Ultimate Popsugar Reading Challenge discussion
2020 Challenge - Regular
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07 - The first book you touch on a shelf with your eyes closed
I arrange my TBR in a 6x6 grid, then roll two virtual dice. First number is the column, second number is the row. That'll be what I do when I get to this one.
I sorted my tbr randomly and got The German Girl. One of the libraries close to me has a copy, so this is what I’ll be reading for this prompt.
All of my "owned" books are on Goodreads in a separate shelf. When I am ready to do this prompt, I will ask my mom or husband to choose a number between 1 and whatever the count is; that's the book I will read.
Sarah wrote: "I didn't use my actual bookshelf as I know where certain books are and obviously my Kindle titles aren't on it. So I used my spreadsheet instead - looked away, scrolled up and down randomly and the..."I used this same tactic! Going to my actual shelves wouldn't be helpful unless I pulled all my TBRs out into a pile, and I definitely should NOT be in bookstores this time of year!
Milena wrote: "What if we land on a book we've already read? Just re-choose?"Or re-read it.
My Goodreads TBR list includes books that haven't been published yet!I usually reserve books online and then I or another family member picks them up without spending any time wandering around the library at all. But it shouldn't be too hard to take an extra few minutes one day and pick a book off the library's shelf.
This was really tricky! I went to Barnes and Noble and just closed my eyes and wandered the stacks in the fantasy/sci-fi section. It took a few tries to pull a book that wasn't like 5th in a series I've never read, or something I didn't already read this year. Finally, got a random pick with A Fire Upon the Deep that wasn't part of a series or something I've already read. Nice surprise, and it seems like it might be interesting.
Since I want to read more of my own books and I know exactly where all my books are placed on the shelves, I'm going to make my husband pick one out blindly!
Mel wrote: "Since I want to read more of my own books and I know exactly where all my books are placed on the shelves, I'm going to make my husband pick one out blindly!"That's one way to do it. If I were to ask my husband to do this he wouldn't understand the idea of doing a reading game like this--I'd have to ask one of my kids.
I went to an online dice roller, and put in my TBR amount. I landed on 20, which is Thirteen Reasons Why by Jay Asher
Thanks for the ideas everyone! I am living in Spain and thus have most of my book collection on a Kindle, so I was facing having to pick from the sad selection in English at our local public library. Thanks to several of your suggestions I set my Goodreads Want to Read list to random, picked a random page, and then close my eyes and picked one from the screen. And the winning book was, End of Days (Con Law II) by Mark Gimenez. I put this on the list a couple of years ago after reading the first in the series, so I'm looking forward to seeing if I'm still interested in it.
My office had a book swap last week. There was a whole conference table full of books. I closed my eyes and picked The Shoemaker's Wife
I put all of this past year's Book of the Month books on a shelf, spun myself around many times, and chose Beyond the Point by Claire Gibson....which was from April, haha.
in moving into a new house, renting a room, in January. the woman who owns the house has a floor to ceiling wall width book shelf. guess what I'll be doing the first evening I'm there
Mod
I loved this book! I hope you enjoy it!
Lynn wrote: "Milena wrote: "My office had a book swap last week. There was a whole conference table full of books. I closed my eyes and picked The Shoemaker's Wife"I loved this book! I hope yo..."
Good to know. Thanks, Lynn.
Milena wrote: "My office had a book swap last week. There was a whole conference table full of books. I closed my eyes and picked The Shoemaker's Wife"Oh, what fun. That's a good way of getting rid of old books and getting new books.
My plan is to go to the New Books section of my library and randomly touch one book. It's only three shelves across, so the genres are difficult to identify, so it won't be like going to the fantasy section and randomly choosing a book, when I know I like the genre. We'll see how it goes.
I put a bunch of unread books on one shelf, and will ask my roommate to randomly rearrange them, and then I'll point and pick.
I picked The Book of the Dead
by Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child. It was on the bottom shelf of a bookcase my daughter put some of my books.
I went through my shelf and stopped on The Monk Who Sold His Ferrari: A Fable About Fulfilling Your Dreams and Reaching Your Destiny :)
Since I mostly read ebooks, I don't own many physical books. I also live in a tiny town in the middle of nowhere, so it won't be easy to get to a library or bookstore. Maybe I'll have my daughter pick one of her books for me to read.
I have a list of Newbery Winner and Honor books printed off as a lifetime goal of reading them all. It's on several pages so I just swirled my finger around and randomly picked something.I wound up reading Princess Academy by Shannon Hale
I am totally going to get into the spirit of this prompt. I'm going to count all the stacks at the library (in the adult section and not including the new release shelves), assign them numbers, put them into a hat and draw. I could wind up in any section. Including poetry. Ugh.
Hannah wrote: "The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro"Lucky you. I loved it.
The trick is to arrange all the books you really want to read most on a TBR shelf, and then close your eyes and touch one of them. :D
I have a big haul of library sale books on one shelf, and I haven't had them long enough to know what order they're in. Touched one with my eyes closed and got The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo, which I'm totally excited to read!
I used Girl,Woman,Other by Bernardine Evaristo.
I have way too many unread books on a couple different bookshelves in my place. I do tend to know what is where though, so I went to a friend's place, did a blind touch of her shelf and borrowed that book (A Widow for One Year). So, I've got the book picked, but unfortunately, it won't reduce my number of books owned but not yet read!
Not sure if it's been mentioned in here, but Goodreads have an option to randomly select books of a shelf (well, they have a settling to put books in a random order :)
So, on my last trip to the library, I wrote down all the stack labels (in the adult section), then drew them out of a hat (OK, not really a hat) and then I drew a number 1 through 5 (the number of sections per stack) and then 1 through six (the number of shelves). And all that has lead me to pick The Chameleon's Shadow by Minette Walters. I don't think I've ever heard of her and it doesn't really look like something I would read but I'm just relieved I didn't end up with a stack where the gardening books, or poetry, or plays:)
Like some others, I used a number generator, first for a number between 1-41 (the number of "Want to Read" pages I have) and then a number between 1-20 (the number of books on that page).I almost laughed aloud because it chose Peter and the Shadow Thieves. This is really only funny to me because I am TERRIBLE at finishing/continuing series, even when I really enjoy them. I read the first book in the series a few years ago and loved it, so I put the others on my TBR, and this actually chose the second book!
It's like the universe knows...
I've decided to be extra ambitious (even though I barely, BARELY finished last year's challenge) and do a second draw, this time only with books I already own, since that's something I'm trying to be better about.I have all my books cataloged on The Library Thing (yes, I am that ridiculous), so I used the same method as above with my Unread shelf. So the other book I'll be reading is The Purloining of Prince Oleomargarine. It's fairly short, so hopefully it won't be too hard to add in!
I used my own book shelf - too many unread there. In any case, I picked Endurance by Frank A. Worsley. Honestly, I think I've had this book over TEN YEARS! Why I've never read it, I have no idea. But that's about to change.
I went through a list of all my books on kindle and landed on Born Survivors: Three Young Mothers and their Extraordinary Story of Courage Defiance and Hope by Wendy Holden. Excited to read it!
A suggestion for those having a problem with this prompt, or feel they know their own shelves too well: try a “blind date with a book,” featured at many libraries and bookstores, especially in February. I’ve seen a few variations on how this is done. Books are wrapped and then have a quote from the book, or will have a short description that indicates genre and brief info like, “Fiction, mystery... Tragic and scarred lives, two loners must work together.”If not familiar with the concept, there are tons of images online. Just google “blind date with a book.”
Heather L wrote: "A suggestion for those having a problem with this prompt, or feel they know their own shelves too well: try a “blind date with a book,” featured at many libraries and bookstores, especially in Febr..."My library in Minnesota is doing this.
I've actually done this more than once already. I pick a shelf in the library, make sure nobody's watching, close my eyes and pick a book off the shelf. If it doesn't look interesting, I put it back on the shelf and try another day.I already did this once, and the book looked interesting, and somewhere in the middle I realized it wasn't just a "random historical fiction" but about Ada Lovelace, so it could also be used for "a woman in STEM." I don't personally like to use books for more than one prompt, so I either need to find another book about a woman in STEM or do the "eyes closed at the library" trick again.
I ended up asking my boyfriend to do this for me because I knew I'd just put them back until I picked one I wanted to read at that moment. (He's a lot better at rule following than me) He totally surprised me by doing it on HIS bookshelf. I ended up with Ordinary Men: Reserve Police Battalion 101 and the Final Solution in Poland by Christopher R. Browning. Not something I'd normally choose for myself but I'm sure it will still be a good read!
Since I don't have physical shelves for my TBR, I'm going to use you guys as a virtual shelf picker. Choose a number between 1 and 25!
Drakeryn wrote: "Since I don't have physical shelves for my TBR, I'm going to use you guys as a virtual shelf picker. Choose a number between 1 and 25!"14?
K8 wrote: "14?"14. Crier's War (Nina Varela)
Nice pick! I've heard a lot of good things about this book. Also it fits one of my side goals for the year, to read as many robot/cyborg/AI books as I can (my favorite prompt)
I keep all of my unread physical books on their own shelf so I just picked one from there to bring on vacation. It ended up being Invisible which was a great travelling book. Kept my interest up but not enough for me to actually want to bring back to the States. Hopefully someone else at my hotel found it.
I mainly use a kindle to read and after a lot of inner debating of my physical bookshelf, my kindle bought books or library ebooks, I decided to go with library ebooks. I thought it might push me to read something that I wouldn't normally choose but with the caveat I can always rechoose if it was totally out there or another pesky Western lol. I used the 'new to the library shelf' and scrolled with my eyes closed and landed on
which I've gone with. I don't think I'd have picked it but its been good and has a very interesting style.
I have a shelf stacked with books I haven't read yet. I reached in blindly and came out with Forget Me Not by Elizabeth Lowell. I don't even remember where I got this book but it should be a quick easy read!
Ultimate Popsugar Reading Challenge
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We have a little library near my work that is well used and the selection turns over often. I think I'm going to take this as a prompt to pick up something out of there as there's normally a choice of about 6-10 items in there and definitely random!!