2019 Reading Reflections and 2020 Plans

Last year I found out about Popsugar Challenge and the Around the Year in 52 Books(ATY) on GoodReads. I started my Challenge on December 2018 with plans to end by December 2019. I actually finished both challenges before that so I'm all good. But one thing that annoyed me about starting the challenges early is the my dedicated shelves say that I didn't complete the challenge. It really is bothering me so for 2020 I am not starting till January 1st despite winter break starting on December 20th.



Also Half way through last year I learnt about tracking the challenges on spreadsheets which was awesome because you can see how many books you have completed and what percentage you've completed. For the ATY one of the mods (Emily Bourque) created a community spreadsheet so that everyone could fill it in with the books they've read and they can also see what others have read for the same prompt. I really liked how she had set it up so I made a very basic one for my Popsugar, which was basically: prompt, book, and a percentage at the bottom. For 2020 I made a nicer sheet for myself with more details. You can see what it looks like here but I won't be using this one. I made it with excel on my computer and I will be updating it on that.

Another awesome thing I learned about in 2019 was Readathons. I participated in quite a few this year. My favorites were The Bookemon Badgethon and the Bookemon Cathcathon, by Meg from Tome Infinity, and The Book Junkie Trials and the Winter Quest, by Rachel Marie. I plan on doing more in 2020 and as I sign up for them I will add a sheet to my Excel Spreadsheet and track it all in one convenient place.

Finally I want to reflect on my 2019 GoodReads Challenge. I wrote that I was going to read 150 books in 2019. I surpassed my goal and I'm currently at 241 out of 150. Which at first glance looks impressive but the truth is 79 of those are Picture Books which can be read in 5 minutes or less. Then I have a number of Graphic Novels and Early Chapter books which are super easy reads and also bump up my book count. Which I know counts as books but my point is that it's really not as impressive as it first seems. But I won't be making any changes to that system. I am going to give myself the challenge of reading 150 books again and I'm going to keep track of Picture Books as well so if you see my challenge for 2020 and think "wow that's impressive," it's really not.