Nothing But Reading Challenges discussion

Sorry if this was asked or is a stupid question:

Is the tracking of our book reading going by a calendar month or the challenge rounds? Do I need to worry about not reading too many books in a month before 5/31 or 6/15? I've been on a roll due to lots of yard work done while listening to audio books and wondering if I need to slow myself down. I put 20 as my monthly average and I'm already at 7.

as far as I know it is calendar month?

Mary C wrote: "Sorry if this was asked or is a stupid question:

Is the tracking of our book reading going by a calendar month or the challenge rounds? Do I need to worry about not reading too many books in a mo..."

I thought it was per round for this challenge, but I could be wrong. Because I've had some delay in my reading, I'm not sure I'm going to reach my target of 8 so if you read a couple extra, it might help me out.

Okay, now I am getting worried too...

Eni, our fearless leader wrote this:

"So our team signed up to read 200 books a month which would be 600 books for the duration of the challenge. No idea why it says 630 books as cap. Of those 600 books we signed up for, we should be able to read up to 9% more, which would be 654 (but i will drop a post checking this with the mods).

Now, we don't have to worry about overreading until the end of the challenge, because there is no monthly turn in. We can just focus on reading and doing the mini tasks. Then at the end, we will go through all the books that we didn't put in the official spreadsheet and check the ones we didn't use for a task to turn them in. If we end up having more books than we should, we will sort them by size (bigger books = more points) and put the bigger books first."

It looks like it's more of a total number of books at the end :)
Does this help?

The next phase of the challenge will be announced within the next 48 hours!

For now, I will invite you to a secret group where we will work together with our other MYTHIC teams - Circe, Pandora and Elecktra!

There something about a maze.....

For now, please join the group The MYTHICS with the link I send to you via PM!

Yup, that helps :)
thanks Melissa :)

Our May mini is looking pretty good! We've got a few I's and E's to find - those Muses are rather vowel heavy!

So if you're pondering what to read next, maybe a book about Ellen? or Elanor? Isabella?

My Dad is going to be so proud that I've started listening to and reading David Copperfield
Little does he know that I'm thinking 882 pages = points as I trundle along with young Davey...

Mary C wrote: "I plan to read and participate in both BOM for June. I already own The Book of Cold Cases. I love Witch themed books so put that on hold from library. I'm the only one on the waiting list for both ..."

Excellent. I am also planning to read both. They look like really good choices. I just came up on the waiting list for Cold Cases, so I might try starting this weekend. Do you have a favorite witch themed book?
I enjoyed The Once and Future Witches but I'd love to read more.

Ok. I forgot that it was posted earlier not to worry about book total until the end of the challenge. Sorry if I caused a panic. I just looked at my total and didn't want to get dinged if I did more than 10 books for the 2 weeks in May because I put 20/month.

I grew up and live close enough to Salem Mass to go there often. (there were also witch trials in my area of MA but for some reason they don't get the publicity that Salem always got). Anyway, I have always been drawn to witch themed content.

I loved a Discovery of Witches and I don't know why I keep putting off reading the rest of the series. I'll check out Shadow of Night for this challenge. I love the Lily Ivory series by Juliet Blackwell (she's a favorite author of mine). And of course Harry Potter.

Other Witch books I enjoyed:

( one of my all time favorite movies).

The Cousins O'Dwyer Trilogy by Nora Roberts is one of my favorites. Have you read her Sign of Seven Trilogy or Three Sisters Island? The Three kind of make up my favorite trilogies by her.

I loved the Sign of Seven and Cousin O'Dwyer series. I have the first 2 Three Sisters Island books marked as read but I don't remember them. I'll probably re-listen to them one of these days.

Different author, but I just put Shadow of Night on hold from my library. I reread Discovery of Witches last year with the intent of finishing the trilogy. But then I got side tracked. It's almost 600 pages so now is a good time to read them.

Not really witches but if you liked those Nora Roberts series, you might like Christine Feehan's Drake Sisters and Sea Haven books. Similar vibe although the insta-love/obsession/uber alpha-male in her books can get a little tiresome. I have to space them out.

I usually reread sign of seven at least once every couple years. something about that set of characters really just resonate with me. Three Sisters was my first Nora Roberts back when I was a teenager.

I keep meaning to read Practical Magic and Discovery of Witches. Maybe I'll finally manage it this year during teams.

Mary C wrote: "Not really witches but if you liked those Nora Roberts series, you might like Christine Feehan's Drake Sisters and Sea Haven books. Similar vibe although the insta-love/obsession/uber alpha-male in..."

I find Christine Feehan fairly dark in her stories but I did enjoy both those series.

Sea Haven and Drake Sisters is why I decided to give her GhostWalkers series a chance and I think I only made it halfway through book 1 before the cringeworthy uber-alpha male sent me running from the hills. I don't remember the men being quite that bad in the other series. Kresley Cole's Immortals after Dark series is another personal favorite if you enjoy other supernatural creatures as well as witches starring in your paranormal romances.

These are great suggestions. I was going to read a Nora Roberts book back in UNO, but never got to it. I'll give one a try, along with a couple others suggested here.

Yeah I dropped her vampire, Game and the shifter series because of the Alpha-Jerk heroes.

But I still like the Sea Haven books.

New maze mini-challenge has been released.
You can find all of the info here. It will start on June 1rst.

To be able to participate in the discussion and in this portion of the tower teams challenge, you will need to join the group that Melissa sent invites to. So if you haven't received an invitation gives us a shout, and if you haven't joined in yet, please do so.

The gist of it is that there will be a web page with a maze in it. We will start with the maze all black except the square we are standing in. Each space will have a task to fulfill and in order to advance to a new square you will have to read a book that fits that task AND a task regarding each direction possible.
For going North - Book title starts with A-M
South - Book title starts with N-Z
East - Even number of pages
West - Odd number of pages.

However, this will be a group oriented challenge. All the mythics teams will join up and we will have 1 maze per mythics teams.
The mythics teams are Jason, Pandora, Circe, Electra.

There is an ongoing individual challenge like this that you can check out in https://www.goodreads.com/topic/show/... . The rules are pretty similar.

Have in mind, that this challenge will be difficult for the slower readers and it's also an optional challenge. The point will be to finish the maze path in the least amount of time.

If you have any questions, feel free to ask them :)

I'm halfway on updating the spreadsheet, so i will have a "where are we" post later today. I have to go get my little one from school. But i dropped by to satisfy a request.

For some reason Sonia told me to post this to you Mary.



Hope you ladies have a lovely day!

I do love Idris Elba. So the gift is appreciated!

Wait, do I get bonus points if I binge watch Luther?

I love Luther.

I requested to join the special Maze group.

Teresa wrote: "Eni wrote: "@Keli - The Travelling Cat Chronicles isn't on your tower shelf. Would you mind putting it there please?

@Teresa - Phoenix Reign isn't on your tower she..."

I put them back for everyone to see. But i did switch all of the books read to the top of the sheet and i did a strikethrough text thing. So it should be very noticeable. This way you can still check what books you already posted =)

Laurie B wrote: "Eni wrote: "Also is anyone on the team a GR librarian?"

I am! :D"

Thanks! I keep forgetting you are. "I'm getting too old for this ****"

think you can help Teresa with message 192?

Keli wrote: "I have added a book to the spreadsheet but haven't shelved it yet. I only put myself fown for four books a month, so at the end I'll remove the ones with the least value to our team. If that's okay..."

To Keli and everyone else... forget about the cap! Just foccus on reading and having fun! We have some wiggle room regarding the cap, since we are signed up for 200 books a month but the mods rounded it up to 210 a month. So for the total of the challenge (which is 3 months) we can read 630 books for the 100%. But we can read to up to 9% extra without having any penalty.

But it's the captains and co-captains job to manage the books and worry about the caps and whatnot. Closer to the end of the challenge, we will see which books were submitted for the mini-challenges and how many more books we can fit it. And if there's extra, we will remove them. So don't worry about it.

We are also under the amount we signed up for, so if you are reading a bit more that's fine. Specially because the cap works team wise, not on a specific person, if that makes sense.

(NOT OFFICIAL) Countdown until the Muse May Mini ends: https://www.timeanddate.com/countdown...

We have all of the mini tasks claimed as of this point.

The following tasks are claimed but not read:
(view spoiler)[Task 8 - mask on cover - Nevernight - Melissa
Task 12 - N - Eni
Task 13 - I - Image - Joyce
Task 15 - stars on cover - Daughter of the Moon Goddess - Mary C
Task 16 - map at the front - The Great Bridge - Melissa
Task 20 - P - Purity - Keli
Task 21 - O - Finding Junie Kim - Melissa
Task 24 - N - The Travelling Cat Chronicles - Keely
Task 26 - sword on cover - Yours, Forever After - Maddy
Task 36 - I - Mud, Muck and Dead Things - Elen
Task 40 - E - Poison Promise - Mary C
Task 41 - R - Royal Assassin - Kit/Briana
Task 44 - O - The Obelisk Gate - Kit/Briana
Task 47 - C - We Begin at the End - Nanci
Task 51 - I - Gemina - Stacey C
Task 53 - P - Pretties - Kit/Briana
Task 54 - E - The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life - Heather
Task 64 - U - Rabbit, Run - Keli
Task 66 - E - The Five - Kit/Briana
Task 69 - E - David Copperfield - Melissa
Task 70 - musical instrument on cover - Fall of Angels - Maddy
Task 78 - C - The Case for Jamie - Kit/Briana
Task 83 - dancing in the book - Death Dance - Maddy (hide spoiler)]

Please let us know if you will be able to finish all your claimed books roughly an hour before the countdown ends (in about 5days and 18hours).

@Teresa could you fill out/tell us which character starts with an A on Phoenix Reign? I switched some things around for us to have all claimed books.

@Keli The Turn of the Screw and Other Ghost Stories isn't on your tower shelf. Could you put it there please?

@Maddy i can't find The Good daughter tagged as tragedy. Mind giving me a hand? I'm really tired so i might have missed it. Or it disappeared, which i think it can happen.

@Joyce GR says you started reading Machinehood in May 6th, which is before the tower teams started. In that case we can't use it :(

One last thing. For the ones doing The Cat Chronicles BOM, don't forget to answer the DQs for those extra points :)

I'm halfway through The Five and I'm planning to finish it tomorrow. and it's a holiday weekend for me this weekend so I should be able to knock out the other 4. I'll be prioritizing Royal Assassin and The Obelisk Gate since they are worth a good chunk of points each, but I definitely intend to have them all done by the deadline.

Briana wrote: "I'm halfway through The Five and I'm planning to finish it tomorrow. and it's a holiday weekend for me this weekend so I should be able to knock out the other 4. I'll be prioritizing Royal Assassin..."

Ok thanks =)

Eni wrote: "@Maddy i can't find The Good daughter tagged as tragedy. Mind giving me a hand? I'm really tired so i might have missed it. Or it disappeared, which i think it can happen. "

https://www.goodreads.com/shelf/show/...

I did a shelf check first and GR says it is there :)
I didn't check tag pages though

Okay, you are right. I went through those 90+ pages of tags from the book page and couldn't find it. And yet in the shelf check it says it is tagged 9 time. So where did it disappear? I don't get it

Can you ask the other mods or captains if they will accept it? I wasn't trying to cheat or anything, GR said it was tagged and I didn't double check because I figured GR knows what they are talking about. Obviously not. Let me know if I need to read something else for that one? I have a couple other options that I got for that task before I settled on the Good daughter

I changed one book for #21 to Obie Is Man Enough. It still works for the task, but the other book from the library wasn't coming in quickly enough. I'll finish Obie, no problem.

I'm going to be able to finish the others, but it might be close to the date. I'm reading a bit about bridges, then jumping to David Copperfield's sad life, (although there was just a day of happiness!) then over to the killer in Nevernight and then wrapping up with a little uplifting from Obie. I think that covers it for me.

I finished Daughter of the Moon Goddess and reading Poison Promise next. It'll be finished in time for mini-challenge.

Eni wrote: "Teresa wrote: "Eni wrote: "@Keli - The Travelling Cat Chronicles isn't on your tower shelf. Would you mind putting it there please?

@Teresa - Phoenix Reign isn't on..."

Thank you!

Eni wrote: "(NOT OFFICIAL) Countdown until the Muse May Mini ends: https://www.timeanddate.com/countdown...

We have all of the mini tasks..."

Phoenix Reign: MC Andrew

I couldn't change it on the sheet...

Eni, thanks for the over-reading clarification. I've added Turn of the Screw to my shelf. I'll just include all books I read then and at the end of the challenge remove the ones you captains don't want to use.

Eni wrote: "(NOT OFFICIAL) Countdown until the Muse May Mini ends: https://www.timeanddate.com/countdown...

We have all of the mini tasks..."\\

Oh sorry, I didn't realize. I tend to put things on my current reading shelf before I actually start them. It's to remind me what to read next.

Eni wrote: "(NOT OFFICIAL) Countdown until the Muse May Mini ends: https://www.timeanddate.com/countdown...

We have all of the mini tasks..."

Hi, I should finish my book either tonight or tomorrow.

I will be finishing my "I" Book this weekend. Fell asleep reading last night. LOL

I have been listening to the Cat Chronicles and it is so sweet. I would never have picked it up if not for this challenge.

I finished The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life and The Man on the Beach, both are now on the planning spreadsheet

I finished The Five: The Untold Lives of the Women Killed by Jack the Ripper yesterday and have added it to the spreadsheet.

Yikes! It has been 6 days since I checked in on our thread! Big apologies! Trying to get our new home in Florida set up has been keeping me working from early morning until late at night. This is the first time in my life that I have read so little. Even when working full time and raising 3 kids and taking care of my mom wasn't this busy. We're trying to get everything done in order to rent when we leave here on June 3. Excuses, excuses and again I apologize.

I will pass on the mini and it sounds like the pressure is off to read a lot of books, as you all are reading lots of books. I'll just keep listening to my books as I drive to the stores and as I work around the house and try to check in more often than lately. Thanks in advance for your understanding!

Good luck with all of the house stuff Nanci!

I have also fallen behind with my reading again as we ended up taking in another kitten on Thursday. This one is older, maybe a month, so is exploring and crying lots. She has three other siblings and they were being very aggressive so I was asked if I wanted to tame a couple, but we only ended up taking the one. I think we ended up with the least aggressive one as she doesn't really fight back if you pick her up and she doesn't hiss or growl at humans. She doesn't like other cats though.
She has been crying a lot, especially when we are trying to sleep so I've had quite broken sleep since which has contributed to my lack of reading. The kitten has tired herself out now though so I'm going to take the opportunity to finally finish The Travelling Cat Chronicles and maybe make some decent progress in another book too.

I seem to have become a full time cat sitter, but I'm not complaining!

For the one keeping up on our Mini May challenge, I changed my book from Purity to the Paris Library. I need to read that before the end of May for another challenge. I have changed it on the main planning tab.

I just finished Malibu Rising and added it to the SS. Looks like the mini is all covered, but if not let me know and I can add it there. It's a very popular book, which I'm sure many of you have read. I found it to be well-written and entertaining. The audio version was good and I'd recommend it.

Checking in! Sorry I've been radio silent. I am still here! 😅 Real life/work has been crazy. I finished up my other team challenge that I mentioned, so I can focus on TT from here on out. Don't know if I'll be able to help with the maze since I'm one of the slower readers, but I'll check it out. I did try to join the group, but I'm just getting a message saying it's secret...

Eni wrote: "Laurie B wrote: "Eni wrote: "Also is anyone on the team a GR librarian?"

I am! :D"

Thanks! I keep forgetting you are. "I'm getting too old for this ****"

think you can help Teresa with message 192?"

Yes - I had looked at this but didn't have time to do anything. Work has been crazy lately. I'll take another look and see what I can do if it hasn't already been fixed.