Pocki’s Comments (group member since Dec 25, 2016)

Pocki’s comments from the A challenge of relative ease and merriment 2017 group.

Hi Carly! Very much welcome to your first challenge :D
Sounds like a great personal challenge too! I look forward to see how many (and which) you can fit into our categories. And I'm sure your library has to get some new books! At least come fall you might get some released from spring?

Good luck!

Great recs Bunny, thanks!

Hi and welcome Sandra! :D
You can read however much YA you want! The only category where you can't is "kids", as that is for an even younger audience. If you have any questions as you go along, just throw them into the Questions thread and someone (probably me to be honest) will happily answer! And don't worry, this is all for fun! I'm glad you found us, and good luck!

A book that was adapted into a movie can have been written at any point (before the movie was made of course). The gap between book and movie doesn't matter, and it also doesn't matter how old the movie is. As long as the book came first you're fine.

For kids book I'd say middle grade and younger. But I personally tend to go for picture books. Definitely younger than YA though. That's its own category after all.

But omg Laura! A butterfly is OBVIOUSLY an animal. Are you crazy? Insects are very much animals! All living things are either animals, or plants, or mushrooms, or bacteria. You wouldn't call a butterfly a plant would you?

Thomas: I completely forgot that one won for graphic novel one year! I should read that too, even without categories.
And I might take you up on that offer! Also, I recommend the Shakespeare Star Wars plays too. So much fun!


Yas: Hi and welcome! :D Reading loads of lgbtq+ books sounds like an excellent plan! I really should read more of those. Good luck with the challenge this year!

Cathrin: Also hi and welcome! And congrats on finishing both this and the overall GR challenge for 2016! Well done :D Good luck this year!

Welcome Bunny! I’m so glad you found us by accident :D And it sure sounds like you belong! Now you just have to read those categories this year too!
Sounds like we have very similar taste in books! (except for your dislike of space opera. I love me a good space opera! But that’s where my heart is for movies/tv too) We had micro histories as a category last year and I read so many of those, and some not so micro non-fiction. Favourite non-fiction about food?

And Thomas, welcome to you too! You did not find us by accident I gather ;D
That’s two of you worrying about the Awards category. I thought that one would be easy with several years and many (and changing) categories! Granted, one might’ve already read several of the winners when they came out. I’m sure you’ll find the perfect one though!
Oooh, there’s a play version of Mort? That sounds delightful! I love that book.

Good luck to both of you! (and to the rest of you I might've forgotten to say that to!)

Hi Sofie! Welcome back! And congrats on finishing 2016's challenge :D

Books about food are easy! It can be anything! I read several non fiction books last year centred around food in a historical context for example (and can think of many more I'm interested in giving a go). But it can be fiction too of course. Maybe a comedy about a chef, a romance about a chocolatier (I've read like five of those haha)? Or simply read Charlie and the Chocolate Factory :P
There are so many lists on Goodreads for different kinda of books related to food: https://www.goodreads.com/search?utf8...
The top one, "Food-Related Non-Fiction" is definitely what interests me the most personally. Further down the line there's one for food related mysteries (fits two tricky categories!)

Darth Olive wrote: "Pocki--and, I presume, it's okay if they've written some short stories prior... That makes it easy, ta.

Oh yeah yeah. We're talking novel here. Which also means fictional I'd say. I mean someone who writes their memoirs and that's all they do feels like a bit of a cheat no?

Since the question came up in the introduction thread:

A debut novel only means that it's the first book that author had published. It does not have to be a recent publication. It doesn't matter if they have written many books since that first one.

Welcome Jenny! I'm sure you'll do better this year :D
(I think you forgot something in that love list. Haha jk jk... or am I?)
I think animal on the cover will just show up randomly and be a happy surprise.

As for debut novel (which we should probably put in the questions thread as well): an author's first novel. They can have written 50 novels since then, it doesn't matter.

Yeah I think under 30 will be the trickiest. Who was it that suggested that category? XD
I'm sure you guys will find something!

Fiona: Hi and welcome! I hope you'll like it here and that you will read and love many books you might not have considered before!

Laura: I'm glad! If you like it and read several in the series you're all set xD

Thanks! I did it about an hour or two ago! So now I can go back to my precious galaxy far far away and cry onto my tablet.

That's why I picked Goodreads Choice Awards. Cause it's so easy to get an overview of each year: https://www.goodreads.com/choiceaward...

Hehe, it's almost too easy isn't it? :P
Yeah one would hope there will be more to fit into that category. And into fantastical (where is also falls).

Hi possibly evil rabbit! Welcome back!

I'm sure you can get a biography and a YA in there! And Good Reads Choice Awards shouldn't be too hard either since there are several non-fiction categories and a scifi and a fantasy (I adore last year's fantasy winner for example).

Very much good luck dear! And I know of at least one book in your own library that will be easy to fit in ^.~

If you want exactly such a book, may I suggest Brownies and Broomsticks?

I am still trying to finish 2016's challenge XD I'm currently reading The Alchemist as my banned book. It's short and my internet was down all afternoon so I got almost halfway. Should be able to finish. It's my last category! And I know the book that will come after can fit the fantastical fiction category for 2017. If I don't end up finishing it before the year is over!

I am looking forward to Not Your Villain, the sequel to Not Your Sidekick which I read this year. The lead in it is trans so that will definitely work. I also don't really remember where the kids that will be the leads in Down Among the Sticks and Bones fall in the possible LGBTQIA* spectrum. Probably somewhere considering the book they were introduced in. If you haven't read Every Heart a Doorway, that's a really easy fit for the category. Very good, very queer, and quite short. And everyone should read it.

Welcome back Laura! (even if it's not actually back)
Didn't you finish the 2016 challenge in like the first half of the year? xD

I'm really glad you're looking forward to this and to challenge yourself! I will probably end up reading a cozy mystery about food, with an animal on the cover haha. But yes, that is what this challenge is all about: force you to read at least something that you otherwise wouldn't!

I think that personally, for the first few months of the year I will just read whatever I feel like and see if it fits a category. Look at the author and see how old they might be. And well, the desert will reveal itself! But that one can get really tricky yeah...
I'm also keeping the categories in mind whenever I look at lists of books within a certain genre or reason for recommendation. Be it new sci fi, or lesbians, or "my favourite books"...

I mean... I guess that's up to you yourself? I think I'm personally going to hold off and see if I can make it a normal animal. It can't be that hard. And then I know I can fall back on a robot pegasus or a dragon if need be.

Welcome Jo! And welcome back Marissa (sort of welcome back haha)!

Well good thing I didn't make New Adult a category ;)
And hey, for covers - that's what you have Goodreads for! Just read, and add it, and then suddenly you can go "wow, this book has a butterfly on the cover. Fancy that!"

I wonder.... do dragons count as animals? And what about a mechanical flying horse?

Hi Sharon! Welcome! I'm glad you found us :D

I guess I should introduce myself as well. My name is Rebecka, but you can call me Pocki if you want. I live in southern Sweden, I'm an osteoarchaeologist and a massive geek. I'm the creator and moderator of this group and challenge, and was obviously also part of the 2016 challenge. With 6 days left of the year I am scrambling to finish.

Last year or two I've bene listening to a lot of audiobooks, and prefer non fiction for those. I like fantastical fiction and I read a decent amount of YA. I love me a romance or a cozy mystery sometimes, but not often. And I'm not a big fan of contemporary fiction (but that's not a category for 2017, yay!).

For the challenge this year it will be interesting to find a book mostly set in the desert I think, a movie adaption, and a before 1900 book. Really easy ones for me will of course be non-fiction and fantastical.

The books I look most forward to being released in 2017 are Within the Sanctuary of Wings, Down Among the Sticks and Bones, and Venturess. They can all fit at least three categories (2017, sequel/prequel, and fantastical) so I guess I have those covered haha.

Let's get ready for this!

Hey, you! Yes you. Who are you?

Tell us a bit about yourself. Were you a part of the 2016 challenge? How did that go for you?
What do you like to read? Is there something you hate to read?
Which category this year do you look most forward to, and which scares you a little bit?

Well, it is simply a book that is tied to another form of media - usually visual media. It could be a novel that just gives you an extra story for a movie or tv-show (Star Wars has an insane amount of novels for example. And yes, of course you can read Legends which isn’t canon anymore. That’s fine). But it can also be a book about how a show or movie was made. Or a collection of essays about it. Or, in some cases: a book “written” by someone in a tv show (Castle, How I Met Your Mother, and Parks & Recreation all did this for example) I have all four kinds on my bookshelf right now actually.

Music usually doesn’t have tie-in books. Then it’s more a case of a biography or something similar. But you might find the exception.
Podcasts though… well, that’s pretty new. But there’s always the Night Vale book! That would definitely count. And I’m sure there must be others.
Video games have some too, but it’s not as common. I know there are both Assassin’s Creed and Warcraft novels out there though.
The tricky bit is with comics/graphic novels. Because we count them as books as well, and I would probably count Buffy season 8 (which is graphic novels) for this media tie-in category. On the other hand, in some rare cases “regular” novels are written based on graphic novels… well I guess it’s up to you! I will personally go with a movie or tv tie-in. Probably Star Wars to be honest, but we’ll see.

I wouldn't really count a novelisation of a movie or tv show as a media tie in. For example, when I write this there is one week of 2016 left and I still haven't finished my 2016 challenge (wow I slacked off during fall), so I need to push myself to read my last two books and then I really want to read the novelisation of Rogue One - A Star Wars Story. As such it will probably be the first book I read in 2017, but I won't count it for this category. It doesn't really tie in to the Star Wars universe. The story is already there, plain to see. Whereas, to stick with the same example, Catalyst - A Rogue One Novel most definitely is a tie-in as it adds some interesting backstory to the movie.

And of course the reverse is obvious: a novel that is turned into a movie doesn't count. It actually has its own category. And remember for that one too: a novelisation of a movie that was first movie script does not count (i.e. I could not count Rogue One for that either. I could of course count it for fantastical fiction though)