Weekly Geeks – Reading Challenges

Published on by Margaret

This week the question is about reading challenges:

Do you plan on participating in any reading challenges in 2011? Are you planning on hosting any reading challenges? You don’t have to “officially” join any of the challenges for this weekly geek.  You might want to spend some time browsing A Novel Challenge. Are there any challenges you are looking forward to that haven’t been announced yet? Regardless of your challenge plans, are you starting to plan ahead for next year? Do you make lists or goals? Are you a person who enjoys reading more if it is structured? Or are you all about being free to read what you want, when you want?

I’ve already signed up for two challenges next year – 2011 Global Reading Challenge and What’s in a Name and I’ll be carrying on with the Agatha Christie Reading Challenge.

I’m in two minds about reading challenges. Part of me enjoys them. I like the challenge and making lists and deciding what to read is very appealing. But another part of me reacts quite badly and I find that once I’ve decided I ‘should’ read a book within a set deadline I don’t want to read it. So the best challenges for me are those that give me flexibility to change my mind about what and when I read, which the three I’ve joined do.

You could argue that the very nature of a challenge is to extend yourself, to broaden your reading experience and read books you wouldn’t otherwise. And to a certain extent I like that and the challenges I’ve done in the past have done just that, but I now have so many of my own books that I have yet to read, that I’ve tended to use challenges to nudge me into reading those books instead of searching out new ones, just to do a challenge. My reading, is after all, purely for me, for my own entertainment and information. I no longer have to read from anyone else’s reading lists to take a course or exam, or for work, so I like to read what I want, when I want.

Having said all that I expect that I will want to read something different, in a genre I’m not familiar with and by authors that are new to me. I love variety in my reading.

I hadn’t come across A Novel Challenge blog before. It’s an amazing resource, listing so many different challenges and weekly events that my mind just boggles! No doubt I will be tempted by one or more of these, but I could spend hours just finding out about challenges and planning to do them and not have time for reading!

So, I’ll probably just stick to those three – unless Kerrie at Mysteries in Paradise decides to host another Crime Fiction Alphabet challenge, that would be good.

9 thoughts on “Weekly Geeks – Reading Challenges”

  1. Hmmmmmmm! I like the sound of a reading challenge – need to do some finding out me thinks but sounds good for a cold winter’s night

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  2. Margaret – Thanks for sharing your thoughts about reading challenges. They do, indeed, broaden one and make one perhaps try something new. I think the key is to get into the spirit of the challenge and use it as an opportunity to expand one’s reading.

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  3. Hi Margaret,

    The concept of reading challenges is quite new to me, as I have not been blogging for that long.

    I have decided to join up for ‘What’s In A Name’, mainly because it only involves reading 6 books over the 12 months and I can quite easily source the books from my own TBR pile and within genres that I enjoy reading.

    I doubt that I will sign up for any more challenges, as I would think that they can become quite addictive and therefore leave less time for actually reading for enjoyment, rather than to fulfill part of a task.

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  4. It’s so odd… this thing of making the list and then not wanting to read what’s on it. I can’t work that out. Like you I now only do flexible challenges and have joined just one so far – the What’s in a Name one which will do me for the year, apart from Carl’s two which I always do.

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  5. Denise, if you do decide to join a book challenge I hope you’ll write about it on your blog.
    Margot, so many of the books on my tbr lists are from recommendations from other bloggers, by authors I hadn’t heard of before – blogging has certainly expanded my reading.
    Yvonne, challenges can become addictive. I think it’s best to be selective.
    Cath, it is very odd, but I think for me it’s not the fact of putting books on lists that makes me reluctant to read them – it’s that feeling that I ‘ought’ to be reading them, when at that precise time I want to read something else.

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  7. I agree that challenges are best if you are free to change your mind. When I join a challenge, I usually have several ideas for what I want to read, but I may buy or win new books later that appeal to me even more.

    I am not even certain I am going to join the alphabetical challenge this year, and that is because I have to write a post every week. It takes more planning than my other challenges.

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  8. I’m more of a mood reader; I read whatever I’m in the mood for at that time. So, I don’t participate in challenges. I do find that reading other people’s blogs introduces me to books that I wouldn’t otherwise read and though I haven’t tried any new genres, I have found many authors that were new to me.

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