2025 Reading Challenge discussion
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TEAM Caught Read-Handed: I Spy
L Y N N wrote: "I've never seen a tracking sheet setup with "page points" in a column along with the books completed. I assume the number we list there is the number of pag..."In the past, there were two columns in that area, one for pages and one for audio hours. Since we decided to try without the audio formula this time, that column is gone. (I could probably find an old readathon spreadsheet to check, but it was something like that.)
The top section of the tracking page is for pages read each day. (It also used to have a separate audio hours area.)
In the lower section, add your book title beside the appropriate prompt, Yes in column L, then the pages for the book in column N. If you read 400 pages on Day 1, completing one 300-page book and making 100 page progress into the next book, you would record all 400 page points at the top, and 300 pages (page points) for the prompt/book finished on Day 1. When you finish the next book on some other day, you'll capture those 100 points from Day 1 on whichever day you complete the book and add it to the lower prompt section. The points are not lost.
That explanation is a mess. Sorry. Where's my coffee?
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EDITED TO ADD: Yay for a completed double!
Has everyone seen the How to Use box on the Tracking tab? You have to scroll right to find it, starting at Q16. It's below and to the right from the Audiobook Hours explanation.
Alina wrote: "Yesterday morning I finished The Fellowship of the Ring - I only had a few pages left and wanted to be done before reading something new. I put it in the completeted tab to "DNF, no promt or <100p. I hope that was right."That's the correct section for it, Alina, but you should include it on the Tracking tab as well, at the top as part of the pages read for the day, and all the way at the bottom in the non-prompt area. bailey has been including that area so that we get credit for all reading done during the readathon.
I'm glad your cat is recovering so quickly from his illness. How wonderful for both of you! 😺
I had to line up a different book to "read" today than planned. I added it to the planning sheet. I wanted to make the books already assigned to prompts my priority, but I needed another audio if I want to get any reading in today. I will try to enter my yesterday's reading to tracking spreadsheet now.
Carrie - if you want you can put One Year Gone down for the Bug double Prompt, as I am really not sure whether I will be able to complete Weyward (I looked through the different prompts your book fits and it seems like that one might be the best option).
HELP! On the tracking sheet, if we complete a book that does not have a prompt assigned to it, do we just add it below with the dnfs for now and then move it if we decide we need it somewhere later? Sorry I am being difficult by starting with books that weren't originally on the planning sheet when prompts got assigned. I miscalculated that I would need audio books the first few days and did not have many on my list.
okay ignore last message - I will do what Lina said. Thank you!
@ Carrie and @ Billie, if possible also paste your completed books into the completed tab so it counts them there as well :) We have already completed a ton of books - way to go team!
I hope you are all having fun :)
Murtagh was good, Hello Stranger wasn't really my cup of tea (but there were tons of things on the cover, so oh well :D).
I am now currently re-reading Momo, which I really like. Anyone know that book?
I love this quote from Momo (It really helps me whenever I am feeling overwhelmed):
“You see, Momo,' he [Beppo Roadsweeper] told her one day, 'it's like this. Sometimes, when you've a very long street ahead of you, you think how terribly long it is and feel sure you'll never get it swept.'
He gazed silently into space before continuing. 'And then you start to hurry,' he went on. 'You work faster and faster, and every time you look up there seems to be just as much left to sweep as before, and you try even harder, and you panic, and in the end you're out of breath and have to stop - and still the street stretches away in front of you. That's not the way to do it.'
He pondered a while. Then he said, 'You must never think of the whole street at once, understand? You must only concentrate on the next step, the next breath, the next stroke of the broom, and the next, and the next. Nothing else.'
Again he paused for thought before adding, 'That way you enjoy your work, which is important, because then you make a good job of it. And that's how it ought to be.'
There was another long silence. At last he went on, 'And all at once, before you know it, you find you've swept the whole street clean, bit by bit. What's more, you aren't out of breath.' He nodded to himself. 'That's important, too,' he concluded.”
TerryJane wrote: "L Y N N wrote: "I've never seen a tracking sheet setup with "page points" in a column along with the books completed. I assume the number we list there is the number of pag..."That explanation is a mess. Sorry. Where's my coffee?"
That explanation was fine. However, I typically switch off reading 2-3 books and sometimes read in books NOT meant for the readathon, so I won't do that during this week!
Thank you so much!!
Alina wrote: "Whoa great progress everyone! I haven´t been able to read much yesterday because my cat got sick and I had to go the vet with him. He´s better now though and I´m already catching up on my reading..."
Oh, no! A sick furbaby is the WORST! (Especially a feline!) So glad he's on the mend! 😺😽
We share our abode with 3 cats and have another 2 who stay outdoors. 😁
Okay, sorry, but I guess I never did the "introductory" post, did I? LOLI retired early to oversee my husband's health and well-being and now am looking for a part-time remote position. He is 9 years my senior and has suffered a stroke which fortunately did very little physical damage, but it is there... BTW, if you know anyone who suddenly suffers a loss of "long-term memory," that person has probably suffered a stroke. (I had no clue about that and we just assumed it was the beginning of dementia, which is correct, except due to strokes/mini-TIAs...)
I still work part-time teaching in the heated therapy pool at my gym 3 evenings each week (M W F). Our heated therapy pool is the same size as our 6-lane lap pool so we can have 25 students at a time! (Though we usually average 10-15!) I do that because 7 years ago at the age of 61 I had titanium sports model knee joints installed. I am bionic! Though, as I informed my surgeon, somehow he evidently neglected to include the accompanying superpowers! To which he had no reply and just looked at me! Sheesh! Too bad they don't teach students how to have a sense of humor in med school! LOL
I have 3 sons, 11 grandchildren, and 1 great-grandchild. I have one (alcoholic and biological father of my children) ex-husband of 22 years and my current husband and I have been together 25 years! Yep! I'm old! LOL
Oh, and I live in the midwestern US.
Love getting to know new people!
TerryJane wrote: "Has everyone seen the How to Use box on the Tracking tab? You have to scroll right to find it, starting at Q16. It's below and to the right from the Audiobook Hours explanation."I did. But it didn't answer my questions. But you very kindly did provide that information! Thank you!
TerryJane wrote: "That's the correct section for it, Alina, but you should include it on the Tracking tab"Just did that! Thank you.
I´ve been reading Howl’s Moving Castle whenever I had time today and I think I´m going to be able to finish it tomorrow!
@Lina I haven´t read Momo but I think I´ve seen the movie ages ago. I actually haven´t read a lot of Michael Ende even though I really loved The Neverending Story
I think you said in another comment that you also read Howls moving castle - how did you like it?
@LYNN oh yay - I wish I had another cat (I used to have two but one died awhile back) but my Gilbert is really happy to be alone so I don´t want to stress him with a new "friend" - he and my other cat never really liked each other but they did get along.
He´s allowed outside but usually he comes back every night for his cuddles and when it´s raining outside he rather stays at home.
I have completed Wildfire but the original prompt outlined (body part) has already been completed should I put this under another that it fits?
Billie-Jade wrote: "I have completed Wildfire but the original prompt outlined (body part) has already been completed should I put this under another that it fits?"Yay! Yes, Billie, go ahead and add it for another prompt. We can move books around later if we need to, but the sooner we fill all the prompts, the sooner we can unlock bonus prompts. Something you find in the garden would complete that double, but we have lots of other candidates for that one. We don't have many options for occupation or element, so one of those may work well, too.
I didn't check in yesterday after completing books, but have added 3 to our spreadsheet. Will keep reading today and should be able to finish at least one more...I adored Mrs. Dalloway. I would term it stream-of-consciousness, but I definitely resonated with the thought processes depicted!
I may fit in a couple more shorter books this week, but am concentrating on the longer ones now...
I am not sure I am going to get to "The One" plus I am feeling hesitant about my decision to call the darts children's toys so I have replaced it with "Before We Were Yours" which has a teddy bear on the cover that will more accurately fill that prompt. Also, I finished The Starfish Sisters which did not have a prompt assigned to it so please let me know if we want to use it somewhere. If not, I will add it to the bottom rows but will wait a while to see if we need it first.
Carrie, maybe put Starfish Sisters into the color blue triple prompt for now? Because TerryJane hasnt started Freefall for that one yet and also yours and hers fit a ton of prompts so are very versatile and can be moved around later? (TerryJane also answered Billie's question about where to put Wildfire with just put it into another prompt that fits for now - so I think this will be fine :) )
Lynn - I have only read To the Lighthouse so far - but am very much planning on reading Mrs. Dalloway soon! I am glad you enjoyed it :)
I am amazed by how quickly the prompt list is filling up! Before this started I thought we would for sure never see the bonus prompts - but I am starting to change my mind!
@Lynn, I definitely would have loved the superpower joke if you had said that to me!
@ Alina I really liked Howl's Moving Castle! Such a feel good book! And I would love to try those seven mile shoes (though it does sound incredibly dangerous). - How about you? (I saw that you finished it)
I finished the Secret Garden today and also squeezed in another book for the occupation prompt (the audiobook worked well while cleaning my flat). I really enjoyed The Secret Garden - it had been very long since I read it.
"Where you tend a rose, a thistle cannot grow."
Sorry, just checking in now, my weekend ended up being quite busy so just catching up now. Updating the sheet now, for some reason, the sheet has deleted what I put in on Friday! Hoping to have a better next few days with reading, but everyone is doing so well!!
Being back at work after my vacation since yesterday. There´s a lot to do and I am extremely tired - yesterday I just fell asleep and couldn´t do much reading. I still try to read as much as possible. Our prompts are filling in so fast! Great to see!
I am currently on Regrettably, I am About to Cause Trouble and it´s such a fun book! According to my kindle I only have a little more than 4 hours in this book so I´m hoping to finish it tomorrow latest.
@Lina I did like Howls Moving Castle however I got a little annoyed while reading it because I felt that it wasn´t explained why certain things happened. Sometimes all of it just felt so random and some characters seemed forgotten until the very end. I did read through some reviews and realized that there is a movie - so I might watch that when I find the time
I hope everyone is still enjoying the readathon and their books!
Mansi V wrote: "Updating the sheet now, for some reason, the sheet has deleted what I put in on Friday! Hoping to have a b..."That's strange. Could you have saved a copy on your own drive, and you updated that copy instead?
Alina wrote: "@Lina I did like Howls Moving Castle however I got a little annoyed while reading it because I felt that it wasn´t explained why certain things happened. "I have yet to read the Howl's Moving Castle series, but since it is the first part of a trilogy, I wonder if your questions might be answered in books two and three. 🤷♀️
I tagged Regrettably, I am About to Cause Trouble on Libby, so that they will notify me if any of my libraries acquire it. It does sound fun.
I am most definitely enjoying this readathon! One of the books I finished yesterday completed our first Triple. Woohoo! 🙌
Lina wrote: "Carrie, maybe put Starfish Sisters into the color blue triple prompt for now? Because TerryJane hasnt started Freefall for that one yet and also yours and hers fit a ton of prompts so are very vers..."@TerryJane is it okay with you if I take Lina's suggestion to put The Starfish Sisters into the color blue?
I went ahead and added it to blue but please feel free to move it elsewhere if you want.
I have been ill over the last few days so did not do any reading, I am feeling better now so I have read Spark of the Everflame today and added it to the tracker.
TerryJane wrote: "Alina wrote: "@Lina I did like Howls Moving Castle however I got a little annoyed while reading it because I felt that it wasn´t explained why certain things happened. "I have yet to read the How..."
I realised, I did a lot of undoing on the sheet when I was fiddling around with the formulas so I could have undone my progress in the process!!
Wow congrats on our first triple prompt! Sorry I haven't actually finished any of my books yet, I'm still on track to finish all of them, I just like to read a few at a time
Hope you're feeling Ok now Billie Jade!
I´m not sure if I´m going to be able to read much the next few days. They found a bomb from ww2 in my city and a few of my friends have to be evacuated, so I told them they could sleep at my place. If everything goes well I´m sure they´ll be able to be back at their houses tomorrow as they´ll try to defuse it tonight but we don´t really know what is happening at the moment so we will see. I still try and get some reading done but my first priority are my friends now - I´m sure you all understand!
Carrie wrote: "@TerryJane is it okay with you if I take Lina's suggestion to put The Starfish Sisters into the color blue?"Absolutely, Carrie, Just keep all the other possibilities marked so that we can move books around if we need to.
Billie-Jade wrote: "I have been ill over the last few days so did not do any reading, I am feeling better now so I have read Spark of the Everflame today and added it to the tracker."I'm sorry to hear you've been sick, Billie, and happy to hear that you're feeling better.
Alina wrote: "I´m not sure if I´m going to be able to read much the next few days. They found a bomb from ww2 in my city and a few of my friends have to be evacuated, so I told them they could sleep at my place...."Oh, wow, Alina! How frightening for you and your friends. Your commitment to your friends is both understandable and admirable. Take care.
Alina wrote: "I´m not sure if I´m going to be able to read much the next few days. They found a bomb from ww2 in my city and a few of my friends have to be evacuated, so I told them they could sleep at my place...."Oh wow that sounds so scary, I hope you, your friends and everyone in your city is doing ok! Of course, it's completely understandable, reading is definitely the last thing on your mind right now!!
Below are the prompts we have NOT completed. I reset the prompt list to white in column A of the planning tab, then marked the completed ones in green. Thought it would make it easier to identify the gaps we need to fill.Of the books we planned for these 15 prompts, only 10 are marked as currently reading. If there are any books you planned to read, but may not be able to get to after all, please tell us. Someone else may be able to cover some of these.
We may also want to look at moving books from single prompts into the
SINGLES
Biome (desert, rainforest) - 1
Deities/Gods (Hecate, Buddha, Aphrodite) - 1
Fruits and veggies (carrot, lemon) - 1
DOUBLES
Mythical creature - need 1
TRIPLES
Flowers (Lily, sunflower) - need 2
Buildings (church, bank, barn) - need 1
Animals (cat, horse) - need 1
A proper title (prince, viscount) - need 2
Type of crime (arson, theft, murder) - need 1
Number - need 3
Mansi V wrote: "Alina wrote: "I´m not sure if I´m going to be able to read much the next few days. They found a bomb from ww2 in my city and a few of my friends have to be evacuated, so I told them they could slee..."TerryJane wrote: "Alina wrote: "I´m not sure if I´m going to be able to read much the next few days. They found a bomb from ww2 in my city and a few of my friends have to be evacuated, so I told them they could slee..."
Thanks! All is fine now - it happens from time to time since the city I live in was completely destroyed during the world war - so they find things like that every few years and normally nothing happens. The one yesterday was in the city centre though and found around 7pm. People weren´t allowed to go near the city centre so they didn´t know how to get home from work and all the people that live in the centre had to be evacuated. But they defused it over night so all is back to normal now!
I might not finish my book until tomorrow but we will see! I´ll start reading The God of the Woods afterwards as it would fit two of the single prompts!
It looks like the book I am currently reading no longer fills any remaining prompts. Should I just dnf it?
Carrie, is it The Midwife of Berlin? It was marked as fitting Animal and Building, neither of which is complete yet. If those fill before you finish, we may be able to move some things around. If you are enjoying it and you're pretty far along, I'd say go ahead and finish. Mansi, do you agree?
I think one of the team leader roles is to report the team's midpoint progress to bailey. She hasn't asked yet, but I would like to be prepared. I see a few blank cells at the top of the Tracking tab. LYNN, Carrie, Lina, Norine: do you have any progress to report for August 5 and/or 6? Thanks!
TerryJane wrote: "Carrie, is it The Midwife of Berlin? It was marked as fitting Animal and Building, neither of which is complete yet. If those fill before you finish, we may be able to move some th..."Yes, sorry I must have looked at it wrong. I should be finishing it today.
TerryJane wrote: "I think one of the team leader roles is to report the team's midpoint progress to bailey. She hasn't asked yet, but I would like to be prepared. I see a few blank cells at the top of the Tracking t..."I just now added my page totals for the 6th
TerryJane wrote: "Carrie, is it The Midwife of Berlin? It was marked as fitting Animal and Building, neither of which is complete yet. If those fill before you finish, we may be able to move some th..."Yeah, if you've already started reading and are enjoying the book, I would just finish it and we can rejiggle the other prompts
Now we're over the halfway mark, how is everyone doing? Is there any books anyone thinks they will not likely complete by the end of the readathon in case we need to reassign those prompts?
I'm currently reading the last of my planned reads, so I can start filling in blanks afterward. I hope we can complete all the main prompts and get the bonus list. @Mansi, do you think we should start moving completed books from Singles to Double/Triples? I said last night that all the doubles were complete, but I was mistaken. One double is incomplete.
TerryJane wrote: "I'm currently reading the last of my planned reads, so I can start filling in blanks afterward. I hope we can complete all the main prompts and get the bonus list. @Mansi, do you think we should ..."
I will also finish the last of my planned reads tonight and can start something else. I added one more to the planning list today but do not have my heart set on it if there is a specific prompt you would like me to fill instead. Just let me know.
TerryJane wrote: "I'm currently reading the last of my planned reads, so I can start filling in blanks afterward. I hope we can complete all the main prompts and get the bonus list. @Mansi, do you think we should ..."
Sure, we could do a little rejiggle now!
Carrie wrote: "TerryJane wrote: "I'm currently reading the last of my planned reads, so I can start filling in blanks afterward. I hope we can complete all the main prompts and get the bonus list. @Mansi, do yo..."
Oh wow perfect thanks! Congrats TerryJane and Carrie for finishing your reads!!
I'm changing things on the tracking tab but not the planning tab so we have a copy of the original plan in case we need to revert back to it!
Mansi V wrote: "I'm changing things on the tracking tab but not the planning tab so we have a copy of the original plan in case we need to revert back to it!"Good plan!
Sorry to be MIA this week. It's been unexpectedly busy!I will catch up my Monday and Tuesday information and apologize for not getting more pages read!
Hopefully Thursday through Sunday will provide much more reading time!!
I've made some changes but to get the others to fit, I'd have to do quite a bit of reshuffling so I was thinking of waiting until around Friday for a big reshuffle? So that we have some more books on the sheet
Hey everyone - sorry for being so absent during the last two days! Lots of working - little time to do anything else. But I am doing my best in between - though yesterday and today I barely had any time to read. I have now updated my progress up till yesterday :)I have completed all of my books that were planned for prompts / or replacement ones that I have added instead, but am hoping to also still finish the ones I am currently reading. But if something else is needed, I can totally also pause them and read something else.
I feel like the numbers prompt isnt doing so well so far? Mansi, will you be completing those books? And we are still missing a third one for that one as well (the one from Norine is still on TBR) (but we do have some other books that could possibly be moved there in case we need to).
Also @Mansi the proper title ones will also be finished by Sunday? :) (you said in an earlier prompt you prefer reading them all at the same time, correct?)
Lina wrote: "Hey everyone - sorry for being so absent during the last two days! Lots of working - little time to do anything else. But I am doing my best in between - though yesterday and today I barely had any..."Ooh well done! Yeah I'll be finishing the proper titles one tomorrow, and one of the number ones by Friday, the last numbers one will probably be a finish last minute read but I'll definitely finish it either way!
2025 Reading Challenge
Books mentioned in this topic
The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo (other topics)The Wishing Game (other topics)
The Paragraph Ranch (other topics)
The Guncle (other topics)
The Wishing Game (other topics)
More...
Authors mentioned in this topic
Jeannette Walls (other topics)Elizabeth Catte (other topics)
Lynn, thanks for the recommendations! The Glass Castle has been on my list for a while - I will move it up and hopefully read it soon :)
Alina, I hope you will enjoy Howl's Moving Castle! I actually also read it a short while ago.
Wishing everyone a great second day of reading as well!