What better way to motivate me (and you?) to read more than a CHALLENGE? I love being able to measure progress according to rules. Type A Nerd alert.
Here’s the challenge that Book Riot posed on the eve of 2015. Click the image to learn more about it and get recommendations for each category. Important: You can’t use a book for more than 1 category. A book set in Asia, written by someone under the age of 25, and published by an indie press only counts for 1 of those categories. You will be surprised how many books fit in multiple categories. You will want to cheat. Don’t.
You have 9 months left to read all 24 books. That’s 1 book every week-and-a-half. I’m more than half way done and it’s only been a few months. And, trust me, I don’t get that much time to read. I read for about 20 minutes on my lunch break at work and 20 minutes before bed. That’s a good day. Some days, because life gets in the way, I don’t read at all. So, this is totally doable.
What I’ve loved about this challenge so far is that it’s forced me to read books I wouldn’t normally read. For example, one of my favorite books so far is a book of poetry. I NEVER read poetry. So, go do it and tell me what you read! Have fun.
I started following BookRiot on Facebook last month (I don’t know what took me so long) and had been on the fence about the Read Harder challenge. It sounded really appealing, but I already had so many other books I wanted to read, and not that many from 2015 that fit the categories. Then when I realized I could count Longbourne by Jo Baker, a book I’d just finished, as my “retelling of a classic story”, I decided to give the challenge a shot. Now I’m partway through my “book by an author from Africa.”
I totally understand your hesitation! I feel like I’ve had to set aside a lot of books I wanted to read in order to read books for the challenge.Overall, though, it’s been good because it has exposed me to books I wouldn’t normally read. Like you, I was motivated to do it when I realized I’d already read a couple books that satisfied the categories. Anyway, keep me posted on what you read! Have fun 🙂