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

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

Trike wrote: "Day one of 2019 and I’ve already finished both Norse Mythology and Nimona, the latter which I thoroughly enjoyed and counts toward my S&L graphic novel challenge."

I read Nimona last year and enjoyed it as well. Have you read Lumbeejanes? Same author. At least initially.

I have the usual numeric goals:

75 total, 40 Sword, 20 Laser, 10 Graphic Novels, and I guess 5 misc. I'll likely read more than 75 total.

I have a bunch of nonfiction in audio I picked up during a sale last year. I also want to read some mysteries/thrillers. So something has to give.

Now I'm thinking I should reduce my Sword back to 35 like I did this year. Although I did 46, so there is some cushion.

Other goals include things like reading all the S&L picks, and as always reading down my owned and unread shelf (currently sitting at 146).

Sorry, I plan to put the rules here too..but today's a vacation day..and there was a LOT of upkeep this morning..

Yeah, their challenge system is limited if you want to read anything other than novels, and even then it's not great.

Short Stories were the same sort of thing. I don't expect either one to go super well, but enough people were interested, so I'm trying them.

I can always lower the bar, but I think the bar is less important than what we actually pledge and how well we do meeting those goals.

Ian wrote: "I have a theory regarding the inaccurate numbers for the 2018 challenge:
Some participants may have been simply marking books read and adding them to the challenge shelf. We must mark a book as Cur..."

Hmm. I hadn't heard that. Of course I always do that for books I read, so it's hard for me to say.

I was under the assumption you just needed the correct year in your read date, the correct shelf and have it marked as read.

Tassie Dave wrote: "25,000 Graphic Novel Volumes/TPB seems a bit high."

Yup, but those that responded seemed to think that's how many we should read!

I'm torn on the amount. On one hand I can read like 4-5 trades in one night, when I can't read even a fairly short novel in that time.

On the other hand, I've been only averaging about 10 trades/year since joining Goodreads.

We'll see how it goes. I can always adjust for next year. Assuming we do it again.

I updated the results of the S&L Challenge Survey in the main post to their final numbers. The survey is now closed.

I enclosed the survey results in spoiler tags in an attempt to keep that post more focused on this year's challenges.

I also posted the final results for our 2018 challenges: https://www.goodreads.com/topic/show/...

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

Sword: 46/35 (131% complete)
Laser: 23/20 (115% complete)

That means I added 2 sword, and 1 laser in December. That's kind of low for me, mostly due to doing multiple Nonfiction audiobooks. I still managed to exceed both challenges though, so I'm happy with my results.

Final 2018 Challenge Results:

(The number in parenthesis indicates the change since last month)

Sword Challenge
Total Participants: 498(+10)
Total Read: 8,529 (+1,298)
Average Books Read: 17 (+2)
Total Committed: 8,509(+48)
Average Books pledged: 17 (0)
Total Challenges Completed (Goodreads): 15 (+4) 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.
Total Challenges Completed (Survey): 225 (80% of Survey Sword Challenge participants; 45% of Sword Challenge Participants)

Laser Challenge
Total Participants: 528 (+13)
Total Read: 7,012 (+1,099)
Average Books Read: 12 (+2)
Total Committed: 8,043 (+176)
Average Books pledged: 15 (0)
Total Challenges Completed (Goodreads): 25 (+12) 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.
Total Challenges Completed (Survey): 213 (81% of Survey Laser Challenge participants; 40% of Laser Challenge Participants)


And that's a wrap! Our first ever S&L Challenges have ended.

There was a huge spike in books read in December. I suspect based on the fairly moderate gains to the number of participants this was caused by people fixing the book's read dates and/or challenge shelves.

The Sword challenge managed to exceed its final goal of 8509 by 20 books. The Laser challenge however fell about 1,000 books short of their goal of 8.043.

Neither challenge hit the 10k mark, but I feel like with increased promotion/participation for 2019, one of them might make it. Which will it be?


The Sword challenge added about 200 more books than the Laser challenge well commited about 1/3 as many books helping them to finish their goal.

Both challenges saw their biggest spike of new participants since the summer, likely due to my email blast. Hopefully regular updates will help overall participation.

The completion statistic remained unreliable to the last. Unfortunately since about only half of 2018 participants took my survey we'll never know the true number, but I'll assume the 80% completion rate for each is roughly correct given a pretty good sample size. I think that's pretty impressive.

Overall I think our first year of challenges was a rounding success. I pulled the 10k number out of the air, and we came a lot closer than I expected.

I hope everyone had a great year of reading in 2018., and don't forget to sign up for the 2019 challenges: https://www.goodreads.com/topic/show/...

I'm running behind on my reviews for December, but I just wrote up my review for Skyward - ★★★★½ - (My Review)

As well as my year as a whole: 2018 on Goodreads - ★★★★☆ - (My Review)

So we have a thread talking specifically about the 2018 Sword & Laser books, but we didn't have one talking about the year in books.

Someone got the good idea a few years ago to add a book series to review your year. Here's this year's: 2018 on Goodreads if you want to write/share your own review.

I just finished my review, which is a mix of my top books and a bunch of stats from my GoodReads Parser Application

Here's the short version:

Top 5 Reads of 2018
1) Red Sister - 5 Stars - (My Review)
2) Wrath of Empire - 5 Stars - (My Review)
3) The Infernal Battalion - 5 Stars - (My Review)
4) Age of War- 5 Stars - (My Review)
5) Blackflame - 5 Stars - (My Review)

Total Books: 101
Audio: 61
Rereads: 8

Average Rating: 3.83
Total 1 Count: 1 (0.99%)
Total 2 Count: 3 (2.97%)
Total 3 Count: 16 (15.84%)
Total 4 Count: 73 (72.28%)
Total 5 Count: 8 (7.92%)

If you're interested you can see my full review and additional stats here: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...

2019 Challenges are live. Apparently I could have posted them sooner and just didn't realize. Oops.

Well they are up now and I'll include links in the next monthly group message (had I realized, I would have made them BEFORE the December message. Live and Learn).

I'm also planning to put together a challenge FAQ at some point. So if you have questions or suggestions for stuff, please let me know and I'll see about adding it.

I've decided to add 2 new challenges for 2019, while keeping the Sword/Laser challenges the same as 2018. I'm keeping the new ones as "side" challenges, simply because there is enough interest to try them, but I already spend too much time on the monthly upkeep and I don't want to promise the same level of attention I give everything else.

Most relevant details will be going in the original post to keep things in one easy to find location, but I'll periodically post when I make updates to it so people following the thread are notified.

Anyways, here are the challenges. More to come after I've had some breakfast.

Main Challenges
Sword Challenge: 10,000 Fantasy Books
Laser Challenge: 10,000 Sci-Fi Books

Side Challenges
Graphic Novel Challenge: 25,000 Comics/Manga/Etc
Short Story Challenge: 10,000 Short Stories

This is the place to share all the latest SFF news you think your fellow members will be interested in for 2019.

New Year. New Books!

What's first on your list for 2019?

According to XKCD the world hit consensus 2019 at 1830PM UTC

Tassie Dave wrote: "80% in I still haven't got a grasp of the "magic" system. I've decided to just go with it and assume it just works."

That's basically how I treated it, and I ended up enjoying it a lot more once I did.

Joanna wrote: "The question is: is the goodreads algorithm smart enough to count only books read in a given year? ."

My understanding is that it is. People who aren't marking the read date on their books were finding they didn't get counted despite being added to their challenge shelf.

We shall see in the new year how it looks for me. I haven't had the same kind of issues others seem to have had. I do feel like Goodreads has made this a lot harder than it needs to be however.

Soo wrote: "I don't keep Challenge Shelves up after they're done."

Instead of doing yearly shelves, I made mine 20xx-Sword, 20xx-Laser. That way I can just keep using the shelves for next year's challenge, and also go back and see what counted towards last year's.

No idea what will happen to the challenge if more people do like you do and delete their shelves. It will probably skewer the numbers.

I plan to capture the final numbers tomorrow morning, so hopefully it won't be too bad. Of course I'm not super confident in the numbers as they stand anyways.

Jim Butcher posted a free Dresden Files short story on his website. Until it crashed. Then he re-hosted it on Google Drive:

http://www.jim-butcher.com/posts/2018...

Jim Butcher posted a free Dresden Files short story on his website. Until it crashed. Then he re-hosted it on Google Drive:

http://www.jim-butcher.com/posts/2018...