The 2023 Annual Reading Challenge Discussion Thread

[bookaho!ic]

am in again did pretty well this year, still bought more than i read but hey ho thats the struggle of a bibliophile

[issybird]

I’ve decided to give up on fixed goals for 2023 as I’ve done so poorly with them in recent years, but just identify areas of interest and track my reading. My only set goal is the MR/StoryGraph challenge.

I was tempted to do a goal of one Victorian novel a month, but I know the more goals I have, the less likely I am to hit any, so I’ll just try to keep it in mind.

My real goal is to read a lot less junk and while I suppose I could set a limit each month on how much trash I can read it strikes me as awfully negative. So I’m just going to try to focus on what really interests me and see how it goes. It just occurred to me - perhaps at the four-month or six-month mark I could do an assessment.

[astrangerhere]

Originally Posted by issybird

I’ve decided to give up on fixed goals for 2023 as I’ve done so poorly with them in recent years, but just identify areas of interest and track my reading. My only set goal is the MR/StoryGraph challenge.

I was tempted to do a goal of one Victorian novel a month, but I know the more goals I have, the less likely I am to hit any, so I’ll just try to keep it in mind.

My real goal is to read a lot less junk and while I suppose I could set a limit each month on how much trash I can read it strikes me as awfully negative. So I’m just going to try to focus on what really interests me and see how it goes. It just occurred to me - perhaps at the four-month or six-month mark I could do an assessment.

I tried make sure I didn't add any trash to the SG challenge for myself for just that reason. I was disappointed when half of my top 10 this year were re-reads.

[Pjama]

I ended up doing mostly comfort reading and rereads last year - I’m not sure setting goals helped or hindered me quite honestly. I tend to read people in batches - so, one year I will read everything I can by Patricia Highsmith, Graham Greene or Iris Murdoch, for instance, then I will need a break from them for a few years. After which I will reread all their books again avidly. I don’t know if that really fits with monitoring my reading, although it has been interesting to review the books I read last year on the 2022 thread. It's interesting to me to see how many I have zero recollection of also. Particularly the modern 'thrillers' (not thrilling ).

[Paperbackstash]

Originally Posted by Pjama

I ended up doing mostly comfort reading and rereads last year - I’m not sure setting goals helped or hindered me quite honestly. I tend to read people in batches - so, one year I will read everything I can by Patricia Highsmith, Graham Greene or Iris Murdoch, for instance, then I will need a break from them for a few years. After which I will reread all their books again avidly. I don’t know if that really fits with monitoring my reading, although it has been interesting to review the books I read last year on the 2022 thread. It's interesting to me to see how many I have zero recollection of also. Particularly the modern 'thrillers' (not thrilling ).

I did over 30% re-reads, which is high for me even as a big re-reader

I sometimes will do batch reading of authors, but really mine is when I get hooked on series by an author - I re-read a lot by Patricia Briggs this year as an example. Probably where a lot of those re-reads come from

[Tarana]

Originally Posted by Pjama

I ended up doing mostly comfort reading and rereads last year

Comfort reads are always a good thing. I found with paper books, I only reread about 20% ever, but there was a core group that were reread every few years. It's those books that I also upgraded to ebooks since I can no longer read the paper copies. My Mom claimed she was never a rereader, but yet she does like to reread historical fiction that she read back in the 80s and 90s, so a lot of my funds have gone into getting some of those collections into ebook as we ditched all the novels already.

[Pjama]

Originally Posted by Tarana

Comfort reads are always a good thing. I found with paper books, I only reread about 20% ever, but there was a core group that were reread every few years. It's those books that I also upgraded to ebooks since I can no longer read the paper copies. My Mom claimed she was never a rereader, but yet she does like to reread historical fiction that she read back in the 80s and 90s, so a lot of my funds have gone into getting some of those collections into ebook as we ditched all the novels already.

Well, I’ve decided I will do the reading challenge again after all. But I will just be recording what I read, for interest. No goals as such. Except reading some French and Spanish books in among the English. I’m not going to beat myself up for comfort reading, or rereading.

[Pjama]

Originally Posted by Paperbackstash

I did over 30% re-reads, which is high for me even as a big re-reader

I sometimes will do batch reading of authors, but really mine is when I get hooked on series by an author - I re-read a lot by Patricia Briggs this year as an example. Probably where a lot of those re-reads come from

I haven’t worked out my percentage of rereads, but I suspect it is more like 50%. I will be rereading a lot of Graham Greene this year, I think, as I bought a lot of omnibus editions of his books for my kindle recently. (He has gone from being completely unavailable on ebooks, to having loads of ebooks suddenly available very cheaply!).

Some of my rereads are triple or quadruple rereads.

[Dazrin]

I have a bunch of books that I've reread many, many times but I've read very few multiple times in the last 10 or so years. Most of the rereads recently have been books I haven't read since the 80s or 90s.

Overall, a little less than 20% of what I read is a reread. Last year it was 33% though.

[HLS]

We need a thread on books not recommended lol

[Dazrin]

Originally Posted by HLS

We need a thread on books not recommended lol

We've got this one, is it close enough?
https://www.mobileread.com/forums/sh...d.php?t=348999

[HLS]

I am reading Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow. Really not a subject matter I care about(gaming) but it is a good book regardless. its more about the characters relationships. I am about 70% in.

[Paperbackstash]

So far my reading has been going fun and strong this year with 9 finished. I did two quickie audios of Perry Mason, which I greatly enjoy, some Valancourt classics - I highly recommend Devil in the Darkness, semi on The Cook by Harry Kressing. I started the year with some romance The Haunted Heart by Josh Lanyon (very good, need the sequel) and a sequel I'd been waiting on Cat's Chance in Hell by Meghan Maslow - didn't enjoy the sequl as much as the first in the series, but both good. Continuing the semi cozy mystery series with Blanch by Barbara Neely - finished the second, Blanch among the talented ten, and reading the third now. I also read the YA mystery A Good Girl's Guide to murder, which I didn't enjoy as much as popular opinion apparently. My goal in January is to get through a lot of these library reads, Valancourt reads goal for the year, and then touch some of the borrowed KU. I also want to get to some of my Christopher Pike re-read goals on paperback soon.

[HLS]

Iam reading Our Missing Hearts-Celeste Ng and regret it. It's about a mother that abandoned her son which is what my mom did to me in 1981 so I really did not need the slap in the face. I am hoping it will have a good moral to the story.

[fduniho]

Moving to other thread, because there are two different threads on the 2023 reading challenge.