The 2015 Annual Reading Challenge Discussion Thread

[CRussel]

My reading has been going along at a reasonable pace. I should, just, make the minimum goal in my challenge. BUT, and this is a problem, I'm losing track of how much I've bought, and which purchases are included in my running tab. I'll never get it completely accurate at this point, so I'm going to draw a line in the sand and try one thing to see if it will help - including the most recent book/audio book included in the running total. That way when I get around to catching up at the next point in time, I'll at least have an idea of where to start from. We'll see if it helps. But I always knew this would be the hardest part of the challenge.

[issybird]

Originally Posted by CRussel

My reading has been going along at a reasonable pace. I should, just, make the minimum goal in my challenge. BUT, and this is a problem, I'm losing track of how much I've bought, and which purchases are included in my running tab. I'll never get it completely accurate at this point, so I'm going to draw a line in the sand and try one thing to see if it will help - including the most recent book/audio book included in the running total. That way when I get around to catching up at the next point in time, I'll at least have an idea of where to start from. We'll see if it helps. But I always knew this would be the hardest part of the challenge.

I find Goodreads incredibly handy for tracking my reading. Even if you use it for nothing else, you could enter the books as you start to read them and also use the mutually exclusive want to read category for purchases. I find it far faster to enter a title from the GR database than to keep manual lists. If you want, you can let GR communicate with your Amazon account and have all those books entered automatically and sort them at your leisure. And your account can be private so no peeking if that's a concern.

I know you must be aware of the Goodreads option, but I thought I'd suggest it just in case. I can't keep up with manual lists and they get confused, but GR takes the effort out of it for me.

[CRussel]

A viable suggestion, but not one I'm likely to implement right now. Mostly because it's just one more place to keep track. I honestly don't have the time. Plus it would solve the reading part, but that's not really the issue. It wouldn't solve the keeping track of how much I've spent on books part. Yes, I'm recording the $$ spent in Calibre. But that doesn't include $$ and credits spent with Audible, and you can't even go back and check from Audible bills because of the way they record things. You can't tell if it was an Audible Credit used for a $0 purchase, or a $ credit from some contest/offer. And I do want to keep track of Audible costs -- they're not insignificant here.

The other issue with Goodreads is that only some books trigger the Goodreads popup at the start of reading -- others don't. So I can't even depend on that to be reliable for books read. But really? The main reason is that I have time for, at most, one forum. And, honestly, I choose this one because I enjoy the people here, mostly. As it is, time spent here is time from reading, and that's precious right now. With my current book at least a week, and probably more, behind schedule, my editor is not likely to view any time spent away from it with equanimity.

[Dngrsone]

Originally Posted by issybird

I find Goodreads incredibly handy for tracking my reading. Even if you use it for nothing else, you could enter the books as you start to read them and also use the mutually exclusive want to read category for purchases. I find it far faster to enter a title from the GR database than to keep manual lists. If you want, you can let GR communicate with your Amazon account and have all those books entered automatically and sort them at your leisure. And your account can be private so no peeking if that's a concern.

I know you must be aware of the Goodreads option, but I thought I'd suggest it just in case. I can't keep up with manual lists and they get confused, but GR takes the effort out of it for me.

Thanks, I was unaware of that option...

[CRussel]

Looks like I'm on schedule or a little ahead to hit 120 books this year, but the stretch goal of 150 is looking really unlikely. OTOH, my change to add the most recent book bought as part of keeping track of where I am with purchases looks promising. I'm using it as the Edit reason, which puts it right up top. Where I'm keeping the totals of books bought, etc. All in all, I'm feeling a bit more sanguine about both parts of my challenge.

[pdurrant]

April's nearly gone, so we're about one third through the year.

My goals for 2015:
1.To read my 54 unread ebooks from 2005 and 2006.
2.To spend no more than £25/month on ebooks on average over the year.
3.To reduce my TBR list in calibre to below 700.

I'm on track for reading my 54 unread books from 2005 and 2006, and I'm well under my budget of £25/month on ebooks. (I've only spent £65.21 so far!)

My TBR looks good - 722 (down 28) at the moment, but there'll be 58 back issues of Fantasy Magazine coming in shortly. I suppose I might just get my TBR below 700 by the end of the year if I continue to exercise restraint in new purchases.

So on the whole - a good start to my 2015 Reading Challenge. (Oh - and 80 books read so far, likely to be 81 by the end of April.)

[Geralt]

Not doing the challenge has made me 9 books ahead of my GR challenge. Damn thing cant be turned off, so I had to put a number. But yeah, apparently not being under pressure to meet any deadlines or goals works wonders for me and I outperform myself, sort of speak. I already knew I'm like that, bur I was just surprised at how much my actual bonus was. At this rate I'll probably finish my "challenge" in July already.

[Hampshire Nanny]

1.5 more days left in April and I'm doing very well in my challenges. Goodreads says I'm 2 books ahead of schedule. I will definitely finish the book I'm reading by this evening and may finish one more by EOD tomorrow, we'll see. At the worst I will finish up April on pace to make 200 books for the year.

My statistics so far:

Challenges
Books read: 66 of 200
Pages: 18,741 of 50,000
Series completion: 9 of 36 (books); 0 of 3 (series)
Library books: 29 of 50

Miscellaneous
Total Books: 66
Paper Books: 6
Electronic Books: 56
Audio Books: 4

Teen Books: 8
Tween Books: 14

Adventure: 4
Fantasy: 11
Mainstream Fiction: 3
Mystery: 24
Non-fiction: 2
Paranormal/Urban Fiction: 6
Romance: 3
Science Fiction: 14

[sun surfer]

Here are my current stats at the end of April:

Main Challenge (yearlong)
14/50 Books

Subchallenges January-June
3,250/8,000 Pages
0/3 Club Nominees
2/2 Print Pile ✔︎
1/1 Partially Read ✔︎
1/1 Irish ✔︎
0/1 Tome
0/1 Young Americana (Little Women)
0/1 The Broken Road
2/6 Goodreads Written Reviews
7/7? Post-Read Club Replies

For the main challenge, at Goodreads it says I'm a couple of books behind, but I'm reading two long books now (one very long) so I think I'll be catching up after I finish these.

Except for the full-year main challenge, my challenges are half-year so my time frame is now 2/3 gone for all those. For pages, I should be at around 5,300 by now and I'm only at 3,250 but again I'm not too worried. One book I'm reading now (the tome, Don Quixote) will be well about 1,000 pages added when done and the other book about 500 and both could be finished within a week or so. So I think I'm more on track than it seems at first glance, though I still have a little catching up to do.

I've completed my print pile, partially read and Irish subchallenges and I'm close to finishing my tome challenge. For Young Americana, I did read Tom Sawyer (originally meant to be part of the challenge but I left it out) but not yet Little Women (the reason for that being that I needed an audiobook to listen to and I was fine with listening to Tom Sawyer but want to actually read Little Women). I also still need to read The Broken Road and three non-winning club nominees. It's a good amount for two more months, especially when adding in club winners I'll be reading and any other non-challenge books I might read, but I'm hopeful that I can accomplish it. As for the writing subchallenges, I'm a little behind on writing Goodreads reviews (but that should be easy enough to catch up on) and I'm 100% on track for post-read club replies.

[jbcohen]

If you are counting your books not the number of pages as I am and you want to add some quick numbers towards your goals, KT Tomb is a good one to read. Her books are real exciting adventure Indiana Jones types of books and go very fast and they are all short. Typically around 100 pages each and they go fast so stock up on a few KT Tomb and jack up your progress towards your goal. In case you are not on Kindle Unlimited like I am the books cost $3 each, I read so much that Kindle Unlimited is a great idea.

[pdurrant]

82 books to the end of April! Not as many as in 2014, but more than in any other year for which I kept records. I wonder if I can hit 240 this year? Not that I have that as a target - my targets are more to do with (not) buying ebooks. But it would be quite fun if I got there - I read 238 in 2014!

[jbcohen]

I find that I have read $521 worth of Kindle Unlimited books this year for the price $40 for a savings of $481. Beat that.

[treadlightly]

Originally Posted by jbcohen

I find that I have read $521 worth of Kindle Unlimited books this year for the price $40 for a savings of $481. Beat that.

I've read a bunch of library books for $0.

[issybird]

Originally Posted by jbcohen

If you are counting your books not the number of pages as I am and you want to add some quick numbers towards your goals, KT Tomb is a good one to read. Her books are real exciting adventure Indiana Jones types of books and go very fast and they are all short. Typically around 100 pages each and they go fast so stock up on a few KT Tomb and jack up your progress towards your goal. In case you are not on Kindle Unlimited like I am the books cost $3 each, I read so much that Kindle Unlimited is a great idea.

I honestly don't get this. It seems to me the point of a challenge is as a goad to read more of the books you want to read, not to set up an artifical goal that can be met by reading junk* you ordinarily wouldn't have touched. If I had to seek out short books I don't want to read in order to meet my goals, I'd be better off abandoning my challenge, IMO.

*This is not a judgment on Tomb, whose books I don't know. Junk is short for a personal and individual evaluation of all the possibilities out there that don't appeal at all, depending on one's own tastes. Along those lines, KU would be a poor choice for me; it would be money wasted, not money saved.

[DrNefario]

I'm pretty happy with my progress so far. My sub-challenges are all going pretty well, and I'm doing better on my TBR target than I expected. I might even be able to reduce the TBR this year, instead of just growing it more slowly, especially since I won't have the Hugo packet messing it all up.

Edit: I've just been working it out, and I think it's my daily short stories that have really been making the difference. 16 of my 44 works read are a result of the daily short stories - either standalone short works or collections/anthologies - and without them I'd have read 28 books and gained 46, which would be 4 books outside my target ratio of 1.5.