A Year of Reading

Who says reading challenges have to be limited to summer?

In my last post, I talked about how I'm burnt out on reading young adult books, and I touched on a reading challenge my sister suggested we do. When my sister texted me to tell me about "a GREAT idea" she had for reading, I was nervous, mostly because we have very different reading tastes, and we're different types of readers. My sister's idea was to pick a specific theme for every month, and we can only read books that fall into that theme. Her plan is to do this for a year.

I was hesitant at first, because that's not how I read. I tend to be a mood reader, and limiting myself the way my sister suggested is really hard for me. Any time I try to limit myself to something, I tend to want to read everything except what I'm limited to.

But the more I thought about it, the more I wanted to try it, primarily because I'm still burnt out on young adult books (and middle grade, and anything that's not aimed at an adult audience), but also because I thought it would be a fun way to extend my summer reading challenge and challenge myself with my reading.

Our challenge starts tomorrow, but I officially started it earlier this week. For the next year, our themes are:

August: Non-fiction
September: Classics/literary fiction
October: Horror/scary stories
November: History (both fiction and non-fiction)
December: Winter-themed books
January: Self-improvement
February: Young adult fiction (I couldn't help adding it in, just in case I want to start reading it again.)
March: Novels where technology plays a role, or non-fiction about technology
April: Poetry, short stories, and plays
May: Memoir/biographies
June: Summer-themed books
July: Childhood favorites

Then, a couple weeks ago, my sister sent me a text about "another GREAT idea" she had. She suggested that each month, we recommend books to each other from the theme, and we have to read at least one chapter of whatever is recommended to us. I'm not sure how this going to play out yet, since my sister can't seem to decide how many books we're allowed to recommend to each other, but I think it'll be fun.

Want to participate in your own reading challenge? Make one up, or try one of these!

2015 Reading Challenges
Novel Challenges
The Perch Book Club Summer Reading Challenge

And if you don't like those options, you can always do a Google search to find a reading challenge that works for you. Happy reading!