This week’s Weekly Geeks topic was suggested by Sheri of A Novel Menagerie. She writes:
“Reading Challenges: a help or a hurt? Do you find that the reading challenges keep you organized and goal-oriented? Or, do you find that as you near the end of a challenge that you’ve failed because you fell short of your original goals? As a result of some reading challenges, I’ve picked up books that I would have otherwise never heard of or picked up; that, frankly, I have loved. Have you experienced the same with challenges? If so, which ones? Do you have favorite reading challenges?”
As we pass the halfway point of 2009, how are you doing with your reading challenges? Did you participate in any challenges this year?
I’m always attracted to the reading challenges, full of enthusiasm for reading the books and I joined quite a few last year. But then I found that I wanted to read other books when I “should” be reading the challenge books. Now, bearing in mind that these are all books I want to read I can’t really understand that, except that it’s that imaginary “should” that’s the stumbling block. I’m very much a mood reader!
So, at the beginning of this year I decided to limit myself to just a few reading challenges and I chose What’s In a Name? I took part in that last year and completed it. This has six categories such as read a book with a building in the title, the time of day, the name of a relative etc. I’m doing OK and have read books from two of the categories; as this challenge is for the whole year I reckon I can still easily finish it. They’re all books from my TBR list, which helps.
I can’t say that doing any of the reading challenges has made me pick up and read books I haven’t heard of before, but that’s because I’ve used them to read books I already own or by authors I already know – such as the Agatha Christie Reading Challenge. I’m loving that one – each time I finish one I go to the library and borrow another one. So far I’ve struck lucky, with at least one AC book sitting on the shelf ready for me to read.
There’s a tab at the top of my blog for Reading Challenges where I’ve tried to keep track of them – I need to add the Agatha Christie Challenge to it and update the whole thing!
There’s also Support Your Local Library Reading Challenge 2009 – which is really easy if you read library books. I didn’t have to think twice about taking part – my aim was to read at least 25 library books this year, but as I’ve already read 20 I think I’ll be way beyond that by December.
BooksPlease 