Saturday, January 12, 2013

Final Reading Challenges for 2013

You're going to find this hard to believe, but I really wasn't going to enter any more reading challenges this year. Pinky swear. As you've seen, I've entered five already (six if you count the overarching one on GoodReads) in the hopes of diversifying and guiding my reading this year. But since subscribing to updates from A Novel Challenge, it's been a daily temptation to sign up for more that I've been diligently resisting. Until now.

But these will be the last of them, I promise. (Well, the last of the year-long, 2013 challenges anyway. I can't be held responsible if I join a challenge without time limits or a more long term challenge like the Classics Club, which was another one of my goals anyway!) So without further ado:


Since my #1 goal for the year was to deal with my backlog of ARCs, I honestly could not pass this one up. You may be wondering where I get all these books, and trust me, I am no big-time blogger and I definitely don't have any publisher contacts. I've actually gotten these from FirstReads, Shelf Awareness, and ARCycling. I also have a few that have been passed along to me from my aunt who got them from a friend who's a bookseller. (I'm also counting all of these books for the Embarrassment of Riches TBR Reading Challenge since they were all in my possession prior to Jan 1 -- so yay for cross-overs!)

Current ARCs:
Mind Games (Mind Games, #1)   Midwinterblood   Dark Tide

Just Published:
The One I Left Behind
This is my first book completed for this challenge since I just read and reviewed it!

ARCs of books already published:

Falling Under (Falling Under, #1)   The Ruins of Lace   Sweet Tooth
The Bellwether Revivals   A Foreign Country   Red Rain: A Novel 
The Garden of Happy Endings   Beamish Boy: A Memoir   Obama Karma

At least one of these is actually a finished copy, but since I got it from one of the above programs that encourages reviewing, I'm going to count it. This means I am entering at level Bronze (b) in which I aim to read and review 12 ARCs. If I get any new ARCs I'll have more to choose from, but will still be aiming for a total of 12.


Then we have: 

I wasn't even considering this challenge until I realized how many of the books I want to read this year actually qualify by being 450 pages or more (adult books; no children's or YA). I decided to join in to discourage myself from changing my book selections in order to read shorter (translation = more) books this year. I'm going for the 'Plump Primer' level which requires reading 6 books that are 450 pages or more.

These are the books I've identified on my GoodReads shelves that qualify and cross-over with my other challenges. I will double check the actual books though to ensure they really are long enough!

The Secret Keeper   A Discovery of Witches (All Souls Trilogy, #1)   Shadow of Night (All Souls Trilogy, #2)
The Rainbow   Women in Love   Lord John and the Scottish Prisoner (Lord John Grey, #3)   
Pride and Prejudice   The Canterbury Tales


And since I clearly have a bit of a problem:

This one challenges me to complete my challenges - ha! The two challenges in this post, combined with the ones I've already joined, makes for a total of eight nine challenges this year which equates with level On the Roof (6-10 challenges entered & completed). I have a more detailed summary of all of them here where I keep track of my progress and link to my relevant posts/reviews and each challenge's host site, but here's the short version:


I may need to up my overall GoodReads challenge goal a bit to fit these all in, but I still think it's doable. If nothing else, this should help me stop buying too many new books once and for all! 

And now that I'm all organized for the year, I clearly need to stop writing about it and start reading!!

7 comments:

  1. Good luck with all of your challenges! They all sounds like so much fun. You have so many ARCs that look really good, and I always say you should read A Discovery of Witches. lol You are making me want to sign up for more challenges.

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    1. Thanks Kay -- I hope I'm not being a bad influence! This is my first year doing more than just the GoodReads challenge, so I'll have to see if I'm being over-ambitious or if I really can finish them all, lol

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  2. Reading challenges are so addictive! I hope you enjoy all the books you choose for the challenges :-)

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  3. oh my gosh, you have got to be the luckiest person i know. i have been entering TONS of those goodreads first reads and i have won.... NONE, ZIP , ZILCH ... you need to send some of that luck my way for sure. anyways, great books, and yes im trying to keep up with my ARC's as well right now. Good luck with your challenges ! - Katie@ Inkk

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    1. I'll be honest Katie, I'm still trying to figure out how I won so many in a short period of time last year...I don't know if it was because I had added a bunch of reviews to the site all at once and it boosted my ranking as a reviewer or if after winning one they saw I actually reviewed it and then I was more likely to win additional books -- whatever the reason, I got behind on my reviewing and I have not won another book for months. Obviously I have plenty of neglected ones, but when I see an awesome title go up (like Lauren DeStefano's Sever!) I wish so badly that my good luck will return!

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    2. P.S. if you don't already get the Shelf Awareness newsletters you really should -- they have a lot of ads for ARCs - some are first-come-first-served and others are contests, but they usually have a decent amount available and I've gotten quite a few from there! I'm trying to be much more diligent about reviewing those books as for the most part they are coming directly from the publisher.

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I'd love to hear what you think :)