Thursday, December 29, 2022

A Year in Books: 2022 Reading Challenge

 


Hello, Readers! I hope everyone is doing well. I'm sorry for the lack of reviews; it's been a crazy last few months. My last update was in September when my husband and I were fostering the cute St Bernard named Rylie. She has since been placed in a home with a sweet semi-retired couple who absolutely adore her and have a big fenced-in yard. Around the same time, I was stressed out at work and wasn't in a reading mood.

Additionally, my class was ridiculously hard, and my husband's grandmother passed away. There were some trips to Indiana as a result, and then we had my dad out for Thanksgiving as a belated birthday gift. I was also in the process of interviewing for a new job with another team in my company. I actually got the position and started this week. Some things were good, and some could have been better. It feels like it's been one thing after another throughout 2022. I am hoping that 2023 will be a little less crazy. I will settle for no more broken bones and not losing any loved ones. 

Alright, enough life updates. I highly doubt real-life shenanigans are why anyone comes to this blog. I had initially set a reading goal of 48 books for the year and dropped it down to 36.  I'm currently at 28 books and in the middle of one. It could end up being 29 books read, but I'm not going to push for it. For 2023, I will probably only set a goal of 25-30 books. I don't feel like stressing out over something completely arbitrary and going into the second term of my Doctorate, I don't have much time to read. 

One upside to the books I read this year is that I don't feel like I read anything I really disliked. I really enjoyed most of the books I did get to read. My most disliked book of the year was probably The Lobotomist's Wife by Samantha Green Woodruff. I'm hard-pressed to pick a favorite for the year. I tried to list the top five and kept changing my mind. So the year was not great on quantity but fantastic on quality. The latter is more important anyway. 

I typically try to link back to all the blog posts I did for the year, but  I barely did any because of the previously mentioned chaos this year. If you want to read the few I did, they should all be listed in the A-Z list at the top of the page. If you want to find the original post of the 2022 reading challenge, you can do so here.  If you have yet to see it, you can find the list for 2023 here


So without further ado, here's where I ended up with the 2022 Reading Challenge. 

Number               Challenge            Book     Author

Level 1: Book of the Month Club

1             Read a book under $5    The Druid            Jeff Wheeler

2             Read a book that is under 350 pages       The Humans       Matt Haig

3             Read a book that was recommended to you                       

4             Read a newly published book (within a year)        The Egyptian Mystery     Emily Organ

5             Read a book that has a type of plant or flower in the title                             

6             Read a book because of the cover            Daughter of Sparta          Claire M. Andrews

7             Read a book about a mythical creature. All the Murmuring Bones             A.G. Slatter

8             Read a book that takes place in the future                          

9             Read a book by an author that's new to you         Instinct  Rebecca Heiss

10           Read a book from NPR's top 50 Sci-Fi and Fantasy Books of the past decade:  https://www.npr.org/2021/08/18/1027159166/best-books-science-fiction-fantasy-past-decade  The Brass City    S.A. Chakraborty

11           A book by an author whose first or last name has 5 letters             The Colour of Magic               Terry Pratchett

12           Free Space! (Pick any book)         Days of Splendor, Days of Sorrow             Juliet Grey

Level 2: Casual Reader Club

13           Read a book published 5 years ago                        

14           Read a Speculative Fiction            Hominids             Robert J Sawyer

15           Read the first book in a duology               

16           Read the second book in a duology                        

17           A book that was published when you were 5 years old                  

18           Read a book by an author named Alex, Alexander, Alexandra (or variant) Lore               Alexandra Bracken

19           Read a book about Zombies                       

20           Read a book with a black cover   The Octunnumi  Trevor Alan Foris

21           Read a book from AbeBooks.com's list of 100 (fiction) books to read in a lifetime:  https://www.abebooks.com/books/100-book-to-read-in-lifetime/                            

22           Read a book with the word City in the title                         

23           Read a book about a musician (non-fiction or fiction)                     

24           Free Space! (Pick any book)         Blood of Troy     Claire M. Andrews

Level 3: Dedicated Reader Club

25           A book with a title that has 5 letters                      

26           Read a book published by Macmillan (or subsidiary)                        

27           Read a book with a title that doesn't start with an article (A, An, The)       Helen of Troy       Margaret George

28           Read a book you recently acquired           The Lobotomist's Wife   Samantha Greene Woodruff

29           Read a book that's been on your TBR for over a year        Becoming Marie Antoinette               Juliet Grey

30           Read a Revenge Story                   

31           Read a book by Philippa Gregory                             

32           Read a book that takes place on an island                           

33           Read a book that does not have a person (or people) on the cover             Hunted               Darcy Coates

34           A book that you intended to read on last year's challenge                            

35           Read a Pyschological Thriller        The Fourth Monkey         J.D. Barker

36           Free Space! (Pick any book)         When He Was Wicked    Julia Quinn

Level 4: Speed Reader Club

37           Read a book over 500 pages        The Broken Eye Brent Weeks

38           Read a book that starts with the letter Z (or has Z in the title)                     

39           Read a book that takes place around your favorite holiday                           

40           A book with 5 objects on the cover          Around the World in Eighty Days               Jules Verne

41           Read a book with the word Wisdom in the title                 

42           Read a Dystopian                           

43           Read a book by an author with the same name as one of your parents (Biological, Step, Adopted)                 

44           Read a book that a movie/show you've watched is based on but have yet to read (example: Watched The Hobbit, but never read the Hobbit)          Witches of East End               Melissa de la Cruz

45           Read a book about a Saint (non-Fiction or Fiction)                           

46           Read any book from the Men's Health most popular book list https://www.menshealth.com/entertainment/g37473997/most-popular-book-by-year/?utm_source=facebook_arb&utm_medium=cpm&utm_campaign=arb_fb_mnh_m_i_g37473997&fbclid=IwAR22Eb95uWUC2FVY_Bdn0CtG3KV8-6-IxwnfABCIZ25fMHLM0Tw4Mee2M2U                 

47           Read a book published in a year that was important to you           To Sir Phillip, With Love      Julia Quinn

48           Free Space! (Pick any book)         Hogfather           Terry Pratchett

Level 5: Overachiever Club

49           Read the 5th book in a series or an author's 5th novel                   

50           Read a True Crime book               

51           Read a book by Georges Simenon (or one of his Pen Names)                      

52           A book with the number 5 in the title                    

53           Read a book that takes place in Russia                  

54           Read a book by an author using initials as part of their name        Sutton   J.R. Moehringer

55           Read a book that has a title in the form of a question                     

56           Read a banned book from this banned book list https://www.ala.org/advocacy/bbooks/frequentlychallengedbooks/decade2019               

57           A book with at least 5 prominent characters         The Fires of Heaven       Robert Jordan

58           Read a book that Linz read previously http://linzthebookworm.blogspot.com/p/reviews-z.html                The Chalk Man   C.J. Tudor

59           Read a book that Tress read previously  https://songstress7.wordpress.com/category/reading/                  

60           Free Space! (Pick any book)         The Iron Queen  Julie Kagawa

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