Action heroine annual reading challenge

[Werner]

Sounds good, E.G. Happy reading!

[Jon]

Imagine an older lady (could be a gent) who comes to the ER reception with her toothbrush and a bag of clothing.

I'm told that the gear is called a "positive suitcase sign" by ER docs, indicating the person wants admission to the hospital.

[E.G.]

Jon wrote: "Imagine an older lady (could be a gent) who comes to the ER reception with her toothbrush and a bag of clothing.

I'm told that the gear is called a "positive suitcase sign" by ER docs, indicating..."

Are we discussing turfing? Because that doesn't sound like an action heroine.

[Jon]

Okay, okay ... back to the topic.

I'm just beginning to read Alison Morton's INSURRECTIO, , which imagines an alternative history in which a fragment of the Roman Empire survives into the modern era, with female leadership and matrilineal inheritance. Definitely has an AH, Aurelia Mitela.

[E.G.]

Jon wrote: "Okay, okay ... back to the topic.

I'm just beginning to read Alison Morton's INSURRECTIO, , which imagines an alternative history in which a fragmen..."

I liked the Karina series, for the most part. But I had trouble with the final book.

[Werner]

Well, I've now upped my challenge goal from seven to ten books. I tend to set goals cautiously, based on what I think I can surely achieve; but given my current reading plans for the rest of the year, I figure the goal of ten should be attainable.

[Jon]

To change the cliché: You go boy!

[Werner]

Thanks, Jon! :-)

[Werner]

Around the end of July, I met my goal of ten books. But I wanted to set a higher goal of 12 afterwards, and discovered that once the goal is met, the program apparently won't let you revise it. So that's a technical detail that it's good to be aware of, if you weren't already!

[E.G.]

Thanks Werner! I'm at 5 out of 8, so I could end up increasing my challenge.

[Werner]

Sounds good, E. G.! As long as you increase it before you hit the target number of eight, the program won't give you any trouble.

[Jon]

You can do it and more, E.G.!

[Pamela]

Wow. Sorry but I kind of feel like we beat that challenge idea to death. At the beginning it was said lady had to be main character and not have much help if any. Then you added love interests that I totally left out because again I thought you wanted heroine to battle alone. I also disagree with your take on Eve Dallas and her death series. Roarke, who any female adores helps with a computer, or rides, or because he doesn't want her walking really late into an abandoned building. She does all the fighting. She gets her bell wrung a lot for the good of a victim. In fact she refers to the dead as hers. Do I now go back and add all the books that if the guy helped out and she did not risk her life, now counts. Please for future challenges set the rules once. You all went back and forth and added and then subtracted again. I'm dizzy.

[Mervi]

Do short story collections count?
I just read Women in Practical Armor which seems to qualify otherwise.
What about comics or graphic novels?

[Werner]

Pamela, thanks for bringing this to my attention. I apologize for the confusion! There are no "rules" per se, beyond the statement I made that, "Each person doing the challenge is his/her own judge of what to include." But I didn't post that statement until message 30; I certainly should have in message 1. I've now edited message 1 to include that sentence in bold text, slightly edited for greater clarity, and it will be included in message 1 about any further challenges. (Actually, if we have further challenges, we'll probably continue to use this thread to discuss them, since it doesn't have a date as such in the thread title.)

Any back-and-forth discussion on the thread above about how much help the heroine has, whether or not she has a love interest, etc., are strictly aimed at sharing our own practices of what we include, or thinking out loud and asking advice about what to include. There was never any intention of demanding that everybody conform to the same standard; the challenge is intended to be fun, and something we make personally our own, not an exercise in keeping somebody else's rules. For my part, I certainly think a lady who fights as part of a duo or a team is just as much an action heroine as any "lone gun" fighter; and unlike nuns, I don't think action heroines have to be required to swear an oath of lifelong celibacy. (Though it's also perfectly okay if an action heroine happens to actually BE a nun, like Sister Mary Magdalene in The Apocalypse Door, which is on my to-read shelf.... :-) )

I've gone over the thread above, and I didn't find any doubt expressed that Eve Dallas is an action heroine; all the references to her prowess that I read were favorable, though there was some criticism of the series on stylistic grounds (which relate to whether individuals want to read it, not to its qualifications for the challenge). Everything I"ve ever heard about Eve, in and out of this group, suggests that she's definitely one tough-as-nails lady.

Yes, Mervi, if a story collection collects action heroine stories, it absolutely qualifies for the challenge! Ditto for comics/graphic novels.

[Mervi]

Thanks for clearing things up, Werner!

[Werner]

No problem, Mervi!

[Pamela]

Thanks Werner for changing and clarifying. Your the best. I like to follow rules if there are such. I will know in the future. Thanks again. No longer confused. Lol.

[Werner]

Glad I could help, Pamela!

[E.G.]

So here's another curve. I picked up a 'romance' as a BOTM for another group. Very much enemies to friends with serious adult content. My conundrum? The heroine is beyond brilliant - gifted to the point of being able to hack any system on the planet. She only uses her powers for good, and when the black hat comes after her, she takes him out with Krav Maga (the Israeli martial arts discipline). She also risks her life to defend a 13 year old and takes a bullet while defeating the black hat.

The book:

Action heroine? Because 1/2 the book is her developing relationship with the hero (served in the Marines) and he's pretty tough, too.

[Werner]

E. G., I personally think that any female lead in a book who can lick an opponent in Krav Maga, and who fights to defend a kid at the risk of her life (taking a bullet), is an action heroine. What percentage of the book actually involves action scenes wouldn't, to me, be the decisive question for that classification. Of course, it's your challenge, your shelf, and your call --this is just my take on it!

[Werner]

I'm not sure why, when you click on the Action Heroines Yearly Reading Challenge feature (https://www.goodreads.com/challenges/... ), the program says "Total challenges completed: 0." According to the stats on the same page, four of us have already completed our 2016 challenge goals.

[E.G.]

Werner wrote: "I'm not sure why, when you click on the Action Heroines Yearly Reading Challenge feature (https://www.goodreads.com/challenges/... ), the program says "Total c..."

I went to my entry and hit update (didn't change anything) and save. Now we have '1' completed.

[Werner]

Thanks for the tip, E.G.! I did the same just now, and we're now credited with two completed challenges.

[Angela]

The end of this competition is just over a month away! I had a lot of fun reading books in this vein. Will we continue with another challenge next year?

[Werner]

I've enjoyed it too, Angela --though I've never really thought of it as a competition, just an an incentive (or good excuse! :-) ) to read more action heroine fiction.

Personally, I wouldn't be averse to doing the challenge again next year, if other members in the group want to. What do y'all think? Our tech-savvy co-mod, Danielle, set up the challenge this time, and I'm sure she wouldn't mind doing it again for 2017.

[E.G.]

I'd do it again. I'll even up my target since I'll be starting at the beginning of the year.

[Mervi]

I enjoyed the challenge and I'm interested in doing it again.

I thought I'd end up reading more books with action heroines but it turned out that they aren't that common. I read around 70 books which I didn't know if they had action heroines or not, and only three ended up having such a heroine as the main character. But several had an action heroine as a secondary character.

[E.G.]

Mervi wrote: "I enjoyed the challenge and I'm interested in doing it again.

I thought I'd end up reading more books with action heroines but it turned out that they aren't that common. I read around 70 books wh..."

I read a lot of scifi and paranormal/urban fantasy. Those genres tend to have more action heroines than contemporary or historical novels.

[Werner]

E.G. wrote: "I read a lot of scifi and paranormal/urban fantasy. Those genres tend to have more action heroines than contemporary or historical novels. *

True, E.G., although contemporary detective, espionage and action adventure fiction have a lot more action-oriented heroines than they used to. Not all of those books are necessarily readily available in Finland, though.

It sounds to me like there's enough to interest to do a challenge next year! I'll see that it gets set up when the time comes.

[Mervi]

E.G. wrote: "I read a lot of scifi and paranormal/urban fantasy. Those genres tend to have more action heroines than contemporary or historical novels."

I've noticed that but unfortunately for my apparently nearly unique reading tastes, I don't care for courtship romances. It seems that 99,99% of modern heroines come with an obligatory courtship romance attached. Or (shudder) a love triangle.
(To be fair, I have enjoyed a few love triangles but those can be counted with the fingers of one hand, so the fault is clearly in my strange tastes.)

Also, I'd love to read about a heroine in a loving, stable relationship but those seem to be even more rare than the women without a courtship romance.

One of the reasons I love Modesty Blaise books: the lover or romance interest never takes over the book and if he obnoxious, I can pretty safely just ignore him and enjoy the rest of the book.

[E.G.]

Mervi wrote: "E.G. wrote: "I read a lot of scifi and paranormal/urban fantasy. Those genres tend to have more action heroines than contemporary or historical novels."

I've noticed that but unfortunately for my ..."

Have you tried JD Robb's 'In Death Series'? Each novel is a standalone murder mystery with a stable and consistent romance subplot. And Roarke is definitely not obnoxious.

J.D. Robb

[Werner]

Mervi, The Deed of Paksenarrion trilogy has no romantic element at all; the action heroine there would probably be described as asexual. So that's also possibly something you'd like. On Basilisk Station, Coral Hare: Atomic Agent (by our own Clive Lee), All Souls by group member Karin Kaufman, the short story collection The Pulptress, the Xena spin-off books, and K. W. Jeter's Kim Oh series also present a heroine without romantic entanglements. The heroine of Operation Angelica (by another of our members, Juliene Lloyd) has lost her fiance when the book opens, and doesn't acquire any new romantic interest in that book.

I can't think of any books I've actually read myself which depict an action heroine who's married or in a stable relationship at the start of the book --though I'd also love to read about one! I'll have to keep J. D. Robb's In Death series in mind.

[Mervi]

Thanks for the recommendations!

[Werner]

No problem, Mervi! Hope you find something in that batch that you like.

[Werner]

So far, of nine people taking part in the challenge this year, six have completed their self-assigned goal. Congratulations to those who have! If you haven't yet, you still have almost three weeks to do so, or at least to make some progress with it. And if you don't complete your goal --well. as my middle daughter often says about losing in a game, "There are no consequences!" :-)

[Werner]

Well, in a few hours, the 2016 challenge will be history As a group, we've more than met our group goal (which was the sum total of all of the individual goals: we'd set the goal of reading 207 books between us, and actually read 222. Congratulations to everyone who helped make this possible by taking part! Personally, I had fun with this, and hope everyone else who participated did too.

I'm looking forward to doing this again in 2017! I've already got the challenge set up, at this link: https://www.goodreads.com/challenges/... . However, I don't expect to set as high an initial goal as I did last time; I'll start more modestly, with four.

[E.G.]

I'm in. I planned 8 and read 11, so I'm going with 12.

[Werner]

And I see that Mervi's also signed up, with a goal of 10. Good for you, ladies!

I've just signed up, with my goal set at four. When we first talked about doing a second challenge, I'd actually hoped to set a higher goal, of at least eight. But subsequent reading commitments, and travel plans (we're planning a second trip to Australia this summer, following the one we took in 2007; I don't expect to read a lot there, and I need to take along a very thick book for the plane flights, a lot thicker than the typical action heroine read) have played havoc with that intention. Of course, if I see that I can squeeze in some more, I'll try to increase my quota before I fill it!

[Mervi]

Thanks for setting up the challenge again! I'm hoping that I'll be able to read at least 10 action heroine books this year. I'll be starting with a couple of Xena comics.

[Justin]

Werner,

I hope you and the others don't mind me suggesting my own book, but The Policewoman is a 480-page book, perfect for your extra-long flight.

Justin

[Werner]

No, Justin, I don't mind; that's actually a good suggestion. However, I already have 407 books on my to-read shelf (I fought hard to keep the total below 400, but you can see how that battle went!), so I'm not anxious to add any more, unless they actually appear to be absolute must-reads. And I already have a 572-page book (though not in our group's area of interest) by one of my Goodreads friends, which I've been waiting and promising to read for several years, in mind for the trip. But thanks for the idea!

[Justin]

Ok then Werner, have fun in Australia!

For the others, if you need an action heroine for the challenge, feel free to PM me for an epub of The Policewoman.

Justin

[Tom]

I know this will be seen as self-promotion, but Staff Sergeant Belinda Watt kills two powerful men by emasculation AND enters into a stable marriage with another (male) warrior.

[Werner]

Um, Tom, it's nice to know that the lady can definitely handle the bad element very capably, and we all wish her all the best in her marriage; but maybe fans would be more apt to look for that information on a thread devoted to the book in the Author's folder, rather than here on the challenge thread? To start one, go to this link: https://www.goodreads.com/topic/group... , and then click "new topic," the faint, tiny link just to the left of the group logo, as you face the screen. Once you do that, you're in business, and it's self-explanatory from there.

[Tom]

Thanks, I'll do it.

[Werner]

Just as an update on last year's challenge, we actually had seven people who met their challenge goal. Pamela read many more books than her goal, but wasn't able to be online much lately to update her total (long story). But she deserves the credit for her successful completion of the challenge, nonetheless!

[Danielle The Book Huntress]

Congratulations to everyone who participated. Let's see how we do this year!

[Werner]

Well, I've finished two different action heroine books today! So I've just updated my goal to six. I've already made the original goal of four (or will have once I enter them), so I think the higher total should be do-able.

[Mervi]

I've now read 14 stories with action heroines so I'm going to increase my goal to 20. Most of them are comic books, thanks to Marvel Unlimited. I've especially enjoyed Mockingbird who is a spy in addition to a superhero, Captain Marvel's newest comic which is space opera, A-Team which stars Captain Marvel, She-Hulk, Dazzler, and a couple of other Marvel heroines, and Spider-Gwen which is set in an alternate universe where Gwen Stacy became Spider-Woman instead of Peter Parker becoming Spider-Man.