You'll love this one...!! A book club & more discussion

I sort of borrowed this idea from Peggy in that I aim to complete an YLTO group read, YLTO monthly challenge and YLTO serial challenge each month. In addition, one audiobook and one Toppler book for months when there is a week-long Toppler (it's usually difficult for me to participate in one-day Topplers). But I will not make it too difficult: if e.g. the monthly challenge doesn't seem interesting, I will not force myself to do it (too many books, too little time anyway), but read something else instead.

Edited to add one category: owned books. I keep buying books, but often don't have time to read them, reading library books instead. So one goal for me is to read one owned book each month.

January:
✔YLTO Group Read: The Secret History of Fantasy
✔YLTO Monthly Challenge: sitting this one out, nothing struck my fancy here, so instead I'm reading The Paying Guests
✔YLTO Serial Challenge: Solitary
✔Own book: When the Air Hits Your Brain: Tales of Neurosurgery
Audiobook: Sacred Hearts Did not finish because of sick leave (I listen during drive to/from work), will continue in February (completed 17 Feb)

February:
YLTO Group Read: Woman on the Edge of Time Started, did not like at all, abandoned
✔YLTO Monthly Challenge: Dark Eden
✔YLTO Serial Challenge: Prodigy
✔YLTO Toppler: Italian Ways: On and Off the Rails from Milan to Palermo
✔Own book: Diary of a Mad Bride
✔Audiobook: Decline and Fall

March:
✔YLTO Group Read: In the Woods
✔YLTO Monthly Challenge: Down Came the Rain: My Journey Through Postpartum Depression
✔YLTO Serial Challenge: Champion
✔Own book: Ambulance Girl: How I Saved Myself By Becoming an EMT
✔Audiobook: The Risk of Darkness

April:
✔YLTO Group Read: Hiking Through: Finding Peace and Freedom on the Appalachian Trail
✔YLTO Monthly Challenge: Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?
✔YLTO Serial Challenge: Last Sacrifice
✔Own book: Tomorrow, When the War Began
✔Audiobook: Me, Keisarinna

May:
✔YLTO Group Read: Kuu on julma
✔YLTO Monthly Challenge: Blood Crazy
✔YLTO Serial Challenge: The Last Policeman
✔Own book: Crazy: Notes On and Off the Couch
✔Audiobook: Gone

June:
✔YLTO Group Read: The Road
✔YLTO Monthly Challenge: Confessions of a New York Taxi Driver
✔YLTO Serial Challenge: Catalyst
✔YLTO Toppler: The Giver
✔Own book: Dancing Through It: My Journey in the Ballet
✔Audiobook: Big Little Lies

July:
YLTO Group Read: The Magicians Did not arrive from the library in time
✔YLTO Monthly Challenge: The Empire of Ice Cream
✔YLTO Serial Challenge: Monsters of Men
Own book: Finders Keepers Did not yet finish, will continue in August (completed 31 Aug)
✔Audiobook: When You Walked Back Into My Life

August:
YLTO Group Read: will not participate
✔YLTO Monthly Challenge: A Month of Italy: Rediscovering the Art of Vacation
✔YLTO Serial Challenge: The Haunted
✔Own book: The Beautiful Thing That Awaits Us All: Stories
✔Audiobook: Century

September:
✔YLTO Group Read: Ender in Exile
✔YLTO Monthly Challenge: Neljäntienristeys
✔YLTO Serial Challenge: The Magicians
✔Own book: The Scorch Trials
✔Audiobook: Brave New World

October:
✔YLTO Group Read: The Mammoth Book of Monsters
✔YLTO Monthly Challenge: Mies kuumasta
✔YLTO Serial Challenge: Earth Star
✔YLTO Toppler: More Horowitz Horror
✔Own book: Of Dreams and Rust
✔Audiobook: The Cuckoo's Calling

November:
✔YLTO Group Read: A Week at the Airport: A Heathrow Diary
✔YLTO Monthly Challenge: I Do So Worry for All Those Lost at Sea
✔YLTO Serial Challenge: Shadow Puppets
✔Own book: Doctor, Doctor: Incredible True Tales from a GP's Surgery
✔Audiobook: The Casual Vacancy

December:
YLTO Group Read: In the Basement of the Ivory Tower: Confessions of an Accidental Academic Started but had no time to finish, will finish in January
✔YLTO Monthly Challenge: The Water Knife
✔YLTO Serial Challenge: Shadows in Flight
Own book: The Golden Compass Didn't have time to start, moved to January
✔Audiobook: The Silkworm

Reserved just in case

I admire people like you and Peggy! You are so organizer! I fail in most of my reading plans...
I'll try harder this year since I want to participate more in monthly readings and monthly challenges. Not sure about topplers. I generally don't have enough time in a day to read a book. Will try this week long one in February.

Sandra wrote: "I generally don't have enough time in a day to read a book. Will try this week long one in February."

Me neither, or else I have to thoroughly neglect my family, which is not possible. But do join the week-long Toppler, it's lots of fun! And there is absolutely no pressure to read more than one book.

And planning to me is half the fun, really. I'm the same way e.g. with planning our holiday trips. Hmmm, maybe I have a mild case of OCD...

Oh, I absolutely agree that planing is half the fun! I love to make lists of what I want to read, and organize my readings for the challenges, but I'm awful at sticking to the plan... I planned 3 levels for the chunksters challenge last year in the last days of December 2013. I couldn't follow it at all! I have to redo it again a month ago to have my badges. Nothing to do with the original one. :)
This year I only planned 1 level for the series challenge, and will plan 1 level at a time. BUT I have a few lists of books done, of course, like: priority-to-read, books-at-home-I-want-to-read-asap, 2014-challenges-left-overs, and others. Let see how I can stick to them...

I like to plan the summer in advance with my kids, but I hate to specifically plan holiday trips, though. Hate all this lodging, travel tickets things. :)

Nice strategy Camilla ;-)

I also like to organize, otherwise my mind overflows. I'm not planning ahead more than a few weeks though, because that won't work. This just helps me stick to my very broad goals and keep track :)

Sandra wrote: "I like to plan the summer in advance with my kids, but I hate to specifically plan holiday trips, though. Hate all this lodging, travel tickets things. :)"

To me that's at least half the fun of travelling! I always manage all our family's travel arrangements, tickets, hotels, attractions etc. I make a day-by-day plan with all important information about where to go and how and what to see. Okay, if we're just lazing around in an all inclusive hotel for a week there is not much planning to do, but on longer trips and city trips I feel that planning is required. I don't like walking up to an attraction and finding out it's sold out for the day or something like that. And often you get cheaper tickets if booking beforehand.

Peggy wrote: "I also like to organize, otherwise my mind overflows. I'm not planning ahead more than a few weeks though, because that won't work. "

I'm also participating in other challenges in other groups, so of course I try to use one book for as many different challenges as possible. That's why I don't make that detailed plans other than for the next month. It also depends on what books I have from the library and when I need to return them.

I'm like you Camilla - love researching places to go see and checkout while away. I make loose plans but not always set days for set things and we don't worry too much if we don't fit everything in. I was thinking earlier about your book shopping in London - did you bring an empty suitcase with you specifically for books? Or did you post them back to yourself?

Sarah wrote: "I was thinking earlier about your book shopping in London - did you bring an empty suitcase with you specifically for books? Or did you post them back to yourself?"

We had three large suitcases with us that were about half full when we came, so we managed to get all the other shopping (mainly the girls' clothes) packed into them for the return flight. Then we had two cabin-size bags where I packed all the books and almost nothing else. I think if I had to post them back it would have been cheaper to buy them online.

The only thing I had pre-booked for the London trip was the Harry Potter thing, because you can't just walk in there without a booking. Otherwise we had no absolute set dates, as we went a bit according to the weather and the dates (like New Year's Day) as well. But I had a sort of a plan anyway, although we didn't get around to doing everything on it (like the museum of London, which I would have liked to visit). But I don't sweat too much if we don't manage to accomplish everything on my list - I think it would stress me more if we were in a place and would not know what to do next. Better to have too many options than none, IMHO.

Ah I see! Forward thinking on the book buying/empty-ish suitcases!

I agree planning a trip is the best way of take advantage of the your time and your money, and I do it when necessary, but is not a pleasant activity to me. I admit I'm in a minority. But thanks God my husband loves to do it.

What I really love to do with my kids is make a looooong list of things we want to do in summer, hang it in the wall. It looks like this but much longer:

- wash dad's car
- go to the library
- go picnic
- play in the rain
- sleep in the tent

Then each day in the morning we chose from the list what we want to do.

Sarah wrote: "Ah I see! Forward thinking on the book buying/empty-ish suitcases!"

Yes, I was definitely planning ahead, as I knew I would buy a lot of books.

Sandra wrote: "What I really love to do with my kids is make a looooong list of things we want to do in summer, hang it in the wall."

That's a lovely idea! We have done it occasionally too, but the list has been quite short and more geared towards places we want to visit during the summer, so we haven't used it on a daily basis. And often at the end of summer we noticed that we still hadn't done many of the things we had listed.

I figure if you don't get everything done, that's an excuse to go back. Looking at you, other half of the British Museum.

March is almost here and it looks like you're pretty much ready... except we're waiting with baited breath for the March challenge to be posted.

Yes, it would be nice to know the March challenge already! And I haven't decided on my owned book yet, but I have several possibilities.

Rusalka just posted the January challenge badges, and made an "ACK! March challenge..." type comment, so she's probably furiously working on it. This is giving me an "ACK!" moment, too because I need to start thinking about February's badge.

I'm happy that May was the third consecutive month when I managed to finish all the books that I planned on this list, without abandoning any of them or substituting any. YAY!

Nice. May has turned out well for me too. I've actually read more than I'd planned. Let's hope June will be as good.

Sarah wrote: "Nice. May has turned out well for me too. I've actually read more than I'd planned. Let's hope June will be as good."

That's good to hear Sarah, as you seemed somewhat daunted by the thought of June, LOL!