30 December 2011

Reading Challenges Update 2011

I joined quite a number of reading challenges this year (16)and worried about whether I had taken on too many.
I hoped the challenges would achieve a number of things:
  • push me to read beyond my usual boundaries
  • help me reduce the number of books waiting on TBR which had grown by the beginning of this year to alpine proportions
  • by joining participating communities, I would learn of new books and titles that I should hunt down.
I kept a running record of my progress on Reading Challenges Update 2011
You can see from the general summary below that I completed all the challenges at the original levels that I signed up on. I'm feeling very happy with my achievements.
I did allow challenges to overlap, i.e. I could count a book for more than one challenge, although I did restrict myself to crime fiction titles. I did treat audio books as books read.
See what I've read.

Some of the challenges such as "translated" and "new to me" were personal challenges to exceed a level from the previous year.

I do think the challenges achieved what I wanted them to do, with the exception of reducing my TBR.
They did also reveal a lot about my reading choices.
For example, I was surprised that nearly one third of my reading was British crime fiction, but on reflection a number of those were audio books. I much prefer British narrators. I also have a fondness for British police procedurals.

I have decided that in 2012 I need to target more American crime fiction - those titles don't appear very often in my reading choices, more Australian, more New Zealand, and much more from my TBR both paper and e-book.

I may just focus on setting myself targets in 2012 rather than joining challenges. I haven't really decided.
Although I will be hosting the 2012 Global Reading Challenge and also the Agatha Christie Reading Challenge.

4 comments:

Bernadette said...

Wow Kerrie, very impressive. i only completed 6 of my 7 challenges this year.

Anonymous said...

Kerrie - If I were wearing a hat I would take it off to you. You leave me in awe; you really do...d

Anonymous said...

Wow, Kerrie. Very impressive.

Jo @ Booklover Book Reviews said...

Thanks for your ongoing support for the Aussie Author Challenge Kerrie - 16/12 - over achieved as expected!

I am very impressed by your '60' new to me authors in 2011.

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