2016 Reading challenges

[Ann aka Iftcan]

2016 Challenge list


January 2016 challenge
For this first challenge of the year, I decided to go with an easy one.
This is the beloveded “Colour challenge”—the cover of the book must have the specified colour in it. Remember that you MUST link a picture of your cover to your post.

White
Blue
Black
Grey/silver
Green
Yellow/gold
Red
Pink
Purple
Orange

February 2016
Because we all liked this one, we are going to go with the Goddess challenge again for the Month of Love.
1. Aphrodite was the Greek goddess of love and beauty. In the story of the Trojan War, the Trojan Paris awarded Aphrodite the Apple of Discord after judging her to be the most beautiful of the goddesses. She then sided with the Trojans throughout the war: Read a book where a war or battle takes place, or a book where main characters fight over a love interest.

2. Ishtar, the Babylonian goddess of love, procreation, and war. When the love of her life, the farm god Tammuz, died, she followed him to the Underworld: Read a book involving demons or a book where at least part of the story takes place in an underground realm.

3. Inanna was the oldest of the love goddess of the Mesopotamian region. She was a Sumerian goddess of love and war. Although she is regarded as a virgin, Inanna is a goddess responsible for sexual love, procreation, and fertility: Read a book where a wedding takes place, or where someone is having a baby, or a book where one of the characters is a virgin.

4. Ashtart or Astarte is a Semitic goddess of sexual love, maternity and fertility. She is also a war goddess and is associated with leopards or lions. Sometimes she is two-horned: Read a book about shifters.

5. Venus was the Roman goddess of love and beauty. She was originally an Italic goddess of vegetation and patron of gardens: Read a book involving any woodland creatures, Fairies, Elves, Fae, Dryads, Satyrs, Gnomes, Nymphs, etc.

6. Hathor is an Egyptian goddess who sometimes wears a sun disk with horns on her head: Read a book where a main character has powers similar to the sun, some sort of fire power or pyrokinetics, dragon shifter, fire demon, etc.

7. Isis is the Egyptian goddess of magic: Read a book where a main character is some kind of magic user, spellcaster, sorcerer, or mage.

8. Freya was a beautiful Vanir Norse goddess of love, magic, and divination, who was called upon for help in matters of love: Read a book where a character has the power of divination or foretelling the future or a book where at least part of the story involves time traveling to another time or place.

9. Nügua was primarily a Chinese creator goddess, but after she populated the earth, she taught mankind how to procreate, so she wouldn't have to do it for them: Read a book where at least one character is of Asian descent, or a book where there’s some sort of Asian martial arts fighting, or a book where part of the story takes place in an Asian named place or city.

10. Tlazolteotl is the Aztec goddess of fertility, sex, childbirth and love. She appears in four forms that correspond to the phases of the moon: Read a book where at least one main character is a werewolf.
And again, thanks for all your hard work Belkis



March 2016
Read with Friends—you must choose a book from a friends shelf—this can be on either their TBR shelf OR their already read shelf, since many people are like me, and their tbr pile is too big to bother putting onto GR, so all they put up is the books that they have read. If you are short friends, everyone in this group is more than happy to accept a friend request from you. Be sure to tell us which friend you got the book from, as well as the usual title and author info. (Ex. Sweep In Peacy by Ilona Andrews, Friend Wyz the Wise)


April
Creature Feature—read books with a specific creature in them.
Read 3 books featuring Vampires
Read 3 books featuring Were-creatures (lions and tigers and bears, oh my—all are good, as long as they are weres.)
Read 2 books featuring wizards or witches or any other magic user.
Read 2 books featuring any OTHER paranormal creature—demons, angels, ghosts, goblins, gargoyles.



May 2016

Alphabet challenge—the author, hero or heroine must have a name that starts with the specified letter of the alphabet. So, for ABC you could use Dana Marie Bell (author), Anita Blake (character), or Adam Hauptman (character).
ABC
DEF
GH
IJ
KL
MN
OP
QRS
TUV
WXYZ


June 2016

Another one that we haven’t done for a while, but that I found interesting. In honour of June being the “wedding month” this one is called Always a Bridesmaid and was suggested by Nikki back in 2013.
Some Old—2 books by authors that you have read before
Something New—2 books by authors that are new to you
Something Borrowed—2 books that you “borrow” from a friends TBR pile
Something Blue—2 books that have the word “Blue” in their title or the cover is primarily blue
Bridal jitters—2 books that either feature wedding wear on the cover (veil, wedding gown, wedding rings/engagement rings) or have weddings in the story. For this last one—the wedding does NOT have to be between the MC’s. It can be one that either or both are part of as bridesmaid/groomsman/wedding planner/wedding singer/caterer etc.




July 2016

Read 10 Different books from 10 different series—these can be either new series to you or books that are in a series that you are already reading. For this challenge, you must give the title of the book, author’s name, name of the series, and what position it occupies in the series. Ex. Witch World by Andre Norton (Witch World, book 1) Just remember to keep to the same format for your entire list.


August 2016
Because August is usually the hottest month in the Northern Hemisphere, I’m going with an easy one here.

The Power of 3—author has 3 names (or a SINGLE initial, so Laurel K. Hamilton would be ok, but J K Rowlings wouldn’t be), the third book in a trilogy and finally a book with a title with 3 words in it (and, if needed, “The”, “A”, “An” at the start of the title can be skipped in the count, so if you read The Black Lung Captain (Steampunk) then you could drop the word “The” from your count. But ONLY when “The”, “A” and “An” are the first word in the title)

September 2016

Cover hunt -- https://www.goodreads.com/topic/show/... to check out what we did for this one before, if you haven’t done it and need ideas. Also, as with the colour hunt, you must link the cover of your book in your post.

2 books with a single female figure on it
2 books with a single male figure on it
2 books with a couple on it
2 books with nothing human related on them—this means no body parts, no clothes etc.
2 books with clothes/shoes/purses/hats only


October 2016

Using one of the lists in GR's listopia features, we are going to read 10 books from the Best Paranormal Romance Series. https://www.goodreads.com/list/show/3... is the list we will be using. Any book in the series will be allowed. List which page number the book appears on. (Ex. Halfway to the Grave by Jeaniene Frost, Page 1)




November 2016

Read 10 books by authosr that are new to you OR read a single book from 10 series that are new to you. When we did this challenge originally, several years ago, it was ONLY author new to you, but, well, many of us read so many books that finding a new author is difficult. You can also mix and match, so have 5 and 5 or 2 and 8 etc.


December 18, 2015

Clean up the TBR pile. All books MUST BE PRE-SELECTED and listed in your post. In addition to the 10 that you normally list, you are allowed to put down an additional 5 titles, so that if, for some reason (floods, flying dinosaurs, zombie apocalypse) you are unable to read one of the books in your 10 selections, you have an alternative. The longer the book has been languishing, the better the reason for picking it to read. After all, those hoary old books that are starting to grow moss and are covered by 2 inches of dust want to be loved too. So, clean up that TBR moun—er I mean pile.