Tag Archives: challenge

Blood Moon challenge

Blood Moon(s) Reading Challenge

Leave a reply

You know I often stumble into little self-imposed reading challenges. The habit started a couple years ago, when I discovered I had a number of books with the same title. Since then, done it again, read all my books with Omega in the title, and I’m currently slowly reading all the alphas.  I even did one where I had several books using the same stock photo on the cover and another where I just read books by people I’d met online. Sometimes it’s the little things that keep me amused. Plus, I have so many books, it’s often a relief to find some way to ease the what-to-read question.

Well, I started reading Blood Moons, last night. Then, as I had everything ordered roughly alphabetically, I noticed I had six books with almost identical titles. There is some variation, a plural moon or Blood Moon being in the series title versus a book title, but it’s enough. ‘Imma read em,’ I thought, and thus was born the Blood Moon Challenge.

Blood Moon challenge

Part of what makes a challenge a challenge for me, is  the intentionality of it. Declaring what I intend to do, so that I can accomplish it. You know, kind of like making a to-do list so that you can mark each item off. So, that’s what this first post is, my I-plan-to post. And I plan to read six books with Blood Moon(s) on the cover (that way I’m including both titles and series).

Here is a list of the books (most were free at the time of posting):

*Edit: There were initially 7 titles. But I found that, though I had one more marked as owned, I couldn’t actually find it. So, I removed it, leaving 6 for the challenge.

Omega challenge

An Omega Weekend challenge

Leave a reply

Every once in a while I get a bee in my bonnet to follow a randomly noticed pattern in my book buying habits. Last year, for example, I noticed I had a number of books using the same stock photo on the cover. Thus was born the Annoying Close-up Guy Challenge, in which I read them all back to back.

Before that it was books with the same title— Bound by Blood and Blood Lust. Today I grabbed Omega’s Touch off the Amazon free list and then wondered how many books I have with the word Omega in the title. Turns out it’s six. (I expected more than that, but apparently I was still counting those I’ve already read in my vague mental calculations.)

Omega Weekend

And seeing them all lined up in a pretty little row, I thought, let’s read ’em. So, I’m officially declaring it an Omega weekend. I’m going to read Omega’s Touch, Omega’s Fate, Omega, Omega in the Shadows, Omega Rising, and Omega’s Agony With the Truth: No Regrets over the next couple days.

All right, it always feels good to have a plan. Now it’s time for tea and a Kindle round-up.

 

blood lust covers

Blood Lust reading challenge wrap up

Leave a reply

Blood LustWeeeeelllll, I can officially say that books titled Blood Lust are apparently not likely to be for me. Wow, I am flabbergasted at how badly this challenge went.

I don’t usually use star ratings here on the blog. I want people to have to read the written review to know my opinion. But I’ve given each book a review post where that can be read, so for this wrap up I’m going to bring over the star ratings I used when I cross posted to Goodreads. Let’s look at the numbers, I think it will make a startling and sad point.

I rated these books as follows (scroll over):

That’s 2, 3, 1, 1 or a collective average of 1.75! But that’s actually rounding up. Zoe Winter’s Blood Lust was a compilation of three novellas, which I rated as 1, 2, 2.5. So, the average of all three would be 1.83, making the real average of all four Blood Lust books 1.7075. What’s more, since Jessica Gibson’s Blood Lust was a prequel and I had book one (Love and Blood), I went ahead and read it. I’ll average it in too. I gave it another 1 star. (I honestly have never given so many 1 stars so close together in all my years of reviewing.) This brings the collective average of the books read for this challenge to 1.566! That barely even rounds up.

I think my overall thought on the matter is that if an author isn’t concerned about using a common (as in frequently occurring) title, they aren’t bothered if they write a common (as in a lacking taste and refinement) book.

Each of these books was a fail for me. The challenge however was not. Because, though the books sucked, I still garnered a lot of amusement out of reading them back-to-back, seeing them line up in my review list, tweeting four Blood Lust reviews in a row, etc. Yes, the actual reading is significant, but it’s important to remember it isn’t the ONLY enjoyment that can be gained from a book.

I have no doubt I’ll do another such challenge. I noticed when I alphabetised my TBR list, for example, that I also have three books titled Blood Bound, which is especially noteworthy since I had five titled Bound by Blood. That’s what started these title-centric challenges to begin with. (Man authors need to work on ensuring variety in their titles, particularly around blood apparently.) Hopefully, though, the next challenge will go better than this one.

31cf6c81811db784bb6717e3aca6dd9e