2016 Reading Challenges: Read Harder and Pop Sugar

I got sucked into these and thought I'd share what I read!

Book Riot's Read Harder Challenge:

 

And the Pop Sugar challenge:

 

Wrap-Up for Dewey's 24 Hour Readathon

I have seen this readathon around social media for years but when I found myself home on a Saturday with few plans, I decided to jump in at the last minute. My day was largely spent reading, posting about reading, and reading other people's posts about reading. Oh and watching half of the first season of UnReal because I started it.

You can read more about Dewey, the readathon, how to participate, and make plans for the next round over on their website.

I finished five books yesterday. I had started three of them already, which might be against the official rules, but it is how I did it. I also started and rejected a sixth book which I don't to mention here (savvy readers can find my abandoned books shelf in Goodreads and draw their own conclusions.)

Reading in community is the best, and it was great fun to be a part of such a great community of readers for this readathon!

The Miernik Dossier by Charles McCarry
The Improbability of Love by Hannah Rothschild
A Darker Shade of Magic by V.E. Schwab
Ark by Ed Madden
Gin and Gardenias by A. Scott Henderson

2012 Challenge - Around the World in 52 Books

You knew it was coming, and 2012 is finally here!  The long months of list making, book swapping, and dreaming are over, and the reading may commence!

The official challenge is 52 books, but I have a feeling I'll do more than that.  Just in the books I've collected, they represent 57 countries, 5 of which have multiple books associated with them.  The official list of what I intend to read is in a Google Doc, but don't worry, I will review them as I go!  I will be taking a group photo as soon as the last few stragglers wander in.

I'm not scheduling too far out, because I want to be able to read based on whim, although I'm going to do a few of the group reads.  I'm also saving all my Caribbean books for the week I'll be on a cruise.  I should be able to knock out a good 5 countries in that week alone.

I will be starting with The Tiger's Wife by Tea Obreht, which was a finalist for the National Book Award and won the Orange Prize this year.  I bought the last signed copy from the Hub City Bookshop in Spartanburg, SC, where she had stopped on her tour.

In case I haven't mentioned it before, I am not the only person doing this challenge.  You can see a lot more by visiting the Tumblr account I set up, which will be where I'll pull all the blog posts people do as well as linking to other sites.  Alternately, you could just visit the group in GoodReads, where all members will be linking to reviews.  It isn't too late to join, if this idea intrigues you.  Making the list is great fun, but the reading will be even better.  I'm already plotting for an Around the USA challenge for 2013....

Here is a visual representation of the countries I will read books from, created on worldmapmaker.com

2012 Challenge - Orange January

Reading a lot of book blogs' end of year posts, it has become clear that there are book bloggers who excel at conquering reading challenges. I might never take on as many as Emma from Words and Peace, but I am intentionally taking on TWO in the new year. One of the two challenges I am taking on in 2012 is Orange January.  Orange January/July is a twice-yearly personal challenge where you commit to read at least one book that has won or been nominated for the Orange Prize.  Jill at The Magic Lasso hosts the challenge, and invites other bloggers to contribute reviews. The link to the challenge links to all the lists - winners, nominees, long lists, short lists, and so on.  The Orange Prize is something I have read a lot of by accident, but never intentionally.

CUE LIST MAKING!

The fun thing about going through the lists was my discovery that quite a few books were novels I was already planning to read for the Around the World in 52 Books challenge.  I simply moved those books to the front of the line, which includes the following:

• The Tiger's Wife by Tea Obreht
• Frangipani by Celestine Hitiura Vaite
• A Short History of Tractors in Ukrainian by Marina Lewycka
• Half of a Yellow Sun by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

This might be enough of a challenge for some people but I have a bunch more Orange titles physically sitting on my to-read shelf crying out for attention.  I might get to a few of the following as well:

• Case Histories by Kate Atkinson (already halfway red, my bedside table book right now)
• Brick Lane by Monica Ali
• American Life by Curtis Sittenfeld
• Gut Symmetries by Jeanette Winterson

I'm excited to get started! The Tiger's Wife will be the first cover I crack in 2012!

2012: Around the World in 52 Books

Photo courtesy of abhisheksundaram on Flickr

One day I was glancing at the feed in GoodReads and noticed a group called 2012: Around the World in 52 Books. I clicked through and joined right away. It is a group that is committing to reading 52 books from 52 different countries in the year 2012. Some people are picking books that are set in certain countries, but I am going as far as to challenge myself to read a book about a place that is also by an author from that place. I felt like this would be a greater challenge with less likelihood that I'd be reading many authors I had read before.

Anyone who knows me knows how much I adore writing lists, so as you can imagine, I've enjoyed myself in the past few weeks. Some of the other readers in the group have long created shelves (tags, really) in GoodReads indicating the setting of a book, and their lists helped enable mine. There were various other tools I used, including Listopia and just some generic Google searching.

The list is still in progress, and you can covet it in two ways - my GoodReads shelf labeled for the challenge, or my Google doc. Hey, this blog is called Reading Envy, after all. You can envy my newest list, and I can envy all the books I won't get to that are on the list right now, to be weeded out later. I think I had 75 last I checked, and I'll want time to read other things too!

If you have any suggestions, I'd love to hear them. I'm really interested in reading books set in areas I don't know much about. There is a small list of countries I've deliberately excluded, because I feel like I've read a great deal from them (and surely will continue to do so) - USA, Canada, UK, Australia, and South Africa. There are some books on my list right now that don't fit my author-from-the-country criteria, but I haven't found a better option to replace it yet. There are also a few authors on the list whom I've already read (Houellebecq, Jansson), and I'm open to replacing them as well. I'll probably read Houellebecq's new novel regardless of the challenge, and I would welcome additional Finnish ideas.

This whole challenge has also impressed on me the usefulness of tagging books by location, and now have shelves in GoodReads that say "location-X." I'll be able to do that moving forward as well. Is it 2012 yet?