All this needs to be taken with a grain of salt, obviously. Maybe a salt lick. Remembering all too well the poet’s lines:
| But Mousie, thou art no thy-lane, In proving foresight may be vain: The best laid schemes o’ Mice an’ Men Gang aft agley, An’ lea’e us nought but grief an’ pain, For promis’d joy! |
So, I’ve got 6 Reading Challenges in the hopper — I looked at a number of others, but these are the ones that clicked with me. Last year was the first that I really got into Reading Challenges, and appreciated the way they made me think about what I was reading (and outside of maybe 3 or 4 books, they didn’t direct my reading).
Additionally, I’m going to focus on bringing down the number of books in my Physical and Electronic TBR Pile/Mound/Heap (33 and 21, respectively, not counting review copies). Those numbers aren’t as big as some people’s, I realize. But that’s 2 months and change of reading if I read nothing else. This is a personal challenge, that I’m dubbing The Reader Who Went up a Mountain but Came down a Hill. We’ll see how well that works.
I’m also going to finish off my Rebus-catch up, I’m going to try to read the rest of the DC Fiona Griffiths (although I’ve been saying that for 2 years now), and I want to read every Fredrik Backman novel I can get my hands on. Actually accomplishing these three would only chip away two books from the above mountain…
But mostly, I’m going to focus on “Serendipity and Whim” like Alan Jacobs talks about. By all means feel free to throw suggestions at me.
LizScanlon
6 reading challenges in the pipeline? eeeek 🙂 I haven’t done a single reading challenge to date, they intimidate me so bad but I like that you said that the challenges didn’t direct your reading as such. I think this is what I am most afraid of and then that pushing me into a reading slump! plus, I am total sucker for taking challenges so seriously/personally that I am bound to let them stress me out 😀 if I was to have a try though… at least a try at a challenge, what would you recommend for a newb? 🙂
HCNewton
I think the While I Was Reading is a good starter — 12 books, basically 1/month, right? (https://ramonamead.com/while-i-was-reading-challenge-2019-categories/). Most of this year’s categories are such that I can fill in with books I’ve been wanting to/meaning to read already. So then it’s just a matter of a handful of books I have to be strategic about (as I think I said somewhere recently, I’d picked one book for a category and didn’t think I’d have time for it — then a book I’d agreed to read for a tour ended up working in that category. 2 Birds, 1 Stone). But that might not be the same for you, I think I’d hunt for something where you don’t think you’d have to work too hard :).
Most of the Challenges this year (like last) are just about tracking books I’m reading anyway — Indies, Mysteries, Library Books — which makes them a piece of cake — and it’s just adding one more column to my Excel spreadsheet 🙂