2017 Reading Challenges

Happy New Year! We love when it's the start of a new year! Our reading challenge slates have been wiped clean and the year holds so much potential! 2016 was an excellent book and reading year for us and we were mostly successful when it came to completing our reading challenges. But 2016 is over which means it's time for new reading challenges! These are the ones we're planning on participating in!

Goodreads Reading Challenge

The Goodreads Challenge is a pretty straight forward. You set a goal for the number of books you want to read this year and Goodreads will track your progress. There's no specific genres or qualifications that need to be met; you just read books. We love participating in this one each year and we wish many "you're ahead of schedule" messages on everyone participating in this challenge.

Rose Red: I set my Goodreads goal to 52 books because I know that I can read a book a week. I'll read more than that but I like to succeed so I set my goal to this. My unofficial goal is to read more than 150 books in 2017. I would love to get more than 200 like I did in 2016 but I'd be ecstatic to hit 150. I'm going to keep my fingers crossed that I meet my unofficial goal.

Gretl: Sometime in the spring (I'm not sure if it was April or May) I lowered my Goodreads goal from 3 books a week to 2 because I was way too far behind. So while I made my (revised) goal, it's kind of bittersweet. I read 107/104 books, which is my lowest total since I joined Goodreads in 2012.

For 2017, I'm shooting for 120, which is 10 books a month. Or about halfway between where I was last year and where I want to be.

Goldilox: I actually followed Rose Red's lead on this one and also set my goal for 2017 to read 52 books. My Goodreads goals in the past few years have been all over the place and some years I've met them and other years I haven't come close. For 2017 I'd like to read at least an average of one book per week though, so I went with 52. I hope to actually read many more books than that, more like 2 - 3 a week, but this way I can ensure that I accomplish my goal.

Rock My TBR 2017

The Rock My TBR Challenge was created by and hosted by Sarah K. from The YA Book Traveler. Basically, the challenge is to read at least one book off your TBR pile each month. If you do that, your TBR will be down twelve books by the end of the year. It's pretty low-key and chill reading challenge and it really helps to make a dent in those TBR piles of ours. Sarah also hosts monthly buddy reads that are fun to participate in!

Rose Red: I briefly played with the thought of upping my goal from what I set last year because I ended up reading 36 books from my pile. I'm going to err on the side of caution and keep my goal the same. My plan is to read at least 2 books per month from my physical TBR list for a total of 24 books. I'll probably read more but that feels like a doable goal to start with.

Gretl: I wanted to read at least one book a month from my TBR and I did that, but since I bought more than one book a month I don't feel like I made any progress. And I'm not sure I read any of the books I listed at the beginning of the challenge that I wanted to read. There's some really good stuff still languishing on my Kindle!

Goldilox: I love the idea of this reading challenge! It's easy to read the new releases that we're all excited about reading and we often forget about the books that have been sitting on our TBR shelf collecting dust. I'm going to go SUPER low key with this challenge and just plan to read one book on my TBR shelf each month because several of them are starters to series and if I like the first one I'll probably read the rest in that series as well.

So we have a plan to make the challenge more fun and help keep us motivated. We're going to have Thursday themes in 2017! Each month, we'll review books that fit that theme. January's theme is going to be MAGIC!

Are you participating in any reading challenges this year? If so, which ones?