Holly’s Comments (group member since Nov 05, 2013)

Holly’s comments from the The Reading Challenge Group group.

Go for it!

The reviews are outstanding. Successfully loaded this onto my Kindle this morning, so I'm all set to read it!

We could definitely incorporate both together. We can always have a separate thread for people wanting to focus on smaller book numbers. It would be great to have some volunteers to help run the readathons.

Sandy, I think if someone would be willing to step up when there's a book they've read, to lead the discussion, then that would be great. Understandably, this can't happen with every read, then I expect either one of the moderators will try to do the best they can, or the nominator could pick it up. Does that sound alright?

Kassandra, I think it doesn't matter if you can't read for the whole weekend. For many people, it's probably impossible. Just try and read as much as you can during the weekend. You don't have to read for the whole of it.

If people are really interested, we could do one to celebrate the start of school, so round early September? We could do kind of a tester one to see how it works?

Roseanne, we'd really love to try push the concept of buddy-reads over the next few months and into the next year. If you have any ideas on how to do that, that would be excellent!

Me and Faye have been thinking about expanding the group a lot. If you have any specific ideas for threads or recurring items, please let you know. We're really looking for volunteers to start organising their own things, such as threads. Please let me or Faye know if you're interested in a specific idea (maybe one that you haven't mentioned yet), or just are interested in helping in any future projects. Feel free to pop us a message.

Ah, Jane Eyre is wonderful!

Melissa, if you need help picking, you could post your list of possibilities and we could help you pick one? :)

I'm planing on finally getting round to reading Wuthering Heights. I've started it multiple times and have never finished it.

The Hunger Games or The Maze Runner, you definitely will.

I might change this to the general series, that way anyone reading the series can join in. Obviously spoilers need to be very carefully placed!

(I'll sort out my post later, on iPhone) :)

I really enjoyed it. If you've read The Himgers

After reading the reviews and how deeply it affected people, I'm definitely going to try to fit this onto my reading list before I go to Uni. I might get it read before September, I'm not too sure!

Finished The Normal Heart today and I'd definitely recommend it if you want a feel of the attitude and events during the AIDs crisis. It is basically an autobiographical work, and works well in showing the tension and what I personally feel is the atrocious reaction by the government and health services at the time.

And don't forget, it's a lot shorter than And The Band Played On.

I've also watched Dallas Buyers Club recently, and is really interesting. Focuses more on health care and the medicines available. And it's based on a true story!

That's a good idea! So the last weekend of every month is a readathon. I know Renee was thinking about mini challenges based on each month, so we could incorporate both together. I think it just depends how many readathons people want.

That sounds awesome!

The only book I can tink of to read is The Last Lecture.

Y is a vowel?!

Might take this on holiday with me!

There's always one or two books that we put off reading. We've either started it and never finished, or just have never got round to it. With the start of the school year (thanks Renee!), lets get those books that perhaps have haunted us from our school days.

Mission: Read one book you know you should have read a lifetime ago, or one that you've been putting off for ages.

Start Date: 21st August
End Date: 30th September

What a lovely idea! Will definitely be attempting this!

And a lovely way of just having a mission to read only one book. Hopefully more and more of these will be set up!

This months genre is the mammoth one of Classic/Literary. It seems to be massively popular with everyone (me included)!

Faye did an excellent guide in the Nominations thread:
"We're defining "Classics" as books that have stood the test of time - let's say 50 years old or older - and are still widely read and discussed.

We're defining "Literary" as fiction of any genre that has "literary merit," meaning that it offers some sort of social or political commentary, or the writing style somehow tests the boundaries of literature. Wiki has a more in-depth description of literary fiction here - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Literary...
"

What classics are you going to put your teeth into? And how old will you dare to go?

I love the idea of the readathons. It would definitely do well to get everyone reading together, and would potentially create a lot of discussion. When reading your ideas, I immediately thought to around Christmas time? That way we can do a last final push to get our goals for the year.

While I know that, with University coming up, it would be hard for me to read the Group Reads, there is an ability to set a 'Discussion leader' for the group reads, much like Camille highlighted. Someone could nominate themselves to lead the discussion, either if they've read it before or are really psyched to read it. That way discussion can perhaps have more of an direction and lead.

As for the notifications when nominations are etc, the main reason we don't notify people (especially through group messages), is because we don't want to spam people's inbox. Would it be better to set a specific dates that nominations, polls and poll closures happen? That way people know automatically when they are on.

eg. 16th - Nominations open
19th - Nominations closed, polls open
22nd - Polls closed, winners announced?

We could easily add this information to the Group's description bit, so people are aware.

I really love the ideas posted, it would definitely make things interesting, and would generate lots of discussions!

There has been some discussion between me and Faye about getting another Moderator in, just to make sure we have things under control and running smoothly. Another possibility, is that we set the moderators with more defined roles (eg. one in charge of group reads, one in charge of 50 questions (like Faye is now), and one in charge of general things and queries). That way things are more likely to be run smoothly and efficiently.

As I Lay Dying
Dracula
A Christmas Carol
Birdsong
A Handful of Dust

That is good news!

That's a good point. I'll get reading right away! :D