Hooked on Books discussion

The Tesseract Travelers — 2026: Time Traveler's Challenge ⏳
Duration: January 2026 to December 2026

Welcome, temporal navigators! This thread is your crew's headquarters for the year-long journey through history. Use this space to coordinate reading plans, share era-specific book recommendations, discuss your adventures through time, and celebrate your progress on both your Personal Timeline and our Shared Timeline!

🚀 Crew Manifest
• Jenny
• Angie
• Sammy
• Judith
• Donna

🧭 Our Mission
- Personal Timeline: Advance your crew from Prehistoric Times (Year 1) to Timeless Classics (Year 6000) by earning years through reading!
- Shared Timeline: Contribute to our community's collective journey. Every year you earn helps move everyone forward through history.

📜 Earning Years
- Base Years: every 100 pages = ~1 year
- Bonus Years: 2 years per completed bonus
- Monthly Era Champion: Winning crew earns a +30 year boost!

Example: A 280-page book with 4 bonuses earns: ROUND(280*0.01)=3 base years + (4*2)=8 bonus years = 11 Total Years

📊 Crew Log (Spreadsheet)
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/...

🎯 Check-Ins
We'll post monthly reminders and tasks here! And please, post in your team thread at least weekly — Let's support each other to keep our timeline advancing!

Let the temporal adventure begin! May your books be compelling and your timeline be ever-forward! ⏱️✨

🪙 Time Traveler's Challenge - Bonus System Explained

Earn bonus years to accelerate your team's progress through the timeline! There are 8 possible bonuses per book (max), across several categories.

📅 Monthly Theme Bonuses (2 per month)
• Each month will have 2 Main Page Genre (MPG).
• Complete a task with a book from the monthly bonus genres to earn the bonus.
• These change monthly — check the HOMEBASE thread or your Team SS!

🗺️ Geographic & Temporal Collection Bonuses
• Unique Country Bonus: Earn a bonus for each new country (book setting ONLY) your TEAM reads from.
• Unique Publication Year Bonus: Earn a bonus for each new publication year your TEAM reads.
• Important: Uniqueness is tracked per team, not individually. Coordinate with your crew to maximize collection!

🌍 Diversity Reading Bonus
• Earn a bonus for reading a book by an author from an underrepresented group. (Updated from Book Quest: this is now author-related only, not based on genre or content.)

Underrepresented groups include: BIPOC authors, LGBTQ+ authors, authors with disabilities, neurodivergent authors, authors from marginalized religious groups, authors from developing nations, and indigenous authors.

⭐ Personal Badges
• Each month features unique personal badge challenges.
• These will be revealed when monthly tasks are posted.

🏺 Team Artifacts (Collective Bonuses)
These require entire team participation!

Team Read 📚
All team members read the same book and participate in an approved Buddy Read discussion thread.
Thematic Treasure Hunt 🔍
Your team finds books from your individual reading that share a common theme, motif, or symbol (like "fire," "moon," "rebirth," "keys," "mirrors"). Submit a combined "catalog" with quotes/examples showing the connection in your thread.

📝 Bonus Submission Notes:
• Claim bonuses on your team spreadsheet.
• For Diversity Bonus: Select the author's identity from the dropdown when claiming.
• For Unique Country/Year: Your team tracker will show your growing collection via a map.
• Team Artifacts require special submission in the thread!

Remember: Each bonus earned = +2 years on your timeline! Strategic bonus hunting can accelerate your journey dramatically. ⏱️✨


🌀 TEMPORAL ANOMALIES (Special Limited-Time Bonus)
• Watch for surprise bonus tasks with specific time-limited windows.
• A fun way to earn a quick burst of years — stay alert!

I'm getting all kinds of St. Mary's vibes! I really hope our pod doesn't smell like cabbage all the time!!! 🤣

Hi all!
Notifications are my friend!!! Just kidding. Hopefully they are on now!

Yeah, completely missed this one before 😆

Hi guys!

Hope the first tasks come in soon, as we're off to Scotland for the holidays on Sunday, and would like to get stuff planned out before then ideally!

Tasks are up! :D

I saw that!
I will see if I have any energy tonight to look for some fun books to start the new year off with a bang. Or a giggle. Or whatever.

we also need to supply a list of 12 recs each to a master list which others can choose from over the year (can't get bonus for reading what you rec yourself), so we may want to be strategic about this... lol.

I filled in a few (some nice dates for our timeline there), and will see what you lot come up with before I chuck any more at it.

So if they are recs, do they have to be books we have already read, or ones that just look good?

Maybe we can each tackle a genre (ish) and recommend 12 books from that. I could do Sci-Fi, you love historical fiction, Angie, Donna and Judith can pick one or two genres each and go from there?

Or just grab books that we might like to tackle as a team, or at least might be good for a buddy read or twelve?

So, unique country/pub date are going to screw with buddy reads and team reads. I cannot tell if one is better points-wise than another. Can you?

I should be able to take a look at everything tomorrow night or the weekend.

Jenny wrote: "So, unique country/pub date are going to screw with buddy reads and team reads. I cannot tell if one is better points-wise than another. Can you?"

I haven't looked at how the points work yet.

Wouldn't the unique country/pub date be per person and not per team? Nope, after looking at the task and SS, and reading some more - it is unique for the Team!

I think of the country/date thing as a nice extra.

as for recs, i think if we each rec things we think others on the team might like, we'll have those options going forward in the challenge.
The person making the rec can still join in the BR/team read, just won't be able to claim that particular bonus for that book.

Sammy,

I'm in for Dungeon Crawler Carl and The Knife of Never Letting Go for BRs

Awesome! I need The Knife of Never Letting Go for something else, so I'm glad it fits here too. Plus diverse author bunus. Woo!

Don't forget we also have one book a month on the 'Temporal anomalies" tab to do.

I'm planning on Shroud for the first one. anyone up for that one as a BR? Jenny, Angie?

Yup. Shroud is on my TBR, so yes on that one.

i started looking for books last night, and did not get far. I really want to start reading books I have purchased recently, so I may have a few that are not great for BRs.

The last few months of the year seemed to be a lot of rereads, which I don't mind, but my books are staring at me, making me nervous.

I have a load of books I'd like to read in the next few weeks because I may not want to take them when we move, so less stuff to haul, lol!

I still have a few spots open and can switch some things around, but like others I'm trying to read what's been piling up before I get smothered by the stacks of books. LOL