The County Library discussion

I have never done a reading challenge, how do they work?

You can find an existing one and follow the prompts. Popsugar is pretty popular. They usually go for a year. Many book groups have their own, tailored to the group's theme.

A common one is to read a book for each letter of the alphabet (author name or book title). My sci-fi/fantasy group does one based on comic book characters with two teams in competition.

I have another group that does a Bingo challenge. I've seen one for classics: read a book for each decade of the 1800s or something.

My sister and I do custom reading challenges for each other every year. This year;

Her challenge from me is to read books that have movies based on the book. I made the challenge 20 books, so she has 5 books whose movies got a Rotten Tomatoes score below 25, 5 books whose movies score 25-50, 5 books with movie scores from 50-75, and 5 books with movie scores above 75.

My challenge from her is that she gave me a monopoly game board with each space labelled with a book category. I shake a pair of dice and move my piece around the game board, reading a book (and marking off the space) from the category. The challenge continues until I get a monopoly.

There are tons and tons of challenges out there, both formal and informal. It's fun!

Greg wrote: "My sister and I do custom reading challenges for each other every year. This year;

Her challenge from me is to read books that have movies based on the book. I made the challenge 20 books, so she ..."

I love this! It's a great Christmas gift idea.

It has really motivated me to read more, but don't do it if it starts causing stress.

At it's most basic, a reading challenge is when you set yourself a reading goal and seek to meet that goal by choosing books that fit within any parameters you set. That's all a reading challenge is. You have most probably participated in several reading challenges and just not thought of it that way.

In school the teacher says "You need to read 4 books this year and write book reports on them." The class reading challenge is reading 4 books. If you went to college and took a literature class, the teacher had a list of books to read. That was a reading challenge.

I had a personal challenge years ago to read all the Pulitzer fiction books. It took a long time, but I achieved it. And every year since, I have read the newest Pulitzer fiction winner. Through personal challenges I have also read all Newbery and Caldecott Medal winners. For several years I've had a goal to read each year's Pulitzer nonfiction categories books. Success sometimes, sometimes not. I cannot, however, set a goal to read all of them because many are no longer available anywhere.

Audrey wrote: "It has really motivated me to read more, but don't do it if it starts causing stress."

Absolutely! I'm old. There are so many, many books I would love to read but I know I won't live long enought to read them all. The list keeps growing faster than I can read them! Don't trap yourself thinking that if you start a book, you have to finish it. I've learned, and it took some force of will, to let a book go if I'm not enjoying it by the time I'm between 20% and 25%. Less, if I find myself feeling reluctant to read because I don't want to read it. Let it go.