4 Jan 2017

Reading Challenges 2016 and 2017


2016 for me as been a very interesting reading year for me.  Having moved house in the middle of the year, I took a lot of time doing that with packing etc before the move, moving and then settling in our new place.  For me, I can only read when I am relaxed.  I cannot read when I am stressed and moving house is one of the most stressful things you could ever do so there was certainly a period of time where my reading slowed way down.  That said, I have read some really great books this year and even read more than what I had expected!  So, let's first look at what I read in 2016 and then I'll move on to what I plan to read in 2017...

2016 Challenges



Goodreads 100 Book Challenge -  OK, so I didn't complete this one but I think I did pretty good to read as much as I did this year considering I moved house also.  For me, this year has been more about quality not quantity.  Usually when I get busy in life but still want to read, I tend to hurry along and force myself to read when I probably didn't want to.  This year I decided not to do that.  When I didn't want to read I wouldn't and it made a great deal of difference to my reading.  



Read Your Own Books Challenge -  For this challenge I didn't want to set a number of books to read to complete this but just wanted to add it to make sure that I didn't forget to read my own books.  Being a book blogger I am very fortunate to be able to read review copies of books before they come out, which is fantastic and I love it but sometimes I do forget to read the books that I buy.  I am really pleased with how many I read in this section.

Big Book Challenge -  This is a challenge that I host on Goodreads (Check it Out Here).  It is a challenge where you have to read books that are longer than 400 pages long.  I can easily get swept away with wanting to read so many books I only tend to read smaller ones and completely forget that I love to get lost in a big book.  This is a great challenge for me and I think I did really well with this one too...

Cecelia Ahern Challenge -   Ok, so this one I completely failed at but there's a good reason for that and that reason was that I changed my mind with the author I wanted to read.  I was really in the mood for reading Sophie Kinsella books so I decided to go with that author instead and read all of her books, some of which were good and some didn't like as much.  

2017 Challenges

Goodreads 100 Book Challenge - This is a challenge that I always subscribe to and always tend to pick 100 books only because it is a nice round number.  Like last year, this year I am going to be quite relaxed with this challenge and go for quality not quantity and if I don't manage to get to 100 books that's ok.  It's just a 'maybe' goal that would be nice if I achieve. 

Read Your Own Book Challenge -  Another challenge that I brought over from last year with the same rules as mentioned above. 

Big Book Challenge -  This is a challenge that I subscribe to every year and host the Goodreads group for it.  I am not planning on setting an amount of books to read on here but hope that I can get to at least 20 for the year.

Jodi Picoult Challenge - I have been wanting to re-read Jodi Picoult's books for a while now and have been slowly collecting them for my bookshelf ready for the day I re-read.  I have actually already started this challenge so this one is not 2017 specific but a goal that I want to get stuck into.

Read 5 Classics Challenge - Now this one is a very interesting challenge for me.  I don't tend to read classics and find the prospect of reading a classic quite daunting but having read The Stone Angel by Margaret Lawrence recently and loved it it has made me want to re-try this challenge.  I initially tried to do this challenge I think about a couple of years ago now but failed miserably at it so I am going to give it another go...  I have set the bar really low with only 5 books but let's see how that goes.....

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