Read-a-Thon #3 - Team Pie

[Ellie]

It was Bake Off last night so I didn't get any reading done after my audio time. The 125 page limit rather than 100 is really scuppering me with my plans to read some novellas, they all seem to be just under.

[Jody]

I've finished The Red Pony! Off to add it to the spreadsheet now. Today's my day off work, and later on I'll have an hour waiting while the Spider has art class, so I'll probably get some more reading done then, unless I decide to go for a walk.

I ended up putting it against the Girl Scout badge for Outdoor: Traveler. Two of the four sections involved someone travelling, so it seemed like a good fit.

[Marina]

I'm unsure if you want us to put the books in the spreadsheet before we've finished it. I'm not sure when I'll finish my books, so I don't want to take up space if any of you finish books first.

I'm working on these two:
Treason - Special agent, detective, truth seeker, theater
Love Overboard - cooking

I don't know if I'll finish the last one. It's a bit dumb, but it fits another challenge I'm working on, where I'm having trouble finding another book. Luckily it's a short book!

[Trish, Annular Mod]

Kathryn wrote: "Sounds good, Trish. So I see you've got both Station X and Academic Curveball in the spreadsheet already - have you finished both of them now?"

Not yet - maybe I've been rubbish again, but I thought the last couple we put suggested books in before they were finished.

Sorry. I seem to be permanently confused!

[Marina]

Trish, I had the same thought at first. I was about to put mine in the spreadsheet but then wasn't sure. It's a little more difficult keeping track on this one :-)

[Lieke]

Especially with the Girl Scout Badges it is good to know if someone is reading a book that can fit.

[Ellie]

I could count the Marthas in The Testaments as Household Elves or Savvy Shoppers... But it will be a few more days till I'm done so I don't want to bagsy either at this point!

P.S. I'm really enjoying the audiobook, I think the narrator for Aunt Lydia is the same actor as from the TV show. I only watched a few episodes though so I can't comment if there's any overlap.

[Jody]

I think because the Boy Scout badges are not repeatable, we are better off having those set up like the first one - each one listed in a row, and then our various options to the right. Then we can put an x in each one our books can count for and move them around easily if we need to.

I can set this up when I get back home from art class if you all think it’s a good idea.

[Kathryn]

Sorry, I was out at choir! And sorry, Trish and Marina - when I set up the spreadsheet this morning, my thinking was that there are so many different options, and you could probably make a case for a book to fit in several different areas, that we probably didn't need to worry about where a book was going to fit until after we'd finished it and then find a space for it to go then. And when I first read it, I also couldn't work out how to set up the spreadsheet other than very basically - and it seemed different to the first quest, and I still can't really wrap my head around doing it like the first one, for some reason!!

But if people want to do it like that, and someone (Jody?) is happy to set the spreadsheet up, go for it!

[Johanne]

Jody wrote: "I think because the Boy Scout badges are not repeatable, we are better off having those set up like the first one - each one listed in a row, and then our various options to the right. Then we can ..."

I think it´s a good idea to list our options in some way. I think this quest needs a bit more strategising than first anticipated.

I started Dora Bruder yesterday, and I´m unsure how it fits... I´ll have a look.

Edit: I think it could work for "detective" (In Girl Scout, science, investigation), "Storytelling" (scribe and novelist), and possibly genealogy and citizenship in the world in the boy scouts.
The book is about the author trying to find the traces of a missing jewish girl (who went missing during WW2), and whilst doing that also remembering his own life and the places he goes (he walks a lot around Paris).

[Trish, Annular Mod]

Right, I've completed Academic Curveball, so I've marked that done in the sheet for "Storyteller". But it would also work for "Athlete" if it needs moving, as the grades of the star members of the baseball team are a key plot point.

I've had a change of mind for my next book, as I've found something I can probably read more quickly, so for now, I've taken Station X out. Instead, I'm going with A Twist in the Tail, which should work for either Entrepreneurship (Business Owner) or Boy Scout badge Pets

Station X is still in the short-term plan, though, if needed.

[Lieke]

Kathryn wrote: "Lieke wrote: "I need some help I'm currently reading Zee van verbeelding, it is a Dutch book with fantasy and Sci-Fi short stories. But I have no idea where I could put the book (I ..."

Thanks, I put it on space exploration for now because of the new worlds I have explored in the stories and at least of two of the stories are about exploring new planets :)

[Jody]

Ok Pies, I've added planning tabs for the Boy & Girl scout badges. I figured that was the easiest way not to mess up the excellent tracking sheet for the completed tasks. I set them up essentially the same as how we tracked the books for Quest #1.

It does add an extra step when we complete a book for a task, to put it into the main spreadsheet, but I don't think that's too much of an issue, and this way we can more easily see different options for each open task. Hopefully I haven't messed up any of the colour formatting, but I think it should be ok!

[Marina]

I finished Love Overboard on my way home from work. I don't really think it fits anywhere else but cooking, so that's where I've added it.

I hope to finish Treason no later than tomorrow. I'm thinking best fit is for the special agent since the main character is a spy, but it could possibly also be used for theater, since she's an actress and part of the story takes place at a theater, but I'm not sure if it was only the first chapter.

[Hilde]

Kathryn & Jody, the spreadsheet look great, thanks! :)

Right, so I just had another brief look at this new quest, after being to tired to read it properly this morning. I am finally getting close to the finish line with The Elegance of the Hedgehog, but not sure where it can fit yet. I'll have a closer look at the categories in the spreadsheet after I finish my dinner.

Btw; I am always so impressed with how many books you all can manage in a week in these readathons, I am never able to keep up. Keep the good flow going!

[Trish, Annular Mod]

Hilde wrote: "Right, so I just had another brief look at this new quest, after being to tired to read it properly this morning. I am finally getting close to the finish line with The Elegance of the Hedgehog, but not sure where it can fit yet. I'll have a closer look at the categories in the spreadsheet after I finish my dinner."

From the description, Renee sounds a bit of a Household Elf to me :-)

[Hilde]

Trish wrote: "From the description, Renee sounds a bit of a Household Elf to me"

That is absolutely true, thanks!

[Hannah]

I just finished Neil Patrick Harris: Choose Your Own Autobiography. I added it to the spreadsheet under Financial Literacy, Making Choices, as this seemed fitting for a Choose Your Own Adventure book. I’m sure it would fit some of the Boy Scout badges if we needed to move it.

[Trish, Annular Mod]

So, I've also managed to finish A Twist in the Tail. For now, I've put it under Boy Scouts: Pets

[Kathryn]

Good morning all!

Thanks for adding in the planning tabs for the spreadsheet, Jody. It's such an involved task...! How on earth did the mods even come up with the concept?!

And well done on the reading through the day!! We've got only 5 more books for the boy scouts and 4 more for the girl scouts!

Great job, Team Pie!!

[Lieke]

I finished Zee van Verbeelding and added it to the spreadsheet.

[Hannah]

I’ve finished Flight to Afar which I’ve put under Boy Scouts: Fishing.

[Johanne]

Wow you guys are on a roll! I've slowed down a bit, but will hopefully be back on track tomorrow.

Good night everyone!

[Kathryn]

Team Pie is on fire! We'll be on quest 4 before you know it! I hope the mods have enough quests to keep us going!

[Trish, Annular Mod]

As it looks like we have takers for the STEM ones, I'm going to try to finish The Raven Tower today - I'm thinking "Bird Study" under the boys, or perhaps "Architecture" as towers are buildings!

[Hilde]

Good morning :)

I finished The Elegance of the Hedgehog last night, and placed it for Life Skills/Household Elf for Girls Scout. It can also fit several Boy Scouts criteria if we need to shuffle things around later on.

[Jody]

Good morning Pies!

I've about 100 pages left on my current book, and I'm hoping between my commute and my after-work downtime I'll finish it off today. After focusing on chonks this year for AtY, it's been a lot of fun to sort through my TBR with the page length pointing in the other direction. It's amazing how many books are shorter than I'd thought they were!

[Hilde]

I am thinking about starting either The Hours or They Came Like Swallows next, but haven't decided yet.

I see that you have read The Hours, Jody - do you remember if it was a fast or a slow read?

[Jody]

I can’t remember, I think it was kind of middling - but I do remember how incredible it was. So so good.

[Hilde]

Jody wrote: "I can’t remember, I think it was kind of middling - but I do remember how incredible it was. So so good."

Thanks, looking forward to it! I decided to go with the shortest one, (They Came Like Swallows), and will then start The Hours once the readathon is over. I read Mrs. Dalloway this summer, so thought it would be good to follow up with this one while it’s still fresh in my memory.

[Jody]

I hope you love it - it would definitely be a good tie in with Mrs Dalloway (which I enjoyed far less, unfortunately - I want to love Virginia Woolf, but the stream of consciousness thing just isn't for me).

I've just finished my book, and added it to the spreadsheet. We only need five more books, Pies! Go team!

Now, what will I read next??

[Trish, Annular Mod]

I've just finished The Raven Tower and entered it up as "Boys: Bird Study".

I'll wander back to Station X for a bit, as a backup for the STEM prompts. It would also fit Boys: Communications (it being all about intercepting them) or might, at a pinch, fit Boys: Chess, as there were chess players at Bletchley.

And if you guys get finished with the other four, I'll hope it fits the next quest.

[Marina]

I've just finished Treason and put it down for girls- STEM-special agent. It can be used for boys-theater if we need to move it.
But only 3 books to go. 😀

[Hannah]

I’ve just finished The Other Queen and put it down for girls - Life skills - My family story. It could also fit genealogy if we need to move it,

Only two books left to go before Quest 4 😊.

[Jody]

I'm currently reading Hunger, but I don't think I'll have it finished before we knock off the two we need to finish Quest #3. Hopefully it will work for Quest #4!

[Lieke]

I finished Witch and Wizard, will add it to the spreadsheet now.

Edit: I added it as a Boy Scout badge for lifesaving. We only need one more book for this quest 😊

[Hannah]

Nearly there, Team Pies! One of the books I’m reading would work for the category we don’t have yet. I’ve got about 2.5 hours of speed listening left, but I really need to go to sleep now. I can listen to it on my commute to work, and I’ve got a ppa slot tomorrow morning so I can hopefully finish it then.

If someone else finishes their book before I do and it works for STEM, I can save my book to put towards quest 4 😊.

[Kathryn]

Good morning, Team Pie! Wow! Only one more book to go! The book I'm reading would also work for this final book, so I'll see if I can squeeze in the 100-ish pages while you're all sleeping, but if I don't get there, if you can nail it, Hannah, then we'll be finished quest 3 one way or the other within 10 or 12 hours, I guess!!

Sweet dreams, Pies!

[Johanne]

Hello pies!

We have finished quest #3!

I just read The Umbrella Academy, Vol. 1: The Apocalypse Suite and added it for science, robotics, and showcasing robots. There are robots and lots of other crazy stuff, and I think it fits well in science/technology.
A mod said in another thread that graphic novels are fine as long as they fit the page requirements, and this is around 180 pages.

I'm off to bed now, good night! And looking forward to tomorrow :)

[Kathryn]

Oh, excellent news, Johanne!!

So we are up to quest 4, mods!

And so for books finished before we get details of quest 4, we can keep track of them in the unassigned books tab of the spreadsheet.

[Laura, Celestial Sphere Mod]

Quest 4:

Sometimes we have to take a moment and just reflect on the journey. For the next stop, we'll focus on some of the books that have already been completed.

Read 15 books related to books that your team has read so far in this read-a-thon. Books must be connected by the following ways:
- 5 books published in the same year
- 4 books with the same word in the title [excluding A, An, and The]
- 3 books with a similar cover [color, object, etc.]
- 2 books set in the same location or written by authors born in the same locations [country]
- 1 book by the same author

Read 3 books [or books by authors] that are mentioned in a read-a-thon game.

Hint: If you're having trouble, it may be a good idea for members of your group to play the read-a-thon games ;)

This should equal 18 total books for quest 4.

[Kathryn]

Laura wrote: "Quest 4:

Sometimes we have to take a moment and just reflect on the journey. For the next stop, we'll focus on some of the books that have already been completed.

Read 15 books related to books ..."

OK - I need to take some time to wrap my head around this one!! Thanks, Laura!!

[Kathryn]

OK, Team Pie - I've had a bit more time today, and I've done a spreadsheet which I think might work for this next quest. Although we all know by now that spreadsheet-creation at this level is not my happy space(!), so if anyone has any brighter ideas, please feel free to modify, or create something entirely different!

Because this is based on the books we've already read for the read-a-thon, I've copied and pasted over the books that we've already read, and I've started to fill in the relevant details for the books, but since we haven't bothered with authors, I'm not sure for most of them which book is the right one! So fill in the details for your own books if I haven't. Over to the right of that sheet are some of the books mentioned in read-a-thon games (on days 2 and 5), or included links to the threads (days 1 and 4) or the linked books for those threads (as there are lots of books mentioned!). (Days 3 and 6 didn't have any books mentioned). Looking at the linked books is definitely simpler than scanning through the whole thread, but if anyone has mentioned books without linking e.g. if they were on the app and can't link, then they won't be included in those lists of linked books.

I've then created a spreadsheet where we can put the books we're reading and, this is where my abilities fall down a bit, I'm not sure of the best way to work out how to put which books where. I guess if we enter the books we're reading, as I've done, but leave the section for deciding where they can go until we get a better picture of what other people are reading? Although if you decide to read a book mentioned in the R-a-T games, feel free to enter that in. Maybe someone can come up with a better way to do this...

Or maybe it needs to be based more on discussion, rather than looking across to work out who's reading what...

What do people think?

[Kathryn]

I was just having a sticky-beak* into the other teams' threads and I realised I've misunderstood the year task. So we just need to read 5 books that match years we've already read books from

So, based on the years I've already entered (and I've now entered more years since I wrote this post!), we could read another book from 2018, another one from 2007, another from 2010, another from 2019 and another from 2017 and we'd be done. It doesn't have to be those years, that's just an example.

So I assume, unless one of the mods pop in to say otherwise, that's the same for the 4 words in the title - the 4 books we read don't have to be the same words, each one just has to have the same word as a book we've already read.

And so on for cover and setting/author country of birth. That makes things a little simpler!!

* - just realised that I think a "sticky-beak" is an Aussie term - it means having a nose around in other people's business!!

[Kathryn]

I keep thinking of things - maybe we could use "O" to indicate where a book would fit, and then once we finish a book, change it to an "X" in the category we used it to fit.

[Kathryn]

Another thought:

I've posted the covers of books we've linked throughout the thread to make it a bit easy to find similar covers:



I used the covers that the links led to, but if any are wrong, let me know which the correct cover is and I can change it. And I know there are some missing, so let me know if you've read a book that isn't there (if your author is missing in the database on the completed books sheet, there's a good chance your cover will be missing from here, as I was doing them simultaneously).

[Hilde]

Oh, wow - quest 3 finished already! And great job you’ve done, Kathryn 😊

I’ll have a proper look at it all when I’m more awake than right now, but here is the cover of the edition I read for ‘The Elegance of the Hedgehog’: (Norwegian edition with the title ‘Pinnsvinets eleganse’).

[Johanne]

Oh wow! Good morning.
That looks extensive. I'll try and wrap my head around it when I am at a computer.

[Johanne]

And great work Kathryn :)

[Jody]

Thanks for all of your hard work, Kathryn! I went in and added a little of the missing info from my books, and I’ll try to get the rest in today (I’m on my way into work now but hopefully will be able to get it done the afternoon).