Tori’s Comments (group member since Nov 25, 2016)

Tori’s comments from the EVERYONE Has Read This but Me - The Catch-Up Book Club group.

Tr1sha wrote: "I’ve been part of some of these challenges in previous years, but not as a prefect. If you need a prefect for team Ruby I’d like to do it, but will understand if you choose someone who has been a p..."

Tr1sha, I'm happy to have you as a prefect!

Please use this thread to talk about the challenge and ask any questions!

You Can sign up in your house thread starting the last week of September, feel free to join in anytime!

Last year I started a list of short stories under 50 pages for recommendations for the easy point getters. Here is that list:

Short Stories Under 50 Pages List

Please feel free to add your own recommendations!

- Keep in mind that this list is public to everyone on Goodreads. please make sure to check that these books are actually under 50 pages.

OVERALL COMPETITION:
Total Average Points:
1.
2.
3.
4.

ROUND ROBIN SCHEDULE

OCTOBER
Sapphire vs. Diamond
Emerald vs. Ruby

NOVEMBER
Diamond vs. Ruby
Emerald vs. Sapphire

DECEMBER
Emerald vs. Diamond
Sapphire vs. Ruby

Welcome to the 9th annual House Cup Challenge! This year's theme is....Precious Gemstones (Diamond, Emerald, Ruby, and Saphire)


HOW THE CHALLENGE WORKS
- Everyone who wants to play joins a house and all the houses compete to read the most over the three months. The scores are based on an average and there will be an overall winner as well as 2 winners each month when you will go head-to-head with another team.
- The Challenge will run from October 1 through December 31. All books started & finished during this time will count toward the challenge.
- Post in YOUR HOUSE’S THREAD ran by your house’s prefect. contribute with the BOOK TITLE and DATE FINISHED and NUMBER OF PAGES.
- If you would like you can make one post, or one per month, and update them to keep everything in one place, but I do ask that you make another comment letting your team prefect know that you updated it.

Each house has its own thread:

DIAMOND - Prefect: Jessica P
EMERALD - Prefect: Laura
RUBY - Prefect: Tr1sha
SAPHIRE - Prefect: Cynthia

RULES AND SCORING
We will use an average score to balance the different house sizes. We will use a tiered scoring system based on the number of pages in a book. Essentially, it's 1 point for every 250 pages read within a book. Here's the breakdown:
1-249 pages = 1 point
250-499 pages = 2 points
500-749 = 3 points
and so on...

- If its a graphic novel, heavily pictured book or sparsely worded (i.e. poetry), half points will be awarded, so it will be 0.5 points for every 250 pages. The points will be awarded per book and not per cumulative pages read.
- Easy point-getters are limited to 10 per month per participant. These will be books with less than 50 pages.
- A book cannot be counted more than one time in a month, so a maximum of three times over the course of a challenge.
- If you read one of the group's selected group reads for October, November or December, you get to add a bonus 0.5 point. (This must be read in the month that the book is our BOTM pick)
- For a book to count, it must be started and finished during the challenge timeframe.
- Use the page number of the most popular edition when you search on Goodreads for every book read. This includes audiobooks, ebooks, and physical books.

- Number of participants per house will be counted based on contributions, so if a member signs up and does not contribute, they are not used in average calculations.

- This challenge will feature a ROUND ROBIN TOURNAMENT with each month featuring a matchup with a different house. To count for a matchup, the book must be read within that month and posted no later than one day after the end of the month. We will not do late term adjustments, but books read in an earlier month (no earlier than October) can still count toward your house’s overall total. The winner of the tournament will be featured in EHRTBM Hall of Fame.

- There will also be an Overall winner featured in the EHRTBM Hall of Fame.

- Participants must log their book in Goodreads as read to count them in the challenge.


Since this competition can get intense, please note that we do expect good sportsmanship from participants and failure to demonstrate good sportsmanship will result in warnings. Multiple warnings or extremely offensive remarks may result in a participants removal from the challenge.

Happy reading everyone!

Results are in!

JennH who was competing for Nepal came in first place with 8 medals, 5 of which were Gold! The Refugee Team comes in second place with 4 Gold medals, 5 medals Total! Third place goes to India who had 11 medals which was the most medals won by any country during this competition!

Well done everyone! All together we read 198 books (64 of which were from the group bookshelf) and 56,168 pages across 16 countries and 26 participants! That is amazing for only a 16 day competition! Thank you all for competing I had so much fun bringing this challenge back!

Hello Everyone!

Just wanted to remind you all that the 11th is your last day to get your final reads for this years challenge. Please have your books logged by the end of the day on the 12th. I will have the final results up on the 13th!

Have a great weekend, get those last minute reads in if you can!

I liked the writing and thought it wasn't as dense as a lot of books I have read from this time period. It was a very uncomfortable book to read, but I did like it.

As for if I felt sympathy towards Emma, my answer would be no. I thought she deserved the things that happened to her. She put herself in those situations. Although I do think that everyone has had thoughts comparable to hers from time to time. Everyone does not act on those feelings of dissatisfaction, and reading a book from the perspective of someone who does (not once but over and over again!) was difficult and even frustrating at times.

It really reminded me of Anna Kerenina. They have such similar plots and I was surprised to see this was published about 20 years before Anna Kerenina was. It makes me wonder if Tolstoy could have drawn inspiration from Madame Bovary.

Pony wrote: "Tori, I have a question. Does the challenge end at 11:59 p.m. on August 11th? Or is it 12:00 a.m. of August 11th, meaning August 10th is the last day to read something?"

You will have all of August 11th to read.

Katie - Because poetry is often sparsely worded we will not allow poetry collections.

Kathy - That is correct.

and I just realized I never responded to your post about the date finished...I would have had to redo the entire spreadsheet to include it this year, but I have it in my notes, so that next time we do this challenge I will add it.

There is a timestamp I can make visible on the spreadsheet. It won't be the date finished, but it will be the date you logged it, if that would help!?

I almost posted this last night, because I thought this would come up! let's set the page limit at anything under 50 pages is considered a short story for this challenge.

Thank you everyone for giving feedback and asking these questions. I always miss some things when we are trying something new. I appreciate your patience and imput!

Rebecca, I'll join you in competing for India!

The form for logging your books is up and running!
https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FA...

Remember the challenge starts at midnight in whichever time zone you are in.

Let the games begin!

short story collections are fine!

The House Cup Challenge will always allow graphic novels for as long as I am co moderator of this group. I have fought for it many times over the years, and we developed a point system for that challenge so we could continue allowing graphic novels. I love graphic novels. I read them frequently and do not think they are "less than". I feel they are often treated that way too, and they do not deserve it. It was a very hard decision for me to exclude them from this challenge.

I made the decision to exclude them from this challenge because there is no point system. We are going by number of pages and numbers of books and if someone on a team is reading only graphic novels they have a clear advantage. I want to encourage reading everything and not have the challenge turn into only reading Manga and not the other things you want to because you feel like that is the best option for winning this competition. Another huge deciding factor is the length of the challenge. It is not even a month long, so there will still be plenty of time in both July and August to read any graphic novels you've been planning on reading outside the challenge time frame.

I could develop a point system for future olympic challenges if that is what everyone would prefer, but my thinking was that it overcomplicates everything for such a short challenge.

Please keep the feedback coming! if you have an opinion let me know, it is easier to tell what the majority of people want if I have more comments to pull from!

After much contemplation I have decided to not allow any graphic novels/heavily pictured books. We will exclude poetry and short stories from this challenge too.

Because there are a couple plays on our group bookshelf I will be allowing all plays.

Please let me know if you have any feedback on these decisions. We won't change it this year, but when we run this challenge next time we could change it if people are unhappy.

Hi Lina,

This is a challenge we did back in 2018 that I have wanted to bring back for awhile now. Back then we had many small teams. I competed for Japan and it was me and one other member! A lot of the countries only had 1 member. It was still a lot of fun! That being said, I will wait to choose which country I will compete for closer to the challenge because I want at least 1 other person on my team.

Kathy wrote: "I knew this sounded familiar"

We do this one every year! Way back when Kassey started this challenge it was a year-long challenge and the only prompt was to read the 5 oldest books from your TBR. A few years ago I started changing the themes every quarter, but I still do this one every year because it was originally what the challenge was all about, and I think it is nice to get a few of the books I've been meaning to read for the longest time off my TBR every year.