Final Summer Challenge Update

It’s time for our final Summer Challenge update!  Last day to finish your books and post your reviews is September 22 by midnight (your local time). Keep reading to find out who is in the lead, to get some insight into how we will judge the winners, and see who made our final honorable mentions.

It’s been a really fun summer and we’ve been impressed by how much you all have read. As a group, you all read 340 books and 114,670 pages. If you didn’t have a chance to join us this time, there will be many more opportunities in the future! Winners of all prizes will be announced on September 27 so make sure to check back on that day to see if you won. Our new challenge (and low-key challenge) will also be announced on that day!

Here’s a quick reminder about the prizes:

1. Most well-travelled. This prize will go to the person who has visited the most destinations. Number of pages read will also factor into the selection. The winner will get his/her choice of six books – written by an author from every continent, excluding Antarctica. A winner from the U.S. will received his or her choice of ebook or paperback books, while an international winner would be required to select all ebooks.
2. Most creative. This prize will go to the person who has shown the most creativity in finding book-destination locations.  The prize awarded will be a beautiful print of a literary map (choice of either the UK or US) and a $10 Amazon gift card. Eligibility: Must have read a minimum of 4 books.
3. True to the Spirit of the Game: Consider this to be our grand prize. This person will have selected books that best fit the spirit of this challenge. For example, for specific countries, they will have selected books that really capture the essence of traveling to that country. The winner will receive a 1 year subscription to “Just the Right Book,” a book service that is personalized for your tastes. Eligibility: Must have read a minimum of 4 books.
4. Random selection: This prize will go to a randomly selected participant. To qualify you must have read and reviewed at least one book by the end of the challenge. The winner will receive: Two books of your choice from among those reviewed for this challenge (so check the comments section to see what people have read). International readers must select ebook versions. Eligibility: Must have read at least 1 book.

For the “Most True to the Spirit of the Game” prize we will be looking for certain criteria including whether you pushed yourself to read outside your comfort zone to immerse yourself in a given destination, but most importantly how strong a match the book was to a particular destination. For example, John’s choice of Suitable Boy by Seth for India would be ranked highly because the author is Indian, the story is set in India and the premise of the book is to outline social/political/religious issues in India. And, the sheer length requires a certain degree of immersion into your destination country.

For the “Most Creative” prize, we will be looking at whether the book fit the destination, but also whether you thought outside the box when finding books to fit. Using John as an example again (because he’s the top person in the comments section – you all have books I could have picked as examples for either category) he picked “James Madison: A Life Reconsidered” for Ghost town. His rationale when requesting was that it fit because it was a look back at the life of someone deceased – “everyone is dead.” We thought this was clever.

Think you should win Most Creative or Most True to the Spirit of the game? Plead your case in the comments section or email them directly to me (jenlane3@yahoo.com). Judges will be able to see your arguments for why you should win. Simply give your reasons along with examples of book-destination pairings that best reflect your reasons. Don’t be modest. It will be tough to determine winners so any little bit may help you!

Frequent Flyers (a.k.a the scoreboard):

Nanny Ogg -32 (pages read: 10,158)
Glo-worm – 28 (pages read: 8,571)* incorrect page numbers -still tabulating (should be a little higher).
Anne Shirley – 26 (pages read: 7,246)
Tracy S – 25 (pages read: 6,956)
Ursula – 24 (pages read: 7,098)
Chili -23 (pages read: 10,200)
LibraryCin – 22 (pages read: 7,006)
Rachel Morgan – 21 (pages read: 6,539)
Maxibob-18 (pages read 4,926)
Jaenelle Angelline-16 (pages read: 5,060)
Aarti -15 (pages read: 3,441)
Nicole – 14 (pages read: 5,376)
Second Honeymoon – 13 (pages read: 3,821)
Luna – 13 (pages read: 2,885)
Sushicat – 11 (pages read: 4,412) +3 when all group members have finished.
Morgen -8 (pages read: 3,246)
Jean Paget – 8 (pages read: 1,638)
Nia -7 (pages read: 2,387)
Tanya -7 (pages read: 2,063)
John -6 (pages read: 3,070)
Jo March -6 (pages read: 2,887)
Tiger Lily – 6 (pages read: 1,870)
Emily -5 (pages read: 1,308)
Becky -4 (pages read: 1,150)
Yvonne – 2 (pages read: 541)
Kate T – 2 (pages read: 479)
Missy Bee – 1 (pages read: 336)

Honorable mentions: Jen’s favorite location-book pairing since last update was read by Nicole D with Team of Rivals for Museum tour. I thought this was a clever pick since she clarified the destination was the Abraham Lincoln Memorial Museum in Illinois. BW’s favorite location-book pairing was read by Romans Girl with Girl on the Train destination for first visit.

Good luck in the final few days of the competition! We wish we could give you all prizes because you all did really well in picking and reading your books. We hope you enjoyed participating and found some great new books. Stay tuned for our winner announcement on the 27th!