Around the Year in 52 Books discussion
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2016 Popsugar Reading Challenge
Only 41 categories!A book based on a Fairy Tale
A National Book Award winner
A YA bestseller
A book you haven't read since high school
A book set in your home state
A book translated into english
A romance set in the future
A book set in Europe
A book that's under 150 pages
A New York Times bestseller
A book that's becoming a Movie in 2016
A book recommended by someone you've just met
A self-improvement book
A book you can finish in a day
A book written by a celebrity
A political memoir
A book at least 100 years older than you
A book more than 600 pages
A book from Oprah's Book Club
A Science Fiction novel
A book recommended by a family member
A Graphic Novel
A book that is published in 2016
A book with a protagonist who has your occupation
A book that takes place during Summer
A book and its prequel
A murder mystery
A book written by a comedian
A dystopian novel
A book with a blue Cover
A book of Poetry
The 1st book you see in a bookstore
A classic from the 20th century
A book from the library
An autobiography
A book about a road trip
A book about a culture you're unfamiliar with
A satirical book
A book that takes place on an island
A book guaranteed to bring you joy
How many of these fit our current challenge? Just curious if anyone did the math. :)
Less interesting list than the 2015 one and with the "uglies" still there (aka romance, home state, memoir, autobiography, recommended by family). I totally have problems with "from the library" (I don't use one) and "1st book in a bookstore" (not the poorly written hyped book, noooooo).If I don't count the ones already in our 2016 RC, I'm interested only in 2 (A book based on a Fairy Tale & A book that's becoming a Movie in 2016), so I can safely say that I prefer our challenge and I don't regret to not join the popsugar party in 2016.
I definitely think our homemade challenge is far superior! But I'm still going to do this one (although there are some repeats from this year).
Ashley, if I didn't miss some:A National Book Award winner (our is just award)
A YA bestseller (our is just YA)
A book set in Europe (if you chose this continent for our week)
A book that's under 150 pages (our is 200)
A book that is published in 2016
A book with a protagonist who has your occupation (could be the "hobby" one or "a profession you're interested in")
A book that takes place during Summer (possible summer/beach list)
A book and its prequel (can be 1st in the series and 0.5)
A murder mystery
A dystopian novel
An autobiography (our is wider)
A book about a culture you're unfamiliar with (our is wider)
Why not? :) I'm on track to read 90 books this year and only 5 were before the end of April :)
Awesome :) I think I might do it overlapping with the other. I don't think I can pull off two completely independent ones.Zaz, I get pretty much all my books from the library. I used to buy them, but I have no more room on my shelves! Our local library is pretty awesome.
For those doing the 2 challenges, it will be interesting to see the books for some other categories (I recognize several we have in the Reject list).Marta > ebooks are evil (or something like this) in France, so most of the libraries don't use them and only french translations are available for paperbooks (another problem is the fact that fantasy is for teenagers here, so few titles are available in adult library rooms). I used to go often for picture books in my previous city as it had a large choice for them :)
I usually buy books on my Nook. I started using the library for the 2015 challenge, but I started itching like crazy from all the dust and stuff on the books that I stopped.
I will create a challenge bookshelf for this, but will start early and finish whenever. Have so much to read that I don't want to confine it to 2016 :)
Zaz - I forgot you are reading in English in France, I would have trouble with non-English in the city library, too. In fact my biggest problem for the challenge was a book from my home town, because Hungarian books are difficult to come by - thank goodness I found an e-book version of Embers. I do love my Kindle!Aglaea - great idea of starting early! Why wait? It is for fun!
I'm in! Will try to complete independently from our 52 week challenge.
I'm ready to throw in the towel regarding a road trip novel. I keep reading reviews, but none on the Listopia lists so far seem worth spending time on.Also left to decide is the 2016 release and the occupation, but otherwise I'm all set. Had fewer suitable books at home than expected, but most have been on my TBR before.
On the other hand, now my five challenge lists have earmarked almost all unread fiction novels that I have.
Aglaea I'm reading Kamikaze Kangaroos!: A trip around Oz in a van called Rusty next year, it looks very good!
A political memoir? I couldn't be less interested if somebody paid me.
I might try to do it by overlapping books from our challenge!
I was thinking of using my wildcard for the political memoir, it doesn't interest me at all.
I actually wanted to read Hard Choices this year as a side read but had to hold off so I wouldn't get too far behind on the challenge.
Sophie wrote: "Aglaea I'm reading Kamikaze Kangaroos!: A trip around Oz in a van called Rusty next year, it looks very good!"Oooh thanks for the tip, will take a look at it!
Political memoir: I'm reading Mannerheim's memoir. He was our president for a while and I am so so so bad at history. Need to make at least a bit of effort to squeeze some facts in :/ It helps to think that my copy was inherited and has been in the family for decades.
Question: Will you post somewhere in this group your list? Or just keep it as a shelf in your profile?
Maybe a thread with all the plans could be nice?
I'm just starting to add the books on my 2016 Plans, I think it's easier to have them all at the same place...
I'm going to try adding the popsugar challenge too but I'll allow overlaps with my main challenge
I may do the Popsugar challenge as well but I will be using the books I read for both. There are too many of the selections that didn't make it that I want to read so I will have to do some cross over. Also, I don't know as that I will complete the entire Popsugar because some of the categories are ones I have no interest in reading.
I agree that there are some categories in Popsugar 2016 that are very specific and a bit of a stretch to the comfort zone. I will do my best. My daughter said that you have to either get creative or search forever. She gives good advice sometimes.
I'm in! But I don't think I'll be able to fit it into 2016. Still going to do it though :)
I agree, the list is a bit less interesting to me than the 2015 one but I will probably do it anyway. I was a bit confused about why it was only 40 categories this time, instead of 52 books. For some reason, just looking over this list, it somehow feels more "rigid" to me than the 2015 one. With this year's challenge, I had quite a bit of room to read a lot of books I'd been meaning to read anyway. With the 2016 one, I have to really look for new books. It's not necessarily a bad thing since it's forcing me to try new kinds of books (ie. political memoirs), but at the same time, I hope I don't get too bored with it if I don't like the books I choose.
Regarding the POPSUGAR 2016 LIST, has anyone created a list of books for the "Book with a protagonist who has your occupation" Category? Has anyone found a list for that category yet?
Rebekah, I struggled with that one quite a bit. I think everyone in this group who is participating has decided to be flexible with that one just because it is such a specific topic.I went with a book about a seamstress. I'm not a seamstress by occupation but I do sew and sometimes sell my finished projects so that felt like it wasn't a cheat to me. If you can't find something directly in line with your occupation, maybe something close to it?
I am thinking of dumping the 2016 Popsugar challenge. I made a list but I am feeling no passion for it, never a good sign.I have no interest in Oprah's bookclub, a book written by a comedian, a book recommended by a family member(my family aren't readers), a self-improvement book, and the protagonist who has the same occupation maddened me beyond belief.
I have exactly the same problem as you Katy, that's why I replaced the categories that didn't interest me in the Popsugar challenge with suggestion that didn't make the cut for ATY! That way I can fit books of my TBR in which I'm actually interested instead of reading book I never heard about because of the challenge.
I'm still doing the Popsugar challenge, but if I can't find something interesting for a category, I'll just pass it. Fortunately, my mum is as much of a bookaholic as I am! :D My brother, too. Oprah's book club books were indeed pretty uninteresting for the most part, but there was A Tale of Two Cities which I've been wanting to read for ages.
Katy, I feel that way about the ReadHarder challenge this year. None of the categories are really exciting me. I hate book recommendation tasks on challenges too because while some of my friends are readers, we all have quite different tastes, and my family is very much not readers. I feel your pain there.The ReadHarder challenge has a horror book, a non-fiction about science, a book about religion, a book about politics, ugh. Little to no interest.
I didn't struggle so much with the PopSugar challenge. I am glad that our little group decided to do our own challenge (ATY) this year instead of sticking to the PopSugar challenge like we did last year. I like our list much better.
I also really don't like the recommendation challenges, especially the one from whatever challenge that is a book recommended to you by someone you just met. Why on earth would I do that?
Aww Jody, can I recommend you 50 Shades? :pI'm happy that most of these big challenges have non appealing categories, so I can stick to interesting ones! Maybe next year, they'll be better and it will be a nice change from the ones I'll do in 2016 :)
Nooooooooo!!! Zaz, you mean bean. Unless you're recommending I burn it to keep warm.
I think I'm a bit different in that I'm interested on a general level in many topics, and so I make these challenges work for me no matter what.For instance horror isn't something I'm naturally drawn to (not even sure I've read a proper horror novel before, can't recall), but since Frankenstein and Dracula are classics, I do want to read them.
The good thing about the challenges is that I don't have to read a particular book when I don't feel like it, but can wait until my mood has shifted. Then it might take some time to get through it, but that's also okay. So both of the novels got chucked into the Rejects.
Lots of non-fiction is something I try to view as reading for both pleasure and academia/work/serious me, and now as an adult I realise I can speed-read sections of less interest, too. (Not that I usually speed-read anything!)
And the more challenging stuff such as economics, politics, philosophy, religion, etc. is "good for me" in doses, hence my large section of biographies, autobiographies, and memoirs. Those are actually a nice way to get insight into a particular area, and another favourite are the microhistories. There need to be the appropriate number of romance, erotica, fantasy and sci-fi in between, though... Yikes.
Zaz wrote: "Aww Jody, can I recommend you 50 Shades? :pI'm happy that most of these big challenges have non appealing categories, so I can stick to interesting ones! Maybe next year, they'll be better and it..."
Oh my god. Nooooooooooooooooo... It is awful, awful, awful. Such unbelievably bad writing. Can't believe an editor didn't throw it back like a boomerang, full of red markings.
Shhh I know some mods who read all the series :p (I'll read it only if one day we have a category like "read the book you'll only read if it's the last book on Earth").Memoirs/biographies are not my cup of tea, so I'm not happy to see them in the lists, but I can deal with one per year. There is 1-2 in all the challenges, which is definitely a problem for me if I want to do several of them without using the same book.
That's a censored version of my GR review for that book. :)
Aglaea, I'll somehow push myself through the ReadHarder challenge despite the fact that it is the least interesting of the challenges I've picked up this year. And perhaps, like the 2015 challenge, I'll find that I like things better than I originally thought I did. Even though some of the challenge topics are less appealing to me I do find that forcing myself to read outside my comfort zone has widened my comfort zone so I always look forward to that aspect of reading challenging topics.As for this mod, you couldn't pay me enough to read that. Although I am reading Twilight right now for the first time since it originally came out and I read it. There is still a lot of eye rolling going on but I find that going into it knowing it's mostly terrible helps. The first time I read it I had ridiculously high expectations and then had a whole lot of "what in the actual !@#$" moments when I realized I'd been hoodwinked into reading total trash.
I wasn't very critical of my reading before joining GR, but it was more like yes or no for "Did I enjoy it?" Now, after having seen just how slow my progress can realistically be in regards to chipping away on the TBR, I have to be more critical of what I begin to read - because most of the time I can't not finish a book. It is a disease...Like Emm said, for me it is about pushing myself out of my comfort zone constantly. This year I've been mending my heart and stuff, so romance has sneakily put its tentacles all over my read-in-2015, and it's been enjoyable, but I want more, I want fresh, I want challenging, and I want less repetition of the same authors.
Problem with the "A book recommended by someone you've just met"? I just look at the list of books that anyone from our group has posted in their reads. That's as good of a recommendation as anything. That way one gets a long list of recommendations to peruse and choose.The same goes for the "family/friend recommendation". We are part of the GoodReads family or we are GoodReads friends, so that recommendation is as good as anything else.
LOL ;) :P
Yes, just like that. *giggles* Don't you find that your soul soars freely when you allow it to just exist?
Sophie wrote: "Aglaea I'm reading Kamikaze Kangaroos!: A trip around Oz in a van called Rusty next year, it looks very good!"I read Kamikaze Kangaroos this year and loved it. I will be reading more of his books. I have one for 2016.
Looking at this list again, it's definitely achievable for me (although I don't often go to bookstores, so I'd probably just pick the first book I saw online on a bookstore's website). For me, part of the problem is I want categories that I'm actually interested in. I don't want to read just for the sake of reading. When I did the PopSugar challenge last year, I wasn't that interested in every topic but there were some that really surprised me. I'm not opposed to trying new categories at all, but there were few that really caught my attention.
Around the Year in 52 Books
Books mentioned in this topic
Foundation (other topics)To Kill a Mockingbird (other topics)
Go Set a Watchman (other topics)
The Autobiography of Malcolm X (other topics)
Kamikaze Kangaroos!: A trip around Oz in a van called Rusty (other topics)
More...
Who's in with me? :)