The 2012 End of the World Reading Challenge

This is the way the world ends

This is the way the world ends

This is the way the world ends

Not with a bang but a whimper. [Sorry, Tommy, but we are going out with a bang up in this bitch.-GGG]

Welcome to our latest and greatest reading challenge. This challenge is the mac-daddy pants-backwards (give yourself two points if you got that reference right away) challenge for the upcoming year; this is the Whopper, Le Big Mac, The Royale with Cheese, the Big Kahuna washed down with a motherfucking Sprite–mm-mm-MMM, that is a tasty burger! I mean, challenge. A tasty challenge.

What, pray tell, is this challenge? you ask.

This is a simple challenge. And it’s a challenge that has a prize. A good prize. Well, it’s a decent prize. And all you have to do is read.

(Note: I lied a little, there are a couple more things you have to do. But the biggest thing is just read.)

Some people think that the world is going to end next year. Even though we think that 100% of people who believe that the world is ending in 2012 should be outfitted for a straitjacket to lounge in while they relax in a plush padded cell, for the 2012 END OF THE WORLD reading challenge, we’re racking up page counts like Armageddon is nigh. Yep, it’s not a book count, it’s a page count–pages that you’ve read of any book at all that you’ve never read before, any genre, any quality writing, from Stephenie Meyer to William Shakespeare. We went with the page count format because some books, like War and Peace, are a bit more of an undertaking than, say, the new J.D. Robb–even if Roarke is a handsome, handsome man–and I wanted the extra effort in undertaking a thicker tome to be rewarded. The person who reads the most pages in 2012 wins the prize: we will give you one cent per page read, up to 3500 pages (that’s $35.00) in the form of a gift card to your favorite bookshop (if they allow online purchases of gift cards) or online bookseller.

Not a fast reader? Don’t fret; I would love to give away a random consolation prize or two, so please enter anyway! (What prizes we have to give away are dependent on what kind and how much merch we sell throughout the year. That’s how I’ve been funding the giveaways and such–either credit to get the prizes or proceeds from the sales to buy prizes. Just in case you were wondering where that money went when you buy things from IB shops! Mostly it goes to buy fun things for you guys, and occasionally, pizza.)

Since we’re giving away an actual good-as-cash prize, this challenge is going to have somewhat stricter rules than the last challenges. Mostly because when money is involved, there are just a few jerks who tend to want to cheat and ruin everything for the largely honest folks out there. So, in order to qualify, here are a few token hoops that we ask you to jump through–bonus points if you set them on fire first:

  • Be a registered follower of our blog by clicking the “subscribe” button on the sidebar.
  • Comment on five blog posts sometime before the end of 2012 under the same e-mail address/username that you followed us with. This is mostly to ascertain that you’re a real human being and that you’re actually someone who keeps up with our blog somewhat. We’d much rather give our prizes to our followers than someone who randomly signs up to win the cash money and never participates in our little community.  You will learn to love us.  All glory to the hypnotoad.
  • Have a blog or an account on Goodreads, Shelfari, or Amazon where you review the books that you are counting toward the total. Each book needs to be reviewed, and something a little more than “I loved this book, it’s awesome!” (It doesn’t, however, need to be a dissertation.) Link the place where you plan to keep up with your reviews here, where you sign up. BTW? I have a Goodreads group set up for Insatiable Booksluts. And I have a discussion folder that could be used to help keep track of your challenge. And I will probably make other folders for other challenges. If you’re into that sort of thing and use Goodreads.
  • Each book counted toward your total should be a book that you have never read before 2012. Every book read between 12:00 a.m. January 1, 2012, up until 11:59 p.m. December 31st, 2012, is eligible, provided it meets all other guidelines.
  • Each book’s total pages should be counted not necessarily from the edition that you read, but from the most standard edition–for example, if you read the large print version of a book, it would have many, many more pages than a regular hardback. If there is a hardback edition available, use that edition; if not, use trade paperback, and if nothing else, then mass-market paperback or e-format. We will check the page counts, because we have a sense of fairness that you might call anal, except that sounds pretty suggestive.
  • Each book should be a full-length work that is a book–for example, reading one story out of a book of short stories won’t count toward the total, or a magazine article or a short story published in a magazine. You can read a whole book of short stories and count the entire work. We are not including poetry because the word count on the page is not quite as dense as prose fiction, and therefore might give some an unseemly advantage.
  • You have to finish the whole book to count any pages.
  • How you keep track is up to you, as long as the reviews are publicly accessible–not just to us, but to everyone who cares to check them out.
  • Contributors to IB are not eligible for this contest. Frowny face.
  • Your final tally needs to be submitted before the balls drop (teehehe) on New Year’s Day, 2013. So if you’re trying to get that last-minute read in, keep in mind that you’ll need to review it and officially log it wherever you’re logging things.

Some additional guidelines:

  • We reserve the right to call foul if we think you’re cheating in any way–padding your page count by using books you’ve already read, padding your page count by using summaries from Wikipedia, adding books far more quickly than we believe people should reasonably be able to read them, adding a ton of e-books that have ridiculously large formatting and inflated page counts, et cetera. We are very reasonable people, so we will give you a chance to argue your virtue if we sense something is awry–certainly, we could be wrong, after all. Dealing with us in a very civil manner if this happens will go a very long way toward resolving the issue in your favor, although we can make no promises. Dealing with us in a non-civil manner will basically guarantee that we will consider you disqualified.
  • In the vein of the bullet point above, I suggest adding books as you read them to whatever list or shelf you are keeping track on, and noting the dates that you read them, even if you’re saving the review process for when you have more time. It’s not mandatory, but it could make things run more smoothly. Good documentation makes the qualification process easier, which means you get your prize faster!
  • We reserve the right to disqualify you if you violate our comment policy.
  • We may occasionally post updates, or call for counts. Some of these may be mandatory in order to be considered eligible; a year is quite a long time to keep up with a challenge, and we may need to see where we stand. In order to remain eligible, you must respond to any mandatory requests; we promise, in return, to keep these requests as simple as possible and post them with a very generous deadline for responding.
  • Although we don’t want to, we reserve the right to cancel this contest at any time. Reasons that could possibly lead to us canceling this contest could include, but are not limited to, death, dismemberment, rabies, job loss, having to deal with too many assholes who just want to use us for our vast fortune meager earnings, ghosts, harassment and abuse, nobody following guidelines or rules, the revolution not being televised, nuclear war, the suicidal depression that would cripple me if Twitter were to suddenly stop working, and the voices in my head telling me that I should use that money to buy ice cream instead.
  • We may find that we need to implement further rules or guidelines if someone outsmarts us and violates the spirit of the challenge. We will post new guidelines if needed; joining this challenge binds you to all past, present, and future guidelines, even if we all become robot androids and are alive in the year 3749.
  • If you pass 3500 pages, you do not automatically win–the person who has the most pages at the end wins, even if it’s 10,000 pages against 10,001 pages. So it’s anybody’s game until 2013!
  • Do not underestimate my Google-fu. I can find things. Oh, the things I can find.
Please sign up on this page if you want to participate. You can add your link after you get it set up, if you don’t already have a designated spot. If you have any questions, or if anything is unclear, please ask! You may not be the only person who has that question! ^_^

This is basically the first BIG-big reading challenge that we’ll have hosted, and by big I mean having a prize, so please bear with us while we work out the kinks. If we have to change anything around, it’s not to make it harder for you guys to win; we just want to make it hard for people to take advantage of us giving stuff away. We only like to give things to AWESOME people, like our loyal followers and future loyal followers.

Some banners for your bloggies:

<a href="http://insatiablebooksluts.com/the-2012-end-of-the-world-reading-challenge">
<img src="http://i.imgur.com/zBktg.png" alt="Insatiable Booksluts 2012 End of the World Reading Challenge" />
</a>

<a href="http://insatiablebooksluts.com/the-2012-end-of-the-world-reading-challenge">
<img src="http://i.imgur.com/7sGiV.png" alt="Insatiable Booksluts 2012 End of the World Reading Challenge" />
</a>

<a href="http://insatiablebooksluts.com/the-2012-end-of-the-world-reading-challenge">
<img src="http://i.imgur.com/dnAxf.png" alt="Insatiable Booksluts 2012 End of the World Reading Challenge" />
</a>

<a href="http://insatiablebooksluts.com/the-2012-end-of-the-world-reading-challenge">
<img src="http://i.imgur.com/RBRob.png" alt="Insatiable Booksluts 2012 End of the World Reading Challenge" />
</a>

118 thoughts on “The 2012 End of the World Reading Challenge”

  1. Pingback: The 2012 End of the World Reading Challenge | Insatiable Booksluts

  3. Well. You seem to have thought this through very carefully. Rabies can take years to show up, so I am ready to do this thing.

    Question for clarification. Can we read books that are ONLY available on e-readers, or does there need to be bound copy somewhere in the world in order to qualify for page count?

    Reply

    • That is a good question. E-reader books are okay for page counts, I think, as long as they are generally reasonably formatted–if someone ends up loading up ebooks that I’ve never heard of with really high page count numbers, I might have to sneak a peak to make sure they doesn’t have like huge font formatting or something. (I know you wouldn’t do it, but people get a little weird sometimes with competing.)

      Reply

  4. I’m in! I’ve linked my name to my Goodreads page where I already read my reviews. This is also great motivation on my personal challenge, which is to read all the books on my shelves that I have not yet read. And there are a lot of them. :-)

    Reply

  6. Jeebus I must be nuts to even attempt this with building a house, adopting 3 more kids and homeschooling, but I’m a sucker for book stuff! I am SO in and will get this stuff up on my blog instead of amazon. I’m a verified book whore and I’m ready to be pounded by fiction and non-fiction alike!!

    Reply

  8. I am so excited!! Now I have a better reason to have my nose always stuck in a book (Kindle?) rather then “I just don’t want to talk to you” which isn’t making me any friends. And it really pisses my mom off.

    Reply

  15. Huzzah! I will most certainly participate in this worthy challenge, and shall firmly kick some major posterior! Sorry, I couldn’t resist a lame attempt at sounding randomly pretentious and eccentric.

    My name is linked to my main book blog, where I review mainly Juv/YA books. Any non-Juv/YA book reviews will be posted to my livejournal blog.

    When we post said reviews, do we need to include the IB End of the World Challenge banner, or just have an introductory post saying that we’re participating in said challenge and all future book reviews will be part of that challenge?

    Last question: since the prize will be in the form of an online-purchased gift-card, does that mean the winner won’t need to reveal her/his address/other identifying info?

    Reply

    • The banner doesn’t need to be posted for each review (although if you want to, that’d kick ass :D)–especially since people doing it on Goodreads or Shelfari, or wherever, won’t be able to post the banners ^_^ Basically we just need to be able to find your reviews to check em out if you win.

      I’m guessing that since it’ll likely be digital, all we’ll need is an e-mail address–unless someone wants to go through a local shop that doesn’t do digital cards but sells them online, but I guess also if it is local, they could hold it there for the person, too! I’ll cross that bridge when I get there. But the option of getting an Amazon or B&N card is always there, and those are totally digital, as far as I know.

      Reply

      • Sounds great! One more thing – if I have books that I once started (i.e. got two or three chapters in and for whatever reason stopped), and I want to use said books for the challenge, can I count those first chapters, or do I start from where I left off?

        Reply

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  26. Hell yes! I’m so in.

    Great idea, guys. Also good call on the goodreads shelf. I’ve been trying to write more/better reviews, anyway.

    I joined the group, and my goodreads shelf is http://www.goodreads.com/review/list/2260790-lauren?shelf=2012-ib-end-of-the-world-challenge

    Ahhh, the possibilities of an empty book shelf. My mouth is almost watering. Almost.

    I don’t really think I’ll read more than any normal person, but it’ll be good to have moral support for my goal of reading a lot more post-college-reading-slump. Do you have any idea how hard it is to WANT to read for yourself when you have to read three books of political theory every week? Plus three clubs, plus social dancing, plus feeding myself, plus logic classes, plus…okay, I’ll shut up now. I like books!

    Logistics question: in 2011 I read the prologue of a book my grandma wrote, but I haven’t started the body of the book yet. I’ve never read it before. Can I count that book in my page count?

    Reply

  30. Pingback: 2012 Reading Challenges | Bitch Lit

  33. I may have missed it, but do audiobooks count. I read traditional books, but I also usually have a book going in the car as well. Either way would work for me, but I just want to know which books to count for this challenge.
    I am on goodreads and will put the books I use for the challenge on my “2012 IB Challenge” shelf. I will also note it on my blog. Hoping to get one of those consolation prizes, since I know know I will not get the highest page count.

    Reply

      • I saw this post regarding audiobooks. I listened to an audiobook last week and had this debate with myself- just call me Sybil. I assumed it would not count since it was audio. I, too, have a lot of hours in a car to listen to audiobooks. I count them on my “Read” list since I have completed the book, but I thought I would not count them on a list for a challenge such as this (unless you say they count :)) . My rationale is that I did not read the book, it was read to me (when kids have to read for Accelerated Reader points in school, they get the most points if they read the book, less if they had help reading and the least amount of points if the book was read to them). The reading was not at my speed (regardless of the pace), nor did I have to contend with my “at home ADD” (kids, animals, dinner, etc). I could basically spend a good 5 hours x 5 days listening to audiobooks (in addition to any reading time) and didn’t think that was fair since a lot of people wouldn’t have that kind of time to devote to reading on their own.
        I realize I just totally interrupted this thread “conversation” with an unsolicited response, based on a conversation with myself. :) Let me know what you decide, I’m good either way!

        Reply

    • Okay, two months later, I’m finally making my ruling on audiobooks:

      Yes, they count. I’m letting them count because it actually takes longer to “read” an audiobook; also, people with super long commutes have less chance to read treebooks, so I guess it’s only fair that they get to capitalize on that time. Since it’s the same books we’d be reading, I think they are totally permissible.

      When counting the audiobooks, use the page numbers for hardback if possible, then trade paper if that’s not available, then mass-market if nothing else is available.

      Reply

  35. Yay for the book challenge. I’m looking forward to it- especially since last year’s reading adventures were minimal for me. This should help give me a swift kick in the arse to get me reading. I joined goodreads to see what all of the fuss is about. I’m not sure where I will post my reviews- probably Shelfari. http://www.shelfari.com/erikaleigh

    Reply

  36. Just discovered your blog – it’s fab! Well up for this challenge as I love books so much and try to read at least a book a week. I tend to tweet about the books I read – is that enough, or do I need to provide a link to my amazon reviews?

    Reply

  39. Pingback: I’m participating in a reading challenge! plus SHAMELESS PLUG: READ MORE BOOKS[luts]! | miss tuggy.

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    • Another question: Do unpublished original scripts count? I read a lot of scripts during my quasi acting career; they take up much of my reading time. Many of them, however, are not published yet. (I dream many dreams…may of them are not my own.)

      Reply

      • Good questions! I’m going to rule that neither textbooks nor scripts count–one because textbooks aren’t pleasure reading, and the second because scripts aren’t books ^_^ and we also don’t have the opportunity to check page counts and stuff like that.

        Reply

        • Ah, I would most heartily disagree on scripts not counting as books, but that is another argument for another day.

          Thanks for the quick and clear answer! It shall be nice to have an excuse to read for pleasure again; it has been too long!

          Reply

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  51. Holy bananas. I would join but its my A Level Year so I probably shouldn’t. >< the life of a student sigh. I would totally give it a shot next year! Even if there's no prize to be won!

    Reply

  52. I thought I was slacking off in reading this year until I did a tally right now. I’m actually already over 3,500. Stunned me. I doubt I’ll win, as there are always rapid readers that put me to share, but I’m happy to join a motivating party for consuming more prose. I’ve been reviewing everything I’ve read for years now right here: http://www.goodreads.com/review/list/147818?shelf=read

    One question of the rules: does sequential art count? I’m presuming not, on the same grounds of quick-reading and less text than a typical prose page. But there are some trades I intend to read this year and it’d be good to know not to include them.

    Reply

    • Good question! I’m going to go ahead and rule out graphic art/art-based books, even though I think they’re lovely, because of the very reasons you gave. (I also think poetry is lovely and important, and people who read these formats properly would take more time to study poems and artwork.. but I can see someone ruining it for everyone by not reading it properly. :\)

      Reply

  53. This sounds like an awesome reading challenge! I’ve never done a page count before but I love tallying up my total pages read every month. It’ll be interesting to see how many I can read in a year. I’ll be posting my reviews on my blog and joining the Goodreads group. I’ve already subscribed in my Google reader a long time ago but, just to make sure, I’ll click the subscribe button too.

    Reply

  55. Pingback: 2012 End of the World Reading Challenge: It’s check-in time! | Insatiable Booksluts

  57. I had forgotten all about this until the check-in, but count me in! I’ve linked to my blog above, but I might end up posting reviews on Goodreads. I’ll add that info later!

    Reply

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  63. I am incredibly late coming to this challenge, with little to no hopes of actually winning, but, hey, I could win a random prize or one of the consolation prizes. Perhaps the biggest benefit of this challenge is that it stands a decent chance of making me haul the mighty “War and Peace” off of my bookshelf where it has sat for some years now.

    I’ll be recording book reviews here: http://bookblogbyb.blogspot.ca/
    My Twitter name is blr098.
    I’ll try to get a handle on posting reviews to my account on GoodReads too, but I am not an avid GoodReads user, but here is my profile link: http://www.goodreads.com/user/show/57986-brandy

    Thanks Insatiable Book Sluts – (love the name BTW)

    Reply

  64. Pingback: Bookiness – Fifty Shades Darker (2011) by E. L. James | Mid-Atlantic Musings

  66. I’ve just updated my summary here; I can sure tell which months were heavy library reading months (it was my own rule to disallow library books in my totals, to try to make sure I’m aware of just how many great books are on my own shelves that I’m ignoring whilst happily draining the library’s supply), but I’m happy with how the year has gone so far. Hope everybody else is still having fun with this!

    Reply

  67. Wait, I thought I had commented here to sign up. I’ve totally been doing this, via my blog and Goodreads (all of my 2012 100 Books Challenge books are new reads). Anyway. Yeah, I’m doing this. Hooray.

    Reply

  68. Pingback: It’s December, EotW Reading Challenge participants–are you prepared? | Insatiable Booksluts

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