Around the Year in 52 Books discussion

I'm still discovering challenges I find interesting so I'd like to see what people are working on and what they are interested in :)

Two questions:
- Which challenges are you currently doing?
- Which challenges would you like to join in 2017?

- Which challenges are you currently doing?
For the officials: I'm doing the AtY challenge, the A-Z challenge (only children books), the dystopia challenge, the r/fantasy bingo.
For my own challenges: cover colors challenge and 10 books outside my comfort zone (this one is working well so I'll include it in my 2017 AtY).

- Which challenges would you like to join in 2017?
I'm planning on doing the AtY challenge ant the associated small reject challenge (5 fav suggestions at a time and I'll see how much I read in the end). I'll also continue the r/fantasy bingo and maybe join the next one (it's April to April).
The unfinished series challenge would be a nice idea too because I've too much series waiting and I've to push myself away when I want to start a new one. So something like "don't start one until you finish one" would help a little.
I'll check Popsugar and Bookriot lists, maybe the 2017 ones will be appealing.

I am just working in the 52 books around the year, but in two different ways. A half challenge with books and a full challenge with Graphic novels... I am thinking to do the same the next year.
I also have a Manga Challenge in other group, but that one is just a number of Mangas set as a goal for the year..

Which challenges are you currently doing?
For the 2016 calendar year, I'm doing our AtY, the Popsugar challenge and the BookRiot Read Harder challenge. I've also just started an I Spy (Titles) challenge through another group here, just for a bit of fun. I don't actually expect to finish any of them, but surprisingly, I don't really care. :)

As ongoing challenges, I'm also doing my version of the Reject Challenge from AtY, though I've removed any prompts that I've done in a previous challenge. I'm also doing the Read Your Age challenge (thanks Laura!)

Which challenges would you like to join in 2017?
I'll do AtY, and most likely Popsugar and BookRiot again. Also, my ongoing challenges, and I've also already started adding the 2017 rejects into my challenge. I do like Zaz's idea of an unfinished series challenge, as I have quite a lot on the go (mostly started due to challenges).

Zaz wrote: ""don't start one until you finish one" would help a little."

That is a fantastic idea! I'm planning to continue 18 series next year, but I'll be finishing only 4 of them. That would "allow" me only 4 new series next year, except if I finish other series until the end of the year.

This year I'm doing ATY, A-Z and Popsugar if I have the time.

Next year, I'll be doing ATY, A-Z, a good part of the reject challenge and prompts I'll like in other challenges.

This year I am currently doing Around the Year, PopSugar, A-Z titles and authors, 16 books published in 2016, 2 a classic a month challenges, 2015 GoodReads Awards challenge, and a title keyword challenge where I read a book each month with a certain word in the title.

For ongoing challenges, I'm doing AtY rejects, A-Z biography/autobiography/memoir challenge, and the complete GoodReads Awards challenge where I read a book from each category for all the years that they've been doing GoodReads Awards.

Next year I'll do AtY, PopSugar, and my own personal Around the Year challenge that will be comprised of the 52 prompts that I'm voting for as we prepare the 2017 list, whether those prompts are included in the final list or rejected. Since I'm picking all the prompts, I'm hoping to really enjoy that one.

I'm always interested in reading challenges, so I love hearing what you guys are participating in.

I am currently doing ATY, PopSugar, and the Book Riot challenges from 2015 and 2016. I am also just beginning to possibly take on the rejects challenge, but that's a very long-term project. Like Jody, I am trying to weed through the list and remove any topics that are repetitive either within the list itself (some are very similar and can be combined), or with other challenges that I'm doing.

Next year, I'll definitely do ATY and I will most likely do PopSugar and BookRiot again. I will probably also be taking on the 2017 rejects list in addition to the 2016 one, but again that's a long-term project.

I am currently doing ATY, Book Riot, PopSugar, and a Bingo Challenge from Never Too Late to Read Classics (for which I'm counting books from other challenges).

Next year I plan on doing ATY and will check the lists for Book Rio and PopSugar. I haven't enjoyed the Book Riot challenge as much this year. I'll also do a rejects challenge for ATY but only for the topics I've voted for.

The only challenges I'm hoping to finish this year are ATY and A-Z Titles and I'm hoping to fit 16 books published in 2016 but those can overlap with any of my other challenges.

On top of that, I have quite a few going on that I just pick from here and there. I know they'll probably take a few years to complete. Next year, I'm just going to add the 2016 rejects to my 2015 rejects but I may go through and try to eliminate some since it will become quite the list.
- 2016 Popsugar
- A-Z Authors (all new)
- A-Z Memoirs
- Cover Colors Challenge
- Pyramid Series (finish series)
- GR Best Book of the Month Challenge (2011-2016)
- Read Your Age
- Stephen King Challenge

Beside the ATY I'm challenging myself to read 40 books that I have owned since before 2015. I'm also in a group that is reading series, there we try to finish 500 series and get up to date in 500 series as a group. I want to do at least 3 in each.

I'll probably do the same challenges next year, but I might change the numbers for each challenge.

This year I have completed AtY and started PopSugar 2016. I will add Bookriot 2016 or a small reject list challenge if I have time. I am also doing the A-Z author and title but using books from other challenges that I have already read. No books go on both A-Z lists however. I just thought wanting to fill in those lists added a little more difficulty to the other challenges.

Next year I will most likely do AtY again. Beyond that I will have to see what Popsugar and Bookriot come up with. If I don't like their lists, I will make my own from the rejects list here, probably combining topics I like from the new list and the old one.

I'm doing quit a few challenges this year, but I'm not sure how many I'll complete. Also some of them are continuing challenges, which I already expect to use more than this year to work on.
As it stands right now I'm doing:
- ATY
- ATY 2016 rejects (personal)
- The Seasonal Reading challenge (new challenge every season)
- BBC - the big read (personal)
- Rory Gilmore (personal)
- Around the world (personal)
- USA reading roadtrip (personal)
- I spy: Book titles Edition
- The every year challenge
- Let's turn pages
- A-Z character edition
- Finish those series (personal)
And a few others.

Next year I'll definitely continue with The Seasonal Reading challenge and my personal challenges. I'm also considering doing a timeline challenge as I think Zaz and another suggested in another discussion. I'll probably also do the ATY and the ATY rejects.
But honestly I'm not expecting to finish many of the challenges I take part in.

Wow, I just took a look at the Seasonal challenges group and it looks amazing. I don't think I can take on anything else for this year, but it's definitely something to consider next year.

Marina, or anyone else doing the seasonal challenges, are you counting books that you're using for other challenges or finding something new for each prompt?

Rachel, I just started the seasonal challenge this season. It's a lot of fun because the tasks are so creative and because they're a combination of really particular and wide open. I'm overlapping my books for that challenge with the other challenges I'm doing. Since its 60+ books for each 3 months challenge, there's no way I could do separate books for that and AtY. I don't think I'd ever be able to complete one of the seasonal challenges, but I'm excited to see how many tasks I can complete. I would definitely recommend it for a fun on the side challenge group.

Zaz or Kathy, what is a bingo challenge?

Laura, when you say all new for A-Z authors does that mean those books won't overlap with other challenges, or are you reading all authors you've never read before?

Katie wrote: "Rachel, I just started the seasonal challenge this season. It's a lot of fun because the tasks are so creative and because they're a combination of really particular and wide open. I'm overlapping ..."

That's what I was thinking too. There are so many prompts, but they are amazing. Very creative! The one thing that put me off at first is that the challenge seems so strict. Unlike other groups that I follow, it seems quite rigid about it's rules about deciding which books count and how to post about them, etc.

Marina, I want to know more about so many of your challenges! For your around the world and USA road trip, what are the parameters you've set for that challenge? And then what are the rules/how do you do these four: I Spy, every year, let's turn pages, and A-Z characters? I'm so interested.

Rachel, that is definitely true. It is very strict, especially in how to post. It's not too bad once you get the hang of it. That's why I'm not worrying about finishing the challenges because there are just some tasks I don't want to do. Since I'd be constrained by time anyway, I don't even worry about it. But as a group, there's definitely a different feel than this group.

Katie wrote: "Rachel, that is definitely true. It is very strict, especially in how to post. It's not too bad once you get the hang of it. That's why I'm not worrying about finishing the challenges because there..."

It also may just be because I skimmed the rules, so I haven't read through them really in detail. But I saw things about finding AR scores for children's books and only certain graphic novels count...and immediately I got overwhelmed. I may do the challenge on my own, without participating much in the group and just see for fun how many points I can get.

I tried reading the rules for that group and I got so lost. I don't think I'd be able to keep track of everything required of me! It seems super overwhelming.

Katie wrote: "Zaz or Kathy, what is a bingo challenge?

Laura, when you say all new for A-Z authors does that mean those books won't overlap with other challenges, or are you reading all authors you've never rea..."

Katie,
My bingo challenge is from the group Never Too Late to Read Classics. There's a bingo "card" with each topic in a square.
Here's a link: Never Too Late to Read Classics Bingo Challenge:

https://www.goodreads.com/topic/show/...

Cool. Thanks Kathy.

Rachel, luckily I don't read much that has children's as a genre, so I'm hoping I can just avoid that confusion entirely. Haha.

Doing the ATY and Popsugar this year, and probably next year, too. I figured these two accommodate my reading pace and leave room for side-reads, too. Originally I wanted to do Bookriot as well, but it felt too much and I disliked several categories.

Katie, yes to both :) I don't want to overlap it with any of my other challenges and I want them to be all new authors. I'm also considering making it only people of color or women.

That's such a cool idea, Laura. Maybe I'll try something like that. Though generally I read a lot of different authors. I'm not too author loyal.

I did decide that next year I'm going to pick twelve authors that I've been meaning to read and read a book by one each month. I have so many authors that I keep intending to read but never get to.

Which challenges are you currently doing?
ATY
A-Z book
A-Z author

Which challenges would you like to join in 2017?
ATY
A-Z book
A-Z author
50 books-50 States...http://www.popsugar.com/entertainment... (It helps that i've read some of these already)
NY Times Best Sellers from 1940's to present...http://www.hawes.com/no1_f_d.htm#2010... (this will probably take me a few years to complete)

Rachel wrote: "Marina, or anyone else doing the seasonal challenges, are you counting books that you're using for other challenges or finding something new for each prompt?"

I'm using the same books for several challenges. If I didn't I definitely would never complete any of them.

The Seasonal Reading Challenge has some strict rules, but ones you get to know them, it's not that difficult to find out how to play. If you want to run a challenge like the SRC, I think you need to have some firm rules or it would be to chaotic if everyone could interpret each topic as they liked.

Katie wrote: "Marina, I want to know more about so many of your challenges! For your around the world and USA road trip, what are the parameters you've set for that challenge? And then what are the rules/how do ..."

Around the World and USA road trip are on-going challenges for me. My goal is to read a book set in every country of the world and a book set in each of the states in USA. The book as to take place at least 50% of the time in the country/state, and each book can only be used for one country/state. I've only read books set in 30 different countries and 19 states so far, but my biggest problem is that the books I read tends to be set in the same places. But that's why you call it a challenge, right?

The four other challenges I've found in 2016 Reading Challenge.

For the I spy challenge you have to read a book with a word that can be found from a list with 25 classic books. The book itself doesn't count, it has to be a new title with a word from the original title.

For the Every Year challenge, I'm reading a book published every year since I was born (1983). I know some people doing the challenge has chosen to start from a year something special happened (graduated, got married). It's not easy finding books for the earlier years, so I think this will be a 2 year challenge for me.

The Let's turn pages challenge is easy. I'm just counting pages for the year. My goal is 35000 pages this year. It's instead of only counting books.

The A-Z challenges can be found in many variations. I'm doing the character edition, where you read a book with a character's name starting with each of the letters in the alphabet. I'm using first names, except for the letters x, y and z where I've allowed first, last or nicknames. Maybe I'll do an authors edition next year.

I find that the challenges encourages me to find new books and that way expand my reading.

Jennifer wrote: "50 books-50 States...http://www.popsugar.com/entertainment... (It helps that i've read some of these already)
NY Times Best Sellers from 1940's to present...http://www.hawes.com/no1_f_d.htm#2010... (this will probably take me a few years to complete)"

Not that I really have time for any more challenges, but I like these two, so maybe they'll be added to my spreadsheet :-)

I don't have tons of time for reading either Marina, but i'm going to do my best to read as many as these as I can next year.

Marina H wrote: "Rachel wrote: "Marina, or anyone else doing the seasonal challenges, are you counting books that you're using for other challenges or finding something new for each prompt?"

I'm using the same boo..."

Absolutely, it would be a huge mess otherwise! For me, the challenge seems a bit too rigid based on what I've seen. I saw a lot of people posting to get their book choices "approved" even when it seemed fairly obvious to me that the book fit the requirements (ie. people would ask if a book that had "humour" as a tag could be used for a prompt requiring books tagged as humour...not sure if they are doing it just to be extra cautious, or if it is an actual requirement.

I'm so tempted by the challenge because the prompts are so interesting, but it's also so overwhelming and (no offense to anyone in that group), the community didn't seem the friendliest. Maybe I'd just do my own variant -- use some of the prompts, but keep track of my points on my own, not in the real group.

The every year challenge sounds interesting. I think I'll add that to my challenges too.

I might try to do a genre challenge. I'm a slow reader, so I'll try to fit each book in the new ATY challenge!

So thanks to these posts I spent all day yesterday trying to figure out what states I had NOT read anything from yet. I have 11 states that I can't remember reading anything from (or do but can't remember the book well enough to name it). There are 4 that I have read for but are repeats of an author. I'd like to avoid repeat authors if I can, just for the added challenge. I've decided that I may read far too many books with fictional or off planet type locations. Nah, I just need to read more books overall! Gotta break 100 again this year :-)

Rachel, some of the participants make a plan at the beginning of the season, and some tasks requires a certain genre on the main page of the book. It can change, so they get it approved in case the genre isn't a main page genre when they post the completed task. They only approve main page genres, but I think that's fair enough. Most books has been mark with loads of different genres if you open the "top shelves", and it would be some job if the mods had to look through all those.

The SRC is definitely more focused on the challenge than on a cozy community, but lots of people seem to enjoy participating in the challenge. I think it's a fun challenge, and the cozy and comfy part of a challenge, I find in this group instead :-)

I just made a list for reading books from every state and then I also made lists for all the countries of the world (by continent). I'm making a list with books already read and one starting January 2016.
Now on to fill in the books and plan my next books :)

I'm glad to see I'm not the only one hooked on all this lists and challenges. Yesterday I found myself making two new lists: One with authors born each year since 1900 and one with authors from every country of the world.

I'm Marina and I'm a listaholic!!!!

Marina, I'm totally a listaholic too! Making lists is so satisfying to me. Even just making lists of potential books to fit each category is so fun to me.

Thank you for telling me about your other challenges. Now I have a few more questions, haha. I've been wanting to do an around the world type challenge with books either set in or written by authors from every country, but I'm trying to figure out where to get a good country list. Where did you find the list of countries you're using? I'm overwhelmed by the idea of all sorts of ocean nations, etc, so I'm trying to find a list of countries I can be happy with. I'm really excited about doing this to help diversify my reading. I started reading a book called Book Lust to Go: Recommended Reading for Travelers, Vagabonds, and Dreamers. I need to get back to it. It is broken down by countries/cities/location & it lists books, fiction and nonfiction about each location.

I love the A-Z Character Challenge. I think I want to do that next year. Are you counting only main characters, or any characters in the book?

And with your pages challenge, I feel like in the past I've found where GoodReads tracked page numbers & publication years of books you read, but I can't seem to find that now. Anyone know where I can get that info?

Rachel, I totally agree with everything Marina said about the Seasonal Reading Challenge. It's definitely only about the challenge for me, not about the community. This group definitely has the better community and discussions.

Nicole, I was thinking I want to do a genre challenge as well. Any idea how you're planning to do it/choose your genres?

Katie > for the page count, it's in "My books" and then on the top right, you have a link to "Stats" and you can choose to see how many pages you already read.

Marina H wrote: "I'm glad to see I'm not the only one hooked on all this lists and challenges. Yesterday I found myself making two new lists: One with authors born each year since 1900 and one with authors from eve..."

Oh Marina, this sounds interesting. I think I want to do this as well now.

Also, one thing I do is print off each list and put it in a binder to keep track of all books i've completed for each challenge/list and which ones I still need to complete.

Katie, I think I used this list: Countries of the World. It has England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland listed as countries, which I liked.
I'm really interested in reading books set in or by authors from smaller countries like some of the countries in the Pacific Ocean. That's why I suggested a country with a population less than 1 million as a topic for next years challenge, but it wasn't a popular topic.

For the A-Z challenges I'm counting main characters and characters who playes a bigger part in the book. If a character is only mentioned once or twice they don't count.

Its' fun to see how we inspire each other with all these challenges.

I'm thinking of doing a genre challenge next year also, but I'm not sure which genres to pick. The genre list here on Goodreads is huge. Which genres do you guys list?

Katie I'm still trying to figure out which genres to read! I did a few Google searches and found so many genres I haven't heard of before. There's so many, it's so intimidating.

Oh, i will have my work cut out for me. I have decided to add a few more personal challenges to my list.

BBC-The Big Read
Rory Gilmore challenge
Books based in every country of the world
Authors from every country of the world

Just. Stop. It. Now. You guys are creating a monster!

I spent the last two days matching up my read books against the 50 states challenge in an Excel spreadsheet and today I spent all day matching up books for every year since I was born (with no doubling up of authors of course. I am a few books short on the 50 states but I have every year since 1974 covered! Woot!

Somehow my Around the World list ended up with a Oceans and Major Waterways list added. I don't have much hope of ever finishing the every country challenge but those waterways....I am all over that!

The genre challenge is intriguing me too but there are literally thousands of genres and subgenres so I am not sure where you would draw the line. I thought of only doing the science fiction subgenres, but then I saw that there were hundreds of options there too. Far too much to work on if I want to do the yearly challenges too. :-(

- Which challenges are you currently doing?
I am currently doing the AtY and just started an A-Z challenge for book titles. I'm giving myself until July 2017 for that one since i just started.
- Which challenges would you like to join in 2017
Definitely AtY, finish the title challenge, at least start a A-Z author challenge, possibly try the Popsugar or BookRiot challenge if they have interesting prompts. I think i want to try the Read your Age challenge (thanks Laura) and maybe the 50 staatez one but those kast two will be over 2-3 years. I may do a mini reject challenge as well.

- Which challenges are you currently doing?
AtY (2016)
Seasonal Reading Challenge (Summer 2016)
YLTO Geocaching challenge (2016) https://www.goodreads.com/topic/show/...
Planning vs achieving (2016) https://www.goodreads.com/topic/show/...
Mynoun challenge (no time limit) https://www.goodreads.com/topic/show/...
Title challenge (no time limit) https://www.goodreads.com/topic/show/...
Setting alphabet challenge (no time limit) https://www.goodreads.com/topic/show/...
Finish this sentence challenge (no time limit) https://www.goodreads.com/topic/show/...

- Which challenges would you like to join in 2017
I'll probably continue with the same ones