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

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

Cindy, just seen your post!

We have lots of Trollope Lovers here. Check out the individual thread here.

Hope this helps!

Okay, my planned reading is:

The Silver Linings Playbook
The Miseducation of Cameron Post
A Short History of Myth

And if I get these for Christmas:
Stone Mattress: Nine Tales
We Will Be Shelter: Poems for Survival

Allison, that looks amazing! What a wonderfully thought out challenge!!

It will be on a book by book basis, Leslie. So if anything takes your fancy when we close the polls for each group read, let us know! :)

Here is a list breaking down what we're doing next year!

Year Long Events:
Challenges (change monthly)
   ~ Genre Challenge (widget)
   ~ World Lit Challenge (widget)
Group Reads (change monthly)
   ~ Fiction by Genre
   ~ World Lit
   ~ Alternate (NF/YA/Classic)

Year-Long Mini Challenges
Non-Fiction 30-Book Mini Challenge
Decade Mini Challenge
Alphabet Soup Mini Challenge
Awards Mini Challenge (Allison)
Buyer’s Remorse/TBR Challenge
Serial Numbers (series challenge)
Brush Up Your Shakespeare Mini for Shakespeare's 400th Anniversary
4 Seasonal Bingos
New month-long mini-challenges each month

Plus a mix of readathons throughout the year!

Hi everyone,

This is just an update on what we have going on for 2016. We're implementing a few changes and developments, and a few new things for the upcoming year!

First off, our group reads and challenges are being simplified! We felt there were too many this year, so we're going back to basics and changing a few things. We'll only have THREE group reads per month: our usual monthly Genre pick, World-Lit, and an 'Alternate Read' that will cycle through different focuses. See below!

Genre Challenge/Group Reads
January: Contemporary/Literary Merit
February: Romance/Chick Lit
March: Mysteries
April: Fantasy
May: Historical Fiction
June: Minority Studies/LGBT
July: Science-Fiction/Dystopian
August: Poetry/Plays
September: Travel
October: Horror/Thriller
November: Manga/Graphic Novels
December: Humour

Alternate Group Reads
January: Non-Fiction
February: YA
March: Classics
April: Non-Fiction
May: YA
June: Classics
July: Non-Fiction
August: YA
September: Classics
October: Non-Fiction
November: YA
December: Classics

World-Lit Challenge/Group Reads
January: South America
February: Middle East
March: Sub-Sahara
April: Southeast Asia
May: Central America/Mexico & Caribbean
June: Western Europe
July: North Africa
August: South Asia/India Subcontinent
September: North America
October: Eastern Europe
November: Oceania/Australia
December: East Asia


Another addition to group reads will be a Group Read Leaders. These will help lead the discussion, and pose questions and points for everyone to talk about. This slightly more controlled way of doing group reads will hopefully maximise participation and discussion. If people want to be a discussion leader, simply post on the group read thread when the poll is over if you want to give it a go!

We'll also have a mass of year-long mini-challenges going up! Which you can see over at Renee's 'Mini Planning for 2016' thread! We're also planning on putting up more and more mini challenges each month, to really get people reading! (And in case anyone is wondering, there will be a non-fiction mini to replace the challenge we have this year!)

And don't forget our readathons! We'll be having a few additional smaller ones as well to add to our usual ones.

Another exciting thing we're starting this year is Accomplishment Badges. These will be little badges you can add to your personal challenge threads when you complete things (your reading challenge, mini challenges, readathons etc). These are just a fun extra thing. I'm currently designing them, so we'll start rolling them out as things open up in January!

Last but not least, we're in the middle of sorting out our new Group-Wide Challenge for 2016! It requires a bit more organisation, so we'll be releasing the information soon. Keep checking back!

Hopefully this isn't too complicated for everyone. Once we start rolling out everything across the group in the opening days of January, it'll become a lot clearer! The main point of this post was to get the monthly timetables up, so you can fully see where we'll be starting next year!

If you have any questions, don't hesitate to post here, or send me a message if you want a more private way of communicating.

Happy reading!

Leslie, I'll be putting up a general announcement of the layout/set-up of 2016 either today or tomorrow. We just need to finalise a few things!

As for now, I'd recommend getting involved with some threads, or making your 2016 Personal thread, like Renee said. :)

Hi Leslie,

Within our genre challenge, we have 'Minority Studies/LGBT' for June. We did specify LGBT as a part of that, because of your reason. It's been such a big year for gay rights and LGBT news, and there has been a massive outpouring of fiction because of recent events/changes in the past decade or so. It's the same as racial issues. They're a big part of our society at the moment, and thats why we decided in some aspects to add an option to focus more specifically.

That being said, we did specify (within our discussion thread) that the term 'Minority Studies' include various aspects of minorities, including mental health and disabilities. We hope that our members took that on board and experienced fiction.

As always, our categories, although focused, are always open to interpretation. We let our members take what they want from each aspect, depending on how they define it.

I hope this clears things up for you!

(But I'm glad you like the variety! Hope you enjoy next year!)

I'm guessing by now people have seen the new fonts/colours.

What do people think?

Paradise Lost is insane. Absolutely adore it!

Perks is such a good book!

About to start this, as a break from essay planning. (Turns out I'm way busier than I expected to be this week)

I'd just say the chapter title, or maybe a percentage?

I'm hopefully going to get started on this tonight!

A few of us are looking to read The Silver Linings Playbook from 6th December!

Feel free to join, or make comments about what you thought about it if you've already read it!

Please avoid spoilers, (or use the spoiler tag).

As both of our nominations tied once again in the tiebreaker, we'll be reading both of them this month!

The other pick for a final non-fiction group read is Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress by Dai Sijie!

In the tie-breaker, the options both tied again so we'll be reading both of them this month!

One of our final World Lit group reads for this year is Spring Snow by Yukio Mishima!

For our final Non-Fiction group read we are reading The Four Agreements: A Practical Guide to Personal Freedom, which seems to be a highly divisive read. So it will be really interesting to see what people think of it!

Yep, I'll set it up today!

It is rather short, Marina! You'll get it done in no time! :)

We're reading that classic Black Beauty for December!

Discussion begins December 1st

Once again, we're reading A Christmas Carol as a celebration of Christmas as a group read!

Discussion starts December 1st