Rachel at American Bibliophile is asking everyone how they are doing on their challenges for the year and I thought I would post an update on mine. I’m currently involved in about five different challenges and while I haven’t finished all of them, I’m doing pretty well.
Herding Cats – For this challenge, we had to create a list of our 10 favorite books and then pick 3 books from other people’s recommendation and read them. We have until November 30th and I have only read one of my three novels. However, one of the remaining two novels is sitting on my desk so I’ll probably get around to reading it soon. Here are the books I’m reading: Twilight by S. Meyer, Eragon by C. Paolini, and the Lightening Thief by R. Riordan.- 50 New Authors – This is a challenge that I twisted a little. The true purpose of this challenge is to read 50 books in 2008, but since it was really easy for me, I made it a little difficult by making it 50 new authors. I reached the 50 book marker back in April and I’m slowly closing on the 100th mark. I’m reading book 99 right now. As for the new authors, I am almost done with that as well. I am on author #40 of 50, and I have a couple of books in my TBR stack that are new, so I’m thinking I’ll be done with it by Thanksgiving if not before.
1st in a Series – This challenge actually works really well with the 50 New Books challenges since a lot of the authors I’m trying have series. The idea is to read 12 novels that start a series. Out of the 12, I’ve read 7 so I’m halfway there.- Numbers Challenge – For this one, I had to read five different books that had a number somewhere in them. This challenge ended on August 1st, so that ones over. If you want to see what books I did, check out my wrap-up post.
AZ Challenge – The idea is to read a book for each letter of the alphabet, using both the title and author, for a total of 52 books. Thankfully, there wasn’t any restrictions on the novels not being a part of another challenge, so I was able to use a lot of the books from the other four challenges for this one. I’m still missing a few letters, but out of the 52, I’ve read 23.
So those are my five challenges and where I’m at. I’m still chugging away at them and all of the lists have changed over the course of the year. Next year, I’ll do a few challenges again, but I don’t think I’ll actually make up a list. It’s been changing so often that it might just be easier to add the books to the list as they fit a challenge.
If you’re interested in finding a challenge yourself, check out A Novel Challenge. It’s a list of various different challenges that are going on and you might find something you’re interested in. If you want to see my entire list of books for all of my challenges, here’s my list. I had some of them posted on the sidebar, but adding all of them would have made it a little too big so now it’s a PDF.
I am joining one more book challenge for the year and this one I think my husband will be supportive of. J. Kaye’s Book Blog is hosting the Ban on Spending Book Challenge. Here are the details:
- No purchasing books for yourself until all the books listed are gone. No purchasing books for other people with the intention of reading them after they are finished. Library or other borrowed books can’t be listed.
- Any books won in a raffle or given to me as a gift will be added to this list.
- Books to be reviewed for promo companies, other blogs, authors, etc. do not count and are not added to this list.
- Start anytime and list as many or as few books as needed. Once all books are checked off from the list, the ban is lifted and the spending can begin again.
- The ending date for each person can vary to a few weeks or months as long as it doesn’t exceed December 31, 2008. This ban can be lifted earlier if all books listed have been read or donated.
So I won’t be buying any more books this year. I’m going to be doing this challenge for the rest of the year in an effort to save money for Christmas. Thankfully, I can still borrow books from the library, so I’ll be able to read the new releases that I want to this fall, but I’ll just have to wait on the library. However, if there is a book someone out there WANTS me to read sooner than the library can get it for me, then they’ll have to send it to me. I always accept free books. My husband is already on board with this challenge:
Jackie: I found a new book challenge for me. You might like this one
Jesse: wait, so you’d stop spending money?
Jackie: that’s the idea
Jesse: I’m liking this
So where is everyone else at on their challenges?
