2018 Reading Challenges: a First Quarter Progress Check

With 2018 just over a quarter of the way through, I’ve decided to write about progress on my (too) many reading challenges.

One of my favorite challenges this year is the Read Harder Challenge by Book Riot, which has 24 categories of books that you try and cover.  These range from the easy (a book about nature) to the more difficult (genre fiction in translation) to the very unlikely (a one-sitting book).  So far I’ve read 8 of the 24 categories.

I’m doing well on the two category-based science fiction and fantasy challenges I signed up for.  I’m 12 of 25 for Science Fiction vs. Fantasy Bingo, and 11 of 20 for the Swords and Stars Challenge. Although these challenges will get tougher as the year goes on, because I’m knocking off the easy categories first.

The books that have been most meaningful for me have been those about other countries, for the Reading All Around Challenge.  These include Pachinko, Here Comes the Sun, Girls Burn Brighter, and Home Fire. Right now I’m reading Miss Ex-Yugoslavia, set in Serbia.

I’ve read 5 of 12 nonfiction books for the Doing Dewey Nonfiction Reading Challenge, including the first quarter group read, Hunger by Roxane Gay.  I have tons of nonfiction on my TBR list, including Bryan Stevenson’s Just Mercy, Liza Mundy’s Code Girls, and Padma Lakshmi’s Love, Loss, and What We Ate.

I’ve been so-so about posting non-review discussion posts for the Book Blog Discussion Challenge, including one on graphics and formatting, one on the Women’s Prize Longlist, and one on signing up for too many ARCs.

The not-so-good: I’ve been terrible on Back to the Classics this year.  I’ve completed two, A Wrinkle in Time and My Family and Other Animals.  Both good but neither were particularly challenging.  I plan to read The End of the Affair and The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie.

I’ve only read two books on my TBR Pile Challenge list, which is normally one of my favorite challenges.  And finally, for the Finish the Series Challenge, I’ve finished or gotten up to date on three series: the Binti trilogy, the Plainsong trilogy, and the Alpha and Omega series. I really want to go back to the October Daye series and the Expanse series.  But I’ve actually started more series than I’ve ended.

This year I’ve read three books for book clubs and way too many ARCs (though I’m close to digging myself out of that hole). And even though I’m not tracking it in any formal way, I feel very good about the diversity of this year’s reading (14 of 32 reads by authors of color).

One of the reasons I sign up for challenges is to push myself.  But the main reason is to interact with other bloggers, and I can’t say I’ve done very well at that this year!  I haven’t participated much in any group reads or visited other blogs participating in these challenges.

You can see my progress on 2018 Challenges here.  How are you doing on challenges so far? Which ones are you getting the most out of?