I’ve been thinking about reading challenges. Not just possible future 52 Books challenges for myself, but reading challenges in general.
A reading challenge is a good way to get some focus into your reading if you feel you don't know what to read next, you want to expand your reading horizons, become an expert on a given subject, or break out of a bad reader's block. Hunting down the books can be half the fun if you assign yourself a specific set of books and they turn out to be out of print or otherwise hard to find.
Different challenges suit different people. Some may do a modest book-a-week challenge for one year or plan to read all of a specific author’s books, while others may be more ambitious and embark on a lifetime reading plan of every book mentioned in Harold Bloom’s The Western Canon. Some may want to cover every number in the Dewey catalogue. Including the fractions would be a bit too much for most, but by taking whole numbers only you would get 999 books and many years of targeted reading.
Here is a list of more possible reading challenges:
*All the books that have won a specific literary award, for example the Pulitzer, the Nobel, the Booker, the Golden Dagger, etc. Here's a listof some literary awards.
*The 100 best novels or non-fiction books of the 20th century.
*An A-Z challenge: read, in alphabetical order, books whose author’s last (or first) name begins with a given letter of the alphabet, or read books with ABC titles.
*One book from or about every country in the world, a chosen continent, or the states of the USA.
*Arctic and Antarctic expeditions.
*Books about setting world records.
*Books that have been banned or challenged.
*The books that formed the foundations of a specific genre, for example science fiction or mystery.
*Every book in a given series, for example Star Trek, The Cat Who... or Discworld.
*One book from each year of the 20th century.
*The top best-sellers from a given period of time.
* Or you can do an unfocused challenge, like I did in my first 52 books challenge. The only rules were that I could not read the same author twice, rereads were only allowed if I had forgotten what the book was about, each book had to belong to a different sub-genre than the last, and I would try to read as many new genres as possible.
Edit: Readers, if you have suggestions for interesting reading challenges, I would like to see them. Post ideas or links in comments.
I have received one suggestion so far - read the comments to see what Tim had to say.
A reading challenge is a good way to get some focus into your reading if you feel you don't know what to read next, you want to expand your reading horizons, become an expert on a given subject, or break out of a bad reader's block. Hunting down the books can be half the fun if you assign yourself a specific set of books and they turn out to be out of print or otherwise hard to find.
Different challenges suit different people. Some may do a modest book-a-week challenge for one year or plan to read all of a specific author’s books, while others may be more ambitious and embark on a lifetime reading plan of every book mentioned in Harold Bloom’s The Western Canon. Some may want to cover every number in the Dewey catalogue. Including the fractions would be a bit too much for most, but by taking whole numbers only you would get 999 books and many years of targeted reading.
Here is a list of more possible reading challenges:
*All the books that have won a specific literary award, for example the Pulitzer, the Nobel, the Booker, the Golden Dagger, etc. Here's a listof some literary awards.
*The 100 best novels or non-fiction books of the 20th century.
*An A-Z challenge: read, in alphabetical order, books whose author’s last (or first) name begins with a given letter of the alphabet, or read books with ABC titles.
*One book from or about every country in the world, a chosen continent, or the states of the USA.
*Arctic and Antarctic expeditions.
*Books about setting world records.
*Books that have been banned or challenged.
*The books that formed the foundations of a specific genre, for example science fiction or mystery.
*Every book in a given series, for example Star Trek, The Cat Who... or Discworld.
*One book from each year of the 20th century.
*The top best-sellers from a given period of time.
* Or you can do an unfocused challenge, like I did in my first 52 books challenge. The only rules were that I could not read the same author twice, rereads were only allowed if I had forgotten what the book was about, each book had to belong to a different sub-genre than the last, and I would try to read as many new genres as possible.
Edit: Readers, if you have suggestions for interesting reading challenges, I would like to see them. Post ideas or links in comments.
I have received one suggestion so far - read the comments to see what Tim had to say.
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