2016 Reading Challenge in Review

Hi! So as I'm sure you saw a couple of days ago, last year was a failure for me in more ways than one. One of those ways was the year's Reading Challenge. lol I realized when I was going through the final update that there were a few challenge entries that were a little repetitive. I honestly hadn't even put it together. Here are some examples, so you don't think I'm just bullshitting you about not finishing it.

So one entry was "Read a book about a popular conspiracy theory" but another was "Read a book, fictional or real, based on a government conspiracy." One book, fictional or real, could fulfill both of those things so I didn't really need to have both. 

There was an entry that said  "Read a book considered to be a 20th century classic" and then another one that said "Read a book that was published over 100 years ago." Shit books from other centuries aren't really available anymore so if you find something that's over a century old, the likelihood is high that the book is already considered to be a classic and explains why it was still available to be read. Another case in which one book could fulfill both entries. That's already four entries done from a 36-entry challenge with just two books, and I'm not even finished yet. 

An entry said, "Read a book set in Africa by an African author" but another one some time later said, "Read a book about an unfamiliar, non-Western culture." To most people, Africa is an unfamiliar, non-Western culture. Again, one book could fulfill both of those entries. But you can take that even further, because another entry said, "Read a book about an impoverished or 3rd world country." There are quite a few impoverished and countries considered to be 3rd world in Africa, so you could actually use one book to fulfill all three if you read a book set in an impoverished African country by an African author. That brings us to 7 entries and three books. If you'd like to take that up a notch, you could add in "Read a book about racial issues by an author of color" and bring the total up to 8 by reading a book by an African author about racial issues in an impoverished African country, but these three seemed a bit closer to me.

There's an entry that said, "Read a book listed as a recommendation from Oprah's book club," but there's another that says, "Read a NYT bestseller." Many of Oprah's former recommendations were NYT bestsellers, so that's two more fulfilled with the same book. That moves the total up to 9, which is officially a fourth of the challenge done and only 4 books read.

One of the entries was, "Read a romance set in the future," but another one said, "Read a post-apocalyptic fiction by a female author." Post-apocalyptic books are obviously set in the future, so you could just read a dystopian/post-apocalyptic romance and be done with both. That's 11 entries and five books.

An entry said, "Read a graphic novel," while another one said, "Read a comic book from the last 5 years that is not about a superhero." Many comics are about superheroes and they're ongoing, so your better bet would be to find a graphic novel. This one didn't have one book to fulfill both entries, but it still felt a little redundant to me. That's 13 entries. 

But enough about my failures. Let's get to the few I did do.
   

A few of these actually got a review here; No Rest and Tales were reviews I was asked to do earlier in the year, then I reviewed Tree Taylor and Bloodwalker back in September. This is a pretty pathetic showing. 😑 These weren't the only books I read throughout the year so it angers me on a different level that I only fulfilled nine entries from this year's challenge. It makes me look like a lazy reader and I'm not here for it. lol

Minus the extra entries, a total of twenty-three books over a year's span doesn't seem hard at all, and I probably should have stuck with that. It would have been challenging enough for me, seeing as how I only fulfilled nine. lol But per usual with me the first time I try to do something, I overdo it, hence my Summer Bucket List of All The Things from two years ago. I learn largely through trial and error, but as is the case with these things, the error has to come first. lol The good thing about overdoing things the first time around is that it's easier for me to scale back than to add things on because I didn't have enough material. Overdoing things the first time around helps me figure out where my limits and boundaries are and establish challenges that make more sense for me instead of diving into the deep end and drowning.

It's easy to get overly ambitious when you read a lot, and that is another of my faults--because I usually read a lot of books in a year, I didn't think 36 things would be a lot. I didn't fulfill all of this year's challenge entries, but I still read over 36 books. So numerically speaking, it isn't a lot at all. But having to read specific books is a bit of a challenge for me because like most readers, I have the genres I prefer to read and that's usually what I stick with. I think another of the issues I had was that I got too overzealous in my planning and didn't really give myself time to think through the challenge entries, which is why there were so many examples above of more than one entry being fulfilled by the same book. One thing I noticed though was that if you have one vague entry, like "Read a romance" and a more specific entry like, "Read a dystopian novel," you could still combine the two. There's bound to be some overlap; it's inevitable if you vary how much you specify with each entry. But there shouldn't be 11 entries fulfilled with 5 books. That's ridiculous.

Now that I have these things in mind and I know where I went wrong, I'm ready for round 2. I've been looking at challenges for 2017 and none of them are getting my goat enough to not want to try my own again. I'm really excited about trying to create my own challenge for the second time so I think that's what I'll stick with. If I do find one I like, I'll leave it on there as a bonus. But I'll go into that more in a few days when I reveal the 2017 Reading Challenge. Again, there's probably going to be a bit of overlap; I've finished all of this year's entries and again, there are a couple of non-specific entries that can be blended with specific ones, but overall I think it's a better challenge. I hope you'll be joining me, both here and on Instagram, where I will finally keep my word and tell you about what I read. lol Tomorrow you'll see RRNT's report card for the year, which is just my twist on revisiting my 2016 goals and monitoring my progress towards each one. See you tomorrow!