Mystery/Thriller Reading Friends discussion

2024 - Second Determination Plus Challenge
☑️ 24 / 24

Determination List
☑️ 1. Bakery Street Mystery: Murder is a Piece of Cake
☑️ 2. Beryl and Edwina Mysteries: Murder at a London Finishing SchoolMurder in Old Bombay
☑️ 3. The Night Shift
☑️ 4. The Last Murder at the End of the World
☑️ 5. A Disappearance in Fiji
☑️ 6. The Murderbot Diaries: All Systems Red
☑️ 7. The Last Word
☑️ 8. Cherringham - In Good Faith: A Cosy Crime Series
☑️ 9. Murder in Old Bombay
☑️ 10. A Front Page Affair

Plus List
☑️ 11. A book set in a different country than you live in: Italy:
Every Time I Go on Vacation, Someone Dies

☑️ 12. Read a book by an Author that you never read before or one by a new debut author:
Wajdi Al-Ahdal (never before): A Land Without Jasmine - and never again

☑️13. A book that someone recommended to you: Breaking the Dark

☑️14. A book that is a different genre than your normal type of read: nonfiction:
Plotting and Writing Suspense Fiction

Two books from a series you haven't completed yet.
Andy Veracruz series
☑️15. Mariachi Meddler
☑️16. Island Casualty

☑️ 17. A book that comes out in 2024:
A Talent for Murder

☑️ 18. A book that you meant to read in 2023 but never got around to it:
If We Were Villains

☑️ 19. A book that came out before you were born: Hollow Man (1935 - WAAAY before I was born!)

☑️ 20. A book that is done by more than one author: A Quiet Life by William Cooper and Michael McKinley

☑️ 21. A book that won an award: Sisters in Crime Davitt Award for Best Adult Novel (2009):
A Beautiful Place to Die

☑️ 22. One of the oldest to be read books on your unread mountain: The Witness for the Prosecution

☑️ 23.A book set in multiple countries: England and Spain: The Last Hope

☑️ 24. Book you started in the past but put aside and never finished for some reason: The Plot, (and then LOVED it!)

Gail, good luck with your second list, one down and six months to do it sounds workable for your reading pace!

Good going, Gail! You are my reading idol!

July - 8/24

Wow Gail! I need to get back to my first list. lol.

August 14/24

good for you. I had issues just now trying to post my 2nd list but I'm only doing the top 10 a second time.

Gail and DJ are both Reading Rock Stars!!!

Sep 13th: 17 of 24 completed

Sep 25: 19 of 24 completed. Going on a "vacation" that I don't want to go on (destination wedding, favor to sister) so I expect to get a lot of reading done while I'm gone...

Gail - silver lining with the reading options opening up! Enjoy!
you are moving right along! I am closing in on my list one. If I do a second list myself, it will be a partial list. The prompts are fun, but probably would pick the standard ten for flexibility.

Gail W wrote: "Sep 25: 19 of 24 completed. Going on a "vacation" that I don't want to go on (destination wedding, favor to sister) so I expect to get a lot of reading done while I'm gone..."

You are doing so good.

10/6 - 22/24 completed

So I have a question for this challenges' participants: what criteria do you use to put a book on your challenge? I'm asking because I know that some of you read much more than I do, yet I'm getting this done faster. Am I not choosy enough (or... are you too choosy)?
Or ???????

Gail: re what criteria do I use to include a book on my challenge. Good question. (1) I added one this weekend because I refused to return it on the first day it was overdue to the library. I was “determined to finish it”. lol
Generally though I have been adding (2) arc’s (my review percentage is abysmal) (3) audible audio books I bought credit or $ (especially those I added a while back) and (4) a few others because I may have meant to read them for a while and finally got to them especially print books. I celebrate when I finish one of those.
Then there are the random adds and the ones that ‘fit’ the prompts.
😀📚📚😀

As for me, I give a fair amount of thought to the second set (specific categories) and therefore usually get most of them done. I'm stricter on 1-10 -- these I've declared must come from my personal library of unread books, of which I have MANY. However, I'm usually so busy reading Group Read selections as well as new works from favorite authors (John Sandford, Robert Galbraith, Greg Isles, Lee Child, Louise Penny, Peter Swanson, etc.), plus books you all helpfully post on your monthly lists that appeal to me, that I don't have time to get to my stash. I could easily fill up my lists with any book I read, but I've "determined" (see what I did there?) that my Determination List must come from specific categories.

Not everyone's decision, I'm sure, which is fine! As Ann says, your mileage may vary.

On added comment: sometimes I'm reading something unplanned and it so obviously fits into one of the categories that I plug it in even though I hadn't planned to read it. Like books that take place in one or more countries (of which I read many).

Carol/Bonadie wrote: "As for me, ...must come from my personal library of unread books, of which I have MANY..."

LOL. Someday we should share with each other a more specific quantity to MANY!
The first year or two that I did the challenge I set myself the goal of reading older books I owned. Then it became that I owned. This year? Oh heck, it's a mystery or thriller, put it on there! (Not much of a challenge really...)

Gail and Carol: I like that we can just put in anything we want! Go for it Gail! And Carol - I agree the specific prompts are fun to match to books and make for the best determination part of the challenge.

Gail W wrote: "LOL. Someday we should share with each other a more specific quantity to MANY!
The first year or two that I did the challenge I set myself the goal of reading older books I owned. Then it became that I owned. This year? Oh heck, it's a mystery or thriller, put it on there! (Not much of a challenge really...)

Carol/Bonadie wrote: "As for me, ...must come from my personal library of unread books, of which I have MANY..
for me, I give a fair amount of thought to the second set (specific categories) and therefore usually get most of them done."
."

And its done.

Congratulations Gail! And based on the previous comments about how we select these, a very nice lineup of mystery thrillers too! I had to chuckle at your comment “and never again” for your ‘Author never read before’ prompt entry. lol. I hope the other twenty-three books were enjoyable!
It’s a bit harder every year to find good books we want to read from the ‘Before we were born’ prompt isn’t it - or for me anyway haha. Yours here that is “waaay” before will go on my consideration for next year. Nicely done!

Congrats Gail.

In answer to your question.
The top section of the challenge and my #2 challenge. It's books I read that I own the printed copy of. I'm finding My bookshelves aren't going down and only going up. I don't really buy new print owned at least full price I did when I went to the shore bookstore it's usually once a year when I'm down there and I just bought one last week otherwise my books comes with library sales, discounted library book cart for sale, Little Free Libraries (LFL). I want to work more on getting print owned books read and off my shelves.
As for the bottom prompts I try to again use print owned books but it doesn't always happen then I usually use library book club, audios or whatever that fits.
I found years ago when I did past challenges back and the day I picked my books ahead and sometimes I never ended up reading them. I seem to do better to see what my mood feels like when I read something. The only time that doesn't happen is when I do my library book club sometimes those books might be out of my comfort zone and ones I usually wouldn't pick off the shelve to read.