Thoughts & Things

Reading Challenges

When I was younger, I didn't particularly like reading challenges for the most part. I think it's really because I didn't fully understand what a reading challenge could entail. I've loved to read for longer than I can remember. It wasn't that reading was the problem, in particular. I think it is that I saw reading challenges as reading lists. A reading list was a set of books I had to read, regardless of whether I would enjoy it or was particularly in the mood for it. Obviously this is not the case, at least not always.

I do recall some of the first reading challenges I ever enjoyed, which were ironically ones I participated in for school. I can recall doing bingo challenges, where each bingo square represented a different genre or category of book. I can recall doing similar challenges, in checklist format. We would get little prizes based on our completion level of these challenges.

I think that I often felt that I didn't really need a reading challenge. I mean, I would read anything as long as I was in the right mood. I think this was initially true. As I got older, I got more into a rut. I was constantly reading, but ultimately most of what I read tended to fit into fairly similar categories. It wasn't that the books I read didn't matter. I read some of my favourite books during my teenage years. I read books I genuinely believe to be significant to me as a person during this time. The vast majority of the books read during my teen years, however, fit into only a few genres and categories. I tended to lean towards romance novels and young adult novels. Either category did lead me to more historical or speculative work, but there was more variants within these categories than outside of them.

I don't regret reading any of the books I have read. Even the books that I did not like, even the books that I liked despite poor quality, still helped to shape me as a reader, a writer, and a person. It is more so that I regret not doing more reading outside of these areas. Why didn't I read more classics, works in translation, pure speculative fiction, or non-fiction?

Finding the BookRiot Read Harder Challenge definitely had a hugely positive influence on my life. This was in 2015, the first year that they ran the challenge. Like the challenges from my childhood, it featured a list of different types of books. It left the control in my hands, but gave me some direction to work with. I honestly didn't fully realise how much my reading habits had begun to stagnate until I looked at the list of tasks and realised that a large amount of what I typically read would not fit into many of these categories. I also realised that a lot of what I wanted to read for these categories was stuff I genuinely wanted to read, and allowed myself to push to the side in favour of something else. While I did not finish the challenge, I did push my boundaries more than I had in years.

I started participating in the Goodreads challenge as well. As this is a sheer numbers game, it tends to be just a matter of making a goal and sticking to it. When I started participating in this regularly, however, I started reviewing every book I read. This helped me to develop skills as both a reader and a writer that I did not previously have. I do wish they had an option to mark the challenge as by page count rather than by total numbers.

I have also tried dipping my toe into other reading challenges. This year I am participating in the "beat the backlist" challenge, which entails reading through all of the things released before this year I have failed to stay caught up with. I am also considering participating in a comics challenge. I also enjoy browsing challenge requirements, as they often serve as inspiration for what I might wish to read. Book challenges in general have served as inspiration for the film challenge that I am running for the second year in a row.

As a whole, I feel like book challenges have made me more aware of so many aspects of my reading and writing habits, as well as helped me in developing both. I am hoping that I can make even further progress this year, and continue to explore the world and expand my mind through books with the help of challenges.