BOTY Progress Update & Brackets for the 2014 BOTY Bracket Challenge

Well...another month down. It seemed to go pretty darned fast. (I've found that seems to be more of an epidemic as I get older.) I got quite a bit of reading done this month thanks to my participation in Bout of Books 10, so I'm feeling pretty happy with where my reading stats for 2014 currently stand. Thanks to a minor obsessive streak with Sims 3 this past week, I am behind again on my Goodreads goal, but that should turn around again without too much trouble. And if not...well, I have Bout of Books 11 coming up in August. It's all good.

With May coming to an end, it's time to do some cleanup for this month's theme. Since it was all about books, that means a Book of the Year progress update, a view of the bracket as it currently stands, and a little something extra just for you.

Let's start with some stats. I'm currently sitting at a completed 24 books this year, out of my goal of 64. Eight of those books have been reviewed on the blog so far. I've read a total of 9,078 pages since January 1st. I've been lucky to read some really great ones this year and I'm transitioning myself out of the YA dystopian fiction obsession that I seemed to have last year. I still dip into that genre now and then (i.e. the Divergent trilogy), but I've moved on into other fields like memoir, women's fiction, and even back to historical fiction (a place I haven't been for a while). The variety is nice.

I finished 7 books this month. If I were to keep up that pace, I'd be able to churn out 84 reads in a year. That would be awesome. Maybe some day I'll be that good at dedicating my free time to reading instead of letting myself get sucked into the social media wormhole on a regular basis.

I'm working on getting my bracket filled so that my BOTY Bracket Challenge will be a productive endeavor this year. I've added in the books that I finished this month, and this is where my progress currently stands.

Want to make a bracket of your own and participate in the BOTY Bracket Challenge with me? I kicked off the 2014 BOTY Bracket Challenge this month thanks to some encouragement from Karsyn.

Here's a little something to get you started... I've gathered up the brackets I've worked with in the past so that you can use them as your own. Find the one that has the number of seeds you want, and just start filling it in. Remember, you can enter books in any order you choose. I'm liking the random number sequence generator myself. If I don't have a bracket for the number of books you're looking for, don't worry...there are blank brackets out there available on the internet. Just search for "tournament bracket" and you should find some great options.

For these particular brackets, you may right click and save them in a jpeg format, or click on the links to be taken to Google Drive for the option to download them as PDF files. Enjoy!

16 Slot Bracket

32 Slot Bracket

64 Slot Bracket

Tomorrow it's a new month and a new blog theme, but just because my book theme will end doesn't mean that the reading will stop. In fact, it's just going to get more interesting. Tomorrow I draw the first card for my Deal Me In Challenge and the first number for my Classics Spin. The best thing about these challenges is that they'll introduce even more variety into my reading, something that I think seems to increase my reading productivity. Feel free to join me on those as well.

And now I'm going to go do a little relaxing and a little sewing. I have a couple of things to get finished by tomorrow so that I have some things to put up for the opening of the EPJ Etsy shop. Yay! Have a wonderful Saturday and I'll see you tomorrow for the reveal of the picks for the Deal Me In Challenge and Classics Spin as well as show off what's coming up in the shop.