The 2014 Annual Reading Challenge Discussion Thread!

[treadlightly]

I have 8 more books left to read, which is very achievable since the last week of the month is a holiday. I am glad I left the choice of which books to read relatively open this year, and will probably do the same next year, while still trying to reduce my "Purchased but Unread" pile.

[jbcohen]

Originally Posted by treadlightly

I have 8 more books left to read, which is very achievable since the last week of the month is a holiday. I am glad I left the choice of which books to read relatively open this year, and will probably do the same next year, while still trying to reduce my "Purchased but Unread" pile.

Since I have Kindle Unlimited I get all the books I care to have and therefore there is no reason for me to maintain a to be read stack, over 700k books to chose from that's approximately one a minute and that does not allow for any sleeping, eating or any of the other things I need to do.

Anyone started thinking about their goals for next year? My goals for next eyar will be where ever I finish up this year.

[Rev. Bob]

Originally Posted by jbcohen

Anyone started thinking about their goals for next year? My goals for next eyar will be where ever I finish up this year.

I've already cut way back on my original 150-book 2014 goal, and I may chop my 2015 goal even further. Writing my first book has simply devoured my reading time, and if I have to choose between them, I'll go with writing. With a little luck, I may be able to finish the first draft by Valentine's Day, but then there's editing and polishing, and I need to fix a certain weird bug in the CSS code I'm using...

That may not sound like it'll have a huge impact on my year, but I've also got ideas for more material. A sequel's starting to nag at me, as well as a themed collection of short stories. If I'm very, very lucky, this might actually turn into a career. I've gotten pretty positive reactions from the people who've seen the novel-in-progress, and it's turning out to be a bigger work than I ever expected, but it's been a wonderful experience so far. Sure, I miss the four dozen or so books I normally would've read in that time, but not as much as I would've missed getting to know these characters.

[pdurrant]

Originally Posted by jbcohen

Anyone started thinking about their goals for next year? My goals for next eyar will be where ever I finish up this year.

I have been thinking hard about this. One big change is that I'm going to start recording my purchases in UK£ instead of US$. When I started buying ebooks, I bought nearly all of them from Fictionwise or Baen, both of which charged in dollars. Now I find I'm buying almost exclusively from Amazon and Kobo, both of which charge me UK£.

I think I will set my spending target at no more than £25 per month, tha is, £300/year. This is a small reduction from this year's target of $480 or £320 at my nominal £1:$1.5 exchange rate.

In addition, I shall try to keep below an average of 15 books bought per month. That is, under 180 for the entire year. So no buying only £0.99 bargains and ending up with 300 new books!

I will aim for 200 books read in the year. But I won't be upset if I don't make it - next year might be rather busy and stressful.

[DrNefario]

I'm intending to go for fewer and/or more open-ended challenges next year. I took on a bit too much this year, and didn't get to read some of the stuff I'd hoped to.

This year I went for TBR growth less than two times TBR reduction, which I'm only just managing, but I'm going to tighten it to 1.5x next year. I think it's mainly things like the Hugo voter packet and various bundles that ruin my stats, but honestly I have a large number of really good books I haven't read and I can definitely afford to be a lot more ruthless.

[Luffy]

Originally Posted by jbcohen

Anyone started thinking about their goals for next year? My goals for next year will be where ever I finish up this year.

The idea going around in my head for now is to read a few fantasy behemoths and other thick books in the historical fiction genre. The idea is to read unpretentious simple books that are nevertheless big books ranging from 700 to 1100 pages. If I had a natural talent for enjoying Dickens then I'd read that most of 2015.

A variation of this idea of mine is to read one big book then one 300 paged book, as it will be fun to contrast the experience of reading such differently endowed books. So either I'll have a target of merely 25 books in the upcoming year or an objective of 60 ish books.

I want my average page per book to range around 400 pages per book. I have no concrete total pages for 2015. The bottom line is that if my number of books for 2015 is creeping to 100, then it means I'm doing the same thing as the last two years. And I intend to be different next year.

On a personal basis I had thought my responsibilities would increase in 2015 but it turns out that I'll have a lot of time for reading. The simplest way to be different next year is to stop reading cozy mysteries, something that I firmly intend to accomplish.

[HomeInMyShoes]

Pages are deceptive. They are not all created equal. I know. I've read 180 page books that are longer than 500 page books. My tentative challenges for next year are:

MobileRead Bookclub Participation (8)
I have been too busy with my challenges to read many book club selections. It's time to start participating again.

Read more Canadian (6)
Because I am inept at reading from my own country. Six books should help get the CRTC off my back a bit.

Read a Few More Countries (6)
There's still a lot of the world left to read and I really liked that challenge so we'll continue it with an unread country every couple of months.

Read Books in Purchased Pile (5)
I don't have a lot of books in my purchased pile. I believe there's about ten on the Kindle and about ten paper books, but there's a few that have been sitting there and should be read. These books must have been purchased prior to mid-2014.

Second Chance Authors (5)
Read some authors that I have only read one title by that I want to read more by or that I didn't really enjoy the first book and I think it might have just been the book selection.

[DrNefario]

I always think that book clubs sound like a good idea, and then I resent being "forced" to read a specific title. I like to leave myself plenty of room to change my mind in my challenges.

At the moment I'm thinking along the lines of:

- A list of named authors I like but who I have been neglecting and/or want to explore more. People like Alastair Reynolds and Gene Wolfe, where I already own more than one unread book but struggle to fit them in with my other reading, or Brandon Sanderson who I only started reading this year, but who is fairly prolific.

- Books from omnibuses. I have a lot of omnibuses. I love to buy them, because they're usually good value, but I also don't love to read from them, because you can't mark them as done until you've read all of the individual books collected in them.

And I'll have the last year of my crime challenge, and the award lists I'm working on, and so on.

[HarryT]

What I do personally is to alternate "reading challenges" with other reading. Eg, for about the last 18 months or so I've been reading all Agatha Christie's non-romance books (about 90 books in total) in publication order, but alternating each Christie book with something else.

[Rumpelteazer]

My official goal this year has been to have fun and try to keep the number of active series to a reasonable number. For GoodReads you have to fill in a number of books you want to read. I started with 52, upped it to 75 and later to 100. I'm now reading my 102nd book of the year. Average length of the books I've read is just over 400 pages.

For next year I keep the same goals, plus I want to try to read at least 4 books of over 700 pages. I have several longer books that have been lingering on my TBR list and I hope to get through a couple of those.

I thought about a reading list but last year taught me that after years of having to read books from reading lists (high school, college, uni) I can't do that anymore.

[Hampshire Nanny]

Originally Posted by HomeInMyShoes

Read Books in Purchased Pile (5)
I don't have a lot of books in my purchased pile. I believe there's about ten on the Kindle and about ten paper books, but there's a few that have been sitting there and should be read. These books must have been purchased prior to mid-2014.

I can't imagine how one avoids buying books. I have over 500 unread books printed on paper in my house and at least 100 purchased eBooks which have not been unread. We won't *EVEN* discuss all the freebies I have downloaded and the eBooks I have downloaded from MobileRead or Project Gutenberg.

Originally Posted by DrNefario

I always think that book clubs sound like a good idea, and then I resent being "forced" to read a specific title. I like to leave myself plenty of room to change my mind in my challenges.

I'm very much one who selects the book to read by my mood. If the book selected by the club appeals to me, then I'll join in during that month.

Originally Posted by DrNefario

Books from omnibuses. I have a lot of omnibuses. I love to buy them, because they're usually good value, but I also don't love to read from them, because you can't mark them as done until you've read all of the individual books collected in them.

I have a special way of dealing with these in Calibre and in my reading stats. When I load the Omnibus into Calibre, I assign it a series sequence number of 90. I then create empty entries in Calibre for each book in the omnibus. In the book description, I point out that the book is actually included in the omnibus. (I wish I could add a LINK to the omnibus itself!) I can then mark any book as read -- and I mark the omnibus a read when I have completed all the books in it.

Originally Posted by Rumpelteazer

For next year I keep the same goals, plus I want to try to read at least 4 books of over 700 pages. I have several longer books that have been lingering on my TBR list and I hope to get through a couple of those.

I love longer books. Series help satisfy my desire to spend an extended period of time with the characters and the setting.

Originally Posted by Rumpelteazer

I thought about a reading list but last year taught me that after years of having to read books from reading lists (high school, college, uni) I can't do that anymore.

I make a very short "must read" list at the beginning of the year, from which I may select a book at any time. I also have a very long list of books that I *want* to read with no target date.

One challenge I'm going to participate in during 2015 is the 42 Science Fiction Challenge. This challenge embraces not only books, but short fiction, essays, video, TV, and audio. The goal is to *review* 42 SF items during the year.

[HomeInMyShoes]

^The library. I use the library a lot. I read a lot of stuff that is difficult to find sometimes and the costs would be exorbitant if I didn't use the library. I did keep track of the cost of books in my spreadsheet and for my list of 70 countries the cost would have been $930.73 (without any shipping.) Many books were only available in paper and sometimes only used. Two were over $50 to purchase. I rely heavily on my library or I'd never be able to complete my challenges.

[Katsunami]

Omnibuses: I just extract the book using epubsplit. If I couldn't do that, I'd use empty records, the same way Hampshire Nanny does.

[Rev. Bob]

Originally Posted by DrNefario

I'm intending to go for fewer and/or more open-ended challenges next year. I took on a bit too much this year, and didn't get to read some of the stuff I'd hoped to.

Originally Posted by HarryT

What I do personally is to alternate "reading challenges" with other reading.

Originally Posted by DrNefario

I always think that book clubs sound like a good idea, and then I resent being "forced" to read a specific title. I like to leave myself plenty of room to change my mind in my challenges.

I tackle this by using a specific challenge to direct my general goal. RoofBeam Reader runs an annual "dusty shelf" challenge, where you pick a dozen unread books you've owned for at least a year and resolve to read them. I need to whittle down my physical stacks, so I make my selections for that challenge from my physical library...and I've also been picking series books that have been languishing.

Thus, every book I read for that challenge helps me four times: reduce clutter, satisfy the specific challenge, progress in a series, and get one step closer to my general goal. The one aspect I don't care so much for is having to name the books in advance, but he does allow you to choose a couple of alternates.

Originally Posted by DrNefario

- Books from omnibuses. I have a lot of omnibuses. I love to buy them, because they're usually good value, but I also don't love to read from them, because you can't mark them as done until you've read all of the individual books collected in them.

If they're DRM-free, it's not all that hard to peel them apart, especially if you use calibre's editor to do so. For a 3-in-1, get the omnibus set up the way you want it (e.g. fix any font settings or other problems), then make three more copies - one for each contained book. Go into each new copy in turn, delete the two books that don't belong, edit the OPF/NCX to fix the title and identifier (easier than it sounds), and you're set. You may wind up with a few extra files in each solo book, like unused CSS files or fonts, but Check Book will alert you to most of those...and as a quick-and-dirty method, it ain't bad.

[Dazrin]

Originally Posted by HomeInMyShoes

^The library.

Absolutely! I love that my library has a decent selection of e-books and that it adds to them regularly. About 3/4 of the books I have read this year are from the library, public domain or (legally) free on the internet. I also tend to change what I am going to read based on what my library has available. There are some authors/series that I will purchase outright, but my budget is very limited so I have to choose carefully or wait for things to drop in prices a lot.