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Great topic, and definitely great timing for it. I've found over the past couple of years that the prompts I enjoy most come down to how much I enjoyed the book I picked, mixed with how easy it was to find a good option. My best of this year (either that I've read, or that I'm most looking forward to) have been:
- An epistolary fiction
- A book set in a fictional location
- A book with at least two perspectives
- A title that doesn't contain the letter E
- A magical realism novel
- A book with a one-word title
- A novel inspired by a work of classic literature
- A book with a long title
My least favourite/most annoying to fulfill were:
- A Penguin modern classic (Not many options that interested me)
- A book you've owned for a while but haven't gotten around to reading (I have a ton of books I got for free/cheap from library booksales and donations, but not all of them are books I'm very anxious to read any time soon)
- A book recommended by one of your favourite authors (I was unlucky and this prompt came up in two of my challenges. It's a great idea, but I found it hard to fulfill)
- A book being released as a movie this year (Done this before, and not many options that interested me)
For me all the ones that forced me to read fantasy or mythical books were the worst. Really don't like those kinds of books. So no matter how beloved an author or book is by people that like the genre it's not going to be for me! I also didn't enjoy my classic penguin book either! So boring. Hope there are less books that pigeon hole me in fantasy/adventure/sci-fi categories next year. ;)
Interesting topic My favourite ones have been those that 'make' me discover books I wouldn't have otherwise - it's why I do challenges rather than just mood read. So
From someone else's shelf : my brother in law leant me The Revenant - and we had a book conversation for the first time in the almost 30 years I've known him.
Book published in 2017: I know this ones bores a lot of people but for me - stuck as I was reading dead authors - this is an opportunity to try something, literally, new. The book I read My Sister and Other Liars referred to events that happened in 2016 so it felt very current.
600 pages plus : I used to have less time to read. So ironically I would choose long books because I would be binge reading them on holiday and I didn't want to have to take lots of books. Now I have more time to read I usually read shorter books so I can get through more of them. Then I read 11.22.63 in 4 days and I don't feel I need to choose books by length anymore.
My least favourite have been those difficult to find books that I like the look of. So
Goodreads 100 best YA : I'm not averse to YA books, I have an 18 year old daughter and have really enjoyed some of the YA books she reads, such as The Hunger Games. But I found that the only books on the list that I liked I'd already read, and I don't repeat read. I have only 3 books left to read for the challenge, this is one of them. I will probably read The Golden Compass as its a YA book I've never read, but I don't think it's in the top 100 on that list.
Hugo Award Winner: I don't read Sci Fi much, so this was a tricky one. I read Story of Your Life after I saw the film based on it. I'm glad to have read it though.
Time Travel : how I wished I haven't already read The Time Traveler's Wife in 2016! Finally settled on Slaughterhouse-Five which I'm glad to tick off because it's a classic.
The other ones I find difficult are the ones like 'unreliable narrator' which potentially involve knowing 'spoilers' before you start reading.
And 'banned book' - basically if you look hard enough most books have been banned at some time, somewhere, which as a book lover I find quite depressing!
The one I've had the hardest time with is read a book that was made into a movie in 2017. I've either read all the books already, or they're later on in series than where I'm at and I doubt I'll get so far. Also, more books seem to be getting made into TV shows these days. One I was planning on re-reading had the movie pushed into 2018! (Ready Player One) I'm already planning on wild carding this topic, but using a book made into a movie in any year.
Favorites:-An epistolary fiction
- A book set in a fictional location
- A book with at least two perspectives
- A magical realism novel
-A book with a chilling atmosphere (scary, unsettling, cold)
- A historical fiction
Least Favorite
-A book being released as a movie in 2017 - found this difficult because of the limited options
-A book where one of the main characters is royalty - just not my thing
-A dual-time line novel - found it difficult to locate a book that interested me
Generally, I liked having prompts that led me to genres I might not normally read.
Great question JackieFavs:
Titles without an E Just hard enuf to make me look at my book list but still a lot of flexibility
Chilling Atmosphere and Animal on the Cover for the same reason
Least Fav:
A book based on a myth, royalty and Hugo winners. I had to add books to my list and that's the opposite of what I want to do
Hm, favorites would have to be:- A book with illustrations
- A book published outside the 4 major publishing houses (love my self-published authors!)
- A book from a sub-genre of your favorite genre
- A book with a long title (5+ words, excluding subtitle)
- An epistolary fiction
Least favorites:
- A book being released as a movie in 2017 ( I had read most of them, and the others I wasn't really interested in)
- A recommendation from "What Should I Read Next" (I loved the concept in the beginning but in use, I had a really hard time finding a book to read for this. Most of my books brought up no recommendations or recommendations for books that I have already read. Oh well.)
I also don't enjoy very very vague topics. But that's just me I guess. Some people love them.
I also loved What Should I Read Next at first, but I pretty quickly learned you could steer it in the direction of books you wanted to read anyway. Sometimes it would give me books that were on my TBR but I wasn't in the mood for, but if I just kept inputting different options, it gave me something I wanted. Great concept, but I think almost any book can show up as a recommendation at some point so it was a bit too broad for me.
Ok for favourites were ::*A book with at least 2 perspectives (multiple points of view)
*A really long book (600+ pages)
*A book by an author you haven't read before
*A book published outside the 4 major publishing houses
*A book set in or by an author from the Southern Hemisphere - As I'm from Australia!
The worst would be the ones I haven't decided on books to read for the categories yet, so:
*A category from another challenge - a bit vague - could find anything to fit
*An adventure book
*A recommendation from "What Should I Read Next" (link)
*A Penguin Modern Classic - any edition
*A book from someone else's bookshelf
Hi All, I just want to say how fab this group has been. How I have loved reading all of yours posts, getting great ideas on what books to read next for my topic. I've read 30 out of 52 so far! It has made me read books I wouldn't normally and as such I've found great new authors and even genres! Thanks again will definitely be doing the 2018 Challenge.
Being my first year I have loved most of the categories. I'm also not a picky reader so different genres don't bother me but probably my least favorite category would be magical realism (still putting off but oddly I already had the book that fit the prompt). I was intimidated by the Hugo Award Winner so I picked a short story but I wish I just would've read Flowers for Algernon. After I read the short story I wasn't as intimidated. I sort of want to do a do over for the category. I guess the book in the middle of my TBR list wasn't a favorite. I guess there is a reason it's in the middle.The ones that were interesting was an epistolary fiction, a collection and a book with illustrations.
I found most prompts pretty easy to fill.
I've loved participating in this challenge and I might end up doubling what I read last year.
Mod
Best: I liked "no e in the title", "a recommendation from an author you like", and the title length prompts because of the scavenger-hunt aspect. I'm looking forward to a couple of the prompts I have left for the same reason. Random choice I think will be fun - I'm going to have google randomly generate a number for me and I either have to read the #th book on my TBR or drop said book from my shelves and try again.
Worst: These are mostly prompts I haven't done yet, so perhaps I'm being unfair, but they don't appeal to me. The 2017 movie book prompt was so limiting; I ended up finding a book I liked, but the movie was a pretty limited release that I didn't even get to see so maybe a bit of a stretch. The Penguin Modern Classic was boring and again, so limited. On the other hand, I could do without "category from another challenge" and "past suggestion that didn't win" because they're too open. It'd be harder to find a book that *didn't* fit those prompts.
Generally I like prompts that have enough options that you can find a book that fits that is also still a type of book that you enjoy, but prompts shouldn't be so open that you can just free-read the entire year. After all, this isn't merely a challenge about reading a certain minimum number of books per year. It's the fun of the hunt that appeals to me.
I love your idea for the random prompt. I love the read it or drop it option.
Like -- No letter E I made this harder for myself by finding the longest E-less title on my tbr list It's Kind of a Funny Story and reading that.
I keep looking to see if anyone comes up with a longer title. The longest title I've so far is seven words (Down and Out in Paris and London).
- Epistolary Not just because I nominated it but because I enjoy this type of book.
Not so fond of -
- Magical realism Not a bad prompt but just a genre I'm not a fan of.
- Published outside the 4 major publishing houses I've not completed this prompt yet but the hunt is irritating me somewhat.
I went for the longest E-less title I could find too, to make it harder - A Short History of Tractors in Ukrainian. I keep looking at it, expecting an E to sneak in somehow. I like the prompts that are a puzzle to fill, especially relating to titles, covers, or specific things about a character or author. I don't mind the ones that push me to try new stuff (such as historical fiction) so long as there aren't too many that are similar in the same year.
Not a fan of the ones that are so open that I could read anything for them. I also dislike the GR Choice awards and a book published in the current year. I get most of my books second hand, with a few when Amazon put the kindle version on special offer, so recent stuff can be a challenge for me.
Mod
I figure it should help me cut down the tbr list a bit!
I keep noticing whether or not books have Es in the title now! Only 9 of the 108 books I've read so far this year don't have an E in the title.
I had a book put aside for ages for the 'No E in the title'. I even read it. Said to my daughter that I just read it for the challenge. " Mum, there is an E in that..."
Woops!
Lesson of the Day: Always screen letter based prompt picks past an adolescent.
The prompts I liked most were the ones that let me read books I was already interested in. I also liked the ones that were sorta vague, giving me more freedom to pick. The prompts I was less happy with were mostly ones that I have to read non fiction books for.Some of my favorites were:
A book with at least 2 perspectives (multiple points of view)
A dual-timeline novel
A book based on a myth
A book with illustrations
A book from a sub-genre of your favorite genre
Ones I'm not especially fond of:
A historical fiction
A book recommended by one of your favorite authors
A book about a famous historical figure
A non-fiction
A Penguin Modern Classic - any edition
I mainly like prompts that are specific enough that not any book works but broad enough that I have choices on what book to read.I liked these prompts best:
4. A title that doesn't contain the letter "E": this was a fun task that had limit but was still open to many books. I'm surprised that I have read a few books that would work for this task. It looks like several of you also liked this one.
18. A really long book (600+ pages): I like to read long books and sometimes with challenges, I don't read my favorite types of books because I'm trying to read other books for different tasks.
52. A book set in a fictional location: Fantasy is my favorite genre so I could read a book from that genre and know it fit somewhere.
Promps I don't like so much:
6. A book being released as a movie in 2017:I don't like when I'm given a very small selection of books and I have to read from that list. I also find it confusing because some books to movie were scheduled to release this year but then the release date gotten changed. Plus, this task is here and on the PopSugar challenge which means two books for me and I have not read one yet.
46. A time travel novel: I really never enjoy time travel books.
Jillian wrote: "I mainly like prompts that are specific enough that not any book works but broad enough that I have choices on what book to read.I liked these prompts best:
4. A title that doesn't contain the le..."
Jillian, have you read aA Monster Calls? It's pretty short but powerful and the movie's good too
It's funny how many people have commented that they don't like the movie topic, yet it's one of the prompts that got automatically voted in. I personally find it far too limiting, as you're really restricted to a very small and specific list.As this is my third year doing challenges (not only here, but Popsugar, BookRiot, and now a bunch of others), I have found that although I don't mind a few vague topics (I don't think 52 super specific ones would be much fun), I really enjoy those with a bit of a scavenger hunt aspect to them.
This is my first year as part of this group and I have enjoyed trying to find books that match the weekly topics. I agree with many of the posts who mention they enjoy the scavenger hunt that goes with finding a book to match the topic. Searching to find a book has led to a huge increase in my 'to be read' list as I end up finding a number of books that I think would interest me. The topics I most enjoyed this year so far have been:
A book with a long title; A book written or set in Scandinavian country; Historical Fiction book; and one word title
Not so popular: Penguin Modern Classic;famous historical fiction; book recommended by author I enjoy.
I have noted that the books I had to search harder for to fulfill the prompts I tended to enjoy the least, yet searching for them was really interesting. I will have to do a better job of searching for the 2018 list. I have about 5 books left for the challenge this year and am excited to be part of putting together next years challenge.
Perri wrote: "Jillian wrote: "I mainly like prompts that are specific enough that not any book works but broad enough that I have choices on what book to read.I liked these prompts best:
4. A title that doesn'..."
Thanks, I will look at that one. I have read some of Patrick Ness's other books and a short book to fill that task sounds good.
It's my first year doing the challenge and overall I'm finding it very fun and enjoyed most of the prompts. I will say in general I like the prompts that require more strategy or searching, as opposed to more generic prompts; that being said, what I end up liking is in no way related to specific versus generic prompt. I like that this challenge allows me to read a little outside my comfort zone and discover new ideas/authors/titles, but have flexibility to make it harder or easier depending on the month.FAVORITES
4. A title that doesn't contain the letter "E"
7. A book with an animal on the cover or in the title
12. A book based on a myth
18. A really long book (600+ pages)
32. A book with a long title (5+ words, excluding subtitle)
42. A best book of the 21st century (so far)
45. A book with a one-word title
LEAST FAVORITE
1. A book from the Goodreads Choice Awards 2016
30. A book from Goodreads Top 100 YA Books
Jillian, I absolutely loved A Monster Calls. My advice, from my own personal experience, block out a couple of hours alone with a box of tissues. I literally could not put it down and holy moly did I ugly, snotty cry. It's a wonderful book. I almost want to read it again, and I only read it this year.
Favorites:A title that doesn't contain the letter "E": I was initially skeptical (and I think I actually originally voted against this one), but once I started looking for a book I had a lot of fun!
A book in the middle of your TBR list: This forced me to choose something that had been sitting on my list for a while. I liked this better than last year's 16th on your TBR (that was way too limiting)
Books set in Scandinavia and the Southern Hemisphere: Since the majority of books published here in the US are written by white Americans or Britons, these categories were nice ones to discover authors from new backgrounds.
Least Favorites
A category from another challenge and A past suggestion that didn't win: To me, these were equivalent to Reader's Choice prompts, which I have no problem with, but I think we should just call them what they are.
A book based on a myth: Ironically, I think I voted for this one last year, but the books that could be read were just too limited.
A book from the top 100 YA: This category was very limiting for me. There were a lot of books that I'd already read and a lot that I had no interest in. Also, almost all of them were series books.
Book recommended by an author: I've had a lot of trouble with this. I might used my wildcard here.
Kelly wrote: "For me all the ones that forced me to read fantasy or mythical books were the worst. Really don't like those kinds of books. So no matter how beloved an author or book is by people that like the ge..."Kelly, I don't like either of these prompts typically but I did enjoy Ready Player One for the fantasy one and a Norwegian detective novel called The Killing Forest by Sara Blaedel. It just happens to have a group that does rituals based on Norse mythology if this helps. The book itself is a crime mystery if you like those kinds of books.
For a book based on Royalty that some people found hard to fill, I happened to read Land of stories with my kids, which has a "main" character as royalty.
I personally like a good mix of broader and more specific topics, so I can use up my tbr but would have to hunt for a few that would challenge me. I must say this year most prompts were really broad and I have been just slotting my tbr, often after I read the book.I liked "the title without E" as well, and I still have not read one for it - I did read e-less titles but used them for other prompts. I also liked the famous historical figure (my only suggestion that made it :)) because I like to read history and I have been neglecting it. This gave me an excuse to get back to it.
I will join the chorus for "movie" as least favorite. No appealing choices. If TV is included, maybe (Handmaid's Tale re-read, anyone?), but I still don't know if I fill this. Do we still have a wildcard option?
I don't really understand why "main character is royalty" is a hard one. Royals are in every genre. Many fairy tales have princes/princesses, history books, plenty of YA, romance, fantasy. King Arthur legends. Even sci-fi: Princess Leia is in Star Wars.
If you are really stuck, you can't go wrong with The Princess Bride.
Marie, I used to also have an objection for current year titles, but once I looked into some new books, I realized I do like to read a few of the latest - especially nonfiction. With fiction there could be so much hype that I prefer to wait for reader reviews, also there are so many good older books. But nonfiction (especially science) is best if it includes the latest research. Oh, and I get them from the library!
Worst- A NYT bestseller - I generally avoid bestseller lists. Just because everyone is reading it does not make it a good book.
- A book that is being made into a movie in 2017- I have read most of those books already, and too recently to want to reread them.
- the open topics that I could slot in just any old book.
Best
A book from GR 2016 choice awards- so many categories and books to chose from. It was easy to find one at my library too.
A book with a chilling atmosphere- so many possible ways to interpret this and so fun finding out how others did so.
A book written by two authors- I like searching for books to fill prompts and I had to do some research to fill this one.
A book set in Scandinavia - this started me on another challenge to read books from around the world. It opened me up to new authors which is always fun.
Mod
I'm with you on that. I've been saving Daughter of Empire: My Life as a Mountbatten for this as I've heard its good, but I've also read a bunch of the Royal Spyness books which are fun mysteries and would fit, some WWI history books that of course mention royals and even the Hamilton script which has King George.
I agree with the movie prompt- not much selection! I was thinking of cheating a bit and doing a tv show but am now thinking I'll do Murder on the Orient Express as its a quick read.
I have a new job that is taking 60 hours a week and sending me home exhausted and right to bed, so I'm looking for books that will hold my interest and be flexible. I'm probably going to use more wildcards this year cause life is too short now to read things I'm not going to love. And I'm three books behind, after having finished by August last year!
Favorites:- A title that doesn't contain the letter "E": It's been fun skimming my TBR shelf and finding this isn't as hard of a prompt as I'd thought it would be.
- A book written by a person of color: I've been trying to read more diversely this year, and this prompt definitely helps with that.
- A book in the middle of your To Be Read list: A good way for me to get to those books buried in the depths of my TBR list. I'm working on this prompt this week, actually, and really enjoying the book I wound up with.
- A book published in 2017: I always have a lot of anticipated new releases to get to, so this is a great category for me. The real struggle was figuring out WHICH new release to read for it.
- A book from someone else's bookshelf: Any excuse to borrow books and expand my reading horizons is always a good one. :)
- A book with a long title: Similar to the title without an E, this one's fun in terms of seeing how long of a title I can find for it on my TBR shelf.
Unfavorites:
- A book you meant to read in 2016: Honestly, I'm so bad at remembering what I was supposed to read when, so I've struggled over what to read for this one.
- A category from another challenge: So broad! No idea what I'm going to use for this one.
- A really long book (600+ pages): Really long books tend to be a struggle for me sometimes. If it's good enough, I'll devour it, but so far I've started and discarded two different options for this prompt. Still waiting to find just the right long read for this.
- A book with an unreliable narrator: Unless I want to get spoiled, this is one of those books I'm going to have to stumble upon while reading, which is annoying.
- A time travel novel: I'm one of those people for whom time travel novels are either hit or miss for me, no in between. Luckily, I had one choice lined up already, but if I didn't, I'd probably be in trouble here!
If you don't want to be spoiled in your search for an unreliable narrator there are a few lists here.Of course it is already a bit spoilery knowing you can't trust them, but at least you don't have to skim blurbs and reviews to look for one ;)
This is my first year doing the challenge too! If it helps others struggling, I used a random number generator to select a Popsugar category from this year for the category from another challenge prompt, which made it feel less overwhelmingly broad. And for the unreliable narrator prompt I chose a classic (Lolita) since I already knew the premise from pop culture. I'm sure there must be other classics that would work too.
Favorites:
-Doesn't contain the letter E: This was a fun scavenger hunt!
-Animal in the title or cover: Another fun scavenger hunt.
-Nonfiction: Nonfiction is the best! It makes me rage a little inside when I see people complaining about having to read *one* nonfiction for the year. Learning is so nice!
-5+ words in title: More scavenger hunt fun.
-One word title: See above.
Least Favorites:
-Movie being released in 2017: I'm super anal retentive and like to make my list when the challenges come out, and it's so hard to know what will actually come out in 2017. I like to read in order, and since this was one of the first weeks, I'm going to have to re-do after my original choice got pushed back. It would be nice if this expanded to include TV shows as well.
-A book based on a myth: I think had four of these prompts between AtY, Diversity Bingo, and Popsugar, and I have little interest in this topic, and there's not really a "creative" way around it.
-Top 100 YA Books: I have absolutely no interest in YA, and I hate being forced to read it. I have way too many Adult books to get to, to read something easier.
In Between:
-GoodReads Choice Awards: I think I would prefer if we had to choose a winner, rather than just a nominated book. I think it would work since it spans all genres/age groups.
-What Should I Read Next: It took awhile to get a recommendation already on my TBR, but I do like the concept.
-Set in a fictional location: I like fantasy/scifi, but I found researching whether something more realistic was in a truly fictional location or not, so I just fell back to fantasy.
Love this topic and have been meaning to comment for a while...Best Topics:
37: A book you choose randomly - this topic was a lot of fun to do and also resulted in one of my surprisingly good reads of the year. I think a few people are missing the excitement by not going all in on the randomness. Which is too bad, that's half the thrill! I was concerned/afraid of my result until I actually cracked it open.
20. A book you have owned for a while. - I have a lot of books that I need to finally get around to. So this was exceptionally good for me. It's become a sub-theme of my 2017 year.
23: A book from the BBC "The Big Read" list. - This is a great list with very few clunkers and a lot of books that I've been meaning to read.
Worst Topics
6: A book being released as a movie in 2017. - A bit surprising how difficult this was to fill. It almost seems like the type of topic that we'd want every year. Books getting major adaptations tend to be pushed to the front of the 'to be read' queue. But it is initially flawed by being to limited (to film). If it said 'a book being adapted in 2017' that would open up the options considerably.
11: A category from another challenge. - Too easy. It's essentially a 'reader's choice' prompt that requires me to research a topic to fit the book I was going to read. Or perhaps I just did it wrong.
30: A book from Goodreads Top 100 YA Books. - There are good YA books, I'm sure of that. But grab one at random and chances are, you have in your hand a stinker. This is also why I avoid Romance as a genre, not because there aren't any good romance books, but because the bar of quality is too low.
I originally disliked the task: A book being released as a movie in 2017. I still don't like the prompt especially with it being here and on popsugar but I liked both books I ended up reading for the prompt.
A Monster Calls/Patrick Ness thanks to those who recommended it in this thread. I also really liked
My Cousin Rachel/Daphne du Maurier.
I actually haven't had an issue with any of the prompts this year. Okay. Not entirely true: I wasn't looking forward to reading 20. a book that I've owned for a while, because *those* books aren't really appealing to me. But then I picked up a book that I picked off my brother's bookshelf (he died 8 years ago) and I've held on to it for mostly sentimental reasons... it turns out I'm actually enjoying it!I'm a little meh about the penguin modern classic prompt, but I'm pretty sure I'll find something I'll enjoy!
I've read lots of great books this year! It's a good list IMO!
Around the Year in 52 Books
Books mentioned in this topic
My Cousin Rachel (other topics)A Monster Calls (other topics)
Lolita (other topics)
Daughter of Empire: My Life as a Mountbatten (other topics)
The Princess Bride (other topics)
More...
Authors mentioned in this topic
Patrick Ness (other topics)Daphne du Maurier (other topics)
Patrick Ness (other topics)
In actually doing the reading challenge, which prompts have been the best and which have been the worst? Were there some that you initially thought would be great but turned out to be terrible? And vice versa?
I think it would be cool to look at what we collectively have enjoyed (and not) so our suggestions for next year are even better.