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Now that we're all here, does anyone have strategy ideas?

For 26. Hive Mind -- I suggest Barbara Elsborg -- she's written both mm and mf

Barbara Elsborg is a great choice! I love her mm books.

Strategy ideas are a great idea. I'm trying to wrap my head around everything right now. It looks like we can start reading now to be ready for Sunday.

I have created a Spreadsheet to see if it helps us organize our thoughts. So far it is VERY basic and only covers the Regular Prompts. I will try to work on it more during the week.

Feel free to take a peek and adjust if you think it needs it. I have made anyone clicking from this link an editor since this is a private group.

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/...

Do we have any ideas about what extra prompt and/or special squares we want to work on next week?

I'm correct in thinking every square is a different book? No doubling up a regular square book also in a special square? Do we all have to read the same thing at the same time, or can we plug in books in squares as we complete and they fit?

Also, since we have the official game spreadsheet, are we still filling out the planning spreadsheet?

I'm using the planning sheet to help me remember what books I have that work for what space and for the spaces where we all have to have a different cover item or thing -- I think the official sheet is for when a book is completed?

Yes, every square is a different book. There's only 1 square where we all read the same book -- one of the special squares, SP2 Group Read

Ah okay, I'll only use the official spreadsheet for completions then. I won't be doing too much planning probably, other than claiming a unique item if I know I have a book upcoming that will work, since I pretty much read a book and then figure out where it fits. :P

Okay, glad I was thinking that it was one book per square. Do you know if we all have to read for the same task at the same time though? I hope not lol, since that will completely blow up mood reading. 🤣

For the week's prompt (1-40) we all need to complete at least 1 book in that week. For the MP & SP spaces, only 6 of us need to read, and we claim the space when the last book that fits has been completed

I knew I shouldn't have tried to understand this challenge lol... We aren't playing for 40 weeks, so how are we reading 40 prompts? And I think I'm only committed to one book a week, so now I don't understand how to get all the prompts filled in? Do we pick and choose, but then how do we choose?

One spot will be called on 2/22 and we'll have 7 days to read for that space. We can also read as a team for a second space and a special space each week if we want. We build our ships with the spaces like playing Battleship

Ah, okay. Eek, I hope the books I need to read will fit...

I am so grateful for you understanding this so well, Jenn. lol

I like the idea of using the planning spreadsheet I created to post any ideas of what categories we want to read. If there is something specific you want to claim, go for it. We all have to read different stuff, so it is good to select it. For example - C likes Cozy books, so she has claimed that subgenre for a couple of the categories. If you have something specific you really prefer, put that in.

We also have to do consecutive years for prompt 2, so what are we thinking? Let's claim those ideas now. Do we want to do recent books? So maybe 2020-2026?

The spreadsheet I made is just for ideas.
The official spreadsheet is where we can put our official completions.

I've added another tab to our spreadsheet to help us choose what special squares we want. We have to pick a year to read every month of that year. Do we have preferences? 2024 or 2025?

We also need to pick one book that everyone will read for a group read. Needs to be more than 150 pages. This might be tough with the varied tastes of our group. Any suggestions?

Hi Kendra, thanks for being our fearless leader! Hopefully I don't drive y'all crazy with my absolutely not understanding much lol. 😂😭

I think recent books might be easier for consecutive years? I feel like we all might have books we got and then they slipped off our priority list lol. 🫣
Same with the months of the year; maybe 2025 since that's the most recent books, but maybe we did a better job of reading those and we need to go back to 2024 lol.

Group reads are always interesting... Are we allowed to use children's books? I'm looking through my TBR for short, recent books that aren't part of a series. Dear America Diaries or a Nancy Drew could work potentially, since they're fast reads and pretty readily available, but looking still for better options.

I definitely like the idea of reading recent years for those challenges, because like you said it’ll be easy to grab something off our TBRs which we might have heard of/bought lately.

C, you can read children’s books like Dear America - the limit is just that the books need to be 100 pages long. If they are longer but also illustrated (say, like diary of a wimpy kid), you just need to make sure they meet a word count of 25k.

Dear America is usually not illustrated, except the bonus material, and they're typically around 150-175 pages I think, so sounds like that could work if we wanted an easy group book? Not pushing for this obviously since we all read differently, but there are a variety of eras available. 🤷🏼‍♀️

Not sure if this is helpful to know for planning, but I'm likely gonna still be reading The Ministry of Time on Sunday when this starts.

C wrote: "Not sure if this is helpful to know for planning, but I'm likely gonna still be reading The Ministry of Time on Sunday when this starts."

Sounds good. If it doesn't work for the chosen prompt that comes up on Sunday, be sure to claim one of the special spots that it could fit in (2025 book if we all decide to do that or the page count)

Okay, will do!! If it doesn't work for the chosen prompt, do I still have to complete that one too? I'm still confused about how I'm committed to one book a week but we have to read a lot more than that?

We all have to read one book for the prompt picked on 2/22 before 2/28 at 11:00 p.m. Pacific time. We can choose to read for an additional prompt, too, but that one only needs to be 6 of us, not all 7. We can also read for a third Special square (the four corners, the middle, or four others just inside the corners) if we want, but we can take more than one week to finish those squares if we need to.

C, you and Pooja only committed to 1 book a week. If you can read more, great, but don't stress. I'm the workhourse, since I said I'd read 5, but mist prompts I can only read 1 book more than whoever reads the least number of books (I think I said that right?!).

What we're doing with the squares we read for is building our ships. If we can build the two space ships in the first two weeks, then those are locked (right, Fredicka?) -- but everything kind of hinges on what space is called. For example, I'm not wild about SP4 (horror/dark), but if 11 or 24 are called first, I'm definitely up for getting that out of the way this week so we can build a two spot ship asap.

(And I might have a little advantage on understanding the rules since I've been playing Sequence for about 16 years now -- my 29 year old son got it for Christmas when he was about 13, and it was one of our favorite games for a while!)

Prompt 40 -- we have to make up our own prompt. Here are my current ideas:
--Book title initial or author initial found in each reader's name
--MC's job has something to do with entertainment -- writer, performer, influencer maybe? (trying to tie into the streaming theme)
--book set during different seasons (would have to have three repeats if all 7 of us read)

Any other ideas?

Read books starting with consecutive letters, or all with numbers in the title?

As for bonus tasks - currently I am reading The Last Boleyn, though I’m not sure if I’ll finish it this week because it’s an audiobook and I usually read those slow. I do want to make clear that while I did commit to one book a week but I can pretty often finish more (really depends on how much reading time I have) so hopefully I’ll be able to chip in on bonus tasks. I just signed up with one book per week as I knew that was just the absolute minimum I could contribute.