Play Book Tag discussion

GrabTag

This activity is based on the top tag list for 2026:

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/...

The idea is pretty simple - - read/grab as many tags on the list that you can in the year, but there would be some parameters:

1. Each book must be tagged 5 times with the tag(s) in question.

2. A single book can cover up to 10 tags. These tags need to be specified in your challenge tracker before the book is read/reviewed.

3. Each month, people can nominate tags that aren't on the list of the top tags, and we will throw those into a randomizer and 5 additional "lesser used" tags will be available for capture too. These special tags count for double. i.e. if you read one of them, it counts as two.

4. Goal is to read the most tags by end of the year. If you read all the tags by year end, you get 30 participation points and a raffle entry. There will be participation points given for reading 25% and 50% of the tags as well.

See messages #2 and #3 for quick access to the relevant links.

Here is this year's de-duplicated list of top 300 tags for 2026. This list will be the one we use for GrabTag and for randomly selecting our tag of the month .

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/...

If you would like to submit a tag as per the instructions (#3), please use the form below.

Please make sure the tag you are going to submit is not on the tag list referenced in Message #2. Thank you!!!!

https://forms.gle/BdpcmwDLMv4Zgisr9

Looking forward to this one. I'll be playing, too! (Obviously not competing, but for fun.)

I will start to comb the official list for tags, and hope to find some new ones that I can submit for "lesser used" . Do I understand correctly that we are compiling the list of lesser used tags now, with 5 submissions from each participant, and they will be used for the whole year? I don't think I can submit 5 new tags each month.

Anita wrote: "4. Goal is to read the most tags by end of the year. If you read all the tags by year end, you get 30 participation points and a raffle entry. There will be participation points given for reading 25% and 50% of the tags as well."

To read "all the tags" are we aiming for 300 (the top tag list number) or 360 (the top tag list plus the additional 5 tags randomized each month)?

Algernon (Darth Anyan) wrote: "I will start to comb the official list for tags, and hope to find some new ones that I can submit for "lesser used" . Do I understand correctly that we are compiling the list of lesser used tags no..."

You definitely don't need to submit 5 new tags each month. In fact you don't "have to" submit any.

But whatever tags are submitted by players, those tags will be entered into the randomizer, and 5 will be selected to add to our list of 300. Those tags will be worth double.

Obviously the 5 selected cannot be re-used, but I will take all of the remaining submissions and re-submit them in the randomizer the following month.

I am I explaining this any better/more clearly? Please let me know if not, and I will make an example.

Pam wrote: "Anita wrote: "4. Goal is to read the most tags by end of the year. If you read all the tags by year end, you get 30 participation points and a raffle entry. There will be participation points given..."

The goal is to read the most you can! So "all" would technically be 300 plus 60 others that count as double for a total of 300 + 120 = 420. 420 would be the maximum grab!

Always so many good questions . . .keep 'em coming . . .

Did we decide that we have to match the tags exactly as spelled in the list?

Linda wrote: "Did we decide that we have to match the tags exactly as spelled in the list?"

For instance, favorites and favourites?

I noticed that there were 2 tags that were basically the same.
biography-memoir and memoir -biography. So we need to read a book with the tag spelled both ways?

The list of 300 seems exhaustive, I don't think we will have problems with alternative spelling, unless we try to grab too many tags for the same book. Th minimum of 5 times for a given tag is not hard to reach
I think I managed to find 5 'unusua'l tags in the books that I read this year that don't appear on the list, but I'm not sure because the list is not sorted alphabetically and I'm not sure I scanned it correctly.

Are there any guidelines for selecting additional tags - for example, number of pages before you read the 5 -tag limit?

(I think we had something like this for one of our previous games so there would be ample books from which to choose).

I think the tags need to match exactly. If we combine favorites and favourites, then we are only grabbing the top 299 tags. It's cleaner just to go with the exact tag.

Linda wrote: "Did we decide that we have to match the tags exactly as spelled in the list?"

Yes, I think we will insist on matching. When de-duping, I was careful to pick the tag with the most books so I think the overlap between something like favorite and favourites will be very extensive.

I don't like needing to judge if one person's idea of an identical tag is the same as another person's idea . . .it's cleaner to just insist upon an exact match. These are huge lists of books so I think it shouldn't be an issue.

Linda wrote: "I noticed that there were 2 tags that were basically the same.
biography-memoir and memoir -biography. So we need to read a book with the tag spelled both ways?"

Great catch! I tried so hard to eliminate duplicates like this, but apparently didn't get them all.

I will be removing one of these (the one with fewer books) and will add a new tag to the end of the list.

Thank you!!!

Also, just a heads up - - one member had a great suggestion!

I had only provided a list of top tags from most books under the tag to least books under the tag.

But this member suggested an alphabetical listing might be more useful.

At the bottom of the Google sheet, you will now see TWO tabs - - one for each type of sort: Most to least AND alphabetical.

Joy D wrote: "Are there any guidelines for selecting additional tags - for example, number of pages before you read the 5 -tag limit?

(I think we had something like this for one of our previous games so there ..."

I took a look, and I think so long as the tag appears on the Top Shelves (there's 100 pages of top shelves) it will be acceptable to submit it.

To see the shelves, member can look here. If the lowest tags on the list have over 6000 books.

https://www.goodreads.com/shelf

You can use the search function to make sure your tag suggestion appears.

Anita wrote: "Also, just a heads up - - one member had a great suggestion!

I had only provided a list of top tags from most books under the tag to least books under the tag.

But this member suggested an alphab..."

Thank you. It will be easier to check for duplicates when we submit a new tag

An alphabetized list will be awesome

Linda wrote: "An alphabetized list will be awesome"

Agreed!

Linda wrote: "An alphabetized list will be awesome"

It's been added as the second tab on the Google document.

Are we having a minimum page count?

If we do have a minimum amount page count, can we make an exception for the ‘novella’ tag?

KateNZ wrote: "If we do have a minimum amount page count, can we make an exception for the ‘novella’ tag?"

I'd suggest exceptions for novella, Childhood and childhood favorites unless children's picture books are not to be counted.

Anita, do you have any preferences for how we should report our reading for Grab Tag?

KateNZ wrote: "Anita, do you have any preferences for how we should report our reading for Grab Tag?"

Good question! I think it would be fun to see where things stand routinely, but I want to make it easy. Let me think about this a bit more.

I do think you should set up an individual tracking thread where you at least identify the books you are using to capture which tags and preferably pointing to the review. But I may have a separate monthly or quarterly thread that will just ask people to indicate how many tags they have captured and how many books they had to read to do it. So that I can have standings.

Linda wrote: "Are we having a minimum page count?"

I think we can dispense with the minimum page counts for this particular challenge.