Themis-Athena's Garden of Books

The King is dead -- long live the King!  Halloween Bingo may be over, but the fun and games on BookLikes sure aren't.  Get ready for the reading year's grand finale:

The 24 Tasks of the Festive Season!

THE CARD

THE GAME HOSTS

This year, the game is brought to you by Moonlight Reader, MurderByDeath, Themis-Athena, and new host Tea-Stitch-Read (aka Mrs. Claus' Tea House).  A big welcome and round of applause to our new team member and co-host, who has brought some phantastic ideas to the table!

THE RULES

The rules of the game are essentially the same as last year -- with one major twist, however, concerning the reporting of completed tasks.

Game Period

As in previous years, the game lasts from November 1 through December 31.

Holidays, Tasks, and Points

Like an Advent calendar, our festive calendar has 24 ”doors“, behind each of which hides the square for one particular holiday falling (with one exception) into the game period.  Most of these holidays you’ll recognize from last year’s game, some are new -- and one has gotten a bit of an extra twist.

With each of the 24 holidays included in the festive calendar, one book reading task (typically, coming with several alternative choices) and four non-book tasks are associated: Completing either the book task (in any of its alternative incarnations) or any of the non-book tasks suffices to complete that particular square / door.

However, completing more than one task per square / holiday will earn you a corresponding number of extra points.  You can earn up to five points per holiday / square (1 for the book-related task and 4 for the non-book-related tasks).

Task Reporting Form

MurderByDeath, our resident coding whiz, has tweaked a Google form to turn it into a handy task reporting form for our game, which is going to make it much easier than before to keep track of all tasks reported:

We will include the form in every holiday / "calendar door opening" post.

Two important notes:

(1) ONLY tasks reported using this form will be counted.

(2)  In this present post, (i.e., the main "Card and Rules" post) the drop-down menu to select the holiday for which you are reporting tasks will be updated as the game progresses.  Currently it only includes the holidays's we're revealing today (Nov. 1), with further holidays to be added as we're "opening" the respective calendar doors.  As stated above, each of those posts will, in turn, also contain an updated version of the form / drop-down menu, up to and including that day's holiday.

BUT we will not go back and update every single previously-posted "door opening" post every time a new "door opening" post goes up.

So, to find a version of the form that includes the holiday you want to report for, there are basically three methods:

(a) Bookmark this post here ("Card and Rules") and go back to it to report tasks completed; or

(b) Find the post for the holiday for which you're reporting a completed task; or

(c) Find the post revealing the most recent holiday, which should automatically include all previously-revealed holidays up to and including that holiday / square.

"Door Opening" / Holiday Posting Schedule

As a general rule, like last year, we will be “opening” the festive calendar’s doors on the dates on which the respective holidays occur.  “Opening” a door will reveal the holiday hiding behind that door and the associated book and non-book tasks.

Moonlight Reader will be revealing the game's first holiday and its associated tasks in a post of hers in a little while.

There are two exeptions from the basic schedule outlined above:

(1) Melbourne Cup Day: As our established horse racing guide from previous years, MbD, won't be home on this holiday this year, Darth Pedant (formerly known as Darth Pony) has graciously agreed to help out.  Our heartfelt thanks and a big round of applause to her as well!

DP will announce the horses in this year's running once that information has been made public (Nov. 3 or thereabouts), and she'll post the winners and the horses placed second and third after the race is over.

One of the game's other hosts will separately post the "full" set of Melbourne Cup Day tasks, i.e. including the book task and the other three non-book tasks.

(2) The eight final holidays: As our calendar matches the actual date of each holiday included in the game, this year we have eight holidays either directly before or after Christmas.  As -- like last year -- we don't want anybody to have to cram these into the year's final ten days, and into time you'll likely want to spend with friends and family, we'll be revealing these holidays and the associated tasks ahead of time:

* The names of the eight final holidays of the game and the corresponding book tasks will be revealed in a separate post today; and

* The non-book tasks for all eight final holidays will be revealed on December 1.

Book Joker

You have the option to replace up to two holiday-related tasks (for different holidays), either books or non-book tasks, by using the book joker card.  To use the book joker, read a book for any of the holidays on the card that are already unveiled at that time.

Charity Donation

Finally, like in previous years, we will be using the number of total points accumulated by all participants as a basis for the amount we’ll ultimately donate, on behalf of the BookLikes community, to one or several book-related charities.

We'll be reposting the rules in the Bingo group and open a "Questions" thread -- if you do have questions, please post them there.  Thanks in advance!

Let the games begin!!

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

IMPORTANT NOTE: If you intend to use an image of the playing card in your own posts, you're going to have to copy and save the image at the top of this post here. 

Like in last year's game, the "door opening" technique involves some fancy coding (all courtesy of MbD, of course), which basically means that what is going to appear as one seamless card in our posts from now on is actually going to be a bunch of individual images all sitting snug right next to (and above and below) each other, so wherever you right-click on "copy", you're only going to be copying that particular fractional image.

The calendar image at the top of this post is actually larger than shown here; if you right-click on the image and select "show / display image", you can see and save it in its original glory.  (BL will automatically size it down to fit the post if you then include it in a post of your own.)