So last year’s challenge did not go well. And not because I didn’t read a lot of books. I just sort of lost my motivation somewhere along the way.

I think the real problem had something to do with the nature of the challenge itself. My goal was to read more of the books that were on my shelves that had been accumulating for years, but the problem was they weren’t all winners. With some books, this was obvious right away, and I’d quit the book and throw it in the donation pile. But other books weren’t exactly bad, they just weren’t all that good. And reading a lot of meh books at the beginning of the year (combined with a lot of wedding-related excitement) was just not good for my reading goals.

Though there were some definite highlights, they were few and far between.

So this year, I still want to get through some of the books on my shelves (I have every intention of finishing last year’s A-Z challenge), but I want to look at my reading goal a little differently so that the completion of the goal is a creative process that takes way more forethought than just examining my bookshelves and choosing a book that starts with the given letter. I really liked the idea of fitting my reading to certain criteria over a set list of books, so I chose the Popsugar challenge as this year’s reading challenge. I like that there’s a lot of things on there I don’t normally read on the list, and there’s a lot of diverse criteria. We’ll see how it goes.

I’ll be blogging about the books I read, and if you have any suggestions for some of the more difficult/weird stuff on this list I would love them! For instance, does anyone know of some good steampunk writers? Or a book set around a non-Christmas holiday? Let me know in the comments! Also let me know what your reading challenge looks like for the year!