You may recall a couple of weeks ago I wrote about the reading pledge I made on Goodreads, the social media site for bookworms, to read 50 books in 2018. This was on top of the deadline I set for myself to finish my manuscript for Book 3.
Well, I did both. I not only finished my manuscript, I also put it through two rounds of edits with a professional editor, but there’s still a little more tweaking to do before I send it to an agent. Of course, I’ll do it –even though by now I feel a little like Jack Nicholson’s character in The Shining!!!
Not The Best Way To Read
I would much rather be lounging around (in the sun) reading — and critiquing– other author’s efforts. I already have a list of books I want to read this year. I just haven’t entered my Goodreads pledge since I’m not sure it’s the best way to enjoy reading.
Downside of Challenge
This is what I didn’t like about being part of the Goodreads challenge :
As I blogged a couple of weeks ago, I was 22 books behind at the start of December. (Or at least, I still had 10 to read because 12 were already read, but needed reviews.) And, so around December 27th, I picked several books from my Kindle library that I knew would be easy page-turners (Liane Moriarty’s Nine Perfect Strangers and Jodi Picoult’s Small Great Things) rather than persevering with Anne Applebaum’s Iron Curtain: The Crushing of Eastern Europe or Bleak House ( a Charles Dickens tome I have been reading for about a year!!!) Not that Liane Moriarty or Jodi Picoult were any less enjoyable for it.
Should Have DNF’d
Because I don’t count a book as read until I’ve reviewed it, and because I generally don’t like to give a book a bad rating 1-2 stars, I would generally ditch the book and pick up something else. But I didn’t have the time to do that in order to complete my challenge, so I gave one thriller a 1-star rating — which I really hated doing. I generally try to apply the Thumper approach to my book reviews, and “if I can’t say something nice, I don’t say anything at all.”
Expensive To Meet Challenge
I don’t know about you but unless you’re one of those favored readers/bloggers who get Advanced Review Copies, (or you get all your books from a library), you need to actually shell out dollars for the books you are going to read as part of your reading challenge. Ebooks are cheaper than hardcover and some paperbacks, and Bookbub deals are cheaper than ebooks. Even so, reading can become expensive, and a pleasurable activity shouldn’t land you in debt.
Adding To Stress Levels
Nor should a pleasurable activity add to your stress levels. Everything is a competition these days, and adding books as “read” so all your friends and followers can see this and “like” and comment on it makes reading less of a pleasurable activity and more of the type of competitive activity (best vacation, best baby, best meal) you post about on Facebook. For what?
I don’t know what Goodreads will do? Will they post a list of winners? Will the winners be users with most books read, or is everyone who completed his/her challenge a winner? And who will actually care in the long run?
More than 4 million readers on Goodreads made a pledge to read 260 million books. The actual number of books finished was 55 million, and 696,846 participants completed their challenges. The average number of books pledged was 61. Here is my list of 50. You can click on any of the books –and scroll down past the book blurb — to read my review.
Highlight Of My Reading Year
This was the year I discovered Jack Reacher, creation extraordinaire of author Lee Child. I made the discovery through a Bookbub deal. Then, I read two more Jack Reachers because I knew they would be fast-paced, page-turning thrillers. It was an easy, delightful way to add two more books to my challenge.
Now there are still 23 out there which I have on my TBR list. It’s a comfort to know that I have more than 20 Jack Reachers on my go-to list. It’s rather like finding I had six seasons of The Sopranos to watch when I retired from my legal career a few years back.
For any, or all, of the above reasons, I probably won’t be pledging to read any specific number of books this year.
Happy reading — and writing– in 2019.
I know what you mean about challenges maybe not being so good for you. I sign up for quite a few of them and sometimes I feel the pressure. Then I have to tell myself that this is just for fun than there is no prize for making the goal. I know it’s a bit different with writers when they have to write so many words or pages per day and then return the edits back by a certain date.
You are so right, Paula! I suppose what is really at the bottom of my dislike for calling this a challenge is that reading is a great joy for me, and I think for most users on Goodreads — so it’s never really a challenge. The real challenge is to complete all our other tasks so that we can sit down and read!!!