Challenge Discussion and Questions

[Bob, Short Story Classics]

Discuss or ask questions about this thread.

[Katy, Quarterly Long Reads]

Good challenge for the coming year. Thanks, Bob.

[Elsbeth]

I agree, Kathy! Wonderful challenge! Thank you Bob!

[Janet]

This has certainly garnered a lot of interest and discussion quickly. True sign of a good challenge. Thanks.

[Elsbeth]

I've been skipping through the reading lists. So many wonderful choices!

Happy reading, everyone! And good luck with this challenge!

[Renato]

You're right, Janet!

Thanks for bringing this challenge to the group, Bob!

[Tytti]

Hmm.. a thought occurred to me. Maybe I should wait a while until we get the classics bingo. Then I could pick books that would suit both... :-P

[Janet]

Looking at these lists and the interest generated in some of the books should give us great ideas when nominating group reads.

[Connie]

I love this idea. I am going to look through my shelves for some ideas on what to put on my list!

[Christine]

Tytti wrote: "Hmm.. a thought occurred to me. Maybe I should wait a while until we get the classics bingo. Then I could pick books that would suit both... :-P"

I will try to get the Classics Bingo game posted this weekend. I'm excited for the 2015 games and challenges!

[Tytti]

This would be a good challenge to use that challenge widget because you have to decide the books beforehand and it's easy to shelf them. It's not a very good one but it might be fun anyway. It could be used for the Bingo, as well.

[Tytti]

I wonder how many times I manage to change my choices. Now I have books from 1810s to about 1960s/'70s, maybe. I haven't updated the list, though. I just can't consider books from the eighties as classics.

So of course I have too many of them and I am still missing something from the 1880s, I think it was... I seem to have two themes already: vampires pre-Dracula and some other monsters, too, and drugs. :-P

[Bob, Short Story Classics]

Tytti wrote: "I wonder how many times I manage to change my choices. Now I have books from 1810s to about 1960s/'70s, maybe. I haven't updated the list, though. I just can't consider books from the eighties as c..."

Oscar Wilde's The Canterville Ghost was published in 1887. It's not monsters or vampires,but?

[Tytti]

I actually thought of that, and I have already one ghost story on my list, at the moment. I suppose I might find it from Gutenberg or somewhere, might be more difficult to get the actual book. (Though it seems to be in one anthology...) I just don't like reading from the screen.

[Bob, Short Story Classics]

I got a free copy from Amazon on my Kindle.

[Tytti]

But I don't have one... :-)

[Bob, Short Story Classics]

There is an app for smart phones, screen is a little small. I use it when my wife takes me shopping and I can steal away to a bench while she shops.

[Andrea AKA Catsos Person]

I am having a technical issue with my attempts to post my list (create a new topic).

When I click on "add book/author" for the new topic that I am trying to create, the "add book/author" link is not active. When I click it (the link) the box does not appear where I can type in the name of the book/name of author etc.

Advice anyone?

[Bob, Short Story Classics]

Andrea I am no expert, but lets break it down into steps. In the same thread you are reading this post scroll to the top of the page. Click on the challenge title "2015 Old & New classic Challenge". That should open up all the individual threads, look to the right just above the words last activity. In small letters are the words "new topic". Click the words "new topic" when the new screen opens at the top under the red book there will have a rectangular box with the word topic on top. Type the name you wish to give you challenge. In the comments box is where you can start to list your thoughts, ideas, and challenge books.

Hope this helps.

[Tytti]

Bob wrote: "There is an app for smart phones, screen is a little small. I use it when my wife takes me shopping and I can steal away to a bench while she shops."

Well, no smart phone either. :-) I prefer books, anyway.

[Laurie]

Andrea (Catsos Person) wrote: "I am having a technical issue with my attempts to post my list (create a new topic).

When I click on "add book/author" for the new topic that I am trying to create, the "add book/author" link is n..."

Andrea, are you tring to create your topic on the GR app or on the desktop page? The app does not have the book/author link available. You have to use the web page if you want the links.

[Andrea AKA Catsos Person]

I often use the app, but I was trying to create my list via a PC bec I wanted to use html and to link the book titles.


I was trying to create my list using Firefox browser and the author/title link would not work. I switched to the browser Google chrome, which I never use, and the feature worked there with Google chrome.

[Laurie]

Andrea (Catsos Person) wrote: "I often use the app, but I was trying to create my list via a PC bec I wanted to use html and to link the book titles.


I was trying to create my list using Firefox browser and the author/title l..."

Good to know. Rarely use firefox but I'll remember that in case I do.

[Rachel]

Are we still going to do the dusty bookshelf challenge?

[Rachel]

Are we still going to do the dusty bookshelf challenge?

[Bob, Short Story Classics]

Rachel wrote: "Are we still going to do the dusty bookshelf challenge?"

It is our intention to retire the "Collecting Dust Challenge" in favor of this new challenge which also designed to move long stand TBR books to the read pile.

Rachel I hope you will participate in this new challenge. It should prove to be more interactive.

[Rachel]

Thanks for the info. I'm still catching up on my dusty to reads, so I'll post my reviews in the retire folder. I'll check out the new challenge this week!

[Bob, Short Story Classics]

There are Thirteen (13) days left to sign up or make changes to your challenges. Remember this is an honor challenge. On January 1st your list is locked and the challenge begins.

New members refer to the challenge rules allowances have been made for late starts.

Good Luck,

[Andrea AKA Catsos Person]

I think I have everything decided for my bingo challenge, but I keep procrastinating about filling in my bingo list. All of those links...Eww. :(

[Bob, Short Story Classics]

This might be a good indicator of how little I had to do this past Saturday. I took some time and did a little checking into the stats of this challenge.

2015 Old & New Classics Challenge

Number of Participants-47
Number of Books Selected-656

There were plenty of books that were selected more than once, so I'll only list the books that made 5 or more challenges.

11 Challenges- The Count of Monte Cristo
8 Challenges- Love in the Time of Cholera
8 Challenges- Pride and Prejudice
8 Challenges- War and Peace
7 Challenges- Catch-22
6 Challenges- Things Fall Apart
6 Challenges- The Woman in White
5 Challenges- The Beautiful and Damned
5 Challenges- Cranford
5 Challenges- East of Eden
5 Challenges- The Great Gatsby
5 Challenges- Gone with the Wind
5 Challenges- Jane Eyre
5 Challenges- Lolita
5 Challenges- Mrs. Dalloway
5 Challenges- The Name of the Rose
5 Challenges- Tess of the D'Urbervilles

At the end of the year or early next January it might be fun to learn how many challenges and the total number of books that were completed during this challenge.

[Pink]

Interesting stats Bob, I only have one on my list (War and Peace) I'd be curious to see the end of year figures too.

[Sarah]

Four of them are on my list. It's fun to see those stats. :)

[Desertorum]

Love stats! Four on my list (plus one as substitute). Six of those I have read already before. So that leaves me six to read still!

[Julie]

Only 1 of those is on my list - but I've read most of the others :-)

[Andrea AKA Catsos Person]

Six of the titles on this list are part of my challenge and I've completed each one of these.

[Bob, Short Story Classics]

Taking away all duplicates this challenge accounts for about 445 different titles. I know this list is not perfect, but it is very close.

1Q84
A Clockwork Orange
A Farewell to Arms
A Fine Balance
A Game of Thrones
A Great Unrecorded History
A Little Princess
A Night to Surrender
A PaleVview of Hills
A Passage to India
A portrait of the Artist as a Young Man
A Room of One's Own
A Room with a View
A Separate Peace
A Study in Scarlet
A Tale of Two Cities
A Thousand Acres
A Time to Kill
A Tree Grows in Brooklyn
A Wrinkle in Time
Absalom, Absalom
Agnes Grey
Alas, Babylon
Alice's Adventures in wonderland
All but My Life:
Americanah
An Old Captivity
Anansi Boys
And Then There Were None
Anerican Gods
Animal Farm
Anna Karenina
Anne of Avonlea
Appointment in Samarra
Around the World in Eighty Days
Arrow of God
As I Lay Dying
Ashenden
At Swim-Two Birds
Atlas Shrugged
Atonement
Believing the Lie
Beloved
Benvolio
Beowulf
Berlin Alexanderplatz
Birdsong
Black Air
Black Beauty
Bleak House
Blow-Up and Other Stories
Bone Black: Memeries of Girlhood
Boom
Bossypants
Brave New World
Breakfast at Tiffany's
Breakfast of Champions
Brighton Rock
Brokeback Mountain
Burning Daylight
By Grand Central Station I sat Down and Wept
Cannery Row
Carmilla ja muita kertomksia
Catch-22
Charlie and the Chocolate Factory
Charlie Wilson's War
Children of Men
Cloud Atlas
Cold Comfort Farm
Confessions of an Ugly Stepsister
Cranford
Crime and Punishment
Daniel Deronda
Darkness a Noon
David Copperfield
Dead Souls
Death Comes for the Archbishop
Death Comes to Pemberley
Delirium
Doctor Zhivago
Doctor Zhivago
Don Quixote
Dracula
Dragonflight
East of Eden
Elmer Gantry
Emma
Euphoria
Eva Luna
Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close
Fahrenheit 451
Fair Stood the Wind for France
Faust
Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas
Fight Club
Five Red Herrings
Five Weeks in a Balloon
Flower for Algernon
For Whom the Bell Tolls
Forever Amber
Foucault's Pendulum
Foundation The Mists of Avalon
Frankenstein
Friday's Child
Georgiana Darcy's Diary
Germinal
Giovanni's Room
Girl With a Pearl Earring
Go Tell It on the Mountain
Going Bovine
Gone Girl
Gone with the Wind
Gravity's Rainbow
Great Expectations
Grendel
Gulliver's Travels
Harantappoase
Haroun and the Sea of Stories
Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone
Hateship, Friendship, Courtship, Loveship, Marriage
Havukka ahon ajattelija
Heart of Darkness
Heidi
Homo faber
Hunger
I Capture the Castle
I Know Why the Caged Bird sings
I, Claudius
I, robot
Illuminations
In Cold Blood
Indiana
Inferno
Infinite Jest
Interpreter of Maladies
Invisible Cities
Invisible Man
IronWeed
Islands in the Stream
Jackdaws
Jamaica Inn
Jane Eyre
Jason and the Golden Fleece
Jo's Boys
Journey to the End of the Night
Jude the Obseure
Kim
King Lear
King Solomon's Mines
L'(euvre au noir
Lady Audley's Secret
Lady Chatterley' Lover
Lady of Hay
Lavina
Les Liaisons Dangereues
Les Miserables
Life and Death are Wearing Me Out
Linnaisten Karanon viheria kanari
Lirael
Little Dorrit
Little Men
Little Women
Lolita
London
Lost in the Cosmos:
Lotita
Love in the Time of Cholera
Mad Love
Madame Bovary
Magician: Apprentice
Mansfield Park
Many Waters
Margaret of the North
Mason and Dixon
Me & Georgette
Metamorphoses
Middlemarch
Middlesex
Midnight's Children
Mine Till Midnight
Misery
Moby Dick
Moll Flanders
Mr. Darcy's Dream
Mrs. Dalloway
Murder on the Orient Express
My Antonia
My Antonia
My Cousin Rachel
Native Son
Nausea Last Exit to Brooklyn
New York
North and South
Northanger Abbey
Notes from a Small Island
Notes from Underground
O Pioneers
Oedipus Rex
Of Human Bondage
Of Mice and Men
On the road
One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich
One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest
One Hundred Years of Solitude
Orlando
Out of Africa
People in the Summer Night
Persuasion
Peter and the Starcatchers
Phineas finn
Pilgrim at Tinker Creek
Pride and Prejudice
Psmith, Journalist
Purge
Rebecca
Red State, Blue State, Rich State, Poor State
Revolutionary Road
River God
Robinson Crusoe
Romeo and Juliet
Rue Morguen murhat ja muita kertonuksia
Safe Haven My Sister's Keeper
Sense and Sensibility
Shopping, Seduction & Mr. Selfridge
Shroud for a Nightingale
Sials Marner
Silly Novels by Lady Novelist
Sir Gawain and the Grree Knight
Slaughterhouse Five
Someone Knows my Name
Something Wicked This Way Comes
Stardust
Station Eleven
Steppenwolf
Stone Mattress:
Stoner
Sudenmorsian
SuperFreakonomics
Swann's Way
Tender is the Night
Tess of the D'Urbervilles
The 39 Steps
The Abbolitions of Men
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
The Aeneid
The Age of Innocence
The Angel's Game
The Awakening
The Awakening
The Awakening
The Bas Beginning
The Beach
The Beautiful and Damed
The Bell Jar
The Bhagavad Gita
The Big Rock Candy Mountain
The Black Moth
The Blind Assassin
The Book of Disquiet
The Book Thief
The BostoniansMary Poppins in the Park
The Bronze Horseman
The Brothers Karamazov
The Canterbery Tales
The Canterville Ghost
The Cherry Orchard
The Class
The Client
The Color Purple
The Complete Stories of Flannery O'Connor
The Count of Monte Cristo
The Cranford Novellas
The Day Last More Than a Hundred Years
The Day of the Locust
The Diamond Age
The Diary of a Nobody
The Divine Comedy
The Double
The Dragonbone Chair
The Dream of Scipio
The Field Guide
The Five People You Meet in Heaven
The Forsyte Saga
The French Lieutenant's Woman
The Golem
The Grapes of Wrath
The Great Gatsby
The Ground Beneath Her Feet
The Haunted Hotel
The Help
The History of the Siege of Lisbon
The History of Tom Jones
The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy
The Hound of the Baskervilles
The Hours
The House of Mirth
The Ice-Shirt
The Idiot
The Idiot
The Iliad
The Importance of being Earnest
The Innocence and Wisdom of Father Brown
The Invisible Man
The Jungle
The Killer angels
The Lacuna
The Last days of Pompeii
The Last Lion 1:
The Left Hand of Darkness
The Legend of Bagger Vance
The Legend of Sleeoy Hollow
The Life of Tristram Shandy
The Lives of Things
The Lonley Passion of Judith Herne
The Lover
The Maginificent Abmbersons
The Maltese Falcon
The Man in the Brown Suit
The Master and Margarita
The Maze Runner
The Mitford Girls
The Moonstone
The Mysteries of Udolpho
The Mysterious Island
The Mystery of the Yellow Room
The Name of the Rose
The Napoleon of Notting Hill
The Night Circus
The Odyssey
The Old Man and the Sea
The Other Boleyn Girl
The Outsiders
The Painted Veil
The Phantom of the Opera
The Picture of Dorian Gray
The Piisonwood Bible
The Pilgrim's Progress
The Portrait of the Lady
The Portrait of the Lady
The Princess and the Goblin
The Professer
The Quiet American
The Raj Quartet
The Razor's Edge
The Rector's Daughter
The Red Badge of Courage
The Red House Mystery
The Return of Sherlock Holmes
The Return of the Native
The Reverse of the Medal
The Rime of the Ancient Mariner
The Round House
The Scalet Letter
The Scarlet Pimpernel
The Secert History
The Secret Adversary
The Secret Garden
The Secret History
The Shadow of the Wind
The Silver Linings Playbood
The Sirens of Titan
The Song of the Lark
The Sound and the Fury
The Source
The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde
The Stranger
The Sun Also Rises
The Symposium
The Tartar Steppe
The Tempest
The Temple of My Familiar
The Thin Man
The Thirteenth Tale
The Thorn Birds
The Time Machine
The Turn of the Screw
The Unbearable Lightness of Being
The Unbecoming of Mara Dyer
The Uncanny
The Valley of Fear
The Vampyre
The War of the Worlds
The Warden
The Warden
The Waste Land
The Way of all Flesh
The Wildest Heart
The Woman in White
The Wonderfull Wizard of OZ
The Woodlanders
The Zombie Survival Guide
Their Eyes Were Watching God
Theodore Rex
Therese Raquin
Things Fall Apart
This Side of Paradise
To Kill a Mickingbird
To the Lighthouse
Tortilla Flat
Tough shit:
True History of the Kelly Gang
Twelve Years a Slave
Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea
Ulysses
Ulysses
Undaunted Courage:
Unnatural Death
Vanity Fair
Villette
Voyage au congo
War and Peace
We
When Paris Went Dark:
Where Angels Fear to Tread
Wide Sargasso Sea
Wings of the Dove
Wise Bolld
Wives and Daughters
Wolf Hall
World War Z
World Without End
Wuthering Heights

[Katy, Quarterly Long Reads]

Bob, you have way too much time on your hands -- but I love the list. Thanks!

[Pink]

Wow, that is quite a list!

[Melanti]

Wow. This group certainly has diverse tastes!

There's everything in there from YA/Middle Grade fiction to Regency Romances to Sci Fi to autobiographies to philosophical fiction... A little bit of everything.

[Andrea AKA Catsos Person]

This is fun to see what everyone is reading.

Thanks Bob.

[Alissa]

Will we do this again for 2016? I'm already making out my list haha

[Katy, Quarterly Long Reads]

Alissa wrote: "Will we do this again for 2016? I'm already making out my list haha"

Challenges coming out the 23rd of this month. I'm glad to see that you are already thinking about the challenge for next year.

[Alissa]

Kathy wrote: "Alissa wrote: "Will we do this again for 2016? I'm already making out my list haha"

Challenges coming out the 23rd of this month. I'm glad to see that you are already thinking about the challenge ..."

I was SO close for this year -I think I'll have 3 left over. Boo. But they're going on the list for next year, and I'm looking forever to checking more classics off my TBR list!

[Katy, Quarterly Long Reads]

Next year I am going to think more clearly about my challenge and really work on it. This year I am afraid I just had fun thinking of the books, and then didn't read them. Lesson learned.

[Tytti]

Me, too, Kathy, though I have been reading fewer books anyway. But in my blog I have already 3 different lists for different challenges, with 50-100 books each. It might be more difficult to NOT read some of them...

[Katy, Quarterly Long Reads]

Hahaha
I know what you mean (at least I think I do)
I have to limit my time reading so that I actually do other things, like cook & clean.

[Melanti]

I was doing really good up until I got busy with real life and my reading time tanked. Now it's all I can do to keep up with the shorter/quicker group reads.

I might manage another 1-2 books of the list before the end of the year though, which will make me officially half-done.

I'm looking forward to seeing what the new challenge is, though, even if I have no hope of finishing it.

[Amanda]

I'm only going to end up with 7 complete but I've got a better thought out plan for next year :)

[Tytti]

Kathy wrote: "Hahaha
I know what you mean (at least I think I do)"

They are mainly unread books that I own or that are in my possession. Or just all those classics that are above all the rest of the classics. But making a short list is difficult because it doesn't really matter which one of them I read, just that I would read at least some of them. But I guess my real challenge is not just to pick the easiest book, but take a chance with a less familiar one, at least in terms of country/language/genre etc.

[Duane]

This challenge should have been easy for me, afterall it's only twelve books, but I will barely finish half. I'm easily distracted, so my reading interest's change almost weekly. That's my excuse. Finish this or chuck it and start all over for 2016? That's my dilemma. No need to answer, I'm just thinking outloud.