Do We Really Need to Be "Challenged" to Read?

The Guardian Books Blog has an interesting post by Richard Lea on what he considers to be "the bad side" of the annual Goodreads Reading Challenge, for which more than 240,000 members have already signed up this year.

Lea contends that Goodreads is essentially preaching to the choir: its members are already readers so the challenge is not a means of encouraging literacy, but rather a way of putting quantity ahead of quality to encourage the sale of more books. He points out that the quality of our reading experience is not enhanced by doubling the number of books we read each year.

For the full text, please see http://www.theguardian.com/books/book....

What are your thoughts on this? Do you think the Goodreads Reading Challenge is important in terms of reminding us to put aside time to read? Does this volume of reading detract from the time we have to enjoy the intimacy of a novel before we move on to the next one? I'd like to hear from you.