Another year down, another chance to see how well (or not!) I did on accomplishing my challenge goals. I learned some things about myself as a reader, achieved some things I was hoping to do, struggled with others, and reassessed my goals for 2015. All in all, while this was a much lighter load of challenges this year, it was a fulfilling learning experience.
You can click on the title of each challenge to see the individual books I read for each one.
Challenged: 15
Actually Read: 15
YAY! GO ME! YAY!
I am SO incredibly happy about accomplishing this goal! I never finish this challenge. Ever. This is the first time, and I am showering huge, gigantic thank yous onto Gina for motivating me to push through and complete it. I actually had to re-write this post because I was so convinced I was going to fail this challenge and then ended up shocking myself.
The books I read were not the ones I had originally intended to read, but I'm mostly ok with that. Even better, I ended up starting and DNF-ing a whole bunch of books that have been taking up valuable shelf space for years. Now I finally know I don't want to keep them (and I can use that room for new books!) I'm going to try this challenge again in 2015, and for the first time ever I actually think I might accomplish it!
I did end up reading an additional 16 books from my shelves (acquired in 2014), so I do think it is important to note that about half of the books I did read this year did come from my shelves. I think that does fall into the spirit of the challenge, if not the exact rules. Rogue that I am, I am going to break from the tradition of this challenge in 2015 so I can highlight these wins as well.
Challenged: 13-20
Actually Read: 25 (13 historical bio)
I'm very happy with my progress on this challenge. I firmly exceeded my overall goals, but what I'm most pleased with is the number of historical bio books I read. I learned a lot of history this year, which was what I was hoping to accomplish with this challenge. I like that my books ended up a mix of adult, YA, and MG and fiction and non-fiction. I also like that there was a lot of overlap in subject matter. I will definitely be participating in this challenge again.
Challenged: 11-20
Actually Read: 20
This ended up being a much easier challenge than I was expecting. In previous years I had spent most of my reading time focusing on new releases, so in 2014 I wanted to focus more on older books. I didn't include older books that were new 2014 discoveries to me since I really wanted to address those books that had been sitting on my TBR for years. I definitely accomplished what I set out to do.
One thing I did realize this year was that my reading tastes have changed a little, so books I probably would have loved when I originally added them to my TBR were only ok for me now. That was a good though sad lesson to learn and has motivated me to read through some of the books that have been sitting on my TBR the longest. That said, I don't think I will participate in this challenge next year. Instead, I'm going to use the Off the Shelf challenge to target these TBR books.
Goodreads 2014 Reading Challenge
Challenged: 50
Actually Read: 65
I had originally set a goal of 60 books, but then trimmed that down to 50 due to a busy personal year. But, it looks like 60 was more doable than I was expecting, so I'm happy I managed to exceed my 50 book goal. I think I'm going to keep my goal at 50 again for next year. Changes in my life have made it harder to make as much time to read (not having a job where you can read for large chunks of the day will do that! Also, more stress) and the type of books I have been tackling, like the heavy historical books, do take more time. Eleven of the books I read had over 400 pages, which is also something I usually shy away from and I'm pretty proud I managed so many.
Challenged: 4
Actually Completed: 4
YAY!
How did you do with your 2014 challenges?
Feel free to add links to your own challenge recaps!
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Yay! I'm so happy for you for doing so well on your challenges! I did terrible on mine this year, but it was my first year blogging so hopefull I'lol do much better next year. Congrats!
ReplyDeleteCongrats on meeting all of your 2014 goals! The off the shelf challenge was incredibly hard for me. I was too scared to tackle it this year, maybe next time.
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