Posts by jenp27

Jul 20

2018 Man Booker longlist: Our predictions

It’s that time of year again! My personal favorite of time for our blog: Man Booker season!! The 2018 Man Booker longlist will be announced on July 24. Those of you who follow our blog know that we are obsessed with the Man Booker and for the last three years, BW and I have tried to read our way through the entire long list in order to make our predictions.

For those of you who don’t know, the Man Booker Prize is a major literary award that is awarded to “the best novel in the opinion of the judges.” The prize was created to “increase the reading quality of fiction” and “attract the intelligent general audience.” Each year the panel of 5 judges selects a longest of 12-13 books they consider to be the best books of the year. Books must be first published in English by a registered imprint in UK or Ireland and must have a publication date from October of the prior year through September of the current year.

Our shadow panel of judges returns this year and once again is comprised of BW and myself along with our four contributors: Nicole, Lisa, Anita, and Andrew (you can read more about them in our “about” section). Book Worm and I will be attempting to read all the nominated books before the shortlist is announced and our four contributors will be helping out along the way.

Each panel member has made predictions for which books will make the longlist. Panelists were able to nominate up to 13 books for the list but some chose to nominate fewer. Here are our thoughts and predictions: Read more

Jul 18

13 Comments

There There by Tommy Orange

There There is a book that will stay with me for a long time. It’s getting a lot of critical acclaim and will likely be a much discussed book among readers this year. Here’s what I thought… Read more

Jul 16

5 Comments

Sight by Jessie Greengrass

sight

This Wednesday, our Man Booker shadow panel will be releasing our 2018 longest predictions. Sight by Greengrass has been getting some buzz and made it onto the Women’s Fiction shortlist. Contributor Nicole and I both read the book in anticipation that it might make the list. Keep reading to find out what we thought. Read more

Jul 2

8 Comments

And we are off…

summer reading 2018

And we are off to Europe!! Participants may start their reading. All updates will be posted on the challenge page so make sure to check in regularly. Mini challenges may be posted at anytime to let you accrue additional points. I’ll also post updates on Litsy, Goodreads, and Twitter.

Make sure that you update your threads regularly to let us know where you are. You are considered to be in a country once you begin your book for that country. Mini challenges require you be in a specific country to get the points so you’ll need to update us in order to claim the points.

Remember that each week we will select a participant to win an extra point for creativity!

Haven’t joined? There is still time if you are interested. Check out the challenge page for more information!

Jun 18

4 Comments

Summer Reading Challenge: Backpack through Europe

summer reading 2018

We are back with a new summer reading challenge complete with some awesome prizes! Last year we did a reading road trip through the United States. This year, we’ll be backpacking through Europe and we hope you join us! Read more

Jun 11

4 Comments

The Greatest Love Story Ever Told

I don’t typically like celebrity books and I don’t read much in the way of memoirs or comedy books. However, Ron Swanson is one of my all time favorite TV characters and I pretty much love everything about Megan Mullally and Nick Offerman. So, I broke my literary fiction trend and picked up this celebrity memoir at Book Expo this year. Read more

Jun 3

8 Comments

May Monthly Recap

pile-of-books It’s time for our May monthly recap – a few days late since I was away at Book Expo for the last several days. Find out which books were favorites and which were duds for the month of May. We’ll end our wrap up with a glimpse of what’s coming out in June. Read more

May 16

1 Comment

The Parking Lot Attendant by Nafkote Tamirat

It’s not often that a book leaves me with such conflicting feelings. This debut by Boston author Nafkote Tamirat is a coming of age story set in Boston and an unnamed tropical island. It’s the sort of book that left me with many questions and a mix of reactions. Here’s my review… Read more

Mar 13

2 Comments

Challenge update: March Madness

march madness

Only two more days to complete your brackets for the challenge! If you do not complete your bracket before Thursday March 15 in the morning, you will be locked out of the challenge. See instructions in earlier posts and on our challenge page.

UPDATE: You may now begin reading as soon as you have completed and submitted your bracket. Once I see your submission on the CBS site, you may start reading. So if you finish your bracket early, you’ll get a leg up on the competition. Granted we won’t know the final 4 #16 spots until end of day tomorrow.

Good luck everyone! And send me a message if you need any help getting started.

Mar 11

Brackets are now Live for March Book Madness Challenge

Our Bookish March Madness Challenge is a reading challenge where we pair books with basketball teams then participants can earn points for both predictions and reading books that correspond with their winning predictions. You can read full instructions and join here.

Teams were announced today and so now you can see which books go with each team. The fate of the book is determined by how well their basketball team does in the NCAA tournament.

You can now access the brackets. Here is the link to the CBS pool where you will submit your own bracket. Here’s what you need to do…

Step 1: Join our CBS pool. to join our league. You need to do this to participate because part of your score will be tracked here.

Step 2: Look at the brackets. I’ve created an excel sheet you can view that has 3 sheets. Sheet 1 has the book bracket, sheet 2 is the basketball bracket. The two sheets are identical in terms of their layout. So the book in the top left corner is partnered with the basketball team in the top left corner. You could potentially print them out and lay one on top of the other in order to see how they are matched. Sheet 3 has the books and partnered teams linked. The Brackets are here.

Step 3: Fill out your bracket. When you submit your bracket to the CBS group you will need to do so using only basketball teams (the books won’t be on the CBS website). We recommend that you print out one basketball bracket and then write in the books next to each team name. Then fill it out with both partners in each position. Then you can go to CBS site and fill out your bracket online with your cheatsheet in front of you.

Step 4: Submit your bracket to CBS site before March 15. Brackets will lock as soon as games start so if you forget to submit it, you will be locked out of the challenge.

Step 5: Read. From March 15 – May 15, you will be reading the books you selected in your bracket. You can only get points for reading books that you have picked to advance at least one game. See challenge page for full instructions.

Step 6: Score your reading. Your score will be determined by prediction score (tracked by CBS automatically) + your reading score (tracked by you). You can find a link to the score card on our challenge page.

Any questions? It can be confusing so make sure you ask lots of questions!

If you have never filled out a bracket: The way the brackets work is that all schedules and games are already determined. You work your way from the outside in to the center of the sheet predicting the outcome of each game until you end up with one winner.

So if you look at the bracket, the top left corner has The Hate you Give (Virginia) vs. My Not So Perfect Life (UMB) linked together. This means that they will be playing each other in round 1. You need to select the winner of that game and you’ll write that in on the line closer to the center for round 2. Then move down to the next pair in round one. In our bracket it would be American War (Creighton) vs. Warcross (Kansas St). Pick who you think would win that game and write that winner in on the line on round two. Proceed down the left side until you’ve completed all the predictions. Then go to the outer right side and do the same thing.

Once you’ve gone through all of the first round you will move to the next games underneath “second round.” So in our example above, I picked Virginia to beat UMBC and Creighton to beat Kansas State. So I should have in my bracket for round two: Virginia (THUG) vs. Creighton (American War). I then pick the team I think will win that game and move down the right side then left side until I have match ups listed for round three.

Keep going until you have only one winner left.