open

Science Fiction, Fantasy & Horror Forums

You are logged in as a guest. ( logon | register )

Random quote: "Science may set limits to knowledge, but should not set limits to imagination." - Bertrand Russell
- (Added by: Administrator)


Have You Completed a Challenge, Well Here is the Place To Crow!
Jump to page : 1 2
Now viewing page 1 [25 messages per page]		View previous thread :: View next thread
Reply New post    General Discussion -> Roll-Your-Own Reading ChallengeMessage format
 
Badseedgirl
Posted 2014-09-11 6:09 PM (#8505)
Subject: Have You Completed a Challenge, Well Here is the Place To Crow!		Quote Reply



Uber User

Posts: 369
100
Location: Middle TN, USA		Although I have not completed any of the Challenges as yet, I know several have. Here is the place to Crow and maybe brag just a little. Go Ahead!! You deserve it!
Top of the page Bottom of the page
Rhondak101
Posted 2014-09-12 7:43 AM (#8507 - in reply to #8505)
Subject: Re: Have You Completed a Challenge, Well Here is the Place To Crow!		Quote Reply



Uber User

Posts: 770
500
Location: SC, USA		Okay, I'll jump in first. I am currently signed up for 19 challenges. Two of those last until Dec 2015, so I plan to do most of that reading next year. Of the seventeen remaining, I have completed eight: the Pick and Mix, Guardian, Fantasia, Short Fiction, Young Adult, The Ones, WoGF, the End of the World. All this has been accomplished by great "strategery "(as one of the former Presidents would say) in choosing books with overlap between several challenges. I have 16 more books to read by the end of the year to complete the other 10 challenges. To this point, I have read 58 individual books.
The two challenges that are in the most jeopardy now are Authors of Color (7 books remaining) and The Second Best (4 books remaining).
Rhonda
Top of the page Bottom of the page
justifiedsinner
Posted 2014-09-12 10:04 AM (#8508 - in reply to #8505)
Subject: Re: Have You Completed a Challenge, Well Here is the Place To Crow!		Quote Reply



Uber User

Posts: 794
500
Only 3 out of 16 completed so far having read a total of 46 books. Most still look doable but Short Fiction and In Translation look problematic. I'm also trying to complete the Nebula winners this year 5 to go but only 1 will count towards the challenges.
Top of the page Bottom of the page
DrNefario
Posted 2014-09-12 2:31 PM (#8512 - in reply to #8505)
Subject: Re: Have You Completed a Challenge, Well Here is the Place To Crow!		Quote Reply



Uber User

Posts: 526
500
Location: UK		I've finished 3 challenges in 3 books so far this month: 12 Awards, Guardian and Fantasia. That's 7 of my 12 2014 challenges done, and only six books to go for the rest. I'm currently struggling to decide on my final Masterwork. Read a bit more of Frankenstein last night, but I'm not sure I'm in the mood.
Top of the page Bottom of the page
daxxh
Posted 2014-09-12 9:59 PM (#8516 - in reply to #8512)
Subject: Re: Have You Completed a Challenge, Well Here is the Place To Crow!		Quote Reply



Extreme Veteran

Posts: 556
500
Location: Great Lakes, USA		I have finished the Read More of that Author, Creature Feature, Pick and Mix, Short Fiction and Nebula Nominees (personal challenge) challenges. I have joined 23 challenges, but 5 finish in 2015. I will finish the New Books of 2014 Challenge this year, though. I have two books started right now that count for this challenge and that will put me at 8/8 when I finish them. I don't plan to stop reading 2014 books when I finish this challenge, but I may slow down and concentrate on the challenges that I need to finish.

I am not sure if I will finish the Authors of Color and the Masterworks Challenges, as I am a bit behind in those. I should finish the rest. I have a lot of time to read over the Christmas holiday. I will take a suitcase full of books and read one or two a day for a week. I may be able to catch up. I have 18 left to read for this year's challenges. That keeps changing as I find other books I want to read that fit in a challenge or find something else that counts for multiple challenges.
Top of the page Bottom of the page
DrNefario
Posted 2014-09-14 10:46 AM (#8546 - in reply to #8512)
Subject: Re: Have You Completed a Challenge, Well Here is the Place To Crow!		Quote Reply



Uber User

Posts: 526
500
Location: UK
DrNefario - 2014-09-12 8:31 PM

I've finished 3 challenges in 3 books so far this month: 12 Awards, Guardian and Fantasia. That's 7 of my 12 2014 challenges done, and only six books to go for the rest. I'm currently struggling to decide on my final Masterwork. Read a bit more of Frankenstein last night, but I'm not sure I'm in the mood.

Well, rather than abandoning Frankenstein, I decided to push through it and get it out of the way. I finished it a few hours ago, which means I've now finished the Masterworks Challenge, too.
Top of the page Bottom of the page
dustydigger
Posted 2014-09-14 10:51 AM (#8547 - in reply to #8505)
Subject: Re: Have You Completed a Challenge, Well Here is the Place To Crow!		Quote Reply



Elite Veteran

Posts: 1031
1000
Location: UK		Out of my 13 challenges,I have finished the Masterworks, My Bucket List,and have read all the books for the Young Adult and Creature Features challenges but still have one review to write for the YA,two for the Creatures to say I have completely finished those challenges. I am in the process of reading Charles de Lint's Moonheart and Dean Koontz's Odd Thomas,which will complete the Faerie Mythology, Fantasia, and Book of Ones challenges by the end of this month
Then I will have 7 books left to read to finish off the other six challenges. I want to work hard and finish them all by the end of October,because I am going to have knee surgery - FINALLY - on November 24th,and I need everything off my plate by then,and I still have 19 other books to read for my 12x12 (12 books each from 12 caegories144 books in all challenge on Shelfari) so I have to get cracking!
I am most pleased with the My Bucket List challenge which really made me tackle books I had felt I should read for years. A Canticle for Leibowitz,This Immortal,Tigana,Preludes and Nocturnes,Shadow of the Torturer were all outstanding reads,and only Man in the High Castle and Pawn of Prophecy were a bit disappointing. And at least I have now read them and can appreciate comments or discussions involving them I hate being in the dark! lol.
So glad this RYO is going to be ongoing,I think it is an outstanding success and I am already pencilling in books I want to read next year,and look forward to juggling the titles to fit as many challenges as possible!

Top of the page Bottom of the page
DrNefario
Posted 2014-09-27 8:44 AM (#8639 - in reply to #8505)
Subject: Re: Have You Completed a Challenge, Well Here is the Place To Crow!		Quote Reply



Uber User

Posts: 526
500
Location: UK		Finished the End of the World challenge last night, with Mockingjay by Suzanne Collins, the last Hunger Games book. Not wholly satisfying but very easy to read. I thought I was actually going to finish it a week or so back with Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro, but that didn't really fit my personal interpretation of the rules so I decided not to count it.

The End of the World is a great theme that fits a lot of interesting books, and I think it's one of my favourite challenges.

I have just three books to go to finish my 2014 challenges. Right now I feel quite keen to just get them done, so I can free myself to read what I like, but I'm sure I'll be looking for more guidance after a few weeks of that. Maybe not quite so much constraint as this year, but then I am still finishing pretty early.
Top of the page Bottom of the page
justifiedsinner
Posted 2014-09-27 9:42 AM (#8640 - in reply to #8505)
Subject: Re: Have You Completed a Challenge, Well Here is the Place To Crow!		Quote Reply



Uber User

Posts: 794
500
Finished End of the World myself a few days ago with Stephen Baxter's Flood. Pretty good book but goes on too long, the disasters become rather repetitive.
5 Challenges down, 11 to go. I've shuffled some of the books to try and get more overlap. The killer is the books that only count for one challenge, In Translation and Short Fiction and particularly bad for this.
Top of the page Bottom of the page
DrNefario
Posted 2014-09-29 11:17 AM (#8648 - in reply to #8505)
Subject: Re: Have You Completed a Challenge, Well Here is the Place To Crow!		Quote Reply



Uber User

Posts: 526
500
Location: UK		And that's Read the Sequel finished, with The Farthest Shore by Ursula Le Guin. A really good book, which I don't think I'd have appreciated at all as a kid. The elegant use of language would have been wasted on me, and there probably wasn't enough action. Strange to read it right after the action-packed but kind of hollow spectacle of Mockingjay.

I found it a lot harder to read sequels than I did book ones.

Two books and two challenges left, from my 2014 selection. It will be a bit longer before I finish the next one.
Top of the page Bottom of the page
Rhondak101
Posted 2014-09-29 11:56 AM (#8650 - in reply to #8640)
Subject: Re: Have You Completed a Challenge, Well Here is the Place To Crow!		Quote Reply



Uber User

Posts: 770
500
Location: SC, USA		@JustifiedSinner, I know what you mean about the 1 book = 1 challenge issue. I've read almost all of the books that have large overlaps, and now I have the ones that only fulfill 1 or 2 challenges to go. However, I was very happy last night when I figured out how to drop my overall number left to read from 12 to 11 by dropping two books and adding one to fulfill both requirements. 
Top of the page Bottom of the page
DrNefario
Posted 2014-10-04 2:06 PM (#8668 - in reply to #8505)
Subject: Re: Have You Completed a Challenge, Well Here is the Place To Crow!		Quote Reply



Uber User

Posts: 526
500
Location: UK		Me again! I've just finished Second Best with The Killing Moon by N K Jemisin, which I'm counting for the WFA.

This was a late substitution. I was originally planning to read Gone Girl for the Shirley Jackson, but I realised I could double up with Read More if I went for the Jemisin, and that leaves me with just one book (and one review) to complete my 2014 challenges.
Top of the page Bottom of the page
Dlw28
Posted 2014-10-04 9:23 PM (#8669 - in reply to #8668)
Subject: Re: Have You Completed a Challenge, Well Here is the Place To Crow!		Quote Reply



Extreme Veteran

Posts: 306
100
Ah! Having made an early decision to have few if any overlaps between challenges (and thus having just 5 challenges plus a more personal one if trying to read 75 books this year) I must confess that I'm not writing any reviews... I can't figure out how to do a quick review (I'm sooo impressed by the person who did a review in haiku) and pressing myself to do a longer review might stop me from reading as many books. Which would make me my own worse enemy.

And yet I like reading the reviews you all write!

So-I've paced myself and am close to finishing 10-11/12 in each challenge: LGBT, POC, masterworks, and women writers. I have one more for the Elizabeth Noun challenge. And I might just make the 75 books! I might not choose to set such a high total number again but it's been a good exercise and some fun reading.

I noticed some folks mentioned their faves in each challenge. How bout the rest of you? I'll add mine in a bit.
Top of the page Bottom of the page
DrNefario
Posted 2014-10-06 4:04 PM (#8683 - in reply to #8505)
Subject: Re: Have You Completed a Challenge, Well Here is the Place To Crow!		Quote Reply



Uber User

Posts: 526
500
Location: UK		And that's me done. The Ocean at the End of the Lane completes the Read More of That Author challenge, the last of my 12 2014 challenges, all done in 49 books.

Of course, I'm thinking of adding the Published in 2014 challenge now.
Top of the page Bottom of the page
Rhondak101
Posted 2014-10-06 5:34 PM (#8686 - in reply to #8505)
Subject: Re: Have You Completed a Challenge, Well Here is the Place To Crow!		Quote Reply



Uber User

Posts: 770
500
Location: SC, USA		Way to go, DrN!
Top of the page Bottom of the page
DrNefario
Posted 2014-10-07 10:40 AM (#8695 - in reply to #8683)
Subject: Re: Have You Completed a Challenge, Well Here is the Place To Crow!		Quote Reply



Uber User

Posts: 526
500
Location: UK
DrNefario - 2014-10-06 10:04 PM

Of course, I'm thinking of adding the Published in 2014 challenge now.

I have added the New Books in 2014 challenge. It runs long enough for me to count it as a 2015 challenge, though, along with my other two outstanding challenges (Gemmell & Reader's Choice).
Top of the page Bottom of the page
Rhondak101
Posted 2014-10-20 9:00 AM (#8786 - in reply to #8505)
Subject: Re: Have You Completed a Challenge, Well Here is the Place To Crow!		Quote Reply



Uber User

Posts: 770
500
Location: SC, USA		I just finished the Marxists, Socialist, etc Challenge. It looks as if I might be the only one. The next closest reader has completed four books. I really liked the books I chose for this challenge, and several of them I would not have read otherwise. So it is a bit of a disappointment that there are not more readers (and finishers)
Top of the page Bottom of the page
justifiedsinner
Posted 2014-10-20 9:50 AM (#8790 - in reply to #8786)
Subject: Re: Have You Completed a Challenge, Well Here is the Place To Crow!		Quote Reply



Uber User

Posts: 794
500
I loved your choice of Edith Nesbit. Both she and her husband were Fabians, of course. Having hit on Bernard Shaw (and given his virginity, unsurprisingly been rebuffed) she had an affair with H. G. Wells and was understandably annoyed when he also had an affair with her daughter. Her socialist credentials were well and truly embedded, so to speak.
Top of the page Bottom of the page
Rhondak101
Posted 2014-10-20 11:28 AM (#8796 - in reply to #8505)
Subject: Re: Have You Completed a Challenge, Well Here is the Place To Crow!		Quote Reply



Uber User

Posts: 770
500
Location: SC, USA		Justified, I love Edith Nesbit's bio. It is so full of Victorian weirdness. Her husband was afraid to tell his mother they got married, so lived at home with the mother for a while. Then when they did live together, he had an affair and got a woman pregnant. She moved in with them and Edith adopted the children that the woman and the husband had together (2, I think). However, for her to be a Fabian her children's books are still very class-conscious. I wish they were less so.
Top of the page Bottom of the page
justifiedsinner
Posted 2014-10-21 9:36 AM (#8798 - in reply to #8796)
Subject: Re: Have You Completed a Challenge, Well Here is the Place To Crow!		Quote Reply



Uber User

Posts: 794
500
Have you read A. S. Byatt's "The Children's Book"? It is a thinly veiled account of the Blunt/Nesbit marriage and it's effect on her own children. It involves various characters both historic (such as J. M. Barrie, William Morris and Oscar Wilde) and based on historic characters (Wells and Henry Salt for example). It also includes a retelling of David Garnett's very strange "Lady into Fox". Worth reading in you have the time.
Top of the page Bottom of the page
Badseedgirl
Posted 2014-10-21 11:02 AM (#8799 - in reply to #8505)
Subject: RE: Have You Completed a Challenge, Well Here is the Place To Crow!		Quote Reply



Uber User

Posts: 369
100
Location: Middle TN, USA		Well I can finally do a little "crowing" of my own! I finished my first challenge. "I Just Have to Read More of That Author" is now complete.
Top of the page Bottom of the page
Rhondak101
Posted 2014-10-21 12:04 PM (#8801 - in reply to #8505)
Subject: Re: Have You Completed a Challenge, Well Here is the Place To Crow!		Quote Reply



Uber User

Posts: 770
500
Location: SC, USA		Justified, I didn't know about that book at all. Luckily, my colleague down the hall is a hugh fan of A. S. Byatt. She's loaning me the book which will go into the queue somewhere behind the 7 challenge novels that i have left.

And Congrats Badseedgirl!
Top of the page Bottom of the page
daxxh
Posted 2014-11-10 5:01 PM (#8851 - in reply to #8505)
Subject: Re: Have You Completed a Challenge, Well Here is the Place To Crow!		Quote Reply



Extreme Veteran

Posts: 556
500
Location: Great Lakes, USA		I read The Handmaid's Tale and by reading it, finished three challenges - Bucket, Banned Books and End of the World. It also counted for three other challenges. I am starting to see the light at the end of the tunnel and may actually be able to finish my 2014 challenges in 2014.
Top of the page Bottom of the page
dustydigger
Posted 2014-11-11 3:11 AM (#8852 - in reply to #8505)
Subject: Re: Have You Completed a Challenge, Well Here is the Place To Crow!		Quote Reply



Elite Veteran

Posts: 1031
1000
Location: UK		Iam still plodding through Iain M Banks Consider Phlebas,which would complete all my challenges for the yea.rHowever it is going very very slowly,I read for what seems ages,then discover I have barely read 10pages !Still 50 pages to go,so it will be several days at the snail's pace I am going,but it should be wrapped up this week,and I can go off for my knee op on Nov 24th knowing I have completed all my challenges for the year,having read 64 books in total.
I am waiting VERY impatiently for Dave and the gang to unveil all these mysterious spectacular changes for next year.And I am already scoping out fabulous reads for 2015.
Top of the page Bottom of the page
DrNefario
Posted 2014-11-18 7:43 AM (#8892 - in reply to #8505)
Subject: Re: Have You Completed a Challenge, Well Here is the Place To Crow!		Quote Reply



Uber User

Posts: 526
500
Location: UK		I finished my not-very-popular Gemmell Awards challenge the other day, with Malice by John Gwynne (Morningstar 2013 winner), a pretty ordinary but solid epic fantasy series opener. As predicted, page counts were high: 3 of the 4 were over 500 pages, with Wise Man's Fear roughly 1000. Prince of Thorns was a suprisingly slender 320-odd.

I must admit, I love this kind of stuff, and would happily wallow in it all day long. It's mainly my insistence on a varied diet that stops me doing so, along with other challenges, lists and faddish enthusiasms.
Top of the page Bottom of the page
Jump to page : 1 2
Now viewing page 1 [25 messages per page]		Reply New post
Jump to forum :
Search this forum
Printer friendly version
E-mail a link to this thread

(Delete all cookies set by this site)