Reading Challenges

I am a competitive person. Blame my parents for having 4 kids in the space of 5 years. Epic Connect Four and UNO battles. (Um, also, Happy Father's Day, Dad! I don't blame you for my worst traits, I promise.)

I am also bonkers about reading.

Now, one might think that competitiveness and a solitary activity like reading are incompatible. But oh, no, my friends! Let me tell you about reading challenges.

The bookish website BookRiot first introduced me to the Seasonal Reading Challenge on Goodreads, which led me to a spreadsheet that occupies too much of my time. And then they developed the #ReadHarder challenge of their own, which challenges participants to pick titles from a wide range of categories in their 2015 reading. (Works in translation, different genres, authors old and young and hailing from across the globe, etc.)

With Euphoria, I completed the 24th & final task. Which means two things:

1. I'm done! 
2. I have to convince myself that it's not a good idea to repeat the challenge with the books I read in the second half of 2015.

Are you participating in any reading challenges? Do you want to tell me about them? 

Warning: if you do, I'm more than likely going to join in. (Especially if you happen to be one of my siblings.)

2015 Tournament of Books

Goodness. How y'all been? I've been off writing my own books, and it's left poor Overreader a little Underwritten.

(See what I did there? That's how you know I'm an author, those word play games.)

But it's time once again for The Tournament of Books! The TOB (aka the Rooster) is a March-Madness style books tournament (go figure) which pits some of the most discussable books from the prior year against each other.

There are 16 books this year. To date, I've read 13 and have plans to read one more before the first round judgement. And I pretty much enjoyed them all - some I've loved. 

My current favorites: Those Who Leave and Those Who Stay by Elena Ferrante, All the Birds, Singing by Evie Wyld, Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel, Redeployment by Phil Klay, Silence Once Begun by Jesse Ball.

I loved the whole Ferrante trilogy (well, series - there's a fourth forthcoming), and my family and I listened to Station Eleven with great pleasure on a road trip in December. 

Anyway, there will be ranting and cheering and exclaiming aplenty in the next couple of weeks as the TOB first round gets underway, and I'm super excited.

Analysis of 2012

I've updated my spreadsheet page of the 128 books I've read / listened to in 2012. (I noted several favorites - what have your favorites been this year?) (I accidentally deleted the original spreadsheet, so now you have to look at the first 6 months - 187 books - if you are curious.)

41 of them were on my Kindle (thanks, Mom!) and 54 were audiobooks (thanks, SansaClip!) That leaves 33 actual bound tomes that passed through my hands. See how much I like saving paper? Or alternately, how much I like my electronic toys?

So there you have it. Happy reading, everyone!