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BookWorm: Introducing GoodReads Challenge

kaizenPosted for Everyone to comment on, 5 years ago6 min read

Goodreads is basically a collection of favorite and recommended books from our contributors. To introduce the whaleshares platform outside, we will also be maintaining a list of books at the actual Goodreads website for everyone's perusal. This is actually a book review and I have prepared a few guidelines to make this a bit formal. The main goal of this challenge is to have a list of books that we can recommend and at the same time use as materials for our Book Reading Challenge moving forward.

Any submissions, will of course be subject to strict curation. Our goal is not just to help people read books, but also have the means to be able to share it to everyone. After all, Einstein said "If you can't explain it simply, you don't understand it well enough." Let's always remember that the point of reading is to improve comprehension, to widen our perspectives, to learn and a lot of things, etc. etc. We don't just read for the sake of reading.

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Source: NYTimes

How do we go about this?
To be able to add a book to our list, one has to provide a book review. We have found a very useful guide to help us with the process of making a book review. If you have a favorite books, this should be very easy for you. But for this challenge, we'd like to make this a bit formal as compared with the LightReads.

According to The Writing Center, a review is a critical evaluation of a text, event, object, or phenomenon. Reviews can consider books, articles, entire genres or fields of literature, architecture, art, fashion, restaurants, policies, exhibitions, performances, and many other forms. For our purposes, we will only be reviewing books of any category or genre, even text books if you like.


Making an Assessment

What follows is a series of questions to focus your thinking as you dig into the work at hand. While the questions specifically consider book reviews, you can easily transpose them to an analysis of performances, exhibitions, and other review subjects. Don’t feel obligated to address each of the questions; some will be more relevant than others to the book in question.

What is the thesis—or main argument—of the book?

If the author wanted you to get one idea from the book, what would it be? How does it compare or contrast to the world you know? What has the book accomplished?

What exactly is the subject or topic of the book?

Does the author cover the subject adequately? Does the author cover all aspects of the subject in a balanced fashion? What is the approach to the subject (topical, analytical, chronological, descriptive)?

How does the author support her argument?

What evidence does she use to prove her point? Do you find that evidence convincing? Why or why not? Does any of the author’s information (or conclusions) conflict with other books you’ve read, courses you’ve taken or just previous assumptions you had of the subject?

How does the author structure her argument?

What are the parts that make up the whole? Does the argument make sense? Does it persuade you? Why or why not?

How has this book helped you understand the subject?

Would you recommend the book to your reader?

Source: The Writing Center


Guidelines:


We need contributors to submit their reviews via post. I'm very much inclined to make this very very formal. But I guess this is not a writing class, so I guess for the benefit of everyone (the readers and contributors) we'll just make it easier.

  1. I. Introduction
    A brief introduction about the book and the author. Some background on what prompted to you to read the material.

  2. II. Review
    Let's make it simple. Just write your thoughts here, taking into consideration the questions presented above regarding "making an assessment".

  3. III. Conclusion
    Last thoughts. Make a final assessment of the book. We need to find a balance between the book's strengths and weakness to come up with a unified evaluation.

  4. Invite at least 3 people to join the challenge.
    If all 3 invitee will join, I will personally reward 100% on the post.
    There could be more additional rewards later on, we'll see.

  5. Use the hashtags #bookworm #goodreads

  6. Title must start with "BookWorm GoodReads: [Book Title]"

  7. Paste post link at our Discord Channel #goodreads

  8. Additional: The whole post should be at least 500 words.

  9. Please include a link to this post for everyone's reference.
    A brief challenge introduction would be very appreciated.

  10. Please include an image of the book or any picture that features the book as post banner.


Source: The Bushwick Book Club Seattle

Book Ambassadors


We will also have a separate rewards for our book ambassadors. We will be selecting winners here as needed. To be able to participate, just leave a comment and a short review about any book submitted via the GoodReads challenge. It's as simple as that.

Our goal here is to encourage the entire community to read the book and see the value that these books bring in order to provide us with the recreation and the invaluable rewards they bring. This is taking into consideration, our Bookworm Initiative's vision of "Igniting the Learner In You Through Reading".

Rewards

I'd like to take this opportunity to thank our sponsor for this initiative @jepu. We will be using MIDAS Tokens to reward our contributors. Jepu also committed 800 MIDAS Tokens a week that we can use to reward our contributors.

For this initiative we have the following budget for every winning category:

  • 500 Midas Tokens - Curation Winners (at most 5 per week)
  • 100 Midas Tokens - Book Ambassadors (as need, done weekly)
  • 200 Midas Tokens - For successful 3 (unique) invites who have participated in the Book Request challenge.

Payments will be done weekly. And will be divided to the total number of winners. May be subject to changes without prior notice.

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Vote Jepu for witness

  1. Go to https://whaleshares.io/~witnesses
  2. Click jepu and if it turns blue. You already voted jepu

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