Take It or Leave It Challenge - July 2010

(continued from here)

For those new to this challenge: More info and monthly index can be found in post #1 of this thread.
Simple directions for posting to the wiki can be found at the bottom of each month's wiki page.


...logo by cyderry

Man, oh, man! Have I been making this TIOLI challenge too easy for you!! This will change. Your challenge for the July 2010 TIOLI is to Read a book with an ISBN ending with the digit 4. Why? I like that number. It was my dad’s lucky number. Now that I’ve effectively eliminated about 90% of your TBR pile, I want to see what you come up with! This month, rather than you picking the book to be read, you might find that your book is going to choose itself! :)

You’ll notice that some books have two sets of ISBNs (a 10-digit number and a 13-digit number). Each might end in a different digit. If at least one of them ends in a “4”, you’re good to go. If you want to learn more about the ISBN numbering system, have a look here on wikipedia. Addendum (6/26/10): If you can pull up your book by putting the ISBN into the Search box on the Add Books page of LibraryThing, it counts for the challenge whether or not it is printed in the book. The reason for this is that some books do have both a 13-digit and a 10-digit ISBN, but the 10-digit ISBN may no longer be printed in newer copies of the book.

To help you find “digit 4 books”, just keep an eye on the wiki as this challenge fills up. Those should be good suggestions for others. Just think of this as a scavenger hunt. I hope you enjoy the book you finally find!!

This is how you should list your book choice on the wiki:
A Good Place for the Night – Savyon Liebrecht – SqueakyChu (9780892553204)

If you’re having difficulty finding books to fit this challenge, check out some of these:

Books I've read and recommend:
Beach Music - Pat Conroy (0553574574)
Don't Eat This Book - Morgan Spurlock (0739462954)

Books I've not yet read:
Blindness – Jose Saramago (0156007754)
It Takes a Village – Hillary Rodham Clinton (0684818434)
NP - Banana Yoshimoto (0671898264)
Rash – Pete Hautman (0689868014)
White Apples – Jonathan Carroll (0765303884)

Happy hunting… and have fun!!

Index of July Challenges:*

1. A Book With an ISBN Ending in "4"
2. A Book about Making a Difference
3: A Book about Books
4: A Book by One of The New Yorker's 20 Under 40 Authors
5. A Book in a New-To-You Medium (i.e. audiobook, digital book)
6. An Orange Prize Longlist, Shortlist, Winner or New Writer Award
7. A Book with a Body Part in the Title
8. A Book with a Cooking Theme
9. A Book with "day" or "night" in the Title
10. A Book about a Private Investigator
11. A Book with Two Adjacent Title Words Starting with the Same Letter
12. A Book You Heard of from an LT member
13. A Book with the Word "Summer" in the Title

*You may want to bookmark the wiki page for easy access.

It is only June 25th and the July challenge is up already? Quick, someone take Madeline's temperature!

Do you know that it was 97 degrees here in Maryland yesterday?! I do have a fever, Stacia!

ETA: People get so sad when they have to remove a book from the wiki that I now see the advantages of posting the challenge early. Okay, folks, (as my husband would say), "You win!" :D

ETA2: The June (page 2) thread was getting too long, and I feared the Thread Police!!! Ha!

Ooh, I wasn't even expecting the new TIOLI to be posted right now! Fortunately I seem to live on LT anyway.

My challenge for this month is to read a book about making a difference. I'll be spending ten days at a Girl Guide camp (celebrating the 100th anniversary of Guiding, incidentally), so this seemed appropriate. "Working to change the world" is a big part of Guiding, contrary to the common idea that it's all about selling cookies ;). I'd recommend that anyone who's interested take a look at the website of the World Association of Girl Guides at Girl Scouts to get a sense of what the organization is really about.

Anyway, after that lengthy introduction, here are some book suggestions:

Half the Sky - I'll be reading this one; the focus on women seems appropriate, plus I already started the book this month! It's a well-written and important book, but the subject matter can make it a bit difficult to read at times.

Mountains Beyond Mountains
Three Cups of Tea
Race Against Time

Oooh! That's a nice challenge, Zoe! I'm going to have to move my "Digit 4" book selection into your challenge and choose another book for my own challenge. Ha!

Three Cups of Tea, although a bit lengthy, is a wonderful read if only to see how one man of relatively modest means had an idea that mushroomed into something quite beautify and worthy. I hear that Greg Mortenson's second book, Stones into Schools, is even better.

Please come back to this thread later, Zoe, to share some of your experiences at the Girl Guide camp. Okay? Think of that as promoting your TIOLI challenge. :)

Zoe did a *great* introduction to her challenge in message #5. I challenge all of you who post your own challenges to write up a description of your challenge here on the main thread. That should further entice people to join you in your reading adventures.

Scouting is a wonderful organization. Both of my boys were Boy Scouts as youngsters. My daughter refused to join the Brownies because the troop leader at that time didn't like camping and only did things like nutrition, home arts, etc. Can you believe that?!

A fond memory of picking up our two boys at scout camp one summer: The younger of the two brothers runs to greet my husband and me...holding a live snake dangling from his hand! Yikes!! :)

I will definitely come back and tell all about the camp to anyone who cares to listen :D. I'm glad you liked my introduction. Also, it's funny that the book you chose ending in 4 turned out to fit into my challenge!

Hearing about troop leaders who don't like camping always makes me sad. One of my friends here in New York was a Girl Scout and has still never slept in a tent in her life!

I totally agreed with my daughter and let her slip out of this Brownie troop with no problem. It made me sad, though. I wish I could have put her into her brothers' Boy Scout Troop.

Girls actually are allowed to join Boy Scouts now, at least in Canada. I can't quite decide what I think about that.

edit: I think they're now calling it just Scouts.

I like the randomness of choosing a book or two with an ISBN ending in "4." I didn't have to go too far into the TBR stacks to find my copy of Blindness which I've been wanting to read because of the recommendations here on LT and to commemorate Saramago's recent death.

I also found A Girl Named Zippy (#0-7679-1505-4) by Haven Kimmel. This looks like a fun memoir of an author who actually claims to have had a happy childhood!

When I typed in the ISBN, I got a flashback to working in an independent bookstore where we had to type in the 10-digit number of every individual book purchased as a way to track inventory. What a nightmare!

wahoo, I have 7 books on my TBR list with an ISBN ending in the number 4. Two of which I will be reading for other group reads -- Freedom (July's Time theme) and The Once and Future King

I've got one to add!

Read a book about books

We're a community of readers, and without books, that binding activity is very much harder. Our passions would be for scrolls, or codices, or lumpy clay tablets that look like an Arthur Murray footwork chart made for chickens.

So let's spend the long month of July celebrating our mental independence by reading about the vehicle of it:

A Gentle Madness
Slightly Foxed But Still DEsirable
The Book on the Bookshelf
Biblioholism

Or for the fiction addicts (like me):

The Shadow of the Wind
Salamander
The Club Dumas
The Last Dickens -- see? I even typed that name without retching!
The Book of Lost Things
The History of Love

You get the idea! I am ready to go with A Gentle Madness, myself. And you?

Ooh, I like your suggestion Richard - I actually had an idea a bit like it but I've had several ideas.

I'll write my suggestion up properly this evening but my suggestion is:

Down these mean streets....

Books about PIs - fiction and non fiction - I'll post some names and online reference sources this evening.

>15 elkiedee: I'm in, Luci! I like that one a lot!

Madeline...I've posted my challenge on the wiki, and I think I did it right, but I have an alpha-order question...does "A Gentle Madness" have to be alpha under "G"? In this case, "A" is really the important word in the title.

...?...

My challenge will be to Read a Book from one of The New Yorker's 20 Under 40 Authors. The authors are:

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, 32;
Chris Adrian, 39;
Daniel Alarcon, 33;
David Bezmozgis, 37;
Sarah Shun-lien Bynum, 38;
Joshua Ferris, 35;
Jonathan Safran Foer, 33;
Nell Freudenberger, 35;
Rivka Galchen, 34;
Nicole Krauss, 35;
Yiyun Li, 37;
Dinaw Mengestu, 31;
PhilippMeyer, 36;
C. E. Morgan, 33;
Téa Obreht, 24;
ZZ Packer, 37;
Karen Russell, 28
Salvatore Scibona, 35
Gary Shteyngart, 37
Wells Tower, 37

This list from Amazon lists most, if not all, of the books by these authors.

My choice for the month will be The Vagrants by Yiyun Li.

I know others will be doing/discussing Orange July anyway, and I intend to, but I wondered if we could include Orange July (winners, nominees or short/longlisted books for the Orange Prize - I also plan to read the Orange New Writers winner next month). I don't want to tread on any toes but I have so many books under this category I'd like to read.

Aaarrgh too many books I want to read already, and I haven't even studied ISBN nos on my library books and others getting really noisy in their shouting at me to be read. I have Karen Russell's book with a fab title, and Joshua Ferris' first novel. I've read Adichie's 3 books, and I will read all your reviews on the others and then see what I fancy/can find, I think.

>18 elkiedee: I was going to ask the same exact thing. Go ahead and put it on the wiki. I've got my Orange reads already lined up.

And for Darryl's challenge I have The End by Salvatore Scibona on my shelf so I'll read that. I'll have to wait til I get home later today to see what I have of ISBNs ending in 4.

> 13

wahoo, I have 7 books on my TBR list with an ISBN ending in the number 4.

July's challenge was too easy for goddesspt2. I'll have to think of something even harder next month! ;)

#18: Definitely we should! I assumed that Jill (mrstreme) would post this challenge, but I suppose that anyone could. I'm planning to read the two winners, The Boy Next Door by Irene Sabatini (Orange Award for New Writers) and The Lacuna by Barbara Kingsolver (Orange Prize for Fiction).

> 16

I was outvoted in this one. The majority of challengers didn't want "A" to be part of the book title when alphabetizing. Since I don't know the important of the "A" in the title, I shall put your question to a vote.

> 18

You make the call. You put on the wiki whatever challenge you would like. You do *not* need to ask for permission to post it. If you're really unsure as to whether or not to post a challenge, simply ask a poll* question.

The idea of these challenges is that you're reading a book within a certain category, and you're simply challenging others to join you (with the hope that many of your followers will decide to read the same book(s).

*To post a poll, do this, but substitute pointed brackets (those on top of the comma and period keys) for the curlicue brackets:

{vote}Shall I include (whatever) in the wiki for July?{/vote}

So many great challenges already...

*Sigh*

#24: You're killing me, Madeline; I've only found one book that meets your challenge so far!

Still searching...

I have a pretty big TBR list and one of the columns I have in my view is the ISBN number, so I was able to slug down the list quickly to see what ended in a '4'

Success! One of the books I ordered from Amazon yesterday, Landscape with Dog and Other Stories by Ersi Sotiropoulos, has an ISBN 10 number of 1566567734. I'm reading it for the July Reading Globally theme read (Greece), and Akeela reviewed it for issue 3 of Belletrista.

*happy dance*

>27 dsstukes: Brilliant idea about showing the ISBN column in your catalogue!

I notice that my copy of Lirael has an ISBN ending in 4. I actually finished reading it a couple of days ago, but others might be interested ;)

I've found the perfect book for the ISBN challenge: The French Blue, which I received for review last month and haven't yet gotten around to reading.

#27 I tried that - and quickly found out that I haven't been as accurate as I thought I'd been when I entered books. None of the ones I picked out from the list actually have ISBNs ending in 4 on the edition I have.

On the other hand, I've found several others that end in 4 on my copy, but something else in my catalogue.

> 26

#24: You're killing me, Madeline; I've only found one book that meets your challenge so far

Ha! It seems as if I found the perfect challenge for Darryl (who is known at LT for his l-o-n-g list of intriguing books)! :)

*curious as to what that one book is*

ETA: Found your book on message # 28.

> 27

one of the columns I have in my view is the ISBN number

I agree with Zoe that this idea is excellent. I'd never even thought of that myself.

*runs to change her columns*

I love the ISBN number challenge!

If anyone wants to “cheat” and quickly find out what 4 books they have listed in LT, you can do this:

Click the More tab at the top right of this (or any LT) screen
On the right side of the page, under "Import or Export Your Data to LibraryThing" (you may have to scroll to see this) click Export as CSV.
Save the CSV file.
Open the CSV file in Excel.
(You will see that your ISBNs are in Column G, and that they begin and end with brackets)
Now, go to an empty cell in Row 2 (I used Column P, cell P2). Enter this formula in the Cell =RIGHT(G2,2)
The value of Column P will now be two characters: the last digit of the ISBN and the closing bracket from Column G.
Copy Cell P2 to all of the other cells in Column P (this will copy the formula and adjust it automatically for each row. You can copy and paste in bulk; you do not need to paste to one cell at a time).
Finally, select all of the columns and rows with data in them and then choose Data --- Sort.
Choose to Sort by Column P.
Click OK.
Now your library is be sorted in order by the last digit of your ISBN, so all of the 4s are grouped together.

> 31

On the other hand, I've found several others that end in 4 on my copy, but something else in my catalogue.

Use the number on your copy.

#32: Actually, that wasn't the book. The only one I've found here so far is Wonder by Hugo Claus, an Archipelago Book that I'm planning to read sometime this year.

A> I've created a category for all the challenges - see here.
B> I've updated the challenge summary page (Summary page). Though I did not do the Popular Book or Fun Facts sections for May-June.
C>I've added a new challenge -

In honor of the fact that I have actually acquired a digital reader when I thought I would never do so:
Challenge #5: Read a book in a new medium to you (i.e, audiobook, digital book) - started by MikeBriggs

Since I seem to be on a rather odd rampage through books at the moment, I do not know what I will have left to actually put down for July, so I will put off, for a moment, actually adding a book. Though I will probably put down one of the Jane Austen books.

hmm. Ok, I put in three Jane Austen's that I have on my nook.

> 34

Thanks, ty1997, for taking the time to post the explicit directions for exporting a booklist to a spreadsheet. I actually took the time to learn how to do it, and it worked! (There you go, Darryl... Hint! Hint!)

>36 kidzdoc:

I'm planning to read sometime this year.

...or sometime in July? ;)

>37 MikeBriggs: Thanks for updating the summary!

And here's a question about the "new to you" medium:I finally got an e-reader last month, and I still consider it new to me even though I've read one book on it so far. I think I'd consider "new to you" any format that you've used for fewer than 5 books so far.

I have added Atlas Shrugged as the ISBN ends in 4. Hopefully none of you remember how many months in a row this book has shown up on the TIOLI wiki under some appropriate category. I have a plane trip so if I take just Atlas Shrugged (and maybe only a few others) then I should be able to finish this book that I enjoy every time I sit down to read it, but I struggle to get myself to pick it up. (Or I'll finish all the other things I take, plus buy something in the airport store, and I'll find a way to get Atlas Shrugged into the August TIOLI challenge :-)

Now, off to find something to read for Orange July.

OK I couldn't wait any longer, I added an Orange Prize Challenge in honor of Jill's Orange July.

I'm going to start with The Lizard Cage by Karen Connelly.

Thanks, Bonnie! (Where's Jill when we need her?)

#35 Thanks. That's what I figured.

> 37

Very nice, Mike! Thanks so much for doing this.

I added Challenge #7: Read a book with a body part in the title. Some examples:

White Teeth by Zadie Smith
The Clothes on Their Backs by Linda Grant
The Other Hand by Chris Cleave (aka Little Bee - you'd have to read the UK version obviously!
The Hearts of Horses by Molly Gloss

Well, I've been adding free electronic books like crazy, but I finally actually bought one now. Next book in a series. Would have cost me $20 new and roughly that used (for some reason; well when I last looked). Spent a whole $2.97 and added that book to the fifth challenge (and moved two of them from there to the ISBN challenge when I noticed they ended in 4).

Hmmm. I'm up to 17 possibles so far. I may have to get a bit ruthless with my planned reads.

The Orange challenge is for books from any year, not just this year's winner/nominees, right?

I added the Culinary Month Challenge - anything related to food!

50> I like to eat my books after I read them. Does that count?

My first TIOLI ever will be to Read a book with an ISBN ending with the digit 4: Smilla's Sense of Snow (9029040874). Bear with me...

Welcome to the TIOLI Challenge. Smilla's Sense of Snow was an interesting read from what I remember (it's been some years).

I added two more. An Orange 2002 winner, Bel Canto by Ann Patchett, and Half of a Yellow Sun by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie under the 20 under 40 category (although that was also the 2007 Orange winner.

#49: The Orange challenge is for books from any year, not just this year's winner/nominees, right?

Right.

> 52

Hi, JustJoey4!

So glad to welcome you to the TIOLI challenges!!

I've added 2 YA books to the ISBN challenge - Helen Dunmore's Going to Egypt and Marcus Sedgwick's Blood Red Snow White. I'll also be adding a book to the Orange July challenge probably The Lacuna especially if there is going to be a group read of it.

Several interesting challenges for July, though I'm still finishing up June.

I'm adding my own challenge: in honor of the long days and hot nights of summer, read a book with "day" or "night" in the title. Of course, a book with both would count, too.

I am doing a challenge for July called 'Walla Walla: An Alliterative Title.' The book must have at least 2 consective words beginning with the same letter. Here are the books I will be reading for sure:

Freedom from Fear by David M. Kennedy
A Beautiful Blue Death by Charles Finch
Sea Strike by James H. Cobb

My challenge again, since it seems to have been overlooked:

Down these mean streets:

Read a book (fiction or non-fiction) about a private investigator. I have hundreds of PI novels and several non-fiction books I want to read, but two I might actally pick up next month are:

Sara Paretsky, Hardball
Laura Lippman, No Good Deeds

You could read the classics - Raymond Chandler - about gay/lesbian PIs, PIs around the world, historical PI novels, black PIs - there are lots of possibilities.

I just found this rearranging my bookshelves to accommodate a couple of new books:

Spygirl by Amy Gray

Val McDermid looked at real life women PIs in A Suitable Job for a Woman which I really enjoyed a few years ago

A website dedicated to PI fiction is:

http://www.thrillingdetective.com/

Madeline, can you add a link to the wiki in the first post? (Unless I'm just going blind and it already exists....)

> 59

elkiedee, your challenge hasn't been overlooked at all. We're waiting for *you* to add it! :)

Yes, you *can* do it. Easy directions are on the bottom of the wiki page itself.

> 60

Will do.

Thanks!

Done!

>64 SqueakyChu: Thank you :)

Stasia, your new challenge will conveniently fit my "As Have It" book, on the off chance that that one doesn't get completed this month... ;)

>57 lindapanzo: Linda, do days of the week count as "day"?

>61 SqueakyChu: OK, I've done it.

> 66

I think they should count as they have the embedded word "day" within the name of the day of the week.

Linda?

> 67

OK, I've done it.

Hooray for elkiedee!!

> 65

You're welcome.

#66 Absolutely. Ann Purser's Terror on Tuesday would count, for instance.

I'm aware of at least two with both day and night, one by Robert Parker and one by Virginia Woolf.

I added Night Train to Lisbon to Linda's Night and Day challenge, Grave Goods, Tales of the Seven Seas, and Fables, Volume 4: March of the Wooden Soldiers to Madeline's challenge, and Death Claims to Luci's challenge.

That is it for now, but I know I will be adding some to Richard's and Darryl's challenges at some point plus others I am sure.

For Zoe's "making a difference" challenge, there's an excellent book I read this year that would fit within that category, I believe. It is Wendy Smith's Give a Little, which talks about how donating even a small amount can change the world.

Is there a specific date that this thread gets posted? I know there are a few months when I would have liked to have posted a challenge, but when we're up to 10 or so already, I think it's probably overkill.

Anyway -- here are my entries for this month:

For the ISBN Challenge: The Taste of Sorrow by Jude Morgan -- a novel about the Brontes.
For Making a Difference: Three Cups of Tea by Greg Mortenson
For the Cooking Challenge: The Cookbook Collector by Allegra Goodman
For Books about Books: The Historian by Elizabeth Kostova (joining someone else on that one.)
Dropped: Worse than War by Goldhagen, as it's not back to back alliteration...

I'll probably squeeze in a private investigator and maybe a body part, as well... I may read Random Violence, a crime novel by a new South African writer, Jassy Mackenzie, for the former.

#74: Suz, I hate to break it to you but you cannot use Worse than War for the alliterative challenge - it has to be 2 or more consecutive words beginning with the same letter (see message 58).

Oh nuts... Out it goes.

Sorry, Suz!

Overwhelmed by challenges!

I've added a bunch of books to the Orange July challenge that I'd been saving up and Half of a Yellow Sun by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie and Then We Came to the End by Joshua Ferris to Darryl's New Yorker challenge.

I need to think some more about the other challenges!

Also added Ursula, Under to Stasia's alliterative challenge.

#59 Luci - for your PI challenge, does the book need to be about a proper PI rather than an amateur detective? I think I will add The Big Sleep by Chandler anyway but I was wondering if someone like Cadfael would count?

Actually I just followed the link you gave and I think that answers my question - sorry!

"This site is for private eyes, and other tough guys and gals who make trouble their business. It's not about cops, plucky librarians, nosey old spinsters or talking cats..."

:-)

#1 "You’ll notice that some books have two sets of ISBNs (a 10-digit number and a 13-digit number). Each might end in a different digit. If at least one of them ends in a “4”, you’re good to go."

My book has a 13 digit ISBN ending in 7 and the corresponding 10 digit ISBN ends in 4 but the 10 digit ISBN isn't printed on the book - does it still count?

This is hard! LibraryThing lists the 10 digit ISBN under my books (even though it's entered as the 13 digit) so I'm coming up with lots of false positives this way!

Added a dozen books in various categories so far, with 19 more in reserve as additional or replacement titles. I've managed to get quite a variety in there, and several from the very tippy-top of the TBR, so even if I read nothing but TIOLI books and group reads all month (not likely to happen!) I shan't feel at all circumscribed.

I thought I might start a different crime subgenre another month, maybe a historical crime or an amateur detective month.

I gave the link to Thrilling Detective because I thought some of you might enjoy it and it has lots of ideas on it, but I think his is a good working definition. The founder/editor of the site has a horror of some of the excesses of cosy crime fiction. For cosyphiles, interestingly, Kevin (who runs the Thrilling Detective site) has included the Mma Ramotswe books as PI fiction. He's going soft in his old age!

Now, that raises some interesting issues about what defines PI fiction. (ETA - In general, that is; not specifically thinking about the challenge.)

I would automatically have included the Mma Ramotswe books in the category on the basis that Mma Ramotswe runs a detective agency and earns her living as a PI. (Disclosure: I already added one of those books to the July wiki.) But it sounds like for some people at least there's a convention that PI fiction has not only to have a PI as the main protagonist but also to be hardboiled/noir in style.

*Ponders*

Woohoo - another great selection of challenges. Like Chatterbox, I too have some challenges up my sleeve which it's too late to post this month, but fortunately one of them was 'food and drink in the title' which is already up there! For that one, I am thinking of Chicken With Plums and Cooking With Fernet Branca. For the others.... well, I'm going to have to go and poke around my bookshelves... one of my favourite activites. Thanks to all challenge posters!

#84: I was thinking of reading Cooking with Fernet Branca this month too. We can compare notes!

> 74

No, there is not a specific date, but perhaps there should be? I usually post it as close as I can to the beginning of the month, but it also depends on my other plans. It really depends on when I have time to plan out the new challenge and create the various pages and links. I did it earlier than usual this month because I knew I'd be busy this coming week.

> 74

Here's another question...If you agree that we should, then later we can decide how to limit them and the number to limit them. If not, no problem.

>86 SqueakyChu: You already do so much work setting up the challenge that I don't think we should force you to do it on a specific day as well!

I voted "no" for limiting the number of counter-challenges as well, because that would just create so many logistical complications. We'd need a whole other procedure for deciding how to do it.

> My book has a 13 digit ISBN ending in 7 and the corresponding 10 digit ISBN ends in 4 but the 10 digit ISBN isn't printed on the book - does it still count?

If you can pull up your book by putting the ISBN into the Search box on the Add Books page of LibraryThing, it counts for the challenge whether or not it is printed in the book (adding this to the rules at the top of the page).

By the way, check both the copyright page and the back of the book when checking for ISBNs.

#88 Seconded, on both counts.

(Also, I think people posting challenges generally have a reasonably good feel for whether there are enough challenges already, and people are also sensible enough to select which of the challenges they really want to participate in.)

#90: people are also sensible enough to select which of the challenges they really want to participate in.

Except those of us who go nutso every month and try to do them all - and sometimes more than once!

Stasia, do you feel somehow obliged to try to do them all, whether they are things that interest you or not? Or do you find that the books you already have and want to read can be made to cover every challenge, and therefore you can do them all? If there were more challenges posted in a month than books you'd be likely to read - say 75 challenges ;) - would you still try to cover them all?

Since it's Orange July (or will be soon) I managed to sprinkle a bunch of Orange Prize books among the different categories, e.g. Horse Heaven in the alliteration category, White Teeth in the body parts, The Voluptuous Delights of Peanut Butter and Jam in the culinary category. Plus a few in the actual Orange Prize category. It's going to be a great reading month!

Maybe those of us who have ideas for challenges can send them to Madeline to post when she puts up the thread -- if that is easier? I've actively been looking for the thread for the last three months, but realized being even 18 hours late to the party puts me in "too many challenges" territory. I think we all realize that a 12th or 15th challenge is perhaps one too many, which is fine. But perhaps there's a way for those of us who aren't/can't be around online to catch the thread when it goes up to participate? I can certainly see that fixing a certain date as "THE" date is draconian (and I wasn't suggesting that, simply wondering so as to try and time this for myself better), but maybe there is an alternative solution for some of us that might feel a bit frustrated? Especially in cases where there is a theme to the challenge tied to a particular month?

>94 Chatterbox: I really don't think there's a problem with a 12th or 15th challenge (and the vast majority of voters seem to agree); just go ahead and post it now!

That said, I know I'm part of the "problem", so I can reassure you that I'm almost guaranteed to miss the first day of next month's wiki, if not the whole first week or more. So that's one less challenge to worry about....

Since every month has had more and more challenges, I decided to just post my idea now...

LT-inspired - read a book you first heard about from a fellow LibraryThing member. I'm sure it's not just me, that being on the challenge threads has been adding more books to the TBR list than what I am reading, so here's an attempt to counteract that, at least a little. Besides, I wanted to read the next Three Pines book sooner rather than later. ;)

I've also joined in on the ISBN challenge, but I've still got a few more books I want to finish this month before I start planning too far ahead.

So does it count if 2 people read the same book but with different ISBN's? Bell7 and I are both reading Dogsbody but our copies have different numbers.

I thought I probably wouldn't be doing many challenges this month because I'm still in the midst of Africa books that didn't seem to fit anything, but I'll be putting them in Zoe's books about making a difference challenge: Honor Lost by Norma Khouri, Infidel and Nomad by Ayaan Hirsi Ali.

ooh...that's a good question. As long as both ISBNs have a "4" at the end, would it still count as a shared book?

Geesh, I'm away from LT for 24 hours and I come back to 51 messages here. Once again Madeline I will say, victim of your own success. I never try to do all the challenges but at this point there are usually so many that it's impossible to do them all. BTW I'm just about finished with my fabulous June "Trouble" challenge, Troubles by J. G. Farrell, possibly my favorite book of the year.

I found 5 possibilites for the ISBN Ending in 4 challenge on my shelves so I'll add a couple to that and a couple to the other challenges too, trying not to be too ambitious.

#92: Or do you find that the books you already have and want to read can be made to cover every challenge, and therefore you can do them all?

Yes.

Yeah Madeline, you're making us work wayyy too hard this time! :)
I read Blindness years ago - what a haunting book...

Here are the 4's I found on top of the ol' nightstand:
Without Reservations (9780375758454)
Mountains Beyond Mountains (9780812980554)
Let The Great World Spin (9781400063734)
Housekeeping (0312424094) - phew, no worries if I don't finish this book this week for the June "problem" TIOLI...

Fun challenges!

Here's what I'm setting out to read for this month's TIOLI:

#1-ISBN ending with 4-An Irish Country Doctor
#3-Book about books-The Whole Five Feet
#10-PI book-The Big Sleep
#11-WallaWalla-Harriet Hume

Except for Harriet Hume, these were all books that I had wanted to get to, sooner rather than later. Synchronicity!

Karen O.

>97 Citizenjoyce:, 98

So does it count if 2 people read the same book but with different ISBN's? Bell7 and I are both reading Dogsbody but our copies have different numbers.

The same book absolutely counts...even if the ISBN numbers are different...but they both still have to end in the digit "4".

Okay. Here's the deal. No limit to the number of challenges. You do the posting. PUL-LEAZE do not send them to me! :) I don't want more work!!

I'm not telling you when I'll post the succeeding month's TIOLI. Look for it any time within the last week of the month. I'll do it when I have time. How's that? Seems fair to me. :D

There will be too many challenges when no one signs up for the challenge you offer throughout the entire month. If that the happens, you'll be so embarrassed that you'll remove the unfilled challenge heading you posted. :) I seriously doubt that will ever happen, though, so post to your heart's content.

Here's why I think there should be no limit to the number of challenges. These are the number of sign-ups so far for the currently listed challenges:

1-34
2-6
3-14
4-6
5-2
6-31
7-9
8-12
9-6
10-7
11-14
12-2

What you can see from these numbers is that it's not simply the first people to offer "counter-challenges" who get the sign-ups, but those who offer the most intriguing challenges (or maybe simply those who offer challenges most matching people's TBR books).

It would be interesting to learn how others do these challenges, so please share. The way I do them is to start from the top (and do my own, of course), then work my way down to see which is the next category I want to read. I try not to sign up too far ahead of time because I know I probably will not read more than about four books each month. I don't hestitate to sign up for a challenge if I'm sure I'll at least start a particular book during the month. It's easy enough to remove that book if unfinished at the end.

How do you do it? How many books do you usually list at the beginning of the month?

How many books do you usually list at the beginning of the month?

As many as possible - I use my own books first and then the library books I have on hand, if they fit any of the categories. I figure I can always trim back at the end of the month if I have to.

>104 SqueakyChu: I always do the main challenge and then look at the other challenges to see what I have on my shelves that will fit into the challenges that are offered. It's all about trying to clear my shelves (to make room for new acquisitions. :)

The number of challenges I participate in has increased every month since January, probably because the number of challenges has increased exponentially. Right now I have five books listed.

I'm like Stasia in that I usually try to match the books I'm already considering reading or have home from the library to the challenges.
Some challenges just seem to suit my current reading tastes - I am amazed at how many 'body parts' books were already on my tbr pile!

and just want to add that I make a point of adding at least one book to the main challenge.

I always do the main challenge too and then look at the other challenges as well as submitting my own.

I look at the challenges. Then, of course, I signup for my own and any others where I have a book that I know I'm planning on reading and it fits. Then as I go along in the month, if I have another book that I read, I'll check to see if it fits any - like this month I read a book and thought oh it fits this one and realized it fit two and I had to chose which one.

like this month I read a book and thought oh it fits this one and realized it fit two and I had to chose which one.

Sometimes I find myself moving the same book around through different challenges throughout the month. I think I'm trying to divide my reads into as many challenges as possible.

Request:

Could the challengers who are doing the Read a Book in a New Medium to You (challenge #5) add what the medium is to the listed book. I'm just curious. :) Thanks!

WOW! 25 points among the challenges, and July is still two days away!

112 posts!?! Phew.
I'm going to sleep on it - exept for the ISBN ending in 4 challenge. Thank you so much to lauranav (#42) who mentioned Atlas Shrugged. That's been on my TBR pile forever. See, it pays to read all the posts...

Referring back to #11

Since I'm a cub scout den mother and I just finished my training (argh), I happen to know a little about this. Something I never knew as well. In Scouting, at the Venturing level, girls are very welcome. Who knew?

http://www.scouting.org/Youth/ContinueAdventure/Venturing.aspx

I have 4 brothers, and my dad was a scout leader for years. I had one of those sad Girl Scout experiences, my leaders were not into camping. They had us studying stamp collections and doing a lot of the home ec. I wanted to be a Boy Scout. I can't believe my parents never told me I could be in Venturing. Maybe it wasn't an option then. I don't know. I would have loved it. You may all quietly pity my 11 year old who has just started his Boy Scout experience.

>113 richardderus: by my count, July is still four days away. But then we're in different time zones.

>116 teelgee: Haha Terri well I'm in the same time zone as Richard and July is still four days away for me. Maybe he's using an old calendar or maybe he's on another continent (which still wouldn't do it) ;-)

Last month was my first month to join in these challenges, and I just added books that I wanted to read wherever they fit. This month, I am trying to read more that others have listed in order to increase the TIOLI points for the month...and expand my reading :). I have felt no need or desire to try and list a book in every challenge...although for some challenges it becomes its own game to try to find a book in your stacks that will work...like the ISBN ending in four and the alliterative one.

July's now THREE days away since it's the 27th and June has 30 days...this'll teach me to type when I'm not paying attention!

Just have to share...

I went to the ALA convention in DC today and *finally* got to meet Tim and Abby in person. They're both awesome! It was so much fun chatting with them.

Our TIOLI is so well hidden away that neither of them had heard of it before. I told Tim how I've be encouraging all of you to learn to use the wiki. :) You've all become great at it!

Our TIOLI is so well hidden away that neither of them had heard of it before

How is that possible‽ Just look at this thread – 120 messages and it's still two days before it's meant to exist! TIOLI is a monster that is devouring my life …

Well, Abby is now working on LibraryThing for Libraries, and Tim (hopefully) spends his time coding (rather than reading everyone's threads). :)

Well it *is* well hidden unless you're a member of the 75 group - and even then, with all the threads, who can find anything???

eta: ooo, does that sound whingy?

to #114 - nittnutt - glad I could help. I feel like I've been mentioning it for months :-) since I can't seem to finish it.

BUT!!! If you are going to read Atlas Shrugged in July for the ISBN ending in 4 (or any other challenge, I'm happy to move mine) then I suspect the fact that it will contribute to the points will be enough to push me to the end!

Or we can both just put it up on the TIOLI challenge for a few more months until we finish :-)

Ah, how do I do the challenges each month. I always try to do the main challenge. This was the first month I didn't manage to do that.

I have a stack of books behind me that constitute my main TBR pile, plus some long holds at the library that come available at random times. Finally there is my wishlist of books you people have mentioned that I haven't acquired a copy of (yet).

So, I check out each challenge, scour the shelves for something that fits, and add it. If someone mentions one that has grabbed my attention before, I see if it's available at the library so I can add it for the points of 2 or more of us reading it. (Points are fun, but not a huge factor in my choices most months.)

In June (which feels like it's already past) I got 8 to fit the various challenges. It's been a month of mostly short books and 2 were audio books.

I guess I usually start the month with a list of planned reads and see if they fit the TIOLI Challenges. Then I may add a title or two specifically for the TIOLI challenges that are on my long-term list but weren't on this specific month's list yet.

>120 SqueakyChu: Hidden?! It's the fourth topic on the Hot Topics "Talk" setting! And this group, as of now, has 2200 more messages than the next most popular group.

Point taken! I just don't look at those much.

I dutifully checked all my unread books this weekend and I was so relieved that none of the many 'I don't feel like reading them right now' books had ISBNs ending in 4.
So now I added Don't Move (Non ti muovere) and Adrian Mole: The Prostrate Years to the ISBN challenge and The Shadow of the Wind to the Book about Books challenge.

> 26

Maybe not "hidden", Richard, but relatively hard to find. Here's why:

1. It's not its own group but rather a sub-topic of the 75 Books in 2010 Challenge.
2. The entity with the large number of messages is the 75 Books in 2010 Challenge, not the TIOLI challenge.
3. If people are not part of the TIOLI challenge, they'd probably just "x" out the TIOLI messages on the Hot Threads. At least that's what I do when I encounter a hot thread that's not part of a group to which I belong.
4. If the challenge itself is not referred to by its full name, people who usually do challenges might not even know its a challenge
5. People either dislike acronyms, or don't take the time, once it's been encountered, to learn what it means. :)

> 128

I dutifully checked all my unread books this weekend and I was so relieved that none of the many 'I don't feel like reading them right now' books had ISBNs ending in 4.

LOL at Deearn!!

94, 95> I believe that can't be too many challenges. For no other reason than the challenges never seem to correspond to what I'm reading when I read them (there are some that fit, but I end up in the wrong month for it). More challenges, more chance I'll actually get to join in.

104> re: "There will be too many challenges when no one signs up for the challenge you offer throughout the entire month. If that the happens, you'll be so embarrassed that you'll remove the unfilled challenge heading you posted. :) I seriously doubt that will ever happen, though, so post to your heart's content."

Actually, there has been at least one challenge where even the challenge submitter didn't read a book in the challenge. I noticed while putting the pages together on the wiki. Feb. - 5. In honor of the Winter Olympics: A book with the word WINTER in the title - zero reads.

Oh, and the "how others do these challenges": After I've finished whichever random book I've picked up to read, I look to see if it fits any of the challenges for that month. And if so, I add it.

Stats:

Most popular books:
The Lacuna - Barbara Kingsolver (5 signed up)

The Boy Next Door - Irene Sabatini (4)
The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter - Carson McCullers (4)

A Gentle Madness - Nicholas Basbanes (3)
The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon (3)
Sixpence House - Paul Collins (3)

update: The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter rapidly climbing up the chart. One more person pledged to read it.

#132 My fault on the Winter Olympics challenge. I started the books I'd hoped to read and they were duds and I never finished.

I think I make my challenges too narrow.

As for how I decide, when the challenges are announced, I try to think of books I've got in those categories. I post them but I'm usually too enthusiastic and, in the end, will cut back a bit. Also, once in awhile, something someone else is reading sounds like something I'd like and then I'll add them.

Lots of challenges and plenty of books people hope to read within each challenge are worthwhile, I think.

Hey! I know! In honor of the blasted, wretched heat wave, I'll start a challenge to read a book with the word "Summer" in the title and we'll see if anyone joins!

> 131

the challenges never seem to correspond to what I'm reading when I read them (there are some that fit, but I end up in the wrong month for it).

LOL @ Mike!!

--> 132

After I've finished whichever random book I've picked up to read, I look to see if it fits any of the challenges for that month. And if so, I add it.

Truthfully, Mike? I like your way the very best!

> 133

Cool, Mike! You can now be our unofficial TIOLI "stats guy"! How 'bout it?

For Fun:

*We* know what TIOLI is, but would you like to make up some fake (and funny) definitions for that word? If so, post them here on this thread.

What is TIOLI?

> 134

My fault on the Winter Olympics challenge.

No fault, Linda! No guilt, please! These are both *prohibited* on this challenge.

Think of it this way. No one really knows what the TIOLI points will be until the month in question is long over. Add whatever books you want; delete whatever books you want...all without apologies of any sort!

TIOLI:

There Is Only Limited Interest

That Is Over Looked Information

The Internet's Oldest Living Incunabulum

Tacky Ingenues On Luxurious Islands

Two Incredibly Old Lady Inspectors

> 135

Hey! I know! In honor of the blasted, wretched heat wave, I'll start a challenge to read a book with the word "Summer" in the title and we'll see if anyone joins!

Pehaps someone from Australia or New Zealand would love that challenge now. Here in Rockville it was 99 degrees (Fahrenheit) yesterday. Phew!! And it's only June. :O

At 11a EDT, it is NINETY-FIVE DEGREES here in New York.

I am royally ticked.

> 141

LOL at Richard's definitions!!

Here's mine:

TIOLI - when a diner eats a cannoli and drinks tea at the same time

P.S. To keep the TIOLI "hidden", we can offer any of these explanations when someone asks what it is. (Just kidding!!)

>The Internet's Oldest Living Incunabulum

This fits your books about books challenge. How are you enjoying A Gentle Madness so far?

Love "The Internet's Oldest Living Incunabulum"; but I also love the cannoli and tea at the same time idea---that's about what occurred to me.

As for choosing: I con the individual challenges, simultaneously conning my *almost* photographic mental image of my assorted shelves; then I do an actual search and seek for books to fit the bill. Always try to match the original challenge by Madeline if I can. Occasionally I have some serendipitous moments, silently crying, "Where in the world did I get that book?" I freely admit that this month's "ISBN ending 4" sent me scurrying, as I never pay attention to long numbers if I can help it. I've made a firm if unarticulated vow to only use books here in the house to meet the challenges, as buying or even borrowing from the library would defeat my major purpose here, which is to clear some of the TBR load and move it/them to at least the "Finally! I've read this at last!" pile(s).

A summer book...hmmm...would A Midsummer Night's Dream comply? Of course, I'm not positive I have that. The only one that clearly fits is Summer by Edith Wharton, but I read that, maybe as recently as last year. Depressing as it could possibly be, too.

>145 dsstukes: I am LOVING A Gentle Madness! It's like being in a quiet room with all my soul-mates, talking about books.

>146 Matke: Gail, anything that has "Summer" in the title works. But why ever would you want to read a play unless you're appearing in it?

> 146

I've made a firm if unarticulated vow to only use books here in the house to meet the challenges,

That's hilarious, Gail!

> 147

But why ever would you want to read a play unless you're appearing in it?

...which gives me an idea for future TIOLI challenge! :D

139> Everytime I see TIOLI I think it might be an Italien pastry.

#140 Thanks, Madeline.

Whatever TIOLI is, There Is Only Limited Interest is not it.

#150 I think it sounds like an Italian pastry, too.

Ok I've lost the last challenge thread so I'm posting here that I finished and loved Troubles which I also reviewed on the work's page. Fabulous read. And even though it's not July yet, I started The Lizard Cage by Karen Connelly as my first Orange Prize book.

It would definitely be an Italian pastry since an Italian came up with the acronym! Personally, for me as well, when I came with it, I was thinking more of the Trevi fountain - gushing forth with beautiful, wonderful books to read and everyone gathering at the fountain to make their wish. That's why the logo has a kind of Tuscan/Italian feel.

That's why the logo has a kind of Tuscan/Italian feel.

*sitting under a grape arbor, sipping Italian wine, reading a gripping novel...*

"A Book You Heard of from an LT member" is a brilliant challenge. It seems half of what I read lately is based on LTers!

TIOLI reminds me of aioli. yumm.

What's aioli?

Aioli is a sauce made with garlic and olive oil. It might also have egg or mayo in it or maybe mustard.

Last week, my "St Louis Dog" had aioli on it, along with pork 'n beans and other ingredients.

I've added a few more books to the challenges, they're all from my tbr pile and I do want to read them soon.
Books about Books: The Angel's Game by Carlos Ruiz Zafón & Outside of a Dog: A Bibliomemoir by Rick Gekoski
Books with a Bodypart in the Title: The Bone People by Keri Hulme, Brainjack by Brian Falkner & Stoneheart by Charlie Fletcher

Re: how I choose a challenge - I'm kind of haphazard about it. I always start with what I currently have checked out from the library and what I have on hold at any given time, and see what fits where. There's usually a pretty good variety of challenges to allow me to sign up for two or more right off the bat. Depending, I might also look at what other people have signed up to read to see what overlaps with my TBR pile - if something appeals, I may bump up reading it to correspond with the month's challenge.

But I don't always do it that way. Sometimes I'll make up rules for a specific challenge. With Zoe's Member Recommendation challenge, I purposely limited myself to a book that I own. Other times I try to find books that overlap with as many challenges as possible - my 1010 Categories for example, or - like with Northanger Abbey this month, a Jane Austen challenge I'm participating in. I try to add a lot of books early in the month, but I don't like planning my reading too far ahead, so I'll often add in the middle too. I'm afraid I was especially guilty of books in flux for the month of June because I had to completely rearrange my reading hopes and plans when I started working full-time hours.

I have added more books to the wiki. For Linda's 'Day or Night' challenge, I added Day of the Triffids by John Wyndham, for Richard's 'Summer' Challenge, I added A Shadow in Summer by Daniel Abraham, and for Terri's 'Body Part' challenge, I added Bone Voyage by Stanley Rhine.

To #124 - I'll find you and post next to you for points. I'm not picky about categories. I just want to get that book read before the end of the year. I listed Atlas Shrugged near the top of my list of books I would read this year.

I go through my TBR to find as many books as I can that fit the challenges*, then from that make a longlist of the ones I'd like to read during the month if time were no object. Then I pare that down to a shortlist (usually about double what I can reasonably get through), and the shortlist goes on the wiki while the remainder of the longlist is kept in reserve for additional or replacement reads.

I keep the list on my wiki page and amend it during the month; the old month disappears in favour of the new month some time around the 27/28/29th of the month.

For some reason, this sort of thing seems to give people the erroneous idea that I am an organised person, when really I am avoiding doing some work.

TIOLI always makes me think of the Tivoli Gardens (not that I've ever been there.)

Choosing books for TIOLI is fun. After I've sorted through my library books and my to read shelves to find what might fit, I check to see if anybody else is reading something on my shortlist. That narrows things down a bit. So those go to the top of the pile, then I add a couple of books I hope to get around to reading. I probably should also take my 1010 and Alphabet challenges into consideration but for some reason they seem to get sidelined;)

So this month, trying not to be overambitious, and allowing space for other library books and challenges I've put 6 books onto the wiki. There are some others that might fit but we'll see if I have time;)

By challenge
A Book With an ISBN Ending in "4" - Celtic Saints Passionate Wanderers (from the library)
A Book about Books - *The Thirteenth Tale by Diane Setterfield and Codex by Lev Grossman
An Orange Prize Longlist, Shortlist, Winner or New Writer Award - *Fingersmith by Sarah Waters
A Book with "day" or "night" in the Title - *Night Train to Lisbon by Pascal Mercier (from the library)
A Book with Two Adjacent Title Words Starting with the Same Letter - Beyond Black by Hilary Mantel

Books from the library and the ones already entered by somebody else which add to TIOLI points (marked with an asterisk) I will try read first.

I always shoot for participation in the main challenge, and any one I begin; after that, what I want to read anyway gets shoehorned in to some challenge or another if possible. Fortunately, that's been really easy so far. This group is *extremely* creative and wide-ranging in its interests, so the challenges are too, thank goodness!

My daughter and I just got Nooks yesterday (see what you made me do), so I added Sarah Palin: Vampire Hunter by Dan McGirt to the Read a Book in a New Meduim challenge.

#166 Sarah Palin: Vampire Hunter LOLOL

LOL indeed! But I wonder if the book has any hope of being even half as funny in reality as it is in my imagination …

Breathlessly await your review of the Vampire Hunter book! Although in this case, shouldn't S.P. be the hunted? rather than the hunter?

#169 Wouldn't that be great? Armed wolves and moose hunting her from helicopters - maybe for the next book. Actually it looks like a Twilight satire.

So far I've added Half the Sky for the making a difference challenge, Heart-Shaped Box for the body parts challenge, Purple Hibiscus for 20 under 40, and I've moved Dance Dance Dance from last month's Japanese author challenge to this month's alliterative titles. And I'm still looking for a book with an ISBN ending in 4! Not to mention the other 4 categories I'm eyeing.

Whoops...I read Dogsbody too quickly and had to move it from July to June in the "author with three names" challenge.

166>. Joyce,
I got my Nook last week and downloaded Eggsecutive Orders for the Culinary Challenge for July. I have to admit that I started it today and I really like reading there. A funny thing happened, I was so into the story after a few chapters I actually raised my hand to turn the page without thinking :D LOL. I had to smack myself and get back to the push a button phase.

#173 Whereas I've gotten so used to Kindle page turning that I now try to do that with regular books, too.

#174

I'm laughing right now, because I try to click to look up the meaning of a word when reading paper books. (oddly, it doesn't work!)

The other day I was near the end of the first digital book I read on the Nook and turned the page. Nothing happened. So I tried to turn it again. Again, nothing. Moments later I'm now five pages from where I want to be. So I hit the back button a little too aggressively. Five pages back from where I was. Eventually I was able to get to the "next page" I was looking for.

Ah, learning new technology.

Edit in: oh. That was this morning. ebooks are warping my mind. I finished the book and . . . . still had the book in my hand. The Nook. I couldn't place it anywhere, it had my other books on it. I miss the feeling of "finishing" a book and turning to the next fresh book. Crisp, new, or looking like it had been through seven wars. Still new to me. Instead I have the same thing in my hands. I had not thought of that issue until I finished my first digital work.

#175 I did that same thing. Very annoyed the other day when reading a regular book and couldn't press the button to look up a word.

#176 I get that same feeling when I send my recently-finished book to the archive. Poof, it's gone (though of course, I can bring it back).

This is what I plan to read for the challenges. Would like to add another, but July seems iffy (other non-challenge stuff to get through) so I'll hold off for now.

The Book of Lost Things for the ISBN ending in 4 challenge (Challenge 1)
Amuse Bouche just came through on hold from the library. I discovered this book (and series) from Richard, so it's perfect for the LT-inspired challenge. (Challenge 12)
And my new, impromptu book club (just formed at dinner last night) picked The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake which fits the Culinary Challenge (Challenge 8). And (bonus) Linda is already planning to read it!

166> I've added Sarah Palin: Vampire Hunter to my list to read also. I didn't realize it was free.

Finally discovered what this TIOLI Challenge was that everyone's been talking about, so am joining in at the half-way-through-the-year mark - seems like a very good way to g)et through some of my owned-but-unread books (partiuclarly as I have about a zillion ending in "4"...

No idea how good I'm going to be at keeping to it, but here's my selection for July:

1) Read A Book with an ISBN Ending in "4": probably Middlesex - Jeffrey Eugenides (0747560234) or Shades of Grey - Jasper FForde (0340963034)
6) Read an Orange Prize...: Oryx and Crake - Margaret Atwood
9) Read a book with a "day" or "night" in the title: Nights at the Circus - Angela Carter
12) LT-inspired: Eva Luna - Isabel Allende (girlunderglass, last year)

flissp - does not matter when you start, glad you did!

You have some fabulous selections there. I don't know Nights at the Circus, but the other three are amazing books.

Alas everyone, the best thing about Sarah Palin: Vampire Hunter was the title. Here I was hoping she'd get eaten by werewolves. Instead she ends up being one of the few people who have a grasp on the fundamentals of reality. Sometimes the author asks too much in the suspension of disbelief category. I'm deleting it from my library, from my Nook, and from the challenge.

> 180

Hi flissp!

Glad you came to join us! Hope you find the TIOLI fun.

I've managed to fit 3 of my current books into the TIOLI challenge for July, though I can't really squeeze in Antigona and Me or A Place of Secrets anywhere!

Joan Aiken, Midnight is a Place (Day and Night)
Laura Lippman, No Good Deeds (PI novel)
Deborah Kay Davies, True Things About Me (Walla Walla) - though I hope to find another more alliterative title as well

I added Seven Summits by Dick Bass to the Walla Walla challenge and Concourse by S.J. Rozan to the PI challenge.

#181 Thanks teelgee - looking forward to them!

#183 Thank you!

#175, #177 - sounds like a good reason for me not to get a Kindle. I worry enough about myself when I am in a shop and think how useful it would be to click on an item to get reviews...

I added a book to the Body Part challenge, Boobs by Suzy McKee Charnas. It's very short, a story really, but listed as a separate offering on Nook. It's wonderful, a young girl enters adolescence, finds she's a werewolf and learns to love her body. Charnas is kind of an angry writer, but I enjoy her very much.

>180 flissp:: Shoot. Either of those would make good "ISBN-ending-in-4" books, but the ISBN on my copies doesn't. I'm surprised I'm having such a hard time finding anything! (I tried exporting my library to sort out the ISBNs, but I couldn't open the file.)

Rats. The copy of Landscape with Dog and Other Stories I received does not have an ISBN number that ends with "4" on it. So, it's back to the drawing board. If I can't find anything else, I'll read Wonder by Hugo Claus, a 2009 Archipelago Book that I was already planning to read this year.

189>> Shauna,

If you go to the Your Books tab and look at all My Unread collection, and change the view to include the ISBN you should be able to see one that ends with a 4.

191>> woohoo!!! - thanks for the tip cyderry. I did that lookup for my books and the first one had a "4" ending - and it's been sitting on my coffee table waiting to flip through - Dictator Style: Lifestyles of the World's Most Colorful Despots by Peter York. It should make a nice companion to How to Rule the World: A Handbook for the Aspiring Dictator I read last month.

Fore the time being I have chosen The Lives of the Muses: Nine Women & the Artists They Inspired by Francine Prose for the ISBN ending in a "4" challenge. I have a few other books I need to read this month that don't fit in any of the challenges. but if I have enough time to fill another challenge I will add it later.

Madeline, I truly enjoy the TIOLI challenge and the adventure it is locating a fitting book from my TBR shelves. Continued thanks! :0)

ETA: Touchstone not co-operating.

If Richard will let me, I'd also like to add The Heretic's Wife by Brenda Rickman Vantrease. I just started listening to it this week, and from what I've read/heard and from the limited reviews I can find, it seems like it will fit.

It's about a brother and sister bookseller team trying to smuggle Protestant Bibles into Tudor England and then translating them into English. It seems like the book will cover "other" topics, but the need to get the books into the hands of the common man seems the undercurrent. If I'm wrong, and it turns into some bizarre bodice ripper for the literati, then I'll pull it, but for now, I'll add it to the wiki under the "Books about Books" challenge.

-->194 pbadeer:: I never realized it till you mentioned it, but I'll bet there's quite a market for "bizarre bodice rippers for the literati." I just love that idea.

> 193

You're welcome, Lynda. I hope I'm getting everyone to read a wide variety of books.

>191 cyderry:: Thanks for the tip Cheli! Great idea.
(your profile page made me smile. Someone who's even more enamored of tickers than I am! :)

************************

I just tried your idea and came up with some likely candidates. Thanks again!
I also discovered that if you sort your books using style E it gives you a list of book swap sites where each book is wishlisted and/or available! Has anyone used this? Is it pretty accurate?

>194 pbadeer: Oh my gosh! That sounds like a bizarro book, no matter what. I'm looking forward to seeing your review!

I finished one of my TIOLI books for this month, Concourse by S.J. Rozan.

I also finished one of my TIOLI challenge books for July, Blue Fingers: a Ninja's Tale by Cheryl Aylward Whitesel. This was for the Book with a Body Part in the Title challenge.

>197 madhatter22: I pay attention to those bookswap site statistics, but be careful. The numbers seem to refer to all formats of the title, so the one you might proffer may not be snapped up as fast as the numbers indicate. However, it's helpful if you like to swap books - you can aim your offering to the most likely swapper.

Note - you can modify any style to show those stats - I use a modified style A. After the listing of letters, there's an icon that lets you customize your display.

Finished Working IX to V, for the "First Heard of on LT" challenge. It's an informative and very humorous look at what everyday culture was *really* like back in the days of the revered Ancients. Turns out they were just like ourselves. Many thanks to Richard, from whom I first heard of it.

I finished Remarkable Creatures for the ISBN challenge, and it was a LOT better than I expected. Her other works were almost mediocre but I really enjoyed this one.

I'm glad to see you enjoyed Concourse enough to rate it 4, Stasia, as I mentioned this series a few months ago and I posted the PI TIOLI challenge. I just wonder what stupid title they're going to give that one if they bring it out here, they're giving them all rather dull titles which include the word Blood, so it will be hard for people to remember which ones they've read!

I haven't yet worked out what my July TIOLI reads will be - and after last month when just about everything was a TIOLI, I think I will not attempt to fit in so many. HOwever, I have made a start as I'm currently (re)reading Mystery Mile, one of the earliest Margery Allingham mysteries - and this will do for the alliterative title challenge.

I wonder if I can take a paid leave of absence this month to read all my planned TIOLI books. No? Hmmm, it's a good thing I have a lot of time off in July.

I am absolutely loving my first TIOLI read of the month, a debut mystery set in 1860s London, A Beautiful Blue Death by Charles Finch. This is for Stasia's Walla Walla challenge.

#204: Luci, you are the reason I picked up the S.J. Rozan books to begin with - I had never heard of them until I saw them mentioned on your thread, so thanks once again for that recommendation.

If you can pull up your book by putting the ISBN into the Search box on the Add Books page of LibraryThing, it counts for the challenge whether or not it is printed in the book. The reason for this is that some books do have both a 13-digit and a 10-digit ISBN, but the 10-digit ISBN may no longer be printed in newer copies of the book.

Ah! I didn't read this before I removed Landscape with Dog and Other Stories by Ersi Sotiropoulos from Madeline's challenge. I removed this book because the ISBN-10 number wasn't printed in the book. However, when I enter the ISBN-10 number for the book (1566567734) in the LT Search box, the book comes up. So, I've added this book back to Madeline's challenge.

Life can be tough, eh, Darryl? ;)

Hope all my fellow American TIOLI challengers have a safe and fun Independence Day holiday!

I am adding The Birthday Boys by Beryl Bainbridge to the 'Walla Walla' challenge for the month.

#210 very appropriate *in memoriam*. And you have a double Walla Walla there, with the author's name being alliterative too. I've never read any of hers, will look forward to hearing about it.

#211: Terri sent that one to me and I received it the day Bainbridge died, so I thought it appropriate to add it to the TIOLI challenge. I will let you know what I think of it :)

I just noticed that my library copy of Heist Society has an ISBN ending with 4, so I moved it from the LT Inspired challenge to the ISBN Ending with 4 challenge. I had looked up its ISBN online and that number did not end in 4, but the one in the book does....

My copy of Lirael has an ISBN number that ends with 4 (the 10 digit one, but not the 13 digit one), so I am adding it to the wiki.

I finished and reviewed The Weed That Strings the Hangman's Bag for Madeline's 4 challenge. It was, as expected, a lot of fun to rejoin Flavia and her cast of weirdoes and meanies (I think I'm turning eleven again) in 1950.

I finished the first to honor Culinary Arts Month by reading Eggsecutive Orders. A fun cizy and only the first one for the month, I have lots lined up to go in other TIOLI challenges!

I finished my entry for the 'Books about Books' challenge, Ex Libris: Confessions of a Common Reader by Anne Fadiman. What a pretentious woman. Her essays are on a wide variety of bookish topics, but she never quite loses the 'more-learned-than-thou' vibe.

Worth a read though. I'm going to go through the seven books I bought today and see if any fit this month's challenges :)

Looking through my 'to read' collection for ISBNs ending in 4, I not only discovered two mysteries I had on the list, but then discovered that I had read them both already! Sheesh. Back to the list.

Been away from TIOLI for a couple of months, but I think this month I'll have time to do a challenge again. I'm going to pick American Cookery by Laura Kalpakian as my challenge book for July since it's already in my TBR Tower. So this will help me read another book that I already have instead of going out to get another.

I'm going to read The Belly of Paris by Emile Zola for the body part challenge, and I'm looking for a book with an ISBN ending in 4 in my tbr pile.

I finished Rereadings, edited by Anne Fadiman, for Richard's 'Books about Books' challenge. I enjoyed it.

I finished The Lizard Cage by Karen Connelly for the Orange Prize Challenge. You can read my review here.

I added Cutting for Stone as I found that through Tutu here on LT.

After 6 hours on planes today, I expect to have finished either Cutting for Stone or Atlas Shrugged. I'm putting money on Cutting for Stone, but there is the return flight in a week to get Atlas Shrugged finished. (Maybe)

I finished Heist Society by Ally Carter for the ISBN Ending with 4 Challenge. Teenage thieves in Europe, great works of art, a museum with high-tech, state of the art security, a mysterious, devious master thief... I will try to get a review written soon.

I finished Good Omens which I couldn't figure out how to fit into one of the challenges then thought I really had to get to one of my Early Readers books, but that would give me another book I couldn't fit into a challenge. Then it occurred to me, I heard about the book through LT, so an addition to the book recommended by an LT Member challenge, Secret Keepers by Mindy Friddle.

I found my book with an isbn that ends in 4---and it just happens to be an ER book I need to read and review, so double incentive.

>226 arubabookwoman: Score!!!

My proposed July TIOLI reads;

The Turning:Stories by Tim Winton for the ISBN ending in 4 challenge (ISBN 0743279794)

Mountains Beyond Mountains by Tracy Kidder for Zoes making a difference book challenge

Boneshaker by Cherie Priest for teelgees book with a body part in the title challenge

Book of my Nights: Poems by Li Young Lee for lindapanzos book with day or night in the title challenge.

Luckily, these were already in the 2010 pile, I just switched the month on a couple.

I will add them to the wiki later,when I'm not at work.

I've finished 3 books for TIOLI challenges this month and LOVE the ISBN one - I've been grabbing handfuls of TBR books and checking them. I know there's a way to check on LT, but this is more fun.

For the ISBN challenge I read Home Truths by David Lodge, which I didn't think was one of his best but was still worth the few hours it took, and No Signposts in the Sea by Vita Sackville-West. It was the first Virago Modern Classic I bought 2 years ago - thank you Madeline for bumping it off the bookshelf!

For the Orange challenge I read The Help, from the long list.

Just finished The Magician's Book: A Skeptic's Adventures in Narnia by Laura Miller for the Books about Books challenge. So good!!

After a rather industrious trip to the library, I've added a whack of books to the wiki. No clue if I will get through all of these, but it's worth a shot.

The Thirteenth Tale - Diane Setterfield - a book about books
Wolf Hall - Hilary Mantel - Orange Prize
The Big Sleep - Raymond Chandler - private investigators
Night's Child - Maureen Jennings - book with day or night in the title
The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society - Mary Ann Shaffer and Annie Barrows - Walla Walla Alliteration (although I suppose this could also fit in the cooking challenge)
Summer Crossing - Truman Capote - book with summer in the title

I have finished The Mysterious Affair at Styles by Agatha Christe for the new genre challenge. I read this on my partner's new ipad, which was actually an enjoyable experience. I didn't think I would like reading e-books, but I think I might be a convert. I've posted a review of the book on my thread here.

Better get busy reading!

Norabelle,
I have that book too, will see if I can fit it in this month.

>228 VioletBramble: I may try to get a hold of Boneshaker as well.

In the meantime, I finished The Windup Girl for the ISBN-ending-in-4 challenge, and I still find myself thinking about it a couple of days later. The book that I tried to pick up afterwards pales in comparison.

Last night I finished Landscape with Dog and Other Stories by Ersi Sotiropoulos for Madeline's "ISBN that ends with a 4" read. It was a series of short stories which I also read for the Reading Globally monthly theme read (Greece), and it was very good (4 stars). I'll submit a review of it later this week.

I've decided to go out on a limb and read The Big Sleep. I didn't realize I never had until I was idly flipping through a Library of America edition of CHandler's early novels. Wow! What a writing career!

For my ISBN challenge, I read NP by Banana Yoshimito in just two days. I think I like this best of the few books I've already read by the same author. I'll post a review of it at a later date.

Then I tried two more books, but could not get into either of them. One was The Night Gardener by George Pelecanos for Linda's "day/night" challenge, but I found I totally disliked the idea of having to read a detective mystery. I tossed this book aside. The other was Hillary Clinton's It Takes a Village for Zoe's "Making a Difference" challenge. I started it, but found it boring. That book got tossed aside as well. Both of those books will move along to new (and more appreciative) readers via Bookcrossing. My husband found The Night Gardener very good, though.

I'm now going to try Richard's "Books about Books" challenge with Outwitting History, a nonfiction book about saving Yiddish books. It sounds pretty interesting so I hope this book finally grabs me. I'm taking it with me on the Metro to work in the morning.

#236: I liked Outwitting History, Madeline. I hope you do too!

Outwitting History came with a high recommendation from a close friend of mine.

#238: I enjoyed the book so much I bought a copy for my personal library. Happy reading, Madeline!

Finished/reviewed The Boy Next Door for the Orange Prize challenge.

I finished my first two TIOLI books for July:
Adrian Mole: The Prostrate Years for the ISBN challenge and The Shadow of the Wind for the "Books about Books" challenge. Both were nice and easy summer reads and I gave them a 3,5/3 star rating.

I'll add Once on a Moonless Night to the Night/Day challenge. I've got it in my tbr pile and don't really feel like reading it, but it's a short book and the TIOLI might work as motivation.

Whew, finished The Astronomer by Lawrence Goldstone for the ISBN-ending-in-4 challenge. Historical suspense with the Inquisition, Reformation, and Copernicus' Of Revolutions as a backdrop.

Adding Outwitting History to my wishlist. Tjamls

I've just finished Hungry Hearts by Francine Prose for the ISBN-ending-in-4 challenge. It's a sweet story about love and theater in the time of the Yiddish theater of New York's Lower East Side. The author captures the lilt of Yiddish rhythms without parody, and the story is funny and at times wise. A quick read - I finished in a day.

I'm really enjoying The Lacuna and The Boy Next Door is interesting so far (both Orange winners this year).

I'm reading The Last Train to Llanelli by Robert Lewis, a PI novel set in Bristol, as it's first in a trilogy and I'm going to review no 3 for The Bookbag. I've read this before but have no memory of it.

Miss Buncle's Book is a book about books - lovely novel about a woman who writes a novel drawing on the other residents of her village under the name John Smith. Many of them are outraged and start trying to find out who John Smith is to punish "him". It occurred to me that The Help is a book about a book in this sense though of course it was also on the Orange longlist.

I'm putting Mercedes Lackey's Exile's Honor into the Book About Making a Difference challenge, though it's far less serious than Zoe's.

I say, the main challenge is hard; I'm sure most of my ISBNs end in either 5 or 0. Must see if I can use LT to sort through my numbers, rather than go through them all manually (Me? Work?) .......

It's probably not possible to sort on the number, since the 4 must be at the end. But you can show them in your library view. I found it pretty easy to scan down the column looking for a 4 at the end of the string of numbers. And then I made a separate library for the ones I found, so I wouldn't have to search again!

Finished The Book Thief today, and will post a review on my thread. I really enjoyed the book, but did not find it spellbinding. I'm glad I read it, though it wasn't as much about books as I thought it would be. I'll leave it in the 'book about books' category anyway, since words were a central theme.
Hope everyone is keeping cool!

> 237

Stasia, I *do* like Outwitting History. What a fun read on what I thought would be a boring subject! Just goes to show - that one never knows! :)

I finished my "Book About Books" challenge today - The Whole Five Feet: What the Great Books Taught Me About Life, Death and Pretty Much Everything Else by Christopher R. Beha. Enjoyable read.

Karen O.

#237: Cool beans! I am glad you are liking it.

I am adding another book to the 'Book About Books' challenge: A Truth Universally Acknowledged by Susannah Carson.

I finished my first TIOLI of the month Night Train to Lisbon - I thought it was wonderful but am not putting up a review yet (I need to re-read).

My June ER book arrived today and fits this month's TIOLI. It's another one for "A Book with "day" or "night" in the Title" - The Gathering Night by Margaret Elphinstone - so I've added it to the wiki.

Ooh, that never occured to me re The Gathering Night - I got a message telling me I'm getting that even though I don't think I requested it (or anything else) and on the same day as I got a message saying I hadn't got any books from the May batch (I wish I hadn't - I did get a book and it was rather horrid). I don't know if I'll fit it in this month though, it may be an August read for me as I have so many Orange, PI, group reads, Bookbag review books, previous books in series to review books, group reads.... help....

Just added some books to the July wiki:

The Uncommon Reader by Alan Bennett for #3 Books about Books challenge
Purple Hibiscus by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie for #4 Books by one of The New Yorker's 20 under 40 Authors
Four Perfect Pebbles by Lila Perl for #11 the Alliterative challenge
Life Work by Donald Hall and
The Tennis Partner by Abraham Verghese, both for #12 LT-inspired Books

I recently finished Four Perfect Pebbles, am almost done with The Tennis Partner and will be taking the rest with me on the plane on my trips across the country the rest of this week.

phebj - curious about The Tennis Partner - I thought Cutting for Stone was just brilliant.

I added Built of Books to the wiki...such a fun book!

I got this in my A Word A Day subscription, which I was catching up on today:

"Bibliophilia: the love, and collecting, of books. No problems there... But watch out. The next step up may be bibliolatry: an extreme fondness for books."
David McKie; The Baron of Bibliomania; The Guardian (London, UK); May 5, 2008.

Yeup. That's me. Bibliolater.

I've just added Still Life by Louise Penny to the wiki - as a book I first heard of from an LT member - in fact almost everyone on this group seems to have read it and recommended it. And the copy I am reading has been lent to me by an LT member also, so it qualifies on two counts. Enjoying it so far, though I've been very tired when trying to read so haven't got fully into it yet...

#245 teelgee--I've got 40 pages left to go on The Tennis Partner. It started kind of slow for me and is a bittersweet book. It's a nonfiction account of Verghese's friendship with another doctor who is addicted to drugs and you know up front it doesn't end well since the book is dedicated to the friend and includes his birth and death dates. I haven't read anything else by Verghese but like his writing and will probably give this book 3 1/2 or 4 stars.

#255 Richard, thanks for the new vocabulary word!

#256 gennyt--hope you like Still Life. It was one of my favorites so far this year.

>257 phebj: Oh do give Cutting for Stone a read. The writing, the story, the characters -- it's one that has stuck with me for a long time.

I added The Last Supper by Rachel Cusk to the TIOLI Challenge #8 (A book with a Cooking Theme). It is a ER book I rec'd a couple months ago and really needed to fit it somewhere this month as an incentive to read it. Hope it fits the criteria.

I finished The Book of Lost Things for the book about books challenge. Review here

I also finished Amuse Bouche for the book discovered thanks to another LTer challenge. Review here

255: richardderus: I've got Built of Books home from the library--I'll add it to the TIOLI list, with great hopes of getting it read this month. It looks really interesting.

Karen O.

>261 klobrien2: So far, so good, Karen. I have high hopes for finishing it with a positive impression.

>260 ty1997: SO glad you liked Russell Quant, Tom! It's a good series.

#258 teelgee--I just finished The Tennis Partner and the ending was so powerful, I'm now going to give the book 4 1/2 stars. It would get 5 stars except for the slow beginning. I will definitely read Cutting for Stone soon!

Oh boy. I've had The Tennis Partner on my shelf since last year when I read and loved Cutting for Stone. Guess I have to move it up Pat.

>263 phebj: Yea!!

> 263

Just adding my two cents about The Tennis Partner, Pat. I thought it was a very moving book about friendship. I liked it a lot. Glad you found it to your liking in the end.

Pulling off The Lives of the Muses because my book does not have 4 at the end of the ISBN # like I thought. But I am replacing it with some mind numbing summer madness - Both of Tori Spellings #1 New York Times Bestsellers! Stori Telling and Mommywood.

I finished Smilla's Sense of Snow for the ISBN Ending with 4 challenge. It was well worth the time reading it, and it had many moments of absolute brilliance. I hope to get a review written soon.

I didn't even realise Verghese had written other books, The Tennis Partner sounds good.

Finished up A Truth Universally Acknowledged, a book of essays about Jane Austen and her books.

I've finished Brainjack, a YA scifi adventure, for the body part challenge and also a poetry collection, Tigers at Awhitu, for the ISBN ending in 4 challenge.

I just finished A Rule Against Murder for the LT-inspired challenge. Short verdict - I loved it! I'm going to see if I can fit in The Brutal Telling this month too.

#256 - I am adding Still Life too, for the same reason!

>256 gennyt: and 273 I own Still Life having purchased it when it was in the new books section at Barnes and Noble several months ago, but I have not got around to reading it yet. All the amazing reviews of it have pushed it closer to closer to my must read next pile. I hope that I like it as much as everyone else has.

Madeline, consider this a formal request for a new thread.

I finished No Fond Return of Love by Barbara Pym for the LT recommended category. It was OK, but I like others of her books better.

I've been tossing around in my mind an idea for a challenge for August.

We've had "I can't believe you haven't read that yet! (10,000+ copies on LT but new to you)" I was thinking of the opposite, though I haven't figured the max copy level and if it is for the book or author.

I thought of it as I was filling in links, pictures, CK, etc. for authors I found while reading Platform-shmatform. A lot of interesting looking books out there that either are not on here, LibraryThing, or have very few copies on here.

277>

Your last sentence is intriguing. I bet a 'Read a book not listed on LT' challenge would be interesting, and somewhat challenging to. (if you go that way with it) (of course, the book would be listed on LT once someone chose it and added it, making it even more challenging)

I've added and am reading "A Book You Heard of from an LT member". It is Watermark: A Novel of the Middle Ages by Vanitha Sankaran which I heard about on Teelgee's thread.

After lying in bed all day, I've finished both Girl With a Pearl Earring for the Orange Prize challenge and The Secret History of the Pink Carnation for the LT-inspired challenge.

Don't you love lazy book days? :)

calm, hope you enjoy Watermark, I thought it quite well done for a debut.

I think it would be fun to add the LT person we heard about our book from for that challenge (if we remember who it was).

> 275

Heard you, Richard! Will put it up shortly.

I haven't read any of the books I wikied yet, and now I'm about to leave on vacation and don't know that I feel like bringing any of those with me. I don't think I'm going to accomplish much here this month! =p

> 277

Read a book not listed on LT

I actually thought of that idea previously but never used it because I thought it would be hard to get others to find the same book(s) to read. Part of the idea of the TIOLI challenge, after all, is to encourage people to read the same books.

It sounds like a fun idea, though, and certainly would be a challenge. In addition, it would be a good way to introduce some unique books to this crowd. I'd say to go for it, Mike!

> 281

I think it would be fun to add the LT person we heard about our book from for that challenge (if we remember who it was).

I agree.

> 283

I wikied yet

Hehe! I didn't know that "wiki" was a verb!

Have a great time on your vacation, Shauna. The wiki will still be here when you get back. :)

Closing this thread per request and opening a new thread here.