for people to organise getting the book, and more time for us to spread the word! i reckon we should definitely give it a try, how are you thinking of organising it? still the poll system, but simply a bit earlier, and then we can make the thread and encourage people to join?

Yeah I was thinking of using the poll system, we could try it for April and May BR, and see how it goes. Or we could open up a thread and nominate books like we use to?

all good, i'm here to help! i was wondering if you needed any help with the monthly messages etc, because i've seen that you've been a bit behind lately (which is not your fault - i know work is super busy for you!)? but anyway, just let me know if you need any help :))

Omg you are amazing! That would be a tremendous help for me! I’ll love it if you could do that, I have been pretty slack in that regards, and having it done on time would definitely help members see the active ness of the group again.
I’ll send you the links of the newsletter that I have so that you don’t have to make it from scratch and feel free to change it up and delete or add different links to it

And that’s brings me to our challenges
We have ad a few challenges that were really popular like the book and page count, theme of the month, colour cover of the month, readathons and bingos
Should we start leading these again?

*❆ Kαɾҽɳ ❆* wrote: "Sounds great! If you can do that, it will be amazing! What do you feel about Discussion leaders? Like each of us lead a book discussion?
Also yes, what’s our next read? Surprise me and nominate one for the March BR!"

ooo yes, having discussion leaders sounds good! does that mean we'll have two buddy read books a month? or will we be swapping?
and i voted for Gods of Jade and Shadow for March because it's on my TBR list, but i'll definitely think of some nominations that we might both love!

Yeah I noticed that as well, maybe I won’t add my suggestion and just add two comments as the options, like “write in your suggestion” and hopefully this might encourage people’s vote?
If we see it doesn’t work out we can always try a new way

yep that sounds good, that should (hopefully) make more people vote!

Yeah I was thinking of using the poll system, we could try it for April and May BR, and see how it goes. Or we could open up a thread and nominate books like we use to?

using the poll system for April and May sounds like a good idea. by the way, do you want me to invite some of my friends to the group and try and make things a bit livelier?

Omg you are amazing! That would be a tremendous help for me! I’ll love it if you could do that, I have been pretty slack in that regards, and having it done on time would definitely help members see the active ness of the group again.
I’ll send you the links of the newsletter that I have so that you don’t have to make it from scratch and feel free to change it up and delete or add different links to it.

sounds perfect! i'll try and remember to be on time every month, thanks for sending the format :))

*❆ Kαɾҽɳ ❆* wrote: "And that’s brings me to our challenges
We have ad a few challenges that were really popular like the book and page count, theme of the month, colour cover of the month, readathons and bingos
Shou..."

yep running a few of these again sounds good! i don't think we should start them all at once, given we're still trying to build the group back up, but we can definitely start running a few! maybe bingo and theme of the month? and maybe readathons as well?

Darce wrote: "ooo yes, having discussion leaders sounds good! does that mean we'll have two buddy read books a month? or will we be swapping?
and i voted for Gods of Jade and Shadow for March because it's on my TBR list, but i'll definitely think of some nominations that we might both love!"

Yes that's fine! I'm thinking of reading both books for March as the Curvy Girls series I loved and would like to share my opinions with people and Yes Gods of Jade and Shadow sounds really interesting so I will read that as well.
Yes so for starters, I think having two books to BR a month would be good, and one of us will choose which book they would like to lead. So for March I think you primarily lead Gods of Jade and Shadow and I'll lead Curvy Girls. But of course we can both read both books if we want to.

Talking about these, for some reason, I cannot add more than 2 topic discussions on the folders, this happened to me last month so I couldn't add the chapter threads for the books last month. Its really frustrating. I have started adding for Curvy Girls and couldn't add the last two chapter threads. Could you add them for me? It is only for Chapters 34-44 and Chapters 45-54 + Epilogue, and finally the Reviews thread. Just follow what I have done. And if you can, can you add the chapter threads for Gods of Jade and Shadow? I'll see if I can start it, but if you see there are no chapter threads, can you add them please?
I'll try to contact Goodreads about this issue, as this never happened to me before

using the poll system for April and May sounds like a good idea. by the way, do you want me to invite some of my friends to the group and try and make things a bit livelier?

Awesome, I will see about the poll for May now and see how we go. Thank you for starting the April poll! <3
And yes that would be amazing! I will invite people on my friends list and see if they would be interested as well

sounds perfect! i'll try and remember to be on time every month, thanks for sending the format :))

No problem, thank you for helping out. Of course if you know you can't send out a newsletter, let me know, and I will send it :)

yep running a few of these again sounds good! i don't think we should start them all at once, given we're still trying to build the group back up, but we can definitely start running a few! maybe bingo and theme of the month? and maybe readathons as well?

Okay great, how about we start with one of these this month and closer to the end of this month we will annouce we will do two of these and the next month three and so on...
I was thinking we start with a theme of the month for this month? If so, what theme should we do?
I'm thinking, new beginnings, coming of age; or we can go fantasy and do mermaids, pirates, dragons, etc.

I was able to finish the two last discussion topics for Curvy Girls but like I said after two topics added, I can't add anymore!
I have contacted GR about this so I hope they can fix this for me.

Maybe I will try again with Gods of Jade and Shadow but if you can do this, that will be great :)

*❆ Kαɾҽɳ ❆* wrote: "Yes that's fine! I'm thinking of reading both books for March as the Curvy Girls series I loved and would like to share my opinions with people and Yes Gods of Jade and Shadow sounds really interesting so I will read that as well.
Yes so for starters, I think having two books to BR a month would be good, and one of us will choose which book they would like to lead. So for March I think you primarily lead Gods of Jade and Shadow and I'll lead Curvy Girls. But of course we can both read both books if we want to."

sounds perfect! i'll probably read both books because Curvy Girls looks really cute, and Gods has been on my list for a while! but yep i can definitely run the threads for Gods of Jade and Shadow.

Talking about these, for some reason, I cannot add more than 2 topic discussions on the folders, this happened to me last month so I couldn't add the chapter threads for the books last month. Its really frustrating. I have started adding for Curvy Girls and couldn't add the last two chapter threads. Could you add them for me? It is only for Chapters 34-44 and Chapters 45-54 + Epilogue, and finally the Reviews thread. Just follow what I have done. And if you can, can you add the chapter threads for Gods of Jade and Shadow? I'll see if I can start it, but if you see there are no chapter threads, can you add them please?

yep sure! i saw you finished the Curvy Girls threads, but i'll make the Gods of Jade and Shadow threads now. that's pretty annoying ://

Awesome, I will see about the poll for May now and see how we go. Thank you for starting the April poll! <3
And yes that would be amazing! I will invite people on my friends list and see if they would be interested as well

ahh so sorry about the poll fiasco! i'd made a poll but then for some reason it wasn't showing up and things weren't working... and then it started working but you had made one.... i'm not even sure what's happening anymore ahah. sorry again!
and yep i'll invite friends in a sec :))

No problem, thank you for helping out. Of course if you know you can't send out a newsletter, let me know, and I will send it :)

yep sure! also can you please send over the template for the mid-month newsletter? thanks!

Okay great, how about we start with one of these this month and closer to the end of this month we will annouce we will do two of these and the next month three and so on...
I was thinking we start with a theme of the month for this month? If so, what theme should we do?
I'm thinking, new beginnings, coming of age; or we can go fantasy and do mermaids, pirates, dragons, etc.

sounds perfect! sorry, i sent out the newsletter without adding a challenge, but we can always send another message later about a challenge. theme of the month sounds good! hmm the fantasy theme sounds good, lots of people read fantasy books so we'll hopefully get a few more people who can join.

*❆ Kαɾҽɳ ❆* wrote: "I was able to finish the two last discussion topics for Curvy Girls but like I said after two topics added, I can't add anymore!
I have contacted GR about this so I hope they can fix this for me. ..."

hmm i just tried to make the threads, but it's also not letting me make the last two threads for chs 22-28 and chs 29-35.... i'm not sure why. it's super annoying

I thought I sent the Mid-Month one? No matter I will send it

You too! That's what happened to me! But for me it has been happening since last week, maybe longer. So annoying. I will try to do them, but I have done two topics for the challenge so I don't know if it will let me as well :/

So I wrote up the template for the theme a month template, what do you think?

https://www.goodreads.com/topic/show/...

https://www.goodreads.com/topic/show/...

Yep I could only do 22-28 and now it won't let me do 29-35 or the review thread! Argh!!!! Goodreads hurry and fix this problem!!!!!

*❆ Kαɾҽɳ ❆* wrote: "I thought I sent the Mid-Month one? No matter I will send it

You too! That's what happened to me! But for me it has been happening since last week, maybe longer. So annoying. I will try to do the..."

thanks so much :))

ooo i love those templates, looks amazing! thank you so much for organising it all! when do you think we should start?

*❆ Kαɾҽɳ ❆* wrote: "Yep I could only do 22-28 and now it won't let me do 29-35 or the review thread! Argh!!!! Goodreads hurry and fix this problem!!!!!"

ahh it's ok, i just did 29-35 and i'll go do the review thread now if possible

Darce wrote: "ahh it's ok, i just did 29-35 and i'll go do the review thread now if possible"

Argh I got a reply from GR, this is what they said

Hi Karen,

Thanks for your email! Goodreads limits members to a certain number of discussion topics at a time. This limit is in place to prevent spammers and other people from abusing the system and bothering our members.

I apologize for any inconvenience this may cause! You can always create further topics once a few hours have passed. If you have any additional questions or concerns, please let me know. I can also recommend visiting Goodreads Help, where you can find answers to many commonly asked questions



How frustrating is this!!!!!

Darce wrote: "ooo i love those templates, looks amazing! thank you so much for organising it all! when do you think we should start?."

Great! Since I have your approval, I'll start it right away!

*❆ Kαɾҽɳ ❆* wrote: "Darce wrote: "ahh it's ok, i just did 29-35 and i'll go do the review thread now if possible"

Argh I got a reply from GR, this is what they said

Hi Karen,

Thanks for your email! Goodreads limit..."

ugh that's so annoying! you think they'd allow mods to make as many topics as they want.... arghhh!

*❆ Kαɾҽɳ ❆* wrote: "Darce wrote: "ooo i love those templates, looks amazing! thank you so much for organising it all! when do you think we should start?."

Great! Since I have your approval, I'll start it right away!"

sounds perfect :))

don't forget to unfreeze the theme nomination thread :))

Darce wrote: "don't forget to unfreeze the theme nomination thread :))"

Oh right! Thanks haha

Hey girls! Darce welcome on the team! I'm officially back and will help around the group. Might take a couple of days to take the handle but thank you so much for everything especially Kare, you've been amazing :)

Also, what happened to the previous Mod Chat thread?

I feel kinda lost. Update me on what's happening around the group?

Hey Aqi! Good to see you again! I am super glad you are back :)

Yes, so when you left, a lot of things stopped running as less and less people were being active on the group. I tried my best throughout the time to keep most challenges and buddy reads running but with less people nominating books and participating in the reading challenges and BRs, lets just say I was heavily discouraged but did try my best to keep it running even though it was only me participating.

So by the end of last year, I decided I didn't want to do the challenges anymore as I was doing the polls, opening the threads, creating everything and no one was getting involved.
So I stuck with just doing the BRs as Darcey and I were doing a couple of BRs throughout the months since last year.

But now that I had Darcey with me this year, we both decided to bring things back bit by bit, inviting new people to join and we can start doing things again!

So, instead of nominating books on discussion threads, we do it directly on the polls which was open for a couple of weeks. Darce is sending out the newsletters and I will be sending out reminders of when polls are open and when they are about to close. The links are above in one of the messages I sent to Darce.

We also decided to start challenges and readathons again, we are just doing one this month, Theme a Month, and then we will see if next month we continue with Theme a month and maybe add another challenge such as a readathon.

So I am super glad you are back, as hopefully with the three of us, we can make this group active again and encourage more people to join in with the fun!

And yes the old Mod Chat got deleted, I realised my mistake I should have just added it to the Archive 2020 folder but I realised I deleted it.

But how are you going? Are you well? How is life treating you?

Aqsa wrote: "Hey girls! Darce welcome on the team! I'm officially back and will help around the group. Might take a couple of days to take the handle but thank you so much for everything especially Kare, you've..."

yayy welcome back!

*❆ Kαɾҽɳ ❆* wrote: "Hey Aqi! Good to see you again! I am super glad you are back :)

Yes, so when you left, a lot of things stopped running as less and less people were being active on the group. I tried my best thro..."

Thank you so much, Kare! It's definitely good to be back :) But it's also a bit intimidating if that makes sense?

I believe you dear, it can be excessively stressful to keep the group engaging and to push people to do more. You've done a lot :) I'm really grateful for your presence :)

That's completely understandable :) Wow, it does sound easier. How do the polls work? And I'll check the thread, but the link is related to what?

Yes, I'm actually finally a bit free and able to breathe, and I'll help bring it back to what it used to be. Hopefully, it would improve. As for themes, I'll slowly take that back under me and we can all have new ideas for that :)

It's alright. We'll just go with what we got :)

*❆ Kαɾҽɳ ❆* wrote: "But how are you going? Are you well? How is life treating you?"

It's actually been a huge mix. There have been stressful and tough times but there have been good ones too. How about you guys? How are you all?

Darce wrote: "Aqsa wrote: "Hey girls! Darce welcome on the team! I'm officially back and will help around the group. Might take a couple of days to take the handle but thank you so much for everything especially..."

Thank you, Darce :)

Yep I can understand that it can get a little intimidating when you start something new :)
We will help you make sense of it all

Thanks, I did my best and hoping it will get better now :)

So, we set up the polls at the beginning of each month, and they last until the 20th of the month. Basically you can nominate up to three books, you can write in one book and put the other two books on the comments section. Then one of the mods will add the book links to the polls. You can also nominate just one book and write it in :)
it's pretty simple
and we are running two at the same time so we are ahead on what books we will read in the next 2 months. This will give people time to get a copy of the books

Oh great! so you want to do the challenges now? or just the theme challenge ?

I have been pretty good myself, started a new casual job as a teacher so I am excited for it:)

Yes, exactly, it's been a while and I just feel a bit unsure of where to begin haha, there's just so much accumulated! Thank you so much, Kare :)

That's really efficient :) A bit good not the perspective as well :)
Thank you!

I'm actually gonna slowly engage in a couple of threads and begin from there and once I'm back in the flow, then I'll take over more of the stuff.

Wow, congratulations! That sounds cool :) What are you teaching, may I ask? I was also thinking of teaching a bit in the time I can land an internship or a job.

sorry i disappeared for a while there, i came down with a virus and was trying my best to recover from that, but i'm back now!
anyway, yes, Karen has been doing a wonderful job of running the group as best she can around her work and everything. it will be so wonderful to have a third pair of hands now to help us all get back into the rhythm of things! take your time getting back into GR and the group, Aqsa, i hope you've been well :))

Hey! I hope you're okay :) Welcome back!

Yes, she really has :) She is super awesome! Thank you so much, I'm trying to at least give a bit of time each day to GR. Starting a book might hep :)

Hey guys, I'm thinking to add a map to the "Where are you from?" Chat. What do you think. I've added a couple of people who are still a part of our group from the initial comments there.

https://www.google.com/maps/d/u/1/edi...

What do you think? Is it a good idea or should I scrap it?

aww shucks thanks Aqi. I'm just glad you're okay and back again:)
Yeah take your time emerging back in

oooo! I love the world map idea! I say go with it haha!

Thank you so much, Kare :) Trying to give some time here each day now :) Happy to be back :)

Haha, okay, I've already done page 1 of the thread. I cross-checked the comments to only include people who are still part of our group.

yep sounds good

:)

suggestion from Catia: "Maybe "choose a music/soundtrack to the book you are reading" and also "choose the characters of the book you are reading". I don´t know if it happens to you but whn i´m reading I always imagine the characters and a certain music for the book. It´s like i´m watching a movie :)"

heyo gang, should we set this up for may? i can hopefully set it up tomorrow in time for the May newsletter

this was her further detailed suggestion:

Maybe in the bookish fun topic you could add 1 topic "Give your book a music" , where we could put a youtube link for example:
While I´m reading The Wall of Winnipeg and Me by Mariana Zapata i´m listening https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s31XT...

and a different topic "The main characters of your book "
maybe with the instructions how to put an image or gif, normaly i use https://giphy.com/

how do you guys think we should set everything up? :))

also, if you have some spare time then it would be great if you guys could help me with these buddy read threads, as we have the annoying factor of only being able to make 2 threads at a time. thank you so much! :))

here's the set out:

Six of Crows:
Six of Crows: Part 1 - Shadow Business (ch 1-6)
Six of Crows: Part 2 - Servant and Lever (ch 7-15)
Six of Crows: Part 3 - Heartsick (ch 16-20)
Six of Crows: Part 4 - The Trick to Falling (ch 21-26)
Six of Crows: Part 5 - The Ice Does Not Forgive (ch 27-38)
Six of Crows: Part 6 - Proper Thieves (ch 39-46/end)

Beartown:
Beartown: Chapter 1-10
Beartown: Chapter 11-20
Beartown: Chapter 21-30
Beartown: Chapter 31-40
Beartown: Chapter 41-50/end

Golden Son:
Part I: Bow (ch 1-11)
Part II: Break (ch 12-24)
Part III: Conquer (ch 25-39)
Part IV: Ruin (ch 40-51/end)

oh also, what are we doing with An Ember in the Ashes?

Hey Darce, let me get back to you in a little while.

Hey Darcy
no problem will help out with the chapter set up
With Catia's suggestion I thought it was a great idea
maybe we can set it up like we do with the challenges. So the first comment box will have the description and instruction on what to do.

Second comment box will have the books and suggestions that members make in the following comments after the first two
example

Books
Curvy Girls Can't Date Quarterbacks
Music Playlist:
- What Makes You Beautiful by One Direction

or something like that? feel free to change it up haha

we could also make the music title a link to the music video in case others don't know the song

I reckon since we have a discussion already for ember in the ashes, we can just use it and we can start reading now. Unless you guys want to use the BR sub group?
Talking about that, Aqi can you make Darcy and I mods for that group as well so we have access to it and to make threads please ?