I found the alphabet challenges last year a fun way to find new authors. I don’t think I’ll do them again this year, but I do want to organize my reading in some way. Goodreads and my book spreadsheet aren’t enough. Enter goals and challenges:

75 books overall. This is a slight increase from 72. Unless something changes with my work, commute, Xavi’s schedule, this seems doable. The 75 total encompasses the challenge below.

10 books from my bookshelf. I have way too many books on my shelf that I’ve never read. It’s embarrassing. Once I read them I can decide whether I want to keep or donate them.

24 books fulfilling the Book Riot Read Harder Challenge criteria. The challenge focuses on diversity of authors, genre and topic. I don’t think it’ll be too hard. Based on last year’s reading, only a few of the topics will be out of my reading comfort zone.

6 books meeting the What’s in a Name Challenge criteria. The six books need to have the following in their titles:

1. A word including ‘ing’ in it
2. A color
3. A familial relation
4. A body of water
5. A city
6. An animal

Going through my to read list, the name challenge should be easy. I just need to find a book with an animal in the title; suggestions are welcomed. I already got #4 done:

5 books from NPR’s 100 Must-Reads For Kids 9-14 list (as research for Xavi’s non-board book library).

Last, I hope to blog more mini-reviews about my favorite books. Maybe my first post will be an instructional post on how to do all the reading. (Not really.)