Reading Challenges (2016 edition)

Every year since 2010 I have set myself a goal for the amount of books I am going to read and then track them. I used to do it on my livejournal back in 2010, 2011 and 2012 and then I discovered Goodreads so since 2013 I do the Goodreads reading challenge annually. I decided back in 2014 to just set my annual goal at 52 books a year, which translates to 1 book a week. I chose that number because I know that that is the base line minimum for how many books I'll read, so the challenge for me is to see how many books ahead of schedule I can stay and see how many more above 52 I can read. It makes me feel good when I see numbers above 100% on the widgets. You can see my 2013-2015 widgets on the right hand side of my last blogging attempt: Novel Concepts. Also in 2014 I tried to do Random House's book bingo and I did pretty good at it. I never got around to properly discussing my reading challenges for 2015 on Novel Concepts but I did post an update about them in November where I talked about how I had replaced book bingo with PopSugar's reading challenge and that I'd managed to complete about half of their list.

That brings us to 2016. This year I am sticking to my same goal, 52 books for the year, and I'm also doing PopSugar's challenge again. I have also added a third challenge. One of my favourite book and reading blogs in Book Riot and they do an annual read harder challenge, so in the spirit of broadening my reading horizons I have decided to add that challenge to my plate this year as well. I wanted to share an update on my progress in all three challenges here, so let's start with my 2016 Goodreads shelf; here's a sample of it, the most recent 5 books I've read:

My 2016 Reads

Clouded Vision

by Linwood Barclay

tagged: books-in-2016 and thriller

Heart of the Dragon

by Gena Showalter

tagged: books-in-2016, mythology, romance, paranormal, and fantasy

Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone

by J.K. Rowling

tagged: favorites, middle-years, ya, books-in-2014, fantasy, and books-in-2016

Demigods & Magicians: Percy and Annabeth Meet the Kanes

by Rick Riordan

tagged: books-in-2016, favorites, ya, mythology, and fantasy

The Hidden Oracle

by Rick Riordan

tagged: books-in-2016, favorites, middle-years, mythology, ya, and fantasy

Next up I'll show you my progress on the PopSugar challenge. There are 40 categories of book to be read as part of this challenge. As you can see from my Goodreads challenge widget over on the right I'm already 54% done my challenge, I've read 28 books so far, and out of those 28 books 10 have fulfilled PopSugar's challenge, which means I'm 25% done this one.

Needs more green Xs though...

Here's the list of books that I've read that fit those checked off categories:

1. A YA bestseller - Black Widow : Forever Red
2. A book from the library - Blood Lite III : Aftertaste
3. A book that is guaranteed to bring you joy - Feel the burn
4. A book set in Europe - The Darkest Night
5. A book with a blue cover - The Darkest Kiss
6. A book you can finish in one day - The Darkest Pleasure
7. A book and its prequel - book: The Darkest Night
                       prequel: The Darkest Fire
8. A book that is published in 2016 - The Hidden Oracle (The Trials of Apollo #1)
9. A classic from the 20th century - Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone
10. A book that's under 150 pages - Clouded Vision (77 pages) [Hah, I just noticed I forgot to cross this one off on the challenge sheet!]

My last challenge for 2016 as mentioned above is Book Riot's Read Harder Challenge. This one's only got 24 items on it but I feel like it's going to be the harder of the two category challenges for me personally. So far this year only four of the books I've read fulfill challenges in this one, which means I'm 1/6th done it.

Some of these seem very intimidating to me...

As you can see, on this one I've already added a couple of books that I plan to read to the categories that they apply to. This past Wednesday I printed off both challenge sheets and sat down in front of my two to-be-read bookcases and tried to match the categories to books that I already own (or have borrowed from the library I work at) and plan on reading; for the most part it's going to work out there aren't  many I'm going to have to bring in from either the library I work in or the public library so that's good! Means I'll be clearing off my to-be-read shelves nicely. Which means I'll get to refill them with more books :D.

Lauren