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2019 Rejects Challenge - How are you choosing?
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I am submitting the reject list to my book club members that want to play and let them make a list of twenty four for us to do as a group. Then I don't have to do anything but read.
I’m not set on a number of reject prompts to complete, but I’m going to slot my side-reads in them with an emphasis on the prompts I voted for (my “Top rejects” on the spreadsheet). I’ve been doing that for the past 2 years and really like it! No pressure but still the thrill of the hunt for the right prompt and the curiosity to see if I can read more rejects than the years before 😉
I am using the ones I voted for but did not make it. To cut it more I removed those that are very similar. It is down to 48 prompts now.
I haven't even looked at how many I put down as "maybes" on the spread sheet (Its a lot). Now that the list is finalized I might go through and look for similarities and narrow it down. I'll probably wait until Book Riot and Pop Sugar come out with their lists in November and then finish planning. I think what I'll probably do is list anything that interests me and just see how many I can get done rather than feeling like I have to do all of them. Not sure yet health wise how I'm going to be feeling about getting a lot of reading done, especially towards the beginning of the year. My tonsils coming out monday, pathology will take about a week and I have an appointment with an oncologist set up for November 15th so.... who the hell knows what they're going to want to do next? Theres been talk of re-biopsying my bone tumor surgically, a colonoscopy.....Its going to be a fun filled busy beginning of 2019. So whatever books I get done and whatever prompts I check off is going to be good enough for me, same as this year. I really do like to use the list making and research as stress relief though. Its my favorite hobby 😏
My intent is to do all the prompts that I voted for that didn't make the list (33, although one of those is a multi-week so it works out to 37 books). Once PopSugar and BookRiot come out and I decide whether I'm doing them, I'll take out any prompts that are too similar to those, and probably go from there. I did something similar this year and ended up with a solid list of 25.
I chose 22 prompts, including 1 multi-week, for a total of 25 books. I don’t remember what I voted for but I think I did vote for most of them!
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I was originally going to use every prompt I voted for (taking out any close duplicates) and supplement with a secondary list of books I almost voted for, but once I started looking at the list of prompts, I realized that what I was excited about in June isn't necessarily what I'm excited about now.
So... I think I'm just going to go through the two lists (my Rejects that I voted for and my Secondary Rejects) and cobble together something that represents a variety. For example, I looove lists, but I think reading from 6 different lists may be a bit much, so, even though I voted for nearly every list that was suggested, I'm going to choose my tops to read from.
I don't think I'll even look at PopSugar or Book Riot this year... I don't want to overload myself with challenges and not be able to read freely like I did this year. When my reading is too planned, I lose interest.
As we did each round of voting, I selected books for many of the suggestions. If a suggestion didn't make the final list I put it on the Rejects List, with the corresponding book I'd chosen for it. Some books were moved to the Official List as more prompts were chosen but most of them have stayed where they were originally placed on the Rejects List.
My method has been very similar to what Dalex described. I pulled out 52 rejects and I'm sticking with them! Oh boy...double the ATY fun. I wish I'd done that this year!
I wish I could do a full challenge of rejects but I don't want to set myself up for failure so I whittled down my list to 35 (not an easy task) and as I research further I'll separate into 20 definites and 15 secondary so that I won't feel so bad if I don't get to all of them.
That sounds like a good plan, Rachelnyc. I bet picking the definites vs the secondary is going to be as hard as narrowing the list to 35! I can't wait to see what other people choose and how they fill them.
Tammy wrote: "That sounds like a good plan, Rachelnyc. I bet picking the definites vs the secondary is going to be as hard as narrowing the list to 35! I can't wait to see what other people choose and how they f..."So true Tammy! I already had been marking them as yes and maybe in the spreadsheet but kept changing which one goes where. I figure once I have some books chosen it may be easier to categorize.
This is a question for the moderators:I’m not going to do a rejects challenge because I barely make it to 52 books. However, I do want to choose books from the Aty list of lesser known books for the main challenge.
Will there be a discussion thread where people can discuss books they have read from that list? If it had won, it would have its own weekly topic thread. Is there another place that people can discuss books from that list? Perhaps in the weekly topic for polarizing/close call prompt? Or a dedicated thread?
I don’t have enough time to follow all discussions so I only get notifications for a few topics so it would be great to get an idea of which threads to follow. Thanks!
Sophie,There is a new heading for rejects challenges where people will be discussing their chosen prompts for next year. You can start a thread for the lesser known prompt there. ( It's right above the A-Z threads)
ooh im really tempted to try this! even though I just said yesterday I was gonna keep myself at 52.... I never learn. Having briefly gone through the spreadsheet, and marking all that I'm interested in, I came up with 28 prompts, but some are multi week so that makes 37 books.
This would bring me to 89 books total, which is about a book every 4 days so that's a decent pace. I would add 1 though because 90 is a much prettier goal than 89 lol. Or I could try to bring it down to around 21 books, putting me at a 5 days/book pace. We shall see
I have about 30 that I picked out but I'm thinking of them as stretch goals. That way I don't feel any sense of failure if I don't get to them but they are something to tick off when I read things that don't fit challenges.I'll probably prune mine after Popsugar comes out. I am not going to be lured into Read Harder again next year though...
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I think I may be setting myself up for failure by picking 25 prompts (52 + 25 = 77 books) as I haven't even reached 77 books read this year so far and so many of them have been side reads. But my main goal is to finish the official ATY and hopefully I can find books to fit all of the Rejects prompts I want to read. I'm doing ATY in order, so the Rejects challenge is my way to read for a challenge while allowing some flexibility in between official ATY prompts.
Tracy & Emily, thanks for the tips, I’v added a topic in the rejects challenge folder.
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Emily, great minds think alike at the same time! I’ve deleted my topic so that there is no confusion.
I have 43 books on my Personal ATY for next year. I plan to do ATY, PopSugar & my Personal ATY, which I've done for the past 2 years. But I didn't finish PopSugar or my Personal challenge last year, so I've just rolled over the topics I have left. Thanks to a big reading slump in the summer, I don't think I'll finish all my challenges this year either, so I'm just planning to keep rolling things over & have a carryover challenge.
Eventually this strategy will probably get totally unmanageable, but until then, pile on the challenges.
Man oh man, Katie, I am in a slump! I haven't even finished 1 book this month. I can't seem to get motivated. Ulysses sucked all the wind out of me!
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But I'm still really hoping I manage to finish the 2018 ATY list this year.
Tammy, I think it's because you've run out of books to read. You have literally read all of the books. 😂I'm slumping a bit at the moment too, but am also just really busy & trying to learn how to juggle everything. I'm not worried if I don't finish any of my challenges, as long as I'm reading - no matter how slow I am!
An unexpected problem when searching for books that would fit the abduction/kidnapping prompt: I can’t seem to find anything that isn’t romanticized gay sexual assault. Anyone have any ideas for this one? I’m okay with sexual assault being present in the book, I just don’t want it to be overtly romanticized, ya know?
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The Lovely Bones by Alice Sebold
All the Missing Girls by Megan Miranda
The Butterfly Garden by Dot Hutchison
Pretty Girls by Karin Slaughter
The Good Girl by Mary Kubica
In the Woods by Tana French
I'm not sure what prompt you mean, but The Orphan Master's Son has some kidnapping in the plot so it could fit. Which reminds me I need to start reading it again. My reading is all over the place right now!
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Also, I just read Then She Was Gone and that would work.
Jody wrote: "I'm not sure what prompt you mean, but The Orphan Master's Son has some kidnapping in the plot so it could fit. Which reminds me I need to start reading it again. My reading is all ..."The spreadsheet said it was an option for poll number 2. Thanks for the suggestions y'all! The first book I found on one of the listopias for "kidnapping", a reviewer commented "it makes 50 shades of grey look like my little pony" so I knew I'd have to look for suggestions elsewhere haha.
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https://www.goodreads.com/topic/show/...
No wonder I couldn’t remember that one ... Poll 2 was a long time ago! 😂
Jody wrote: "I'm not sure what prompt you mean, but The Orphan Master's Son has some kidnapping in the plot so it could fit. Which reminds me I need to start reading it again. My reading is all ..."Definitely one of my all time favorites!
The Orphan Master’s Son was intense!! I really liked it.
are any of you planning to order your rejects in a certain way? I have a semi order to mine but idk how strict I'll be with it. There's really only a few prompts I particularly want in certain places. Like for the health and medicine prompt, I put it last because I'm probably taking the MCAT in January or February of 2020, so it'll be nice to have that lil motivation of "why the hell am I doing this" before test panic mode sets in
I actually got the idea to roll over my challenges from you, Laura. I was bummed last year when I didn't finish PopSugar for the first time ever, but then I thought, hey, Laura has a good approach.
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I'm not ordering the rejects either. I am going to try to do the main challenge in order. I'll give myself total freedom with the rejects list. That might also help to fit them into some group reads at other groups.
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Same here! I am in an IRL book club and BOTM club and I usually take on a Wacky challenge that requires me to read certain books in certain months... hopefully most of those books will slot into rejects or just become side reads for me.
I finally finished narrowing down my rejects challenge. In the end I went with 52 prompts (sort of like doubling up).My plan is to try and finish my challenges from this year, Then move onto ATY, and if I have ANY time leftover start working on the other challenges.
I'm not concerned very much with finishing a specific of number of rejects prompts but there are plenty of books on there that I would love to get my hands on.
I think my plan from now on is going to be to try and finish the main ATY challenge year and roll over the other unfinished challenges. I'm sure some years I'll get more reading done than others. If I don't finish a previous years challenge during the following year, I'll just add those leftovers to my infinity list ( Including rejects).
Watch all my plans snowball lol.
Nothing ever turns out as I plan it, Tracy, but half the fun is the planning, I think.
Sara wrote: "Nothing ever turns out as I plan it, Tracy, but half the fun is the planning, I think."It is half the fun :-)
Now I'm just waiting for Pop Sugar and Book Riot to come out with their lists so I can do some more.
Sara wrote: "Nothing ever turns out as I plan it, Tracy, but half the fun is the planning, I think."Agreed!!!
Around the Year in 52 Books
Books mentioned in this topic
The Orphan Master's Son (other topics)The Orphan Master's Son (other topics)
Then She Was Gone (other topics)
The Orphan Master's Son (other topics)
The Lovely Bones (other topics)
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How are you choosing your prompts? Are you even choosing or are you just winging it? Just interested in seeing how everyone else is doing it before I really commit to a list!