Rob’s
Comments
(group member since Jul 06, 2012)
Rob’s
comments
from the The Sword and Laser group.
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Dara wrote: "I did mean Nexus, sorry Rob! Total brain fart."No problem. Fixed it!
terpkristin wrote: "Sheila Jean wrote: "Rob wrote: "As has become tradition, I'm going to nominate Theft of Swords"
I also nominate Theft of Swords."
Thirded."
*high fives terpkristin*
Current Nominations
Just like last year I'll be periodically rolling up the nominations as we go.
FAQ:
How Many books can I nominate? One. You cannot nominate one book and second another. You cannot nominate both a Fantasy book and a Sci-Fi book. Just ONE book total. If you mention more than one, I'm going to pick one. Likely the first one you mention. Please be CLEAR about your nomination.
Can we nominate any book we want? The only criteria is that it's a Fantasy or Sci-Fi book we haven't read. That said, it's preferable that you also nominate a book by an author we haven't read as well. Those nominations will likely have a better chance of making the final bracket. This year we have a new rule that prevents author's from nominating their own books. In addition we'd like to prevent people from nominating their friend's book etc. If I see you doing this, I will first warn you to pick another book, and later simply ignore your nomination all together.
Can I change My Nomination? Yes, but if you do so, please specify which book you are changing it from, as I'm doing this by hand.
How many books will be selected? 16 (8 Fantasy, 8 Sci-Fi)
When do nominations close? Monday, February 25th 8:00 PM EST. This will give Tom & Veronica some time to make the final bracket, and allow me to close the nomination thread before I go to bed :).
Which books will be selected? Whichever books Tom & Veronica want. They will simply use the nominations in this thread for suggestions.
How will the books be seeded? This is entirely up to Tom & Veronica. They may take into account how many people have nominated a book, but there is no guarantee.
The book I want was already nominated. You can second a nomination made by someone else, and I'll count how many people have nominated that book and sort accordingly.
No one else is nominating my book, should I change my vote to something more popular?In my opinion, you're better off just nominating a book you're interested in us reading than hoping to game the nomination system by changing your vote. Most years some of the books in the final bracket had only a single nomination, while several books with multiple nominations didn't make it. Multiple nominations may help it get noticed or in the seeding, but really all of that is up to Tom & Veronica.
How are the Nominations Sorted? The numbering is based on number of nominations, followed by when they moved up the list (i.e. based on post order). This number will likely not reflect the actual seeding as that will be entirely up to Tom & Veronica.
My nomination is missing/wrong! Sorry about that. I'm doing this by hand. Please post again and yell at me for missing, or not grouping it with another nomination for the same book, or marking you down for the wrong book, etc. If you're not clear about your nomination (or you nominate 2) I may add the "wrong" book. Please be sure you're clear, and I can fix it.
-----------Multiple Votes----------------
Theft of Swords by Michael J. Sullivan - 2 (Roberator, Sheila Jean)
The Martian Chronicles by Ray Bradbury - 2 (John (Taloni), Tina)
Trail of Lightning by Rebecca Roanhorse - 2 (David, corkhead)
The Ruin of Kings by Jenn Lyons - 2 (Matt, Callum)
-----------Single Votes----------------
The Neverending Story by Michael Ende (Anne)
Places in the Darkness by Christopher Brookmyre (Paul)
Semiosis by Sue Burke (Silvana)
Nexus by Ramez Naam (Dara)
The Stainless Steel Rat by Harry Harrison (Mark)
Every Heart a Doorway by Seanan McGuire (William)
Black Leopard, Red Wolf by Marlon James (Jenny (Reading Envy))
I Am Not a Serial Killer by Dan Wells (Scott)
Glory Season by David Brin (Viola)
Dangerous To Know by K.T. Davies (Tassie Dave)
Viriconium by M. John Harrison (Rick)
Red Sister by Mark Lawrence (Stephen)
The First Fifteen Lives of Harry August by Claire North (Christos)
The Last Unicorn by Peter S. Beagle (Rebecca)
Dara wrote: "I nominate Crux by Ramez Naam.----------
Hey guys. While you're nominating things, you can nominate the Sword and Laser podcast for the 2019 Hugo Award for Best Fa..."
I'm going to leave it as is for, but did you mean to to nominate Nexus instead?
I updated the description with the information. Thanks Wayne.So does that mean your next meet-up will be Sunday March 3rd?
I didn't know about the backmatter either. I've had a few audiobooks from audible with downloadable pdfs, but sadly not this one.It'd be nice if they all did that. Probably not how the book rights work though.
Themcbays wrote: "Physics of the Impossible - Michio Kaku"That's nonfiction, isn't it?
Sheila Jean wrote: "Rob wrote: "As has become tradition, I'm going to nominate Theft of Swords"I also nominate Theft of Swords."
*high fives Sheila*
Welcome to the 4th annual March Madness tournament!Once again we have a split bracket. That means there are 8 Sword picks, and 8 Laser picks selected by our benevolent leaders based on your suggestions in the nomination and a super secret criteria of their own making for seeding etc.
We have 4 rounds of voting. Rounds 1-3 will take us from 8 Sword books and 8 Laser books down to 1 of each that will go head to head for our to be our pick for April.
This thread will serve as the main information center for the tournament and I'll be creating separate threads for each round.
Bracket
Round 1 thread
Round 2 thread
Round 3 thread
Finals thread
Schedule & Details
Here is the schedule for this year's tournament:
Nomination FAQ
(view spoiler)
It's time once again for March Madness! Nominations are now open, and will run through Monday February 25th at 8pm. We're once again doing a Sword bracket and Laser bracket with 8 books each.
As usual I will periodically roll-up everyone nominations (Roughly once/page or approximately 50 posts)
Please Read the rules for nominations below for more specifics
Please see the March Madness 2019 Information Thread for additional details about the tournament as a whole.
Nomination FAQ
How Many books can I nominate? One. You cannot nominate one book and second another. You cannot nominate both a Fantasy book and a Sci-Fi book. Just ONE book total. If you mention more than one, I'm going to pick one. Likely the first one you mention. Please be CLEAR about your nomination.
Can we nominate any book we want? The only criteria is that it's a Fantasy or Sci-Fi book we haven't read. That said, it's preferable that you also nominate a book by an author we haven't read as well. Those nominations will likely have a better chance of making the final bracket. This year we have a new rule that prevents author's from nominating their own books. In addition we'd like to prevent people from nominating their friend's book etc. If I see you doing this, I will first warn you to pick another book, and later simply ignore your nomination all together.
Can I change My Nomination? Yes, but if you do so, please specify which book you are changing it from, as I'm doing this by hand.
How many books will be selected? 16 (8 Fantasy, 8 Sci-Fi)
When do nominations close? Monday, February 25th 8:00 PM EST. This will give Tom & Veronica some time to make the final bracket, and allow me to close the nomination thread before I go to bed :).
Which books will be selected? Whichever books Tom & Veronica want. They will simply use the nominations in this thread for suggestions.
How will the books be seeded? This is entirely up to Tom & Veronica. They may take into account how many people have nominated a book, but there is no guarantee.
The book I want was already nominated. You can second a nomination made by someone else, and I'll count how many people have nominated that book and sort accordingly.
No one else is nominating my book, should I change my vote to something more popular?In my opinion, you're better off just nominating a book you're interested in us reading than hoping to game the nomination system by changing your vote. Most years some of the books in the final bracket had only a single nomination, while several books with multiple nominations didn't make it. Multiple nominations may help it get noticed or in the seeding, but really all of that is up to Tom & Veronica.
How are the Nominations Sorted? The numbering is based on number of nominations, followed by when they moved up the list (i.e. based on post order). This number will likely not reflect the actual seeding as that will be entirely up to Tom & Veronica.
My nomination is missing/wrong! Sorry about that. I'm doing this by hand. Please post again and yell at me for missing, or not grouping it with another nomination for the same book, or marking you down for the wrong book, etc. If you're not clear about your nomination (or you nominate 2) I may add the "wrong" book. Please be sure you're clear, and I can fix it.
Incidentally since you can't update the subject of your post with your next date since (because you're the not the one who made the thread), I updated it for you. I've been doing it on several of the threads though, just so it's obvious to people when the meetup will be.
Haha. OK. I was confused cuz I copy pasted :)I updated it..
OK, I updated the FAQ: https://www.goodreads.com/topic/show/...If you'd like me to change anything, let me know.
OK, I updated the FAQ: https://www.goodreads.com/topic/show/...If you'd like me to change anything, let me know.
Oh yeah. I forgot about comics. Updated my post to include that too
Silvana wrote: "The Warrior's Apprentice (low expectation since I don't like Shards of Honor).."FWIW, I liked Warrior's Apprentice a lot, and didn't really care for Shards of Honor much either..
Tassie Dave wrote: "Rob wrote: "I'll be curious to see what the top pick from this year will be."I think this month's pick will be up near the top. I'm loving it so far."
Of the two we've read (both of which I actually read/enjoyed before the group made them picks) I'd pick this month's pick too.
For my own personal challenges, I'm finished with:Sword: 3/40 (8% complete, on track)
Laser: 4/20 (20% complete, 11% ahead)
Comics: 2/10 (20% complete, 11% ahead)
I decided to bump my Sword pledge up from 35 to 40 this year because I haven't read fewer than 40 fantasy books since I joined Goodreads.
Surprisingly I'm actually ahead with Laser books, but that's because I was finishing up the Murderbot novellas at the start of the year and the new Wesley Chu book came out as well.
I'll be adding two more fantasy books in February, if not more. We'll see. I need a fantasy break and plan to go double non-fiction not benefiting either challenge when I finish my current books. However 2 new fantasy books came out recently that I want to listen to in audio so I'll likely add at least one more after my non-fiction break.
I should add at least 1 to my graphic novel challenge as I've got Paper Girls, Vol. 5 sitting on my end table.
Right now I'm not planning on any Sci-Fi this month, and since I'm ahead of pace on my pledge that's fine by me.
January Results:Sword Challenge
Total Participants: 296
Total Read: 396
Average Books Read: 1
Total Committed: 5,192
Average Books pledged: 18
Total Challenges Completed : 0 NOTE: This number is terribly inaccurate. However there is no way for me to verify/get the correct numbers, so I have to take what Goodreads gives me.
Laser Challenge
Total Participants: 301
Total Read: 378
Average Books Read: 1
Total Committed: 4,872
Average Books pledged: 16
Total Challenges Completed (Goodreads): 0 NOTE: This number is terribly inaccurate. However there is no way for me to verify/get the correct numbers, so I have to take what Goodreads gives me.
Graphic Novel Challenge
Total Participants: 78
Total Read: 143
Average Books Read: 2
Total Committed: 1,812
Average Books pledged: 23
Total Challenges Completed : 1 NOTE: This number is terribly inaccurate. However there is no way for me to verify/get the correct numbers, so I have to take what Goodreads gives me.
Short Story Challenge
Total Participants: 27
Total Read: 23
Average Books Read: 1
Total Committed: 412
Average Books pledged: 15
Total Challenges Completed : 0 NOTE: This number is terribly inaccurate. However there is no way for me to verify/get the correct numbers, so I have to take what Goodreads gives me.
With this being the first month there are no changes to talk about. I have some numbers from last year, but I don't think I captured stats until mid February so it's not a fair comparison. Also I'm too lazy to do year to year comparisons. Needless to say the participation seems to be ahead of where it was this time last year, but still well behind the participation by the end of the year and what the survey results indicated for this year.
Comparing our two main challenges though shows that once again we have more Laser participants than Sword participants, but those participants are pledging and reading more books per person (albeit very slightly for the latter as it's less than 20 books different right now)
I'm going to snapshot the Graphic Novel/Short Story challenges each month and include those numbers here, but I'm not going to talk about them.
So the poll(https://www.goodreads.com/poll/show/1...) for our best 2018 read closed yesterday and Bob was the clear winner with 95 votes (43%). Circe was the runner up with 47 votes (21%).
We had 221 Total votes. Before the monthly message we had maybe 50, so it definitely had an impact..
I'll be curious to see what the top pick from this year will be..
