The 2019 Annual Reading Challenge Discussion Thread

I have had a great start to my 2019 challenge. I've finished one of the two compilations of Urdu poetry on my Challenge list, just fantastic! I also read Christina Rosetti's complete works for the book club (in 4 days, never again), read Le Carré's "A Delicate Truth" for the book club, and completed a total of 34 books toward my GR target of 100. This gives me time to go back to Le Petit Prince, Jungle Book in Hindi, and the next Urdu poetry compilation on my list.

[Rumpelteazer]

I've also had a great month; I've read 12 books, totaling 4755 pages. I hadn't expected to finish the book I started on Tuesday, but it was really hard to put down and I finished it today. It also helped that I had my annual reading retreat, January is usually one of my better months. It's good, since February is usually my worst month of the year.

[astrangerhere]

Goals:
Total Books: 50 (stretch goal of 100)
Total Pages: 25,000
Ebook TBR Reduction: 25 (stretch goal of 50)
Read at least 51% non-American authors
Read more female/gender-fluid authors than male
ead at least 52 short stories | Read at least 10 of the New Leaf Book Club selections


Aggregate Totals (Updated through January):

• 6 books - 12% of goal met - ON target
• 9 short stories - 17% of goal met - ON target
• 2364 pages - 9.5% of goal met - ON target
• 60% female/nonbinary authors / 40% male authors - ON target
• 67% US authors (up from 47%) / 33% non-US authors - OFF target
• Ebook TBR Reduction: Reduced by 1 - 2% - OFF target
• New Leaf Book Club selections - 2 for 10 - 20% of goal met - ON target

[pdurrant]

I've updated the index in the discussion thread.

[issybird]

Sigh. No sooner do I finally, finally, for the first time this year, get my mean rating at Goodreads up to 3.0 stars on the year with my most recent four-star read, than I crack my next book which despite a rating over four stars at Goodreads is only going to get two from me. Unfortunately, it's not quite bad enough to abandon.

And I have only myself to blame. Well, duh, but I identified the problem in a post two weeks ago:

Originally Posted by issybird

Part of the problem is that I've been sidetracked by a few books I didn't plan to read and didn't like them terribly; I should stick to the books I have.

And this current two-star read is yet another where a passing mention led me to reading it, instead of the things I really do want to read. I don't learn!

The longer this goes on, the much more difficult it's going to be to get my overall rating for the year to a respectable level. Despite my fondest hopes, it's hard to identify four and five star reads in advance, and I need a flurry of them now.

ETA: Well, alrighty! I'm glad I posted because I've come to my senses. No point in throwing good reading time after bad. I am abandoning the book.

[binaryhermit]

I'm so far behind on my goal (no magazine backlog and reading the Harvard Classics and Harvard Shelf of Fiction, or whatever it is) that I'm abandoning it. That's ok, I am actually reading more just not what I wanted too, so that's something, I guess. Not the end of the world, I am enjoying what I'm reading. And there's always next year.

[PurpleStar]

Originally Posted by binaryhermit

I'm so far behind on my goal (no magazine backlog and reading the Harvard Classics and Harvard Shelf of Fiction, or whatever it is) that I'm abandoning it. That's ok, I am actually reading more just not what I wanted too, so that's something, I guess. Not the end of the world, I am enjoying what I'm reading. And there's always next year.

Enjoying what you're reading is definitely more important than making any goal.

[binaryhermit]

Yep. I agree. That's why I'm ok with missing my goal.

[astrangerhere]

Originally Posted by astrangerhere

Aggregate Totals (Updated through January):

• 6 books - 12% of goal met - ON target
• 9 short stories - 17% of goal met - ON target
• 2364 pages - 9.5% of goal met - ON target
• 60% female/nonbinary authors / 40% male authors - ON target
• 67% US authors (up from 47%) / 33% non-US authors - OFF target
• Ebook TBR Reduction: Reduced by 1 - 2% - OFF target
• New Leaf Book Club selections - 2 for 10 - 20% of goal met - ON target

I am most passionate about the gender and nationality goals. I am willing to sacrifice on the rest of them.... So, of course, I am already off the mark on one of those two.

[Dazrin]

Well, I have almost caught up to where I should have been at the end of January. And that is after reducing my goal by over a third from where I finished the last two years. Even beyond that, this has not been a good reading year so far; I have already abandoned 3 books. That's more than all of last year. All three were books I paid for too.

Ugh.

[pdurrant]

It's much better to abandon books than waste your reading time on something you're not enjoying.

[Dazrin]

Originally Posted by pdurrant

It's much better to abandon books than waste your reading time on something you're not enjoying.

It is good to do that but I have only finished 6 books this year. That's a 33% failure rate. Not good. Normally I abandon 2-3% of books. It's indicative of something else at this point I think.

After a strong start in January, I modified my GR goal to 104 for the year. I've now finished book 45, David Crystal's The English Language: A Guided Tour of the Language, also the fifth of the eight linguistics books I set as one of my Reading Challenge goals. I now finally feel like I'm far enough ahead to go back to tackling the books I have set myself to read in languages other than English, without having to worry about a mad scramble to reach 104 by year's end.

[Tarana]

Originally Posted by Dazrin

It is good to do that but I have only finished 6 books this year. That's a 33% failure rate. Not good. Normally I abandon 2-3% of books. It's indicative of something else at this point I think.

Do you have preferred genres? Maybe you need to join a literary group that focusses on what you enjoy reading. I know after I did that, my rate of abandoned, poorly rated books went down. Now it's mostly 4 and 5s rather than a lot of 1-3s.

[Tarana]

Originally Posted by Dazrin

It is good to do that but I have only finished 6 books this year. That's a 33% failure rate. Not good. Normally I abandon 2-3% of books. It's indicative of something else at this point I think.

Yes, that is frustrating, especially if you were stretching to try a new author. I have a few books that were extremely popular that I just didn't like - just not my style. Yes, it's painful when you pay good money for that. At least Audible was pretty reasonable to refund most of my can't-stand books.