2025 Reading Challenge discussion

Hello everyone! I hope to read at least 25 books this year!
This is my main goal for the year, but I'd also like to "broaden" my reading, so here are my personnal goals:
- 25 books at least
- 6 000 pages
- 12 of those books must come from my unread books at home
- read more about countries other than France/the USA, or books set in a foreign country, or read books from other from a foreign country
- try to read books translated from a language other than English
- finish at least one of those series I've started years ago : maybe the Dark Tower by S. King? or the Sharakaï series by Beaulieu? or any other one, I have too many to count, but I want to finish one of my series.

I've already finished 5 books (it's a very good start to the year for me):
1.The Ghost Brigadesby John Scalzi : novel number 2 in a series, solid sci-fi, 4 stars
2. Le Maître d'armes : number 8 in comics series. Very good, very funny, but not translated into English, and most of the jokes are about French literature, so I don't know if it would translate very well.
3. The Screaming Staircaseby Jonathan Stroud : number 1 in the "Lockwood and Co" series, recommended to me by my sister. Excellent YA, I'm waiting for novel number 2 (from the library).
4. Uprooted by Naomi Novik : 4 stars, good fantasy, and I give Naomi Novik kudos for writting a stand-alone novel. FInally a fantasy book I don't have to hunt the sequels to!
5. Cheaper by the Dozen : YA, 3 stars.

3 of those 5 books are from my own books, so that 3/12 for that goal!

Edit, 31 of January : one series finished! ("De cape et de crocs" : 12 comic books).

That is a very good start, La_mariane! Best of luck with your goals this year :)

Those are some great goals! Wishing you the best of luck with your reading challenge :)

Ilona wrote: "That is a very good start, La_mariane! Best of luck with your goals this year :)"

Thank you! I'm usually really motivated in January, and then I slow down… I'm hopping this group will keep me on track!

Lisa wrote: "Those are some great goals! Wishing you the best of luck with your reading challenge :)"

Thanks! I gave myself those goals, otherwise, I'd read only YA fantasy with the odd sci-fi novel in between.

I just finished Around the World in 72 Days by Nellie Bly.

It's my 6th book this year, the 4th one from my TBR pile, and it also counts toward my goal to read about countries other than France and the US. Three goals with one book!

I'm also doing the February challenge "The 5 languages of Love" : the thread is here : https://www.goodreads.com/topic/show/...

I've just completed my 10th book, because I finished the series "De Cape et de Crocs" : 12 tomes, the first one being Le Secret du janissaire by Alain Ayroles. I read this series very fast because it's "bande dessinée" : comic books or graphic novels in English. Still, one series!

I'm joining different yearly challenges on this site : this comment is just so I can keep track of everything:

--> Turn the pages : sign up in the comment # 521.
--> Clear the shelves: sign up in the comment # 427 (also, my thread in the group TBR Mountain of 2020)
--> Serial reader : sign up in comment #303
--> Find your flight : message #108

I managed to meet my goal for the February challenge "The Five Languages of Love". I read two books for this challenge, The Whispering Skull by Jonathan Stroud (my copy had more than 500 pages) and White Lies by Jayne Ann Krentz (genre : romance). I really liked the fist book, but not the second. Still, one challenge down!

I like the idea to read books from/about different countries, I'll try to do it more too. It's a long way to go, wish you good luck throughout the year! 😉

Irena wrote: "I like the idea to read books from/about different countries, I'll try to do it more too. It's a long way to go, wish you good luck throughout the year! 😉"
Thanks! I'm trying ot read Blindnessby José Saramago, an author from Portugal. Still from Europe, but I'm pretty sure I've never read anything translated from Portuguese.

The story looks promising, now I want to read it too xD I hope you will post a review here when you're finished reading it.

Irena wrote: "The story looks promising, now I want to read it too xD I hope you will post a review here when you're finished reading it."

I plan to review it, but I'm stuck at page 67... Still, I'll have time off work soon, so more time to read!

20 books read, at the beginning of March (because I read lots of comics : 11!). I've upped my yearly challenge from 25 to 28.

Clear the Shelves challenge / Mount TBR : 5 books.
Turn the pages : 3796/6000
Still Nothing for the "find your flight" challenge. I plan to read about Germany, religion, and maybe Nature (océans, ecology, …)
For the Serial Reader challenge : 17 books (I'm really not worried about this one…)

6th book read for the "Clear the Shelves" challenge : Une amazone by Alexandre Dumas.

7th book read for the "Clear the Shelves" challenge : La Porte des enfers( Hell's Gate in English) by Laurent Gaudé. This book is amazing, I Don't even have words to speak about it. It want straght to my "favourite" shelf, which only contains 9 books, so it's a pretty exclusive shelf.

BREAKING NEWS : I'm upping my total reading goal to 34 books for 2020.
I may even surpass it if I continue to read at the pace I'm going right now, but it seems reasonnable to me. It adds one book a month untill the end of the year.

Edit : a mod mooved my thread to the appropriate part of the challenge. Thanks!

I'm also uping my goal for the "Turn the Pages" challenge : I'll try to read 8 000 pages, which I think is achievable this year!

I'm going to do my first buddy read in April, for Animal Farm by George Orwell. Here is the thread for the buddy read.

Find your Flight challenge : I've decided "Hell's Gate" by Laurent Gaudé is going to be the starting point for my first flight. I've decided we're travelling to Hell! The company shoud be interesting at the very least :) Here is my plan:
1. Hell's Gate by Laurent Gaudé : read
2. The Aeneidby Virgil : TBR but I own a copy
3.Inferno by Dante Alighieri TBR and I need to buy a copy
4.A Life by Simone Veil: I have copy right now. We're going to a man-made version of Hell (Auschwitz).

Question to all of you fellow readers : can you recomand a book whre the main character goes to literal Hell, like in the Greek or Roman myths? It needs to be something I can get my hands on, because I don't live in America.

Edit : I'm also going to re-read the play by Jean-Paul Sartre, No Exit, and maybe some poetry : A Season in Hell by Arthur Rimbaud.

8th books for the "clear the shelves" challenge : The Attack by Yasmina Khadra. Good writing, very dark subject matter : violence, terrorist attacks in Israël and Palestine.

I've finally finished Blindness by José Saramago. Good writting, intesresting story, but far too dark and despairing for my tastes. Still, I'm glad I pushed myself to finish it. And it goes towards my goal of reading more widely : it was written in Portuguese.

For the "Find your Flight" challenge, I know where I'm going for my second flight : we're exploring social media! So, a totally foreign country, where the rules are often a bit blurry, as far as I'm concerned (Goodreads is the only "social media" site I use, the lure of the books was too strong).

I have my first two books for this theme:
#Murdertrending by Gretchen McNeil. I love the cover!
I also plan to read #Trahie by Louison Nielman. It's a YA novel, which title translates to "#Betrayed". The cover is beautiful :

I still don't know what the third book of this flight will be. Maybe a non-fiction? Don't hesitate to comment if you have a good recommandation!

I like oshizu's format for the progress report so much, I stole it! I'll make my first progress report for the 1st quarter, and then I'll try to do a monthly one.

2020 1st QTR PROGRESS
Duration: 1 January to 31 March, 2020

General Goodread Reading challenge : 24/34

2020 YEARLY CHALLENGES
Non-Group Challenges
*Read books translated from a language other than English: 0
*Read books where the action is set in a place other than France/the UK/ the USA(obvioulsy, sci-fi and fantasy don't count!) : 2 : Around the World in 72 Days by Nellie Bly and Hell's Gate by Laurent Gaudé


Group Challenges
*Let's Turn Pages: 4 886/8 000
*Find Your Flight: 1/9, for my first flisht "Flight to Hell".
*Serial Reader: 18/20 (I'll very probably up my goal for this challenge)
*Clear the Shelves : 7/12 (also, my thread in the TBR challenge group)

- - - -
February: Language
The Five Love Languages: 2/2
- - - -
1st Qtr Reading Stats
Books Read: 24 books (4 886 pages)
Books with 500+ pages : Uprooted, tomes 2 and 4 of the "Lockwood and Co." series
Average number of pages : 204
Favorite books: Uprooted, Hell's Gate and the "Lockwood &Co." series by Jonathan Stroud
Least favorite: White Lies

Translations (9): French is my mother tongue and I read in French, so this section is bit different than it would be if I were reading in English
English :9

Genres
Fantasy: 1
Science-fiction: 1
Classics: 2
Romance: 1
Litterary fiction: 1
Sequential art/bande dessinée: 11
YA: 4
Autobiography - memoirs: 3

For the "Find your Flight" challenge : I have a plan for my third flight, with the theme of epidemic/pandemic.

Here are the books I plan to read:
*The Plague by Albert Camus
*The Rains Came by Louis Bromfield
*Le Décaméron by Boccace
*The Stand by Stephen King
*World War Z: An Oral History of the Zombie War by Max Brooks

Your quarterly summary looks great!
Actually, most members track their challenges in their Member's Corner thread.
But since I've joined so many challenges and am leading 3 yearly ones as well, I decided to not have separate Personal Challenge and Member's Corner threads this year.

Best wishes with your new reading goals!
Have you already read the French sci-fi Our Life in the Forest? Would that fit into your Epidemic/Pandemic" flight? (Plus, it's shorter than The Stand, lol)

oshizu wrote: "Your quarterly summary looks great!
Actually, most members track their challenges in their Member's Corner thread.
But since I've joined so many challenges and am leading 3 yearly ones as well, I d..."

Thanks, you're the one who did the template, I just copied it :) And I like to keep everything in the same thread, it's easier to manage.

Thanks for the rec too, I've heard of Marie Darieussecq but I've never read anything by her. "Our life in the forest" sounds great, I'll add it to my reading list. I'll still try to tackle "The Stand", since I bought it years ago, and I haven't read it yet...

Just read Animal Farm by George Orwell in one sitting (April buddy read. I'm also counting it as the 9th book in my "Clear the Shelves" challenge).
This is my second time reading this book ; I read it the first time when I was a teenager or a young adult. This book was great! I gave it 4 stars and not 5 because the writing is very "to the point", and I prefer a more "litteray" style, but that's just personnal preference. Also, this book makes me want to go and something significant with my life… so, yeah, it's inspiring :)

OK, I'm having a really good year, reading-wise, so I'm upping my global reading goal again : I'm now aiming for 42 books!

Just finished novel #6 in the "Peter Grant" series : The Hanging Tree by Ben Aaronovitch. I love Nightingal, and I want to learn magic...

Just finished Need by Joelle Charbonneau : third book of my flisht about social media, for the "Find your Flight" Challenge. One flight done!

For the Clear the Shelves challenge : 10th book, Gurvan by Paul-Jean Hérault.

For the "Clear the Shelves" challenge : 11th book : Out of Africa, which takes place in Kenya.

I've just finished my 45th book this year : Book of Souls by Glenn Cooper. I've also completed my "Turn the pages" challenge, with more than 10,500 pages read.

I still need to read one of my own books for the "Clear the Shelves" challenge. I'll choose a very short one, to be sure to make it :)

I've finished my 46th book : Mother Comes of Age by Driss Chraïbi. That's my "Clear the Shelves" challenge done!

Just finished my 47th book : The Dark Child by Camara Laye. It's an autobiography, about the author's childhood in Guinea, in the 1930s, before he leaves for France. I really liked it : 4 solid stars. It's a gentle book, about family, growing up and eventually leaving.
Recommended to everyone!