Around the Year in 52 Books discussion
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[2021] The Wild Discussion
I hear ya. I’m fine with including or not. Just thought it was something new and fun to try this year, since several prompts seem to be recently recycled, like the Ws and mental illness.
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And I don't like how it's just this weird personal prompt. There's no group cont..."
I agree, I would just cheat and keep trying numbers till I see what I want to read at that moment. That's what I did with the "20th book on your shelf, list, etc." prompt this year. I kept counting my TBR or my shelves in different directions to find something that appealed to me.
I don't think I've ever seen a list prompt suggested with even 5% of my TBR on it, let alone enough to make it a "read a book" prompt. List prompts are never freebies for me, they are often a struggle but I do like having one or two in the challenge. But I feel we are OK for lists now, I still like the ATY best of one because I think it's nice to have something connected to the group and it also caters to different tastes, but other than that I can't see myself voting for more lists.
I really love the number generator idea. I actually really like more personal prompts! Like the Popsugar prompt this year: "The first book you touch on a shelf with your eyes closed" - that's so my jam. It just feels like a fun challenge to me.
I struggled a bit with "the 20th book" this year and ended up reading an author's 20th book. I didn't love this prompt and I don't know that I would vote for a random number one.
I had the same, Nancy. I read the 20th book on a TBR shelf. I split them to make them more manageable, so I had several shelves to pick from, and the 20th book kept changing since I read some and that alters the sequence. Not a fan, so not voting for another random number prompt.
I really don’t care for TBR picks. I just use the shelf for books I notice someone mention that from a glance it looks interesting. I don’t want to forget the title but it is not really an indication of the books I’m prioritizing to read.
Mod
I would hate that! I would definitely cheat if I didn’t want the first book I touched. Of course I read books I haven’t chosen, when they are for book groups, but nobody is going to tell me what to read right now.
What a lot of people have done for the Popsugar prompt is to put a shortlist of books they feel like reading on a shelf and then pick one of them with their eyes closed. It's still following the prompt, it doesn't say you can't curate your shelf!
One or two also just put the next book they want to read alone on a shelf and then touched it! Not quite the spirit of the prompt but I don't judge.
I guess what's interesting to me about this conversation is that I do treat my TBR as a list of books I actively intend on reading, and I don't particularly like being forced to add to it to satisfy a prompt. So something that has me choose FROM my already-existing TBR is going to work better for me than some of the scavenger hunt prompts (I absolutely hate "item on the cover" prompts, for example). Funny the different ways we all think about it!
So for me, it depends. I do also like to use my TBR list when possible. For this year's challenges I tried to use the TBR whenever possible, especially ones I already own, either in print or on my Kindle. But then so many new books are always coming out, and I read recommendations for prompts that sound really good, and often the ones I own get yeeted for something else. I actually started keeping track of the books I had planned to use and then bumped and am trying to use those for next year's. Or I'll use them for things like the fall reading challenge if nothing left from the regular challenge fits. It's an ever evolving process!
I wouldn't like a random TBR-related prompt. I keep a lot of books on my shelf because I want to read them, but they are not necessarily available to me. I have the The Cambridge Companion to Sam Shepard. I can't get my hands on that right now, and it's a reference book rather than a read it to read book. So I'd have to wind up manipulate the results which would, imo, make it a freebie.
I use rng for choosing books to consider for prompts this year and I'm loving it. Usually I have many options for prompt, so to narrow it down I use rng to get around 8 options (or less when I don't feel like checking out many books) from my votes on Listopia. If rng rolls me something I can't get, I just reroll it and I don't see it as manipulation to do so, because in my mind only valid options are the ones that are available to me.
If anyone wants to do a random generator through their Google/Excel spreadsheets, let me know and I can try to find the post I made about it late last year! I can't remember the formulas off the top of my head, but can share it here if there's interest.
Sarah wrote: "I guess what's interesting to me about this conversation is that I do treat my TBR as a list of books I actively intend on reading, and I don't particularly like being forced to add to it to satisf..."Same here! Technically, I plan to read all the books on my TBR list, and my biggest problem is that I don't have the time or mental bandwidth to read more than one or two at once, and I have new shiny books battling for my attention over the older patient ones that have been hanging around my physical shelves for years. I like tasks that have me reaching into my personal backlists (back-shelves?). In the event I find that I don't want to read a book on my TBR when a task comes up, I take it as a sign I should take it off and, if I own a copy, pass it along to someone else who does :)
I've been making an effort to clean up my TBR, and I sometimes have to ask myself, am I still the person who would enjoy reading that bookclub book my grandmother gave me ten years ago? A lot of times, the answer is...actually no.
It's interesting to me how there are so many different ways people decide what to read - I won't suggest the WhichBook as a prompt since it looks like it's too limiting for some. I thought about suggesting something like "read a book you've never heard of until you picked it for this prompt" but I think that might not go over very well either (though some of us do that all the time!).I really like finding new books that I've never heard of, hence my ridiculously long TBR shelf, so that site in particular interested me because there were so many new-to-me books and authors included. I also go off on research tangents like "I wonder if there are any good historical fiction books about medieval Germany and the Holy Roman Empire?" which end up as little clusters of related books on my list.
And like some have mentioned I also have the problem of a lot of books I want to read not being in my public library system (though I also have access to my state university system library for my job, so I can usually get any non-fiction I want to read).
Steve wrote: "If anyone wants to do a random generator through their Google/Excel spreadsheets, let me know and I can try to find the post I made about it late last year! I can't remember the formulas off the to..."In Excel it's very easy, and Google Sheets tend to be pretty similar but I prefer Excel so I'm not sure about Google.
Excel formula:
=RAND() will give you a random number between 0 and 1
=RANDBETWEEN(a,b) will give you a random number between a and b (where you would put in an actual number in place of a and b). I just tried it, and a & b do not need to be integers (although I don't know why you'd use anything other than an integer in this case). RANDBETWEEN returns an integer every time
Kelly wrote: "I thought about suggesting something like "read a book you've never heard of until you picked it for this prompt" but I think that might not go over very well either (though some of us do that all the time!). ..."I have an enormous TBR list, but for me the joy of a reading challenge is discovering those golden nuggets, that book I'd never heard of before and read JUST for the challenge. (I LOVED the "a book you touch with your eyes closed" prompt this year! I had my daughter lead me to a random library shelf in the fiction section, so my choice was truly random, other than being fiction.) But yes, it looks like not everyone likes that :-)
You could try A book chosen at random. This could allow for someone to use a website, a random pick from their TBR or just a book they picked at random because the title caught their attention.
Nadine wrote: "Excel formula:=RAND() will give you a random number between 0 and 1
=RANDBETWEEN(a,b) will give you a random number between a and b (where you would put in an actual number in place of a and b)"
These are the same in Google Sheets.
I can't even wrap my mind around picking a book at random. I'm too much of a control freak, lol.
I think we had a book chosen at random as a prompt a few years ago. I really liked it because it didn't limit how the book was chosen, just that there was a matter of chance.
Nadine wrote: "Steve wrote: "If anyone wants to do a random generator through their Google/Excel spreadsheets, let me know and I can try to find the post I made about it late last year! I can't remember the formu..."What I'm talking about is more a random chooser from a list. You list all the books and then the formula chooses one off of that list for you.
That's pretty much what these random formulas do. For the RANDBETWEEN one, if you have the list numbered, it would just choose a number and you would then read the book with that number.Like this, where the numbers are one column, and the books are a second column.
1. Book A
2. Book B
3. Book C
4. Book D
5. Book E
If you did RANDBETWEEN(1,5) and the result was 2, you would read Book B.
If your list isn't numbered it would be easy to just add a new column with numbers.
Nadine wrote: "Pam wrote: "Nadine- I’m accessing the site from my iPhone. The only category with sliders is Mood and Emotion. For Bestsellers, you click on one book that you liked and it gives you a selection of ..."I've tried it out a bit more, and the site just does not work well for me. The Bestsellers page has arrows and it looks like there should be a way to see more options to choose from, but it doesn't let me click on them, and there was nothing there that I really cared to use.
The World Maps page did not load for me. After a few tries, I got it working, but again, it gave me mostly books that I'd never heard of and didn't really care to try.
The site is a cool idea, but based on my own experience with it, I'd probably downvote it. I find it frustrating to navigate.
I found for the best sellers section, you have to swipe left to get it to move. But there are only about 6 best-sellers to choose from.
In another group, I had a challenge to read 20 books from my TBR shelf put there prior to 2020. I just finished the challenge today and have read 83 books today. I liked playing with the WhichBook but I can see where it would be difficult as a prompt.
Alicia wrote: "I found for the best sellers section, you have to swipe left to get it to move. But there are only about 6 best-sellers to choose from."Oh you are correct, swiping instead of clicking does the trick. I still didn't find any bestsellers that I'd liked though!
I poked around a bit on the site to figure out where these book suggestions were coming from and why did they all seem so mostly unheard of ...
"The joy of being online editor for Whichbook is seeking out books which may fly below the radar - books from Indy publishers, first time authors, novels and poetry in translation, quirky titles and knock out covers."
That explains it! I like reading books that were not on my radar before, it's just not what I was expecting from this site, so I was confused. I think they need to add some more information to their pages about what the site is for and what to expect from it.
i suggested a randomly generated prompt a little while ago but instead of a random number choosing exactly the book you have to read next, what about a random word generator? you can base the book you read off of the word/s so it has a lot more flexibility.
https://randomwordgenerator.com/
for example, my 'spin' got: key, brainstorm, patience, vote, stick, ice, strict, lost, provoke, and action.
you could read a book with a key, stick or ice on the cover for people who like cover or title prompts. you could read a book with strict parents, set in a cult or maybe a strict dystopian world for 'strict'. you could read a book about election or politics for 'vote' or a heist for 'key'. you could read a mystery with a missing person/disappearance element for 'lost' etc etc
any thoughts?
https://randomwordgenerator.com/
for example, my 'spin' got: key, brainstorm, patience, vote, stick, ice, strict, lost, provoke, and action.
you could read a book with a key, stick or ice on the cover for people who like cover or title prompts. you could read a book with strict parents, set in a cult or maybe a strict dystopian world for 'strict'. you could read a book about election or politics for 'vote' or a heist for 'key'. you could read a mystery with a missing person/disappearance element for 'lost' etc etc
any thoughts?
I like the random word generator better than random number.
Ooo, the random word generator idea is really cool! I would definitely vote for that.
Thanks for the word generator, Annie. That’s a fun one, too.
I agree that I like the word generator much more than the number generator option; for reasons others have said already, I don't love the random number prompt, but this seems like a good way to inject a little randomness and individuality into it, without dictating something like "read the Xth book on your shelf/list". Easy to see how there'd be BIO and KIS versions, too, such as generating only 1 or many word options at once, or requiring the word to appear in the title vs being related to/inspiring the book choice, etc.
Stacey wrote: "Thanks for the word generator, Annie. That’s a fun one, too."
glad people like it :) does anyone have suggestions for wording?
glad people like it :) does anyone have suggestions for wording?
Roxana wrote: "Easy to see how there'd be BIO and KIS versions, too, such as generating only 1 or many word options at once, or requiring the word to appear in the title vs being related to/inspiring the book choice, etc."
exactly, the best prompts have a good range of kis/bio opinion so they can work for everyone!
exactly, the best prompts have a good range of kis/bio opinion so they can work for everyone!
I like the random word generator too. I picked 8 words and got some good choices so I took a screenshot in case this prompt makes it.
annie wrote: "glad people like it :) does anyone have suggestions for wording?"A book related to a randomly generated word
A book related to a word from a random word generator
A book related to a word given by randomwordgenerator.com
I think the random word generator idea is so cool! I would definitely vote for that.
I wonder if we put together a listopia for the non-binary etc. prompt if it might get some more interest? I know there are a myriad of articles and lists out there on the 'net but maybe we could bring all that info together onto a listopia? Thoughts and opinions?
Mod
I’m surprised one doesn’t already exist!
I think non binary may be having trouble getting through because it was a Popsugar prompt this year and a lot of people do both challenges
Chrissy wrote: "I’m surprised one doesn’t already exist!"There quite probably already is a listopia but who knows what's been added to it. I'd like to have a listopia specifically made by and for this group with some oversight regarding what books are included. Not that there's anything to prevent anyone and everyone from adding to it but at least we could attempt to create a reliable core list.
Mod
There's a Listopia from the PopSugar prompt but since that one was limited to authors, it doesn't include books where the character is nonbinary/trans/+.
I really don't know if we should suggest the prompt again or that it's worth building out a listopia.I don't think the results are going to change, as people have expressed that, for various reasons, they aren't interested in the prompt (whether it's seen before, lack of access to books, not interested in prompts like this, doesn't match their reading tastes, etc).
We've given book examples in the past without success. I'm afraid suggesting it a third time will be like pushing it down people's throat and create weird feelings in the group.
I am interested in a trans/non-binary+ listopia regardless if the prompt gets through next time.
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Around the Year in 52 Books
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And I don't like how it's just this weird personal prompt. There's no group cont..."
I would agree. There are too many ways to manipulate my tbr to find a book that matches (physically and on goodreads), I could take any number given and get 20 different books just by sorting by author, pub date, rating, date added, title, etc. I wouldn't vote for it unfortunately.