2016 reading challenge

I read about 14 books in 2015. It’s not great, but it’s better than I’ve managed in previous years. While all of those books could be comfortably contained within the fantasy/horror/sci-fi shelves there was more variety than previous years: mainly down to me not simply sticking with authors I was already comfortable with (and I made some great discoveries, which might warrant a separate post). Still, I want to do better this year. But how?

An obvious first step is to read all of the books I picked up during 2015 (I am obsessed with reviewing my Amazon wish list, and will grab anything on it that has dropped in price—reading those books is less of an imperative, it seems). This list includes books I’ve been gifted as well as few I’ve held over from previous years. It does not include all of the books on my ‘to read’ list simply because I like the structure that arbitrary limits impose.

In total, including graphic novels and short story collections there are 22 books:

I was going to give myself the whole of 2016 to read through this list, but that seems ridiculously generous (especially as I’ve already started some the short story collections). Instead I’ll give myself the first six months of the year. To keep me motivated I’ve set myself a relatively soft reading goal of 25 books in 2016—you can keep tabs on that over at Goodreads if you like.

The last six months of the year will be for reading any books that I purchase during 2016. Ideally, come the dawn of 2017, I’ll have comfortably beaten the 25 book target and won’t leave this year with a massive stockpile of unread books.

Let’s see how it goes …

Footnote: you should probably all know that I’ve made a great start by reading a book that isn’t on any of these lists: “The Disaster Artist” by Greg Sestero and Tom Bissell … go figure