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Posts by jenp27

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

The Greatest Love Story Ever Told

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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

May Monthly Recap

pile-of-booksIt’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

The Parking Lot Attendant by Nafkote Tamirat

the parking lot attendant

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

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.

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.

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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.

Bookish March Madness 2018

It’s time to join our challenge! Books have been nominated, rated, and ranked and our book bracket is complete. Now we are just waiting on the basketball teams which will be announced on selection Sunday, March 11, 2018. Books on the book bracket will be paired with basketball teams  of the same rank. Keep reading to learn more about what you need to to do participate.  Read more

March Madness Reading Challenge

march madness

We need your help! We’ll be hosting a March Madness reading challenge where books get paired with basketball teams and we need your help to rank the books that will go into each of our brackets. If you have 10 minutes, please go to our survey and vote on the books for the challenge. You can also join in on the challenge to earn the chance to win a box of bookish prizes.

The survey takes about 10 minutes and includes rating 68 books on a 5-point Likert scale. Everyone who completes the survey will be offered the opportunity to win a $15 Amazon gift card for helping out. I will warn you that this survey will be bad for your TBR. I added quite a few books to mine!

Click here to take the survey.

You can read more about the challenge on our challenge page here. I will be posting the list of participants on the challenge page in the next few days so if you want to join and don’t see your name on the list, drop a comment on that page saying you want to play and where you will be posting your updates (on the blog, on your own blog, or on List) and I’ll add you.

February Monthly Recap

pile-of-booksIt’s time for our February monthly recap. Find out which books were favorites and which were duds for the month of January. We’ll end our wrap up with a glimpse of what’s coming out in March.  Read more

Bookish March Madness Challenge

march madness

It’s that time again! Once again The Reader’s Room will be hosting our own version of a bookish March Madness, slated to begin with the start of the NCAA tournament (March 15th). Reading won’t start until March 15 and full instructions won’t be posted until March 1. However, this challenge requires us to do some preparation so it would be very helpful to us to get people signed up early. We hope you join us for this challenge! Read more