Around the Year in 52 Books discussion

As it's our first team bingo, feedback is very welcome if you have some time to answer the questions :)

For the captains:
In which team were you?
Did the team complete the full card?
Which squares were the most difficult to complete?
Which squares did you complete first?
Stats you want to share: (total page count, total books read, etc)

For everyone:
In which team were you?
Did you participate in almost all the squares or focus on some?
What did you enjoy the most with the team bingo?
How many books did you finish?
How many pages did you read?
Did you challenge yourself with a category?
What was your favorite game?
Did you also do the individual bingo?
Will you participate in the next team bingo if you're available?
Anything you'd like to improve?

TEAM CHERRY WRAP-UP

Did the team complete the full card?
Yes, with about a day to spare! Awesome work, team Cherry.

Which squares were the most difficult to complete?
Our last ones to be completed were the rainbow square & we had a bit of a hard time with books for the reading map.

Which squares did you complete first?
We got our 30 comments done the first morning. We also were able to get a lot of the squares that only required one book done in the first day or two.

Stats:
41 books finished (This is a combination of novels, nonfiction, children's, graphic novels, books of poetry, and short story collections.)
In addition to the 41 books, we also read at least 7 short stories.
8553 pages read plus 25+ hours of audiobook.

Great job, team cherry!

In which team were you?
Team Peach

Did you participate in almost all the squares or focus on some?
I tried to do as many as I could.

What did you enjoy the most with the team bingo?
It was a great idea to do a group bingo. I had a lot of fun with it and it was easier to pick what squares I knew I would be able to do. I liked that if you didn't want to do a square or you knew you wouldn't be able to there was most likely someone else that would be able to do it.

How many books did you finish?
3 that I read fully during the read-a-thon and 2 that I started before hand

How many pages did you read?
940 and 14 hours of audio books

Did you challenge yourself with a category?
No I don't think so

What was your favorite game?
I liked Alphabet Soup game the best

Did you also do the individual bingo?
I tired to but it was harder than I though to do the two of them.

Will you participate in the next team bingo if you're available?
Anything you'd like to improve?
Yes I sure will. Nope I thought it was set up and organized very well.

Team Peach

We didn't quite complete the full square, but we still did awesome! We just made a frame instead of a solid square. lol

The squares that took the longest to complete were B3, N2, & O5.

We were able to knock out some of the single book topics pretty quick. We also completed the aduiobook hours way faster than I thought we would.


I'll update with total stats later today!

In which team were you?
Team Cherry

Did you participate in almost all the squares or focus on some?
My group moved pretty quickly, so I just did as much as I could. I had a stack of books from the library to read, so I didn't really change my plans. There were some I couldn't do (ie. a book that takes place in summer) because I just didn't have any. I did not participate in anything to do with reading outdoors or listening to audiobooks.

What did you enjoy the most with the team bingo?
I actually really enjoyed the discussions and how encouraging everyone was. I think our team was balanced pretty and it was nice how each of us could cover the topics that others couldn't. I liked that it took the pressure off for topics that I wasn't so interested in (and it made it much easier on me than the individual bingo!).

How many books did you finish?
1 short story, 2 children's books, 1 play, and 3 books.

How many pages did you read?
A total of 1473

Did you challenge yourself with a category?
None that I can think of.

What was your favorite game?
I really loved the game where we had to find one word in the book for each letter of the alphabet. It really made me pay more attention to the words.

Did you also do the individual bingo?
Yes, but I didn't do so well.

Will you participate in the next team bingo if you're available?
Yes, definitely.

Anything you'd like to improve?
Maybe smaller teams or more difficult categories? I found that my group progressed so quickly that I didn't really feel very helpful.

In which team were you?

Team Peach

Did you participate in almost all the squares or focus on some?

Just a few. I'm not a very fast reader.

What did you enjoy the most with the team bingo?

It was fun. I really enjoy games and I liked seeing how other people completed the squares. I also didn't feel too pressured to read more than I wanted to, while still finishing the books I had planned.

How many books did you finish?

I finished 1 and a half, then started a new one.

How many pages did you read?

I read about 293 in total.

Did you challenge yourself with a category?

Not really. I read exactly what I already had planned for the week. I did read more outside, I guess, which I don't normally do. And it was such good weather for it.

What was your favorite game?

I didn't play them all, but probably the title scramble.

Did you also do the individual bingo?

No, but I wished I had designated some time to it.

Will you participate in the next team bingo if you're available?

Yes. I really did enjoy this.

Anything you'd like to improve?

I kind of agree about having smaller teams or more difficult categories. I had thought about challenging myself more by finding and adding other books for categories, but they were often filled before I could do that, so I no longer felt motivated to stretch myself beyond my plan.
With that being said, as a slow reader, I still felt like I could contribute with categories like page counts and reading outside that didn't require finishing books quickly. The limits of contributions on squares also helped with this. Overall, this was an enjoyable game.

In which team were you?
Team Lemon

Did you participate in almost all the squares or focus on some?
I focused on some, I had a few books I wanted to finish and they could be used in a few squares.

What did you enjoy the most with the team bingo?
I enjoyed the team effort to finish books for all the squares

How many books did you finish?
I finished 3 books

How many pages did you read?
1363 pages

Did you challenge yourself with a category?
No, I already picked most of my books before the squares where known

What was your favorite game?
The scrambles

Did you also do the individual bingo?
Yes I tried, and although I choose most of the books before I knew the squares I managed to complete one line

Will you participate in the next team bingo if you're available?
Yes I will

Anything you'd like to improve?
No :)

In which team were you?
Team Peach

Did you participate in almost all the squares or focus on some?
Some a couple.

What did you enjoy the most with the team bingo?
It was fun working with others to complete the squares.

How many books did you finish?
4: All Shook UpWitch BornUnleashedThe Raft

How many pages did you read?
790

Did you challenge yourself with a category?
No

What was your favorite game?
All but the book cover one.

Did you also do the individual bingo?
No, maybe next time

Will you participate in the next team bingo if you're available?
Of course! I think we should do the team bingo every time.

Anything you'd like to improve?
Make some of the squares more challenging, like amount of pages read, number of books completed and stuff like that.

I finally posted the Team Cherry final wrap-up. Sorry for being so slow. See message 2 in this thread.

In which team were you?
Team Cherry all the way!

Did you participate in almost all the squares or focus on some?
My reading contributed to 9 of the 25 squares.

What did you enjoy the most with the team bingo?
The team bingo basically was the read-a-thon to me. I enjoyed the sense of competition as well as the fact that completing the board was totally doable because we were all working together.

How many books did you finish?
I finished 10 books, but I feel like that number is a little deceiving. I only read 4 full length novels or nonfiction books. The other 6 books included poetry books, short humor books, and books that were primarily illustration.

How many pages did you read?
1520, but again a lot of those pages were short on text.

Did you challenge yourself with a category?
No, I mostly used the read-a-thon to just read more than I was regularly doing.

What was your favorite game?
I liked the ones were people were sharing things about themselves, like 5 Facts and On My Shelf. I also really enjoyed seeing how many books I could list in a minute. It seemed like it should've been more than it was.

Did you also do the individual bingo?
Yes, I enjoyed that as well, especially after we had mostly completed the team bingo. Then individual bingo kept me motivated.

Will you participate in the next team bingo if you're available?
Most definitely.

Anything you'd like to improve?
I really enjoyed the way it was, but I think it we had smaller groups, it would make tracking easier. It might be interesting to do something like teams of 3 or even just partners. How about partners bingo in addition to group and individual? hahahaha. I guess I'm showing how much I really loved this read-a-thon bingo!

In which team were you?
Lemon

Did you participate in almost all the squares or focus on some?
I focused on some, especially the not very popular ones like graphic novels & reading outside.

What did you enjoy the most with the team bingo?
It was nice to let the others complete squares I wasn't interested in. I've problems when I do bingo cards on my own because there are always 2-3 squares I loathe.

How many books did you finish?
4 novels + 1 graphic novel + 1 short story

How many pages did you read?
997 (not counting audio and graphic novel)

Did you challenge yourself with a category?
Not really but it was complicated to finish books I started this week, I tend to read a book during 2-3 weeks when it's not YA or children books.

What was your favorite game?
I think the covers was my fav, even if I couldn't find all of them.

Did you also do the individual bingo?
Nop.

Will you participate in the next team bingo if you're available?
Yes, for sure.

Anything you'd like to improve?
It was a first try, so for next time, I'd prefer to organize the teams earlier so we could really work on how many members are in each team and balance the goals in the card. It was difficult to see beforehand what would be challenging or not :)