HM & SL 2014 Book Challenge

I'm a bit behind in posting, but here is the challenge for this year. We liked last year's set up, so we did a wee bit of tweaking and here you go!

The categories for this year's challenge along with the required number of books for each category:

Science Fiction/Fantasy - 4 books
Travel (Books about travel or set in places you've never lived) - 4 books
Nonfiction - 4 books
Mystery - 4 books
History/Historical Fiction - 4 books
Award Nominees/Winners - 4 books
Religious - 4 books
Classics - 2 books
Adult Fiction by an author you've never read - 4 books
Books You Own - 6 books
Books on Your To-read List - 6 books
Other - 4 books

Books have to be at least 100 pages long to count. 

SCORING GOES AS FOLLOWS:

In all categories except for Books You Own and To-read Books, each "required" book is 10 points. (In other words, the first two, four, or six books in the category.) After you have read the required number of books, each book is 5 points in a given category.

For Books You Own and To-read Books, each book is an additional 25 points - no matter how many you read! (But you are required to read at least 6 in these categories for full credit.)

Also, for Books You Own and To-Read Books, if those books fit into another category, you can count them in both categories, and still add another 25 points! Hooray!

Happy Reading!

2013 HM&SL Book Challenge Wrap-Up

2013 has ended and with it the annual HM&SL Book Challenge. And awesomeness: I completed it!! Even when I read significantly less than usual (which was also a goal). Amazing what being busy can do to reading time. Though it is affecting my abilities at work, so I may not carry that goal over to 2014. So here are the iffy jpgs of my category tracking:

Travel or Book set where you have never been

Adult Fiction Author (which eventually became any author, but the 1st 4 are adult fiction) which I have never read before

Award Winner or Nominee

Classics

History or Historical Fiction

Chapter Book with less than 100 pages

Books Turned into a Movie or Musical

Mystery

Nonfiction

Other

Recommended by

Religious

Science Fiction or Fantasy

And the final totals:

Interesting comparisons:
I read less books (287 vs 359)
and less pages (29,584 vs 32,854)
But I got more points this year! (1152.6 as opposed to last year's 1076.1).


And, there are also my A to Z Totals (aka The Scrabble Challenge) with comparison to last year:

Count Scrabble points for first letter of each title and author that I read. Bonus points for letters my names start with. (Not including picture books.)


2012 Titles: 246
2013 Titles: 223
2012 Title Letters not read: Q, X, Y, Z
2013 Title Letters not read: G, J, K, N, Q, X, Y, Z
2012 Highest Scoring Title letter: H (30 points)
2013 Highest Scoring Title letter: H (35 points)

2012 Authors: 210
2013 Authors: 254 (whoa! Go me!!)

2012 Author Letters not read: N, Q, U, X, Z
2013 Author Letters not read: E, I, Q, U, X, Y

2012 Highest Scoring Author letter: W (28 points)
2013 Highest Scoring Author letter: Tie! B & H (30 points)

2012 Grand Total: 456

2013 Grand Total: 477 (wow. higher even with reading less.)