Read-a-Thon #1 - Team Challenge Introduction

[Katie]

It's a brand new team challenge for our first read-a-thon of the year.

For this team challenge we’re off on a journey around the world. Each team has been assigned a different continent to explore and the aim is to “visit” as many countries as you can by reading a book that’s linked to each country.

For each country that your team visits, the mods will reveal one letter in the name of an author from your continent. Your goal is to reveal all the letters and then guess the name of the author. The letters will be provided out of order and you'll have to unscramble the letters to figure out the author's name. If you guess the first author then the mods have second and even third authors for you to continue the game with...

Each country can only be visited once and there are five ways that a book can be linked to a country:

1. A book set at least 50% in the country
2. A book by an author born in the country
3. A book by an author whose initials are found in the country - eg France could be Agatha Christie, or Anne Fine; Vietnam could be Anne Tyler or Val McDermid; Honduras could be Nnedi Okorafor or Ali Smith, etc
4. A book with a title that begins with the same letter as the country - eg France could be Far from the Madding Crowd or Fudge Cupcake Murder; Nepal could be Nine Perfect Strangers or Nobody Writes to the Colonel, Benin could be Beginning or Brooklyn, etc
5. A book with a cover that is a colour found in the country’s flag - eg a red, white or blue cover for the US; a green, red or yellow cover for Cameroon.

General rules
- All genres and formats (including childrens’ books, graphic novels, audiobooks etc) are fine but books must be at least 100 pages long to count.
- Books started before the read-a-thon can be counted as long as you read at least 100 pages of the book and complete it during the read-a-thon.
- If you want to read books shorter than 100 pages, like picture books or graphic novels, 3 short books linked to that country will comprise a visit to that country.

[Katie]

Team Africa
Emily (team leader)
Edie
Brittany
Vanessa
Joan
Sarah E
Traci
Perri
Jody
Pam
Diana
Jennifer
Hilde
Mindy
Joi
Joanne

Team Asia
Carmen (team leader)
Hannah (from UK)
Tammy
Sara
Rachel
Johanne
Deena
Beth
Betty
Kathy Jo
Samantha (yawning cat picture)
Allegra
Jamie
Kathryn
Veronica

Team Europe
Kristina (team leader)
Deborah
Raquel
Jill
Samantha (playing cat picture)
Marina H
Ellie
Marta
Lieke
Hannah (from Germany)
Kelly
Sarah
Tracy
Bernadette
Sofia

[Katie]

Sorry teams, I can't keep my eyes open any longer, so the 3 team threads will be posted tomorrow morning.

[Edie]

Sounds like a great new challenge. Happy to be on team Africa and currently reading (with more than 100 pages to go) a book set in Morocco! It's a page turner, so expect to finish it early on in this read-a-thon.

[Tracy]

Yay!! It’s midnight and I have exactly 101 pages left in the book I’m reading. Now to figure out how it fits .

Thanks for staying up to work on the teams Katie 😊

[Johanne]

looks fun *off to check country namelists and flags*

[Johanne]

..and authors nationalities... :)

[Jen K]

Go team Africa!! Love the challenge idea!

Highly recommend The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind: Creating Currents of Electricity and Hope for anyone who wants a book book actually set in Africa and written by an African and it is also becoming a movie soon.

[Brittany]

I love this challenge idea! I’ve been making an effort to read more novels set in different countries and by authors from different countries so this work perfectly.

[Emily, Conterminous Mod]

I'm putting together Africa's spreadsheet, but I wanted to share it with everyone so you can edit it to fit your continent!

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/...

This was a hard one, so if you have suggestions on how to make it better/more accessible/more easily understood, please let me know!

[Emily, Conterminous Mod]

For titles, would we be able to count articles or not count them?

For example, would The Immortalists count for both T and I, or just T, or just I?

[Tracy]

Emily wrote: "For titles, would we be able to count articles or not count them?

For example, would The Immortalists count for both T and I, or just T, or just I?"

good question, my current book starts with "The"??

[Katie]

I would not count the article. Use the first word after the article. This matches how we categorize our books in the A-Z folders.

[Jamie]

Thank you Katie! Looking forward to participating -- my first :)

[Allegra]

Still getting the lay of the land. So I hope these questions aren't wasting time.
As a member of team Asia, my completed books should all "relate" to Asia? Also, so we decide as a team who visits where? Of course the first 2 qualifications are what they are, but 3-5 are open to quite a bit of interpretation. It doesn't sound like we all need to agree on a single book

[Johanne]

Allegra - welcome to team Asia! If you come on over in the team group (can't link, on phone) we'll discuss the books and where they may fit as we go. We usually figure it out as we go, but I think most books can probably fit several places, but if you have something obvious like set in Asia or by an author from an Asian country just say it :)

[Johanne]

and yes they should relate to Asia in one of the 5 ways :)

[Laura, Celestial Sphere Mod]

Yes, my suggestion would be to apply possible books to the harder categories where possible but then others are totally up to how you want to apply them. Since this is the first time playing this particular game, we can definitely iron things as people come up with specific questions or situations.

[Emily, Conterminous Mod]

If there's a number that begins the title, we go with the letter that number begins with?

11/22/63, for example, would fall under the E's for title?

[Laura, Celestial Sphere Mod]

Yep :)