I don’t usually set actual reading goals for the year. I set a number of books on the Goodreads reading challenge only because it’s an easy way to see my books at a glance. This year I put 78 for 1.5 books a week. I truly don’t care if I hit that number or not, but generally reading 78 books in a year is not much of a challenge for me. Although, it is more than I read last year…
Some years I have done reading bingo cards and those are always kind of fun and mix things up a bit. This year I created my own challenge just by thinking about what I like to read, getting out of my comfort zone, and also looking at my bookshelves. So here’s my reading challenge:
7 Nonfiction: This is because I read 5 last year and wanted to increase that. Plus, I’ve found that there are so many truly interesting nonfiction books to choose from.
3 Classics: LOL not sure about reading 3 but it’s supposed to be a challenge. I am allowing short stories in this section and I use a very loose definition about what I consider a classic.
10 Books I already own - Paper copies: Because I can easily count double that sitting on my shelf. I really need to get to some of them.
6 Books I already own - Kindle version: Again because I have so many that I’ve purchased and never read.
5 Diverse Authors: This one is authors of different color, nationality, or LBGTQ because I feel like I need to branch out more here and this is a reading challenge, after all.
5 Non-Romance: Meaning there is no romance in them, not even a small side story. I added this because romance or romance-ish is always my top genre and I’m trying to read outside that. I’d like these to be mostly fiction (as opposed to non-fiction, which seems too easy) again, just to get out of my comfort zone.
5 Childhood favorites: I’ve got 3 shelves completely full of childhood books. Looking at them, I can see some that had such a huge influence on my life. Some are the same old, battered copies I used to read and others I bought later, but I used to check out from the library over and over again. I thought maybe I could revisit a few of them.
No book can be in more than one category so this will take up half of the 78 books and still leaves lots of room for falling back on favorite genres and comfort reading. I’m hoping this helps get me out of my reading slump. It’s already been kind of fun to think about books that fit each category. Plus, the first book I finished this year will fit for a kindle book I already own. I had been meaning to read it for quite a while and I finally did!
