Tag: challenge

Posted in Chatty

Library Love Challenge 2023!

Posted on by Jennifer

Hey y’all! A couple years ago, I learned of a challenge that was able to wholeheartedly embrace. My impulsiveness will actually help me with this one, since it’s the 2023 Library Love challenge! Hosted by Angel’s Guilty Pleasures & Books of My Heart, the goal is simple: read books from the library!

Who doesn’t love the library? When I move to a new place, I always go to the library to check it out and get a card within a day or two of moving in. Usually before I’m even fully unpacked. Priorities, right? 👌🏼

So this year I’m joining the 2023 Library Love challenge and going to shoot for at least 24 books. In 2022 I went absolutely library mad (apparently) and read SEVENTY-TWO books from the library. But in 2023, I have some challenges for myself centered on reading books from my shelves to help determine what I want to keep, so I actually want to aim lower for library reads this year since I own a lot already. I’m sure it will end up being a lot of library reads anyway, though. xD

past years…

Progress!

If you’re interested as well, go see the full post and sign up link from the hosts! The levels for the challenge are:

  • Dewey Decimal: Read 12 books
  • Thrifty Reader: Read 24 books (my goal)
  • Overdrive Junkie: Read 36 books
  • Library Addict: Read 48 books
  • Library Card on Fire: Read 60+ books
  1. All That’s Left Unsaid by Tracey Lien
  2. Book Lovers by Emily Henry
Posted in Book Talk

2022 Library Love Challenge is Complete!! (And BOY is it COMPLETE)

Posted on by Jennifer

Hey y’all! In a few years ago, I stumbled upon my favorite reading challenge ever, the Library Love reading challenge! Hosted by Angel’s Guilty Pleasures & Books of My Heart, the goal is simple: read books from the library! And boy, do I ever do that!

2022 was a surprise to me in how much I read from the library, considering I don’t often walk to one anymore. Technically it’s within walking distance at about a half hour, but the walk is on some busy streets for about half of that so I don’t love doing it. I did take advantage of any time I was out near the library for another reason to stop by and browse, though. 🙂 And of course, I read so many books digitally from the library!

Here are the tiers that were established from the hosts for level of reading:

  • Dewey Decimal: Read 12 books
  • Thrifty Reader: Read 24 books
  • Overdrive Junkie: Read 36 books (my goal)
  • Library Addict: Read 48 books
  • Library Card on Fire: Read 60+ books

I actually ended up surpassing the final tier of 60+ books with a total of 72 which is WILDLY UNEXPECTED but okay! So yes, I hit my goal. xD I love this challenge because it’s fun to see how much I really am getting from the library. There are so many books I first learned about by just wandering around their displays! (a few examples in the full list below are #3, #19, #57, #61… honestly a lot of my nonfiction reads come from discoveries at the library!)

Now this year I have something extra included in this post. Below is the usual list of all the reviews with links to each, but ALSO I have a lot of custom statistics courtesy of The Storygraph for all the books I tagged with the library reads 2022 challenge! I’m really excited to dig into those. 🙂

~ the stats!

I love Storygraph stats and this was a fun one to see what they can do with their custom tag stats (a really lovely Plus plan extra!)

Continue reading “2022 Library Love Challenge is Complete!! (And BOY is it COMPLETE)” →
Posted in Chatty

I posted a book review every day in December. Here’s how it went…

Posted on by Jennifer

Hey y’all! If anyone’s been paying attention to this blog in the last month, you likely will have noticed that you’ve been pretty much bashed over the head with book reviews. I moved away from my usual more varied book related content and posted only book reviews in December 2022. There was an actual reason for this! In late November, I went a little crazy and felt very motivated for some reason and decided that I would finish the year strong by reviewing a bunch of books that I had not yet done for the year. So many in fact, that I would post a review every day in order to catch up!

Well, in a manner that is both shocking and not I did actually end up posting a review every day in December. Also shocking yet not, is the fact that I did not prepare most of them ahead of time (despite my intentions) and was usually writing a review each day to post that same day. And yes, there were at least two or three days where it got to be about 11:00 PM and I was exhausted and then realized I still had to post a review. But hey, I got them done!

I will now celebrate this in the best way I know how: with data and insight!

Below is a brief summary of some of the things I learned through posting a book review every day in December and how I’ve changed since the start of it. That feels kind of ridiculously grandiose to write that it’s changed me, but there were actually some pretty noticeable differences after doing it.

🎙 I narrate my reviews now

I finished an audio book in early December, and I liked it so much that I decided to write the review for it by using voice to text dictation software. And then I was surprised by how much I liked doing that voice to text review! And now I’m almost always voice to text writing my reviews and posts. It feels like I’m talking to a friend about it. If you happen to have noticed that the reviews have gotten a little bit wordier and longer, that would be why! It’s a lot harder to track how long the text is getting when I’m speaking since it just feels natural. And yes, if you were wondering, I am currently voice narrating this as well. 😊

🎭 I am a mood reviewer

Continue reading “I posted a book review every day in December. Here’s how it went…” →
Posted in Book Talk

Kindle 2023 New Year Reading Challenge Guide! (9 unlocked update)

Posted on by Jennifer

Hey y’all! With the end of 2022 comes the end of the Year-End Kindle Challenge! You can see all the achievements and badges for that here, and start preparing to move on to the new challenge: the New Year challenge! This new challenge runs from January 1, 2023 to March 31, 2023 with 15 possible achievements.

Below is a guide to the Kindle New Year Challenge for 2023. It’s following the same format as the previous challenges (you can see an FAQ here including links to past and current challenges). Prior to the reveal of the criteria for each mystery badge, the hint will be shown below. As the mystery achievements are revealed, I’ll update this page to show the criteria for each, and then the badge itself once the challenge is completed!

Kindle Achievements FAQ & all challenge guides
Kindle 2022 Year end Challenge guide

Kindle New Year Reading Challenge Achievements

This one runs from January 1 to March 31, 2023. There are 15 possible achievements.

Days Read

  • Bronze Reader: read on any 15 days during the challenge
  • Silver Reader: read on any 40 days during the challenge
  • Gold Reader: read on any 75 days during the challenge

Books Completed

  • Bookish: read one book
  • Bookworm: read two books
  • Bibliophile: read three books

Streaks

  • Head Start: read one day
  • Perfect Week: read 7 days in a row (Sunday through Saturday)
  • Perfect Month: read every day for a calendar month (ex. every day in February)

Mystery:

  • Best of 2022: read a book from the Amazon Best 100 Kindle Books of 2022 list (here and also linked in the app on the badge)
  • Quitter’s Day: read any three days between Jan 16 – Jan 21 (the week most people stop resolutions)
  • Black History Month: read an Editor’s Pick book by a Black Author (list here! and also linked in the app on the badge)
  • 2/12 Hint: A day of love
  • 3/3 Hint: Celebrate Women’s History Month
  • 3/20 Hint: Say hello to spring
Continue reading “Kindle 2023 New Year Reading Challenge Guide! (9 unlocked update)” →
The shape of a coffee cup made up of black and brown words. There are steam lines coming off the top, too.
Posted in Reviews

Month of Reviews: How’s it going?

Posted on by Jennifer

Hey y’all!

If you’ve been following along this month, you’ll have noticed that every day in December, I’ve posted a book review. That’s because in late November, I decided on a whim that it would be fun to do so every day in December. xD

Well I’m officially at the halfway-ish point at December 15, and though I have used up my handy little backlog of pre-written reviews and will need to write one fresh for today, it’s going pretty well! I’ve been really enjoying it, actually, which is great since that is what I had thought would happen. I haven’t had as many backlogged as I had planned, and I have been writing a lot of reviews to be posted for that day. Still, it’s been going fairly smoothly. Except…

There was one night I went to a holiday party and as I was drifting off to sleep just before midnight after a long, fun night, I sat bolt upright in a panic as I realized I hadn’t posted a review! Thankfully, this was when I did still have backlog ready, so I just needed to do a little formatting. Got that sucker posted at about 11:50pm. 🤣

I’ve also discovered that I really enjoy doing my reviews by narrating them aloud for voice-to-text functions. This came about after I did one for an audiobook and ended up really liking the style. It feels very natural to just speak about the book as though I were talking with a friend about it. Then I go back and correct any words it got wrong (which is impressively rare!) and tweak the phrasing of any sentences that I want to make flow better. It also feels like doing them this way has made it faster than usual too, which has definitely helped on some of the days when I needed to get one done with not much free time. Anyway, just thought I’d do a little update! And now to prep today’s review. 🙂

Posted in Chatty

Adding one last challenge to the year…

Posted on by Jennifer

Hey y’all!

As it’s almost December, I’ve been taking stock of where I’m at with my various reading challenges, and the news since I checked in around halfway through the year is that they are basically all done! This is great since I don’t feel pressure to cram things in December to try to hit my arbitrary goals, but also… now I can set more goals… 😁

So the short status is that I need to read my X book for the alphabet challenge, which I’ve started and don’t think will take long. I also have 5 more books to go on my newer nonfiction goal of reading 25 books this year. I have several ready for hold and/or on my bookshelves ready to go, as well as a few in progress, so I think I’ll be good on this one, too!

the new goal…

So with no real reading pressure coming to me in December, I’ve decided, apparently, to give myself a different goal for the writing/blogging side of things. In November, I posted barely at all compared to my usual, and it was mostly just laziness I guess. I even had some reviews written that I just needed to format and post, as well as quotes ready to go, but nope! Just didn’t bother. That makes me sad.

To change that and finish the year strong and proud of myself, my new goal for December is quite a stretch, honestly:

post a book review every single day oh my god.

But look! I have a plan…

Continue reading “Adding one last challenge to the year…” →
Posted in Chatty

Kindle 2022 Year-End Challenge Achievement Guide! (all badges revealed!)

Posted on by Jennifer

Hey y’all! With the end of September comes the end of the 2022 Summer Reading Challenge from Kindle. You can see all the achievements and badges for that here, and start preparing to move on to the new challenge: the Year End Challenge! This new challenge runs from October 1, 2022 to December 31, 2022 with 15 possible achievements.

Below is a guide to the Kindle Year End Challenge. It’s following the same format as the previous challenges (you can see an FAQ here including links to past and current challenges). Prior to the reveal of the criteria for each mystery badge, the hint will be shown below. As the mystery achievements are revealed, I’ll update this page to show the criteria for each, and then the badge itself once the challenge is completed!

Kindle Achievements FAQ & all challenge guides
Kindle 2023 New Year Challenge Guide

Kindle Year End Reading Challenge Achievements

This one runs from October 1st to December 31st, 2022. There are 15 possible achievements.

Days Read

  • Bronze Reader: read on any 15 days during the challenge
  • Silver Reader: read on any 40 days during the challenge
  • Gold Reader: read on any 75 days during the challenge

Books Completed

  • Bookish: read one book
  • Bookworm: read two books
  • Bibliophile: read three books

Streaks

  • Head Start: read one day
  • Perfect Week: read 7 days in a row (Sunday through Saturday)
  • Perfect Month: read every day for a calendar month (ex. every day in November)

Mystery:

  • Prime Early Access: read during the Prime Early Access sale on October 11 or October 12
  • Chills and Thrills: read a mystery, thriller, or suspense book (list here!)
  • Great on Kindle: read a Great on Kindle book (list here!)
  • Read Instead: read any day between Black Friday and Cyber Monday (Nov 25-28)
  • I’m a Fan: follow an author
  • Sweater Weather: read any three days between 12/15 and 12/31
Continue reading “Kindle 2022 Year-End Challenge Achievement Guide! (all badges revealed!)” →
Posted in Book Talk

20 Books of Summer 2022 – Complete!

Posted on by Jennifer

Hey y’all! In early June, I started my first year challenging the 20 books of summer goal that’s hosted at 746 Books. The goal is to read and review 20 books from June to September 1. The reviewing is the key part!

In my sign up post, I chose to go for 15 based on specific prompts that I wanted to fulfill. I did hit all 15 prompts, as well as a lot of other books that I read and reviewed outside of it! Below is a list of the books I completed for each prompt, as well as the other reviews I posted during the summer. 😊

The 15 prompts & their books

Continue reading “20 Books of Summer 2022 – Complete!” →
Posted in Chatty

Kindle 2022 Summer Reading Challenge Achievements Guide (COMPLETED!)

Posted on by Jennifer

Hey y’all! If you use Kindle, you might have seen last month that they had a Spring Challenge where you could get little badges shaped like bookmarks for different reading and book-related goals they set. I scoffed at the idea that it would get anyone to read more, and then proceeded to obsessively track and get every one of the achievements. You can see them all here. It also has some FAQs on the challenges overall, like what counts as reading and how to view badges from old challenges.

Clearly I’m going to keep that up, so I wanted to put together a new post for their Summer Challenge set! I’ll update these as they reveal the mystery badges and as I unlock the full badges.

Kindle Achievements FAQ & all challenge guides
Kindle 2023 New Year Challenge Guide

Kindle Summer Reading Challenge Achievements

This one runs from July 1st to September 30th, 2022.

Days Read

  • Bronze Reader: read on any 15 days during the challenge
  • Silver Reader: read on any 40 days during the challenge
  • Gold Reader: read on any 75 days during the challenge

Books Completed

  • Bookish: read one book
  • Bookworm: read two books
  • Bibliophile: read three books

Streaks

  • Head Start: read one day
  • Perfect Week: read 7 days in a row (Sunday through Saturday)
  • Perfect Month: read every day for a calendar month (ex. every day in August)

Mystery (all are now revealed!)

  • Around the Campfire: read a book from the Summer Reading list
  • Prime Day: read on July 12 or 13 during Amazon Prime days
  • Topshelf: Read an Editors’ Pick of an Amazon Original Story
    • Note that you can only access this list via the link in the achievement in the app, and will have to add any books to your wishlist or otherwise save them and then purchase them via browser since you can’t purchase via the app anymore. Asked customer service. They also couldn’t find a way to get this list in the browser. OY. Email seller-suggestions@amazon.com to tell them to change this for future achievements!!!
  • I’m A Fan: Sign up for updates from an author by following them
  • Quick Bites: Read a Kindle Vella story
  • Epic Ending: read any 3 days between Sep 17 and Sep 23
Continue reading “Kindle 2022 Summer Reading Challenge Achievements Guide (COMPLETED!)” →
Posted in Book Talk

Mid-Year Challenge Check-in

Posted on by Jennifer

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

Continue reading “Mid-Year Challenge Check-in” →