Few weeks ago, the "BookWorm Initiative" was initially introduced to the Whaleshares community. Before I posted this article, there were already a lot of discussion going on behind the scenes. And the support that we have was quite overwhelming here and via Discord.
Source: Adazing
Our vision statement remains the same "Igniting the Learner In You Through Reading", but we will need to reword this later. There are a lot of ideas being suggested on how we can make this initiative work. Some are actually very good addition to our list. So without further ado, allow me to share some of the ideas that we have brainstormed so far.
Apologies for the very long post, I was writing and have a lot of things to consider based on the feedback that I have gathered. We will be polishing this later, I just freely wrote my thoughts. So basically, so far we have 4 major categories for our Bookworm Challenge: Lightreads, Goodreads, Book Requests, and the Daily Grind. I have made quite a long discussion about it. All of the items below are still a work in progress. And I'm really hoping to get your feedback/comments/insights on the stuffs below.
I. BookWorm Lightreads (#bookworm #lightreads)
Have consolidated the feedback, and one thing that most people say that stops them from reading books is "Time". Most people say that they are too busy that they think that they just don't have the time at all. Well, reading doesn't really have to take much of our time. For example, I read e-books on my daily commute. I read during short breaks may it be the news articles, short stories, poems, etc. etc.
And so I am very pleased, to introduce the "Lightreads Challenge". What we have here are short readings, depending on the material. For this one, I want the community to have the say and contribute the resources that they want to be tackled on the challenge. So there are two ways to participate: (1) contribute topics and reading materials, and (2) contribute to the challenge.
For the topic and reading material contributions, we will also have a few guidelines to ensure that the contributors have covered everything and that the material is ready to be used for our challenge. Part of the task is to create "Thought Provoking Questions or TPQs" to guide everyone who will be participating the challenge. Our goal here is to have a meaningful discussion and to share the takeaways and learning from our reading materials.
II. BookWorm Goodreads (#bookworm #goodreads)
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.
The curation will ensure that we have the best books on our lists and not the mediocre ones. This is also a means to encourage everyone to be responsible and to think carefully about the wordings and how we write articles in general. Of course, we encourage everyone to participate, but the Book Review Challenge may not be for everyone. Don't worry though, we have challenges applicable to everyone. We'll make sure to accommodate everyone no matter our reading appetite and writing skills.
III. BookWorm Book Requests (#bookworm #requests)
One of the challenges about book reading is finding the materials. For those who have the means, we highly encourage to buy your own books and support the authors. But at the same time, we are also aware that this is one of the things that may hinder a lot of people from reading books, simply because they can't afford it.
Resources is just one of the barriers that we need to work on. And I don't really know the legality or if it is even realistic to make this happen. But there are a lot of e-books being circulated online. I'm not really promoting piracy, and there could be some legality issues attached to this. Hope someone could comment about this. For now. let's just say that I know someone, who can pull those e-books somewhere. There maybe limitations to this of course, but the collection is huge. O.O
The idea is that every member of the group will be able to request for e-books. We won't also encourage people to hoard the books. So we will limits requests to "one at a time". Every request should have at the very least, a commitment to actually read the book, and not just sit on it. So we will also work something out, how we can ensure that the books were actually read. Maybe we can include this to our "Daily Grind" or "Reading Challenge".
IV. BookWorm Daily Grind (#bookworm #dailygrind)
For our "Book Challenge", we don't want it to be a solitary challenge as @john-robert pointed out. As much as possible we want to spark meaningful discussions at Discord and especially here on the Whaleshares platform. Our main goal is to encourage and motivate people to read - to make reading a daily habit. So the Daily Grind challenge was meant to become a place to share learning and insights from our readings, also to share the progress of our readings.
One of the first things we should consider is what genres and how many books to maintain on the list at a time. Personally I prefer to read contemporary nonfiction (including history books) and classic fiction. We should be cognizant that we are engaging with each other in a digital-first environment and not everyone who will potentially join will have access to hard copies of books. Perhaps we could select one or two from this list of classics in the public domain? (https://www.gutenberg.org/browse/scores/top) -- @john-robert
The classics would also be a good choice. But may also be a hard-read to a lot of people. The good thing though, is that we have "LightReads" as well. So we can still work with the classics, and have the hard-core readers take it on. Not also sure how to go about this, would it be a good idea to separate members into groups? Might not be a good idea. But we'll work something out.
V. Support System and Reward (We Need More WHALETOKENS)
As for the Support System, we encourage every member to support at least one member a day. Go over the contributions, spark conversations and talk about the posts. Let's not just have the usual "Great Posts", "Thanks for the read". We are better than that. This is a reader's group, so let's properly read the post and draw a meaningful comment. The support here is two way, the post gets an upshare and at same time a meaningful discussion happens. Let's work and bring a lot of open-ended statements, comments, etc. For every post, the author can also handle a mini-curation. Upvote the best comments or something, I will also personally be on the lookout for awesome comments.
For the reward, I am in the process of pooling stuffs mostly WhaleTokens to help with this initiative. We have challenges that will run for a week or two. But we also have ongoing challenges, which we can also curate and reward people bi-monthly. This obviously take a lot of work, so moving forward, I will also be needing volunteers to curate and help manage everything.
Currently, I have @jepu backing the idea. Thanks Jep! :D
I hope other whales will also reach out and support this initiative.
You can always comment on this post or ping me on discord @shoganaii#8033
Let's make this a reality and continue make Whaleshares the best platform that it can be.
VI. Last Thoughts and Some Random Stuffs
After giving it much thought, having a "book reading club" will take much preparation. And there are a lot of planning involved to make this work. It will probably take a while before we can have a formal and good process. At the same time, I don't also want to prolong this any longer.
And so, I have decided to throw around a reading challenge for fun just to test the waters, and see how the community will respond to our challenges.
It is just a very very simple challenge, and hopefully fun for everyone. This will be our chance to promote the initiative and hopefully a lot will respond to this.
Come and join us at Discord. Invite link will be open until further notice. Please do invite your friends to our Discord Server. Don't expect too much though, still have nothing much on it, but hope we can start gathering people. :D
Source: Grammarly
Lastly, thank you so much to everyone who have shared their thoughts and insights regarding this initiative. I can't name everyone here, but you know who you are. Your contributions are greatly appreciated.
Thanks a lot for your time and looking forward to hear from all of you.
Cheers,
Kaizen