This year has flown by, hasn’t it? The cliche that the older we grow, the faster time passes has never felt more true. Now that the year is more than half over, I thought it was a good time to check in my Goodreads Reading Challenge.
Do you participate in any annual reading challenges? While I’ve always been an avid reader, I didn’t join my first Goodreads Reading Challenge until 2019. I surpassed my goal and have every year since, even though I’ve bumped it up each year. There are countless reading challenges out there, with most of them giving suggested themes, specifying genres, or myriad prompts to give you bountiful books to choose from.
In case you’re unfamiliar with prompts for reading challenges, here are several examples:
- Events or holidays tied to the month (or simply seasonal books)
- A specific job/career of a character
- A particular setting – location or time period or both
- Specific tropes or genres
- An author’s debut novel
- Alphabet challenge – select books with titles starting with each letter of the alphabet
The Goodreads challenge simply allows you to set a goal of how many books you aim to read for the year. That’s been my challenge of choice because I enjoy selecting books from my endless TBR list. And I want to read what I want to read when I want to read it. I’m a rebel like that. For 2022, I set a goal of 60 books. As of today, I am tracking to exceed that by quite a bit. I have read 53 books. To be honest, sometimes I forget to add books I’ve read, so I’ve possibly read more. I try to review my list regularly to make sure I’m capturing everything I’m reading, but sometimes life gets in the way.
I am a sucker for a traditional, printed book, but I have acclimated to reading on my iPad and listening to audiobooks. That’s how I’m able to accomplish reading more than a book a week. I make an effort to read different genres on each format when I’m consuming multiple books at a time to keep things straight. So while I listen to a nonfiction audiobook, usually while folding laundry or driving, I’ll read a romantic suspense paperback and have a contemporary romance going in my Kindle app. When I find myself with free time, I’ll select which current read to pick up by my mood.
Taking time for a halfway checkpoint also helps me evaluate my list for what genres, tropes, authors, etc., I’m trending toward in my reading. I use the challenge as a way to push myself beyond my usual go-to authors and genres. I don’t want to get to the end of the year to discover I’ve read the same few genres over and over. And as a fiction junkie, I try to make sure I’m getting some nonfiction reads in each year, with books on the craft of writing filling a few of those slots. Of the 53 books I’ve recorded reading so far this year, I’ve read:
- Contemporary Romance
- Historical Romance/Historical Fiction
- Split Time
- Romantic Suspense
- Dystopian (a rarity for me)
- Fantasy (new for me this year; I was surprised and delighted to realize I enjoyed these stories.)
- Cozy Mysteries
- Nonfiction – a writing craft book and a self-help book
- A couple of novella anthologies
Not bad, but I’m doubling down on the nonfiction. I feel a bit behind there. Since we have about five months of 2022 left, I’ve decided adjust my goal to 70. In the past, I just let my “books read” count blow by my goal, but this year, I’m trying to embrace the “challenge” part of this reading challenge. And next year, I think I’ll try another reading challenge with prompts to further push myself outside of my comfort zone.
Your turn. Do you participate in reading challenges? Which is your favorite? Are you on track to accomplish your goal? Have you completed your own midyear check-in? What did you discover?