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Usually Anita has some kind of "How did we do over the year" and highs and lows top ten.... She should just enjoy her trip and all of that can wait, even until never. But I have spent a few hours catching up on Å·±¦ÓéÀÖ work and my own accounting master lists - and I noticed that this year I read 36 books for Steeplechase and 87 for Books with Friends, which even if a number of those were the same, and a sizable portion were audio, still feels like quite the number. I am aware that with even that, I didn't come close to many of the others doing these challenges. I am like somewhere around 15th to 20th for BWF and 10th (somehow) for Steeplechase. I am curious if others want to share. How did some of our prolific others actually fare? How many books did some of our high readers read for these challenges? They should be congratulated. With all this talk about slowing down, I just thought we should take a moment to celebrate ourselves and each other at this years end.

It looks like I read 191 books for BWF, mostly matching letters rather than tags. Almost all of them also worked for Steeplechase and all of them worked for some other game or challenge somewhere on GR.

At the library today, I had to stop myself from choosing books based on letters. Instead I started looking at where in the world they are set!

I haven't done my personal tally for these challenges yet, and I'm currently still reading that last book for Steeplechase. I just finished transferring Team Shadow & Flame's tracking over to PBT. At the moment, I could care less about tracking my own performance, LOL.

I had a fabulous team-- a wide range of reading levels, from legendarily prolific to slow and steady and everything in between, all threw their hearts over the fence for the team, even when life, health, jobs, moving, wildfires interfered. And they put up with my nagging, chivvying, cheerleading, needing to accommodate my end of month work pressures, and, lately, whining. We had a very good time too.

I do however, want to make a very special shout out to Meli, who was a loyal S&F Team reader and player, and will never toot her own horn. Meli did not play the individual game at all, and in fact rarely participates in these kinds of challenges as she's a slow reader, pretty much only managing her 4 (FOUR!) book club reads every month. But I asked her to join and she leapt. She never let me down. I knew she'd be an awesome member to the team as I had gotten to know her when we read A Brief History of Seven Killings together a few years ago.

Shadow & Flame read a total of 913 books for BWF. I'm so very proud of each and every team member. Though they did wear me out as their reporter!

I read 132 books for BWF and 34 for Steeplechase. There was overlap, so these are not unique titles.

I definitely read more monthly tag books this year than any other year.

The thing that got thrown off this year were all the predetermined challenge lists like TRIM and book group reads. Since these were already picked for certain time frames they often didn't line up. So I felt guilty every time I read a book that didn't fit.

So far I have read 159 books this year. Should get in another 10 or so. That makes about 170. But for each of the 4 preceding years I read over 200. So something was different about this year. Whether it was these particular challenges, the types of books, their length, or what else was on my plate. I made a smaller dent to my TBR pile.

I read 31 books for Steeplechase that didn't also match the tag for BWF. So that makes 222 books for PBT!

This was a record breaking year for me, even higher than 2020. I went way beyond my comfort level this year. I might hit 300 by the end of this month. I’m glad I proved to myself that I could do it, but I don’t need to do it again. 150 would be fine next year.

I’m really happy about the variety of books I read this year. I read a lot of books I would not have otherwise read. I’m particularly proud of what I read for steeplechase, authors of color, earthday, and Olympics. I found something great for every tag, even the ones I didn’t expect to like. I want to read a little more nonfiction and literature next year, and lot less genre fiction.

Bwf = 249 books
Steeplechase = 160 books
Steeplechase = 1076 points - thanks to many tag matches.
Total books =287 reviewed

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I’m really proud of the Dandelions this year. If I did the math correctly, we read about 1089 books this year - 638 tag+ letter, and 451 letter only. Of course, Lynda (olivermagnus) did all the heavy lifting, especially with Steampunk! The point formula doesn’t reward a balance of tag versus letter books. A focused strategy would have earned us a lot more points. But the balance in our reading made it much much more enjoyable.

We were determined to prevent a total shutout (or triple skunk) in the tag+letter bonus points for the teams. At the end, someone had to do it, haha. In a remarkable act of self-sacrifice � Lynda flung her body on top of the bomb and read an extraordinary number of steampunk books and graphic novels. Thank you Lynda!

Amy and Theresa,

I was wondering if it would be possible to move the challenge threads you have both started (one for Trim and one for Big Fat books) into the challenge folders for 2025.

I really would ideally like all challenges, whether PBT sponsored or member sponsored, to reside in one area.

Not everyone is about challenges, and I'd like to have a bit of division between the main thrust of PBT and the challenges if at all possible.

Anita, that sounds like a lovely idea. Two ways that I could do it. One way, which is just ever so slightly more complicated, would be if you or Joanne or somebody who has tech knowledge, can talk it through with me on the phone�. But if we’re going for ease, by January one I’m gonna post the ongoing 2025 trim challenge thread. And I can post that in the PBT sponsored activities folder. And then it would just have a link to the planning thread in case anyone wants to join and add their new thread to it and that was really just for organizing. I feel if it’s OK with you that letting this one just fall away because it won’t be really much use except maybe for reference in incredibly shortly sounds like a better plan. But I’m open to either way.

Anita wrote: "Amy and Theresa,

I was wondering if it would be possible to move the challenge threads you have both started (one for Trim and one for Big Fat books) into the challenge folders for 2025.

I reall..."

Easy peasy -- will do later.

I assume though that buddy reads stay in Footnotes? And Christmas in July? Not sure if it is truly a challenge - or Fall into Smut which amused everyone so much this year.

Also - the no-date ongoing planning thread for history books pre 1900 will be left in Footnotes too. It's a buddy read not a challenge challenge.

Amy wrote: "Anita, that sounds like a lovely idea. Two ways that I could do it. One way, which is just ever so slightly more complicated, would be if you or Joanne or somebody who has tech knowledge, can talk ..."

Amy - it's very easy to do. Open the thread and look at the top where the title of thread is listed. It will be after the FOOTNOTES; ... See the little edit link in brackets? Click on that. A wndow drops down and in the middle it says 'folder' and there is a box which now says Footnotes. Click on the arrow in the box and a window drops down that offers a list of folders you can have it appear in. click on 2025 Activities and Challenges. Now click 'save' at bottom. And voila, you are done, it is now in the 2025 Activities and Challenges Folder.


And I just moved mine while walking Amy through it.