Nothing But Reading Challenges discussion
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Pewter Blue
I like it so far, Riya. It's been a few days since I last read it so I don't really remember much about it at the moment, heh. I can see/feel a difference from Sarah Dessen's usual formula, too.Good job, Mary!
ilovebakedgoods (Teresa) wrote: "I like it so far, Riya. It's been a few days since I last read it so I don't really remember much about it at the moment, heh. I can see/feel a difference from Sarah Dessen's usual formula, too.G..."
Well good to know! You'll definitely have to tell me what you think when you do finish then!
Well I spent the day, all day, in the sun at the water with toddlers. I am exhausted, and I work my 12 hour shift tomorrow so no I have not got any reading done. Hopefully I will have 2 or 3 books done for next week. Still working on my three big books that are taking me forever.
Mod
Announcement:
With regards to “Cutthroat Competitor Cupcakes,” 350,000 words = 1,400 pages.
However, keep in mind that for some of the longer books they squeeze more words on per page. We go by word count first, when we can find it, then refer to WorldCat.
Sooooo... that is why sometimes you will see an 800 or 900 page book count as a “Cutthroat Competitor.”
Also, your Captain has a link to a list of approved books, to which we will continue to add. Thus far they are:An American Tragedy
Atlas Shrugged)
A Breath of Snow and Ashes
The Civil War, Vol. 1: Fort Sumter to Perryville
The Count of Monte Cristo
A Dance With Dragons
The Fiery Cross
A Storm of Swords
It
Les Misérables
Sacajawea
Voyager
The Wise Man's Fear
sent in puzzles 135, 136 & 137.Head hurts from 137, so I'll do 138 later unless someone else gets to it first, which if you recognize the photo, you might wanna do it. I don't do romances, and have NO idea what it is. :)
I'm working on the Buddy Reads Crossword puzzle. The hard one with 247 triangles.
Almost done with 139. Good thing time doesn't count.eta: finished and submitting 139. That was freaking hard.
I have no idea how to do #140. None.Taking a look at 138. Ugh. another encrypted thing. I have no idea how to this. If the picture is a clue then I think it's Pride & Prejudice. I am not a Jane Austin fan and I have no idea where to begin solving it.
Mod
Moderators of Nothing but Reading Challenges (All the Mods) wrote: " Announcement:
With regards to “Cutthroat Competitor Cupcakes,” 350,000 words = 1,400 pages.
However, keep in mind that for some of the longer books they squeeze more words on per page. ..."
A Suitable Boy?
Sent #138 & #140.I love the encrypted ones, so I have no problem doing them. I don't have to know what it comes from to do them. In fact, I didn't know that was P&P without you saying so Mary.
Most of the tricks have been said in the other thread. For me, I look for 1 letter words first, those will either be I or A. I'll look for contractions because those will typically be T or S. Once I find what encrypted word is THE, it's usually easy going from there. :)
Finished another audiobook today but I'm too tired to list where it fits in the September challenge and will do that tomorrow. I just came back from a night out bowling with some friends. It was a 30min drive and so I was able to finish the audio in the car. Did a lot of housework today while listening earlier. 
. Will try to finish something tomorrow to get myself caught up.
Took a break from my big reads and read a book in a day:)
Update is done and we are back down to 6th place. Mango Tango is only ahead of us because they have 6 more bonus points. They actually have 3 books less then us read. The gap between us and 4th place Forest Green is bigger. They have quite a bit less bonus points but they're book total is 33 more. Anyone way over or under 42% might want to consider adjusting their goal. Unless they are expecting a lot more or less reading time that will have them evening out a bit. If you are only a bit over or under then I wouldn't worry about it.
That stinks we're down again. :( I know Forest is good, my BFF is over there and she reads even more than me. :)I'm at 48%, but my reading is going to go WAY down here in 2 days. I'll hit my 19 this month, but I won't be doing much after that for a while.
I'm at 48% as well, and if next weekend I'm still 5 books or more ahead of schedule, I might up my goal and read some more. I've been pretty constant at this pace now, and I know I have some long weekends from school coming up where I'll be reading more! For now I'll just stick with my goal, but next week I'll check how it's going :)Hopefully we can lessen Forest Green's lead this week!!!
I'm tempted to reduce mine. Right now I'm at 42% which is supposed to be on target but it says I'm one book behind. Let me see how many books I am behind for the September Challenge. I can't believe we're halfway through the month already.
I know! This month has gone by so fast. I can't even believe it.
@ Mary - I am at 58% - nine books ahead - should I change my goal? 55 to 60 books?
Finished White Lies, very fast reading. I need to return and renew The Camel Club because it's almost overdue! Will try to read more of the Sarah Dessen book before it's due.
I would say give it to the end of the month and if you are still several books ahead then maybe upping it a little would be a good idea. 9 books isn't a huge amount.
I wouldn't stress over much about reducing goals, as I don't think it's going to have a huge impact on the team either way. The only advantage to people moving goals down would be to pick up extra players. Let's say we had a teammate who had a goal of 300 books and had only read 75 or 25% of their goal. Adjusting their goal to where they are on track would put them around a goal of 180 and would bring our overall team goal down 120. We could them potentially get an additional player to help fill in that 120.
If I adjust the goals of our team members who are currently behind, it only lowers our team goal to 1314 which only leaves us with 36 books. We would have to hope for a new player with a low goal.
There are also several teams asking for replacement players and Banana Mania is still forming (their current goal is just over 900). As a team we are at 55% of the goal, so the likely hood of us getting a new member to pick up that slack is pretty slim.
As far as raising goals, I don't think any of us are far ahead enough to be concerned. Moonstone is at 65% as a team, so I think anything under that should be fair game. ;)
I think we have a player over 70% but she's been quiet lately and her % might start going down due to real life. I managed to read a short book this afternoon but I'm still behind.
I brought up the goal issue because if someone is really behind and thinks they may not be able to get their September goal in then their goal needs to be reduced by the 20th. We're doing well with it so far but the month is already half-over and no changes can be made after the 20th. Of course this only pertains to those doing the September challenge.
Mary: Harry Dresden's Love Slave wrote: "I brought up the goal issue because if someone is really behind and thinks they may not be able to get their September goal in then their goal needs to be reduced by the 20th."I'm not sure if it works that way. I know that when the mods adjusted the September goals for readers at 75%+ it was done based on a certain Sunday Update and wasn't going to change if their percent went over or under 75% during the month. We might be stuck at our September goals even if our challenge goals changes. I will check with the mods.
Mod
edited my post because I don't want to come off too negative. Just feeling a little over mini-challenges for BAP. Looks like the October challenge will not just be a read-a-thon. There'll be a read-a-thon and a treasure hunt and the first team to finish each one is the only one to get bonus points. Which makes me wonder if anyone has a shot beside the top couple teams. But I don't have all the details yet. They just put up preliminary info in the captain's thread.
At this point in the game, I don't think we have a shot at winning anyway as we are too far behind. But I am hoping we can crack the top 4. Which will be awesome considering we were one of the later teams to be made and have had a couple of people go.
It is Sonia's challenge to explain, so I don't want to let too much out of the bag, but I think you'll be happy with the options, Mary: HDLS.
Well, all. Within an hour or two, I'm going to be offline for today, Wed and Thurs. I will pop on, when I finish a book, but I think IF I get one done it'll only be one in the next 3 days. I've completed 17 of my 19, so I'm on track where I wanted to be. I'll finish at LEAST my two more, if not a few more than that, but after Friday when my hubby goes back to work.
Be good, and don't miss me toooooooo much!! :)
sent in 141 and 143 spot the difference puzzles. Not sure if these are ones we can do more than once. Going to see if I can do the red duplicate cover ones: 144? I'm at work but it's quiet at the moment. That could change but let me see if I can.
I like the jigsaw puzzle ones and can do the latest one tonight after my TOPS meeting if no one else has gotten to it yet. I don't want to attempt it at work.
Spot the differences need to only be done by one person, Mary: HDLS, however, they are fun to do, so why not repeat them?That #144 is a monster. Good luck.
I am almost done with 144. I just need to compose my email but I have to leave work now and take my car to the shop and then go to my weigh-in. So no one needs to do that one unless they really want to or we can get credit for more than one. My eyes hurt from looking at those covers.
Ugh I give up on 144. I spent a lot of time going through those covers and then I come home to double check some counts and come up with different numbers. I could have read a short book in the time I spent on it today.
I got the jigsaw part of 142 done if anyone else is good at sliders and can do that part then we get that cupcake. My daughter is a master at sliders and she gave up on that one. I suck at them.If I'm reading the spreadsheet right, we just need 142 and 144. I might try 144 again tomorrow. Maybe. I want to read a few minutes and go to bed now.
Good Morning. Was able to print out the covers for #144 so tackling that again. Now at least, when I get interrupted, I can see where I left off.
Mary: Harry Dresden's Love Slave wrote: "I got the jigsaw part of 142 done if anyone else is good at sliders and can do that part then we get that cupcake. My daughter is a master at sliders and she gave up on that one. I suck at them...."
Hi Mary I just did the slider of #142 and posted it.
Since my last post, I finished
and
. Really enjoyed White Lies and found it to be a very fast read. I was kind of annoyed by some characters and their actions in The MOon and More but I have too much of a headache to do a semi-proper review today.I have a few books that are due soon and have zero renewals left so I need to figure out which ones to get started and returned. I've got a couple of YA books, a couple of thrillers, plus a couple that I think are going to require me to not have a headache when I start them. I think for now I'm just going to update all of the challenges I'm in this year and worry about a new book to read later.
I'm going to do the Chop to Male doublet right now. I love these. Book cover one is coming along. I think. If anyone is really good at the book cover one and wants to do it, feel free to do so.
Ok stumped on the Hamlet quote because what I looked up as the correct answer doesn't fit with the word that fits into the clue above it, bestow love. Posting because as soon as I do, I usually figure it out.
Mary - thank you for doing all these puzzles.
I like the word and jigsaw puzzles. Well except for the encryption ones. I figured out the Shakespeare one. Further research shows that there's 2 ways to say the quote. Not being a Shakespeare fan, can't really say which one is right and don't really care.
So going to email 145 in right now.
I'm starting to think audiobooks have ruined my ability to read books. :( I've become accustomed to doing thoughtless tasks while listening to an audiobook and now I'm finding it difficult to sit down and read without my mind wondering. Yikes!
That happens to me sometimes. Luckily I much prefer romances in print so that keeps me from going totally audio. I never thought I'd prefer ebooks to print but I'm starting to get that way. I'm just to cheap to buy ebooks.
Hey guys. We passed 700 books this week and we're at 710 now! Way to go.
Starting
now. Would be a super quick read except if I were to follow the BR schedule it is only 50 pages a day. Don't know if that is going to happen.
I started Perdido Street Station on audio last night. Has anyone read this? I'm only about 2 hours (5 chapters) in, but I'm not sure I'm going to make it through. I've listened to the narrator before and loved him, but he's just not resonating for me in this one. It's also excessively descriptive. I'm 5 chapters in and I've learned more than I ever need to know about how dirty the setting is. :s
Nothing But Reading Challenges
Books mentioned in this topic
The Graveyard Book (other topics)The Golem and the Jinni (other topics)
Be Still My Heart (other topics)
Winter Rose (other topics)
As They Slip Away (other topics)
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Authors mentioned in this topic
Lexi Blake (other topics)Lexi Blake (other topics)
Patrick Ness (other topics)
Neil Gaiman (other topics)
Vikram Seth (other topics)
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Anyways, I just finished one book today and am about to start 2 more!