Reading Challenges of 2016

So I read about Book Riot’s Read Harder challenge and got all excited. This resulted in a lot of googling and finding other challenges and then it got a bit out of hand and now I’ve committed myself to loads of them when I’ve never even bothered to do one before.

Hopefully some will double up. I’m also aiming to read 120 books on Goodreads. Last year I aimed to read 70 books and I read 114. The year before my goal was 60 and I forgot to track most of the books I read.

I’ll try to remember to link to them as I go along because most of the challenges have reviews as part of the challenge.

Book Riot: Read Harder Challenge 

1. Read a horror book
2. Read a non-fiction book about science
3. Read a collection of essays
4. Read out loud to someone else
5. Read a middle grade novel
6. Read a biography
7. Read dystopian or post apocalyptic
8. Read a book published the decade of your birth
9. Listen to an audiobook that’s won an audie award
10. Read a book that’s over 500 pages
11. Read a book that’s under 100 pages
12. Read a book written by a transgendered person
13. Read a book set in the middle east
14. Read a book wit an author from souteast Asia
15. Read historical fiction set before 1900
16. Read a first book in a series by a person of colour (recommendation: Parable of the Sower by Octavia E. Butler)
17. Read a non super hero comic that debuted in the last three years
18. Read a book adapted into a movie then watch the movie and debate which is better
19. Read a non-ficiton book about feminism or about feminist themes
20. Read a book about religion
21. Read a book about politics
22. Read a food memoir
23. Read a play
24. Read a book where a main character has a mental illness

Classics challenge 

1. A book from the 19th century
2. A book from the 20th ccentury
3. A book by a female author
4. A translated book
5. A book by a non-white author
6. An adventure book
7. A fantasy, science fiction or dystopian book
8. A detective book
9. A book that has a name of a place in the title
10. A book that was banned or censored
11. Re-read a book you read at school
12. A volume of classic short stories

Worlds Without End: Roll your own reading challenge

Here’s where it got a bit out of hand because I signed up to 28 of their challenges, which ranges from 6 books to 100 books each, but it’s meant to be a challenge and I always get in over my head.

1. 12 awards in 12 months: I chose the ‘master’ reading level of 12 books because I don’t usually pay attention to awards but with all the recent controversy I feel like I should start.
2. LGBTQ speculative fiction (they have their own LGBTQ resource so that helps): I chose the ‘Oscar Wilde’ reading level of 12 books because despite wanting to read more diverse books I’ve barely read any LGBTQ books.
3. Listomania – pick 12 books from any lists on their site: The ‘listomaniac’ reading level of 12 books because I love lists.
4. Second best – any books nominated for awards but not winners: The ‘also ran’ reading level of 12 books.
5. Published this year: the ‘nebula’ reading level of 12 books. 24 books at the ‘hugo’ level seemed a bit much.
6. Unloved – neither won or nominated: The ‘heartbreak hotel’ reading level of 12 books.
7. Women of genre fiction – (they have their own Women Authors page): The ‘apprentice’ level of 12 books
8. Cat quest: The reading level of ‘lolcat’ which is 6 books. I love my cats but I don’t want to read loads of books about cats. I’d also like to note the other reading levels are ‘Cat-astrophe’, ‘cat fancier’ and ‘chairman meow’.
9. Science fiction from Australia: The reading level of ‘cherry ripe’ which is 6 books
10. Punk’s not dead: The reading level ‘Joey Ramone’ which is 12 books
11. Read the sequel: The reading level ‘blue fish’ of 12 books
12. Series A to Z: The ‘entire alphabet’ reading level of 24 books. For this challenge I only have to read one book from 24 series, not all of the books in a series for each letter.
13. Science fiction masterworks: The ‘master’ reading level of 12 books.
14. Space opera: The ‘shai hulud’ reading level of 12 books.
15. Star wars: I picked the ‘obi wan ken-obi’ level of 6 books because there was no way I was picking the ‘Anakin Skywalker’ level (as stupid a reason as that sounds). The other levels are ‘Yoda’ and ‘emperor Palpatine’ but that was too many books considering my interest in star wars is minimal.
16. Tie-ins: the ‘journeyman’ reading level of 9 books. I might have gone for the higher level but I’ve never read a tie-in that I thought was really good. They’re mostly quite bad.
17. Author! Author!: the ‘virtuoso’ reading level of 20 books
18. Big fun in a little package novella reading challenge: the ‘large’ reading level of 18 books
19. Tor.com short stories: the ‘wizard’ reading level of 96 books
20. Discoveries in genre: the ‘explorer’ reading level of 6 books
21. Genre non fiction: the ‘savant’ reading level of 6 books. That’s the highest reading level for this challenge. Ihave loads of books of this type and I love reading them.
22. In translation: the ‘linguist’ of 9 books. I’m not sure I’ve ever read a translated book so I figured I’d start off slow.
23. Io9 best of 2015: the ‘master’ reading level of 36 books which I think is the entire list.
24. The weirdness: I picked the ‘worshiper of Dagon’ reading level of 9 books. There’s also ‘resident of arkham’, ‘Student at Miskatonic U’ and ‘High Priest of Cthulhu’ reading levels but even I can only put up with so much weirdness.
25. 2016 I have just have to read more of that author: the ‘completely obsessed’ leading level of 12 books.
26. Triumvirate (trilogies): the ‘novem’ reading level of 9 books
27. New books of 2015: the ‘halogen’ reading level of 13 books.
28. 2016 books I’ve read this year: the ‘voracious’ reading level of 100 books. This one should be easy it’s just keeping track of all the books I’ve read. So as long as I remember to track them as I go and don’t have to do it all at once at the end of the year there won’t be a problem.

So that’s 313 books if I don’t double any of them of them up and don’t count the 96 short stories from Tor. There’s no way I could read that many books in a year because I have other things I’d like to do in 2016.

The last reading challenge is from Panels and is about comics so shouldn’t be a problem because I read a lot of comics.

Panels: Read Harder Challenge

1. Read a self-published comic.
2. Read a feminist comic.
3. Read a comic featuring one or more teenage protagonists.
4. Read a superhero comic whose race or gender has been swapped from the original or traditional hero.
5. Read a complete run of a comic.
6. Read a comic based on a book and the book it’s based on.
7. Read a graphic biography.
8. Read a comic that was originally published in a language different from your own.
9. Read a comic set in space.
10. Read a collected web-comic.
11. Read a comic with at least one creator of colour.
12. Read a comic set in Asia by an Asian creator.
13. Read a superhero comic NOT by one of the Big Two.
14. Read a slice-of-life comic not set in the U.S.
15. Read a comic that has been adapted from a T.V. show or movie (not vice versa).
16. Read a comic about a real-life historical event.
17. Read a black-and-white comic.
18. Read a watercolour comic.

This shall be my master post where I keep track of what I’ve done and how far I’ve got to go because I am notoriously bad at keeping track of these things. I even forgot to post this back in January.

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