Pick-a-Shelf discussion

1. Mini SAT: 50 points when you have read off the following 12 shelves (with 5 books or less):

scifi
sci-fi
science-fiction
sf
20th-century
religion
short-stories
mysteries
mystery
mystery-suspense
mystery-thriller
christian-fiction

2. Winner of You Choose, Karen (of the Bookworm), Task on Election in May for 30 points: Read a political themed book (which can include biographies, autobiographies, memoirs, history, etc)

3. In May: VE Day, Europe Day, and Holocaust Remembrance Day: For 30 points: Read a book on, during and / or about Wold War 2 BUT only in European setting.

4. 2010 GR Choice Awards: For 20 points: Read a book which either has won or was nominated for an award of your choice of category BUT to claim up to 5 books, read from 5 different categories.
Note: some books maybe have won or been nominated for different categories however that still counts only as one but you can choose which category to claim that one on.

5. 25 May is Towel Day (a tribute to Douglas Adams): For 20 points: Read books to spell “TOWEL” either by title or author’s first / last name BUT only in (Outer) Space setting. For the Really Overly Ambitious: Bonus 100 points, if you choose one category only (eg. Only spell towel by first name of authors etc)

Mid-Month:

It appears that May is National Short Story Month (most possibly in the US) though it's not quite official; it is being run by some blogs. I wish that I found out sooner so I could've included in the monthly challenge however we can still participate by:

Reading some short stories... One book of short stories for 31 points (for the 31 days in May) BUT for the Really Overly Ambitious Reader: 31 points PER story - read 31 stories from today until 31 May 2011 (so that's a GINORMOUS total of 961 points!!)

Note: For the ROAR-er challengers, the usual rule of mid-month of starting the book within 7 days is over-ruled, in this case only. An average of 2 short stories per day, achievable? C'mon, you know you want to ;)

To get you started:
Short Stories Shelf
Best Short Story Collections Listopia
Best Short Stories Listopia

FYI: Blogs running Short Story Month

ohh tricky! lol!

fyi - loving the holocaust category, I have a ton of books for my around the world challenge, set in Europe during WW2 about the holocaust ;)

**answered my own question as soon as I asked it**

Lauren wrote: "**answered my own question as soon as I asked it**"

love it... :)

OK, now I'm really confused. Regarding the "only on the first 2 shelves" requirement of the mini SAT.

I follow the link to the shelf, in this case christian fiction. On that shelf, on the 2nd page, I find a book listed. The Five Love Languages. I recognize that this book doesn't intend to be fiction, so it's weird to see it there. But the shelf list says it's been shelved 85 times as christian fiction.

I go to the book's page, and check pages 1 & 2 of the top shelves. I don't see christian fiction, even though being shelved that way 85 times would clearly put it on page 1. There's clearly some inconsistency between the two lists. So this means I couldn't count it? Or do we conclude there's an error somewhere, and it should be on that first page?

I don't know if this is correct, but I have only been using books that show up on the 1st two pages of the book's shelves, thinking that if Karen wanted to check those would be the shelves she would use.

Susan wrote: "OK, now I'm really confused. Regarding the "only on the first 2 shelves" requirement of the mini SAT.

I follow the link to the shelf, in this case christian fiction. On that shelf, on the 2nd page..."

Tara - You are exactly right. It doesn't matter where the actual book is on the shelf, but where the shelf is on the book's list of top shelves. It has to be on either page 1 or page 2.

Susan - I can see why you are confused. When you look at the christian-fiction list, it does say that it was shelved 85 times as christian-fiction, but in fact, when you go to the books top shelves, it has been shelved 85 times and christan. BUT - when you go to the comprehensive listing of shelves, there is no shelf listed as christian by itself, so my guess is that the books list of top shelves is incorrect and that christian should actually say christian-fiction.

Something is definitely wrong here as I cannot believe that there is a not a shelf called simply "christian". I know they just redid all of the shelves to give us the abilitiy to look at them in a new way, which rolled out with the last release. I wonder if christian and christian-fiction got combined by mistake? I think a question to the goodreads feedback group is in order. I think I will ask them.

Thank you, Lyn! Let us know what they say...

Susan, if you do want to read this for Mini SAT, you can count it.

There has been a few changes with the shelves which they are now calling 'genres' which kinda throw things awry for us (ie. the group's name & main activity! how inconsiderate, lol)

i just posted a question over in the librarians group to see if they know the deal...because christian doesn't even show up as a genre, when i search that way...so something probably got combined somewhere that shouldn't have

ok, so here's the gouge that go about the christian vs. christian fiction...basically some librarian has taken christian and merged it as a duplicate genre of christian fiction, which is why so many non-fiction books are now on a fiction list...i just asked about unmerging, but don't know

Huh, I could see merging Christian Fiction into Christian, but not the other way around.

ditto...i asked if there was a way to get it unmerged...and expressed my dislike for the whole merging genre things...i can understand making genres, but not taking top shelves and merging those into the genres...it should be something that is done on the metadata for the book itself

Odd, I wouldn't think it is their buisness to merge them at all since I thought the list was based on how readers choose to shelve books and how they name those shelves. You will never convince me that (-) is a genre but lots of people use that as a shelf category. (I've always been curious to know what it even means!)

i have no frickin idea...lol! hence, why i don't like how they implemented the genre thing

Shucks, Dee, I was counting on you to know everything! :)

Oh, and just in general, I'm a little stressed over the space books that spell towel. So if anyone has any ideas...

I am pretty stumped as well... I don't read a lot of true Sci-fi, so I am at a loss for any outer space books.

yeah, i know some romantic sci-fi...but not enough to spell the entire word i don't think

contrary to popular belief, i don't know everything....but throwing it out there, the president is getting ready for a press conferance right now - looks like Bin Laden has been killed...and that is signifcant in american history (so it ties in well with the shelf)

Lahni wrote: "Shucks, Dee, I was counting on you to know everything! :)"

If you are looking for a name beginning with E, there is Elizabeth Moon. I believe some of hers are set in space.

Believe or Not:

Space is a genre

LOL

after reading the whole genre debate in the librarian group, i am not surprised, because some people also declared cowboys a genre and mermaids a genre...

I've posted feedback several times in the GR Feedback group about the new "genre" project with shelves - and mentioned that groups use the the shelves for challenges. So far at least we can still click through to get to the "top shelves" pages for individual books. That information hasn't been merged - it's just the "genre" listing on each book page that shows merged shelves.

there is a huge discussion about it in the librarian's group...gave me a headache just reading it...is smut a genre, not its not, yes it is...not its not, its derogatory...i agree with a, well, i agree with b...or something along those lines ;)

i think it would have been better approached if genre was added to the book metadata when you are creating them, and it gets added that way, because everyone does their shelves different...you might do mystery-thriller, whereas i might do thriller-mystery...and they are technically the same, but the difference could be argued

I'm in the GR Librarians group as well, but I don't keep up with it as much as the Feedback group. I'll have to pop over and check out that discussion. There hasn't been much lately about the genres in Feedback so it must have all gone over to Librarians. I was hoping the discussion wasn't over yet.

for your entertainment: http://www.goodreads.com/topic/show/5...

Thanks, Dee! I just read through it. I'm not going to add anything to the discussion, though. Seems like it's been pretty well hashed out. I'm not in favor of everything that's been done, but it seems like they've reached some pretty fair compromises.

true...i posted a question at the end about the christian vs. christian fiction...to make sure someone saw it and answered it...hopefully we can get that fixed...it makes more sense to me (at least in my own little head at 4am)...that is should be christian > christian-fiction

not christian-fiction > christian

I think we should still be fine if we stay away from the "genre" pages and just use the shelf pages.

Susan, I can't recreate what both you and Lyn M saw with The Five Love Languages shelved 85 times as christian-fiction. Looks to me like it is shelved 85 times as "christian" and just once as "christian-fiction." Was there a caching issue? That seems like a huge number difference, though. It's weird. Even though the two shelves may have been combined in a weird way on the genre pages, that shouldn't affect the shelf pages.

i managed to replicate it...basically, if you click on the christian link, it takes you to christian fiction (or something along those lines)

Ah, got it. Thanks, Dee! But if you click on the "christian" link, you are being directed to a genre page and not a shelf page: http://www.goodreads.com/genres/christian-fiction?original_shelf=christian. (Notice it says genre and not shelf?) We're all going to have to be very careful about that from now on. :( Shelves do NOT equal genre.

i just sent you a msg ;)

Sorry for hijacking the thread! Dee set me straight and now I see The Five Love Languages on the christian-fiction list - showing it's been shelved that way 86 times, which is why I missed it. But when you click, it only actually shows one person shelving it that way. So VERY weird.

So where do we find the list of shelves? The regular spot on the right side of the book page says "genres" at the top of the little block but the link in green at the bottom of the same block says "shelves".

basically, click on the link that says popular shelves and it will still load the top ones...its a genre where you see two categories on that first list (show on the book profile page) - clear as mud in explaination i hope

Delicious Dee Challenge Addict wrote: "basically, click on the link that says popular shelves and it will still load the top ones...its a genre where you see two categories on that first list (show on the book profile page) - clear as m..."

Just a last note, as per messages 9 and 10 above, I have asked the Goodreads Feedback group to look into this and hope to hear from them soon.

I'm trying to do Towel by title. Does the word "the" at the beginning always count or can it be optional? (Or, I suppose, never count). I'm hoping to use The War of the Worlds for "w".

and I have soething in the librarian group, which are the ones doing all the genre work...but there are huge debates over what is and isn't a genre right now - so i'm not expecting a result

Lyn M wrote: "Delicious Dee Challenge Addict wrote: "basically, click on the link that says popular shelves and it will still load the top ones...its a genre where you see two categories on that first list (show..."

As Dee said above, the answer I got from the Feedback group was that they are "re-evaluating the genre hierarchies." So for now, things are weird, lol.

Lahni wrote: "Oh, and just in general, I'm a little stressed over the space books that spell towel. So if anyone has any ideas..."

I tried authors' last names, because I had a Westerfeld book I wanted to include. But I couldn't find all the letters that way. I don't think it should be too hard to find them all using titles.

Lahni wrote: "I'm trying to do Towel by title. Does the word "the" at the beginning always count or can it be optional? (Or, I suppose, never count). I'm hoping to use The War of the Worlds for "w"."

In other challenges, we've been told we had the option -- count it as "T" if you want, but ignore it and could it as "W" if you prefer -- just not both, of course.

Susan wrote: "In other challenges, we've been told we had the option -- count it as "T" if you want, but ignore it and could it as "W" if you prefer -- just not both, of course."

By "just not both" you mean from the same title right? I can use the "T" from one title and ignore it in another right?

Lahni wrote: "Susan wrote: "In other challenges, we've been told we had the option -- count it as "T" if you want, but ignore it and could it as "W" if you prefer -- just not both, of course."

By "just not both..."

Yes, that's what I meant. :)
But you may want to wait until someone more official than me confirms it.

Lahni, it's totally up to you if you'd want to count 'The' or not but please be consistent for the rest of the title choices for TOWEL :)

& Thanks, Susan!
Btw, good luck with searching last names for TOWEL - if you haven't read the time series by Madeleine L'Engle, there's "L" for you ;)

Thanks, Kazza.

Kazza wrote: "Lahni, it's totally up to you if you'd want to count 'The' or not but please be consistent for the rest of the title choices for TOWEL :)

& Thanks, Susan!
Btw, good luck with searching last nam..."

I gave up on the last name search. Since this is one of my favorite genres, even when I found one that might have worked, I'd often read it already. I'm going with titles instead.

i found 2 first names...but haven't been looking too hard...lol!

book about a kid who experienced the rise of a dictatorship (Qadaffi) - fit into political? I would argue yes, but would like inputs