The mornings are dark, the evenings are rainy, and autumn has arrived. Just like that, another quarter gone, and it is time to dig into the numbers!
2016 Goodreads Challenge
Back in January, I set my sights on reading 130 books this year. I’m now up to 113, or 87%, so even though September was a bit of a slow reading month, I should finish the challenge comfortably. I like to go into the last quarter strong, because holidays and travel do have a way of messing up routines. However, I did a terrible job of logging these to Goodreads throughout the quarter, so I spent a good part of Sunday going through my reading notebook and inputting missed entries. Apologies to the newsfeeds of my Goodreads followers!
Maintain Diversity Awareness
Diversity was the focus of my 2015 reading challenge, and while I set some new goals for 2016, I didn’t want to lose that thread entirely. So while I didn’t set a formal target, I kept tracking the stats. I noticed my numbers had dipped from Q1 to Q2, so I made a quick and dirty tracking sheet in my reading notebook to fill in throughout the quarter. Sure enough, actively watching the numbers caused me to rally, and 21 of the 45 books I read this quarter qualified, or about 47%. I reviewed 15 of these 21 titles on my blog, so I’m not just reading these books, I’m talking about them, too.
Even out my fiction to non-fiction ration
I have a tendency to list towards reading purely fiction if I don’t push myself to pick up non-fiction, even though I really enjoy it. Fiction books are also often quicker to read, so when I am planning my time poorly, it is easier to fit one in to get out a review. This quarter, 23 of the 45 books I read were non-fiction, which I think is the first time the scales have tipped even slightly the other way. However, this wasn’t quite as evident on the blog, where only 10 of the 26 reviews this quarter were about non-fiction titles. So there is still some room for improvement here.
Read more Canadian Literature
Last year I only read 11 Canadian books, five of which were for Canada Reads. I wanted to do better than that this year, and at the end of Q2 I had equaled that number. This quarter, I can consider the goal officially met, as I read another five, bringing my total for 2016 so far up to 16. From where I am sitting, I can see a pile of eight unread Canadian books, so I will aim to knock off a few more before the year is out.
Update Blog
I did most of my work on this goal in the first quarter of the year, but I still have two items outstanding. I want to update my photo, which was taken almost five years ago, and launch a new feature. I didn’t complete either item in Q3, but I did build the page for the feature. You can consider this my public commitment to publish it by the end of the of the month. While the page is done, this feature is going to require a few guinea pigs, who have not yet been lined up. Leave a comment if you want to volunteer! And while it was not on my list of planned updates at the beginning of the year, this quarter I created a Top Picks category and menu to make it easier to find my most recommended books.
So it looks like there is still work to do before the year is out. Stay tuned! How are your reading challenges coming along?
Required Reading 