2017 Reading Challenges!

It’s that time of year: deciding a number for my total Goodreads Challenge for books read in 2017!!! Last year, I set my goal to 80, then bumped it up to 100 after I beat my initial goal in like September. This year, after much contemplation, I’m setting a goal of 120. A few notes about how I decide which books to attribute to the goal: I don’t count children’s picture books that I read for work typically. That’s because I read a minimum of 3 children’s picture books a week and I just feel like that may be cheating because they take like 5 minutes to read most of the time. I do, however, count audiobooks, which I know some people don’t. But I think that audiobooks count as reading (I actually think it’s a little ablist to say reading the book with your ears is not the same as reading with your eyes), as I’m still putting in the time to listen to the story, and often prefer audiobooks for a specific narrator or if I think the experience would be enhanced by listening. I’m an auditory learner, too, so I don’t have any trouble paying attention to an audiobook.

So anyway. 120 books. That’s about ten books a month, which is definitely doable for me. Also, and I don’t know if everyone does this or what, I have mental goal of 150 books but I’m not ready to commit to that so I’m setting the bar at something I know for sure I can reach. Then, if I end up reading more at the end of the year, I can bump my goal up or set a higher goal the following year.

But the main Goodreads challenge isn’t my only challenge. I also participate in Around the Year in 52 books (mentioned in a previous post), which is a challenge that has a specific criteria for each week of the year, and the readers have to select a book to read that meets that criteria. For example, a book with a color in the title or a book over 500 pages. This list is so fun to create, and it’s a good way to clean out my TBR and read books that I own but have been putting off reading. Even though it takes hours to decide what to read each week, it's worth it. Plus, with my newly minted blog, I decided to join the Historical Romance Reading Challenge, which isn’t made up of specific categories for every single book, but has broader categories (medieval romance, time travel romance) and ascending levels based on how many books you read. I plan on aiming for queen status (50+ books and at least 1 book from every category). It sounds like a lot of fun and a good way to get to various historical romances that have been lingering on my TBR.

I'll be sure to update this blog on the status of my 2017 reading challenges. Hopefully I'll meet my goals the way that I did in 2016!

What's your reading goal for 2017? Are you signed up for any challenges? Let me know in the comments below!