College Students! discussion

Thank you everybody for your feedback! Very helpful!

I have to say I'm not a super active member but I really enjoy keeping tabs on the group. I would say my main reason for not participating in the group reads has just been that I usually am too busy during the school year to read for fun a book a month. I think this is a really busy time of the year for everyone (I know my second round of midterms are coming up) and that definitely cuts down on my reading ability.

As far as nominations go, I would say that I usually don't nominate because I want to vote for something that has already been nominated. To be honest, I would much rather read a new book that someone told me was good than nominate a book of my own. Is that selfish? Haha, probably!

You know, overall I think this group is great and is, frankly, really organized and active for other groups of its kind. I think you're doing a great job Jamie and the added activity of the facebook page, though not a part of "goodreads" is helping make this really active too.

I'll do my best to keep the activity level up!

I've nominated a few books over the months I've been involved with the group, and none of them have ever won. sigh.

As for not participating in the group read, I try to vote every month. Often the book I wanted to read doesn't win, therefore it doesn't make it very enticing to read the winning book. I don't think there is really anything that can be done about that though.

I feel like I'm echoing the comments of everyone else when I say, I'm not as active as I was over the summer because this semester has been brutal. I do try to check the group on a weekly basis, but sometimes that means lurking not posting.

Generally I don't nominate because I'm too indecisive. Sometimes it is an issue of whether or not I know I can commit to reading it.

As far as participation is concerned, it's usually that I just don't have enough time/ too much schoolwork. I like to discuss when I can, even if it's something I read a while ago, but sometimes I'm so swamped with work that I don't even have time to come on the site!

I don't nominate because I
1)either forget
2)can't decide on a book. Do I want to pick one on my personal shelf I haven't read yet, or scour through the internet for a book.
3)I like expanding my genres and authors, so I don't want nominate the same thing I always read.

I don't participate because
1) I don't finish the book in time
2) I'm reading a book already
3)I don't have the time between work, school, internships, etc.
4)I didn't pick up the book or couldn't find a copy.

I hope this helps. And I hope this group will still be around. I do hope to participate at few times a year; spring break, fall break, xmas break, etc. When I have more time to read.

I like to browse this group, but I frequently don't participate in the readings for the simple reason that the books don't interest me. I also noticed in the voting that a single book tends to win early on by a landslide while other members are split among the other books.

I usually do nominate books. I usually don't read the group reads for one of two reasons:

1. I don't have a way of getting the book in question. My library is the school library, and it has mostly classics and literary fiction that people might need for papers or classes. If the group read is a popular fiction book, or just something the library doesn't have, I can't read it.
2. I'm just not interested in the book. This happens a lot too. I have very limited time with all the work I'm doing for school, I'm not going to spend it reading a book I know I'm going to dislike. That's why I'm not reading Memoirs of a Geisha or Graceling. I don't have much time to read, and I'd much rather spend my time on the kinds of books I know I'll like. Maybe over the summer or once I get out of school that will change.

I think that the times I have read the books the discussion has been good. I love the number of people we have. It's good to know that even if only 10% of the group were to read the group reads, we'd still have enough people for a good discussion. The discussions could be a little more well organized, but that's hard to do when everyone is finishing the book at different times. Maybe we could have people post questions in the Spoilers thread and then discuss them rather than just have reviews?
When it comes to the polls, I'm definitely the kind of person who will vote on a book at the beginning, and then change my vote at the end once I see which ones are winning. I've noticed that it's always between two or three front-runners, and the rest hardly get any votes at all. I wonder if that's because of people changing their votes like I do.

Personally, I love our group and the group read discussions I've participated in. I would be perfectly happy if there were no changes made at all, and if there are I'm sure they'll be good, because you mods really know what's up.

I came across this Reading Group Guides in the Goodreads Feedback group. Some of the questions could be helpful in the 'for those who have finished' thread.

I could have sworn that around this time last year we had a New Year's Resolutions post. I was going to bring it back up again but I can't find it. Is there one or am I just going crazy?

There might be one..I feel like we did. It would be in the Life folder. If not, feel free to start a new one!

I've looked in the life folder three times. I was pretty sure that there was one last year though.

I may have deleted it during my spring cleaning. Sometimes I'll do it if it's seasonal so we can start over just to keep things neat.

I've been wildly busy lately, having just finished my first semester of grad school. Also, some of the books are not in the local libraries, so I can't get my hands on them in time. I generally don't like to purchase a book unless I already know that I'll enjoy having it around or that I'll be able to use it later.

Not sure where to put this, but have you guys seen the new spoiler tags goodreads has created? It's pretty simple:
< spoiler >...text...< /spoiler >

Just get rid of the spaces between the <> and 'spoiler' and it should look like this...
(view spoiler)[Look! A spoiler! (hide spoiler)]

Pretty neat.

Yeah, it looks amazing. :D

Yay! Thanks for sharing that, Kelly. It's much better than having your entire review hidden because of one spoiler at the end of it.

The spoiler tag will definitely be helpful!

Ooh! That's really nice!

That's awesome! Thanks for sharing that!

Group reads---


I saw some chatter in the comments about the last group read poll about the lack of "adult" books in the group read so I thought I might address it.

Firstly, last month there were only 3 nominations for category 1..hence the lack of choices. If there is a particular book or genre that you want to see..please feel free to nominate it. You probably aren't the only one who is unhappy with the selections available.

Secondly, do we like have one "open" category and one themed category? Or do we want to try something new-- maybe doing an adult group read and a YA group read since we have readers of both in the group. Would that be more helpful so that you can be assured at least an age group that interests you?

Also, with the new spoiler tag that Kelly mentioned a few posts ago....I think this could mean that we could just have one thread for each book rather than the spoiler vs. non spoiler type thread? Thoughts?

Jamie wrote: "Group reads---


I saw some chatter in the comments about the last group read poll about the lack of "adult" books in the group read so I thought I might address it.

Firstly, last month there were..."

I actually like having the themed categories, myself, but it might be fun to try something new (like the YA and Adult categories). I love both genres so it doesn't matter to me.

Jamie wrote: "Also, with the new spoiler tag that Kelly mentioned a few posts ago....I think this could mean that we could just have one thread for each book rather than the spoiler vs. non spoiler type thread? ..."

That makes sense to me, and I'd probably prefer having one thread because there would be more comments to read and that might open up better discussions. I would suggest, though, that if a person uses the spoiler tag that they put whether it is a major or a minor spoiler. I don't mind reading minor spoilers but I would like to avoid the ones that spoil endings, plot twists, deaths ect.

I agree that having one thread might be better now that we have these new tags. Jumping between both threads to have two different discussions got to be a bit much.

@Jamie... I like your idea of one adult read and one YA read. I have just now started reading some YA books, so I've got tons on my TBR list. And I agree with the threads idea too.

Anybody else with opinions?

I know for me, personally, the reason why I don't read the group reads is because most of the books chosen don't interest me. I do read a lot of YA so that would definitely interest me more.

I am so not into YA books anymore... they were so fun until I reached age 21 and 8 months. Then they all started being same old and same old for me (with the very few exceptions). So I probably wont join in these group reads, especially if they are PNR, but might occasionally.

Otherwise, I like a lot of the adult books I get tossed my way in other groups.

I like your idea of a theme category and an open one. That seems to work well. (I like a lot of the nominations for this next month so far too).

The reason I didn't nominate something for group reads this past month was because I completely missed nominations were open. Which made me really sad because Dystopian literature is my favorite. So... my loss. Darn.

I would like a YA v Adult option because I tend to not read YA (with the occasional exception) so it I tend to opt out of group reads when there are only ever YA books chosen.
And sometimes my lack of group read participation is because the book I vote for hardly ever wins :( once again. darn.
As for spoiler tag or not, I don't really mind either way.

I noticed today that our group says it has 1705 members. I think there are about 30-40 of us that are active or somewhat active and probably another 30-40 that are seldom active, but still follow things. I am sure there are a lot of lurkers that just don't post anything.

Any ideas on how to get the rest active? Think we as moderators should delete anyone that hasn't been active in the last 12 months, 24 months, etc?

What are your thoughts?

I'd say deleting someone who hasn't been active for 12 months is pretty fair. You can't be on vacation that long.

I am probably not as active as you'd like, but I find a lotnof the discussions on here to be helpful. Categorize me as lurker, if you will. :p

what qualifies someone as inactive? I don't post very often, but I vote on group reads (and usually try to participate), but in other ways, I'm mostly a lurker.

Hmm well I think last year Jamie went through and deleted a decent number of inactive people...I think she sent out a message saying she was going to do that, so anyone who kept up with the group but didn't post much could tell her that.

I did delete some people last year but I definitely think a purging is in order! You can tell if someone hasn't even been on Goodreads in a while so we can delete people who haven't even come on Goodreads in a year or so!