The 2014 Annual Reading Challenge Discussion Thread!

[jbcohen]

Originally Posted by Geralt

Outlander is a romance book. It just uses time travelling (which is more of a science-fiction trope than it is a fantasy one) to establish the setting of the book. But all in all, it's a romance novel set in 18th century Scotland. The main plot revolves around the personal relationships and sex.

I think that we are talking about different series, it seems that there is a TV series by that same name that I was not aware of. I am talking about a book series by that name, that I have attempted to illustrate below. The books are post-appocolyptic US, where the books do talk about interpersonal relationships among the characters however this tends to be rare since they are typically fighting for survival:

[Geralt]

We were all talking about the book Outlander by Diana Gabaldon. Except you I think You were talking about another book lol
https://www.goodreads.com/series/43943-outlander

[Hampshire Nanny]

Originally Posted by Tarana

Goodreads automatically gives you a page count based on the version of the book you select, so make sure you select the right one and don't select audiobooks if you listen (because it won't give any pages at all). I don't mind 'padding' my book count with short books because I have additional challenges (age challenge, series challenge, etc.). In fact, I read several short books in a row to get ahead enough to read/listen to two doorstops.

Originally Posted by Geralt

What I do when I listen to an audiobook I just add a kindle edition so I can keep the page count.

For books that don't have "real" pages, I use the page count from the Mass Market Paperback if the book is available in that format. Otherwise, I'll use the page count from the hardback edition. It's only recently that the Kindle edition has had a page count -- and even now, there are some Kindle books that either don't list the number of pages or with blatantly wrong page count. (One Corpse Too Many by Ellis Peters shows 8 pages on the Kindle listing!)

Originally Posted by Tarana

I also love my Kindle Keyboard. Since I have multiple devices now, and I like how the Kindle sorts stuff into collections, I use this one to keep my series' books.

I haven't made much use of collections. I started organizing books into collections, but when I deleted a book and then downloaded it again, it didn't seem to go back into the collection. SO - I do all my organizing in Calibre and just don't worry about trying to maintain any collections on the Kindle device itself.

[treadlightly]

Originally Posted by Geralt

Outlander is a romance book. It just uses time travelling (which is more of a science-fiction trope than it is a fantasy one) to establish the setting of the book. But all in all, it's a romance novel set in 18th century Scotland. The main plot revolves around the personal relationships and sex.

I think this is true for the first book. But for the series as a whole, I would describe it as historical fiction with elements of romance, adventure, science fiction and fantasy.

[CRussel]

Originally Posted by treadlightly

I think this is true for the first book. But for the series as a whole, I would describe it as historical fiction with elements of romance, adventure, science fiction and fantasy.

I would agree, with perhaps the emphasis on the romance side. But they really are a bit more than "just" romances.

[Dazrin]

I went searching for word counts for some of the books I have read this year and came across a couple really useful sites for that and thought I would share since there have been questions in past years about where to find word/page count information. For page counts I much prefer GoodReads but hadn't found a decent reference for word counts.

http://www.arbookfind.com/
http://src.scholastic.com/bookexpert/

Both are geared toward teachers/parents/students in K-12 to get information for their reading programs, so the book choices aren't nearly comprehensive but I was able to find information (word counts) for a surprising number of books that I hadn't been able to find elsewhere.

These do give slightly different results but they are very close to each other. They do have different selections too.

[jbcohen]

Originally Posted by Dazrin

I went searching for word counts for some of the books I have read this year and came across a couple really useful sites for that and thought I would share since there have been questions in past years about where to find word/page count information. For page counts I much prefer GoodReads but hadn't found a decent reference for word counts.

http://www.arbookfind.com/
http://src.scholastic.com/bookexpert/

Both are geared toward teachers/parents/students in K-12 to get information for their reading programs, so the book choices aren't nearly comprehensive but I was able to find information (word counts) for a surprising number of books that I hadn't been able to find elsewhere.

These do give slightly different results but they are very close to each other. They do have different selections too.

Personally I do not usually like to look at the page counts of my books because I tend to shy away from books with the higher page counts. Since I have converted to electronic books I don't tend to get intimidated much any more because I do not get a sense of the physical size of the book any more. Just one of the many reasons to covert to electronic format in my opinion.

[Katsunami]

I've finally started my re-read of Musashi (I'm at the beginning of chapter 2 now), and Tai-Pan is 600 pages shorter than I remember it to be. There's a chance I'll make this challenge yet... the subchallenges, at least.

[Dazrin]

Originally Posted by jbcohen

Personally I do not usually like to look at the page counts of my books because I tend to shy away from books with the higher page counts. Since I have converted to electronic books I don't tend to get intimidated much any more because I do not get a sense of the physical size of the book any more. Just one of the many reasons to covert to electronic format in my opinion.

This is less about e-books vs paper books for me; I have always liked longer books than "average" so am not intimidated by length. Mostly I use a page goal because I found that if I used a book goal I would actively avoid larger books in order to make sure I could meet my goal. I also wondered how to count short stories and novellas. Does a 10 page short story count the same as The Cuckoo's Calling? Does Cryptonomicon count as 2 (or 3) books due to it's length? Etc.

With a page count, I can read whatever I want and not worry about my goal. All pages count the same. (I do try to find a mass-market paperback edition in GoodReads to base the pages on in an attempt to keep page sizes consistent, but it isn't that big of a deal to me.)

Mostly, my post was a follow-up to a conversation a long while back where someone asked where to find page/word counts and I wanted to share since there weren't any good resources for word counts in the previous discussion.

[jbcohen]

Originally Posted by Dazrin

This is less about e-books vs paper books for me; I have always liked longer books than "average" so am not intimidated by length. Mostly I use a page goal because I found that if I used a book goal I would actively avoid larger books in order to make sure I could meet my goal. I also wondered how to count short stories and novellas. Does a 10 page short story count the same as The Cuckoo's Calling? Does Cryptonomicon count as 2 (or 3) books due to it's length? Etc.

With a page count, I can read whatever I want and not worry about my goal. All pages count the same. (I do try to find a mass-market paperback edition in GoodReads to base the pages on in an attempt to keep page sizes consistent, but it isn't that big of a deal to me.)

Mostly, my post was a follow-up to a conversation a long while back where someone asked where to find page/word counts and I wanted to share since there weren't any good resources for word counts in the previous discussion.

I can understand your question about the short books, that's why this year I started to count pages rather than the number of books. This year long book or short book makes little difference. I have passed my goal and I am keep on going, my goal was 24k and I am probably going to get to 30k before new years. I will set my goals for 2015 at where I finish up 2014 at.

[Katsunami]

Meh...

I've dropped back from a projected number of 11,054 pages (using my personal count @ 2400 characters per page) to a projected number of 9,920. If I'm going to make this challenge, I'll have to read 70 pages a day, starting today, while I'm now only averaging 27 (a bit less than one hour of reading) since the beginning of the year.

[Geralt]

Originally Posted by Katsunami

Meh...

I've dropped back from a projected number of 11,054 pages (using my personal count @ 2400 characters per page) to a projected number of 9,920. If I'm going to make this challenge, I'll have to read 70 pages a day, starting today, while I'm now only averaging 27 (a bit less than one hour of reading) since the beginning of the year.

If you commute you could switch to audiobooks and catch up in no time.

[Katsunami]

Originally Posted by Geralt

If you commute you could switch to audiobooks and catch up in no time.

I don't like audiobooks. First, they're too expensive. Second, listening to audiobooks is not reading; not for me. Sometimes, I want to stop for a few moments to think about something I've just read and flip back in a book to look something up. With audiobooks that is more difficult.

[Geralt]

Your loss.

[pdurrant]

We're now (just over) 70% through the year.