Happy New Year everyone!
2020 was a crazy year and I, like many other people, was not ready for it. I had a weird reading year in 2020, with lots of reading slumps in between but I managed to get through the year and finished my goal. It's 2021 now and it is time to set new goals, join new reading challenges and read more!
This is going to be an overview of the different reading plans I have for this upcoming year and the different resources out there to help you find your next reading challenge too!
Contents:
I was very excited to start planning for this year's new reading projects! New goals, new challenges, new reading clubs!
My Personal Goal
This year I want to set myself a goal that would not overwhelm me too much. Last year I decided to try to read 40 books and I found myself rushing towards the end of the year to be able to achieve this goal. So this year I want to read 30 books. By looking back at the amount of books I usually read in a year I consider 30 books to be a doable amount. But of course, my goal is always to read more each year and just have fun!
I do have other goals related to reading a wider variety of books. More genres, more authors of color and more non-fiction. Reading is a hobby for me, so I have mostly focused on reading books that I know I like and that I know I will enjoy. But in 2021 I want to try to engage in activities that will help me be a better and more knowledgeable person. I want to step out of my comfort zone and read more books.
Reading Challenges
This year I am excited to have created (or put together), my own reading challenges for the year. Thanks to the StoryGraph's new features, you can create your own reading challenge, share it with your friends or share it publicly for anyone to join. You can add the books that you wish to read for each prompt and then you can mark your prompt as completed when you are done with the book. This is truly one of the best features that the StoryGraph has and I definitely everyone to check it out!
Hosted by me
In the StoryGraph I created some challenges. Some of these challenges are for me personally, some are opened for anyone who wishes to join.
In 2021 I am aiming to read all the books I physically own. I currently have 47 books but this list might extend if I buy more books throughout the year. I am aiming to finish all these books so I can sell them or donate them. I want to try to decrease the amount of physical books I buy and keep my house a bit tidier.
Tome Topple is a readathon originally created by ThoughtsOnTomes. The readathon consists of reading big books in a given time (usually a week). But I wanted to have a year-long Tome Topple as a challenge for myself to read more and bigger books! All of the books you use for each prompt has to be 500+ pages long. I made 10 different prompts to add more fun to the challenge.
Hosted by other people
There are a lot of fun and interesting reading challenges in StoryGraph. You can join them here. Here are the ones I have joined:
This is a challenge hosted by gabbyreads and oliviareadsalatte. This challenge involved reading spooky themed books from January 4 to January 10!
It’s time for another POPSUGAR Reading Challenge! I participated last year and I had so much fun with it. This year features 40 standard prompts and 10 bonus prompts all themed around your TBR.
There are too many really good authors and books out there that were not written in English, let's try to find these amazing jewels. As a Spanish speaker I consider this challenge to be a must for me! I miss reading in Spanish and I don't think I invest enough time in finding and reading books written in Spanish. So I thought this was the perfect challenge for me. Of course, any one can join this reading challenge even if you don't speak the language. You can just get translated books from these authors!
I am very excited for this challenge. This challenge consists of reading all the Goodreads Choice Winners of 2020. We have all genres here!
The Buzzword Readathon (#buzzwordathon) is a monthly readathon (created by the amazing BooksandLala, running the first week of each month (1st through 7th). Each month has a designated word/word theme and you have a week to read as many books as you like with that word in the title. Alternatively you can complete this as a year-long reading challenge, and read just ONE book each month featuring the monthly buzzword until you complete the whole challenge! I like the flexibility of this challenge, it is really up to you how you want to complete it. Whether you want to really follow the original challenge rules or you just want to take it easy and read as many as you want whenever you want.
Book Clubs
Hosted by Me
I started the Vancouver Girls Book Club in 2019 to invite any females living in Vancouver to come together and talk about books! There are many other book clubs out there but I wanted to make one that provided a safe space for girls to come and talk and meet new people. We read many different genres, and are trying to read more female authors, authors o color, indigenous authors and LGBTQ+ books.
The Girls Who Like Psychology Club is a Facebook group where we discuss topics about Psychology. We share resources, discuss topics, help each other out and recently we decided to start reading some books and discuss them. So these are the books that we are going to read throughout the year. We have two months to get and read each books.
Hosted by Other People
I have been part of these two books clubs for a while and I love their selection of books! Most of you already know them because of how famous they are (as they should be). The Late Night book is hosted by three amazing people: Joel, Noelle, and Ellias. I just love the energy these three people bring together into this book club.
The other book club is hosted by the queen of booktube Books and Lala. if you are into booktube you have definitely heard of her. She co-hosts with many different book tubers throughout the year and they read a very interesting selection of books.
these book clubs are opened to anyone and their discussions are done live on Youtube.
I have linked their Instagram home page in case you want to learn more about them.
Resources for You
There are so many resources out there with lists of prompt ideas (if you wish to make you own challenges, or already existing reading challenges that you can join at any time. Like I said, StoryGraph is a good resource to find possible reading challenges you wish to join. I recommend going on YouTube and searching what other reading challenges are people taking part of.
These two websites are good resources to find your next challenge!
What are your reading goals and plans this year? Happy reading everyone!