Book Challenges

Book Challenges. Some readers like them, some don’t.

Personally, as a reader, I find book challenges enrich my reading, broaden my knowledge of books, helps me discover different authors and  genres and gives me something to aim for.

Many readers express a dislike of challenges because they feel too pressured by deadlines or feel the lists are too competitive.

While I enjoy sharing a Book Challenge with other readers, I am not in competition with them. Many read far more books than I do, others read less. That is not the point, as we all read differently – at different rates, in different circumstances, for different reasons and with different tastes. The only person I’m in competition with is myself.  And even, then, if I don’t meet my challenge for a year, then I don’t. After all, I read (mostly) for pleasure.

Here are some challenges I’ve encountered in recent years:

The Goodreads Challenge

This challenge is numerical – set a goal for the number of books you hope to read for the year. It could be one a month (12), one a week (52) or two a week (104) or any other number you choose.  The nice thing about this challenge is that Goodreads keeps a tally of your books and also gives you a charming summary at the end of the year (shortest book, longest book, most popular book etc.) This was my Goodreads challenge last year.

The Popsugar Challenge

The Popsugar Reading Challenge gives a list of book categories (40 regular & another 10 on the extended list). The categories change each year and some are trickier than others.

What I like about this challenge as it encourages me to read outside my set reading patterns, it introduces me to new authors and new genres (such as Afrofuturism) and it gives me a focus to my reading. Some of the categories are fun – like “A book with a Tiger on the Cover or in the title” while others can be more serious “A book that discusses body positivity.”

I’ve enjoyed completing this everchanging challenge every year since I started in 2017, but feel like a break from it this year. Here is my efforts last year and a link to this year’s categories.

The Around the World Challenge

The premise of this challenge is simple – read a book that is set in a country or is written by a person from this country (or both) for each of the countries or nations across the globe.

Depending how you count them – there are 193 or 197 nations  in the world. And,  that doesn’t take account of distinctive ‘countries’ within nations. For instance, England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland are all part of the UK.  Or Taiwan is an island with it’s own governance, identity and history, though it is often included in with Mainland China.

The Around the World Challenge is not for the faint-hearted and might be best completed over a couple of years with almost 200 boxes to tick. Chances are your usual reading may be focused on a handful of countries and finding books from some of the smaller areas, while not impossible, can be a challenge.

Perhaps this Challenge could be broken down in smaller units, e.g. Read a Book from each country in Asia or Europe. Or it could be adapted, e.g.  Read a Book from every State and territory of Australia and/or the provinces of New Zealand.

The Alphabet Challenge

This year, I’ve decided to take an easier challenge – the Alphabet Challenge.  Which is as it sounds – Read a Book with a title starting with each letter of the alphabet.  That comes to 26 books – with Q, X, Z perhaps being the hardest to find.  In most cases, like librarians, one might ignore ‘the’ and ‘a’ at the start of the title. I’ve set up a Alphabet Reading challenge here.

(I could fill quite a few letters with my own books, especially if I include the anthologies –  A – Akrad’s Children, B – Blood Crystal, C – Caverns of the Deep, F-Futurevision,  G- Glimpses of Light, H – Heart of the Mountain, I-Imagine (Poetica Christi), L – Let the Sea Roar, M-Mixed Blessings, Q-The Quantum Soul, R-Rasel’s Song, S- Stone of the Sea, T-Tales of the Underground,  W-Wonderment (Poetica Christi) – 14 of the 26 letters. Maybe I should do it as a writer’s challenge, as I continue to write more books in my series 🙂  )

Other challenges abound – for instance, a Classics Challenge, or a list drawn from women authors,  or books related to Australia or New Zealand or to read the whole Bible in a  year.  Perhaps, we could invent our own Australasian Christian books challenge.

What book challenges have you encountered? Do you love them or hate them?  What categories would you add if you were creating a Book Challenge?