Read by Theme discussion

What goes here?

•Questions: If you're confused about any aspect of the group, ask for help here.

•Feedback: If you have something--positive or negative--to say about any aspect of the group, leave a comment here.

•Suggestions: Is there a feature you want that don't have yet? Tell us about it!

If a book comes up more than once for a theme and people want to discuss it, do they post in the original thread or create a new one? So if someone read Kraken next month for the "set in England" theme and wanted to say something about it, would they post in the current Kraken thread?

Just curious. :)

It should get a new thread in the new month's folder; a link to the old thread is optional but helpful. :)

The exception is book threads in the "Theme Rebels" section; to reduce clutter, Theme Rebels threads should be continued from month-to-month when new people the same book.

Thanks for starting this great group! Maybe it would be nice to have a folder where each member could start their own thread recording what they read for all the months' themes?

That's an interesting idea. I'm reminded of a comment someone recently made in the chatter thread about having a shelf or shelves for their Themed reads. Perhaps we could weave the two ideas as thus:

Have a thread (not sure where to put it, maybe Official Threads?) where members can drop a link to their Read by Theme shelf or shelves if they have any?

Thoughts/suggestions? :)

I like the idea of creating a Read by Theme shelf and sharing it with the group.

I think there's a way to cross-post bookshelves. Like, if each member has a shelf for this group on their own book page, it can also appear as a shelf on the group's bookshelf. I don't know how it works, but I've seen something like that in other groups. OR you could adjust the settings so members can add to the group bookshelf, and each person could have a shelf there that they add to each month. (Both ideas have the same result, but the process of achieving them is different.)

I experimented a bit with the group bookshelves, but honestly didn't find their functions to be fleshed out enough to be useful. But I do very much like your idea, so I think over the next few days I'll go back to my test group and tinker with them a bit more to see if I can get them to work in a way that wouldn't clutter things up to much (my main complaint when I first started exploring the feature). If I can get a set-up that appears to work work, I'll definitely implement it, perhaps first for a trial run, as soon as I can. :)

I notice that with my nook I don't have all these choices for adding a link to my book I am reading in a comment. I am still pretty new to the club. Is this a website too that I can sign into on my home computer?

Christy wrote: "I notice that with my nook I don't have all these choices for adding a link to my book I am reading in a comment. I am still pretty new to the club. Is this a website too that I can sign into on my..."

Forgive me, but I'm not sure I completely understand your question. If you're asking if Goodreads (and thus Read by Theme) can be accessed on a desktop/laptop computer as well as your Nook, the answer is a definite yes. I'm fairly sure the Nook app is actually a very recent expansion of this site, and the various Goodreads apps (for the Nook, Kindle, iPod/iPad, etcetera) still have quite limited features compared to the actual site. ;)

Thank you Amara! That is exactly what I meant.

Glad I could help, then, and you're very welcome. :)

thats what we do in another group im in. we make topics each year with our books and just continue on with the topic till the year is over. when the new year starts u can either continue on with that thread or start a new one. i also just made a 2012 folder for my books so i know when i read them.

Is anyone interested in having polls at the end of each month to see how many books you read for that month's theme? Not for competition's sake, just for fun.

An interesting idea; I wonder, though, if it would be best implemented as a poll or a thread? I do think that making it a poll would be most useful, but I worry that another poll each month might clutter up the poll section...? Any thoughts/opinions/suggestions, anyone?

I don't know. Are you closing the polls each month? If so, the most current, open polls would be a the top of the poll thread. I don't think it would appear cluttered, but that's just my opinion.

I'm also a numbers girl, so I think it's cool to see those statistics. A thread would be fine, but unless someone wants to volunteer to compile the counts everyone posts, you wouldn't have an overall idea.

Of course, if I'm the only one interested, then it's kind of a moot point. :)

I suspect I would close the polls after a certain length of time.

But reading through your "I'm also a numbers girl, so I think it's cool to see those statistics"--and I definitely agree!--I was actually pondering implementing the statistics bit through the bookshelf suggestion someone else had. If I can manage to get the bookshelves set up appropriately, here's what I'm thinking:

There would be shelves for each theme, as well as a shelf for each member who chooses to use the shelf feature.

So I would be able to go through each theme's shelf and see who read what and how many books, which I could report... somewhere. ;) Still need to think of exactly where to put this statistic.

Thoughts? (And anyone else's opinions?)

As I'm browsing the topics I notice at the top of each area it says 6 of 9 showing, etc. When I click on it to see the rest, 8 topics appear. For the August - Set in England section it says 6 of 13, but when I click only those 6 appear. When I did this for the July - Blue Cover, I got the full list. How do I see what other books have their own topic for discussion in August?

Linda C wrote: "As I'm browsing the topics I notice at the top of each area it says 6 of 9 showing, etc. When I click on it to see the rest, 8 topics appear. For the August - Set in England section it says 6 of 13..."

That's really weird, and I'm seeing the same issue. I'll look into it. If it's not something I've got set wrong, I'll see if anyone else is having the issue in Feedback.

I have the same problem as Linda C. Guess it's a common issue now.

I've brought it up in Feedback.

It seems they never responded. Is this issue still relevant? I'll bump the feedback thread if it is.

(Wow, it's been so long since I made that thread I'd forgotten all about it!)

There does still seem to be a slight discrepancy in some folders, but not to the extent there used to be. Most of the folders are one number off, so I don't think it's too important at this point--at least not compared to the downright inaccurate numbers we had back in August. The discrepancy's probably still a little confusing to anyone who notices, but I suspect it's simply not widespread or important enough for staff to address it.

(I've been told that they have lately been "taking note" of bugs reported in Feedback without responding to the actual threads. I hope that's what happened there, but I've also been informed that the overall quality of the Feedback group has gone down dramatically over the past year or two, so maybe they just ignored the issue...? Meh.)

In other words, feel free to bump it, but it's probably not necessary... at least until things get wildly inaccurate again.

I'll just leave it be for now if things have improved somewhat, if it gets all wonky again I'll bump it back up and see what happens.

I can definitely attest to the strong decline of the Feedback group over the last year or two. They used to be extremely efficient in their courtesy responses, informational updates, etc. I used to frequent poster in the iOS & Android bug forums until the last few months, where I received little to no response to anything.

It has also gotten pretty unfriendly in there from other users, so I could understand why GR staff has decided to distance themselves - it's usually a full-fledged personal-attacka-palooza in there, unfortunately.

We could use some new reading challenges for this year, since the three listed ended in Dec 31, 2012.

Siobhan wrote: "We could use some new reading challenges for this year, since the three listed ended in Dec 31, 2012."


I totally agree with you!

Thanks for the reminder, I've set up four of them:

12 Books in 2013 (a book per month)

52 Books in 2013 (a book per week)

100 Books in 2013

365 Books in 2013 (a book per day)

I'm thinking about doing prizes this year, but I can't say for sure yet. Hopefully by next month I'll be able to commit to it, and I'll let everyone know then. :)

How do the challenges work?

Goodreads never fleshed them out properly, so at the moment, they're very simplistic.

Our group's challenges are here. There are four currently open ones, as well as the three from 2012 (which are now closed).

To join one of the challenges, pick the one you think you're most likely to reach.

Then, where it says "My goal is to read ____ books for this challenge", type in the number of books that corresponds to the challenge you selected. (If you chose 12, type 12. For 100, type 100. And so forth.)

Then you'll need to set up a shelf for the challenge. Mine is simply "2013". Set up your own, then type the name of it where it says "Enter a shelf name for this challenge: _______" and hit save.

If you set up the shelf and entered its name in the box correctly, anything you add to that shelf over the course of the year will contribute to your total score for that challenge.

As an example, I signed up for the 100 books challenge last year and assigned it to my "2012" shelf. By the end of the year, my 2012 shelf had 330 books on it, so my score for the challenge ended up reaching 330 / 100.

If I end up being able to allow prizes, I may add a rule or two. If/when I do, I'll put up a thread dedicated to the challenges. :)

Thanks, Amara! I'm a sucker for a reading challenge, so I will try this feature.

I am impressed that you managed 330 books last year, my goodness!

I was impressed that I ended at 127, I cant imagine doubling that, haha

Don't be too impressed. Some of it was Cam Jansen and the like. ;)

And you're welcome, Candace!

Are we reading any books this month? I have not seen the thread started for this month!

Ahhh! Sorry! I need to put an alert on my calendar to do this. Setting this up now. My apologies!