Reading Challenge Round-up – March 2017

Reading challenges must be reported on.  Some challenges suggest you post an update monthly, others don’t really worry about it, although it’s nice to do a round-up post at the year end and add it to the challenge owners’ summary.  Some years I remember to do a quarterly round-up, others I fail.  Here’s the first of four that I hope to do this year!  Click the progress links to see the challenge page and the books I’ve included.

Alphabet Soup Reading Challenge

This always goes swimmingly at the start of the year, although I did hit upon a series of books beginning with S for some strange reason.  I’m picking up my Y early because the April A to Z Blogging Challenge (starting Saturday) gets to Y on the last Saturday of the month.  Otherwise, it’s easy going at present.

Progress: 12 out of 25 letters completed to date

Colour Coded Reading Challenge

I added this in when I saw it, and I was reading The Blackhouse.  There are nine colours (or combos) to include, either in the title or as the principle colour of the cover.

Progress: 5 out of 9 completed so far. I’ve started duplicating already.

Mount TBR Reading Challenge

I set myself a stretching target for this challenge this year, to read 36 books from my To Be Read list.  The number on the list keeps increasing and it doesn’t help when I fall for these wonderfully enticing ARCs from Net-galley to read and review.  But the first place I check for difficult aspects of the other challenge is my TBR list, so…

Progress: 9 out of 36.  That’s right on schedule, and that surprised me!

A Non-Fiction Adventure

A long-term Challenge – fifty books over ten years, and obviously I’m aiming for five a year.  I’m off to a good start, and it helps that a lot of these books I’m planning to read have been on my bookshelf (and my TBR) for years!

Progress: 3 of 5 for this year.

What an Animal Reading Challenge

With only books with animals featuring inside now, rather than getting away with ones on the cover, it’s a harder challenge, but I surprise myself sometimes, when books that don’t appear to qualify suddenly leap out at me when I’ve finished them.  I may end up going to the next level again, after all.

Progress: 4 out of a target of 6.  Two were time travel related, and the others were fantasy.  Not what I expected, really.

Wild Goose Chase Reading Challenge

Now, this is a different story – I’m finding this difficult.  Bruce Gargoyle has set a challenge to read a book from each of seven categories relating to the words wild, goose and chase.  It’s very clever, and quite difficult.

Progress: 2 I’m confident qualify and one that might do if I’m desperate, out of 7 categories.

Goodreads Reading Challenge

I confess I see this as less of a challenge than a tallying exercise, but I find Goodreads listings and shelves a great way of tracking my reading successes – and failures; I’ve abandoned one already this year (not included in the total).

Progress: 14 of 52 books, one ahead of schedule.

So it’s all going swimmingly at present.  Of course, if I could only count books in one category (plus Goodreads), it would be far harder.  Well, that’s an idea for next year.