Mid-Year Challenge Check-in

Hey y’all! I think last year I saw other folks doing these in June and July and thought, what a great idea! And then of course, I proceeded to never do it. BUT NOT THIS YEAR! This year I’m fully on the ball!

So for this post I’m checking out what my challenge statuses are so far for the year, and what my goals are for the rest of the year. This is kind of weird to write, because just a few short years ago I was so wildly against the idea that I would ever do a reading challenge, and now I have a list. xD I never knew how flexible they could be!

Anyway, let’s take a peek! In theory, I should be halfway through with most of these since they’re mostly all year-long goals. Hmmm…

Library Love

Goal: read books from the library!

My Library Love challenge this year is going strong! My goal this year was 36 books, and I just read my 26th. Oh wait, crap — 27th. But that one’s not on the blog yet. xD Okay, so that raises a good point: I’ve gone a bit nuts this month, and particularly this week. I’ve finished 5 books from the library in the past week alone as of the moment I’m writing this. And I have a lot more on hold, currently out, and tagged on lists to borrow in the future. 😅 So anyway, this one is going well. NO ISSUES HERE!!! In 2020 I hit the 36 book tier, and last year was the 48 tier (just 7 shy of 60). So we’ll see where this year goes…

A – Z Alphabet Challenge

Goal: read a different book for each letter of the English alphabet with a title starting with that letter

I’m going strong on this again this year! Typically around June/July is when I start actually targeting letters for books to read, and this year is no different. I have 5 letters left: F, U, V, X, and Z. Remarkably, I actually have plenty of books on my list for ALL of those letters — yes, even X and Z!!! Oddly F is a standout this year. I’m always entertained by seeing which letters just happen to get missed in my natural rounds of reading and which are plentiful (a lot of Ws this year so far!).

And you know what? While writing this… I realized I already read an F book: From Little Tokyo, With Love by Sarah Kuhn. Look at me go, even better than I thought! This is definitely my easiest year yet haha.

5 x 500

Goal: read at least 5 books over 500 pages

This is just a goal for myself, though I’m sure there are plenty of structured group challenges around it. I think I saw one called the Chonker Challenge that was related to the same idea. xD Anyway, My reasoning with this one is that I tend to slam through short books quickly, and lose priority on longer books that are full of amazing for a long time. I’m already at 4 of 5 technically for this one thanks to my newfound passion for S.A. Chakraborty, but I want to make this more of a general goal through the year. I have one other book in progress right now that’s a thick 888 pages. Great number!

20 Books of Summer

Goal: read and review 15 books by September 1

I went for 15 on this one because I wasn’t sure I’d hit twenty. But considering I started this challenge on June 11th and I’ve already read, reviewed, and posted 6 books for this challenge, I think I’ll be fine. One of my books in this is the aforementioned 888-page-chonker though, so it might take a while for that one. xD

For this challenge, I curated my own list of shorter-term goals to find books that fit. The ones I have left are:

• a Book of the Month book that I got and haven’t yet read
• two Fast Forward Friday books from before 2022 x2
• first book in a series I’ve always meant to start
• the final book in a series that I never finished
• one of the oldest books ever added to my Goodreads TBR
• a book I recently bought
• a random TBR Jar pick (the only prompt with exactly one option available)
• an arc (technically I already completed this, but it doesn’t publish till December so I won’t have a review out this summer so I’ll just read a DIFFERENT one for this challenge. xD)

Yearly Reading Challenge

Goal: read 52 books this year

Well, that goal is already done, as I’ve mentioned. I’m currently at 60. So as I have in the past, now that I’ve hit a “quantity” goal, I’m focusing on some other goals towards broadening my reading, doing challenges, and cleaning up my shelves. Those are below!

My new goals!

Well! Since it seems that most of those challenges are done or very easily going to be completed, it’s time for me to set out what else I want to focus on for the rest of the year in my reading. Of course I’m always reading for fun primarily, but here are some other goals I have!

Read at least 25% nonfiction (or 25 books, whichever is smaller

For this one, I want to give some time to my 100+ books on my TBR that are nonfiction. There’s so much interesting nonfiction I want to read, but it does tend to get shunted aside in favor of romcoms and fantasy. Still, I usually love nonfiction when I read it so that’s a priority!

Read all my Book of the Month books, or GET RID OF THEM!

Oh, my. I have only gotten Book of the Month once this year I think because I haven’t been reading the books I have from last year and none of the options have really appealed to me. July is my birthday month, so I’ll get one with the free credit they give, but otherwise I think this sub is going to continue collecting dust.

UNFORTUNATELY, so are all the other books I have from them. So my goal for the year is to read all of the ones I currently have. It’s only 7 or 8, but it annoys the crap out of me that I bought these books for them to just sit. I usually only buy books I really love enough to re-read or have a physical copy of, so they bother me a lot on principle. If I DNF them, I don’t care — just want to get rid of them or be happy to have them!!

Read books from BookSirens

I used to read at least one book a month from BookSirens, which is like NetGalley but for smaller independent people who are usually publishing their own books. It’s more like an indie NetGalley. I have found some really incredible books and series on there (like Review: Court of Bitter Thorn by Kay L Moody and the entire Fire Within series by Ella M Lee which I BLEW through). I want to get back to that, and also back to helping support and spread the word about authors without big money for marketing.

My random TBR Jar!

There was a Top Ten Tuesday question recently about bookish items and decor that people had or wanted. One person mentioned Fortune Jars on Etsy and their TBR Jar. You send 100 book titles, and they fold them into little paper stars and tuck them into this cute tiny jar. My goal is to pull one of those stars each month for a book to read. These are books that have been on my TBR a while, or ones that are on my TBR that I have ABSOLUTELY NO IDEA what they are about anymore, ones that I was excited about and then never read, etc. It’s fine if I DNF some, and I’m sure I’ll use it more than just once a month, but it’s an “at least” kind of thing.

Anyway, those are my new and in-progress goals for the year!! I’m glad I went through compiling this because it was fun to see where everything is at, plus I realized I was farther along than I thought with some of them. xD We’ll see where I’m at at the end of the year and if I stuck to any of these!

If you have a mid-year post, feel free to drop a link in the comments! 🙂