Reading Challenges for 2012

I'm finally here, almost a quarter into the year. Work has been alternately crazy-busy or stone-cold-dead, after next month Job #2 is going away (the department is closing) so there've been a lot of hours spent sorting paperwork in preparation, my organizing kick is still going (mostly) strong, and sadly my new iPhone has eaten up hours of my life. Seriously, it's ridiculous.

At any rate, I've still been reading away like usual. While my total number of books read might sound impressive (it's at 45 right now), over a quarter of them are children's books by Peter Sis. He's an outstanding storyteller and illustrator and I can't recommend his books highly enough. When January 1 was getting closer on the calendar I started to think about my reading goals for this year. I wanted to keep them a little more realistic than I normally do, and I didn't want to sign up for 5 or more challenges, so I purposely avoided the book blogosphere in the first weeks of January to save myself any temptation. So, in no particular order, here are my reading goals and challenges for 2012.

Goals:

1. Read books that I already own

Once again, trying to cut down on the physical stacks around here.

2. Try to even out the percentage of books read and unread

To do this I need to read (or get rid of unread - the horror!) around 150 books to even things out. Crap. If I get even half of this done, I'll be surprised, but it's something to shoot for.

3. Buy fewer books than last year

While I lost track of the number from last year, so far I'm doing well with this one. Of course, books gotten through PaperbackSwap don't count since they're "free", but anything that I pay for counts against me.

Challenges:

1. The 75 Books challenge on LibraryThing

Read 75 books in 2012 - no sweat!

2. The 12 in 12 challenge on LibraryThing

While the full challenge (to read 12 books in each of 12 categories) comes to 144 total, that might be stretching my yearly total quite a bit. I changed it up and did a stepped challenge (1 in 1 category, 2 in the next, etc) for a total of 78. I am counting all of the books that I read, but so far only 24 of the 45 that I've finished so far count for this one.

3. The What's in a Name 5 challenge on BethFishReads

I said I wasn't going to join this one again, but then I just read the categories and decided to do it. Look for the post for this one soon.

That's it! Nothing that seems too out of reach, but still a challenge overall.