Rob’s Comments (group member since Jul 06, 2012)

Rob’s comments from the The Sword and Laser group.

Bump. Please fill out the survey if you haven't already.

Thanks!

Misti wrote: "I'm not in the mood to read the club pick for this month so I'm delving into the S&L archives to listen to The Hum and the Shiver instead"

I enjoyed that one. Good choice!

Jenny (Reading Envy) wrote: "I was watching The Expanse before I understood the entire season isn't there - why are they doing this? What's the point? ARGH etc. So now I'm catching up on His Dark Materials in HBO."

I'm actually kind of enjoying it. The Save the Expanse discord server is doing weekly watch parties for the episodes too.

I haven't had a chance to join one, but I want to try before the season finishes being released.

Soo wrote: "Woo! Nice to see someone else reading Cradle series. It was one of my 'Yay' finds in 2019."

yeah. It's a really fun series. I found it in 2018, so I've been reading the new releases as they've come out for the last few books. It's always a drop what you're doing and read book for me now.

Donald wrote: "Hello! Donald here. I am an audible addict who got hooked on fantasy at at early age when My Dad introduced me to The Lord of the Rings. Currently trying to make it through the Wheel of Time Series."

Welcome Donald. I really enjoyed Wheel of Time in audio. I actually got to meet the narrators at a signing for A Memory of Light

John (Taloni) wrote: "11 9 14 11 25!"

Haha. that's what I was going to say..but I wasn't going to bother to encode it first

1) Battle Ground - 5 Stars - (My Review)
2) Peace Talks - 5 Stars - (My Review)
3) The Relentless Moon - 4.5 Stars - (My Review)
4) Wintersteel - 4.5 Stars - (My Review)
5) Rhythm of War - 4 Stars - (My Review)
6) Network Effect - 4 Stars - (My Review)

Full stats/review of 2020 for anyone interested: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...

I cut way back. 5 for the 2 main challenges. 25 for my personal challenge and dropping the comic challenge.

I may read some comics, but I don't want to set a goal for it.

I mean it's a 1200 page book and I loved the last 700 pages of it. It's not like I hated the first 500 either. It just wasn't the typical page turner that series has been for me thus far until much further in.

Also 2020 has been awful for my reading. I have major concentration problems.

Trike wrote: "Done."

Was this you?

"Ask Trike to create a monthly newsletter puzzle"

:-D

For my own personal challenges, I'm finished with:


Personal: 50/50 (100% complete)
Sword: 20/15 (133% complete)
Laser: 17/10 (170% complete)
Comics: 6/5 (120% complete)


This month I've added 3 Sword, 1 Laser, 0 Graphic novels and 1 non-SFF books.

I did it! Barely! I finished Rhythm of War on Wednesday. I originally figured I'd be reading a lot yesterday but the last 200 pages or so just flew by. Sadly the first 500 or so didn't or I'd probably have finished it last month.

As for the rest I mostly did a few shorter audiobook to hit my 50 book personal challenge goal exactly. Next year I'm only doing 25 books and 5 books for both the Sword & Laser challenges. I'm not joining the comic challenge though I'll probably read some of them. Maybe I'll finally finish the boys, but considering I went most of 2020 without doing it, not too sure.

December Results:

Sword Challenge
Total Participants: 303 (+6)
Total Read: 5,286 (+604)
Average Books Read: 17 (+1)
Total Committed: 5,337 (+71)
Average Books pledged: 18 (0)

We fell short of final challenge number by: 51 books. We did keep our 18 book average pledge for most of the year. We only averaged 17.4 books/person though so we fell about 0.6 books short.

Compared to 2019 we had about 125 fewer participants and 1800 fewer books read, but our average book read per person was up by nearly 1 book.


Laser Challenge
Total Participants: 299 (+6)
Total Read: 4,621 (+418)
Average Books Read: 14 (+1)
Total Committed: 4,563 (+58)
Average Books pledged: 15 (-1)


We fell short of final challenge number by: 477 books. We also dropped from 17 to a 15 book average pledge as the year went along. We only averaged 13.9 books/person though so we fell about 1.1 books short.

Compared to 2019 we had about 125 fewer participants and 1550 fewer books read. Our average read per person was about 0.4 books higher though.

Once I shut off the survey I'll post/compare the challenge related results from that here as well.

2021 Challenges are live: https://www.goodreads.com/topic/show/...

Also, please fill out the 2020 survey I forgot to post in December if you have a few minutes and are so inclined: https://forms.gle/5K92oYG8uXErvdfB8

Here are the details for the 2021 Challenges. If you have any questions, first check the FAQ, and otherwise post them here.

Main Challenges
Sword Challenge: Fantasy Books
Laser Challenge: Sci-Fi Books

Side Challenges
Graphic Novel Challenge: Comics/Manga/Etc
Short Story Challenge: Short Stories

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Challenge FAQ

General Questions

What are the Group Challenges? The group challenges are a feature of Goodreads that allows a group the ability to create various challenges for members to participate. Sword & Laser first started doing group challenges in 2018.

How can I sign up? Click on one or more of the links above to sign up for the challenge(s) you wish to participate.

Which Challenges Should I Join? As many as you want. That includes none for those of you who are uninterested. It's totally optional. Although if you're reading along with the group each month, you could pledge 6 sword and 6 laser picks for the year even if you won't read any others. But no pressure!

Why aren't my books being counted?
The main reasons I've seen is that either:

1) Your challenge isn't pointing at the correct shelf
2) Your book isn't on the correct shelf
3) You didn't mark the book with a read date of 2021

I completed my challenge, why isn't it being counted? In past years we found the count of challenges completed was buggy. As such that number is unreliable. The book counts should be correct however assuming you've shelved your books and marked them as read.

Does this relate to the monthly pick? Nope. The types of challenges we do, the books we read, have no impact on how the group is being run. It's the same as always. This is more of a side thing for people to participate in.

Sword/Laser Challenge Questions

How Many Books are We Trying to Read? This year we're not shooting for a specific goal, rather we're simply challenging our members to see how many books we read as a group. The previous targets were kind of arbitrary and I don't think they had much effect on our results.

What Books Qualify? We're asking you only count Novella length books or longer. That's 17,500 words, 50 pages or 2 hours of audio.

The format doesn't matter (physical book, ebook, audio book).

We are asking you not to count graphic novels or short stories. Those have their own challenges.

What Should I do if I'm not sure the genre of a book I'm reading?
You can ask in the thread, but in general I always suggest to use your best judgement. If something isn't clearly Sword or Laser, or you think it's both. Count it however you think makes sense. We're not auditing the books you contribute, we just ask you try to follow the guidelines.


Graphic Novel Challenge Questions
I read trades, should I be shelving/tracking Issues? No, please only count books by trade.

I only read issues/there is no trade, what should I do? If you're reading issues and a trade exists/has been created, we ask you to track by that. If none is available or you don't want to shelve comics twice, we're going by a rule of thumb to shelve every 5th issue to roughly simulate a single trade. As with most things, use your best judgement.

Does Manga Count? Yup! We just ask you count the trades, not individual chapters. If you're reading online via Crunchyroll or Shonen Jump, etc often times there will still be a trade book created on Goodreads even if the English translation isn't listed yet.

Short Story Challenge Questions
Should I count individual stories? That's the idea, although I've been told Goodreads tends to remove any individual stories in favor of collections/anthologies.

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2020 Survey Challenge Results
In January 2020, I posted a short survey (https://forms.gle/5K92oYG8uXErvdfB8) to get a general sense of feedback.

I will post the challenge related results once the survey ends.

Normally I'd have posted this in mid December, but honestly I forgot completely about it until I was creating the 2021 challenges.

Once again this is my survey, not Tom and Veronica's. I do share the results with them though.

Please take a few minutes to fill it out if you're so inclined: https://forms.gle/5K92oYG8uXErvdfB8

Normally I'd have run this until the end of December, but since I'm a slacker, I'll run it for a few weeks in January. Most respondents come in the first few days anyways.

Thanks!

New thread for 2021: https://www.goodreads.com/topic/show/...

Thanks to everyone who contributed to the quick burns in 2020.

New Thread for a new year. Please share your SFF news here.

Well now that the awful year of 2020 is behind us, what will you be reading this month in the hopes that 2021 will suck a lot less?

The month has begun. Go forth and discuss.

I also signed up for HBO Max (well used my free month trial from AT&T). So far I've started Harley Quinn and Doom Patrol.

Really enjoying the former. Not far enough along in the latter to have an impression yet.

Oh and I watched the Fresh Prince reunion. I loved that, but I grew up on that show.

I wasn't interested in Perry Mason until I saw you say Tatiana Maslany