2018 Reading Challenges

As 2017 wraps to a close (thankfully), I’ve been thinking about 2018 challenges.  I love reading challenges.  Even though I know I won’t succeed at all of them, they’re a fun way to connect with other bloggers and a good way to push myself to read more intentionally.  You can find a really good list of 2018 challenges at Feed Your Fiction Addiction.

The tough part is not signing up for too many!  I look for a good amount of overlap across challenges, I look for ones I feel I can reasonably complete, and I also look for a good amount of flexibility: I still want to be able to read what I want to read.

I’ve posted all of my 2018 challenge sign-ups on this page, with lists of the books I hope to read.  In 2018, I plan to follow some of the challenges I did in 2017, including:

• Back to the Classics has you read classics in specific categories. I did poorly on this challenge in 2017, but here’s to a better 2018! My five-year Classics Club list is “expired”, but of course I mean to keep reading classics.
• The Book Blogger Discussion Challenge encourages posts about reading and blogging, not just reviews, which is something I always want to do more of.
• The Reading All Around the World Challenge is a multi-year challenge to read more books from other countries. I read 12 in 2017 and will keep that list going.

One of my favorite challenges, Roof Beam Reader’s TBR Pile Challenge, is back.  You select 12 books, plus two alternates, that have been on your TBR list for at least a year.  I like this challenge because 1) most of my books are on my Kindle, not on my shelves (I’m a literal thinker); and 2) I tend to get caught up in new releases but forget about the many books on my want-to-read list, and often those are the best ones.  I’ve posted my list of TBR books on my 2018 Challenge Page.

Here are the new challenges I’m thinking about:

• The Read Harder Challenge by Book Riot gives you 24 categories you can check off as you read, across all genres.  Categories include a book about nature, a children’s classic, a book with a cover you hate, and celebrity memoir.  Those are the easy ones — a few that will be harder for me: a book of social science, a book of true crime, a western, a book published posthumously, and colonial or postcolonial fiction.
• I found two challenges for science fiction and fantasy where you fit your science fiction and fantasy into specific categories: Science Fiction and Fantasy Bingo and the Swords and Stars Challenge.  For bingo, categories are things like space, plague, alternate reality, undead, fantastic beasts, and “bite me”.
• Something I’ve been meaning to do for a while, this Finishing the Series Challenge lets you pick series you want to finish or catch up on in 2018.
• And one more: The Les Miserables Chapter a Day Readalong has you read one chapter a day, completing the whole book in one year.  Apparently Les Mis has 365 chapters, short ones, so the idea is that one chapter a day is absolutely doable.  The host also suggests good translations for those of us who will be reading in English.

I hope you’ll consider joining me on one or more of these challenges!  And thanks in advance to the hosts.  I’ve never hosted a challenge but I imagine it’s quite a lot of work.

I also plan on continuing to read diverse authors.  So if anyone knows of a good challenge in that area, please let me know!

See my 2018 Challenges page for regular progress updates.  What challenges will you be taking on in 2018?