2019 Time Traveler Challenge

[CBRetriever]

thanks, I forgot the original publication bit which is important for digital books as their publication date often = date digital version released

[Nicol]

Thanks! I am excited to catch up on some classics, especially Le Guin and Butler I've been meaning to read. Found this list of influential Queer Sci Fi writers while looking: https://theportalist.com/9-influentia... Strangely does not include Butler but has some good authors but earliest publish date is 1960's.

[Allison, Fairy Mod-mother]

Great find, Nicol!

[CBRetriever]

here's a collected works that covers several decades

Collected Works of Jules Verne
and
not listed that I could find: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B004V5FORY = Delphi Collected Works of H. G. Wells (Illustrated)

Wells = 1890s, 1900s, 1910s, 1920s and 1930s
Verne = 1860s, 1870s, 1880s, and 1890s

plus Alexandre Dumas wrote a werewolf novel: The Wolf-Leader in 1857 and as the author was the son of a slave from Haiti, you should get the 5 points for person of color (he was darker than Samuel Delany)

[Kaa]

Oooh, I never knew Dumas wrote any fantasy! (For anyone interested in Dumas Sr.'s story, which is fascinating, The Black Count: Glory, Revolution, Betrayal, and the Real Count of Monte Cristo is great.)

[Soo]

Sweet!

I have a question. Would works of poetry count? Cause some of the tales are set in epic poetry. I'm thinking Divine Comedy, Beowulf, Iliad, etc.

This would give added push for me to read stuff that I've put off for one reason or another. =D

[Allison, Fairy Mod-mother]

It totally counts!

[Sarah]

Ohh Soo if you decide to do Beowulf or any of those- The Iliad and The Odyssey or other epics, please tag me in the buddy reads thread. The only one I wouldn’t be in for is The Divine Comedy (read it in college and just wasn’t a fan.)

[Allison, Fairy Mod-mother]

Melanin levels are not measured for this challenge, if the author does not share an ethnicity with the majority of authors traditionally published in your area by identity and or perception (generally those who are nonwhite), they count for those points!

[Soo]

YAY! Ok. I haven't done a classic run in a while. Maybe 2019 will be my return to classics. =)

Sarah wrote: "Ohh Soo if you decide to do Beowulf or any of those- The Iliad and The Odyssey or other epics, please tag me in the buddy reads thread. The only one I wouldn’t be in for is The Divine Comedy (read ..."

Beowulf is great and pretty short. My copy is actually a scanned copy of the book that a friend gave me. It's currently on the shelf that's hidden by other shelves. Haha

Nice part of these classics is that we should be able to get a free copy to read. Yah! I'm down to Buddy Read some. I'll make a potential list and post it in the BR thread.

[Allison, Fairy Mod-mother]

Love it! Depending what you pick I'd love to jump in too 😁

[Lost Planet Airman]

Sarah wrote: "Ohh Soo if you decide to do Beowulf or any of those- The Iliad and The Odyssey or other epics, please tag me in the buddy reads thread. The only one I wouldn’t be in for is The Divine Comedy (read ..."

Ooh, please tag me in for BR on this stuff, too!

[CBRetriever]

Allison wrote: "Melanin levels are not measured for this challenge, if the author does not share an ethnicity with the majority of authors traditionally published in your area by identity and or perception (genera..."

good, I was actually just being a tad bit snarky about the US where they went by having just one ancestor out of those 4 generations back making one qualify as a person of color (quadroons, octaroons, etc) which was a bit silly

[Allison, Fairy Mod-mother]

I figured you were being a bit jocular but for the non-Americans, I thought I'd clarify. Our view on this tends to seem a bit opaque to some others :)

[Angie]

I have a couple of Icelandic sagas to get to... I might use them for this challenge.

[Anna]

I really want to read something from as many decades as possible, and based on my reading stats I should easily cover ten, but those aren't all SFF, so I don't know what number to settle on. I won't sign up for the challenge yet, but I'll be keeping track, and if it looks like I'm close to ten or hopefully even more, maybe I'll try to hit a certain goal.

At least we're starting the year with a 1960s scifi, so that's one decade sorted!

[Maggie]

sounds super cool!

[Gabi]

A hopefully not to dumb sounding question: author of colour is every non-caucasian author?

[Soo]

Gabi wrote: "A hopefully not to dumb sounding question: author of colour is every non-caucasian author?"

Yup

[CBRetriever]

Aliette de Bodard - Vietnamese and French, so she counts twice

Ken Liu was born in China but lives in the US

and possibly a white author in an African country would qualify

[CBRetriever]

and Sabaa Tahir is Pakistani-American

2010 decade book by a woman finished today so I'm off to a good start

[Gabi]

Soo wrote: "Gabi wrote: "A hopefully not to dumb sounding question: author of colour is every non-caucasian author?"

Yup"

Thanks, Soo!

[Kaa]

Does buddy read/group read only include things read by this group? Or can I include things that I'm reading with other GR groups or offline friends?

[Allison, Fairy Mod-mother]

Kaa wrote: "Does buddy read/group read only include things read by this group? Or can I include things that I'm reading with other GR groups or offline friends?"

Any buddy read will do!

[Anna]

Has anyone already looked at the group bookshelf and what the decade sitch is? It's annoying that the book list doesn't show you the pub date like My Books does.

[Lost Planet Airman]

"Someone" had made a copy of the group bookshelf onto their own shelves, so they could do just such hijinx with the 'settings' control. I have been trying to find my link to that 'someone' but cannot locate it.

If I find it, I will see if I can publish the news here.

[Anna]

I also have lots of sffbc books on my tbr marked as such, but it's only a subset. I already went through them and found some older ones I want to prioritize. That's what made me wish I could do the same with the group shelf. Although if it's not already on my tbr, the chances of actually getting it read aren't very high.

[Nicol]

Is anyone else having trouble where their read books are not populating on the group challenges page?

[Anna]

Nicol wrote: "Is anyone else having trouble where their read books are not populating on the group challenges page?"

Is the shelf name exactly correct? And read dates?

[Anna]

Nicol, it's just the usual bug! You can see the books here:

https://www.goodreads.com/user_challe...

They'll appear on the main page at some point.

If anyone else has the same problem, 'view books' should always be up to date. That link won't show until the main page shows at least one read book, but you can also click on the '0 of xx (0%)' link to get there.

[Nicol]

Anna wrote: "Nicol wrote: "Is anyone else having trouble where their read books are not populating on the group challenges page?"

Is the shelf name exactly correct? And read dates?"

Yes I tripled checked the shelf names and read dates since I thought I was going crazy lol. Thanks!

[YouKneeK]

Anna wrote: "Has anyone already looked at the group bookshelf and what the decade sitch is? It's annoying that the book list doesn't show you the pub date like My Books does."

The spreadsheet I maintain has the original publication year in it. I have to run to work shortly, but I could clean it up and find someplace to share it later tonight (U.S. Eastern Time) if it would be useful. Is Google Docs what people usually use?

Meanwhile, I did a quick manipulation to get a count of books by decade:
1810 – 2 books
1890 – 3 books
1930 – 2 books
1940 – 1 book
1950 – 12 books
1960 – 16 books
1970 – 20 books
1980 – 33 books
1990 – 31 books
2000 – 56 books
2010 – 97 books

[Anna]

YouKneeK, you are indeed wonderful! If you can do a title + pub year, I can add those to the group spreadsheet that's available to everyone.

[Mareike]

Just a brief question, does any book count or just prose narratives? I.e. can I count a poetry collection I read over the past two days?

[Allison, Fairy Mod-mother]

Well the Iliad counts so I think I have to say more modern poetry also counts! The only thing is it must be SFF and it must be book length, i.e. not a singular short story or poem. Reading the Ballad of Tam Lin wouldn't be a fair comparison for those points. However, an entire collection of poems and short stories about Celtic figures from 16th Century containing the Ballad of Tam Lin would be just fine.

[Bobby]

Is there a page count we should be using? Would novellas count? I was actually wondering that for the Seven Kingdoms/Heptarchate challenge as well.

[Mareike]

Allison wrote: "Well the Iliad counts so I think I have to say more modern poetry also counts! The only thing is it must be SFF and it must be book length, i.e. not a singular short story or poem. Reading the Ball..."

Right, that's what I thought. So I think I'll discount the one I just read. Thanks!

[Anna]

Bobby wrote: "Is there a page count we should be using? Would novellas count? I was actually wondering that for the Seven Kingdoms/Heptarchate challenge as well."

For 7K/Hept, anything you mark read on GR counts. It's up to you if you want to "cheat" and only use short fiction and graphic novels, or go with novel length.

[Allison, Fairy Mod-mother]

Bobby wrote: "Is there a page count we should be using? Would novellas count? I was actually wondering that for the Seven Kingdoms/Heptarchate challenge as well."

Novellas are fine. Don't want to put too fine a point on it since we write wwaaaay longer things these days than they did earlier. Just no singular short stories or poems that are less than novella length.

[Jordan]

Oh man, this sounds pretty fun. Definitely joining in. And looking at my shelves it should be doable with my personal challenge of reading mostly what I own.

[Bobby]

Thanks for the clarification, Allison and Anna. With that, I've got 2 books read for this challenge with a total of 26 points so far.

1. NOS4A2 - 2010s 1st book (10 pts)
2. Home - 2010s 2nd book, woman author, author of color, non-colonial POV (16 pts)

[Kaa]

Thanks, Allison. I've finished my first two books, as well, for 70 points (Skin Folk ticks off every category!)

1. Kiss of the Fur Queen - 1990s first book, author of color, LGBTQ author, non-colonial POV, owned before 2019 (30 pts)
2. Skin Folk - 2000s first book, woman author, author of color, LGBTQ author, non-colonial POV, owned before 2019, buddy read (with a non-GR group) (40 pts)

[Allison, Fairy Mod-mother]

Well done, Kaa and Bobby!

[CBRetriever]

Blade Dancer is my first one - female author with a decade of 2000s

[YouKneeK]

Anna wrote: "YouKneeK, you are indeed wonderful! If you can do a title + pub year, I can add those to the group spreadsheet that's available to everyone."

Here you go, Anna. This is my first time sharing anything on Google Docs, so hopefully this works ok! Here’s the link.

I tweaked my Titles to match up exactly with yours and tested the vlookup to make sure there weren’t any mismatches, so hopefully all you’ll have to do is vlookup and be done.

I deleted most of the nonsense on my spreadsheet, but I did leave my page counts on there also in case they’re useful. This is where the #'s came from:

* Pub Year – Pulled from the "first published date" that shows on the Goodreads book page. I didn’t validate them so if the crowd-sourced data was wrong at the time I looked it up, GIGO. :)

* Pages – Typically pulled from whatever the default Goodreads edition was, so the accuracy will vary wildly based on what edition people look at. I like having it anyway just so I can make a general judgment of “long” or “short” when I’m looking at the list.

[Anna]

Thank you so much YouKneeK!

[Angie]

If we read more than one book by the same author (say, two books by Octavia Butler), do we count the points for that author twice?

[Anna]

I added the years to the group spreadsheet.

[Allison, Fairy Mod-mother]

Angie wrote: "If we read more than one book by the same author (say, two books by Octavia Butler), do we count the points for that author twice?"

Great question! I'll add this to the initial post. I'll say yes, but only from different decades. 1979 Butler and 1993 Butler would be fine.

ETA: I know some of you have grand compendia of works by authors. Count those for each decade it spans. The idea is to read across the decades and get a feel for how things are different, where trends come from and so on. If there's confusion, err on the side of that being the outcome.

[Angie]

Allison wrote: "Angie wrote: "If we read more than one book by the same author (say, two books by Octavia Butler), do we count the points for that author twice?"

Great question! I'll add this to the initial post...."

Thanks!