MobileRead Book Challenges discussion

Might as well start this so we can collect out thoughts :D

This is completely open, all suggestions welcome!

I'll just copy HIMS suggestion here:

You know what would be cool. If we could all have our own Bingo cards. I'd do one for covers and countries and one for subregions of the world. That way people can shift more to their reading wants next year.

Possible options for cards or lists of categories to cover (because that's what it really is):

the big pile of unread books challenge
the cover challenge
the world subregion challenge
the world country challenge
the genre challenge
the WSW (weird-shit wednesday) challenge
the how to find books challenge
the read something off your top-friends read books challenge

And Dazrin:

More board ideas:
*Opposites (long vs short, old vs new, young author vs ... um... mature authors ;), under the earth vs in space, opposing political parties, books from two sides of a war, first book vs last book, etc.)
*Classics (maybe by author?)
*Subgenre challenge - lots of different subgenres for a single genre

And MrsJ:

How about a decimation card?

Like, take your TBR and count. Every 10th book you should attempt to read

First!!!!

Orlok wrote: "First!!!!"

LOL xD

I do like the idea of individualised Bingo Cards. You haven't mentioned an A-Z board. Boring to an extent, but I still like the challenge of getting them all.

*How about a book from every decade of the last century?
*Books with numbers 1-25 in their title, or however many tiles on the card there are (difficult one).
*A book from every country on the equator
*Books with Greek or Roman gods in their titles (now I'm just being silly. Time for bed.)

Haha xD
I should be sleeping by now myself..
I like A-Z challenges, been doing the list one (not bingo) for years now :)

Orlok wrote: "First!!!!"

*snort

A list is really just a one column Bingo card, or a Bingo card is a five-column list. :haha:

My thoughts so far:
A-Z Challenge: do it for author names. Same categories as last time and first letter of any of their names would count. So J.D.Robb could be J, D or R and Jussi Adler-Olsen could be J, A or O.

Decades challenge I like a lot, what about cover the old stuff and then all of the newer years.

(view spoiler)[
-1899
1900-1909
1910-1919
1920-1929
1930-1939
1940-1949
1950-1959
1960-1969
1970-1979
1980-1984
1985-1989
1990-1994
1995-1999
2000-2004
2005-2009
2010-2011
2012
2013
2014
2015
2016
2017
2018
2019

or just give people all the decades wince 1900 and they have to do each one twice. I think I like that better actually.
(hide spoiler)]

Why just the Greek or Roman gods. No love for Odin? Thor? Raako? I think these could maybe go into a random bingo card where we all throw in some suggestions for it and anyone deciding to play it gets 24 random picks from it. Attempt this at your own peril.

Even I would say no to countries along the equator. I'm still missing five of them, but then I am looking for native author which is more difficult.

Are we thinking a random things that don't fit board?

I'm thinking a book from a local book award. Local could be state/province/region or country. So I could ideally use the Saskatchewan Book Awards list and I'll say that anything on short or long lists or winning books would work.

This could also fit into the how we find things card.

An Awards board could work by itself even.

For the "world subregions" this list needs to have a couple items added to it for it to work:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_...
Maybe just an overall "Europe" or "Asia" category in addition to the sub-regions.

And I agree on the equator ones, there aren't enough and many of them are so small that it would be VERY difficult.

For me, I am most likely to do the dates (2/decade), covers, genres, awards, and maybe a couple different semi-themed random boards. One being items/things, another being actions like sitting, sleeping, falling, flying, etc.

Actions seems like a fun one :D

I guess everyone could choose how many boards they wanted to do as well.
And whether to have it be "standard" size or bigger?

DoodlePanda wrote: "I guess everyone could choose how many boards they wanted to do as well.
And whether to have it be "standard" size or bigger?"

I'd like standard sizes cause then you can have more.

I also like the mega one, too.

How about a Sesame Street challenge? You know, an ABC and 123 category combining the alphabet and number challenges. ;)

Or board with one season's "word on the street" entries. There are some surprisingly good words on there and I think that each season would just cover a board:
http://muppet.wikia.com/wiki/What%27s...

I'd like settings in different states of America, since it's not my home country and I'd would like to look up on a map where the settings of my books actually takes place. It would be cool to have a map where the different states would get marked off. Most of my books have settings in America.

^I just use google maps for that sort of thing.

my world reading map

But,big huge labs has a map maker for both the world and an opption for the US with states.

The big huge labs one embeds pretty nicely into most blogs and forums and such so it gets used by lots of people.

Geography: 22 regions, 1 dependencies, home (your state/province/region/city by birth or residency), and FREE. Books set in or written by authors. And if people want more flexibility it could just be read 24 different countries. You could get away with reading three or four subregions.Technically you might only have to read a few regions then.

So how would the "Word on the Street" work? Find the word in your reading or In the title? I'm not sure about Pumpernickle. A book about a delicatessan? Bakery? Any authors named Pumpernickle?

Marte - Thunderella wrote: "I'd like settings in different states of America, since it's not my home country and I'd would like to look up on a map where the settings of my books actually takes place. It would be cool to have..."

Like it!

Dazrin wrote: "How about a Sesame Street challenge? You know, an ABC and 123 category combining the alphabet and number challenges. ;)

Or board with one season's "word on the street" entries. There are some surp..."

THat looks cool - how would the numbers work, though?

The word on the street sounds fun! There seems to be a LOT of words, so I guess you could pick the ones you wanted? And avoid words like Pumpernickel :P

MrsJoseph wrote: "Dazrin wrote: "How about a Sesame Street challenge? You know, an ABC and 123 category combining the alphabet and number challenges. ;)

Or board with one season's "word on the street" entries. Ther..."

I've seen things like book n in a series for things like 1 to 6 would work. Anything larger becomes difficult. You can do the occurs in the title kind of thing, but there's not many books for some numbers. Thinking 5 for that. Read the nth book published by an author? That might be fun for rediscovering some authors and reading things people don't usually read.

Making it open-ended is the best method for things like that.

HomeInMyShoes wrote: "So how would the "Word on the Street" work? Find the word in your reading or In the title? I'm not sure about Pumpernickle. A book about a delicatessan? Bakery? Any authors named Pumpernickle? "

I was thinking just finding them anywhere in the books you are reading. It certainly isn't really a challenge you would be able to plan ahead for easily since who knows what books may have those words. Maybe it could be a bonus thing. A list of words you check off when you see them and you could have as many as you want from any one book.

Really, I was just playing around while my youngest was making me watch Elmo with her.... anything to not have to listen to that little red monster.

MrsJoseph wrote: "THat looks cool - how would the numbers work, though? "

There were earlier mentions of both the alphabet challenge (adapted to authors) and a number in the title challenge (which seems WAY too hard) but combining them would make it much more reasonable. Maybe 18-20 letters and 4-6 numbers in the title which could include words like "thousand" or "million" or "zero". That way you don't need to worry about the "weird" letters if you didn't want to.

HiMS's suggestion of number in a series or Xth book by an author would work too.

Dazrin wrote: "There were earlier mentions of both the alphabet challenge (adapted to authors) and a number in the title challenge (which seems WAY too hard) but combining them would make it much more reasonable. Maybe 18-20 letters and 4-6 numbers in the title which could include words like "thousand" or "million" or "zero". That way you don't need to worry about the "weird" letters if you didn't want to."

That works for me.

Dazrin wrote:
*Classics (maybe by author?)"

I was thinking about how to better describe this one "by author". The idea is to read something by the great authors in a bunch of different genres, duplicate genres would be allowed. For example, for science fiction you might read Ray Bradbury or Isaac Asimov or H.G. Wells. For fantasy, you might read J.R.R. Tolkien or C.S. Lewis or George MacDonald. For mystery, Agatha Christie or Arthur Conan Doyle or Raymond Chandler. You could certainly read more contemporary authors too.

HomeInMyShoes wrote: "^I just use google maps for that sort of thing.

my world reading map

But,big huge labs has a map maker for both the world and an opption for the US with states.

The big huge labs one embeds pret..."

Ah, cool! :D

I'm sure it will shock you all but I have started a spreadsheet for this.

Before I go too far, what do you want to see in a tracking / score sheet for next year?

A couple thoughts I would like to see:
It would be nice to let everyone choose which boards they want to complete.
Maps would be nice if doing a state or country type challenge.

Hahaha :D
I am not surprised, but happy that you dont mind doing all that work again! Thank you! <3

:)

I know right?

They recently made a few changes to Google Sheets so I need to learn them and this is giving me a good excuse to do it. Twisting my arm so to speak.

I also don't want to give the impression that anything I am dong is at all final, even if I get a sheet working. We are more than 6 months away from needing to actually decide on things. I really am using this as a learning experience and need to do that sooner rather than later. So this is a potentially useful way for me to do that rather than doing something to learn it that I know won't be used anywhere.

^Lol.

- books read
- categories comppleted
- categories needed
- number of authors read (I like seeing how diverse or not people read)
- bingo score, but I think it only needs to have first and second line and then blackout. Frame didn't seem very meaningful. I'm not sure anyone claimed a frame score before the blakcout.
actually get a frame before they finished a card? And not actually finish the card?
- estimated completion date

I agree about the frame, it turned out not to make much of a difference, seeing as it rarely got reached before the whole board.

HomeInMyShoes wrote: "^Lol.

- books read
- categories comppleted
- categories needed
- number of authors read (I like seeing how diverse or not people read)
- bingo score, but I think it only needs to have first and se..."

I have but it was HARD.

I am starting from this year's board, so...
Books: ✔
Categories: ✔
Categories to go: I have this as "# completed/# max" but could probably find a place to do that math. I will add the "magic number" calc either way.
Number of authors read: easy add
Bingo score: will probably leave the frame since it is already there and doesn't hurt. Maybe we should change how much it is worth though? 5 / 5 / 15 / 25 >> 10 / 10 / 10 / 20?
Estimated completion date: I can add a rough estimate for that.

Dazrin wrote: "I am starting from this year's board, so...
Books: ✔
Categories: ✔
Categories to go: I have this as "# completed/# max" but could probably find a place to do that math. I will add the "magic number..."

IDK. How about 5>10>15>20? Cascading points?

Also, is it possible to do a decimation board?

What is a decimation board? :O

DoodlePanda wrote: "What is a decimation board? :O"

The one where we pick every 10th book we own to read or DNF.

MrsJoseph wrote: "Also, is it possible to do a decimation board?"
I have it included in my list of options..

Here is the list I have right now, feel free to add new board ideas or options for the existing ones.

I can't click that :(

Should work now. Apparently hrf doesn't work in place of href.

Holy moly, thats a lot of work done :O

I hadn't even uploaded the sample tabs earlier. ;)

Sample tab 1 has the added features HIMS was wanting, the others show some different options/layouts for consideration. The top row has a brief description on each.

Have not messed with points yet.

Wow...impressive.

I've been trawling the writing awards lists and coming up with 24 would be very difficult. I'd suggest adding a few award options into the MegaBoard instead: literary award; genre award; local award. But if we're thinking awards I'd include: Nobel; Neustadt; Kafka; Glass Key; Mythopoeic; Giller; Tanizaki.

At present I'd probably be in for: mega-board; subregions; countries (obviously); covers; items; alphabet

I guess we could do it so people can choose how many boards they want to try and do too? Unless thats a lot of extra work?

I thought that was sort of the plan? It is obviously a bit more work, but I think that could be handled with a muliplier against the boards (in is 0 and out is 1 for the counting.)

I'll let Dazrin answer that though as I'm not the one building the spreadsheet, although I think my skills are getting closer to being able to do that.

@HomeInMyShoes: The Random Stuff/Mega-board category I think of as the catch-all so adding some awards to that is certainly appropriate. I will have a way so that people can select which items from each list they want to target.

For awards, we could also split the awards up into sub-groups. Novel, novella, short story, etc. There are also a lot of little awards around. For example, lots of states have their own regional awards so if someone were serious about that category I don't think it would be too hard, not easy though.

@DoodlePanda: Between 1 and the 5 (what we have now) would be easy, going above that less easy. I wasn't going to mess with that until I heard more from what people are intending. I see HIMS has 6 listed though. Look at "Sample 3" on the sheet I linked above for one way to add more boards. The problem I haven't solved is how to get the formulas (and conditional formulas) to work in that layout automatically for however many boards are selected. I am more inclined to say "you can have up to xxx small boards and xx large boards" than to say "choose however many you want".

As long as it is selectable which ones to target I might do awards. I can totally be persuaded to drop a bingo card. Eazy-peazy there. :)

Besides, I'll probably change my mind at least thirty times before mid-December.

at the moment I think I would be the most interested in Alphabet, covers, titles, random stuff, items, wsw, word on the street, tbr decimation adn possibly genre/subgenre

HomeInMyShoes wrote: "As long as it is selectable which ones to target ..."

I will have a tab that lets you choose which overall categories (boards) you want and then select which items from the list that you want to target. (That's why I want people to keep adding to the lists. Having more options for each list is good.)

When you have done that, it will create a new tab boards and selections you have chosen. So everyone should have a totally unique set of cards.

I have it working with the layout from this year, that's how I created most of the sample boards, but will need to adapt it to however many boards we want to have.

Bloody hell! That's good going! But where's my countries on the equator?



(kidding)

Countries on the 100th meridian? "Where the great plains begin?"