Has anyone had a bad experience with the Goodreads reading challenge? I’ve been doing it for the past 8 years but I think it’s time to call it quits. I know it’s totally inconsequential and no one cares if you succeed or not, but the constant reminder of “You’re X books behind schedule” is starting to feel tiring. Lately I’ve been reading short books instead of the big bricks I really want to read, just to complete the challenge. Makes me feel dumb.

I wish they would bring more diversity to the challenge instead of just a number. Read books from 5 different genres, read a book on astrophysics, read X books written by women authors, write 1 review, start a new series, read a book that my wife rated 5 stars, etc.

Anyone has thoughts or suggestions on a reading challenge that would be more engaging?

  • minimalist_coach@alien.topBEnglish
    1·
    10 months ago

    I personally love reading challenges, but # of books per year stopped being interesting to me several years ago. I used to use Good Reads and I would just set my challenge low so I wouldn’t over think it.

    I was looking for more interesting challenges and last year I joined a book club on GR that had a Genre of the month challenge. It was so much fun, but was very awkward to log the books that completed the prompts.

    Last year I also switched over to StoryGraph and created my own long term challenge. After importing my data from GR into SG I started looking at the challenges they have. I love how SG has them set up. They are easy to browse and easy to log books into a prompt. I also love that I can see which books others have logged for each prompt. There are 12 categories for the challenges, I really enjoy the genre and geographical categories.

    The challenge I created for myself was based on so many posts I saw about “reading the world”. My challenge is to read a fiction and nonfiction book by an author from 195 countries. I’m actually using SG challenges to help me keep track. I’m using 2 nearly identical challenges that list all 195 countries, one is for my fiction books and the other I’m using for my nonfiction books.

    I hope you find a more interesting challenge or 2.