Ultimate Popsugar Reading Challenge discussion

Hi all!
I know I've seen in the past, people post mini challenges.
Does anyone have any they're doing?
I have four per month:
-A book that I already own (way too many TBRs)
-A memoir (audio form if narrated by the author)
-A Newbery winner/finalist (I'm an English teacher)
-Celebrity Reader's Diversity challenge (https://celebrityreaders.com/2023/12/...)

These categories are in combination with the Popsugar, not on top of.
For example,
I'll Scream Later is:
-a book by a Deaf Author
-a book I already own
-a memoir
-covers October's diversity challenge

Let me know what you're doing!

I challenge myself to read at least 1-2 classics a year. Last year I read David Copperfield and started Bleak House. I ended up abandoning Bleak House because I wasn't into it at the time. I think I will pick it back up and try to finish it this year. I also reread Pride and Prejudice.

For this year I am reading The Phantom of the Opera for the Pop Sugar challenge. I am not sure what else I will read at this time.

I like your idea of doing at least one book I own every month too. As you say I have a ridiculous amount of books that I own and haven't yet read.

My challenge for January/February is to finish a bunch of books that I've started and let fall to the wayside.

The Bonfire of the Vanities
The Song of the Jade Lily
Floodpath: The Deadliest Man-Made Disaster of 20th-Century America and the Making of Modern Los Angeles
Night over Water
Mistakes Were Made, but Not by Me: Why We Justify Foolish Beliefs, Bad Decisions, and Hurtful Acts
The Schoolmaster's Daughter

There's probably even a couple more beyond these that I'm forgetting at the moment!

I wasn't going to let myself start any new books until I finished these, but then I started a buddy read and also a hold from last year came in at the library, so....

My first mini-challenge of the year has been to finish off old challenges that only lack a few books being done. That amounted to 10/12 old challenges of which I have to date finished 4! Two old challenges have double digit books needed.

Two of those were seasonal challenges for ATY and PS. For those two groups I am current!!!

Mostly I am reading for old challenges...however, I am also reviewing recent books that I have read and making substitutions where possible of books already completed.

I like the idea of structuring my reading, but I have found that piling too many specific challenges on myself becomes too stressful as the year goes on and it's just not fun or satisfying any longer.

So I keep it simple: Popsugar, maybe AtY, a list of books I MUST read this year (this year it's only 10 books), plus I read relevant books (any number of books) during six cultural appreciation months (Feb, March, May, June, Sept, and Nov). So I guess I'm kind of doing that Celebrity Readers Diversity mini-challenge! The only category I don't usually hit in that 12-month mini-challenge list is "religious minorities" for December.

I'll count one book toward multiple challenges. If I can find a book from my list of Must-Reads that also fills categories in Popsugar & AtY, that's the trifecta!! (and it does happen sometimes). I also prioritize books that fill challenge categories when I'm picking my books for the cultural appreciation months.

I create posts in this annual "general" folder for each CAM, you can join us in talking about books you're choosing for those months. Here's the first post of this year, talking about books we might read for Black History Month:
https://www.goodreads.com/topic/show/...

I'll create future posts in March for Women's History Month, May for Asian American & Pacific Islander Month, June for Pride, Sept for Hispanic Heritage Month, and November for Native American Heritage Month. Six CAMs each year is all I can manage, because I tend to go overboard for each month and read a lot of books.

If anyone else wants to create posts to discuss other months (such as Irish American Heritage Month in March, Autism Awareness Month in April, Poetry Month in April, Mental Health Awareness in May, Jewish Appreciation Month in May, Italian American Heritage Month in October, etc etc etc) you can go ahead and create a post for that!! I'm in the US so my viewpoint is very US-centric, and I know other countries probably have different "appreciation months" and we can do those, too!!

What great ideas you all have for your sub-challenges! One year, I read as many "Green" books as possible (my favorite color). Titles, Author names, Covers, Green subjects, etc.

This year, my only goal beyond my usual challenges, is to try to always have one of my physical books going. Most of my reading is audiobooks, with the occasional ebook, and my library holds are constantly coming in, requiring lots of juggling, so my physical books always seem to get deferred. It didn't help that last year, we had our "biggest" book to read, and that took me all year! (I did slip a smaller book into my purse for emergency reading).

Nadine in NY wrote: "I like the idea of structuring my reading, but I have found that piling too many specific challenges on myself becomes too stressful as the year goes on and it's just not fun or satisfying any long..."

Yeah, all the various challenges floating around seem so tempting, but I need to leave room for just reading whatever takes my fancy, especially with Popsugar being a bit more restrictive this year.

I do try and keep myself accountable on diversity, but that's a personal tracking thing rather than a challenge.

Misery wrote: "When I am hyped by the paper I pick, I start the book right away, but when the pick is not that enticing, I take a second paper and I make my instagram friends vote between them (aaaaand most of the time they force me to read the one I would'nt choose, which is perfect because it adds up to the challenging part of the process)...."



How has this been going for you so far? I like to read a book I wouldn't normally choose now and then but if I read too many of them I start to get antsy, and I find yes there is a reason I did not want to read that book!

I do a lot of IRL challenges. So I am doing a BPL Winter Reading Challenge over the next 2 months. One set in and by an author born in each of the geographic areas below:
Africa
Americas
Europe
Near East
Oceania
Asia

I do buddy reads through the year with my BFF.

And I also try to read at least one book a year in: Spanish, French, Welsh - and Mi'kmaq , if I can find it. Love keeping the language skills up!

Hi All :)

As I very much enjoyed Nadine's 2023 Mini-Challenge, I've decided to do my own this year. I've also decided to only use for it books from my oh so very long TBR list :D

1. Book with word ‘gold’ in the title (24 karats in pure gold)
2. Book about family (24 is associated with ‘family’ in numerology)
3. The 24th book on your TBR list
4. Book with six words in the title (2+4)
5. Book about architecture (24 is associated with architecture in the Bible)
6. Book about religion (24 is associated with worship)
7. Book set in Greece (24 is the number of letters in Greek)
8. Book with money in the title or on the cover (24 blackbirds baked in a pie in ‘Sing a song of sixpence’)
9. Book about film industry (24 is the number of frames per second in which a movie is normally projected)
10. Book less than 240 pages long

I like this idea. I have so many challenges already, but I do have one personal one as well.

While it's not fleshed out. I do have two book goals for the year:

1.) Read as many Nicholas Sparks books as I can.

2.) Read more Indigenous history, whether by white or Indigenous authors.

Khalisti wrote: "Hi All :)

As I very much enjoyed Nadine's 2023 Mini-Challenge, I've decided to do my own this year. I've also decided to only use for it books from my oh so very long TBR list :D"

I like your challenge. Perhaps later in the year, I might try it. Good job, though.

Khalisti wrote: "Hi All :)

As I very much enjoyed Nadine's 2023 Mini-Challenge, I've decided to do my own this year. I've also decided to only use for it books from my oh so very long TBR list :D

1. Book with wor..."

Very creative. I am willing to give it a try. Last year I finished all but one of Nadine's mini-challenge prompts. It was fun and low stress.

Khalisti wrote: "Hi All :)

As I very much enjoyed Nadine's 2023 Mini-Challenge, I've decided to do my own this year. I've also decided to only use for it books from my oh so very long TBR list :D

1. Book with wor..."



Brilliant!!

I've got another thing to add to my mini-challenge:

Do more read-along's (listening to the audio book while reading the physical copy).

Last year was my first time ever attempting listening to audiobooks so because I didn't know how to navigate it, it was hard at first. Still though, I'd like to think that over the past year I grew from it and listened better.

I still can't listen to audiobooks on their own because I get distracted easily, but at least now I can consider them like podcasts and sit through them better, more so if I have the physical copy with me.

Ron wrote: "I've got another thing to add to my mini-challenge:

Do more read-along's (listening to the audio book while reading the physical copy).

Last year was my first time ever attempting listening to au..."

I love how you have grown over the past year. It is encouraging to me.

Aw, thanks Bea. That means a lot. Guess I have, hadn't really noticed that much.

I think what helps is doing the read-alongs. That's made listening to audiobooks easier.

I don't know if I would call this a "mini-challenge," but I am trying to read all of classics on my TBR before the end of the year. After finishing Emma earlier this month, I currently have seven classics remaining, and most of them are pretty lengthy books.

The books I plan to read (and in some cases have already started) include:
~The Arabian Nights: Tales of 1001 Nights, Volume 1-3
~The Iliad & the Odyssey
~The Merry Adventures of Robin Hood
~King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table
~The Complete Works of William Shakespeare

I'm planning for Arabian Nights and Shakespeare to take most of the year to complete, since I am reading them at a fairly sedate pace, but I hope to finish the other books by the summer.

I've added another reading challenge to mine:

Read the Twilight Saga books, specifically Midnight Sun.

I've been reading through Agatha Christie's books in publication order for a few years now, one per month. I will finish at the end of the year.

I try to keep up on my IRL book club each month, even if I don't make it to the meeting.

I set goals to read each year a certain number of owned books, re-reads, new releases, non-fiction books, Spanish childrens' books, and books from my Well Read list. Some years work out better than others.

I'm challenging myself to finish reading the Vampire Academy series this year as well as read the Bloodlines series - I've had both for AGES and want to get them off my TBR shelf

Hoping to read The Twilight Saga starting this week.

I got new highlighters so I want to re-annotate the books so as a result I got whole new copies. I know, crazy.

I do have personal challenges that I call upon for fulfilling prompts like the Pop Sugar list. They are:

1) The Crime Writers Association (CWA) best 100 mysteries of all time.

2) The Mystery Writers of America (MWA) best 100 mysteries of all time.

3) President Obama's previous years' reads.

4) Queen Camilla's book club (Yes, she has one!).

My literary tastes align with those compilations more than, say, the Oprah or Reese book clubs. Not that there's anything wrong with those...it's just that they're not my cuppa so much as what I listed above.

Sometimes, I'll also pick an entire series to read. Last year, I read all of the Brother Cadfael mysteries by Ellis Peters, the Maggie O'Sullivan series by M Ruth Myers, Kate Atkisson's Jackson Brodie, Forbidden Iceland by Eva Ægisdottír, and Stephen Spotswood's Pentecost.

This year, I'm tackling Ngaio Marsh's Roderick Alleyn series (35 books!) and the Lord Peter Wimsey series by Dorothy Sayers. I'm even doing the short stories for those two, LOL.

I've finally created my own challenge. I found a site that has some really popular challenge prompts going all the way back until 2018 and so I decided to pick some out from all 6 lists to create my own.

I've got them all written out in a journal so I can keep track.

I'm in no way intending to finish them all this year, but it will be fun to see which ones I end up getting to.