Wednesday, December 23, 2015

Month Of Faves - Challenge Wrap Up

Bright, shiny books, new books and scheduled reviews all served to throw me off of my challenge goals once again this year. That and I couldn't really make myself care about reading some of the books I'd put on lists. Soooo...again, my challenge results are mixed.

My biggest failure was the one that I was the most interested in at the beginning of the year - the Official 2015 TBR Pile Challenge. Since one of the things I wanted to do this year was read more of my own books, I thought this was the best way to push myself to do that. The problem was, as I've mentioned, that I just never had any interest in reading several of the books I'd put on the list. In fact, three of them recently made their way out of my house unread.
They might have been very good books but, for whatever reason, they just never seemed to pique my interest. I did, however, manage to read well more than a dozen books that were on my shelves at the beginning for 2015 so I'm okay about not finishing the books that were on my list.

I'm close enough on the Nonfiction Challenge to call that one met at this point, although I'd really like to up my game on nonfiction reading in the coming year. I finished the War Through the Generations Challenge, the Foodies Challenge, the Chunkster Challenge, and the Women Challenge, and will finish the Finish The Series challenge by year's end - a good much better than normal result for me as far as challenges are concerned.


I picked the Chunkster Challenge to try to make myself read some of the really big books I've got lying around, you know that ones with 600 or more pages. But as the requirement was only 450 pages, this one wasn't as hard as I thought it might be and didn't push me as much as I had hoped. Dammit, I need to get to Little Dorrit and Pillars of the Earth!

As far as the Women's Challenge, it turns out I don't really need to be challenged there. Without really giving it any thought, I'm more than giving women an equal shake in my reading.

As for the Foodies Challenge, I turn out to be a little bit "meh" about that one. If a book happens to have food in it, great. But I'm not really interested in going out of my way just to find books that are focused on food. Which may put a crimp in my Fall Feasting reading as well.

I vastly reduced my Goodreads goal this year, from 80 books to just 50, trying to make sure I had time to read those aforementioned chunksters. I blew by that goal this fall. Which I was pretty sure going in I would. Makes it not much of a challenge, right? For 2016, I doubt very much that I'll even set a goal on Goodreads.

I did not complete the What's In A Name Challenge once again. Seriously, how is it even possible that I didn't read one book all year that had no familial word in the title? The city in the title I knew would be a stretch but nothing with sister, daughter, wife, mother in the title? This one I may just sign up for again just to prove that I can, at least once, succeed at it!

My biggest disappointment regarding challenges? Not playing the game better - remembering to official sign up, to post my links when I read the books, to check out how others are doing. Bad blog community member!

Did you sign up for challenges this year? How'd you do?



2 comments:

  1. I wasn't going to do challenges this year, but ended up signing up for one at the start of spring (or was it summer). My biggest failure was in not linking my reviews. I am really bad at that--so it's good to know I am not alone.

    I don't blame you for not wanting to set a Goodreads goal. I set mine at 6 books this year and am at 1200% completion right now. I knew going in, of course, I would blow by the goal. And that was kind of the point. Haha

    I have learned I don't do well with challenges for which I need to come up with a pre-selected list and then am required to read from it throughout the year. I do better when I can chose as I go. I love making lists though--so I tend to refer to those as suggestions more than anything else.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Yeah, challenges with preselected lists never work for me. I know there books I wanted to read when I made the list, but I feel all kinds of rebellious about "having" to read them when it comes down to it.

      Delete