The 2015 Annual Reading Challenge Discussion Thread

[jbcohen]

Going to set the 2015 goal post at the place where I round out 2014, given that 2014 was a banner year for me I can only hope that 2015 is as good to me as the previous year was. I am going to set a secondary goal of getting to one hundred books read, something that I am not likely to hit however its a nice goal. Haven't started entering progress information as yet, will start that around XMas.

[Red Falcon]

I have two goals for 2015:

1. Read more of the books that have been sitting on my kindle/phone since 2012.
2. Read at least 40 books this year including 5 classics off my audible account.

Since I started keeping track of my reading again in 2012 I have averaged 40-45 books a year not including the piles of Short Stories I consumed.

[Waylander]

I think mu goal for 2015 is going to be pretty similar to 2014, but I may up my goal from 80 books, as i blew through that in July, and look set to beat 2013's record of 135, given I'm already on 131 books. I may set my goal at a nice round 100, and see what happens.I definitely want to get through some of my tbr pile sitting on my Kindle, so that will be my secondary goal.

Summary

Primary Goal: Read 100 Books

Secondary Goal: Reduce TBR pile on Kindle

[bookaho!ic]

I will set my target for 80 books for next year

[Hampshire Nanny]

Originally Posted by Nyssa

My reading goals for 2015 centered around a genre-centric group I joined on Goodreads. We concentrate mainly on Speculative Fiction, which includes: Fantasy, Science Fiction, Horror, and their many sub genres. We also added Young Adult as its own category.

I'm joining the 42 SF Challenge for 2015. This is not *just* a reading challenge. Participants are asked to "Review 42 sci-fi related items: short stories, novellas, novels, radio show episodes, television show episodes, movies, graphic novels, comic books, audio books, essays about science fiction, biographies about sci-fi authors, etc." We all know that "42" is a number with special meaning to SF fans.

Originally Posted by treadlightly

C) Reduce "Purchased but Unread" balance to below $100 (currently at $167 and change)

Now that's a cool metric. I ought to go tally up the purchased/unread eBooks that I have. That should be so easy since I have a spreadsheet of all the purchased eBooks with an indicator of whether or not they've been read. I also have close to 1000 unread dead-tree-books, but I purchased very few of them, and the ones that I did buy were typically 4-for-a-dollar at the annual library sales. At any rate, I wouldn't begin to be able to determine the monetary value of those books.

[Geralt]

No goals or challenges for me in 2015. I had enough of structured reading for past two years. 2015 is reserved for reading whatever I feel like, when I feel like it. If that means reading 50 or 5 books in a year, it's all the same to me. Time to have more fun with reading.

[Nyssa]

Originally Posted by Hampshire Nanny

I'm joining the 42 SF Challenge for 2015. This is not *just* a reading challenge. Participants are asked to "Review 42 sci-fi related items: short stories, novellas, novels, radio show episodes, television show episodes, movies, graphic novels, comic books, audio books, essays about science fiction, biographies about sci-fi authors, etc." We all know that "42" is a number with special meaning to SF fans.

That sounds like fun! Enjoy!

[pdurrant]

Originally Posted by Geralt

No goals or challenges for me in 2015. I had enough of structured reading for past two years. 2015 is reserved for reading whatever I feel like, when I feel like it. If that means reading 50 or 5 books in a year, it's all the same to me. Time to have more fun with reading.

I hope you have a great time reading in 2015.

[pdurrant]

Oh - one thing I'm going to add to my challenge for 2015 is to read all my bought but unread ebooks from 2005 AND 2006!

[Geralt]

Originally Posted by pdurrant

I hope you have a great time reading in 2015.

Thank you. You too.

[CharredScribe]

So, I've set my overall reading goal at 60 books, with a sub-goal of 5 non-fiction books. Reading over my reading list from this year, I realised that I had not read any non-fiction books which I don't think has ever happened before (although, I did only start tracking in March). Usually, at least one quarter of my reading (often more) is non-fiction. I think it is because I got my first e-reader and so I read lots of fiction, as I don't really find non-fiction readable on an e-reader. Next year, I want to get back to my usual pattern of reading several non-fiction books.

[pdurrant]

I've decided on 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. (Currently it's around 750)

[sakura-panda]

I have less a goal than a "here is the most number of books that I have ever read in a year." I don't even remember what year that was and I had to go find my 2014 list to copy it because I couldn't remember the number. (No worries about meeting or exceeding it this year either.)

I like having a list of the books I read. When I was younger, I would arrange my bookshelves so that the books I read were stacked in the order I read them and I could see them all lined up together, at least until I started re-reading them. The lists do something similar for me -- it is very satisfying to watch it grow!

[ATDrake]

I think in addition to just reading and recording stuff (the latter being the real challenge every year, TBH, since I read more than the 100 books that were the original suggested challenge way back when all this started, IIRC), my challenge is going to involve trying to read more in the way of the non-English translated books I've acquired over the years.

You see, francophone publishers are generally quite good about publishing translated sf/fantasy from even relatively obscure authors, but they often have a short shelf life for their editions' availability, with my having learned the hard way that if I don't pounce on anything I might want that isn't a Terry Pratchett Discworld (which have excellent French translations, by the way) pretty much the moment it appears, it's going to disappear and become unavailable to order very shortly afterwards (and then go for $$$ in the used section, if they show up there at all) and not get reprinted for years, if ever.

So I've kind of gotten into the habit of auto-buying my very favourites once they hit French mass-market-sized paperback (or money-saving omnibus editions), and 2015 is probably the year I should finally get around to reading more of them and see how good/bad/monkey* the translations† are and how well the stories hold up.

* Sometimes I miss Warren Ellis' Nextwave, which I like to pretend is the canon version of the Marvel Comics Universe.

† Forever disappointed that the translation of Barbara Hambly's 1st Benjamin January antebellum New Orleans mystery novel did not teach me the French equivalent of the word "absquatulate".

[CRussel]

@ATDrake: Now that's a worthwhile challenge. If my French were better, I might give it a try. Or my Spanish, either one. How has the wide availability of eBooks changed that publishing picture? Do they do eBook versions? Or just paperback?