The Dusty Bookshelf discussion

So I already have February's mini-challenge planned out (it's secret :) But I wanted to get your feedback on a few of my other ideas.

Swag Swap - I was thinking of having a swag swap (preferably bookmarks) where people could sign up and I would give your name to someone else in a pen-pal/secret santa type thing. I thought since you can't have new books, you could have a new shiny bookmark, right? Plus get to know other bloggers. What do you think?

Jackpot challenge - I wanted to do an extreme challenge (like reading only books from your dusty bookshelf for a month) and having a jackpot prize at the end. To enter in the challenge you would have to pledge something. If you finish the challenge, you get your pledge back, but if you don't then your pledge goes into a jackpot for the person that wins the whole thing. I don't know what we could pledge (bookmarks? books? $1?) or even how it would work, but I wanted to see if anyone was interested in something like that.

I like the book mark idea and we can do a post about the bookmarks we get too! What about a mystery book swap. A book is sent in the genre of your selection and you sent one to someone in their genre of choice.

!!! I love the idea of a mystery book swap! Thanks for your feedback :)

Okay, I have another idea. What if we had a charity drive? For one month we take the money we would usually spend on books and donate it to a reading charity and commit for a month to read only books that we already own. Plus, we could purge our shelves of books we don't want and donate those as well. Would you guys want to do something like that? Do you know any good charities that focus on reading and education?

I love it. I am planning a book swap party with my book club. I think this is a great idea

The swag swap sounds fun! The jackpot challenge sounds cool too. And I think the charity drive sounds good, but I could probably only donate books that I own, not money.

Thanks you guys for the feedback! I can't wait to get some of them into action :D

Looks like at least a few of us have some books in common. Maybe buddy reads or even a group read would be fun!

Looks like a lot of us are reading classics, and quite a few of us have some sort of fun/fantasy/YA type book on our lists as well as some sort of non-fic (religious, most of them seem to be).

Just thinking about some things we might could base challenges on. I like this group, and the group of people here, and want it to be more active, so I'll think on it some more!! LOL ;)

Some sort of monthly challenge would be awesome!

I've got monthly challenges and giveaways up my sleeve :D I think I'll start a thread where people can schedule buddy reads with people that have the same books.

I like the idea of a group read, but I will have to ponder some more on how to do it. If you have any more ideas about a group read and how it would work, just let me know!

OKie dokie! Haven't done any group reads yet but plan to do some in Feb in other groups. Maybe that will spark some ideas!

Wishing GR had a "like" button instead of me having to come up with a sentence or two just to make it worth my posting time.... ROFL (I'm such an FB addict!)

I was also thinking about doing a read-a-thon for just dusty books with giveaways and little puzzles throughout. I want it to be three days over a weekend so the most people can join and you can only read your challenge books! When would you guys want to do something like that? I was thinking in the summer?? Or maybe spring is better when it's not warm enough to get outside yet? Let me know if you'd like to do something like that and some good times for you!

HA this weekend would be good, superbowl widows and all. (Not that I'm one, I'm not, but still.)

Maybe... hm. I dunno when but I likeee! :D

I'm going to set a tentative read-a-thon for May or June. I'm thinking of doing the charity drive in August so kiddies can have new books for school.

those r defiantly some interesting ideas! lemme know the plans and I might join! I had a thought for one, but now I forgot. :D

Jessica, for a read-a-thon, I think summer would be best! My weekends now are all used up for doing homework. OTL

Summer sounds good to me too. Does June count as summer?

I would like to state here that, as good as these challenges sound, I am useless at carrying out challenges that involve giveaways/swaps etc as I'm pretty useless with posting stuff, I always forget :S


Read-a-thon's could be good tho'and would definitely be a plus for me and the summer would definitely be best as my apprenticeship should be done by then :D

Jessica wrote: "Summer sounds good to me too. Does June count as summer?"

To me it does. :D

Of course I'll have camps and reunions on and off through june and july. :D

okay so um im kinda new... wondering if anyone knows the House of Night Series????? it's an amazing book Series, even if you hate vampires

Is the first one isle of night?

Jessica wrote: "Is the first one isle of night?"

no it's Marked!!!! It's An amazing book

Read-a-thon sounds like something i'd be terrible at, but such fun! I'm in...and yes:) June is summer in our book...heck we start summer in May! :) Reason number 3423 of why I homeschool...I make my own seasons (as far as school goes! :)

...and I may have to look into House of Night????

Those sound like fun ideas, Ace! The traveling book tour sounds super cute!

Love those ideas Ace!


Also, I know we have a "Discuss Your Books" thread, but we seem to be chattering quite a bit in there. Do you think we might have use for a "Reviews Only" type thread, for posting covers, links, etc, and a quick review, thumbs up/down, stars, whatever?

Recent post in the Discuss Your Books thread was like that, and I just wondered if those types of posts might get lost in the chatter, or if people might not post that type of thing for fear of interrupting the 'conversation' in there, etc. Kind of a, "I finished one!" type thing....

Just a thought to mull over for ya! <3

Oooh I like the reviews Idea. :D

@Destiny: Hate to burst your bubbly, but I couldn't get through the second chapter of Marked.

Ace wrote: "I love the idea of the bookmark/book swap. Maybe we could have a theme each month and make our own (or buy them if we run short on time). Then we can post pictures of our bookmarks in the group if ..."

Oh how fun! I bet the book would travel all over the world! That's a great idea :)

I can start a thread for posting your reviews when you've finished! Great idea :)

Have you thought about doing a "Recommend a book to the person above you" mini-challenge? The gist would be to actually take a few minutes, go through what that person has read and liked (or in the case of a private account, they could just list a few books in the forum post) and go from there?

Just throwing it out there.

That's a cute idea! End result being sort of the same for the Member of the Month thing I'd mentioned before - just kind of a getting to know you thing. Maybe more personal this! Love it.

Oh, like a book blind date?! Love it Kayci!

Jessica wrote: "Oh, like a book blind date?! Love it Kayci!"

A blind book date. Exactly!

There seems to be an issue with the bookshelf, in that if more than one of us is reading or has read a book it deletes previous entries?

Or something.

I went to change my Silmarillion to "read" with the date so it would count towards my challenge thing, but someone had already changed the dates and taken it off my shelf and all sorts of stuff. Not sure how that's supposed to work...?

What about with us all reading Eragon?? :( Sad day.

mine has all been seperate? I put it on my currently reading, then I just update my status...it's seemed to work so far...??? I'm confused..I didn't think anyone else could change OUR stuff???

I wouldn't think so either, but when I went to change Silmarillion off of the current reads shelf it wasn't there any more. So I searched the whole shelf and it had been changed to the "read" shelf with a date almost 10 years ago, taken OFF of my shelf and added TO someone else's shelf. It had my name linked on the side as having added it, so I went ahead and changed it back. I assume that whoever did it just changed mine instead of adding their own, but I wondered if it will happen with EVERY double book or not.

I'll go add Eragon this afternoon to my shelf. I see it's already there, so I'll double check and see if it changes what's there or adds it a second time for me.

As far as I can figure out, there are two shelves involved in this. One is a shelf that you can make for yourself here in the group bookshelves. But the challenge doesn't use that; it uses a shelf that you make just under your own account (My Books), so that will always stay separate.

And I did make my own shelf here. It just appears that, even though it was on MY shelf, someone else was able to edit it and even remove it from my shelf. Not sure how to prevent that....

It looks to me like the shelves on the group share books. When I made my group shelf and put books on it, some showed up as being on both my shelf and someone else's. But my own shelf, under my account, only refers to my own shelves. I was confused at first, but the challenge is looking at my shelf under my account, not my shelf on the group.

But the problem with sharing books here on the group is you can't add separate dates... or like the issue I had was I was still reading it and someone marked it as already read (complete with date).

Going to go add a couple now, including Eragon which I know is already on the list. So I'll see if it lets me add a second copy *instead of* sharing it with someone else. Because the sharing thing is only going to work if we read it at the same time (or leave dates off, or something)...

Sure enough, I went to add Eragon and it won't let me add a second copy of the same book. It came up on the currently-reading shelf as well as Thalia's shelf... which is fine, but when she wants to change it from the currently-reading to the "read" shelf it will change it on mine also. LOL See the problem?

Oddness.

So, if she has finished it and I'm still reading it, the same book can't be on BOTH the current shelf AND the read shelf at the same time. AND the group won't led us add a second copy unless it's a different edition....

Golly...I"m still so confused! Maybe I don't have this "group shelf"??? or Maybe because Eragon wasn't on my dusty list? I hope I don't figure it out when we read the Arthurian read together..??? I just added a new shelf called dusty-challenge and put from my TBR list the books I wanted to add to the challenge...so I have two shelves listed on the challenge books...depending on what I'm currently doing, they are either on my TBR and Dusty challenge or Currently reading and Dusty Challenge...I just add everything to my currently reading..and I update it periodically on that little box that comes up on the right hand side of my screen...and when I'm finished I just hit finished and then put in my review??? Does this sound like what you guys are doing? It seems to be working, becuase it updates my "challenge" every time I finish a book that's on that list! I hope I'm not doing something wrong! :) Eeekkkkk. I guess *technically* I haven't really participated in a 'real' buddy read from my shelf...Eragon was the first and it was only residing on my TBR shelf..not on this challenges shelf? Ugh...I'm so confused. I guess I should just not worry about it until I notice something on my side...although I might go try to do something now and see if I can change other peoples stuff...for the heck of it!

April, here on the group site in the upper right corner there's a Bookshelf link. If you go there, you can create your own shelf (starting with your name) and list the books you have or plan to read for the Dusty Bookshelf.

Problem is, when we mark things as "to read" or "currently reading" etc - because it's considered a single book and not by several different members (again, because it's on the GROUP shelf which is totally separate from your profile shelves), we can't mark it for more than one status.


Not sure what the solution might be, except maybe that we only ever mark "current reads" and put it on our own shelves, and don't ever mark it "read" unless it's not on anyone else's shelf! But then you run into the issue of people putting their dusty tbr on their shelves....

I dunno!! *confused*

'kay...so what I just heard was that if I don't go out there and create my own shelf...I'm golden, cause nothing seems to be messin' with my shelves...but then again, who knows if there are any duplicates? But, maybe I'm not connected that way, since I only have my shelf and the challenge shelf?? Guess if it isn't broke I won't fix it...we shall see if it continues to work...so what is the benefit of creating a shelf there? on the group shelf? can't everyone just click on our dusty challenge shelf and see what we're reading if they want? just curious?

I guess I'm not explaining it very well. Maybe Jessica can do better.

When I go to My Books, I see a list of my own bookshelves at the left. Whatever books I add to My Books, I can put on any of those shelves, including multiple shelves. These shelves are just attached to my own account, so they have nothing to do with other people's shelves. One of my shelves there is the one I am using for the challenge in this group, and it will update according to my marking books as read.

Here, on this group, there are also bookshelves, but they are attached to this group, not to any individual's accounts. So, similarly to how I can put one of My Books on multiple bookshelves, within the group shelves, a book can only be added once, but can be on multiple shelves. So when you create a bookshelf there, it is attached to the group, not to your own account. If you put a book on the shelf you created there, and another person puts the same book on their shelf they created there, it is the same book, but it is on both shelves. So, since it is the same book, if one person marks it as read, it will show as read on all the group shelves. Those are not used for the challenge.

I don't know if that makes it any clearer, but I'm trying!

Denise, I think you did a fine job...I think I understand the workings of it..still kind of clueless on the benefit of doing so? But, that's neither here nor there:) But I get it now as far as the "group" shelves! :) Thanks!

April and Dalynn - Sorry it's taken me so long to get to this thread!

I think you bring up a good point. I actually ran into this problem early on because Hayley and I are both reading the Hunchback of Notre Dame. Do I add it back to the to-read shelf when I'm done because Hayley hasn't read it yet? The truth is, with group shelves any one can change them as much as they want unless I restrict the shelves and make it so only I can add books.

I think the real question is how we want to handle having books on the group shelves. The advantages of having group shelves are that you can see what every one is reading. The disadvantages are that it's very confusing if the book should be on the read, to-read, or currently-reading shelf. The group shelves are optional. I'd like to start a thread about this and get everyone's feedback on what we should do about the group shelves. Are they beneficial? Should we have rules? Should we get rid of them all together?

Question...please ignore my group book shelf dumbness:) ! Can't we just add...if we want to, books that we are reading to the group shelves, but just update our personal shelves when we are finished reading? Would that solve the problem?? Then it's updated on YOUR acocunt, but it doesn't touch the 'group' shelf? (and that way it still updates your challenge meter?) Or is that not possible? My udnerstanding is that personal and group shelves are not linked? Just wondering...

I think that's a good idea. I don't know if it would solve the problem. It would still be confusing as to if the book should be on the read, to-read, or currently reading shelves....

OK..you know how you have shelf settings? and you can customize what you see??? Can you just put a "comments" section in..then when people are reading/finished they can just leave a comment with their name and the date finished? Then it can stay on the TO READ shelf...but if you want to see who is finished and when...you can just click the comments? I tried it and it worked, but (i did only try it with a book that had no comments???) I guess technically it could get sorta messy if a bunch of people leave comments??? not sure if you'd see EVERY comment or just those left from group members? maybe could work?

I think it might be a good idea, and the way I understood what April is saying, to ONLY add books we are CURRENTLY reading to the group shelf.

This would mean keeping our TBR and our "read" shelves personal and not on the group.


I really, really love the idea of a group shelf and seeing what everyone is reading. I think a thread (which I'm pretty sure we have one of already) where everyone can list what they plan to read works for a "to-read" shelf. I think that the "I finished one!" review thread will work for a group "read" shelf.

And I also think a thread to ask what everyone thinks would be fitting since we already have TBR shelves and such set up. :)


Thank you for doing this group Jessica! There's always little quirks to work out. I sure appreciate your effort! <3