Sunday Salon: Introducing the 4 Rs Challenge!

Sorry this is coming in late, y’all, but I’ve been strangely out of it all weekend, which leads to procrastination.

Regular readers of my blog probably know that I’m not much of one for challenges. I’m going to make an exception for this one, though, and not just because I co-created it! :)

It started out with LibraryThing‘s Secret Santa program – where you listed what kind of books you like, anybody who wanted could look at your request and at your library, and then your santa picked out which books to send you. I was toying with the idea of turning this concept into a giveaway when Literate Housewife had the excellent idea of turning it into a challenge… et voila, The 4 Rs challenge was born!

The four Rs stand for:

1) Recommend. Like SantaThing, you tell us what you like to read, and give a link to your blog or LibraryThing account (if you have one – it’s okay if you don’t) so we can see what you’ve read. Then you go around to the posts of other participants, look at their blogs/libraries/requests, and recommend books you think they’d like.

2) Read. Pick one of the books off of your list of recommendations, and read it! You can buy it, mooch it, get it from the library, whatever.

3) Review. Write up a review of the book you read, and post it on your blog, LibraryThing account, or on a thread in the 4 Rs forum.

4) Repeat! We’ll start the process over every three months – you don’t have to participate in every round, but we sure hope you do!

It combines a lot of things that I think most bibliophiles love… getting to poke around in other people’s libraries, getting to recommend books you loved to others you think will love them too, and getting personalized recommendations for books and authors that you might otherwise have missed!

If this sounds like fun to you, head on over to the 4 Rs Challenge blog for more details, or right to the forum to sign up!

(There’s still a little bit of construction dust lingering around both places, but we’ll be working out the kinks as we go.)

We’re hoping that this will be maximal enjoyment for minimal commitment (only one book in three months), and in order to make it really great, we need lots of people there, generating great recommendations for each other. So come join us! There will be prizes! And cookies! And unicorn rides! (Or maybe just the prizes, unless you bring the cookies yourself.)

*Psst!* Also, if you decide to join us, if you could help us to get the word out by mentioning it on your blog/twitter/whatever, that’d be super-nifty, and you’ll get first crack at the unicorn rides.