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Want to Read More This Year? Join the 2017 Reading Challenge
It's time to bring on the 2017 Reading Challenge! Give yourself a resolution you'll want to keep: a promise to spend more time reading this year. Goodreads makes it easy to set your own reading goal, track your progress, and celebrate your success with our much-loved Reading Challenge.
In 2016 alone, more than three million readers joined the Challenge and collectively read 37.8 million books. Wondering what all those people read? The top new books read in the 2016 Challenge were: Harry Potter and the Cursed Child, Parts 1 & 2, A Court of Mist and Fury, and When Breath Becomes Air (see more of the most-read 2016 Challenge books).
Set your goal:
- Make this fun, not stressful! Start off with a small, easily achievable goal to avoid feeling daunted by your Challenge. If you hit the number early, you can always stretch yourself and increase your goal.
- Need help settling on a number? Some members like to set a goal based on the year: 12 books (one per month), 24 books (two per month), or even 52 books (one per week).
- The Reading Challenge is all about what you want to read. If you're focused on tackling long, literary classics, account for the time you'll need and set a smaller goal. If you're breezing through lots of great graphic novels, you can be more aggressive.
Find great books to read:
- Get recommendations tailored just for you as you rate books you've already read. The more books you rate, the better your recommendations will be.
- You can also browse the thousands of reading lists on Listopia—where you'll find categories on everything ranging from 2017's Biggest Book-to-Film Adaptions to Books Everyone Should Read at Least Once.
- Find books with great buzz by looking through the winners and runners up in the 2016 Goodreads Choice Awards, representing the readers' selections of the year's best books—more than 400 books across 20 categories to add to your reading list.
Adjust your settings:
- Pro tip for Kindle readers: Connect your Goodreads and Kindle accounts for more features to help you reach your goal. To connect your accounts, click here and scroll to the Amazon section to connect your accounts.
- U.S., U.K., & Ireland members: Goodreads is available on most Kindles and Fire tablets so you can easily update which books you are Currently Reading and have Read from inside the book. There's no need to switch to Goodreads to update the books you've read to make them count for your Challenge.
- U.S. members: If you use the Kindle app on your iPhone or iPad, keep your Reading Challenge count up-to-date by switching on Autoshelving. When you finish a book, both your Read shelf and progress toward your goal are automatically updated!
Productivity tips:
- Whispersync on Kindle: This Kindle feature allows you to read in bed on your Kindle ereader and then pick up where you left off with your Kindle app on your iOS or Android device during your morning commute.
- Use your local library's website to request books online and have them waiting for you. Plus, that due date provides an extra incentive to finish the book! Add your local library link as one of your Book Links so that whenever you discover a great book on Goodreads, you can easily open up the page on your library website and order the book.
- Listen to audiobooks. Our members say this is an easy way to read more books—you can listen while making dinner, exercising, or driving. Find some great audiobook suggestions here.
Be a Team Reader:
- Join one of our thousands of online reading groups that span across topics, themes, and genres. You'll be sure to find the perfect reading community waiting for you.
Find the time:
- Take some great advice from our Facebook and Twitter followers! We love this one: "Cut off all outside distractions. If your phone dies, let it die. Don't plug anything in until you're finished with your book. And get cozy. Make yourself a hot tea or hot chocolate and throw on some flannel pajamas."
What is your 2017 goal? And how to you make time to read? Tell us in the comments!
Comments Showing 101-150 of 157 (157 new)
message 101:
by
randy
(new)
Jan 07, 2017 05:27AM
some people on this post need to lighten-up. we are just talking about reading books which shouldn't be controversial. there are more important things going on in the world for you to get upset about.
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randy wrote: "some people on this post need to lighten-up. we are just talking about reading books which shouldn't be controversial. there are more important things going on in the world for you to get upset about."Sure, we could talk about terrorism, but that's not the topic of this particular discussion.
An opinion is an opinion, and there's nothing wrong with having one. Discussions are great, and this was too for a while. However, making assumptions about people doesn't come across as very nice or productive.
This is a really simple matter: everyone does things differently. If the reading challenge isn't someone's thing, that's fine, and there's nothing wrong with explaining why it's not. I just wish those of us who like it wouldn't get presumed as being something we're not or doing something we're not doing.
Goodreads is about variety, and that's the best part of it.
IAmBroke wrote: "I know I will get a lot of hate for this but it's all up to y'all people.I don't think the reading challenge is worth it. It puts a lot of unnecessary pressure on people to finish books or skim t..."
Seriously. . . ??? There's no gun to anyone's head pressuring them to take the challenge.
How about an option to get free books to read. At some of the prices i see here, at 2 books a month, thats like 30 dollars or more a month. I love to rwad, but honestly i pay for maybe 4 books a year, all orhers are frre. And i have a ton on my kindle to read. It would be mm great to use the ones i have in thwre for this challeng
Lorrie wrote: "How about an option to get free books to read. At some of the prices i see here, at 2 books a month, thats like 30 dollars or more a month. I love to rwad, but honestly i pay for maybe 4 books a ye..."The majority of books I read are free... I get them from the library!
Also, in Canada, two books a month would be closer to $40 or $50 a month..... books are stupid expensive here :(
Beate wrote: "My 2016 count would have been triple if I could add books I've re-read. I know you can add same book multiple times by various formats, but I'm a little OCD when it comes to books, and when I've re..."I completely agree! For the popsugar reading challenge that goodreads teams up with every year-the re read was an issue! One of the challenges was to re-read a book from high school. I ended up having to delete that book from my "read" section and add it again to get it to count. I wish my re-read could have been counted.
IAmBroke wrote: "Reading should not be about duress on finishing a book as fast as possible but a pleasant experience that provides a serene and informative escapism from stress (no matter what you read). It shouldn't be a 'challenge' to read books."It was a challenge to read your first book, when you were first learning how to read. No matter how many books you have read, there are still plenty of challenging books left to read - books that contain words, ideas, concepts, and so on that are unfamiliar to you. Books in foreign languages, even. If reading a book feels effortless, there's a good chance you aren't learning anything. If you don't read to learn, that's fine - just as it's fine to walk in circles around your back yard every day and never try anything new. But some people want, or need, to push their brains. (It might even protect against Alzheimer's to some extent.)
A person who reads only pleasant, escapist material will be dangerously uninformed about the planet we actually inhabit. Topics such as climate change, the ongoing mass extinction event, the coming wave of automation and robots that could cause massive unemployment, the scourge of fundamentalist religion, corporate corruption of politics, drug addiction, our own eventual death - these are not pleasant topics. The fact that most people are uninformed about many of them, or actively misinformed, is itself a great source of danger. But I like to read difficult books about science, politics, religion, race, and every other social taboo. People get uncomfortable discussing things when they have strong beliefs that they can't justify logically - that is, when they don't know why they believe what they believe. I want to know.
Generally in life to get a reward one usually has to work for it. The amount of effort is often proportional to the result. Rewards that are worth more usually cost more. That often applies to reading, particularly if you are reading because you want to solve some sort of problem (learn a marketable skill, make the world a better place, overcome a bad habit, etc.). If it were possible to no-stress your way to a Ph.D., everybody would have several.
Learning is inherently stressful. To learn something new, you have to push your brain out of its comfort zone by bombarding it with new facts and ideas. The people who are the most knowledgeable - and therefore often the most valuable - have spent more time doing this than most people.
Keeping track of how many books you read is like keeping track of any other measurable that is relevant to a goal. If you want to retire comfortably, you have to keep track of your retirement funds, and so on. And since Goodreads is a social networking site, by participating in a reading challenge, you might inspire virtuous behavior by someone else. We're a bunch of slightly-evolved monkeys who feel pressure to keep up with each other.
Bjoern wrote: "It's not the bloody pageturning olympics where higher thicker longer will bring you eternal fame and big industry endorsements so you'll train to go for all you possibly can and maybe too much., [...]"
Well, there are far worse ways to compete.
Todd wrote: "I've never understood people being judged by how many books they've read." Are you saying you don't notice any differences between a person who has read zero books and a person who has read 1000? Well-read people tend to be more interesting, more valuable, a source of new ideas, and so on. Provided, of course, that they haven't just read trash.
If you've ever paid for a particular type of expertise, you probably judged people in part by how many books they had read in their area(s) of expertise. When you hire an accountant to prepare your taxes, a lawyer to defend you in court, a physician to treat your disease, or an airline pilot to take you high in the sky and back down safely again, and so on, these people can only do their jobs if they have read large numbers of the appropriate books.
According to success guru Brian Tracy, you can become one of the leading experts in a given field by reading 500 books about it. Whatever you do for a living - or for fun - you can probably do it better by reading more books about it. And when you judge various people by how good they are at something, to some degree you may be judging them by how many books they have read about that something.
Knowledge constantly increases, and changes, so the need to keep reading never ceases.
The more you read, the more you recognize people all around you making dumb mistakes. For example, look at all the new construction on beachfront properties in Florida. Nobody who had read a few books about man-made climate change could be that stupid.
Daniel wrote: "IAmBroke wrote: "Reading should not be about duress on finishing a book as fast as possible but a pleasant experience that provides a serene and informative escapism from stress (no matter what you...""We're a bunch of slightly-evolved monkeys who feel pressure to keep up with each other" ... https://www.amazon.it/Kingdom-Speech-...
Nyssa wrote: "IAmBroke wrote: "I know I will get a lot of hate for this but it's all up to y'all people.I don't think the reading challenge is worth it. It puts a lot of unnecessary pressure on people to finis..."
My goal in visiting today was to post a comment about a way for rereading support. For instance, I have read Harry Potter #1 about 10 times, Key to the Keplian over a dozen, and many of the Terry Pratchett Discworld and Janet Evanovich Stephanie Plum series books are multiple reads. It would be good to just have a way to mark second, third, etc reads. For example, I read Harry Potter #1 when it first came out, the last time about 2 years ago. Just having a way to enter each date finished would be great.
I had to re-adjust my number of books. I found myself skimming and such. I want to enjoy the books I read and not feel rushed. I lowered my yearly goad by 5 books and it was much more enjoyable.
I set a reasonable goal that I can achieve, but I don't pressure myself into completing it. I just let it happen. Sometimes I get so busy I can't achieve my monthly goal, sometimes, I just fall asleep and read only a couple of pages (chapters). So if I go over the number, ok, if I am under the number ok too. IT IS NOT A JOB!!!hehe. No one is paying me to reach the final number. For years I worked in a career where certain goals were set for me and I had to reach, now I am retired, I live at my own pace. Thanks Goodreads
Beate wrote: "These reading challenges aren't about stress. Everyone who reads, reads to escape. Regardless. Or we wouldn't be reading. Just because we like something little extra to go with our love for reading..."I totally agree with what you say. I strongly believe that reading is like a therapy. It helps we humans to organize our thoughts, read our history and explore our future.
CC wrote: "I set up my challenge every year at 12. It seems achievable. If I want it to be more challenging, then I only read bigger books (400+ pages) - like this year for example...
But if I fall behind on..."
I do 700+ pages but I cheat a lot with 200 Papges ones you can finish one day of the weekend.
Irrespective, book is book, just make sure you learnt something from it, no knowledge is lost.
Is this for any book or books just recommended by good reads
Mary wrote: "Is this for any book or books just recommended by good reads"The challenge is for any book. GR is just giving you a way to track them, if you would like.
I'm doing my 1st challenge and I don't see how to enter what I was reading or let the group know that I've finished it. Help me, please!
This is my first year trying the challenge. I thought it would be an interesting way to keep up & figure out how many books I actually do read. It encouraged me to get on my public library database and put a few books in the queue. Also hoping it will nudge me to pick up a few of the books that have been lingering on my shelf and actually read them (so I have room for more;-) No pressure, no competition. Happy reading y'all.
Cynthia wrote: "I'm doing my 1st challenge and I don't see how to enter what I was reading or let the group know that I've finished it. Help me, please!"Just enter the books as you normally do. The challenge keeps track for you. Just make sure the date you completed the book is entered!
To find what you've done, click on "home" and look for the challenge counter on the left.
If you don't know how to enter, go to the "search" and enter the bar code numbers - the bottom set is best, or the title, and enter as much detail for a review as you want, or just save that you read the book, and the date you finished it.
I really wish there was a way to record books that I reread so I can actually reach the goals I set but I don't want to override the original dates because I like to know when I first read a book and what age I was.I also think doing it by pages would be a good idea because while I try not to stop reading a book halfway through (I've only ever done that twice and I've picked one of them back up and read it the whole way through since then) I do read a lot of thick books roughly 600-1000 pages and it makes me feel like I haven't read much because those books take longer to read and it doesn't feel like I'm actually making progress in the challenge.
Adding either of these options would make me more likely to complete the challenge and continue participating in it
The Quaker Cafe by Brenda Bevan Remmes. Her 1st novel! So wonderful. Educational, as well, in my case. I knew they had staunch religious beliefs and were loyal to family and that they made furniture that will last for generations. I have learned so much in reading this. I hope that this is a huge bestseller in 2017 so multitudes of you readers out there experience Brenda's tale of the Quakers. Finished on 1/7/2017
Rach wrote: "I really wish there was a way to record books that I reread so I can actually reach the goals I set but I don't want to override the original dates because I like to know when I first read a book a..."I wind up putting both dates in the review or in my notes (the only for my eyes stuff) because I too read many books multiple times, and it is a shame to not have them count, especially when you read the same book multiple times in the same year.
Rach wrote: "I really wish there was a way to record books that I reread so I can actually reach the goals I set but I don't want to override the original dates because I like to know when I first read a book a..."I agree, a page challenge/a way to keep track of pages would be nice, so that the books you don't complete count for something.
I took part in last year's goodreads reading challange. It was a fun discovering a new world of characters and stories. I am too excited for the new year's reading challange. Happy new year to all the readerts wwith a lot of wishes for participating in goodreads reading challange.
I usually set Reading goals each year; but not numerical - just vague goals "Read more books this year". In 2016, I set a numerical goal using Goodreads for the first time. I met my reading goal of 50 books and read some extraordinary books this year. A big two thumbs up from me on the Goodreads Reading Challenge. The goal was not just a checklist of me but helped me focus my time on making more time to read! Participating again this year!!
CC wrote: "I set up my challenge every year at 12. It seems achievable. If I want it to be more challenging, then I only read bigger books (400+ pages) - like this year for example...
But if I fall behind on..."
I do the same but I also have a couple of books on the side that I go to but he book listed in reading now is the book I want to read n 10 days.
The most beautiful that talking about a book discuss talking about.A book in week
So it be more interest .
In all cases
please active my Challenge 2017
goodreads
Thanks all
Hi DearI suggest to read a some books together and talking about it .
good?
Beate wrote: "My 2016 count would have been triple if I could add books I've re-read. I know you can add same book multiple times by various formats, but I'm a little OCD when it comes to books, and when I've re..."Reading different editions . . great I prefer reading print editions or changing ... I have lost saved reviews and had to start over . Now I save in an email. ... copy and paste ... but older reviews gone forever a n d not the same thing as writing a review immediately after reading.
Reading a different edition should be accounted as a separate read. For me, sincerely feels different even holding that printed edition.
I never choose a high number of books for the reading challenge new year ... life happens ... reading challenge should not be starting the year off with added pressure ... I have enough of that ... reading is my happy go to place. .... the number that is too high for me is my "To Read" #.
Kangoor wrote: "Would it be possible to set reading goals for either the number of books we want to read, or the number of pages? Or maybe both for some readers. I would really love such an option.Also, how about..."
I agree! It's also a lot easier to read 10 100-page books than 3 700-page books. And a lot of books I want to read are more than 500 pages
Sounds like a great idea to have a choice of either books read or pages read or both. I like to try and read 200 pages a week which would come to 10,000 pages a year I almost made it for 2016 I read over 9000 pages. Close but no cigar.
One reason I hate giving up on a book is because the pages I read/the time I spent reading is "wasted" since it does not go towards my book total.
Tough for sure. I do have 2 books that I have not finished, but every now and then I will go to one and read a few chapters until I have to put it away again. The other book was way over my head, so I have stopped reading it altogether. The sad thing is I love the author but it is a hard read for a political layman like me.
I know this is a bit out of the actual topic but can somebody assist me because I cannot access these books... however I was able to select the ones I want to read but I just cannot actually open them.
Jasmine wrote: "One reason I hate giving up on a book is because the pages I read/the time I spent reading is "wasted" since it does not go towards my book total."Actually it could go against your book total.
I created a new shelf called "Couldn't get through". Instead of putting a book in read or listened, if I can't finish it I put it in 'CGT' and it counts against my challenge total for the year.
Personally I try to complete enough books to actually meet my yearly goal of books outside the number that I didn't finish.
Luyanda wrote: "I was able to select the ones I want to read but I just cannot actually open them."Your post is not clear about what you selected and what you mean by opening them. If you mean that you selected books on Goodreads, note that Goodreads does not contain the actual text of most books which you could open. Most books are copyrighted, with all rights reserved, so to read the books legally you must either buy your own copies or borrow them from a library or friend. If you live in a civilized area, you are probably close to a library that contains more books than you could read in a lifetime - although probably not every book you might want to read. Libraries are getting better, though, with options for checking out ebooks from very large centralized repositories, so you might look into that.
Many books are available for free, either because they are old enough to be out of copyright and in the public domain (including a huge number of classic great books) or because their authors published them under a free license.
Jasmine wrote: "One reason I hate giving up on a book is because the pages I read/the time I spent reading is "wasted" since it does not go towards my book total."Try reading book chapters in a reverse alternating order, starting from the beginning and the end. That is, read the first chapter, the last chapter, the second chapter, the penultimate chapter, and so on. Then you finish in the middle. (Of course this applies to non-fiction books that you can read in arbitrary order. Most novels would probably read better in the order they are written; but hey, if you are stuck in the middle, desperate times call for desperate measures.)
Getting through books can be hard because you're getting tired of an author as you get to the halfway point. If you read in the alternating order, then when you get to the halfway point you're done.
Also it's good to read the back matter first (index, references, notes, etc.). Then when you read the corresponding material in the main body of the book, you're already primed for it.
Related observation: if you are writing an expository book, the first chapters are the most important. Some large fraction of your readers won't get beyond them. The book should make its most important points early.
Daniel wrote: "Luyanda wrote: "I was able to select the ones I want to read but I just cannot actually open them."Your post is not clear about what you selected and what you mean by opening them. If you mean th..."
Oh okay, thank you. I wasn't aware of that.
Luyanda wrote: "I wasn't aware of that."I can understand the confusion, because Goodreads does not announce as clearly as it could that it is merely a bibiographic catalog rather than a repository of actual books. When Goodreads says "book" it usually does not mean what an ordinary human understands a "book" to be. Depending on where a person enters the site for the first time, Goodreads could very well look like a place where there should be some way to see actual books. But all you have here is a fancy version of the card catalog in a physical library.
Daniel wrote: "Luyanda wrote: "I wasn't aware of that."I can understand the confusion, because Goodreads does not announce as clearly as it could that it is merely a bibiographic catalog rather than a repositor..."
I agree only in part. As a matter of fact you can also see what others think of a book you have reviewed, you can share your thoughts, you can show your books on your shelves, you can start a blog, you can link to open access books ...
Antonio wrote: "you can also see what others think of a book you have reviewed, you can share your thoughts, you can show your books on your shelves, you can start a blog, you can link to open access books ..."Yes, on re-reading my comment I see I should not have said "merely a bibliographic catalog." Technically, Goodreads is a: Social cataloging application. Users can attach information to a book's entry that goes far beyond what a traditional paper card catalog can hold.
But still, people who look at Goodreads with no prior knowledge of what the site is and isn't can be forgiven for expecting to see actual books here. In the case of books which are not open-access or out of copyright, such users may become frustrated - "where is the #*&$ book?"
Am I the only person who has an extra invisible book showing up in my Challenge counter? It says I've read 11 books when I've only read 10 but it still just shows 10 when I hit view books.
Goodreads has added the ability to track multiple reading dates for a book! So our requests have been answered. Thanks Goodreads!
Adrian wrote: "I would like it if I could select only a few of my shelves to count toward my reading challenge."A possible ugly workaround would be to create more than one Goodreads account, if they let you.
Another ugly workaround would be to mark books read under a false date (such as a date in a previous year, or exactly 10 or 20 years before the actual date) if you don't want them on this year's reading challenge total. Goodreads lets you set the date when you finished reading a book to anything you want. I've used that to add books I read before I started using Goodreads.
Another strategy would be to read only books from the shelves you want to count until you finish your reading challenge for the year, then read the other books you don't want to count for the remainder of the year.
Or let the other books you read pile up on your currently reading shelf, and mark them all as read on January 1, 2018.
