Reading talk (and challenges!) in 2022

[Scaly Freak]

Welcome to the annual thread for reading and reading talk!

 

While we of course make room for talking about books (and other reading materials), this thread is first and foremost for reading. We love books here, of course we do, that kind of comes with the territory. But more importantly, we love to read, and that is what this challenge thread is about.  

 

 

 

We have a small number of rules that we respectfully insist that everyone who joins this thread do their best to follow:

 

First of all, Rule Zero: Anyone who wants to join, can can join at any time during the year. There is no enrollment end date, and no reading minimums of any kind.

 

Now for the rest of the rules:

 

1. Any reading counts as reading. This means we are not required to read books. Any reading material is acceptable reading material, including but not limited to graphic novels, blogs, poetry, philosophical treatises, newspaper articles, periodicals, sheet music, and anything else anyone can think of. All reading counts as reading.
2. Audio books count as reading. If this rule isn't self-explanatory to you, that's fine, as long as you don't question it.
3. Everyone reads at their own pace and level. Reading goals are personal, and while we freely give and take inspiration from each other, we don't compare our goals to each other. This isn't a competition.
4. Everyone reads for their own reasons, and every reason for reading is valid. Again, take inspiration from others, but don't compare yourself to anyone. There are as many reasons for reading as there are readers, and just as many reading goals, and that is exactly the way it should be.
5. Enjoy the reading challenges and have fun with them! This is the most important rule, that no one should ever feel pressured to compromise on. If keeping up with your reading challenge causes more stress than it relieves, do what you need to do to restore that balance to where the reading challenge is a haven again.

 

And that is it. Please tag fellow readers as you come across them in your travels across the greater NF community, and never forget to honor Rule #5.

 

 

 

[Artemis Prime]

Thanks for the new thread, Scaly! I don't plan out my reading that much, but one of my 2022 goals is to clear out some of the books that have been sitting on my TBR for years. I'm starting the year with Better than Before, which seems like a good New Year's read, and Queen of the Tearling. 

[Jupiter]

Yes, thanks Scaly! My goal is to read 60 (or more) books this year.  

[Asha Phoenix]

I'd like to read 20   15 books this year. My biggest goal is to finish the Silmarillion. I probably won't even care if I hit my book goal if I finish it. Finishing that book after almost two years will be an accomplishment in itself for me this year. 😂😅

[Rebel Pilot Gar]

Woo new thread!

 

I am slowly working my way through the Witcher series. I also have a few biographies / autobiographies my mum passed over to me after reading and thinking I'd enjoy.

And at some point I'll get around to Kristen Britain's new book... once i decide whether I want to re-read the rest of the series first or just launch into the new copy. I absolutely adore her Green Rider series and will sing it's praises to anyone and everyone i can.

 

No specific goals but I always love seeing what books others are enjoying to help fill out my ever increasing "To read" list.

[Scaly Freak]

I failed to complete my local library district's Extreme Book Nerd challenge in 2021, and I plan to try again in 2022. The challenge is to read 50 books in 50 weeks, and based on similar challenges in previous years, my mistake is to assume that I'll have plenty of time to complete the challenge "later this year". This is obviously a delusion, or rather it is a powerful illusion spell cast by Procrastination.

 

The 2022 challenge kicks off on January 3 and ends on December 19, and I am resolved to do better this year. The sexy black library card will be mine!

[Heidi]

3 minutes ago, Scaly Freak said:

The sexy black library card will be mine!

Truly, I want one of these!

 

Thanks for the thread, @Scaly Freak! I'm hoping to resurrect my reading life from the ashes. It has fallen prey to combined forces of TBI and grad school.

 

The books I talk about here will be reading for pleasure, at whatever pace the TBI will allow. There's no number goal, more of a "just do what you love" goal.

 

As the new year dawns, I've still got 100 pages or so left in We Need to Talk About Kevin. After I finish that, I have no clue what I'll read next, and I'm looking forward to hearing about what you're reading and how you like it (or don't). 

 

Onward!

❣️

 

[elisanns]

One of my goals this year is to get back into reading more. I used to be such an avid reader, and then over the last two years I just couldn't get my brain to focus. As modest a goal as this may be, I'm currently hoping to hit 12 books this year (1 book per month), plus comics and magazines on top of that which I don't usually track.

 

Currently reading Yours Cruelly, Elvira: Memoirs of the Mistress of the Dark. Not sure what I'll pick up next, but I have a lot of unread books on my shelf.

[Waanie]

This is my first reading challenge, so I'm going to start conservatively at 25 books this year, and allowing for re-reads. Currently I'm re-reading the Others-series by Anne Bishop. One book that is on my goal list explicitly is the first part of Dune. Others really like the book, and I enjoyed the movie, so I want to read it as well.

[Alanna]

Thank you for the invite! I started reading regularly again last year and want to keep it up - it helps a lot with my bedtime routine and stress reduction. I mostly read science fiction and fantasy, and my reading list is largely determined by sales on Kindle since my access to used book stores and the library is currently limited. I just started The Priory of the Orange Tree. 

 

I don't want a total "number of books" goal, but my challenge will be to track the number of books I read this year and also read at least two non-fiction books - I have some popular science books and a book on learning that have been sitting on my bookshelf for too long. 

[Artemis Prime]

28 minutes ago, Alanna said:

I just started The Priory of the Orange Tree. 

I really enjoyed this book. Looking forward to hearing what you think of it.

[MezzotheLefty]

New year, same ever-expanding TBR list.

I got the new Critical Role book Kith and Kin for Christmas so I think that's my first book of the year.

I didn't make my modest goal 15 books in 2021 but I think I can do it this year! 😁

 

[bigm141414]

New year, new reading goals!

 

Last year I spent consuming everything I could to meet a quantity goal which I smashed and had 61 things read for pleasure. This year I want to pare down my backlog and focus more on intentional reading. I don't want to read purely for escapism, which is my default, but I want to absorb the material and worlds and learn things from the novels I consume. So here's the general goals for the year:

 

Read your damn books

 

 

This ^ perfectly describes my book habits for as long as I have had money to buy books. I probably have something around 40 books on my shelves that I need to read, but I keep buying more and more books. So this year I am going to make an effort to pare down the to-read list. The goal is to have a ratio of 3:1 of reading the books I own to buying a new book.

 

Fiction goals For the Year

 

Keeping in mind the above goal, there are a few fiction books coming out in 2022 that I am going to be picking up. The biggest release is The Lost Metal by Brandon Sanderson which is the 4th and final Wax & Wayne Mistborn book. It's a given that any time Sanderson releases anything I am going to buy it and read it immediately.

 

Other goals is to try and read more poetry this year. I started last year, but I didn't make a habit out of finding a style of poems that I enjoyed. The first book I plan to pick up is The Ode Less Traveled by Stephen Fry. I love Stephen Fry and the book will hopefully be a novice guide to getting into and enjoying poetry.

 

Non-Fiction goals For the Year

 

Since the year is to be more intentional with my reading I have a goal of being more studious with my non-fiction. There are several topics that I want to go in depth on, some for career/work development, and some purely because I am curious. On the professional development side: I have a machine learning side project I am going to be working on with a colleague and thus I need to know more about that. It's a topic that I have read about with interest but only from a high level/bigger implication standpoint, so the first quarter of this year will be spent going deep into the math behind it all.

 

Other topics I want to study are law/justice. I have several 1L level books on torts, property, and the (US) constitution law which keep reminding me I have no idea how our laws work and everything I know is wrong. I also have A Theory of Justice by Rawls which is less technical more philosophy of law as a counterbalance.

 

The third topic will be business/econ/finance. I am an engineer by trade and training but I want to be better at knowing how money gets made and moved around instead of focusing on the widgets I make.

 

Old Man Grumbles about Society Goal

 

The last goal is to read some philosophy. This year I am going to tackle Walden by Thoreau and Stoic Meditations by Marcus Aurelius. These books are small enough to always keep in my bag, so it'll be a year long read-and-annotate type thing. Why these two books? I dunno, I think as I start getting into the old man stage of life, I find myself wanting to disconnect from the big city fast paced life style I've been living the last 10 years or so. I've always wanted to read these two since they are considered classics of self-reliance and inward reflection.

 

 

Anyways, those are the goals. Numbers wise, I will probably get through 30 or so books this year.

 

Happy reading!

[bigm141414]

6 hours ago, MezzotheLefty said:

I got the new Critical Role book Kith and Kin for Christmas so I think that's my first book of the year.

 

Ooooo you gotta let me know how it is. I love me anything CR related. The new animated series comes out soon as well as their Taldorei DnD adventure book which will end up on my adventuring shelf this year.

[Gemma]

I read fewer last year than my goal but I'm good with that - less audiobooks on my commute was due to finding more podcasts that interested me. 

 

This year I am returning to the Book Riot Challenge.  I used to do this every year, but the last few years I have let it slide and I've fallen into some reading ruts.

 

Last year my fiction reading was almost exclusively fantasy sprinkled with occasional murder mysteries.  I'd like to find more well done, creepily atmospheric horror, so if anyone has recommendations I'm all ears.  (I'm a Shirley Jackson and Edgar Allen Poe fangirl) 

 

Nonfiction-wise, I have been collecting underpants with a steady diet of Self-Help and How to Write Good.  Book Riot has tasked me with a memoir, a non-fiction YA comic, and a history, so those will break that rut up a bit. 

 

I'm currently reading Burnout: The Secret to Unlocking the Stress Cycle (which I love) and The Magic Casement: An Anthology. of Fairy Poetry (which, like most poetry anthologies, has poems that I love and poems that I skim over very quickly because *yawn*) 

 

[juliebarkley]

My goal is more intentional focused reading with time to absorb and room to roam. My chosen books right now are How to Read Non-Fiction Like a Professor and Lock Every Door.

 

23 hours ago, Scaly Freak said:

The sexy black library card will be mine!

Your library has the coolest reading rewards I have ever seen, truly.

 

3 hours ago, bigm141414 said:

This ^ perfectly describes my book habits for as long as I have had money to buy books. I probably have something around 40 books on my shelves that I need to read, but I keep buying more and more books.

Me too, but with library books.

 

3 hours ago, bigm141414 said:

This year I am going to tackle Walden by Thoreau and Stoic Meditations by Marcus Aurelius.

I've had my eye on those for ages.

 

26 minutes ago, Gemma said:

I'd like to find more well done, creepily atmospheric horror, so if anyone has recommendations I'm all ears.  (I'm a Shirley Jackson and Edgar Allen Poe fangirl) 

Lock Every Door looks like it will be sort of psychological thriller/horror, but I've barely begun it so I can't vouch for its quality. It's dedicated to Ira Levin; you could try Rosemary's Baby. The Exorcist was also good. If you are okay with teen and want to try a zombie book, I recommend Rot and Ruin by Jonathan Maberry. It's not gory or sensational; rather, it spends some philosophical time on what it means to be human.

[bigm141414]

39 minutes ago, juliebarkley said:

My chosen books right now are How to Read Non-Fiction Like a Professor

 

This has been on my Amazon wishlist for at least 6 months now. I'd love to know what your thoughts on it are after you are done reading. And I'll probably bug you in like 9 months to see if you use any of the lessons in your future readings. 

 

42 minutes ago, juliebarkley said:

I've had my eye on those for ages.

 

 

No time like 2022 for introspective reading.

 

 

[Scaly Freak]

1 hour ago, Gemma said:

I'm currently reading Burnout: The Secret to Unlocking the Stress Cycle (which I love)

 

I read this about a year ago, and would love to hear your thoughts on it.

[Artemis Prime]

2 hours ago, Gemma said:

This year I am returning to the Book Riot Challenge.

I like the idea of these challenges, but finding books that fit all the criteria is too much work for me. What I want is someone to find the books for me and I will read them. Actually, my sister loves researching books, so I might ask if she'd be willing to do this for me.

[Scaly Freak]

56 minutes ago, Artemis Prime said:

I like the idea of these challenges, but finding books that fit all the criteria is too much work for me. What I want is someone to find the books for me and I will read them. Actually, my sister loves researching books, so I might ask if she'd be willing to do this for me.

 

In previous years they have turned the categories into links to pages that provide a half dozen options that all fit the criteria. Might be worth checking back with them again in a week or so.

[juliebarkley]

57 minutes ago, Artemis Prime said:

I like the idea of these challenges, but finding books that fit all the criteria is too much work for me. What I want is someone to find the books for me and I will read them. Actually, my sister loves researching books, so I might ask if she'd be willing to do this for me.

I believe you have a thread of people here who would be happy to research books for you...

[Gemma]

11 hours ago, juliebarkley said:

 

Lock Every Door looks like it will be sort of psychological thriller/horror, but I've barely begun it so I can't vouch for its quality. It's dedicated to Ira Levin; you could try Rosemary's Baby. The Exorcist was also good. If you are okay with teen and want to try a zombie book, I recommend Rot and Ruin by Jonathan Maberry. It's not gory or sensational; rather, it spends some philosophical time on what it means to be human.

 

Oooh, these sound great. Also, either Rosemary's Baby or The Exorcist would meet one of my challenge tasks "read a book whose movie or TV adaptation you have seen (but haven't read the book.) I was worried about that one, generally speaking I always try to read the book first, but I never did with either of these. 

 

10 hours ago, Scaly Freak said:

 

I read this about a year ago, and would love to hear your thoughts on it.

It is well written, with solid research explained simply (but not so simply that it becomes meaningless or misses nuance.) I enjoy the blend of explanation/anecdote/example.  I'm about half through and already realizing that it is probably not doing me a lot of good because I have a walk-in closet full of similar underpants already, but it would have been a game-changer if 27 year old me could have got her hands on it. 

 

I have an acquaintance who appears, from the outside, to be trying to self-induce a bleeding ulcer and to have fully internalized Human Giver Syndrome, my main thought while reading this is "I wonder how I could loan this to K without seeming intrusive or unsolicited advice-y?" 
 

9 hours ago, Artemis Prime said:

I like the idea of these challenges, but finding books that fit all the criteria is too much work for me. What I want is someone to find the books for me and I will read them. Actually, my sister loves researching books, so I might ask if she'd be willing to do this for me.

 

Some of them just floor me - I rely heavily on this Goodreads group, because I am the last person on earth to find a "nonfiction YA comic." It never occured to me that nonfiction comics were even a thing! But someone in that group suggested  March, it's about John Lewis, it looks fantastic and I would never have known about it without challenges like this.  That's the main reason I like them, they expose me to material that I would never think to look for otherwise.  

[Scaly Freak]

6 hours ago, Gemma said:

I have an acquaintance who appears, from the outside, to be trying to self-induce a bleeding ulcer and to have fully internalized Human Giver Syndrome, my main thought while reading this is "I wonder how I could loan this to K without seeming intrusive or unsolicited advice-y?" 

 

Unless you acquaintance agrees that their life choices are causing problems for them, that might well be a lost cause. Unfortunately.

[Defining]

My brain has given up, and at this point reading has just been about escapism for me - I've been struggling to focus on anything new, and even with re-reading stuff I'm gravitating back to 'old familiar' reads that I've gone through multiple times, rather than revisiting something useful in the non-fiction realm.

This year's reading goal is simple: don't let reading get in the way of everything else. And in a perfect world, try to read something new, without distractions, or googling for spoilers to be sure I want to finish it ('cause that's cheating); and/or revisit some of the non-fiction that was too dense to appreciate with only 1-2 read throughs.

[Asha Phoenix]

Is it just me, or does anyone else take fiction books and read the last sentence in the book before starting it? Like, I've been doing that since I can remember and have absolutely no clue why I do it. 🤷‍♀️ Just wondered if anyone else does this, or has something they do when reading?