Reading is one of my favourite things in the world, being transported to new worlds, making new friends, and learning from people who know more than I is wonderful. I also love new years and making goals and challenges for myself.
One of my favourite goals is figuring out what I am going to read for the year. I like having challenges for myself to challenge myself to read outside of my comfort zone, pick up books that I wouldn’t normally, and give me ideas for what to read.
This year I have completely changed my reading tracking over to The StoryGraph, switching from Goodreads. You can read all about it and why I did here.
One thing I really love about The StoryGraph is that it allows you to see all of your reading challenges on one page and see how you are doing on all of them.
My first challenge is for the number of books that I want to read. Last year I decided that I would drop that number down to 52 and it was one of the best decisions that I have ever made. I spent the entire year not caring about how many books that I read and just enjoying those I did. I wasn’t stressed in December to make sure that I hit my goal and I wasn’t worried about the numbers. I have a feeling that I won’t be reading as many books this year and I don’t want to feel like there is a number that I cannot reach.
Now onto my other challenges.
The first is the Book Riot Read Harder 2021. I completed and really enjoyed doing this challenge last year. The challenges are different from those that I usually come across and since there are 24 I am able to read 2 a month for the year. The challenges are as follows:
- Read a book you’ve been intimidated to read
- Read a nonfiction book about anti-racism
- Read a non-European novel in translation
- Read an LGBTQ+ history book
- Read a genre novel by an Indigenous, First Nations, or Native American author
- Read a fanfic
- Read a fat-positive romance
- Read a romance by a trans or nonbinary author
- Read a middle grade mystery
- Read an SFF anthology edited by a person of color
- Read a food memoir by an author of color
- Read a work of investigative nonfiction by an author of color
- Read a book with a cover you don’t like
- Read a realistic YA book not set in the U.S., UK, or Canada
- Read a memoir by a Latinx author
- Read an own voices book about disability
- Read an own voices YA book with a Black main character that isn’t about Black pain
- Read a book by/about a non-Western world leader
- Read a historical fiction with a POC or LGBTQ+ protagonist
- Read a book of nature poems
- Read a children’s book that centers a disabled character but not their disability
- Read a book set in the Midwest
- Read a book that demystifies a common mental illness
- Read a book featuring a beloved pet where the pet doesn’t die
I am very excited to see what this challenge has in store for me this year.
Next is the A-Z challenge. This is just for fun to try and read a book starting with every letter of the alphabet. I will not be including A, An, or The and will be using the next word if necessary. I know everyone does this a little differently, but this is a fun way to find books with all of the litters of the alphabet.
Lastly is a challenge that I made up myself. I want to read more books set outside of North America so I set up a country generator and went through to find 12 countries. I only chose countries with at least a few million people to make sure that there were books to choose from. If possible I want to read books written by people from that country and if needed I will switch countries if I can’t find any books suitable. Currently the countries I have are:
- Uganda
- Georgia
- Togo
- Cypress
- Zambia
- Albania
- Haiti
- Belgium
- Ireland
- Brazil
- Kuwait
- Turkey
Lastly I will be continuing to read and review books from NetGalley and will be tracking those books as well.
Let me know if you have any reading challenges and what your reading goals are for 2021. Also let me know if you are on The Storygraph and your username so I can follow you!
Reading Recap:
The StoryGraph Profile – Username: andrea_connors
Books Read in 2021: 5
Read Harder: 0/24
A-Z Challenge: 4/26
Read Around the World: 0/12
ARC’s Read: 1
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