Nothing But Reading Challenges discussion
Tower Teams 8 - Discworld
>
Team Sam Vimes
All about Tower Teams - RULES - PLEASE READ THE RULES CAREFULLY
TRACKING SHEET - Use the "BOOKS Tab" of the sheet to fill in all possible details for your books. Please use only the BOOKs/BOM tabs. Captains will take care of the rest.
If you are not comfortable with excel, please do a full completion post for your books in the team thread, listing all required details.
- Link to the right book edition
- Author
- Pages number
- Read date
- What your book could be used for: Discworld task/Bingo/Jackanory
Also the full details of which task (MPG, colour cover, featuring... character, spell-it-out
- make sure your book is on your TT shelf.
Starts 1 May 2021 at 00:00 UTC and goes for 3 months, ending on 31 July 2021.
COUNTDOWN to the start.
Members' Shelves
Anna
Beth
Denise
Jenn
Lulu
Melanie
Melinda
Rokkan
Rose
Stacey
Tina
Members' Comments
(view spoiler)
POINTS
Book Points
◈ Books less than 100 pages = 0 points
◈ Books between 100 and 1000 pages = 0.1 points/page
◈ Books over 1000 pages = 100 points
◈ Points will be rounded up/down from 0.5 as per standard maths
◈ For audio only books, the page count will be set as 100, no matter how long the audio is.
For current BOM (Book of the Month) discussions
Writing a day's worth of discussion questions = 40 points
Participating in a current BOM = 20 points
Discworld Reading Bonus
Each team will get 8 bonus points for each Discworld book they read, to a maximum of SIX over the whole challenge. Note that this is for the whole team, not each member. You can use the BOMs to claim this bonus.
Tasks
Each Discworld book has had 6 tasks assigned to it. As a team, you can fit your books to the tasks for an additional 5 points. Excitingly, each Discworld book belongs in a sub-series; if you finish all the tasks for all the books in a sub-series you will get bonus points!
Sub-series (#books) Bonus points
Rincewind (8 books) 40 points
DEATH (5 books) 25 points
Witches (6 books) 30 points
City Watch (8 books) 40 points
Industrial Rev. (6 books) 30 points
Tiffany A. (5 books) 25 points
Others (3 books) 15 points
Bingo
Use books to mark off the squares on the bingo card - being creative with your links! Each book can only be used to cover off one square.
Marking off a square is 5 points
Completing the card gives a bonus 40 points.
Jackanory
Write a story (max 500 words) using books - any element of the book is fair game.
Each book used in the story gets 5 points
A completed story (minimum 8 books) gets 80 bonus points
BOM (books of the month)
If you participate, writing or answering questions, we'll get extra poinst. These books will not all be DW related.
If you have one of the books and decide to read them & volunteer to write questions, please drop by the bom thread and put down the team name as well.
You need to answer 3 sets of questions while reading the book to count. Once you did that, you can attach the links to your answers on the "BOM" tab of the tracking sheet.
If you are chosen to write questions, please also attach the link to your questions as well.
All of us can read the books and answer the questions, but only 1 team member can volunteer to write DQs + another one as back-up.
(view spoiler)
JUNE BOMs
, June 2 - July 2BOM Thread
, 16 June - 16 JulyBOM Thread
, 22 June - 22 JulyBOM Thread
JULY BOM
2 July
BOM Thread
16 July
BOM Thread
22 July
BOM Thread
OTHER TEAMS BOOK RECs under the spoiler tags
(view spoiler)
OUR RECOMMENDATIONS
LIST OF TASKS under the spoiler tags
(view spoiler)
BINGO TASKS under the spoiler tags
(view spoiler)
JACKANORY under the spoiler tags
(view spoiler)
Welcome to Team Sam Vimes!
In case you did not know, His Grace, The Duke of Ankh, Commander Sir Samuel "Sam" Vimes is the one of the awesomest characters of Discworld and Literature in general (well, at least for some people :).
Despite being a character in a Fantasy World, he is a kind of film-noiresque policeman with loads of potential and has the fullest character-growth along the 9 books of the City Watch sub-series.
But as already mentioned in the discussions at The Mended Drum thread, reading Discworld books is not a requirement. Should you want try, awesome. But if they are just not cuppa, that's also fine.
The main thing is that you read books and have fun.
What you are required ro read is THE RULES.
If you are still uncertain about some issues, just ask the captains. We are here to help you.
Please also observe the deadline. Only books started after on 1 May 2021 at 00:00 UTC.
COUNTDOWN will count.
Happy Tower Teams 8!! :)
Some useful links to Discworld
Where to start?
Discworld Wiki
Sam Vimes
Our Sam Vimes is probably the most quoted of Discworld's characters (the other teams lie), so as an introduction I present to you Sam Vimes often cited economic theory -"The reason that the rich were so rich, Vimes reasoned, was because they managed to spend less money.
Take boots, for example. He earned thirty-eight dollars a month plus allowances. A really good pair of leather boots cost fifty dollars. But an affordable pair of boots, which were sort of OK for a season or two and then leaked like hell when the cardboard gave out, cost about ten dollars. Those were the kind of boots Vimes always bought, and wore until the soles were so thin that he could tell where he was in Ankh-Morpork on a foggy night by the feel of the cobbles.
But the thing was that good boots lasted for years and years. A man who could afford fifty dollars had a pair of boots that'd still be keeping his feet dry in ten years' time, while the poor man who could only afford cheap boots would have spent a hundred dollars on boots in the same time and would still have wet feet.
This was the Captain Samuel Vimes 'Boots' theory of socioeconomic unfairness.”
Hello Team,So very excited about kicking off this challenge with you all.
I am Melinda and together with Jenn & Rose we'll be captaining the team, so feel free to come to us with any questions.
I am from from Hungary (GMT+1) and live with my husband & my 7-year old son in a small laketown.
This is my 4th TT challenge and as Terry Pratchett is a favourite author & Sam Vimes a favourite character of mine, I am very happy about the theme and the team. :)
I read all the DW books, those I loved, more than twice. :)
But just to repeat, you don't need to read or like theses books to enjoy and take an active part in the challenge.
Apart from fantasy my favourite genres are the classics -hunting for more forgotten ones- but I read very much whatever strikes my fancy.
I avoid horrors & thrillers, though.
Hello Team,I'm Jenn, and a co-captain. I think I've done all of the TT challenges except maybe one. It's my most favorite reading challenge.
I live in a small mountain town in Northern Arizona (US). Right now we are on Pacific Time Zone. My husband and I have two cats and he has two teenager daughters from a previous marriage.
I have not read any of the DW books - though I plan to do so for this challenge. I love to read in general, covering a wide range of genres. Right now I'm on a non-fiction kick, but I imagine I'll be doing more fiction for this challenge in order to be able to meet more of the tasks. I love mystery and some YA. Not a big fan of Thrillers or horror either - thought I do read some.
I'm really looking forward to taking part in this challenge with all of you.
Hi All, I'm your other co-captain :) I think I've been on almost all the TT challenges, also.
I'm currently in Minnesota (moving before winter, because I grew up here and know when to run) in the Central Time Zone. I keep pretty night heavy hours, though.
I normally read across all genres except self-help, but I'm currently concentrating on reading myself out of the fluff only hole 2020 put me in. Hopefully, our task lists help out with that.
Hope everyone is ready for some strange book hunting.
Hi Team Sam Vines. This is Team Rob Anybody. Can we have a book recommendation please?
Hello everyone-- this will be my first time doing this challenge and I can tell the learning curve will be steep! I'll just go read through the description again now...😬My shelf is here: https://www.goodreads.com/review/list...
Hello Denise, glad to have you on the team. Don't worry, you'll get the hang of it soon once we start and feel free to ask questions.
What books/genres do you like reading?
Jammin Jenny wrote: "Hi Team Sam Vines. This is Team Rob Anybody. Can we have a book recommendation please?"I have dropped by Team Rob's thread and left book recommendations and asked for some in return, as this is one of the tasks we need to cover: read a book recommended by another team. :)
Good morning Team Sam Vines, Team Rob here, thank you for the recs.In return I give you some 5 star reads
I was pleasantly surprised with this book. A feel good read about overcoming prejudices and so much more.
I read this for UNO and it was oh so good. Follows the friendship of two friends through school and beyond, heart warming and gut-wrenching at the same time.
some of the best I’ve read that are set in World War 2 tend to be set in Britain Martha's Girls: A Heartwarming Novel of Family Bonds and Wartime Romance or France The Nightingale. This epic tale set in Russia tells of a love story set in the middle of the war. There is courage and heartbreak in this emotional storyAnd not quite a 5 star read but worth a mention
this one actually brought a tear to my eye while reading this. Good job I was working from home.
Thanks Louise! :)@Team: Will put all book recommendations by other teams at the beginning of the thread
Hello Team! I'm so excited TT is getting ready to start again. This was my gateway challenge and still my favorite. I think I missed the first couple of rounds, but know I've done at least the last 5 or 6 years.I'm in North Carolina in the States, live with just my VERY spoiled dog and work as a PT in a trauma center in Raleigh -- reading has been a HUGE stress reliever for me over the last year.
I will read just about anything -- including horror/thriller so I can pick those up if we need someone. :) My favorites are Urban Fantasy, mystery/suspense, scifi and romance. I have not read any of the Discworld series and will give them a try this challenge, but straight fantasy and I have a bit of a love/hate relationship, so we will see how it goes.
Here is my shelf:
tt8
Looking forward to playing with you all!
Hello Stacey, glad to have you with us!! :)Considering the all those tasks we have, diverse reading is important. lol
Hello your excellencies... (part of) Rincewind here with some book recommendations. Disasterless you say? But one of my all-time favourite books (outside of our most wonderful Discworld, naturally) is actually pretty heavy on the disaster. Hey, some times it's nice to read about the familiar, no? In my case that would be about an end-of-the-world scenario on a planet called 'Earth' (did you know the writers would have us believe this planet is round..? the things people come up with!).
where was I? Oh yes, the title. That would be Lucifer's Hammer.
What else... hmmm, let's see. I don't suppose books about running away from things would interest anyone? No? just me then? Hey, it's always good to get ideas... you never know when the information might come in handy!
Ok, how about magic then? We all love a bit of magic, no? some of my favourite books about Magic take place on a world called 'Midkemia' (which is a far more interesting place than that weird 'Earth' place. I would suggest starting at the beginning, with a book called Magician. although if you'd prefer something with less of a focus on the magic, and more on an Agatean (Oriental, to some of you) flavoured society, I would highly recommend the empire Trilogy, starting with Daughter of the Empire. A very good account, even if the main character isn't a distinguished robed gentleman with an impressive beard like myself, but a... female... *shakes head*
Well then, one more. If your preference is for something with a touch more danger (well, we can't all be sensible, I suppose), then I can recommend a novel by a very royal sounding gentleman named King. this one's set in that 'Earth' place again (sorry), and goes by the title Duma Key. and you know the best thing about that book? There's no tourists in it at all!!!
And that's it from me for now (though other incarnations of myself may very well appear in future with more recommendations), I think I see a troll over there, so I will do what I do best, and run awaaaaaaaaaaaayyyy.
*disappears in a cloud of dust*
Hey everyone, I'm Anna. I've played TT in the past and I love this challenge. I live in the Louisville area and am on Eastern time zone. Real life has been super crazy lately but I can usually get things updated on the weekend. I read all over the board but steamy sports romances have been my things it seems like the past couple months. I've never read the Discworld books but plan on reading some during the challenge.
Here is my shelf: https://www.goodreads.com/review/list...
Hello Anna & welcome to the team. You are also playing UNO, right? :)
Hello team! I'm Melanie, I live in New Jersey (EST) with my husband and our two cats. Last year was the first time I'd played TT and it was a lot of fun. I had heard about it for a few years when I played WAT or UNO and finally decided to jump in last year.I primarily read romance (historical, contemporary, and suspense being my favorite subcategories) as well as mystery/thrillers. I also pick up urban fantasy occasionally but generally steer well clear of high/epic fantasy. I have never read a Discworld book but I will try to read the 3 BOMs since they're available on Scribd and I do love bonus points. So we'll see how that goes since they're not a genre I enjoy.
Here is my shelf.
https://www.goodreads.com/review/list...
Awesome Melanie, we love BOM bonus points. :) For those 3 books I am also going to participate. :)And glad to have you here.
Hello Team Sam Vines, I am from TeamVentinari I see you have a couple of Romance Lovers What about the in death series Naked in Death and the rest by JD Robb
If you want to read something that I love and have read several times try Sophie's World or Pride and Prejudice
I can vouch for House in the Cerulean Sea. such a comfort read
Hi everyone!I have played before but it has been a few years.
I'm in Florida and have not read any DW books.
I read most things although I am not a fan of thriller or horror.
Shelf link
https://www.goodreads.com/review/list...
Melindam wrote: "Hello Anna & welcome to the team. You are also playing UNO, right? :)"Hey, yes I'm over there also. I tend to be in a lot of things so I'm playing catch up to get myself all together right now. I liked the House book also.
Melindam wrote: "Hello Denise, glad to have you on the team. Don't worry, you'll get the hang of it soon once we start and feel free to ask questions.
What books/genres do you like reading?"
I work in a public library, so I read a lot of what other people recommend from various genres. My favorites are probably mysteries/suspense/contemporary fiction/rom coms.
I'm also playing UNO and someone over there recommended this challenge, but this one seems a bit more complicated. I'm confident I'll figure it out... eventually!
I haven't read any of the discworld books. I might try one.
Can someone explain how the BINGO card works? That's a little fuzzy to me.
One more question-- as we start thinking about what we'll read, do you want us to communicate that somewhere for planning? Or are there so many categories that everything just fits somewhere and we don't need to worry about it yet?
Hello! Another Rincewind here making a recommendation - or maybe it's an alternate time-line Rincewind - because we are kind of disasterous that way!The latest book I loved was
- it was just so great and gave me a bit of a book hangover.I also love Sarah Lyons Fleming's books about zombies - so much - they just hit all the right buttons . I think the first series starts with
.So there you go! There are many other books I love, but those are two good ones!
Denise,I created a tracking sheet (link in message 4) which everyone can access. On the very first tab "BOOKS" you can put your books and list there which tasks they could work for.
Then we captains can decide which task to use it for & transfer it to the official ss.
The plan is to try and fill in as many tasks as possible, then bingo and the story-writing part would come later when we get the chance to become more creative. :)
The bingo cards are all related to characters/objects/features in Discworld books and we can try and connect books you read to the cards. We can get creative there as well.
I will list couple of ideas there, but will be happy to help connecting books for you.
Thanks Suzanne for the recommendations. :)
Suzanne wrote: "Hello! Another Rincewind here making a recommendation - or maybe it's an alternate time-line Rincewind - ..."Wow-- that's two recommendations for The House in the Cerulean Sea. Now I'm tempted.
By the way, feel free to drop by other team threads and recommend books - the more the merrier. :)So far, we received recommendations from Teams
Rincewind
Vetinari
Rob Anybody
I will put all these recs under message 5
Hello all! I'm Rokkan, or Rokk, and this is my first time doing Tower Teams so bear with me while I figure out what I'm doing. My shelf is hereI'm in the UK so we're on BST ATM, and I've loved the Discworld books since I read my first one at the age of 12... many moons ago. Going to look at the spreadsheet now, see if I can figure this out...
Hey Rokkan, fellow DW-fanlovely to have you on the team.
Any favourites among the DW books?
I have changed setting for the tracking sheet, so if you already want to add some books, feel free.
Hogfather is a perennial favourite, I try to read it every December. I like Night Watch too, and Carpe Jugulum. I like that no matter how many times you read them, they're still always fun.
Rokkan wrote: "Hogfather is a perennial favourite, I try to read it every December. I like Night Watch too, and Carpe Jugulum. I like that no matter how many times you read them, they're still always fun."Night Watch & Hogfather are also in the Top3 DW books for me, and I also try to read HF around Dec every two years at least. :)
Hello team!I'm Tina and I'm from Sweden. This will be my first time doing the TT challenge and I'm super excited:)
I've never read any DW books and since there are so many interesting books out there, I think I'll focus on reading books from my ever growing TBR:)
Tina wrote: "Hello team!I'm Tina and I'm from Sweden. This will be my first time doing the TT challenge and I'm super excited:)
I've never read any DW books and since there are so many interesting books out t..."
Hey Tina and welcome! :)
The main thing is that you have fun with us. Please also attach the name of your shelf here. Thank you.
Melindam wrote: "Tina wrote: "Hello team!I'm Tina and I'm from Sweden. This will be my first time doing the TT challenge and I'm super excited:)
I've never read any DW books and since there are so many interestin..."
My shelf
Hello Melinda and Team Sam Vimes, I'm also popping over from Team Lord Vetinari (those Vimes/Vetinari scenes are some of the best) with some recommendations of books I have read recently and loved. The Thursday Murder Club is brilliant and hilarious, and made me actually laugh out loud many times. Non-Brits may sometimes need Google, but even if you don't know about catchphrases from judges on Strictly Come Dancing (US version is Dancing With the Stars) and what on earth Waitrose is (posh supermarket), you'll have a giggle.
Piranesi starts out slow, but by the end I was totally in love with it. Beautiful fantastical tale.
The Ten Thousand Doors of January - finally, a YA fantasy that was awesome. Lots of them aren't. Parents who cared, heroine who had to learn courage, not completely enveloped in a plot where teenagers are the only ones who can save the world.
Happy reading!
Nothing But Reading Challenges
Books mentioned in this topic
You'll Never Believe What Happened to Lacey: Crazy Stories about Racism (other topics)The Car Share (other topics)
The House in the Cerulean Sea (other topics)
Secret at Skull House (other topics)
The Thursday Murder Club (other topics)
More...
Authors mentioned in this topic
Mariana Zapata (other topics)Mariana Zapata (other topics)
Peggy Townsend (other topics)
Paige Tyler (other topics)
Jilly Cooper (other topics)
More...
Team Sam Vimes
• Melinda (Captain)
• Rose (Co-Captain)
• Jennifer (Co-Captain)
• Melanie
• Stacey C
• Tina
• Anna
• Lulu Fritz
• Rokkan
• Denise R.
• Beth Fox
Challenge Status Sheet
Team Sheet