Tone your literary muscles with a reading challenge

Longer ago than I care to remember, as a student of English Literature, books were my best pals. Finishing university with a half-respectable degree meant ploughing through a lengthy list of recommended reading. Jane Eyre, Great Expectations and Pride and Prejudice threatened my thriving social life and on occasion I briefly* considered shunning a night out and staying in to consume the works of Dickens instead of a cheap cider.

My left shoulder carried a permanent red mark, penance for lugging an assortment of chunky novels wherever I went. I’d trawl bargain book stores for £1 Penguin Classics to keep up with the demands of the course on my measly budget. My flimsy student shelves strained under the bulk of terms’ worth of tomes.

Perhaps inevitably, I started to forget the pure joy the more youthful me had derived from the likes of Enid Blyton, Roald Dahl and Judy Blume. I liked my course, but reading became a bit of a chore, and I took to rattling through the pages, digesting just enough to discuss the themes and characters in a vaguely knowledgeable fashion when questioned.

Student days done, it was a few years before the magic and escapism offered by a decent book returned. Owning my first Kindle was a revelation, and not just for the overweight baggage fines swerved when going on holiday, now that I no longer had 10kg of novels nestled among my beach towels and swimwear.

Armed with a neat portable gadget jammed with literary material, I read more and more. But without the physical presence of a book and having regular sight of its cover, I found that unless it was a bestselling number, I couldn’t always bring it to mind and recommend to others.

Finding Goodreads

A few years back, I came across Goodreads. A social network dedicated entirely to book fans, and importantly, a social network devoid of selfies, unnecessary hashtags and other forms of narcissism. The only showing off you’ll find here is perhaps some impressive reading lists. Which brings me to my new vice. The Reading Challenge.

Goodreads Reading Challenge is exactly as it sounds, a chance to set yourself a target number of books to devour in a year, track your progress, and discover lots of new authors and genres along the way. My earlier problem of struggling to remember what I’d read, sorted.

Of course you could do this yourself with minimal effort by tapping your reads into your phone or scribbling them down in a notebook. But how likely are you to do that really? When you sign up to the Reading Challenge on Goodreads, you’ll input what you’re reading onto the site, updating it when you’re finished or at various milestones. You can choose to review at the end, or at any point throughout your bookish journey. You’ll also get a motivating progress bar, a visual representation of how quickly you’re edging towards your chosen target. It quickly becomes very, very addictive.

As the site learns more about you and your tastes, you’ll get recommendations and inspiration for future reads by the bucket load. If you’ve got ‘friends’ on there too, you can spark up a bit of healthy competition.

Raising the game

I saw out my first challenge having read 32 books and increased my target at a steady pace over the following years. In 2020 I’m raising the bar and aiming for 60.

But this isn’t all about a numbers game. Since signing up for the challenge, I’ve discovered genres I previously wouldn’t have given the time of day. I’ve always been into modern fiction or a gripping thriller, but now I’m partial to music biographies or travel diaries.

I’m revisiting the classic numbers I sped through as a student and appreciating them with a more grown-up head. I’m searching for lists of ‘must-read before you die’ type books and probing/harassing fellow book-nerd friends for their recommendations. I’m spending more time lurking in Waterstones and Kindle’s virtual book shop. I’m hooked on finding my next reading fix. I’ve well and truly rediscovered my passion for the written word.

With my Reading Challenge goal in mind, I also find more opportunities squeeze in a chapter. I read as I’m boiling the kettle or drying my hair. A book or Kindle is a permanent fixture in my already overloaded handbag.

It would be easy to assume this time buried in books has made me anti-social, but the reverse is true. I’ve actually got more to talk about, have broadened my knowledge of different authors considerably, and have found others that love the book banter as much as I do.

Another unexpected but absolute bonus is that the more time spent in the company of good books, the urge to visit the pages of another well-known book - Facebook - has all but vanished. It supposedly takes 21 days to form a habit but I’d say my new one - picking up a book instead of getting lost in social media, took hold much sooner than that. I’m turning my back on status updates, ‘likes’ and check-ins, there’s so much more to be gained in the covers of a real good story.