House of Chains the team not the BR, Year 2!

[Sha]

Milan does that! And I do love romances which are social commentaries. I like anything that's got a sociological component in tbh. It's about half the reason why I love Bujold books so mcuh.

[Mel]

Sha wrote: "@Melissa
UF series tend to be really long in general so I'm struggling to come up with recs which don't require a commitment to a bookshelf's worth of books. Heh. I suppose some of Seanan McGuire's..."

Yeah, that's another part of it. I have a hard time diving into long series even when it's fantasy, or a familiar author. Looking up standalone novels, it looks like I have read some. Emma Bull's War for the Oaks, China Mieville and Neil Gaiman. But even though I enjoyed many of those books, I can't help but think the reason none of them were 5-star reads is perhaps because of that UF quality they all share, and I liked them in spite of it, not because of it. It may just not be the genre for me. I'm still open to recs, and I want to try more China Mieville, but I'm not going to force myself on the genre when there are so many other books I'm eager to read. :)

[Mel]

@Zaar & Sha
I'll see if I finish my current book quickly enough to catch you for The Duchess Wars. I haven't done any BRs in so long because of my foray into romance, so I'd be glad to join you once again. :)

[Charlie]

Quick question, if i'm in the middle of some books by the time the competition end on the 31st, do I just put in the number of pages I've read so far so I get partial points for that book?

[Yanique, Thread Master]

@charlie yes. Also if you DNF anything you can put the read pages as well.

[Anni]

I'm not sure that's true, I think last year we only counted unfinished books, if you really intended to DNF them for now...

[Yanique, Thread Master]

No, I remember last year we agreed to count the number of pages read in incompletes and DNFs in a specific convo about DNFs, someone was asking about a book they read a good chunk of but didn’t finish.

[Charlie]

I'm just reading about 8 books right now (and about to start a few more) and I don't think I'll get them all finished by 31st that's all.

I have put partial pages for a few books I've DNF'd this year.

[Siobhan]

I didn't think we were allowed to count pages for books not finished by end of Oct last year. (Unless we were actually DNFing them.)

Can a Mod confirm for us please??

[Niki Hawkes, I made it past GOTM... barely]

Maybe someone could look back in last year’s trackers and see how we all entered our last books. I remember being on the side of counting all pages read in partially finished books as of 10/31, but I also remember there being a small discussion about only counting books completely finished as of 10/31. Not helpful... I wish my memory didn’t suck. My vote is this year we allow all pages read counted because, after all, you can count DNF pages throughout the year, why not at the 11th hour? We’ll see if the other mods chime in. If they don’t, we’ll go with that lol.

[Charlie]

Just checked, last year I didn't do partial points, if I wasn't finished the book, I didn't give myself any points.

I think this year, since we can get points for partial reads throughout the year it should be okay. As I'm reading like 8 books, there's loads of books I'll be almost finished by the 31st so if I can't log any of those pages that would be a real shame, I might as well DNF them now, get the points and then resume them later in the year.

[Virginie]

I went through the old threads to see if there was something about partial points but didn't find anything. I found the "fluffers and dirty jokes" conversation over at the old Tome Raiders thread and laughed for half an hour though :p

[Anni]

I'm relatively sure that I haven't counted half-finished books eigher last year... I think it's half of the fun to try to finish a book to be able to count it 😅

[Timelord Iain, Tech Support]

Yea... there was a definite cutoff last year... depending on reading speed, it led to people focusing on open books rather than starting new ones in their final hours/days/weeks...

[Siobhan]

Sir Anni wrote: "I'm relatively sure that I haven't counted half-finished books eigher last year... I think it's half of the fun to try to finish a book to be able to count it 😅"

That's what I was thinking, part of the tactics. I only counted finished books at the end of last year.

[Niki Hawkes, I made it past GOTM... barely]

In that case, let’s keep it like that to be consistent with last year. That way I won’t have to bug the other mods. ^_^

[Frank]

I also recall having to finish book, We were all rushing because of the midnight deadline.
The discussion became midnight in what part of the world, LOL.

[Siobhan]

Frank wrote: "I also recall having to finish book, We were all rushing because of the midnight deadline.
The discussion became midnight in what part of the world, LOL."

Haha yeah exactly!! XD

[Yanique, Thread Master]

Timelord Iain wrote: "Yea... there was a definite cutoff last year... depending on reading speed, it led to people focusing on open books rather than starting new ones in their final hours/days/weeks..."

I think people were trying to get all their pages in for books, especially ones that were buddy reads. And also many may have assumed that unfinished books don't count.

I definitely plan on counting the pages read even if I don't complete a book. That would be consistent with what I did last year, and makes sense if DNFs count.

[Charlie]

So it's the end of the line. I've had such good fun this year with the competition!

I'm currently reading 4 books, I know I won't finish by midnight (especially since I'm busy tonight) so I'm going to end it here.

I have 693.8 points which I think is great! So far, our team has 8238.8 points! We've read a combined 594 989 pages this year!

[Yanique, Thread Master]

Charlie wrote: "So it's the end of the line. I've had such good fun this year with the competition!

I'm currently reading 4 books, I know I won't finish by midnight (especially since I'm busy tonight) so I'm goi..."

We've done amazingly this year! I'm going to try to finish a current read and power through another book today to end strong, but that's it for me! I'll be ending off with 1401+ points and 107,680 pages, so I feel good about this year too.

[Zaara]

Yanique wrote: "I'm going to try to finish a current read and power through another book today to end strong..."

GO YANI...and I'll be here to cheer everyone to the finish!

And may the force be with you...luv!
(view spoiler)[
(hide spoiler)]

[Siobhan]

Amazing job everyone!!

Just put my last points on and now it's time for bed! Ending on 706 points, and highest rank I've been so far! (I know people will overtake me when they enter their last points lol but so).

It's been such fun guys! Time to relax for two months! XD

[Siobhan]

Charlie wrote: "So it's the end of the line. I've had such good fun this year with the competition!

I'm currently reading 4 books, I know I won't finish by midnight (especially since I'm busy tonight) so I'm goi..."

That is a crazy amount of pages!! We rock. Well done Charlie, we're a great team!

[Charlie]

Just looked at the sheet, well done everyone!!

[Siobhan]

When will the positions be final? By which I mean, is there a deadline for people entering their points do you know? :)

So proud of you all this year! Totally rocked it.

[Barry]

Good job guys. Can’t believe it’s November already! I’ve finished inputting all my books. A slightly down year, in terms of pages read for me. I think we shall remain in 2nd but that’s ok.

I’ve enjoyed BRing with a lot of you. Siobhan especially, since it felt like we’re in a lot of BRs haha. Hopefully, we’ll have more opportunities to do more BRs in the future!

[Siobhan]

Yes we were BR twins this year xD I'm sure there'll be many more to come! I will start Golden Fool at some point....

You've done a great job on points, Barry!

[Timelord Iain, Tech Support]

Don't worry... Scott can console himself, knowing he would have won by 39 points with his 2018 team ;)

That's the number I was pushing my team to reach for the past week or so actually... needed 9246.3 points, ended with 9207.3, tentatively...

[Siobhan]

Haha! I hadn't looked at last year's points. Were most people higher last year with the extra buddy read bonus? I can't remember how I did.

[Yanique, Thread Master]

Siobhan wrote: "Haha! I hadn't looked at last year's points. Were most people higher last year with the extra buddy read bonus? I can't remember how I did."

I think I'm higher this year, but I think last years team had more people with big point contributions. Yeah I checked and the top 5 people from our team were over 1000 and then the rest were almost all above 500. So it was a more even effort.

[Timelord Iain, Tech Support]

Siobhan wrote: "Haha! I hadn't looked at last year's points. Were most people higher last year with the extra buddy read bonus? I can't remember how I did."

I think this year, a lot of the "Middle Class" contributors earned more points for less effort, thanks to the de-emphasized BRs and extra eyeball points... Top-Enders either learned to cope with the "audiobook penalty" and cut close to even, or burned out from overdoing it last year, and dropped down to "Middle Class"... or life situations just changed... not sure about the bottom end... i think people that read little but similar to last year came out ahead in general, since audiobooks mostly affect Top-Enders like me and Soo...

Arkadeb's been swamped at work, or s/he'd probably be closer to Me and Julia... Choko/Laura contributed a bit less this year... etc...

By pagecount, I think the Top Contributor from each team would win, this year, as a 4-man team...

Soo - Jaghuts - 204,548
Me - Tomers - 152,616
Julia - Eagles - 149,038
Yanique - HoCs - 108,871

TOTAL = 615,073

Blood Eagles = 501,334
HoCs = 604,223
Tomers = 660,617
Jaghuts = 672,965

And that's without removing us from our Team Scores... the points comparison one removes us from the team,and we win by 300 points... I just noticed this, because before Soo updated her sheet we lost, but Soo has nearly double Arkadeb's points ... Julia & Soo are 30% of their Team pages, I'm 23% of Tomers, Yanique is 18% of Jaghuts...

[Siobhan]

I love all the extra stats you work out for us, Iain! :)

[Mel]

Good job, team! I hope you all had a year of fulfilling, excellent reads.

I'm only sad that Delitealex had to drop out, for whatever reason. Delitealex, I hope if you come back, we can do one of those buddy reads we mentioned back in January!

I finished Skyward just under the wire for my last few points. I read a lot more this year - more through October than I've read in an entire year before. All that despite, or perhaps because of, working insane 70 hour work weeks this year. No time to see friends, so I just come home and read during my few remaining hours of consciousness.

Other reading benchmarks this year include discovering a whole new genre in that of romance novels which I hadn't delved into before. I also made a rare addition to my Favorites with Song of Achilles. Most of my faves are childhood books that imprinted on me some way, and I go back to again and again in my memory, and by rereading. The ones I can quote. For me, it's rare to find books in adulthood that I want to reread, but that one makes the cut.

In sci-fi, I'd say Murderbot and Wayfarers series were my favorite series this year. What about you guys? What were your favorite readsof this year's competition? Any other benchmarks to note?

[Charlie]

@Melissa Murderbot and Wayfarers were also standouts of the year for me. I absolutely loved them. I was quite surprised since I don't really read a lot of sci fi, I'm a fantasy girl all the way but these two series were some of my absolute favourite reads.

[Siobhan]

Loved reading Murderbot with everyone! Such a fun series! :D

Skyward was up there for me too, excellent book.

Overall, I'd say the author who's made the biggest impression on me this year is Robin Hobb! I started reading her books back in January, and the buddy read team has continued since! I've absolutely adored her books so far. Added to my list of favourites definitely.

[Scott , Karsa Orlong]

Sorry for falling off the map but as many of you know I took a job at Google and my free time really dried up. As did my capacity to retain more information. It's just a whirlwind of learning new stuff. By the end of the day having done so much technical reading I'm too toasted for audio. l

[Siobhan]

Scott wrote: "Sorry for falling off the map but as many of you know I took a job at Google and my free time really dried up. As did my capacity to retain more information. It's just a whirlwind of learning new s..."

Congrats on the new job! That's awesome. :) I know what it's like when your brain just can't cope with more reading!

[Timelord Iain, Tech Support]

Siobhan wrote: "Scott wrote: "Sorry for falling off the map but as many of you know I took a job at Google and my free time really dried up. As did my capacity to retain more information. It's just a whirlwind of ..."

Me, too... that's like when I read 350 pages/day/month instead of 800 ;)

[Virginie]

Scott wrote: "Sorry for falling off the map but as many of you know I took a job at Google and my free time really dried up. As did my capacity to retain more information. It's just a whirlwind of learning new s..."

Congrats on the new job! And at Google at that! Way to go :)

[Scott , Karsa Orlong]

Thanks guys.

[Charlie]

That's amazing Scott, congratulations!

[Scott , Karsa Orlong]

Charlie wrote: "That's amazing Scott, congratulations!"

TY!