The 2013 Annual Reading Challenge - Discussion Thread!

[auntykatkat]

Can someone help me with adding the ticker to a signature. I have tried several times and get nothing but a error. Thanks in advance for the help.


Auntykatkat

[Alcohol]

My new years reading resolution was to try to read what my children find so fascinating - the likes of the Harry Potter series and such. I started with my daughters current favourite - The Hunger Games - and finished it in a day and a half (it really was that good!). So besides now having found a huge new topic of conversation, in the future I hope I can go on to recommend what else she might like based on what she's already read. I'm already suggesting she will love the Terry Goodkind books starting with Wizards First Rule...

[pdurrant]

Originally Posted by auntykatkat

Can someone help me with adding the ticker to a signature. I have tried several times and get nothing but a error. Thanks in advance for the help.


Auntykatkat

You appear to have at least two tickers in your signature, but you also seem to have the option for showing your signature in your posts turned off for some reason.

[bloodlover]

25-30 books for me this year. I don't have a particular set of books in mind but finishing ASOIF series and working on some Russian classics are in my plan.

[HomeInMyShoes]

I finished my first book this weekend and I've got three on the go right now.

[jbcohen]

One down 84 more to go, thank goodness its only january.

[DrNefario]

I've only just passed the half-way point in my first book, and it's nothing to do with any of my sub-challenges. Luckily I am enjoying it in its own right.

[Nyssa]

I finally completed my first book of 2013: A Scanner Darkly. I think I may just watch the movie. Its available free of charge to Prime Members on Amazon.

[JSWolf]

I've finished the first book in 2013.

I've finished Visions in Death by J. D. Robb. My current book is Running with the Demon by Terry Brooks.

What I am going to do is not have an actual goal. What I am going to do is read the bigger books and not worry about how long it takes. I am going to keep track just so I know how I am doing.

[Mystweaver]

Has anybody else suddenly realised that they've bitten off more than they might be able to chew over the course of the upcoming year? My goal is to read 50,000 pages - it's already the eighth, and I've only read 646! I'm confident that I can get somewhere in the vicinity of 30,000 pages, at the very least. The reason that I set a page-count goal and not a book-count goal was so that I wouldn't skip lengthier tomes (which I have a certain preference for) in favour of reaching that sought-after goal. It's my first time doing a reading challenge, after all, and I don't want to force a change in tastes because of it.

However, after a minute or so of thinking when I closed Jack Of Diamonds and opened up Storm Front, I became acutely aware of just what a mammoth task (for me) 50,000 pages will be - it's ~100 shorter (400-600 page) books and ~50 larger (800-1200 page) books. War And Peace has 1200 pages, according to Amazon -- I can't read War And Peace (or the equivalent thereof) fifty times in fifty-two weeks! I'm not going to give up, but I've received a sharp slap in the face from reality; slow readers aiming for fifty-thousand pages are not the cleverest readers, clearly.

[jersysman]

Nothing says you can't adjust your goal.

That way, at the end of the year, you can say that you met your goal!!!

By the way, 50,000 is a HUGE task.

Good luck with whatever you decide.

Welcome to MR!!!

[Mystweaver]

Originally Posted by jersysman

Nothing says you can't adjust your goal.

That way, at the end of the year, you can say that you met your goal!!!

By the way, 50,000 is a HUGE task.

Good luck with whatever you decide.

Welcome to MR!!!

Thank you for welcoming me! I feel as though the free library has already given me all of the welcome that I need...

I hadn't really thought it through when I said to myself, "50,000 is a wonderfully whole number. I'll aim for that!" That's really about as much thought as I initially put into it after deciding that I'd aim for page numbers rather than book count; I've quickly realised, as you've said, just what a ha-yooge task it's going to be!

I'm a little stubborn, though, so I know that I'm going to continue to panic and try to reach 50,000, rather than adjust my goal to something more achievable. Why be logical when you can be stressed instead? If I don't reach 50,000 this year, it gives me a comfortable benchmark for next year -- that is, of course, assuming that I don't frighten myself away from keeping goals in the future.

[Synamon]

Pfffft, round numbers are boring. I recommend using 34969 pages as your target – favorite number of the Muppet character Count von Count (source).

Or any other cool number you can find.

[DrNefario]

Hmm, all those short books I was reading last year were just under 200 pages. So 50k is, uh, 250 of them. That's quite a few. I read 55 books last year, although not all of them were that short. A few were over 500 pages, but nothing was over 1000 (well, technically, Dance with Dragons is, but I read the split UK paperback edition, and got to count it as two).

[Yapyap]

I've read three books out of my goal of 120 so far this year, so I'm pretty much where I need to be, reading-wise.

Perhaps I'll even manage to tackle some thicker books (most of what I read tend to be in the 3800-6000 Kindle locations range, or probably around 300-500 pages) this year. Although I haven't been avoiding them because of goals to meet; I just feel a little intimidated by very long books these days, mostly because I feel my attention span cannot deal well with books that take me more than three evenings to read.