^Travel. Camping just a couple of hours from home is a great one, but the one that really struck me was looking at the night sky in Patagonia. It was like I woke up on a different planet. There were no points of reference. No Big or Little Dipper, no Orion's belt. All those familiar things were gone. That was so cool.

Really struggling with my challenge this year. Not the total # of books - I'm a bit behind in that but I expect to catch back up - these things go in cycles. But where I'm having problems is in keeping accurate and up to date records of what I buy and read. I need to be more immediate in recording purchases, including $0 purchases, or I completely lose track.

I'm currently reading the first in the Game of Thrones series and am finding it hard going, despite having seen the tv series. I don't think fantasy is really for me! In order to keep going I'm interspersing GoT with some childhood favourites that my small niece reintroduced me to a few weeks ago. They're such short stories that I hope I can surpass my goal this year.

That's a logical approach to reading books you aren't about to complete. It took me a long time to begin reading GoT. I've only read the first four. I intend to begin on what is arguably the weakest in the series in a couple of months' time. I too am not sold on fantasy as a genre for me.

I don't know why I chose to read GoT as I'm not really sure if I enjoyed the tv series! I'll probably just read the first one and then move on to something that is more my style.

Books of movies and TV shows tend to be very popular these days. It always amazes me anytime a new movie comes to neighborhood movie theater the book of the movie tends to make its way up the best seller list. :chinscratch:

^When there is so much stuff out there, the book from the show or movie is at least something familiar and recognizable. I'm not in that camp, but it's not really surprising.

I believe the term is synergy for those playing marketing bingo at home.

I thought reading the book might increase my enjoyment of the next series, I suppose. Books usually have a lot more padding in them which, generally, improves the story. Not the case for me with GoT though!

Finished book number 20. On a torrid pace this year so far. More importantly, I am one book away from finishing my sub-challenge to read six Canadian books.

Good for you!

I'm still in-budget, and I'm sort-of on track to meet my 'read unread books from 2005 and 2006' target. But I'm not sure I'll make my intended reduction in my TBR total. My TBR is already 58 up on the start of the year, and I know (subscriptions, etc) that I'll be buying at least another 40 books this year, probably more. So to reach my 50 book reduction target, I'll need to read over 148 books for the rest of the year. Entirely possible, but I'm not sure that I'll be able to resist buying even more books.

Excellent! Congratulations! :)

Struggling a bit. I'm ahead on my basic number of books, but otherwise haven't really managed very well. I've had a few false starts (abandoned Everything is Illuminated and The Grand Sophy halfway through because I didn't like them) and I feel like I'm struggling to read except on my commute, so I'm not getting through as many paper books as I'd like. I'm not spending much on books (though the temptation is still there!) but I feel like my pace at actually getting through them has been really sluggish. Urghhhh. I'm reading The Girl who Saved the King of Sweden and The Spectacular Now at the moment and I hope I enjoy one of them :/

I'm behind, though I hope to get some good reading in this week. Now that I'm also doing a goodreads challenge for an entire year, I understand how it's...not the most pleasant thing to go there and see "x books behind schedule", lol.

I'm not worried, though. Rather than a flat straight plain, I see my reading as more of a stroll through softly sloping hills - sometimes up, sometimes down, but enjoyable regardless and moving forward.

This proved like a great decision.
Unfortunately I had to enter the Goodreads challenge because they don't have an option to hide the challenge from my homepage if I'm not participating. So I've put down a number just for that sake and apparently I'm 4 books ahead.
I am reading/listening way more and enjoying books a lot more now that there's no structure to what books I am "supposed" to read.

It's March 1st! We're 1/6th of the way through the year!

How are people doing?

I'm doing well. My TBR is down 5, my spending is well under budget (£31.65/£50), I've read 37 books and only bought 23.

Everything's looking rosy, except for the upcoming month. When, thanks to LightSpeed's kickstarter, my TBR is going to go up by around 50 on the start of the year, and it seem likely that I'll be spending more than my £25 budget for the first time this year.

But I should still be under budget for the year so far by the end of March, and April is looking pretty light.

A good start to the year, all in all.

I am currently ahead of the game, despite school, averaging nine books a month.

I am not slacking off, though-- I am halfway through a biography of J. R. R. Tolkein, have started on a memoir of an 18th century crook and cop named Vidocq, and have to read Persopolis for ENGL 44B. On top of the regular reading assignment which I should complete today (if I weren't engaged in other activities...).

I'm keeping pace with my TBR, which is great and better than I was aiming for.

The other sub-challenges seem to be going OK.

I'm one book behind at the moment, however I do have two on the go and should be able to catch up this month.

I'm half way between my goal and my stretch goal, so doing reasonably well, considering. And so far, I'm mostly keeping up on recording my purchases, though it's a near thing. That's really the hard part of the whole process.

I've read 13 books and am six books behind on my Goodreads challenge. I'm only about a quarter of the way through The Iliad, one of the few specific books I'm planning to read this year. The great thing is that every book read this year has been engrossing and thoroughly enjoyable.

My challenge to purchase no more than a book each week has gone well. I've purchased five books and read four.

I think The Iliad took me about 3 months to read!

I'm reading the beautiful Robert Fagles translation. It is to be savored, not hurried through.

I'm 6 books behind. My excuses are the arrival of a new kitten to the family, an increase in my yoga class attendance and the promise of the delivery of a knitted scarf to a loved one before the end of the coldest winter in 114 years.

^You've got plenty of time before the next winter. :)

I can sympathize with the cold. We had the coldest one for many decades last year. The overnight low on March 1st was -38.8C.

This year not so bad, although -17C and a -28C windchill this morning is not making me think Spring.

According to Goodreads, the 12 books I have completed so far leave me 3 books behind schedule. :o

However, since I read 5-6 books at one time -- I leave my books where I'm likely to be reading rather than taking them around with me ;) -- I could get caught up at any time. :p

March is reading month for the kids -- they have to read and log 15-30 minutes of reading every day. This year I have two reluctant readers (and another in Book Bowl) so I have decided that we are going to have a half hour of family reading time every day. Hopefully that will help fill out my challenge list!

Woohoo. I have now read at least one book in all my challenges for this year.

Canada 7/6
TBR: 4/5
Second Chance: 3/5
Bookclubs: 3/8
World 1/6

I need to pick up the pace on the World reads. I'm just barely on schedule for that one.

Congratulations!

I've read 5 books and purchased 2. However, 3 books were freebies so I guess I'm even so far this year.

I am almost a month ahead of my page goal which is good, but I haven't managed to read anything for almost a week which is bad. Hopefully I will be able to get back on track next week.

I am also looking forward to the March book club. All three leading contenders at this point sound interesting. At the very least I will also be reading Timeline since my hold just came in.

Congrats HIMS, Paul and everyone else doing well so far!

I really enjoyed Persepolis and found it very unique.

Sounds wonderful - I wish I had it so good! Not that I'm complaining - I've read my fair share of great books this year so far.

Since I'm going through my backlog of unread purchased books, I must admit I've had a larger than usual number of rather poor books, but ten years ago from Fictionwise, and either not yet read, or I've forgotten that I read them!

Dare I suggest that you give up your quest and move on from the junk? No point in compounding the error of buying them by wasting good reading time on them. There's probably a reason they've been unread for ten years or been forgotten. Read what appeals to you most. Look at the ten year-old also-rans as you do the books in a bundle you don't want; they were part of a buying agenda that saved you money overall.

Tempting, but what I think I'll do is be much more ruthless about abandoning them. And there should be some gems in there.

I'm making good progress toward the overall goal of reading 200 books and/or 50,000 pages this year. Also doing very well toward a goal of borrowing at least 50 books from the library. Not progressing as fast toward completing the remaining books in 3 series.

Jan/Feb stats:

Books read: 34 (goal: 200)
Pages read: 8812
Library books: 20 (goal: 50)
Elm Creek Quilts series: 0 (goal: 13)
Brother Cadfael series: 2 (goal: 16)
Kris Longknife series: 0 (goal: 6)

I sense either a typo or a rather drastic sense of optimism for which I applaud you.

Egads! Never noticed. I've now edited the original post.

34 books is very impressive.

Don't abandon fantasy yet. Once you've finished as much of GOT as you plan, look for other subgroups within the genre. Don't base a whole genre on one book. Try several in different subgroups before abandoning it. For instance Robert Asprin or Piers Anthony are quite a bit different from GOT. These are older authors (Asprin's been dead a while), but you get the picture. Terry Pratchett should never be ignored. While it is true some people don't care for his stories, so many people who only read general fiction are often amazed and become fans of his even if they read no other fantasy stuff.

As far as my stuff, my Goodreads calculator says that I'm 8 books ahead. I've read 3 magazines and about 15 short stories. So, I'm plugging along mostly because I've been doing a lot of SHORT stuff. I'm holding off on Game of Thrones until Spring. I need something to listen to when weeding. :)

Finally finished the memoirs of Eugène François Vidocq... and did my mid-term on Persepolis, so now I can read the second book of that series.

I've taken the decision not to pursue completing my reading challenge. I'll complete the sub challenges of 5 books over 700 pages and 10 books over 500 pages...maybe so. I need to step back from reading during all my free time. I'm finding books disappointing and I'll take up other hobbies to its detriment. I will read only for 2.5 hours a day. It will be weird not to complete my Goodreads challenge. Next year I'll set the counter at 20 books. That will be manageable. A lot of the decisions of my life are coming together - wake up earlier, lose weight, treat a 'condition' of mine - and reducing my reading time is a smart choice.