Next year, CATs aside

The official thread for discussing next year is totally dominated by a rather intense debate on the whats, hows and whens of next year's CATs. I'm personally not interested in CATs - the "regular" challenge is quite enough for me - and rather than trying to start a paralel chit-chat (doomed to drown) over there, I thought it made sense to start a new thread for people's personal planning. I know many of us have pondered 2015 since mid january already...

It seems to me 2014 was the year when a lot of abandoned the idea of using the year itself as base for the challenge. I haven't seen many people doing 14 categories this year (and no 14 in 14 attempts, even though I'm sure you are out there!). I would be interested to hear how you reason for next year - anything 15 related at all?

I plan on reading fewer books next year. I find I have a hard time keeping up with threads, and reading a little less will hopefully give me more time for the social side of LT. I've also found that the challenges in the last years, with me stretching how many books I've read each year, have made me avoid many of the thicker books on my TBR. Having a lower aim will allow for thicker books, I hope.

My idea at this point is to do a 1+5 challenge, with a brick, say over 420 pages perhaps, starting a reading cycle. Then books in five different categories, then a new brick starting the next cycle. Could be I decide to do 2015 completely open end, or set a goal for the number of cycles I hope to complete.

Where are all the rest of you with your planning - or utter lack thereof?

I did 14 this year and I'll probably go for 15 next, however, it may be spreading things a bit thin, with only around 5 books per cat., I try to aim for more than that in at least a few... but we'll see once I've got things fleshed out a bit more. I might do the scale sort of thing, but wouldn't start it all the way down at 1. Will just have to determine more once I've settled on some other things! :P

I did 10 books in each of 10 categories for 2014, and I plan on repeating that for 2015. I've had my categories planned since July of this year. There are certain categories, like mystery, that I have every year and other categories, like first in a series, that tend to come around every other year or every third year. This year I tried an experiment whereby I had to fill slot #1 in each category before filling slot #2 and so on. That's worked really well, so I'm likely going to repeat it next year. (With one possible exception for non-fiction, but only because I'll be taking a class with a lot of reading, and I want to be able to count it all.) My real goal is to read 100 books for the year, hence the 10 books/10 categories.

I also have my 2016 categories planned, in case anybody wants to get a real head start on the discussion. :)

I also have 14 categories this year and hope to have at least 10 books in each category. I'm pretty sure I will have 15 categories next year, and probably consider the challenge complete when I have nine books in each category. If I can do 140 books this year, then 135 should be doable next year.

I have pretty much finalized my categories, I admit that I am starting to get excited about next year's challenge but I still have a lot of reading to do to finish this year. I hope to finish by at least November so I can use December for a month of free reading.

ETA: Since casvelyn has admited to having 2016 planned, I can admit that I have pretty much worked out my categories for that at well. :)

I read about 500 books last year, but was only at 250 at the end of July this year, so with my challenges planned for a few more books than last year, I'm not going to make it. I'm currently still hoping to manage three x ten books in 14 categories, but the German nonfiction will be hard to complete.

I'm still trying to figure out how to make next year work. 15 is such a big number of categories!

I don't plan my categories in advance, but there are some that just naturally fill each year, and I see where my reading takes me. I do like seeing what things I am perhaps overdoing, and what I am skimping on.

I have 14 categories this year, with the plan to read 10 in each category. I have about 28 books left with several tomes included, so I hope to finish in early or mid November.

I plan on having 15 categories next year but I might do a staggered or step amount, I'm not sure yet.

Like casvelyn, I'll be doing ten books each in ten categories. It works for me, although I am impressed by all of you who read orders of magnitude more than I do!

I have yet to come up with a theme, however.

I'm thinking of doing a 10x10 and 5x5 challenge. The 10 categories will be broad ones, while the 5 categories will be more specific, maybe focusing on a single author or subject that I want to learn more about.

I loved my half challenge this year - no stress, no pressure - and looking forward to a more relaxed challenge next year. I haven't finalized all of my details yet but for now my 2015 challenge is shaping up to be one main category of 30 books (unveil to occur when the next group is up) with a second category of 15 books for CATS, KITS and group reads and a third category of 15 books for miscellaneous reads.

>7 RidgewayGirl: It makes sense that someone whose health issues make her sit/lie down several times a day to rest between doing other things is going to read a LOT more than someone who puts in a full day's work, or runs around after a bunch of kids. I'd rather read less and do more other things, but it just isn't going to happen.

I had seven categories in my challenge this year and I'll probably repeat that next year too - it was just so perfectly manageable. Not sure what my goal for books in each category will be yet, though. Or if I'll manage to come up with a theme. Looking forward to figuring it all out in any case!

I am doing a 12x12 this year and that seems to work for me. I do tend to keep my categories broad, but I did also add in an "Overflow" category this year, just to throw anything that doesn't fit in the other categories, so I'm sure I'll add that in, too (though I'm not aiming for a number for the Overflow).

>4 DeltaQueen50: My idea for 2016 just kind of fell in my lap last December. So I've actually had 2016 planned longer than 2015, but only by accident.

I started counting how many books I read a year in 2005, when I read 63 (or remembered to write down those, anyway). Since then I've read between 75 and 102 books a year. There is no way I'm going to make all my reading fit any challenge, but I like to use this category challenge to help me get through my huge TBR pile.

In 2008, I did the 888, which was 8 books in 8 categories (unlike some people, I counted books in more than one category, and in fact, gave myself extra (chocolate) rewards every time I managed to do that).

In 2009, I did 9 X 9; in 2010 I did 10 categories, but made it 6 or more books; then in 2011, instead I decided to tackle some of the chunksters in my TBR so took the year off to work on that; in 2012 I couldn't get my head around it, but in 2013 I was back with 10 categories and 3 books each (surpassed that goal by reading not 30 but 47 applicable books), and this year I did 10 categories of 4 books.

I'm feeling it's time for a structural change again, so am interested in new ideas. I like the idea in the opening post (the 1+5) because it's way out of my comfort zone, but feels doable.

>13 casvelyn: I have both too much time on my hands and a love of planning!

>3 casvelyn:, >4 DeltaQueen50:, and >13 casvelyn:
Haha, I'm reminded of a comment made by @Gingerbreadman, the very OP of this thread, back in 2011: check out message #97 on this thread!

>15 DeltaQueen50: Well, there's that too. I love low-stakes planning, where you can plan just for the sake of planning and change your mind ten times and nobody minds.

ETA >16 -Eva-: But does he still remember what he was planning?

This year I am doing 9 categories with 7 books in each. I read around 60-65 books a year so this works well for me. I haven't given next year much thought yet but there is no way I am doing 15 categories as they would only have 4 books each. I will start giving it some thought now. Maybe I will pick up some good ideas from the rest of you.

Yes, Low-stakes planning. It feeds the OCD without putting too much pressure on anything.

From 2010 through 2013, I was able to reach my goals of 10x10 through 13x13 respectively; but I realistically knew I wouldn't be able to hit a 14x14 mark (196.) I trimmed my list down, but I boxed myself in too tightly. While I will probably read somewhere in the neighborhood of 150 titles this year, there are whole categories that will go untouched in my own base challenge. I've been thinking about 2015 for awhile and decided I needed to be looser with the books I slot in. I'm thinking of setting up 15 categories with 10 slots each, with a max of 5 pre-filled. This seems more manageable for me :-)

I haven't decided if I will carry over any of my unread books from this year or not, and I'm also seeing what sorts of CATS develop as well. The bingo card sounds appealing too, but it may be too much. I haven't yet decided on an overall theme either. I didn't do one this year (my first year of participation) but I've really enjoyed seeing how creative and entertaining others have been!

>3 casvelyn: I started some loose plotting of my 2015 ones once my 2014s were settled, because I saw an idea I really wanted to do my own spin of, and couldn't wait to get started! :P I haven't gone back to fine-tune since then, though. But with all this next year talk going on now I'll be getting to it rather soon, I'm sure. xD I'm also quite sure once I fix them up I'll be in that woo categories! planning! place and start working on the 2016 ideas. hahaha

>16 -Eva-:+17 That was a blatant lie of course. I was just trying to do what all the cool kids do.

Seriously, I will be trying to plan less next year. On one hand, I love the idea of candidates. It is very helpful at the start of the year to see what threads might be especially interesting, and mapping out what you expect to read is a lovely way to spend an afternoon. (Then I end up reading about half of those candidates, but that's beside the point).

On the other hand, I haven't stood before the bookshelves being completely open for anything that catches my fancy since I joined LT. I kinda miss that feeling too, you know what I mean?

I have a theme set for my challenge but haven't decided on a number yet. I had a very easy challenge for myself this year (12 categories, 1 books in each) and still didn't make it. It's been a bad reading year for me... I'm re-structuring my challenge for next year so I'll have to decide what exactly to do and how to do it. I'm going to abandon my monthly themes and just do more open-ended ones.
I'll probably end up with around 10 categories. I don't now if I'll set any limits to how many books I read in each one, but it'll be a low number.

I like the idea of having a massive book and then a few shorter ones. I might try to include that somehow.

I've been thinking a lot about this too. I think I could manage 15 categories of 5 books each, but then I know I'd just end up picking broad, easy categories so that every book I want to read fits easily. That's appealing because it would be relatively easy and fits the "15".

But then again, I like the idea of challenging myself a little more so my other thought is to make a smaller challenge with specific, challenging categories that will push me a bit but will only encompass about a third of my yearly reading (maybe 5 categories of 5 books). For this I'd do categories like "books on my shelf the longest", shakespeare, or books from some specific country or region that I'm unfamiliar with.

Still pondering . . .

I'm thinking I'll do 5 categories and shoot for 15 books in each one but keep it loose and flexible. I have a general idea of what kinds of books I want to read and what my overall theme will be. I learned this year that I need to keep my categories broad so I can follow my interests and I know next year I'll want to read more newly published books so I need to keep myself open.

I have to admit to having a general plan in place for 2015 - probably 10 books in 15 categories. My concern is that I'm going for quantity over quality!

>26 LoisB: If you feel that way once you've done some reading, you can always choose to drop the number down from 10 for a bit better balance. Even just dropping to 9 would be 15 books less, which is fairly significant! :)

>27 .Monkey.: The problem is ME! Once I set a goal for myself, I am determined to achieve it! But, I may take your advice before I finalize plans. Thx.

>28 LoisB: Haha I get that. But if you go into it with the idea that 10 might not be the right number, then it's not set!

I usually read around 100 books a year so I just need to decide if I want 15 categories or something less (like 10, which makes a nice even challenge). I've got a number of ideas for categories, but corraling them into some kind of theme is causing me a little problem right now. I always worry about the books I'm neglecting. I'm kind of waiting until the CATS are decided to make a decision.

I'm going for the 14/14/14 challenge this year. Falling behind but hoping to catch up when I'm on vacation. My structure this year is 7 main categories broken down into regular and "new-to-me" sets, and one of those categories is HodgePodge for whatever doesn't fit. If I go for 15/15/15 next year, the 15th category will be Picture Books.

I've never done a theme before, but I'm considering trying it for 2015. Some of my categories were too broad or too narrow, so I've already made one adjustment this year. Probably going to make at least one more.

1> stretching how many books I've read each year, has made me avoid many of the thicker books on my TBR.
I'm stealing someone else's idea and counting books more that 500 pages twice. I might actually put that rule into effect for this year.

The number 15 got me thinking about the summer reading program the library does for kids. Some track time spent reading instead of the number of books read. I wouldn't do that, but it might be an option for other people. Or maybe pages read - 1500 pages in 15 categories would be about 3-4 books per category or 45-60 books.

I have a theme and most of my categories are falling into place, but I'm trying to figure out how to let myself use a category (or more) for some series I want to get caught up on (or at least concentrate on).

This year I started out with 10 categories, and added four more in July. Mostly because I found myself reading too many of one category and not enough of others.

Maybe I need to do series specific categories. Argh. I don't know...

I've found that if I don't have enough structure to my challenge, then I'll spend all my time on the internet and very little time reading, apart from my lunch break at work. I love to read, but I get distracted by all the shiny virtual stuff out there. If there's too much structure, then I end up with too few options and get bored. I think, after four years of category challenge participation, I've finally come up with a structure that works for me. It also helps that I have a truly massive TBR list (ca. 1600 books). There's something for every occasion and taste.

At some point, I'm going to return to just doing the last number of the year, x books in x categories. But I think 5x5 is probably a bit too small. Still, I've learned that I just don't want to fit all of my reading into categories, because then I have to make the categories excessively broad or else feel extremely restricted in the second half of the year. So I think I'll go with 15 categories of 3 books each; the tiny categories will hopefully allow me to really push my reading in directions that I wouldn't normally go.

>31 BookLizard: I like the idea of counting pages, rather than books!

I like the idea of counting long books twice.

"Low stakes planning"? I plan my categories, but never plan specific books at the start of the year. I have too many groups over at shelfari that decide things month to month, so I just can't do that much planning that far ahead.

Another cool idea that someone over at shelfari mentioned a couple of years ago (though I've never done it, some have) is a pyramid for your categories. So, if you want 15 categories to go with 2015:
Category 1: 15 books to read
Cat 2: 14 books
Cat 3: 13 books
Cat 4: 12 books
and so on all the way down.

Just another suggestion.

>32 majkia: I have a theme and most of my categories are falling into place, but I'm trying to figure out how to let myself use a category (or more) for some series I want to get caught up on (or at least concentrate on).

I have a category called Will It Ever End? (Continuing Series) to try to get me to continue with series I've already started.

>36 LibraryCin: The pyramid is another idea I've been playing with.

>33 casvelyn: Wow! Yeah, I have over 500 on my tbr and even with that, I can find a lot that will fit a lot of different things (though poetry was tricky for me for the RandomCAT earlier this year).

>36 LibraryCin: What I meant by "low-stakes planning" is that planning ages in advance and making lots of changes doesn't have a huge impact on "real life," unlike, say, planning a wedding, vacation, or conference.

I can't plan specific books in advance, because as soon as I pick something, I don't want to read it. I know from previous years that I'm not the only person who has this problem.

>39 LibraryCin: Poetry would be tricky for me as well. I just don't like most of it.

>40 casvelyn: Thanks for the explanation. I thought you just meant keeping it easy to switch one book for another or not getting that specific so early!

I do have 14 categories this year, but didn't set a goal for them. Instead, I'm doing it more like a competition. I read what I want and books for other challenges (including the CATs) and put the books I read in the category that fits best. I think I've set my categories in such a way that there's no book that can't be fitted in. Then, at the end of the year, I'll see which category has the most books as well as which category scored highest in stars (adding all the stars I gave the books in that category, devided by the number of books).

As for next year, I've decided to do 15 categories. I'll probably do the same type of competition, but I might also cycle through the categories. Haven't decided that one yet.

#40 by @casvelyn>
I can't plan specific books in advance, because as soon as I pick something, I don't want to read it.

I can sooooo identify...

>1 GingerbreadMan: First of all, many thanks for starting this thread, it is much more interesting than the "intense debate". The "theme" I chose this year was boring and I may have come up with a better one for next year, although fitting books into it might require some creative thinking. I like your idea of 1 + 5 in 15 categories. I hope you don't mind if I use it?

To everyone else, I'm in awe at your creativity and looking forward to another great year of sharing your reading experience.

edited for clarity

Looking at the title of my challenge, I just remembered why I had 7 categories this year: 2+0+1+4=7, so I guess I'll do 2+0+1+5=8 categories next year.

I'm determined to have a non-fiction category since I have a hard time getting myself to read those and there are quite a few I want to have read. I had one this year, but bailed on it and changed it to another category.

>17 casvelyn:
Haha, it was mainly a joke, but I said I'd remember it for when we got closer and this was a great opportunity! In 2011, 2016 seemed like it would be an eternity away, but we're getting very close, aren't we?!

>22 GingerbreadMan:
Perhaps have a category for that - things that just catch your fancy? (I.e. not just an overflow category, but one that you have to fill by actually just standing in front of the shelves and pick something that looks fun.)

>40 casvelyn: & >43 majkia:
Yeah, I have that problem too.

I started working on a list of categories for 2015 months ago. I assumed that I would continue the pattern and go with 15 categories. This year I have a pyramid scheme - 14 books + 13 +12, etc. A total of 105 books, and I allow myself to count each book in up to 2 categories. Many of my books will actually fit in 3 categories, and few will fit in 4. So, for next year, I thought about 15 categories, with 15 books in each, allowing unlimited overlaps.

But then, thinking back on successful challenges in past years - what worked and what didn't, I began to re-consider. So now I don't know.

As far as themes go, I consider it every year but never seem to be able to pull it off. I think I'm too literal and have a hard time making books fit into the different categories. I did have a couple of new ideas the last few days for themes, though, so I'll explore those options before deciding to go without a theme - again.

I guess the main thing I wanted to say is that I appreciate all the comments and descriptions and rationale and justifications of everyone's categories here. It's helping me to be a bit more creative in my thinking.

This year I had 11 categories with a minimum of 5 books and three categories with 10 books. I'll probably add one category with a five book minumum. My categories usually are based on stuff I would read even without the challenge. I have never come up with a clever theme and probably won't this year either. I usually never plan the books ahead because that doesn't work for me. I had one category this year with a list of possibilities and thus far have read zero books in that category... :)

I think I like the sound of the page counting idea. I also like to read a huge book now and again. I am going to think on this concept and do a little research on how many pages I would normally read in a month etc.

I really am unsure what I will do next year. I like the Pyramid but am thinking maybe just some straightforward categories that are fairly broad might be good. I usually allow a book to take several spots as I really only read at best around 75 books a year. I will have an overflow, I am going to continue my president challenge the birth of a reader challenge. I liked my theme this year which was TIME. I started noting how time was addressed in the various books I was reading. It was a great theme for me.

2014 was my first challenge and I set myself a minimum of 2 books in 14 categories. I'll take a look at the final number at the end of the year and just aim to read at least the same amount next year. I'm planning fifteen categories, carrying over some from this year, because they are my favourite reading. I'll change some others to make room for reading inspired by this group. Book bullets, for one.

Next year I will finally include a group read and CATS category! Should have done that this year because the mystery CAT has really stretched that category. It probably also didn't help that I started my challenge in early December. This time I will start on January 1! Or at least wait until Christmas.

Most of my categories are fairly broad (my misc. categories are general fiction and general non-fiction, which seems to work), but this year I also set sub-challenges. So in my mystery category I wanted to read one Sherlock Holmes book and one John le Carre book. It gives me some focus but not too much.

I'm also toying with the idea of using a bingo card just on my mystery category, because I read the most in that genre and would like to filter my choices a bit. Christina found a mystery-focused bingo card on a blog that I think is called Vintage Mystery Reader. Or if we do a Bingo card for the group I might use just mysteries for my choices.

I have several possible themes in mind and am always looking for new ideas. It's good contemplation if I'm bored at work ;)

So, after a few calculations, I have decided the page count idea isn't going to work for me. Then I was thinking I could have two categories with 15 books each, one of which would be for cats and group reads. Then 1+5=6 so I could then have six categories with six books each, making a grand total of 66 books which is an achievable target for me. The more I think about it the more I like this idea. Now I need to come up with an interesting theme.

I enjoyed the challenge more this year than the previous 2 years because I made my categories broader and that suits me better. I read about 80 a year and used 4 categories of 14 and 3 of 7 for a total of 77. I've read 2 books of poetry that didn't fit a category. I would like to add a category for ER books because I'm so dang slow getting to them. Right now I'm just thinking I'll make a small change to 4 categories with 15 and 4 categories with 7 for 88. The thing is, I'm not sure how CATs may affect this great plan!

After making some adjustments based on this year's reading, I'll have fifteen categories of twelve books each for 2015. I'm still settling on an overall theme though.

I'm aiming for a very relaxed 2015 challenge…almost a non-challenge, really. (Reason being, I love this group and don't want to quit, but I'm a bit burned out on reading challenges right now!) I happen to be turning 30 in 2015, so I think I'm going to read 10 books in each of 3 categories: (1) Re-reads, (2) books I own but haven't read yet, and (3) books I don't own at the beginning of 2015.

Yes, that means I am setting a challenge "goal" of 30 books. Yes, that also means that any book I read will count for the challenge. I may also participate in the CATs (or some of them), depending on how they shape up. I'm still trying to think of a clever theme, so any suggestions are welcome! Right now, I'm trying to think of things that come in threes (to be my category names)…bears? Blind mice? Trouble? :)

>55 christina_reads: Musketeers

>55 christina_reads: Billy Goats Gruff, French hens, Bronte sisters, little pigs, books in a trilogy, witches in Macbeth, Stooges, Wise Men, pieces of a men's suit... etc., etc., etc.

>51 rabbitprincess: - I like a couple of ideas that you mentioned. Using just mysteries for the bingo card, being one. And adding a focus book to each category. I'm not deciding what to do until the CATS are decided, but I'm working on a couple of ideas. I might even have a 10 category challenge and put the CATS, etc as my extra 5 categories.

>55 christina_reads:

How about the three fates? Then you can do past (re-reads) present (currently owned and TBR) and future (acquisitions) as your three categories.

I've been doing a minimum of 5 books in each category, with 2013 being 13 categories, 2014 = 14, etc...Not sure if I can pull off 15 categories this year as I'm starting to feel a bit stretched to come up with creative yet challenging buckets to place my books in. I do try to gear it towards a mixture of easy to achieve and harder to achieve categories. My favorite the last couple of years has been the one where I have other people pick from my TBR list - I never know what they are going to pick, I usually end up enjoying them, and it clears five books off of my list!

>59 March-Hare: Brilliant!

Have been brainstorming and think I have my theme for next year! Looks like it will be 15 categories with minimums of 5 in all but one. Kind of excited to have a theme again.

>59 March-Hare: PERFECT! Thanks for the suggestions, all, but I think March-Hare hit the nail on the head!

>45 -Eva-: I had a "no planning allowed" category in my 12 in 12 Challenge. Which was nice, but it fairly quickly became more of a place to stuff things when other categories filled up :)

I'm thinking perhaps a middle ground would be doable - deciding candidates for the next cycle as it starts. That is, choosing the next six books. Allowing for changes, of course.

>55 christina_reads: and >59 March-Hare: I thought of Faith (new books) hope (TBR) and love (re-reads), but the suggestion of fates is way better! Should you wish for a nordic mouthful when it comes to your theme, they were called Urd, Verdandi and Skuld in Norse mythology :)

As for no planning, I've got a random category planned for 2015 and I'll use Random.org every month to pick a book off Mt. TBR.

>65 majkia: How does that work?

you can just input the total number of books in your tbr pile and random.org generates a number from 1 to whatever. Very easy. I sometimes have more than one book in a series, so if it picks one in a series, I read the next one up.

I have shelves upon shelves of TBR books. That would be literally impossible. I suppose I could pick some arbitrary start/end points of shelves/stacks each time and just count those... But they're organized, so really it'd be just selecting one from a certain type. Unless I marked out various point-to-point spots, counted those, did a generator for a number of those, then did one for the books within those markers. That seems an awful lot of work. I'd rather just pluck something off that appeals to me. Haha.

>65 majkia: et al. I use LT's random book generator to pick books. It's located at LT Home > Folly > LibraryThing Roulette module > Book of Yours. You can't specify which collections or tags to pick from, so it's not perfect, but if it picks something you just read, you can just spin the wheel again. Like majkia, if I get a book in a series, I just go with the book I'm ready for in that series, not the book that was picked.

>65 majkia: Love that idea! I just gave it a try.

>68 .Monkey.: If you have them cataloged in LT using either a tbr tag, or a tbr collection, it's not hard to do since LT lists 20 books per page. I have 450-ish books on Planet TBR, and got number 181 on the generator - the first book on page 9. Unfortunately it's not a book I want to read this month. ;- I might have to give myself 3 tries and pick the best of the 3 .....

ETA: Whoops # 181 would be the first book on page 10, not 9. OK, I can see myself reading that one.

I don't have them all added. There's at least a hundred if not more not yet entered. That would be at least semi-feasible, though. :)

>171 VivienneR: I hear you. I have mysterious boxes upstairs that I have not sorted and added yet. But a random number generated from the ones I do have cataloged works for me.

Yeah, the problem is though that I add in the newer acquisitions but still haven't finished all the ones from before I joined/got active here. So it'd be excluding a lot of the older ones, which is the opposite of what I'd want. :P

After reading comments on this thread, I might be changing my mind about next year. At first I thought I'd do a competition-like category thread again, but maybe I'll do a pyramid style instead, or set some other number per category. Give it a bit more structure than this year.

#69 - I use LT's random book generator to pick books. It's located at LT Home > Folly > LibraryThing Roulette module > Book of Yours. You can't specify which collections or tags to pick from, so it's not perfect, but if it picks something you just read, you can just spin the wheel again.

This is a fun little thing (for lack of a better word) that I never noticed before. Don't know how useful it is for my purposes though . . . I clicked it 25 times and got only 6 books from my TBR pile (the others I had either read or were on my wishlist). If I could get it to just pick from my TBR collection it would have potential. Still, it's a fun thing to play with.

I've been using a manual version of this for the past two challenges with my Blindfold category. LT friends get to choose a shelf and a number, and that book goes into my Challenge. (I skip right if I've read the book, or go to first unread if a book in a series out of sequence is chosen) It' s been a great way to move some utterly unlikely reads up the TBR. In fact, right now I'm enjoying Restoration by Rose Tremain, a book my wife has owned since before we met and which I'd not likely had picked myself for the next decade or so.

>69 casvelyn: >75 Nickelini: When I exported my library from GR, I had a file that I could also import into a spreadsheet. From there, I modified the spreadsheet to move all the titles that I had read onto a different page. From the remaining titles, I I draw random titles using the random.org utility :-)

From that experience, I don't think it would be any different to export your LT library into a spreadsheet and do the same if you were interested in just drawing from TBR titles. It only takes about ten minutes en toto :-)

For a fun change I named one of my categories after my 14 year old grandson and had him pick the books which has worked out really well. Next year it's my granddaughter's turn to pick books for a random category for me.

Y'all are making me wanna do a random category, dangit! lol. Maybe I'll have one where I have a few friends randomly pick somehow.

I've never counted pages before, but I'm thinking about aiming for 2015 pages per category. My problem, though, is figuring out how many categories to make since I'm not used to counting pages! I may go ahead and make 15 categories, many as that is, just to see how it goes.

This year, I said I'd do 14 categories and aim for 8 books in each. At this point, about half of those categories are complete (or over-completed), with two or three close to completion, and two barely started.

I've thought about organizing it a couple of ways--this year I just sort of based it around interests and big categories within my library/tbr stacks. I've thought about organizing by favorite songs or albums, though, and may go that route.

Regardless, I think this may be the first year I try for a page number goal within the challenges, instead of a book number.

>80 whitewavedarling: You don't even know the avg length of book you read? I think LT has some sort of stats on that, if you've entered them in your book info...

>81 .Monkey.:, I'm afraid my stats wouldn't tell me much lol. I read such a mix of young adult, fiction, nonfiction, and poetry, that the lengths vary crazily! Poetry books are generally 60-80 pages, and my fiction reads are anywhere from 180-200 with the YA, right on up to 500-700 with the long fantasies and classics! I'll just have to figure out my categories, I guess, and know I'll read more books in some categories than others. I will have to check to see if LT has a stat on how many pages I've read in given years, though, which I hadn't thought of...

>80 whitewavedarling: I like the idea of 2015 pages per category! That's 8 books of 252 pages each, which seems do-able.

2015 pages is a good idea - and is much more in the tradition of books and categories being based on the year than the (equivalent) 8 books

Oh, that's a cool idea!

>>2 .Monkey.: What an interest possibility - maybe 1+5 in 15 = 90 books
>>8 mathgirl40: 10x10 + 5x5 sounds interesting!

I do like the idea of 2,015 pages per category - something to consider.
Thanks for all the ideas.

>>32 majkia: I have a category this year and I had it last year too that was specifically setup for catching up on specific series. I chose 3 series that I wanted to concentrate on so that those books were a high priority. I've read some for each of the 3 series.

This year I'm doing a halfer - 7 books in 14 categories =98 books so in 2015 I've thought of either doing a pyramid =120 or a halfer+ which is 15 categories with 7 books in 8 categories and 8 books in 7 categories=112 books.

I still haven't chosen my theme, I have about 4 or 5 under consideration and 1 or 2 that at the top of the list but I have to be closer to finishing 2014 before I really concentrate on 2015 further. Any time I think of something related to next year, I just write down and then move on.

I've decided on my theme - My Favorite Things. Ill be using the song lyrics as metaphors for each category, and I'll be aiming for 2015 pages in each category.

There are so many good ideas being tossed out - it's hard not to sit down right now and decide what I want. I keep reminding myself to wait until the CATs are decided first. Plus, it's only August - there's still plenty of time!

#88 by @sjmccreary> yeah, it's only August. But but but ....

I like the 2015 pages per category too.

I was thinking, the good thing about the 2015 pages is you could get "credit" each month for unfinished books. Not a big deal and makes no difference overall, but nice for those of us who do a monthly recap.

#91 I was thinking the same thing - after spending weeks reading a book that I ended up abandoning and then had nothing to show for it in the challenge. It would be nice to be able to count what did get read, even if it wasn't the last chapter of the book!

A problem I've found is that the big theme that interests me at the beginning of the year is often not what grabs me a few months in. I like to have some loose categories, some very loose categories (of the "books with titles" variety) and one or two very specific categories, which worked beautifully in 2013, but less well this year. Really I have no idea. And if past performance is any indication, I will continue to have no clear idea (or too many ideas) until one quiet evening toward the end of December when I throw something together at the last minute.

I think I will remove any pretense of setting up a clever theme and just start with 15 empty categories and fill them in as I go. I've been toying with the idea of picking one author to focus on for the year. I'm not sure if I want to start in 2015 though. I may also pick a leitmotif that will run through the year, but I'm not looking to tie everything I read to it.

I like keeping the number of books in my categories open ended. That way I don't feel discouraged if I'm not meeting my goals. I try at least to hit all of the categories. I will always have categories that have more books than others (YA fiction, for instance - I do work in a high school library) and since I graduated from college I don't care to impose a specific number on myself. I admire the heck out of those of you who can line up their reading ahead of time. I'm just too easily distracted to do that. Whatever mood I'm in or what looks good on my Kindle drives my reading choices. (OOO - pretty!) I've been averaging over 100 books per year and at least a third of them have been from my work library.

I do enjoy inventing a theme for my categories. I have one in mind for next year that is in development. I always enjoy reading about everyone's themes and reading adventures. I get such inspiration from you all and the volume of posts in this group is just right for me to keep up with and still have time for life, my own reading, etc. In short, I'm looking forward to another year in this group.

>95 mamzel: - I'm with you. I may have a minimum for each category but it's always something doable as being constrained to rigid reading standards wouldn't work for me. Love trying to come up with fun categories that are a nice mixture of comfort and challenge.

Absolutely love seeing what other people come up with!

>95 mamzel: I love your thought and I may even follow your lead and set out the categories and see how they go. I keep changing my mind anyway so maybe something with a little more freedom and randomness would be good for me. Thanks for sharing your free spirit concept. I too love the shiny new covers. I love reading about things while they are fresh in my mind, which explains why I am not a good planner with reading. I have discovered that if I plan on reading something for a specific theme or challenge it is almost like a kiss of death for that book. I think that is one of the reasons that I really like the randomCAT.

I think I'm going to do 15 categories but only require one book per category. That way I can have all the categories I'd like, but not have to limit certain categories like off the shelf or 1001 books where I generally like to read more books. And I can have categories like rereads and other books by authors of my favorites that I don't necessarily want to read a large number of.

But of course, I still have 4 months to change my mind!

I'm really happy with my theme this year but am feeling stretched by 14 categories, even though I hadn't set out to read a set number of books in each category.

I'm thinking of keeping things simple for next year. Since I read between 40 and 50 books in a year, I've been thinking about 3 very open categories with 15 books each. I also like one of the idea mentioned above of 2+0+1+5 = 8 categories with maybe 1+5 books per category.

So I was playing around online, looking for something significant about the number 15, and I found the magic square. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magic_square



Looks a little like a bingo card, so I was thinking 9 categories with 1-9 books each to fill in each square. If you add them all up, it comes out to 45 books. Quite doable for me. In fact, if I decide to go with this, I would probably do 4 of them, one each quarter, which would average out to 15 books per month. Perfect!

Oh that's a great idea!

>100 BookLizard: Fun!

Urgh! I had an idea for next year but I'm not feeling it anymore so have been thinking of another one. I love the theme but I'm having trouble with a couple of the categories (they come "pre-packaged" with the theme, so to speak). They're a bit too similar. Not sure what to do about this.

I'm the same, PawsforThought. I had a theme, but I'm reconsidering. I had 15 categories and thought of doing a pyramid scheme for the amount of books per category. That was mainly because the 'no numbers' game I'm playing this year isn't helping me push my boundaries, nor is it helping me focus on reading more. I tend to get distracted by other hobbies too easily, and I'm reading very little this year as a consequence.

So, now I'm thinking of having 12 themes or topics, one for each month. Each theme/topic will have something to do with the number 15, though perhaps not always directly. I'll think of a list of topics in advance, but will 'draw' a random topic from my list at the beginning of each month. This will allow me to be inspired, instead of planning too much - planning too much seems to be taking my will to read away lately.

I'm thinking of setting a minimum of 2 books (since 15 is comprised of 2 numbers), which will not be too much on top of whatever else I want to read, but will push me a bit.

When we first started talking about the 2015 CAT Challenge, I was very excited. I had all these ideas running around in my head for themes and categories; but now, I'm oddly ambivalent about the whole thing. I'm not sure if it's because I'm not meeting my present reading goals and feeling a bit overwhelmed - though I really should look at that as having learned my limitations; or thinking about 2015 too much! I'm tempted to put up fifteen blanks and see how they grow - sort of like planting seeds and seeing what sprouts!

ETA: Don't mind me. I'm just flailing around! I have to remember I have four months to hash this out in my mind and that I don't have to decide anything right now!

As always, I'm excited about the 2015 challenge even though I won't be continuing with the 15 categories approach, as I've done up til now. I had 14 categories this year and planned to read 10 books in each. Too much!! I'm now aiming for 8 books in each.

I'm thinking of fewer, but broader, categories, and then reading 15 books in each. Someone mentioned 8 categories (2+0+1+5=8) so that's a possibility.

I try to tie it into a theme. I have nothing creative yet for next year but can always tie anything into baseball, so there's that.

Someone talked about "books chosen by friends" category. I've done that, I think it was last year, and it was among my favorites. Definitely need to consider doing that for one of my 2015 categories.

I think I want to relate my 2015 reads to music, but I'm still debating whether to do each category around a favorite band, and connect that band to a theme/ tone I associate with them, or whether to choose one favorite band and arrange each category around one of their songs... But, as so many have said, there's still four months to go!!!

Although I always seem to fail at completing these challenges, I love to plan them so I am in again for 2015. I've had my theme and categories planned since last November and the books I plan to read are all chosen. Now I'm just waiting for the group to be created so I can post my challenge.

(I also have my categories planned and books chosen for 2016. Did I mention I like planning?)

>108 Her_Royal_Orangeness: I am truly amazed and I'm a planner by profession! I do well to plan next month and stick to it!

The more I think about it, the more I like the idea of reading at least 2015 pages in each category. I've got some long books in mind for next year. 900+ pages, such as the first of the Richard J. Evans World War 2 histories. Maybe even War and Peace.

If any of you happen to be interested in shaping next year's CATs, final voting is happening on this thread: http://www.librarything.com/topic/179634.

Sorry if you see this more than once; I wanted to post on several popular threads to give as many people an opportunity to vote as possible!

Every evening I check, thinking the 2015 group will finally have been created, but.....no. Sadness. :(

>109 clue: - Ha. I'm a bit OCD about planning things. :)

I think she's planning to make it once the CATs have been settled, and make the threads for the final planning of the CATs there. So a couple more days.

The earliest date I find on this year's is Aug 24.

There's a "Created on" note on the group home page.

2013 was August 23rd. 2012 was August 16. 2011 was August 11th.

It gets later every year.

...There's four months to spare. That's really not worth a mention of "later."

>112 Her_Royal_Orangeness: I keep doing the same thing. :)

I can't believe we do this to ourselves! We get all excited, discuss, vote, then discuss more, make out our lists for next year and then realize we still have months to wait. I drove myself nuts last year, but here I am back again.

Hey, I like working on my lists as early as the next bookworm, but personally I think all the big group plotting stuff is done way too early. Like you say, all the excitement is worked up...and then we sit there and wait months while it fizzles.

To be honest, I'm quite relieved the 2015 group hasn't been created yet. When it does start up, I'll get stressed about coming up a final plan for my own challenge and I'm miles away from that yet.

I enjoy the four months of discovering everyone's challenge ideas and discussing the ideas behind the creation of the challenges. Actually, I like that more than the reading/reviewing/etc. part of this group. Thus, my impatience. :)

Oh I love seeing what creative things everyone comes up with, I just don't think they need to start up so many months before the actual reading! heh.

One thing that I noticed, is that with such early planning, I've already shifted my focus away from the current year's reading. It's absolutely ridiculous, but I feel like with the onset of discussions for next year's agenda, that this year is "done." My motivation to push on seems to be evaporating and I've already entering the "end game" mentality. I wanted to part of the consensus building, but my enthusiasm for the challenge as a whole is already starting to fade away.

In years past, I always spent Thanksgiving week-end planning and sorting books for the next year, deciding what challenges to participate in, and shopping to fill the perceived gaps in my shelves! I think that once the thread for the 2015 CAT Challenge is up, I may put in 15 blanks and then decide how to brand each over that same week-end this year. By then, other challenges will already have been launched and I can co-ordinate across :-)

While I enjoy reading others plans, I often wait til the end of the year to start my thread.

>123 Tanya-dogearedcopy: That's a problem for me too.

Ah, the siren call of the new and the shiny....

It's different for me each year. Almost as soon as I decided on my 2013 theme, I had an epiphany for a theme that I ended up using for 2014. I had a glimpse of an idea for 2015 earlier this year, but now I'm not so sure and so I'm thinking that waiting till Thanksgiving is a good idea.

I've done the Category Challenge for six years and the first five I was always one of the first with my thread up and ready.
For this year I waited until November to create my thread so that my excitement wouldn't fizzle before the start of the year.

999, 10in10, 11in11 I was tight to the idea of the challenge but as the numbers have gotten larger, I've had to be a bit more creative to make the challenge not overwhelm me. Waiting to make my thread definitely helped me with the 2014 Challenge. So I will wait again until I have gotten all my "books shelved" for the challenge.

>127 dudes22: When I decided on 2013 I had some other ideas bouncing around that I ended up not going with, so I used one of those for this year, but I hadn't done more than pick the theme, really. At the end of the year when I chose 2014's categories and settled it all, I really loved an idea of someone else's and immediately got planning on how I could adapt it for my own. So I already had like 70% of my planning done for 2015's list when 2014 hadn't even started yet. :P

There are people here who have their 2016 planned out. I guess a reading challenge involving both numbers and categories attracts the planners and organizers! Who would have guessed?

I love seeing all the challenge threads going up as soon as the new forum is opened, but I don't put up my own challenge until that week between Christmas and the New Year, when there is a bit of quiet.

>127 dudes22: That's exactl how it was for me. I got my idea for 2014 almost as soon as I was done planning 2013 and when I was putting the finishing touches to my 2014 thread I had an idea for 2015. Unfortunately, that idea isn't working out well so I've come up with a new one but I'm having difficulty with some of the categories.

I guess I'm at the other end. I don't plan at all, let the categories grow out of what I read, although since I have been doing this since 2008 I now know what a few will be, and create space for those.

What I like is seeing where my reading is going. Sometimes I like to continue a trend, othertimes I decide that I have gotten too one-sided. I also keep a lot of statistics.

>132 MarthaJeanne: I choose my categories based on a) what I enjoy reading and know I will read a fair bit of, and b) things on my shelves that I've been neglecting and want to motivate myself to read more of. So, they do come from what I read, based on 30some years of experience ;), just, a bit more pre-molded. What's actually contained in the categories doesn't change much from year to year, aside of the couple things I've decided I want to make a bit more progress on from my shelves. I just like the fun of coming up with a theme and devising categories to match with both it & my reading. :)

I admire anyone who can plan meticulously. I have a theme in mind, but it has to be one that can sort of accommodate anything. Planning the actual books I will read would be a total waste of time - I would never stick to the plan. Even when I stack my current reads beside me, they quite often go through several modifications before I get to them. My categories won't be posted until late in the year for the same reason. And I'd like to see the final decision on CATs before posting the theme, just to avoid having to reconfigure to fit them in, as happened this year.

To clarify, I don't pick actual titles, except for the 24 selected for the TBR Challenge. When I say the things being neglected, it's specific subsets of books, not like a whole collection of individual titles that I collect. That would feel like a chore to me, while saying "I need to read more of these" is not at all. Any titles that I come up with for categories are merely potential ideas, definitely not set it stone. I could never pick out my entire year's reading ahead. I bounce around, I finish something and then go okay, that was heavier, so now I want to read something fun, or whatnot. I would hate to have titles plotted out, and I'd never stick to it.

I tried one year to plan my reading ahead of time by adding a list of potential books off of my TBR. What ended up happening was that was a sure way to make sure I did not read any of those books. And that happened again this year -- I made a list of books for my GeoCAT category and only read a few from that meticulously compiled list. Although I do like the making of a good list.

For the categories that I make specifically because I'm slacking in that area and want to make sure I knock out some that've been hanging around unread too long, those are what I tend to list a few potentials on, and I read at least one or two of them, though I may wind up veering off with others for the rest of it. But the ones that are just -this is the sort of stuff I read-, making a list just doesn't appeal at all. It's too rigid. That's why I like the challenge, there's a little structure, some guides to base around, but no forceful -this or else!- kind of deal. It's fun and takes a little effort to keep things in line, but isn't a tight irritating grip. :)

What a great few last messages - you guys crack me up!! My beau is coming in to town this weekend, so you'll have to wait a little longer for the new group. Yes, you do come in second place in some cases. :) But he leaves again Monday morning, so I'll try to have the new group up then (that's California time, btw).

I quite enjoy planning next year's categories about now, because I enjoy all the discussions about thread and themes and CATs and because it's a nice break from my current thread. Once it's up, I kinda forget about it until next year and that's when I go look what I had planned and (most likely) make some adjustments. I'm another one of you who can't pick books in advance - if I pick something particular too far ahead, it's almost guaranteed that I won't feel like reading that one. And, I can trick myself into not feeling too guilty about the books I haven't gotten to yet on Mt. TBR - there's always a potential spot for them next year... :)

The new group won't be up until TUESDAY?!? O my g....I'm going to die. (j/k) Oh well, at least I can stop obsessively checking for it.

Back in 2012 (I think) I inventoried all my owned-but-unread books. That was a list of (approximately) 500 books. Plus I bring home about 50 free books every year from my job (I work for a book distributor). Plus I am (occasionally) distracted by shiny new titles that catch my attention. So, I am quietly resigned to the fact that there are many many books on my TBR list that may well not be read until like 2023. Honestly, if I dwelt on the titles tucked away in shortage, I'd go a bit mad trying to decide what to read. Planning - and lists - are necessary in my life.

PS Have a lovely weekend Eva!

>138 -Eva-:

And, I can trick myself into not feeling too guilty about the books I haven't gotten to yet on Mt. TBR - there's always a potential spot for them next year... :)

Me too! I'm already saving books for next year's challenge :))

At the rate I buy and read books, I think I'm going to have to live until I'm about 115, assuming of course that I'll still be able to read that long. The challenges are supposed to help reduce my unread collection but instead too many book bullets find their target and I just can't resist buying them.

>139 Her_Royal_Orangeness: Roll on Tuesday, can't wait to see who's first to sign up!

Is there a good library in heaven? And web access, at least to LT? Maybe I can finish my TBRs there.

In theory, it's not so bad. Only 309 'to read' (Oh, yes, and the 10 I ordered yesterday.) but somehow I don't believe the number will be any lower a year from now. The books will just have changed a little.

>141 MarthaJeanne: If there isn't a library, it's not heaven.

And only 309 books on the TBR? Wow. I'm nearing 2000.

That's the count on LT. These are physical books on my shelf. There are certainly a bunch of second hand books that haven't made it in. Then the wish list on BD. Oh, and probably a few hundred I have downloaded from Gutenberg. I only enter them when I get around to reading them.

I'm not going to run out anytime soon.

>143 MarthaJeanne: Well, that explains it. My list is not related in any way to books I own or have downloaded. Just books I need to/want to read. Though it's a very, very incomplete list. Could probably easily be twice as long.

It's so interesting what people consider to be their TBR. It seems to be slightly different for everyone. For me, it's only the books physically on my bookshelf. Books downloaded to my ipad don't count until I read them, and only then they are entered into my library. But paper books do, being actual entities. It doesn't make sense, except to me. But it's my TBR, so I can do what I want.

Ah, I know a lot of people on LT have similar qualifications for their TBR and it just doesn't make sense to me. What do you call books you want to read but don't own? Why is there a difference between physical books and e-books? Argh, my poor head.

my TBR consists of books I own (physical or virtual). My wishlist is for books I want to read but don't own (yet). Including books I hope to get from the library.

>147 majkia: I do the same thing.

I don't really use the LT "extras" that often (I very rarely even enter books I've read) so that system doesn't work for me.

If I didn't enter books downloaded on my kindle, I'd totally forget I had them!

I had planned to read only from my tbr for the rest of the year, but now that the cat voting is going on, there are many I want to save for next year. It's so useless to plan because I always change my mind, but planning is such fun.

>145 RidgewayGirl: I'm with you, it's not "to be read" if I don't even have access to it!

>146 PawsforThought: I'd call that a wishlist. Or else a hope-to-read list, if one considers wishlist as only things they wish to own.

As for ebooks, personally I hardly even see them as books, and they're so simple to collect hundreds of in the blink of an eye, especially with sites like Gutenberg where they're all free and not on some limited time offer, but indefinitely available. So yeah, I also wouldn't count them on a list until having read them.

I have different TBR categories that I use in my tagging system. I have a "TBR-owned" tag for books that the physical books on my shelf and on my kindle that I haven't read (I tag kindle books as well so I can search TBR-owned, kindle for those). Then I have a separate "TBR" tag where I list books that I want to read but don't own. This has been a good system for me as I only recently have had the money and space to start storing up books to read later.

>151 .Monkey.: Well, as I plan to read them all, and not just hope to, I call it a TBR. If it's pencilled in in the near future (like group reads here on LT), it's an "upcoming" read. And yeah, a wishlist is for books I want to own.

And I don't read e-books so don't need to think about them.

>146 PawsforThought: That would be my wish list. As for ebooks, my first ereader was a kindle, and when I switched to an ipad, I lost my library, which was made up of free books mostly and added to without any real restraint. I'll download them when I'm ready to read them this time round!

>153 PawsforThought: But 2000 books? Are these all available from your library? Do you intend to purchase them all? I simply couldn't feasibly claim that I was going to read that many books I didn't own. I certainly want to, but I have no idea when or even if I will get to many of the ones that I would like to read.

>145 RidgewayGirl: Glad to know I'm not alone.

>153 PawsforThought: I specifically bought the iPad to read Gutenberg stuff. So many wonderful books I want to read that are free and easy to get this way, and hard and expensive if at all available without. I'd still rather read a book on paper, but hardly ever pay for eBooks. But I really don't want to count them even as TBR until I really read them. They don't really seem real to me.

>155 .Monkey.: No, they're not all available. And I only intend to buy the ones I like. Don't know how I'll get hold of the ones I can't borrow. I'll cross that bridge when I get to it. I will hopefully live a long life so there's still plenty of time. Though, obviously, if I dislike a book I won't finish it. I'm not a masochist. I suspect there is a fine line between my "will" and your "intend to".

>156 MarthaJeanne: I totally get why you read Gutenberg books on the Ipad. I just don't like reading off of screenat so I don't. Except for a few GNs (but there's less actual reading involved there.

>141 MarthaJeanne: I don't think I'll be going there so I better start reading a bit faster :))

What I call my tbr includes what I have on my shelf as plan to read + what I physically have + any unread ebooks I have. There are extra books "floating around" in my the back of my mind as possibilities but I consider those not "officially" on my tbr, just maybes.

I'm not sure how many I have in total. Using shelfari as my reference (as it's most up to date), online I have about 500, some of those include physical and ebooks I have, but it doesn't include them all. Most of what's there I hope to find via my library.

Speaking of my library, >157 PawsforThought: can you order books through interlibrary loan? I have a really good public library, so I don't often have to do this, but sometimes. I have (so far) only come across one book my library couldn't even find via ILL.

Oh, although I like planning, my planning is generally only from mid-month to the end of the month for the following month. Mostly that's because most of my shelfari groups don't announce the themes until then, so that's what I'm used to. So, even though most of the CATs (except Random, of course, which works well with the timing for my shelfari groups) are decided so early, I don't think too hard about them until a couple of weeks ahead of time.

My TBR stacks include most of the books, ebooks and audiobooks that I own since 2007, but have not yet read. Currently, that number is 501. I generally acquire about 100 titles a year in addition to borrowing 15-20 books from the library. I've stopped hoarding and started to give away most of my read books. I loosely plan what I'm going to read, but impulses always override my "best-laid plans!" :-D

>159 LibraryCin: Yes, but only non-fiction. From any library on the country, lots in the other Nordic countries and quite a few from elsewhere in the world. It does cost, though. (Not much if it's in Sweden, about $2-3, I think.)
My main public library is pretty good but there are lots of books they don't have. Some are available at the main library or university library in the next town over so if I'm going there for another reason or a friend is going there I'll borrow through them.
Oh, and the libraries in the municipality send books to and fro without any charge, and no matter the content. So do the libraries in the region the next town over is in.

I think a big difference regarding people's TBRs is the number of books people have at home, which is obviously connected to how many books you buy. I only ever buy books I've read and liked or books by an author I know I like. Everything else is library loans (or loans from friends/family). If I only included books I own myself, my TBR would be approximately 3 books.

>159 LibraryCin: Is Shelfari still a thing? I was using it to keep track of the books I'd read, but stopped when they insisted that I log in through amazon, rather than the perfectly good log in I'd had on Shelfari. I did like seeing the last big group of books I'd read, but it wasn't worth the hassle.

I was thinking about why I don't count ebooks on my TBR and I think it comes down to how they don't feel like real books to me. I can't loan them to a friend or donate them for a charity booksale. I don't really get to decide what to do with them. I do like reading them, especially late at night when my SO would rather be asleep or when I'm not home since the ipad mini is lighter and thinner than most paperbacks, but I'm not convinced that owning an ebook is as good as owning an a tangible, physical book.

>163 RidgewayGirl: I kind of figured they'd kill it off after acquiring GR, since Shelfari really never took off, and GR is huge. I'm actually kind of curious why they don't kill it off, it doesn't seem to make much sense to have both. Maybe they're waiting until they get GR more directly connected with amazon like Shelfari is? hmm.

>163 RidgewayGirl: Well, since you can't even use shelfari without signing into amazon, it would be hard to be more integrated with amazon. But would GR survive as an amazon adjunct?

Well it was why they bought it. To milk the info. I'm sure they want them to be more connected so that the records are more directly mixed with their own purchase/wishlist records and all. Besides, GR is pretty base-level as it is, most people don't bother to set editions of books even, they just click the title, click the stars, and they're done. I doubt the FB masses who use it would really care or even notice if it got tighter mingling.

I'm with most here, counting my TBR as the unread books we physically own. For me, I guess, the difference between those and a "Books I want to read" list, is that I have somehow already made a commitment to those books. Bringing a book home and never reading it in one's lifetime is hard to see as anything but a waste. There's a level of ambition there. Whereas a book on a wishlist can easily be taken off if I hear bad things about it from reliable sources, if my interest in the subject or genre fades away, and so on.

The balance between planning and spontaniety discussed earlier in the thread is always a bother to me. I like planning, even if many of my candidates get bumped along the way, and like how listed titles can give me a feeling for how interesting someone's thread might be for me. But I want to find a way to be more spontaneous next year too, as I've missed just picking up a book without having to think about which of my planned reads it'll end up replacing.

My idea for next year is to do cycles of 1+5 books, with the 1 being a brick, starting each cycle. For now, I think my solution to the planning/unplanned dilemma will be to keep categories broad, but letting each cycle have a theme (possibly relating to some overall theme for the year). That way I can plan my next six reads, without trying to make commitments for the whole year.

Can someone explain to me what is meant by a brick? I've seen several people mention now that certain books will be 'bricks' but I don't understand what they mean by it. I'm getting visions of very thick books (600+ pages) but I'm quite sure that's not what they mean :).

>168 Samantha_kathy: You're spot on! A brick is a very heavy/long book. A book about as thick as a brick used for building houses.

Wow, my flu-addled mind actually made sense of something. I'm amazed!

>170 Samantha_kathy: "Brick" stopped me too when I first came across the term - and I didn't even have the flu to blame :))

Hope you feel better soon!

My TBRs consist of the ARDs (Antique Reading Devices a.k.a. books) which are sitting on my shelves, audiobooks downloaded, and e-books on either my Nook or Kindle. Right now it is hovering around 420 just because when I read one I seem to add one or two. I try to make an effort to read about 75% off my shelves each year so that the TBRs don't explode. But between giveaways, ERs, ARC and gift cards, my TBRs will never shrink and I'm definitely covered for the WWBF when it hits.

If anyone is really interested in reading some of their TBRs, some of us work at it diligently each month in the ROOTs group. ROOT stands for READ YOUR OWN TOMES. So come on over and join us. Last year I actually managed to reduce my TBRs by 15 books! But it appears that TBRs are infectious and mine continue to spread - the disease is incurable - I'll just have to continue suffer through. :-)

>168 Samantha_kathy: >170 Samantha_kathy: LOL, When I saw "brick," I thought it was the title upon which the category's foundation was built! I guess in a way, I wasn't that far off, but still... :-)

>170 Samantha_kathy: I wish I could zap you a sample of thyme jelly fresh off my stove. Best thing in the world for anything that makes it hard to breathe.

>172 cyderry: I was very ambitious last year in regard to reading ROOTS; but out of the 48-50 titles that I had thought to get to, I read none of them and 12 other TBR books instead! I think I'll adjust my goals next year to something a bit more realistic ! ;-)

>163 RidgewayGirl: Yes, shelfari is still around (though amazon has taken all the employees away and does not seem to be supporting it anymore; sadly, bugs are going unfixed no matter how many people complain to them. We're pretty sure they just want everyone on GR, so they only have to maintain one site).

I never did switch to an Amazon login. There is still a link to log in the "old" way if you were a member before Amazon bought it. I've been there since early 2008, so I've met a lot of people there, and it's hard to give up. I'm sure I'll be one of the last die-hards over there!

Obviously, though, I've backed up my information in a few places, including here. I don't like GR, though. I am also at leafmarks, which is fairly new.

>164 .Monkey.: Oh, they're ignoring shelfari. I'm sure they want us to go.

>165 RidgewayGirl: If you were a member before amazon bought it, there is still a link you can use to log in without going through amazon, which is the way I continue to login.

>176 LibraryCin: I just liked seeing the covers of books I'd finished. I could recreate that here with a small amount of effort. ; )

>172 cyderry: Thanks for the suggestion. I might have to take a look at the ROOTs group. ('Cause I need more groups, between here, shelfari and now leafmarks!!! Sigh...)

>179 RidgewayGirl: Yes, in addition to the people connection and some groups over there I love, I really do like the shelfari shelf displays.

Whohoo! I just had a great idea about how to turn my theme that was causing me grief into one that will work much better - all the while not straying very far from the original concept. I'm so glad! And relieved. It was causing me quite a lot of stress.
Now I just have to weed out a few categories (and decide who many I'm going to go with).

When I read discussions about how many TBRs members have I feel like such a whimp because I don't count mine and don't really want to face how many there are. The last couple of weeks I've been going through my bookcases and floor stacks looking for books to donate to the library's "mostly non-fiction" sale. I didn't get through all that I have but made a pretty good dent because when I looked at a book I hadn't read I asked myself if I really thought I would ever read it. Even checked reviews out on some of them. I ended up donating 84 to the sale and I'd say I had read about 60 of those. One day while I was sitting among the piles a friend called and asked what I was doing. She's a life long reader too and has all the book related diseases we do. It was so nice to be able to say "playing with my books" and have someone get that and in fact be jealous! I'm in the ROOTS group, love it, and have a goal of 35 a year. I need to increase that but don't know that I will. As for planning, mine is super simple, I don't use a theme, just categories. That works better for me.

>183 clue: I don't count mine either. I have lots of filled bookshelves upstairs and downstairs. I'd estimate at least a thousand but I have no idea.

Mine aren't counted either. Whenever I eventually get all my books entered here then I'd have a number, as they're all obviously in the owned & unread collection. But I've still got probably around a hundred or so uncatalogued, couldn't say for sure, of course, or else I'd know the number! :P

Oh joy - the 2015 challenge group is up and running. :) Come on over, planners, and stake your claims. )

>186 -Eva-: Thanks, I am member #2.

>187 lindapanzo:: show off :)

>187 lindapanzo: >188 majkia: Yeah, I wasn't surprised!

Alas, I have an elaborate list of all of my projected categories. Sitting on my desk at work. Sigh.

>190 lindapanzo:
Well, happy Labor Day... :)

LOL Linda.

Hooray! So much earlier in the day than I thought it would be. I'm all set up and ready to go.

I've joined the new group but I won't be staking my claim and creating a thread for a while yet. Still have some honing to do regarding the challenge.

Yee haw!! I'll set up my 2015 thread shortly. At least the basics; I'm on vacation and forgot to copy over my Word document with all of the category pictures in it.

>194 PawsforThought: So do I, but that didn't stop me! bahaha. I do have my ideas mostly settled, but I still need to figure out one more category, and take photos of the stuff I don't already have photos of. Which will probably wind up being most, so that I can get them exactly how I want, with having a specific purpose for them, haha.

>196 .Monkey.: I've settled on a theme and number of categories. Not quite settled what the categories will be. Most of them, but there are a few concerns left. I may need to be a little inventive.
And I need to set aside some space for the bingo squares and CATs, and I can't be bothered to do it all before I've settled everything and the discussions about the CATs are underway.

>191 -Eva-: One thing about lists...they can be recreated.

Thanks for setting up this group, once again.

I've joined but still have work to do on my challenge

>195 rabbitprincess: Word document?? I thought you couldn't copy/paste from a Word document into an LT thread as some programming would affect the outcome. I'd appreciate any advice about how to do it.

>200 VivienneR: How do you mean? When you paste things in the text box here it'll be made plaintext, so no formatting could copy over to mess with things...

>200 VivienneR: -- when I set up the July GeoCAT thread I used a word document I had created earlier. I just copied and pasted. I don't remember if I put the brackets for touchstones in the original word document or if I added them here at LT. I didn't have any problems. Oh, but it was actually an Apple Works document and not MS Word. Maybe that makes a difference.

Re: word into LT - I copy Word into LT sometimes. HTML coding works (bold, italic, etc.), the touchstones sometimes work. I usually don't put the touchstones in until I copy into LT. YMMV.

yes, I copy word docs into LT as well.

>201 .Monkey.:, >202 VioletBramble:, >203 Nickelini:, >204 majkia: Thank you all! 'Way back when I first joined LT someone advised not to paste from a Word doc as the Word programming would mess up the post. I've followed that advice all these years. I'm really happy to hear I'm wrong. Can't wait to try it out!

>205 VivienneR: Yeah, the only potential issue I'm aware of is that anything you've bolded, underlined, or italicized in Word will appear as plain text in LT.

>206 christina_reads: Well, that's easily fixed. I feel like I've just come out of the dark ages and entered modern times :))

BTW, I've been using Stickies until now. They work, but are limited.

>205 VivienneR: Maybe they were confused. It is bad to c&p stuff from Word into a rich-text editor, it will paste hidden things that do wonky stuff, because it retains all the formatting (both visible and the under the hood sort). But you can always always always paste anything into a plaintext field, because it'll strip out any formatting that might've been hiding out.

>208 .Monkey.: That was exactly the reasoning. Of course I should have tried it out - even if I'd thought about it more I'd have realized the information was askew. Thanks, pmm.

No problem :) Oh, and if you ever do want to paste unformatted into a richtext thing or you're not sure about it, you can always copy from Word, and paste into Notepad (or any other simple plaintext editor like that), and then c&p once more, from that. That'll strip out any hidden formatting before it gets to the text field of the site. :)

You can use googledocs (which I guess is now called Google Drive) instead of Word, or put your Word doc into something like dropbox....if you do this your documents are accessible via internet rather than your hard drive. Just an FYI for those of you who couldn't get your info when you wanted to use it to post your challenge.

Not that book challenges are anything private, but I'd never put any of my documents into google's data collection.

I tried the Word c&p but have come to the conclusion that Stickies (on my Mac) are actually more convenient.

>213 VivienneR: If I'm just writing a comment, no matter how long it is, I just type straight into the message box. If I'm writing something like a thread opener and challenge info (where I need to write and re-write and edit several times over), I just use TextEdit (Mac).

>214 PawsforThought: I type directly into the message box too but I'm inclined to hit "post message" too quickly. I often get a laugh at my strange or misleading wording. Thank goodness for the Edit button.

>215 VivienneR: Yes, thank goodness. I edit all the time. I know other people make note of when and why they edit posts but I don't. It's always because of a typo so I can't be bothered.

On a long one I often save a few times while writting. I don't want to lose everything because of some foolishness.

How big is the general interest in group reads for 2015? Obviously, any discussion about what those reads might be should go in the 2015 group but I was just curious about how people feel. Does anyone have any books they'd like to propose as group reads? If so, maybe start up a thread over in 2015 for discussions...

218> I thought of one but I forget what it was. But yes, I'd be interested in Group Reads even though I have an iffy record on completing them.

"Best laid plans" and all that, I don't often wind up getting to them even when one comes along that I do want to join in with. I will watch the thread though, and see what comes up.

I'm hoping some will match my categories. That way I have more incentive to read. I generally do start reading group reads but haven't been able to finish for various reasons. Hoping that'll change.

I think it's related to my huge distaste for timeframe-reading. Choosing a book in October to read in July... it just doesn't normally work out for me. I love to discuss my reading with others, as we all obviously do :P, but trying to schedule reading, I just don't like it; it almost never winds up working out, especially for more than 6mos into the year, when I'm trying to focus on my lacking categories and getting all my TBR Challenge titles in and all that.

I was really happy with several books that I read as part of group reads this year. One or two a month don't interfere with my other reading.

If people do want to suggest or discuss specific books for group reads, there's a thread over at the 2015 challenge: http://www.librarything.com/topic/180112.

Wow, I was just thinking about what I was going to read in 2015, and wandered over here (not to the CAT discussion place - too much to catch up on!) to join in. Lots of thinking going on! :)

I've been diligently doing a "traditional" category challenge since I joined in 2008, and while I usually read around 150 books a year, I don't know if I can do 225 books next year. (I may get there this year, though, and it's strictly due to lots of time spent sitting and waiting in hospitals - I do not recommend this strategy.)

Since I'm already in two real-life book groups, the reading for them is always a category, and if I do decide to go to grad school next year, that will be a category too. And of course, there's always ROOTs. And Series. Hmmm. What do you guys think about doing 15 categories with no real goal for each category? Whatever I end up with will be a challenge, that's for sure, so I'm not concerned about lopsided categories, etc.

I'm always impressed and inspired by everyone else's categories, so maybe I should browse the 2015 group for a bit before plonking things down? Like someone said above, I'm a "low-stakes planner" for this since life has been throwing lots of crap at me lately. This is the fun part of my life, and some loose planning is plenty for me. :)

Also, thank you to whomever gave direction for LT's Folly - tried to putz around and find it a few days ago and just couldn't get there. :)

What do you guys think about doing 15 categories with no real goal for each category?

I tried that this year, with 14 categories but no goals in the categories, but found that I needed the push a goal gives me. So I've decided to go for a minimum of 2 books in each category this time. (I'll also have 12 categories, randomly picked each month from a list of 15, so even the last category will be a suprise, but that's another story)

I've finally come up with a theme. It'll be a little contorted fitting books in, but after several years of the Category Challenge, I'm going to go exceedingly broad with my categories.

broad and an open number of books is easiest for me. Maybe a minimum number but I always seem to fill up one category or two far more than the others.

I like the idea of minimum numbers that are doable without in the context of real life. That way, you get that great 'I did it feeling' when you pass the mark and it becomes fun when you add surplus books to the completed categories. I did that one or two challenges ago and it was a stress free way to approach the challenge.

>229 lkernagh: For me, making the numbers too low would invalidate the challenge. If it's not going to take real effort to meet the minimums, why even bother putting them? Not knocking anyone else's preferences at all, obviously everyone should do what works best for them! Just for me that wouldn't work at all.

225> What about setting the goal for different categories at either 1 or 5 with the understanding that you might go over?

I had a minimum amount my first year (4+1) and then tried 2 this year but because of the terrible book slump I'm in, I've decided not to have any minimum for next year. I completely understand those who need a certain target and I wish I could do that again (I used to be able to) but it's just not feasible for me right now. It'll stress me out and make me feel bad about not reading enough, which will make me less inclined to read anything and then the spiral will keep going.

>233 PawsforThought: I get that. I'm annoyed with myself when I fail challenges, but it's really because I know I could have finished them had I put in the effort, not taken plenty of time for slacking off and such. I make my goals realistically attainable but where I have to put in the effort to do so. If I'd put numbers that I just didn't hit while putting forth a fair bit of effort, I think I wouldn't really be bothered, because I'd just know I worked at it and the numbers were just a wee bit too high, and so would adjust for next time. So it's not so much the numbers themselves for me as whether or not I did as much as I could & should have. :)

>234 .Monkey.: I think for me no matter what number I put down it'd be hard. I'm the same as you and it's the fact that I know I can do it if I try hard, but I just can't make myself do it. I can read a book a day if I'm on a roll. That knowledge is making me have a very guilty conscience and any number I put down would just remind me of that.

I've decided to use a page count of 2015 next year for each category. Having slogged thru a few "epics" this year, it seems to be a fairer way to track my reading.

Paws, I understand book guilt. I've also fallen into the trap of wanting to reach certain numbers and so purposely choosing shorter and less challenging books to reach my goals. I reassessed after that year (in which I read more books than ever before) and decided it was more important for me to read more substantial books. Now it's a mix and I've come up with a number that is doable, but not a given -- last year I missed by two books.

But reading slumps are the worst. I'm just coming out of one. It took a quieter house, a calmer mind and an excellent mystery novel of exactly the right sort (thanks, LittleTaiko!).

I have taken to counting the bricks as two books. I didn't quite go as far as counting Mists of Avalon (1000 pages) as three books. But I thought about it. I'm now at 13 books in the Arthurian fiction category.

Reading, unless you are doing it for education or for work, should be FUN. Do what makes you feel good and makes you happy.

>239 majkia: Amen!

>237 RidgewayGirl: - Glad to help! I've been in a bit of a slump all year and that book helped.

It is a fine balance between challenge and not killing yourself to read x number of books. So far five in each category stretches me in a realistic way. I definitely have become a more well rounded reader since joining this challenge.

Thanks for all of the input, guys. I think I may do a 5-book minimum for each category. That way some categories will be a bit of a stretch (probably the started but not finished category, mostly), but others will be over with before I even realize it.

Love this group!!!