Nothing But Reading Challenges discussion

Magic. That's our secret. But shhh..don't tell anyone.

I know I'll start reading again, once my company leaves... and now that the challenge has calmed down.

And yes, I do have some "things up my sleeves." **hee hee**

Book 3 down! Also: This sexy man in uniform picture may be NOT SAFE FOR WORK! Click the spoiler tab to unwrap him!

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FIRST BOOK READ!!!!

Wooohooo...

And my boss just told me I could have a early weekend *Happy Dance*

So, I'm going to wrap all up and leave for home!!!

The mods seem awful quiet lately. Do you think they are busy reading?
Find out what they have been up to HERE

I was just looking at that.

We just entered our busy season at work and my at work reading time will be very limited and possibly non-existant. This is the time of year for us that funds the slower than death periods.

I've been in the middle of a huge book:
by Julie Orringer. It's SO good, but crazy long, which I didn't know when I checked out the Kindle copy from the library. Anyway, I'm 80% through, so I'm getting close! After that, I'll try to read some short ones.

I am in the middle of
too, but every time I flip to it from The Invisible Bridge, I can't help but compare the writing and note how shallow and empty it is compared to the beauty of The Invisible Bridge's. That's completely unfair to Time Between Us, I know. So if there's any chance I'll enjoy Time Between Us, I need to wait and finish it later.

I have The Invisible Bridge on my TBR. Glad you are enjoying it!

Oh, I hate when I read a really GOOD book while also reading one that's maybe a little shallow in comparison. I always have to put the lesser book down for later, when I have had time to give it a fair chance.

Mary: Harry Dresden's Love Slave wrote: "We just entered our busy season at work and my at work reading time will be very limited and possibly non-existant."

The RaT isn't mandatory. Only the team members that decided to set a goal and participate count.

Well I will participate. I will just have to think about my goal. I don't want to overshoot but I am a bit of a power reader.

I had planned on reading Atlas Shrugged next month. That's 1200 pages. I don't know if I could do it in a week though. I have it on audio and it's 61 hours. Maybe if I got the print one from the library and used both.

I'm not quite sure I understand how the page tracking works or the mini-challenges.

Oops just realized that it's a 12 day challenge. Maybe I could do Atlas Shrugged in that amount of time. That's only 100 pages a day. Easily doable.

If I'm reading it right, there's no penalty for doing more and finishing more books would only benefit our overall total. So I'm not going to worry about it.

penalized? how?

Mary: Harry Dresden's Love Slave wrote: "I'm not quite sure I understand how the page tracking works or the mini-challenges."

You know the book stats from goodreads? It shows the books read per year. It also allows a page read view. The catch is that it only records the read books, not the book updates. So we'll have to do it the hard way. See how many pages before and after the RaT are marked as read.

Hence we are only counting books read during the time limit. Is a bit unfair because you can only have 10 pages left to read but the whole book counts.

*looks at huge pile of unfinished books*
No, I'm not going to do that. I'll earn my books fair and square, even under Teresa's whip threat.

Yeah there is a temptation to read a huge chunk of a bunch of books and then not finish them until the challenge starts. But I won't do that either. For one thing, I think it would look kind of suspicious if someone quadrupled their reading for those 12 days. Maybe not but kind of odd.

On the other hand, I always have like 5 books going at once and it's not uncommon for me to take a weekend and finish them all up. But I wouldn't feel right about doing that for this.

During the read a thon I'm hoping to turn off the tv and the video games and only read during free time in hopes of making a dent in some books. We'll see how it works out.

Oh, I'd never crack the whip on anything unfair. I hadn't even realized that bit about books being unfinished still counting. In my mind, I'm gathering up ideas of books to read JUST for the RaT and hoping to at least read those. I'm not allowed to start any of those books until DING, Challenge Begins! And I'm either finishing it if I have to stay up all night, or I'm not counting it.

When we did the RaT in Round 1, I didn't know anything about looking at the book stats thing. I literally counted pages and if I didn't finish a book, I only gave myself credit for pages read. So, if I read up to page 250 in my final book, I added that 250 to whatever else I'd read in that time period.

As of the last update on the spreadsheet we have 5 books (well 6 because I just marked one read) and the the next lowest team has 17 books.

Should be able to finish this tonight:

ilovebakedgoods (Teresa) wrote: "Oh, I'd never crack the whip on anything unfair. I hadn't even realized that bit about books being unfinished still counting. In my mind, I'm gathering up ideas for the RaT and hoping to at least r..."

Yes, I didn't thought about pages stats either. But we didn't have points on round I.

Either I was possessed by an evil entity when I thought about that or the discovery of the Alien vs Predator picture took my better judgement off!

Actually, I blame you and Mary *giggles* It was the team's challenge and points that gave me the idea. And the pound advantage from The Biggest Loser did the rest.

I'm still trying to think of a good prize for the winner of the mini-challenges for our team.

Okay, two things:

1) I need a planner/calendar to keep track of books I want to read! I mean, I've got my threads for challenges but now I'm starting to read more Buddy Reads so I need to make note of dates for whatever those books are so that I can remember to get them from the library; I am in this challenge which will have read-a-thons and mini challenges so I need a way to keep track of those things, too! I'm amused.

2. I need to start reading! I haven't cracked any of my books open yet today. I've spent entirely too much time refreshing this group instead of reading, lol. And I work in an hour. I'm spending a lot of time thinking about books to read, making lists of books to read, looking around the group for ideas and pondering the RaT, rather than actually reading, hehe!

Mary: Harry Dresden's Love Slave wrote: "I'm still trying to think of a good prize for the winner of the mini-challenges for our team."

I'm at a loss, too.

BTW, I think of you as Mary Dresden now, lol! It rhymes with Harry and it's all I can think when I see your name on the threads, hehe.

I'm the same way Teresa! I plan and plan but don't seem to read :-P

Yes, I think of her as Mary Dresden, too! Too, too funny!

I like that name better than lugging around my ex-husband's last name that I constantly have to spell.

Finished an audiobook:

Book 4 complete, now onto book 5! But, boo, I need to go cook dinner and then go to work for 6 hours. SIGH! I'm off tomorrow so I hope to get some reading done, as well as some of my "captain's checklist" taken care of.

I'll look at the list and see if I can do some. I can handle posting the Read-A-Thon info here.

Thanks, that'd be much appreciated, Mary!

Ok I posted the read-a-thon info in posts 10 & 12.

Cool, thanks! Here is a page of Listopia lists that have blue-related book covers:

Blue Covers

If you want this could be pasted into message #10 or 12.

READ-A-THON UPDATES:

*Page Goal
Mininum page goal: 600 pages - average of 50 pages a day

*Goal Posting
By team captains on RaT page thread. Tell us the name of participants and their page goal.

*Mini-Challenges
The team Captains must send them by PM to the mod account or to Sonia with the subject: "RaT Mini-Challenge"

*End Date:
Updated to May 12th (Sunday)

For members with Challenge Goals 50 books or less, I'll set the minimal as 300 pages.

Moderators of Nothing but Reading Challenges wrote: "*End Date:
Updated to May 12th (Sunday)"

What time on May 12th?

8 AM PDT. It was May 11th, so we gain 24 hours

I guessed as much, but wanted to be sure. Thanks :)

Ugh I got very little reading in today. Just the last bit of an audiobook. I got in cleaning mode today but I had DD helping me and so didn't use an audiobook. Then I spent about an hour shopping for shoes on Zappos. Then I got into book purging mode and and filled 2 boxes with books to go to the thrift store. I'm trying to purge all the books I have that my library also has in multiples. No need for me to store them.

I started a book at work and read about 25 pages or so. I really want to read now but I'm so tired, i"m sure I'll be out before I get one paragraph finished. Oh well, onto tomorrow!

Yay! I finished a book last night and should finish another - or maybe two - today. I even managed a review!

Go, Lisa Kay!! And a review to boot! Someone's getting back into the swing of things, hehe!

For your progress:

Oh! I am the Cookie Monster! And I have a "Cupcake" board on Pinterest that has 854 followers!

Thanks, Teresa!

Do you know how difficult the choice is when you do a search for sexy firemen? LOL! You can't just pick one! And since we haven't had a sexy-man-in-uniform mascot for a few days now, view spoilers for some goodies!

A little bit dirty...
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Sexy men holding heavy tools
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Thirsty?
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P. S. I am so SO glad to be in a group that doesn't mind posting tasty little treats like this, lol!

I am the Cookie Monster, too! And I just love cupcakes. Love looking at them about as much as I enjoy eating them.

Here's a treat for the rest of the team for both their progress and their motivation!

LOL! Good one, under the "dirty" pic, Teresa!

BTW, did you see Cupcake Wars, when they had to put in a ton of ingredients - and one of the bakers did the smart thing... she make a cookie with which to garnish the cupcake, thus separating the ingredients. So clever.

Yummy to both the firemen and the cupcakes.

I'm hoping to get something finished today too. I want to try and get most of the books I've started finished before the read-a-thon starts.

I think I'm going to go with a goal of 100 pages a day for the read-a-thon. I'll probably actually average more than that but I don't want to set the bar too high and then have something come up to keep me from reading. 100/day average is doable for me even on a busy week because of audiobooks.

I was thinking 100 per day, too. But, then again, I don't know.

Thank you for the cupcakes Team Cadet Blue!! Well done on your progress too.

From Team Atomic Tangerine!!

READ-A-THON UPDATES

There are some misunderstanding about ALL the team members needed to participate to get points.

Well, they DON'T

If a team has 12 members and only 4 want to participate, that team can still earn all the points available.

We'll consider that team a team of FOUR elements to the Read-a-Thon only.

Thank you for the cupcakes!

I'm afraid I can't bake, so we at Radical Red bring you cocktails instead. Hope that's okay ;)

Psst, Team -- I sent all the other teams some cupcakes to congratulate them for all of their progress from all of us, in case you get confused about the people coming here to say something about sending them cupcakes hehe.

Now, I want a cupcake, lol.

And those drinks look so good, Faith, thanks!

Me too, and I have no flour and no butter at home. And I'm still in my jammies and no will power to get out of the house.... plus is almost 5 pm, perfect hour for a cupcake