Today, I'm sharing the results of my 2019 reading challenges as well as the progress I made in my longer reading challenges during the year. This does not include any challenges that took place through the year via read-a-thons. I'll be including links to the individual pages for my challenges so you can take a peek at how I've done over the years, the books I've read, and decide whether any of these fun challenges would also be right for you.
Disclaimer: I have been struggling to get my act together and get this post completed. So...I'm going to streamline it a bit here and there so that I can get it out to you. If you want more information on anything I talk about here, follow the respective link for the entire history of a given challenge.
Reading Challenge Results / Progress
Last year, I created a TBR for the year in January based on the challenges I had, ARCs I needed to read, and books I just wanted to get to in the year. I wasn't super successful in this task, but it was a good start and I am continuing this approach this year. Last year's TBR started with 73 books.
Percent of original TBR completed: 39.7%% (29/73 books)
Out of the books I aimed to read, I completed 29. 12 are rolling over into this year's TBR and another 10 are ones that I still hope to read this year, but aren't on the official TBR.
Lifetime Reading Goal
I don't recall where I originally heard of the 1,000,000 Pages Challenge. There are several sources out there. This is a lifetime reading challenge that I wish I would have come across sooner. I started officially tracking for this one in 2011. For reads before that, I pulled from my Goodreads "read" shelf and totaled up all of the pages there as a base.
I made some great progress on the challenge this year and put a decent dent in the overwhelming amount of pages remaining. I started the year with 195,503 pages read and 804,497 pages remaining, so 19.6% of the challenge complete. In 2019, I added an additional 37,008 pages. This brings my total pages read to 232,511, my remaining pages to 767,489, and my challenge to 23.3% complete.
If I keep up this pace, I should complete this challenge in 2041. Since I originally expected that I would be in my 90s before I could complete this challenge, I'm pretty pleased with this. I've cut more than 30 years off of my original estimate. Amazing.
I've participated in 52 Books since 2015. The goal is pretty straightforward...just read 52 books in a year's time. In 2019, I finally completed the entire challenge for the first time.
This is an ongoing life challenge with a terribly long list of books, a good portion of which are classics. I completed 2 of these books in 2019, bringing my completion number to 51/1000.
This is one of my favorite challenges. The goal is to read books with a titles that start with each letter of the alphabet. Last year I almost made it for the first time, finishing 2019 with 24/26 completed. That's 92.3%. The only letters I didn't complete were X and Y.
Alphabet Soup Author Challenge
Last year was the first time I tried the Alphabet Soup Challenge's little brother, the Alphabet Soup Author Challenge. This is still based on books from A to Z, but the letters are based on authors' names, using either first or last at your own discretion. I did pretty well, completing 21/26 (80.8%) of the challenge. I was left with unfulfilled slots for I,Q,U,X,and Y.
The concept for my Century of Books challenge came from one conceived by Simon at Stuck in a Book. In my version, I'm aiming to read a book published every year for a period of 100 years. The "century" I've chosen for my challenge is 1911-2010. I started this challenge in June 2014 and I've given myself 10 years, until May 30, 2024, to complete it.
In 2019, I completed 3 reads toward this challenge, which brings my current completion to 34/100.
For the purpose of my challenge, a chunkster is a book with 450 pages or more. My goal is to read 50 chunksters in the 10 year period between June 1, 2014 and May 31, 2024.
I competed 12 chunkster reads in 2019, bringing my total challenge progress to 25/50.
My current classics spin is a list of twenty books and runs from January 1st, 2018 - December 31st, 2022. It's my 3rd round and I'm hoping to be successful for the first time with this go round. I currently sit at 50% with 10/20 finished. Five of these reads were completed in 2019.
Another 10 year challenge running from June 2014 to May 2024, the goal is to read 50 classic novels. I completed 12 of these books in 2019, getting my challenge total up to 29/50.
Color Coded Challenge
Another favorite, this challenge has prompts based on books with colors in their titles. Last year was my best year yet, meeting 7/9 (77.8%) of the prompts. I'm hoping to finally conquer this one in 2020. The Color Coded Reading Challenge is hosted by Bev over at My Reader's Block.
The Deal Me In Challenge was originally a short story challenge created over at Bibliophilica. Since I don't read short stories, I repurposed it for myself. I have not set a time frame for this challenge yet since I'm revamping it, but the basic idea is to read one book per quarter based on a predetermined list set to playing cards. A card is randomly chosen from the deck and that determines that quarter's read.
Last year, I completed 3 reads on the Deal Me In list.
Based on the list generated by the popular PBS series, 2019 was my 1st year working on this personal goal. I currently sit with 32/100 of these books read, with 4 completed 2019.
I Dare You Reading Challenge
This is an open time limit challenge with a list of prompts. I started it back in January 2015 and I am almost done. I finished 15 books toward the challenge in 2019, leaving me at 103 / 105 completed. I should be able to (hopefully) complete this challenge in 2020.
Modern Mrs. Darcy Reading Challenge
I've participated in the Modern Mrs. Darcy challenge since 2017. It's typically a more streamlined challenge that is designed to give a bit of a push without adding stress to the weight of your reading. Last year was my first year to complete all 10 of the prompts and 100% complete the challenge.
Monthly Keyword
2019 was my first year of the Monthly Keyword Challenge. It's a fun and relatively simple one, and added a few interesting (otherwise perhaps not considered) books to my TBR. I completed 9/12 (75%) of the prompts.
Monthly Mix-Up Mania was based on a now defunct blog. The goal is to read a book for each letter from each month of the year, that's a total of 74 books. A two-year challenge, my current round runs from April 1, 2019 to March 31, 2021.
Between April 1, 2019 and December 31, 2019, I completed 46 out of the 74 prompts. The remaining prompt letters are titles beginning with E, J, O, R, U, and Y.
Monthly Motif
Like the Keyword Challenge, 2019 was my first year taking on the Monthly Motif challenge. I really enjoyed it and completed 12/12 (100%) of the prompts in my first attempt. YAY! I will be taking this one on again as there are new prompts for 2020.
PopSugar Challenge
The PopSugar is an oldie, but a goodie. I've been participating with this one since 2015. 2019 was my best participation year yet with a completion score of 33/50 (66%). That seems low as I write this, but there are some very obscure and odd prompts, so I suppose that's not so bad.
This is a ten-year challenge, based on attempting to read books set in 50 countries around the world. I started this one on June 1, 2014 and it ends on May 31, 2024. I completed 3 additional books in 2019, bringing my total to 24/50.
Another long challenge, this one is based on books read and mentioned in Gilmore Girls. I complted 2 books on this list in 2019 and now have 64/339 finished.
This round of the State by State Challenge (an attempt to read books set in each of the 50 United States), was set to run from 2017 - 2020. By the end of the year I had 26/50 read and decided that I needed to overhaul the plans. So...it has been cut short and has restarted as a 5-year challenge effective January 1, 2020.
Aaaaaand...I think that's it. Not a bad year in the challenges, I completed a bit here and there. I have a different approach for 2020, with a TBR plan that should make these numbers grow a bit quicker. I'll lay that all out next month. Next up, an end of year survey... Until then, happy reading!
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