Moderators of NBRC’s Comments (group member since Jan 22, 2011)

Moderators of NBRC’s comments from the Nothing But Reading Challenges group.

Please nominate an Adult Fiction or a Non Fiction book that you would like to read in the month of March 2025.

Nominations will be open until 27 January, UK evening

***Please pay special attention to the Rules and Guidelines listed below.***

Rules and Guidelines
1. Books nominated after the deadline will not be included in the polls. Sorry.
2. Each person is limited to nominating ONE book per category.
3. Please use the add book/author tool located at the top of the comment box when nominating a book. (Please make your nomination clear because side conversations do happen and we don't want to accidentally miss a nomination)
4. Please add the Goodreads synopsis for the book you nominate; optionally you can include a reason why we should read your nomination.
5. Books that were read as a past BOM will not be considered for the poll. (link to the sheet under the spoiler (view spoiler)[https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/... (hide spoiler)])
6. Books that are #2 or higher in a series will only be considered if all earlier books in the series have been a past BOM.
7. Books must be published at the time of nomination.
8. If your book is successful in being picked as the BOM you are expected to actively participate in the discussion. This will include writing a set of DQs as well as engaging in conversations.

Also, please be aware of your nomination's genre and list them in the appropriate BOM category.

Genres that DO NOT go here:
Young Adult
Middle Grade / Children's
Erotica

The BOM nominations are for our members to nominate a book they are truly interested in and have no affiliation with. Promotional activity is NOT permitted and nominations that the Moderators perceive to be promotional will be deleted without warning

Theme Book Of the Month



The theme for March 2025 is SMALL ISLANDS & SEA

March's BOM Theme is Small Islands and Sea. Will you be finding swash-buckling pirate tales or a "fish out of water" transplant from the Big Smoke to a small island?
In keeping with this years general theme of Around the World, we'd prefer lesser known small islands over a Greek island romance, but the book world is your oyster!

Nominations will be open until 27 January, UK evening

***Please pay special attention to the Rules and Guidelines listed below.***

Rules and Guidelines
1. Books nominated after the deadline will not be included in the polls. Sorry.
2. Each person is limited to nominating ONE book per category.
3. Please use the add book/author tool located at the top of the comment box when nominating a book. (Please make your nomination clear because side conversations do happen and we don't want to accidentally miss a nomination)
4. Please add the Goodreads synopsis for the book you nominate; you should also include an explanation of how it fits the theme for the month.
5. Books that were read as a past BOM will not be considered for the poll. (link to the sheet under the spoiler (view spoiler)[https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/... (hide spoiler)])
6. Books that are #2 or higher in a series will only be considered if all earlier books in the series have been a past BOM.
7. Books must be published at the time of nomination.
8. If your book is successful in being picked as the BOM you are expected to actively participate in the discussion. This will include writing a set of DQs as well as engaging in conversations.

The BOM nominations are for our members to nominate a book they are truly interested in and have no affiliation with. Promotional activity is NOT permitted and nominations that the Moderators perceive to be promotional will be deleted without warning

Participation Verified

Insiyah https://www.goodreads.com/topic/show/...
Catherine https://www.goodreads.com/topic/show/...
MelanieJoy https://www.goodreads.com/topic/show/...
Angie https://www.goodreads.com/topic/show/...

Chapter Breakdown

Date		Chapters 		%ages	MPDQs
17 Jan		Prologue - Chapter 9	26%	Chelsea
18 Jan		Chapter 10 - Chapter 17	51%	Catherine
19 Jan		Chapter 18 - Chapter 28	73%	MelanieJoy
20 Jan		Chapter 29 - Epilogue	100%	???

Guidance for DQ setters
Aim for a reasonable number of questions: 4 - 5 is typical. Please don't post too many - any more than 7 gets unwieldy!
Use consecutive numbering of the DQs for your days. So, for example, if Day One is posted as questions 1-4, Day Two should start at number 5 etc.
Don't worry too much about your questions: you aren't being tested on how clever your questions are!
Hints and tips:
- Is there a quote that jumped out at you? Use that in a question.
- What about the characters - do they generate strong feelings? No feelings? - either way, we can explore that!
- What about that plot twist?!
- Explore the writing style: is there an unusual structure being used? what's the tone of voice like? or the point of view?

Want more information about how NBRC runs their Book of the Month discussions? Check out the information here

Two best friends. Ten summer trips. One last chance to fall in love.

Poppy and Alex. Alex and Poppy. They have nothing in common. She’s a wild child; he wears khakis. She has insatiable wanderlust; he prefers to stay home with a book. And somehow, ever since a fateful car share home from college many years ago, they are the very best of friends. For most of the year they live far apart—she’s in New York City, and he’s in their small hometown—but every summer, for a decade, they have taken one glorious week of vacation together.

Until two years ago, when they ruined everything. They haven’t spoken since.

Poppy has everything she should want, but she’s stuck in a rut. When someone asks when she was last truly happy, she knows, without a doubt, it was on that ill-fated, final trip with Alex. And so, she decides to convince her best friend to take one more vacation together—lay everything on the table, make it all right. Miraculously, he agrees.

Now she has a week to fix everything. If only she can get around the one big truth that has always stood quietly in the middle of their seemingly perfect relationship. What could possibly go wrong?

=======
Nominator: Chelsea

Participation Verified

Judith https://www.goodreads.com/topic/show/...
Amanda https://www.goodreads.com/topic/show/...
Catherine https://www.goodreads.com/topic/show/...
Shannon https://www.goodreads.com/topic/show/...
Angie https://www.goodreads.com/topic/show/...

Chapter Breakdown
Chapter Breakdown

Date		Chapters 	Pages		MPDQs
3 Jan		Forward - 10	26%		Judith
4 Jan		11 - 21		50%		Catherine
5 Jan		22 - 42		76%		Cat
6 Jan		23 - end	 100%		? Judith

Guidance for DQ setters
Aim for a reasonable number of questions: 4 - 5 is typical. Please don't post too many - any more than 7 gets unwieldy!
Use consecutive numbering of the DQs for your days. So, for example, if Day One is posted as questions 1-4, Day Two should start at number 5 etc.
Don't worry too much about your questions: you aren't being tested on how clever your questions are!
Hints and tips:
- Is there a quote that jumped out at you? Use that in a question.
- What about the characters - do they generate strong feelings? No feelings? - either way, we can explore that!
- What about that plot twist?!
- Explore the writing style: is there an unusual structure being used? what's the tone of voice like? or the point of view?

Want more information about how NBRC runs their Book of the Month discussions? Check out the information here

A New York Times bestseller! From Edgar Award–winning novelist, playwright, and story-songwriter Rupert Holmes comes a diabolical thriller with a killer concept: The McMasters Conservatory for the Applied Arts, dedicated to the art of murder where students study how best to “delete” their most deserving victim.

Who hasn’t wondered for a split second what the world would be like if a person who is the object of your affliction ceased to exist? But then you’ve probably never heard of The McMasters Conservatory, dedicated to the consummate execution of the homicidal arts. To gain admission, a student must have an ethical reason for erasing someone who deeply deserves a fate no worse (nor better) than death. The campus of this “Poison Ivy League” college—its location unknown to even those who study there—is where you might find yourself the practice target of a classmate…and where one’s mandatory graduation thesis is getting away with the perfect murder of someone whose death will make the world a much better place to live.

Prepare for an education you’ll never forget.

=======
Nominator: Judith

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RELAY READING CHALLENGE TIPS

Examples:

Some Tips:
1. Please post the book cover, date read, and page number of your book(s).
    If you need help, see Add a Bookcover Link.
2. Please double check your post total.
3. For those newly joining the page count, there is no need to post your backdated books. Just keep a tally from the point you join onward.
4. The original intent was for everyone to post page counts for just one to two books at a time to keep an up-to-date running tally, but a larger page dump for more books is okay. Just please DON’T wait until the end of the year.
5. Remember to click “Refresh,” just in case someone posted at the same time as you did.
6. If you're at the bottom of a page, make sure you don’t need to hit “Next.” Each GRs thread page holds 50 posts. If you see the person above you is at a 50 increment number, make sure you don’t need to go to the next page.

7. Please use the page numbers of the edition you read.
8. There are no page length or genre restrictions.
9. For audiobook conversion, use the most popular page length, or do little math - 1h is about 9000 words and 1 page is about 250 words.
10. Again, please double check your post total.

SECOND MILLION PAGES RELAY READING

Since you had fun last year, we decided to do it again. Special thanks to Romance Readers Reading Challenges’ for letting us use their Million Page Run as template. There are quite a few groups that do something similar, but we like theirs the best.

This thread will open soon after we reach Our First Million pages for 2025. Until then, this thread will be frozen.


How It Works:
Anyone may join this challenge. To participate, all you need to have are two things--a book you’ve recently finished reading and the page count of that book.

Begin by posting the number of pages of a book you just finished. To continue, anybody who has finished a book since January 1st (regardless of start date), and has not posted it in our first million thread, may post their book title, and taking the previous total, add the total pages of the books.

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READING SCHEDULE
Note as the book is in 4 parts this schedule is slightly different to previous years to enable it to be broken into 4.
Part 3 is much longer so is over 3 months with a 2 month break/catch up period following

January & February 2025

Prologue and
Part I The Twilight Year (CE 509)

March & April 2025

Part II As the Gods Slept (CE 510)


May 2025==BREAK / CATCH UP MONTH==


June, July and August 2025

Part III Age of Fire (CE511)


September & October 2025==BREAK / CATCH UP MONTHS==


November & December 2025

Part IV The Long-Haired Star (CE 512) and
Epilogue

Over in the Cleaning out the closet challenge in 2018 we started talking...

Your know those MASSIVE books that you want to read, but everything else gets in the way?

Well we decided that perhaps the best way to tackle this problem is to pick a book and read it together over a year. So 2019 was the year of Les Misérables, 2020 was War and Peace, 2021 Gone with the Wind, 2022 Pillars of the Earth, 2023 Ship of Magic and 2024 The Way of Kings!

After nominating books and then voting for 2025, the winner is A Day of Fallen Night!

Anyone is welcome to join. This is essentially an extremely long buddy read :)

There is a reading schedule below to show which chapters to read over a two month period and we will also have two break months ; meaning the read will last the whole year.


To participate, all you need to do is come on over and give your thoughts for the section you are reading. Please make it clear which section you are referring to, and if you are reading ahead of the schedule, put your comments in spoiler tags.

c.800 pages? 38+ hours of audio?! Meh! We got this! Let the Reading Begin!

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Feed Your Readers, the NetGalley Challenge

Duration: Monthly

How to Participate:

The NetGalley Challenge is designed to not only get you to read your NetGalley books, but to also advertise your reviews for others to see because after all, that's what NetGalley is all about.

Though you may pop in/out at any time, the NetGalley Challenge will run on a monthly basis so you are able to see progress being made.


1. At the beginning of the month, post any/all of the following:
a: How many books on your NetGalley shelf
b: What books are on your NG shelf
c: What your Netgalley feedback ratio is

2. During the month, read the NetGalley books that you can AND update your post with your reviews. (You can do this after each book or wait until the end of the month.)

3. At the end of the month, update your post and with:
a: What books you read
b: Link(s) to your review(s)**
c: Your updated shelf count
d: Your updated books to read
e: Your updated ratio

Then start a new post for the next month!


**When linking your reviews, please link only to the book(s) here at GoodReads. At this time, linking to a personal blog is not allowed. Thank you!

In 2025, NBRC is going to explore the great wide world throughout the year. While adventures and fun can be had in every corner of the globe, so can danger. From notorious serial killers to the pirates of the high seas, battle your way across the globe.

Note: for the 'takes place tasks' the books should be set in the given location for at least 50% of the book.

A new spreadsheet of monsters and tasks was added to the Master List of Tasks called World Villains Monsters.



https://wheeldecide.com/index.php?c1=...

*Shout out to Lexi for assistance with wheel construction