Tuesday 1 January 2019

2018 Reading Challenge Recap #blogmas (Pt. 1)



All right, it's the last day of December, the last day of 2018, and that means also the last day of Blogmas! I did it, guys! I actually posted every day in December! I am impressed with myself for this feat haha. So because it's the last day of 2018 that means it's time for my annual reading challenge recap, aka the longest post I make all year. How did I do you ask? Well, I set out to do 4 challenges, and I completed 2 of them. Interestingly one of the ones I failed was the one I created myself back at the beginning of the year. I realised in about June that I had been waaaaaaay too over ambitious with my challenges this year and knew I wasn't going to finish them. In addition to the challenge of my own devising, I attempted Book Riot's Read Harder challenge, which is you've been following my Blogmas posts you'll know that I won. I also attempted to do PopSugar, but my over ambition got the better of me there too so I didn't finish that one either. My last challenge was, of course, the annual Goodreads challenge I pledged 100 and ended up at 122. That's down from last year, but it's still the second most I have ever read in a year so I am freaking psyched.

The problem was, instead of doing what I did last year and trying to find books that fit multiple challenges, I was trying to do a different book for every single challenge. And with the way, I'd split out some of them, that worked out to be over 160 books which is more than I read last year. That was daunting and actually impacted my speed because I overwhelmed myself with the sheer amount of things I planned to read and therefore put off reading it. So I went back today and had a look at what books I read that could work for multiple challenges. I still failed, but by a much narrower margin haha.

Onto the recaps! What were the challenges and what did I read for them:

Book Riot Read Harder 2018

24/24 = 100%

A book published posthumously
The Salmon of Doubt by Douglas Adams [published in 2002, Adams passed away in 2001] [7/11/18]

A book of true crime
Who killed my daughter? The startling true story of a mother’s search for her daughter’s murderer by Lois Duncan [17/11/18]

A classic of genre fiction (i.e. mystery, sci fi/fantasy, romance)
Dark is Rising by Susan Cooper [middle grade/YA fantasy] [3/9/18]

A comic written and illustrated by the same person
Hostage by Guy Delisle [8/1/18]

A book set in or about one of the five BRICS countries (Brazil, Russia, India, China, or South Africa) Android Karenina by Ben H. Winters [Russia] [13/8/18]

A book about nature
Oryx and Crake by Margaret Atwood [8/10/18]

A western
Wizard and Glass by Stephen King [13/5/18]

A comic written or illustrated by a person of colour
Monstress, Vol. 1: Awakening by Marie Liu and Sana Takeda [28/5/18]

A book of colonial or postcolonial literature
Brown Girl in the Ring by Nalo Hopkinson [described in reviews as “postcolonial redemption story.”] [4/12/18]

A romance novel by or about a person of colour
Winds of Salem by Melissa de la Cruz [paranormal romance by a filipina author] [11/12/18]

A children’s classic published before 1980
Last Battle by C.S. Lewis [first published in 1956] [27/4/18]

A celebrity memoir
Nerd do Well by Simon Pegg [27/12/18]

An Oprah Book Club selection
Alif the Unseen by G. Willow Wilson [Oprah’s Summer Reading club] [30/12/18]

A book of social science
Free Speech on Campus by Sigal R. Ben-Porath [29/12/18]

A one-sitting book
The Magician’s Nephew by C.S. Lewis [18/1/18]

The first book in a new-to-you YA or middle-grade series
Loki’s Wolves by K.L. Armstrong & M.A. Marr [6/1/18]

A sci-fi novel with a female protagonist by a female author
Cress by Marissa Meyer [4/11/18]

A comic that isn’t published by Marvel, DC, or Image
Princeless vol.2: Get over it [Published by Action Labs Entertainment] [29/5/18]

A book of genre fiction in translation
Inkspell by Cornelia Funke [fantasy - translated from German] [27/5/18]

A book with a cover you hate
The Hunchback Assignments by Arthur Slade [2009 Harper Collins Hardcover edition] [22/9/18]

A mystery by a person of colour or LGBTQ+ author
A Study in Scarlet Women by Sherry Thomas [25/4/18]

An essay anthology
Out Behind the Desk: Workplace Issues for Lgbtq Librarians edited by Tracy Nectoux [28/1/18]

A book with a female protagonist over the age of 60
A Caribbean Mystery by Agatha Christie [Miss Marple] [14/7/18]

An assigned book you hated (or never finished)
Frankenstein by Mary Shelley [I hated this book when I was assigned it in my undergrad English program] [28/10/18]

Because this post is so long I am inserting a cut. Keep going if you want to see PopSugar. My TBR challenge will come as a seperate post tomorrow because this one is making my browser lag haha.