Q1 Challenge Report 2015

Happy April Fool’s Day! This post is not a joke. Rather, it is time to report in on how I’ve been doing with the reading goals I set myself all the way back in January.

2015 Goodreads Challenge

I set my reading meter to 116 books, and have gotten mildly ahead of schedule. I have read 40 books so far, putting me at 35% finished when I only need to be at 25%. The original idea was to slow down a bit and focus on my second goal, but I already had a bunch of books on hold at the library, so I plowed ahead and kept reading them as they came in. I did have to continue to keep my eye on what I was reading though, in order to stay on top of my second goal.

Diversify 2015

Reading 116 books in a year isn’t much of a challenge for me, but last year only 10% of the books I read were by authors who aren’t white. This isn’t surprising given the state of the publishing industry, but it was something I wanted to do better at. Knowing myself, I need to have a measurable goal in order to change, so I set the challenge that 25% of the books I read in 2015 would be by authors who are members of a visible minority.

Of the 26 books I have reviewed so far this year, 12 of them have been by diverse authors, putting my reviewed books at an amazing 46%. However, I’ve also read quite a few books that I haven’t reviewed. Of the 40 total books I’ve read this year, 14 of them were by diverse authors, so my actual total is more like 35%, still well ahead of my goal of 25%. You can find the qualifying reviews by checking out the posts in my Challenges category.

I’ve discovered that plenty of books by diverse authors are crossing my radar on a regular basis; it is just a matter of flagging those books and giving them a higher priority on my TBR pile. Even without pushing myself to read genres or topics that are outside my usual areas of interest, I have had no trouble finding plenty of diverse books for this challenge. I’ve got a stack of a dozen more qualifying books standing by, and still more on hold at the library. I finally read the truly excellent Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian by Sherman Alexie. I became utterly immersed in Aaliya’s strange literary rituals in An Unneccesary Woman by Rabih Alameddine, and next week I am leading a book group discussion of The Book of Unknown Americans by Cristina Henriquez. I didn’t love every book I read (looking at you Songs of Willow Frost) but so far, the challenge has been an overwhelmingly positive experience.

How are your 2015 reading challenges going? Do you have any diverse books you would like to recommend?