Nothing But Reading Challenges discussion
The Floor is Lava
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Team Krakatoa Go Go
Alysa wrote: "megan wrote: "Yes, I volunteered for Lolita. Other than that I have no preference. I enjoy the hunt."How long do you think you will take to read Lolita? I know you generally read less than the re..."
I should be able to knock it out in 3.5ish hours or less if I read it at “timed challenge” speed. I’m normally more leisurely with my pace because I end up googling stuff, but have no problem doubling the pace when needed.
Re Zone 2 task iii:I did a Kindle search for the word "lava" in text and made a list of the books that came up. Now I would just have to look at all their covers and see if any have something "hot"! (This doesn't work if you only read print/audio though: then you'd need to use less convenient ways to search through text).
And re Zone 2 task iv:
I identified a whole lot of authors with the letters L-A-V-A in their names if anyone is interested, but so far not much luck finding anything "hot" on their covers. I have more to look through, but so far neither fire nor sun nor sexy people have appeared. ;D
megan wrote: "Alysa wrote: "megan wrote: "Yes, I volunteered for Lolita. Other than that I have no preference. I enjoy the hunt."How long do you think you will take to read Lolita? I know you generally read le..."
Nice. Don't rush though, if that's the only thing you wanna read for the Top 10 tasks. Just say the word :)
In fact if the rest of us are reading all short stuff, we will probably finish everything sometime on Tues or early-Wed (depending on when exactly challenge starts), and then we'll all be able to start the other zones right away which will be a lot less limiting.
Further up this thread, I removed the link to our planning spreadsheet. All of us should have it saved by now, and Mods said it can be private :)Aha, this means we can start adding more book names too!
Do we have a spread sheet we are claiming tasks on? I think I only have the official one saved.
megan wrote: "Do we have a spread sheet we are claiming tasks on? I think I only have the official one saved."Yes: the one with the link that I just removed. ;)
I will PM you.
Yeah you are probably right in doing zone 2 before 3. Then we can opt to change a word to a shorter one if needed. I know that I can knock out spell out books quickly. I have a huge stash of short Kindle books and generally have lots of reading time Th-Sunday. It's M-W that's my issue and even then I usually get a decent amount of audio book time.
I forgot to send myself the link so I can look at the spreadsheet at home. Tomorrow I'll double check the task books I have and see which one besides 4 that I think I can get done By Wed. (again depending on what time the challenge starts). And I'll look for Zone 2 books unless they're already covered by someone.
If I understand the rules right, if we do zone 2 first, we can start reading books for zone 3 before zone 2 is done, we just cannot finish the zone 3 books until zone 2 is completed. So if someone had a longer one they wanted to read for 3, they could start it early and just not finish until zone 2 was done.
If you have opened the spreadsheet at all, it will show in your Google Sheets history when you open it as long as you have been signed on to your google account wherever you accessed it.I'm like Mary, my heaviest reading usually is Thursday through Sunday, but it can all depend on what's going on that week
Definitely depends on what’s going on week to week for me too. Especially insofar as weekends are concerned. Some Saturdays, for instance, I would love to read all day but instead have to go to kids’ birthday parties or whatever. ;)But during most week days I can supplement with audio (I like to switch back and forth if I have both ebook/print & audio), and on weekends I can almost never do audio. So that’s something I always consider when planning ahead.
Mary, Mary, Just a bit contrary wrote: "Tomorrow I'll double check the task books I have and see which one besides 4 that I think I can get done By Wed. (again depending on what time the challenge starts). And I'll look for Zone 2 books unless they're already covered by someone."The combination of the 3 tasks that I currently have “claimed” in the Top 10 are my best chance of finishing any 3 of those tasks quickly, point blank, due to the respective lengths and formats of the books I have available. That is to say, I could do other tasks instead, but would need to do fewer of them (like only 1 or maybe 2 tasks instead of 3, which does exactly not seem like it would be fair for the rest of you ;D).
BTW, I’m not obsessed about reading the book that I claimed for Zone 2, I should note, just in case anyone else has something short that they really wanna read. I don’t mind either way. We just need to make sure that at least 2 of us read for Zone 2.
"If I understand the rules right, if we do zone 2 first, we can start reading books for zone 3 before zone 2 is done, we just cannot finish the zone 3 books until zone 2 is completed. So if someone had a longer one they wanted to read for 3, they could start it early and just not finish until zone 2 was done."
Yes, this. Which I suppose also relates to what I said just now re my listed Zone 2 book. If I don’t need to read it, I could at least get to starting my longer Zone 3 spell-outs sooner.
Damn, all these strategic options are hard to puzzle through! Is it weird that I am already sort of looking forward to Round 2, because by then we will have a better idea of what works for us? Or what does not work for us, if (heaven forfend!) we rank poorly!
Random thought!Challenge states the following:
Note: If you receive any injuries, you will have an opportunity in rounds 2 and 4 to rejuvenate.
So... I wonder if that is code for Bonus Tasks? And if we do NOT receive any injuries, does that mean we do NOT have a chance at Bonuses? Hmmm. Perhaps this is a wait-n-see question, for when the Round 2 info is revealed.
I'm guessing the injuries are received if we stay in the lava too long during the countdown?
Erin *Proud Book Hoarder* wrote: "I'm guessing the injuries are received if we stay in the lava too long during the countdown?"Yes, and I think there are injuries (deductions) for various other things too. I need to look through the rules again...
Say, what do you all think of alliances w/other teams? Just for, say, occasional book recommendations for the harder tasks or something. Esp if they are not in the same category as us!
Hmmm... re my own question about alliances:It looks like I only know one person who is on a Molten Team. Everyone else I know is on a Crater team, like us.
FYI: it looks like all teams signed up as either Molten or Crater, which is... interesting... it means that if we end up going UP a category, we may still have a chance to win that category even if we don’t read much more than 40 books... but we have to decide before the end of Round 1.
You know while I am fairly competitive in these challenges, I'm not so competitive that I don't mind sharing a book idea with someone struggling. Not that I want to make our planning sheet public. But it wouldn't bother me is someone on the team gave another team a book idea. Well it might if someone was going to several teams and offering suggestions.
If I have time today, I'll take another look at my books for the first tasks and see which ones I can read the absolute quickest and which ones will take me the longest.Of course I was not smart enough to mark those books down anywhere. D'oh.
Mary, Mary, Just a bit contrary wrote: "You know while I am fairly competitive in these challenges, I'm not so competitive that I don't mind sharing a book idea with someone struggling. Not that I want to make our planning sheet public. ..."Hah, yeah, no I would definitely not be comfortable about going around and randomly helping lots of other teams. At least not beyond whatever questions may happen to come up in the general “Campfire Chat” thread.
It also bothers me somewhat when people/teams don’t put any books on their official spreadsheet until the last minute, so as to hide their finds for as long as possible. I mean, that strategy is allowed and it is valid, but to me it seems to go against the idea of transparency that the Mods espouse in the All About post.
During Upside Down Summer and Right Side Up Spring, I sometimes updated 2-3 books at a time rather than 1 at a time, but that was about it. And I know at least one other person was taking a good chunk of my book ideas, but I was more amused than annoyed because it meant we had similar reading tastes. (Plus, their waiting for my ideas meant they were a little behind, lol.)
At one point back then I also asked about a thing I noticed, with some people putting books as finished on their spreadsheet without shelving them on GR (not even in their TBR, in some cases, let alone in their Read books). That seems shady to me. But the Mods said they didn’t really care because we didn’t need special shelves, etc.
I tend to be an extremely rule oriented person, and I enjoy the extra-level challenge that comes with trying to win while still strictly following both the letter and spirit of the law, so to speak, so I get annoyed when other people overtly bend the rules or undercut the spirit. In fairness, I believe that we should all be playing by the same rules. I don’t just mean in book challenges but IRL too. My coworkers are always poking fun at me about it. ;D
How many of each task are we trying to have each person read for the 1st set and what day are we making our goal to finish them? I'm not sure how the countdown thing works. I hope they don't expect us to get those 10 tasks done in one or two days.
I think I can get tasks 4 and 9 done by Wed evening/Thursday morning depending on when we can start on Monday. I could probably get a 3rd task in Thursday/Friday if needed.
Most of the time when they use the Australian time zone, it's late afternoon for me. I have a paid for exercise class on Monday night, and meetings Tuesday and Wed evening.
If I read shorter books I could probably get several done between Th-Mon morning for zones 2 & 3.
Alysa wrote: "FYI: it looks like all teams signed up as either Molten or Crater, which is... interesting... it means that if we end up going UP a category, we may still have a chance to win that category even if we don’t read much more than 40 books... but we have to decide before the end of Round 1."Just thinking more about this “moving up to Magma category” idea. We’ll obviously need to stay on top of the situation and see how close we are to 40 books in the last day or two of Round 1, and how close we are in both points and book totals to the other teams, but even if we could read 42 books by, say, adding the word “by” (80 points!), it could be worth doing.
My only issue with moving up a category is if all the other teams read at the top of that category and we move into it with just a couple of books then we'd be on the bottom. I'm competitive enough to want to be at the top of the Crater category than at the bottom of Magma. But I'm willing to go with the flow. (pun intended)
I shameless trolled other peoples spreadsheets during Right Side Up. Most of what I found was books I had already found myself so it didn't really help much. But I did the same thing-I filled in books as I went. I didn't feel the need to hide all my books until the last minute. I usually added them once I knew for sure what I was going to read for a task.
Mary, Mary, Just a bit contrary wrote: "How many of each task are we trying to have each person read for the 1st set and what day are we making our goal to finish them? I'm not sure how the countdown thing works. I hope they don't expe..."
So far it seems like we should be able to finish the Top 10 tasks in 2-4 days, depending on the start time. But the idea obviously to finish as quickly as possible, and all at basically the same time.
And all 4 of us need to read at least 1 book or face a penalty.
For me, if the start time is Mon morning EST, I can finish Tasks 10, 7, and 2 by Tues night/Wed morning. But if the start time in Mon evening EST, I won’t finish until Wed night/Thurs morning.
After that, either way I think, I can then read my Safe Zone 2 book by probably Fri/Sat, and when everyone else is done with their Safe Zone 2 books, I will have 9-10 days to read another 6-12 (depending on length) books for Zone 3.
I recently played a romance themed challenge in another group based on the Bachelor TV show. First team to accomplish a certain task got the rose each week. My team won it all but 1 week and people were griping that there's no way we could do it that fast and it was against the spirit of the competition. But really all we did was scope our book ahead of time and all read short books. Any team could have done that too. We also posted our book ideas in our team thread for any one to get ideas if they wanted and most of us read free Kindle books.
Mary, Mary, Just a bit contrary wrote: "My only issue with moving up a category is if all the other teams read at the top of that category and we move into it with just a couple of books then we'd be on the bottom. I'm competitive enough to want to be at the top of the Crater category than at the bottom of Magma. But I'm willing to go with the flow. (pun intended)"
Yes to all that, but the thing is that as of now there are NO teams in Magma category. So either we would be the only ones and would win by default, or we would be one of a small handful of teams who have moved up from Crater by only a few books. So we could still potentially be on top there. Nobody is going to sign up as Crater and then move to Magma and achieve anywhere near that category’s maximum (60!) books.
But yeah, going with the flow! 😁
Mary, Mary, Just a bit contrary wrote: "I recently played a romance themed challenge in another group based on the Bachelor TV show. First team to accomplish a certain task got the rose each week. My team won it all but 1 week and people..."Nice. I mean, nice to winning and good strategy. Not nice to people griping for no good reason.
Some people do cheat at stuff, unfortunately, but it usually isn’t possible to prove. (And what is the point, really? Why would you want to claim you read a book when you didn’t, or you just skimmed it? Where is the satisfaction in that?)
But other people are just “challenge veterans” and understand how best to play the game. Word.
I have my level orders wrong. I was thinking Molten was more than crater. So, we could save that as an option to go up to Magma. I just want to remind you that my reading will be limited during the last week of the challenge. So you guys will already have to pick up my slack. But it ends the day I leave for my honeymoon so I should be able to still help a decent amount. Up until around the 1st or 2nd of the month anyway.
Mary, Mary, Just a bit contrary wrote: "I recently played a romance themed challenge in another group based on the Bachelor TV show. First team to accomplish a certain task got the rose each week. My team won it all but 1 week and people..."What group was that? Curious because I'm always on the lookout for team challenge groups.
Romance Readers Reading Challenges. They are actually hosting the 2nd time of playing the game now but I chose not to play. Not because of what happened last time but because of Wheel of Brown.
Mary, Mary, Just a bit contrary wrote: "I have my level orders wrong. I was thinking Molten was more than crater. So, we could save that as an option to go up to Magma. I just want to remind you that my reading will be limited during the..."I was JUST thinking about that actually. Your wedding stuff, I mean.🎊
The short if it is, regardless of category or anything else, Team Krakatoa Go Go will have to do as well as possible up until then, to get ALL THE POINTS AND DEFEAT OUR PUNY ENEMIES! So that we will be in a good enough position, by early Oct, to still win even if Mary needs to disappear. 🎉
GO GO Krakatoa Go Go!
I should be able to at least cover one book for the first 10 tasks. Then maybe a couple of short ones for spell outs. It's really a low key wedding so not a week of festivities before hand. I'll have a better idea when it gets closer and we have the tasks for that week.
Mary, Mary, Just a bit contrary wrote: "Romance Readers Reading Challenges. They are actually hosting the 2nd time of playing the game now but I chose not to play. Not because of what happened last time but because of Wheel of Brown."I think I had seen that one around, but hadn't joined.
The only book I've come across for the red cover/ HOT in author's name is over 600 pages. But I'm still perusing the red cover listopia list.When we use tineye, we are supposed to check the exclude background colors box right? If so, does anyone want to read The Scarlet Letter. I would really, really rather not. But it works for red cover and HOT in author's name.
Mary, Mary, Just a bit contrary wrote: "The only book I've come across for the red cover/ HOT in author's name is over 600 pages. But I'm still perusing the red cover listopia list.When we use tineye, we are supposed to check the exclu..."
Interesting option. I haven't looked for that task yet. I'll have a lot of time this weekend to hunt.
And yeah, on TinEye we have to check the exclude background colors box.
requested it from library and should have in time. Marking it on the spreadsheet. Not calling dibs if someone else has a book for this be my guest. My local branch has a print copy which I can pick up and have as a backup to the ebook or audio both of which had short waits.
Nice! I remember enjoying a movie of that, many years ago.
I also found a book for iii (something hot on cover with lava in the text) in safe zone 2. I probably will not be able to read both of them quick enough for us to move onto zone 3. I'll read whichever one no one else can cover. Neither book is short but they also aren't insanely long either. If we're in zone 2 by this weekend, then I can knock one out in a day.
Mary, Mary, Just a bit contrary wrote: "I also found a book for iii (something hot on cover with lava in the text) in safe zone 2. I probably will not be able to read both of them quick enough for us to move onto zone 3. I'll read whiche..."I also just checked my books for Safe Zone 2 Task iii (something hot on cover with lava in the text), and found 2 books with 320 pages & 345 pages, respectively. One has fire on the cover:
and the other has 4 hot brothers:
;D So I can also theoretically do one of those if needed, but it would probably be instead of the book I had in mind for Safe Zone 2 Task i:
which is 368 pages.I guess it'll depend on what other people find!
So if Mary reads
for Safe Zone Task ii, and I read for Task i and/or task iii (depending on what others would like to do!), we still need to cover task iv...
So they are saying it will start at 9pm Sydney time on 8/12. That's 7am my time so yay! That means an hour of audio book time while getting ready for work and more on my lunch break.
Nice, looks like that is also 7 am here in Florida.
I'll probably take a look for task iv at some point. Just in case everyone only has books for i-iii and because it's a compulsion.
Haha, it looks like we are all in the same time zone. That is a wonderful coincidence. It's almost like we checked when we made our team. (We did not). XD
I plan on taking my laptop and hiding on Monday and Tuesday so that I can listen to my book without being interrupted every ten minutes, which means I will actually get something done at work too. I can listen to audio books all day if I want, I just have to hit pause a lot.
I am often alone at the office and can listen to audio books at work. I can listen almost all day on Fridays when I'm the only one there. I'm usually too busy earlier in the week. Although I do keep a Kindle at work and read on that some.
I'm fortunate to listen to audio at work as well, although sometimes if it's too hectic or loud I have to turn it off since I can't focus. Depends on what's going on at the time.
I plan to avoid reading anything in this weekend off between Wheel ending and Lava starting.
I have a ton of NetGalley reviews to write, so I will try to make myself do that this weekend!
So I found this, which has a L-A-V-A author, but I'm not sure if the word FIRE in the title will count as something hot?????
I would think it would work with hot because of the fire in title
I don’t think that works because Mods usually have items/images on the cover in mind for those types of tasks... Should probably clarify in Questions thread.
Nothing But Reading Challenges
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I should have some good reading time in the first two weeks: my kid will be away at my mother's house again! (Though my partner's around; no more business trips for him this summer.)
Re reading quickly, yeah, we should all definitely try! But in those Top 10 Tasks, hopefully the quicker readers won't leave others too far behind. On the bright side, if I for one end up sitting around unable to read until other people are done with stuff, I know what I will be doing with that time: reading comic books and other random stuff that's not eligible for Lava Challenge ;D
Re doing Safe Zone 3 before Zone 2:
It's technically allowed, but I think it'll be too difficult w/timing due to Zone 3 being so broad. The Mods even mention somewhere that doing Zone 3 first is not suggested until you're not doing the other Zones at all. (Which I don't think is wise, as Zone 2 will give us more points than any remaining 4 letter word options.)