Questions? Start Here! [Links and FAQs]

[Valerie]

I am in the process of tweaking my 2024 reading challenge and find myself at #50. Best books of the month for 2023 and 2024. When I check out those listopias, I only find a single comprehensive list for 2023. There is a note about 2024 coming...but I get the feeling that I need to go through each month's list. Say it isn't so!

[Emily, Conterminous Mod]

Oh man! We never updated that thread with the 2024 listopia? If you go to any of the Best of the Month threads, you will see the 2024 listopia linked!

[C-A]

To an Admin/Moderator -- I just went to update my listing on the 2024 spreadsheet, and it has disappeared (looking at history, it looks like there was a big change to the sheet on October 9th). It was column EX on the first tab. Would it be possible to have it restored?

Thanks!

[Emily, Conterminous Mod]

Hey C-A, I removed all columns that had less than 10 books logged, as we are in the end of the year and I wanted to make sure we had accurate numbers (under the assumption that many people who had less than 10 logged had started a column and never returned to it). Unfortunately, I can't restore it without backing up everything through that date. Feel free to start a new column though!

[Kelly Sj]

C-A wrote: "To an Admin/Moderator -- I just went to update my listing on the 2024 spreadsheet, and it has disappeared (looking at history, it looks like there was a big change to the sheet on October 9th). It ..."

It's also possible your column is still there, just in a different place - my column went from DH to somewhere in the high C's as other columns were removed!

[C-A]

Okay, thanks for the explanation; I'll add it back in then. Mine was less than 10 due to starting the challenge during the summer.

[Valerie]

Regarding the Winter Reading Challenge, must they be books separate from the 2025 challenge or the 2024 challenge? In other words, new books from any other challenge?

[Robin P, Orbicular Mod]

Valerie wrote: "Regarding the Winter Reading Challenge, must they be books separate from the 2025 challenge or the 2024 challenge? In other words, new books from any other challenge?"

No, you don't need to find different books! We encourage members to use books they are also using for the yearly 52. That is true for all of our games and challenges, unless otherwise noted. The only thing you can't do is use one book for two different categories within one challenge. Of course, if you are an overachiever who reads 300 books in a year and you want to use different books, that's fine too. But I always feel it's like winning a jackpot when I can use the same book for multiple challenges, both inside and outside ATY.

[Jackie, Solstitial Mod]

You can absolutely overlap between the winter reading challenge and the 2024/2025 challenges!

[Rachael]

I have a question about the Rejects Challenge. On the Community Spreadsheet, I've seen people either type "X" and/or highlight the squares of whatever reject prompt they want to do for the challenge. Is that how that works in terms of picking/letting other people know what prompts we're doing? I'm new to all this so I'm just trying to understand how participating in the Rejects Challenge in addition to ATY exactly works.

[Emily, Conterminous Mod]

The rejects tab can act as you'd like it to act. When I updated the tab, I didn't delete what was already there (like I did with the regular planning tab), so those X's are likely holdovers from people marking what prompts they voted for.

For my own personal use, I highlighted all of the prompts I voted for so that I could keep track of it, and I will type the book names over the highlighted boxes as I read for my rejects challenge. That keeps the count at the bottom accurate to what I've read (not what I plan on reading). Hope that makes sense! We are very flexible with the rejects challenge - you can approach it however you'd like!

[Rachael]

Emily wrote: "The rejects tab can act as you'd like it to act. When I updated the tab, I didn't delete what was already there (like I did with the regular planning tab), so those X's are likely holdovers from pe..."

Thanks for the clarification. I joined a week ago, so obviously I didn't vote on any of the prompts. What I'll do is just pick the prompts I'm interested in reading and highlight the squares.

[Valerie]

I read somewhere (The Winter Reading Challenge Discussion thread? Which no longer exists.) that you could start a book outside of the challenge time, or end it, that you could count it as long as you read 100 minutes or 100 pages of the book during the challenge. Is that true?

[Robin P, Orbicular Mod]

Valerie wrote: "I read somewhere (The Winter Reading Challenge Discussion thread? Which no longer exists.) that you could start a book outside of the challenge time, or end it, that you could count it as long as y..."

Yes that is correct. The thread you were looking for is here
https://www.goodreads.com/topic/show/...
It got hidden because GR often shows you just the most recent 5 threads. If you look to the right of the heading Seasonal Reading Challenge, you will see it says 5 of 10 topics, and if you click on that, you will see all the threads.

The same will be true of our upcoming Read-a-thon next week, you can count a book if you have at least 100 pages (or equivalent audio time) left.

[Robin P, Orbicular Mod]

Rachael wrote: "Emily wrote: "The rejects tab can act as you'd like it to act. When I updated the tab, I didn't delete what was already there (like I did with the regular planning tab), so those X's are likely hol..."

Welcome, Rachael! All the tools such as the Tracking Thread and the Community Spreadsheet are for members to use as they see fit (as long as you are careful not to touch anyone else's column by mistake!) Some people use one, the other, or both or even keep track somewhere off our site. The Mods don't generally check up on these. The Rejects challenge is a personal choice, whether and how you do it.

ATY is nonjudgmental. We don't give prizes or announce who finished first, who read the most books or anything like that. For the Read-a-thon, we have teams, but again no comparisons are ever posted about how the teams finished. (You can see all the teams' threads if you are curious how everyone did.) This is rather refreshing, as some GR groups are based on competition.

[Allie]

Hello, when are the signups for the Winter Read-a-thon? Did I miss the link?

[Kendra]

Did the read-a-thon get postponed, or is it still starting the day after tomorrow?

[Robin P, Orbicular Mod]

Allie wrote: "Hello, when are the signups for the Winter Read-a-thon? Did I miss the link?"

Sorry, Mods are working on this, stay tuned!

[Emily, Conterminous Mod]

Sorry guys, completely lost track of the calendar! Will be posting this morning!

[Rose]

Looking to sign up for the 2025 ATY Challenge on the community 2024 & 2025 spreadsheet. Under the 2025 N-Z group the number of named readers/competitors goes through column AY and there doesn't appear to be any more places to choose the next column and set-up. Will this be expanded to more columns? This has never happened before on the community spreadsheets. Please advise. And thank you in advance.
Rose W

[Emily, Conterminous Mod]

Whoops! I haven't been staying on top of the sign up tabs like I usually do and missed that we were out of columns. There are more now!

[Sherri]

I may of missed this but is there a printable list of the 2025 prompts for the reading challenge?

[Emily, Conterminous Mod]

Yes! You can find it just under the list here:

https://www.goodreads.com/topic/show/...

[ladymurmur]

Happy New Year!

Can the Anniversary challenge and the regular weekly challenge overlap, similar to the seasonal challenges? I've been poking about for an explanation of the Anniversary challenge, which I remember seeing some time back, but haven't been able to find it today.

[Jackie, Solstitial Mod]

ladymurmur wrote: "Happy New Year!

Can the Anniversary challenge and the regular weekly challenge overlap, similar to the seasonal challenges? I've been poking about for an explanation of the Anniversary challenge, ..."

Your challenge, your rules! If you want to overlap books between, you can; it's totally up to you and what you want to do. As far as an explanation of the Anniversary prompts, we just wanted to have something fun as a celebration of the 10th year of this group so we had members vote for a prompt from each of the past year's challenges. Just a fun bonus thing, that you can do (or ignore) in whatever way you please!

[Emily, Conterminous Mod]

Yes! Think of the main 52 prompts as the MAIN CHALLENGE and everything else (including the Anniversary List) as a side quest. You can overlap them if you want or need, or you can treat them as an extension of the 52 prompts and keep them separate.

[Perri]

Happy New Reading Year! I'm having trouble adding book on the community spread sheet (tab and at top) Any thoughts on what I'm doing wrong? I see others have been successful

[Emily, Conterminous Mod]

Hm. Are you doing it on your phone our on a computer? If you’re using your phone, you’ll need the Google Sheets app. I’ll take a look at it today!

[Perri]

Emily wrote: "Hm. Are you doing it on your phone our on a computer? If you’re using your phone, you’ll need the Google Sheets app. I’ll take a look at it today!"
I tried today and it worked!

[ladymurmur]

Thank you, Jackie & Emily!

[Kim]

I thought I had added my name to the spreadsheet, but not finding it, I added another column with my name (DR - under the G-M tab). It let me add my name, but when I went to add my books, it gives me this message:
You are trying to edit a protected cell or object. Please contact the spreadsheet owner to remove protection if you need to edit.

[Emily, Conterminous Mod]

Hey Kim, I'm not sure what's going on. The only protected cells I'm seeing are the first four columns (where the prompts are). I did add more columns since it looks like we had run out... can you check again and let me know if it's working?

[Tanu]

Hi, I may have missed this, but is there a minimum word limit per book for the official ATY prompts? I know there is a limit for readathons and seasonal challenges (100 pages?)

[Emily, Conterminous Mod]

Nope, no requirement for your personal main challenge! We've had people complete the whole thing with picture books in the past.

[Tanu]

Thanks :)

[Karin]

Emily wrote: "Nope, no requirement for your personal main challenge! We've had people complete the whole thing with picture books in the past."

I often forget this. It's fun to to read a picture book now and then.

[Emily, Conterminous Mod]

As the mother of a toddler, I feel like I could VERY easily do the whole challenge this way haha!

[Robin P, Orbicular Mod]

Emily wrote: "As the mother of a toddler, I feel like I could VERY easily do the whole challenge this way haha!"

Some people have done it with their child/grandchild in addition to their own reading. For a bit older child, they could be in on it - we need a book with this picture on the cover, can you find one at the library?

[Kim]

Emily wrote: "Hey Kim, I'm not sure what's going on. The only protected cells I'm seeing are the first four columns (where the prompts are). I did add more columns since it looks like we had run out... can you c..."
Yes, thanks, it was fine after you added the additional columns.

[Jennifer]

Hi everyone! I'm new to the group and the challenges for this year. I am curious to know how the seasonal challenge prompts get selected. I'm a little over halfway through the winter challenge, but wondered when we might start seeing info about prompts for the spring challenge?

Thanks!

[Emily, Conterminous Mod]

Hey Jennifer! The mods put together the seasonal challenges. We typically switch those up and do different types of challenges each season (A-Z, prompt-based, cover colors, etc). We won't post the spring challenge until near the end of the winter challenge at the end of February.

Winter runs Dec 1-Feb 28/29
Spring runs March 1-May 31
Summer runs June 1-August 31
Fall runs September 1-November 30

[Jennifer]

Emily wrote: "Hey Jennifer! The mods put together the seasonal challenges. We typically switch those up and do different types of challenges each season (A-Z, prompt-based, cover colors, etc). We won't post the ..."

Me again! Just checking in about the Spring challenge, but not meaning to be a pain in the butt! :-) I just like to plan my challenge books and get them on hold with my library. Any day now, I'm assuming?

LOL, forgive me - after a prolonged illness I've dived back into voracious reading again and the challenges are keeping me fueled.

[Emily, Conterminous Mod]

Jennifer, you have a few days to wait! We are working on the Read-a-Thon right now (a much bigger project), and then will focus on the Spring Reading Challenge. We don't usually post those until the day they go live, though we occasionally post a few days before, depending on how life is going at the moment. There will be an announcement in the mod thread and the monthly newsletter when it's available!

[Valerie]

Where do I find the 2025 Spring Reading Challenge List? What are the dates for this challenge?

[Emily, Conterminous Mod]

Hey Valerie,

You can always find our seasonal reading challenges in this folder: https://www.goodreads.com/topic/group...

The Spring challenge can be found here: https://www.goodreads.com/topic/show/...

We usually post the new seasonal reading challenges in the week before they begin, but they will always have a link in our monthly newsletter, which goes out on the first of the month.

[viemag]

Question: HELP! I went into the spread sheet to enter 2 books. I use the name VIEMAG and I went to the correct page N-Z but my name is not there. I can't find it anywhere. I am there for 2024, but not 2025. I don't know what I did. Does anyone know how to fix the spread sheet? I only have 11 books entered so it isn't monumental, but I hope I didn't mess up the spread sheet. HELP!

[Robin P, Orbicular Mod]

viemag wrote: "Question: HELP! I went into the spread sheet to enter 2 books. I use the name VIEMAG and I went to the correct page N-Z but my name is not there. I can't find it anywhere. I am there for 2024, but ..."

I'm sure Emily can help you, she is our Spreadsheet Queen! If you don't see a response here later today, you could send her a message.

[Emily, Conterminous Mod]

Hm. I don't see your column, viemag! I wonder if it got accidentally deleted by someone... things happen when you have 400+ unique users on one document. It's likely nothing you did though! I'd recommend just starting a new column.

[Karin]

I've been forgetting the spreadsheet!

[Perri]

Is the anniversary spreadsheet full?