Mindfulness Reading Challenge for 2016

I am still in shock as to how much faster each year seems to travel than the one before. My 2015 was definitely travelling faster than 88 miles per hour back to the future style for sure. Reflecting back on early January last year was around the time that I was contemplating whether or not I should try my hand at writing blog posts for fun. Over the past year I have loved and loathed many books and I have loved every second of sharing my thoughts through ‘Miss Book Dependent.’ It has been such an enjoyable experience in 2015 connecting with other bloggers and book enthusiasts alike. Ah how time does travel fast when one is having fun amusing themselves with writing about books, tea and mindfulness…

One of the very first photos I took for bookish purposes… 

 

I have read many books in my twenty three years, but I don’t think I could tell you how many. I don’t even think I could ‘guestimate.’ When I was younger my Mum used to always say “Ashleigh just try and guess how many books you’ve read!” I could never give her a straight out answer. I do remember In grade six I competed in the MS Readathon and read over 25 books. For a 12 year old this was very committed. Mind you dear reader my total pretty much consisted of all three series of Deltora Quest. I don’t know if I was skim reading to just get a higher amount of donations… Regardless that is the only time in my life that I have bothered to record my reading lists…

For someone who is born in a technological driven society, I am so not technological.  I was very late on the ‘Goodreads’ bandwagon which is an app that lets you record books you want to, have and are currently reading. (If Ron Weasley was reviewing the app just as all the fabulous people leave their reviews on beloved books, he’d say it was bloody brilliant!) I decided that I would keep a folder for all the books I read this year.

I didn’t set myself a total of desired number of books to read last year as I was curiouser and curiouser to see how much I could actually read. I know that I have read my fair share of books over my life, but I have never had a solid idea about how many I would read every 365 days…

Surprisingly I managed to read my way through all of 62 books. I say surprisingly because at first I couldn’t determine if that was I was happy with that total. It does average just over one book per week which is not too bad. However I am aware that this total included poetry anthologies, short stories and one very large audiobook (I listened to ‘A Game of Thrones’ by George R.R Martin this year and am now onto ‘A Clash of Kings.’ They are absolutely huge stories!)

With the onset of the New Year, I am compelled to set myself a new reading challenge goal. As a highly competitive Scorpio, I am experiencing the need to outdo my efforts of last year and have set myself a personal goal to read 75 books to read in 2016. 75 is an especially bookish number for me, as I like to give all books I read a ’75 page rule’ to allow it grab my attention. 75 pages in and you will know if you want to keep reading it! I assure you dear reader it hasn’t failed me yet! Sadly I do have a few books pending in my Goodreads account because they couldn’t succumb to the 75 page rule.

Book Bunny Arnold also approves of my 75 page rule… 

 

I’m also extremely aware of the fact that my 2015 consisted of many reading highs and extreme lows for me. There were weeks that I was chewing through book series and other times where I wasn’t reading anything at all. 13 books added to my 2015 total may not seem like a lot, but I am trying to remain realistic about my goal. I don’t want to go overboard with my reading total as I’m extremely busy working as a teacher and a second job in retail. I am constantly balancing the two so I need to allow myself time to do my work J  Although more times than not I do find myself preoccupied with books for fun rather than working. It’s just way more fun 🙂

With the excitement of starting a fresh new year, I wanted to add a dash of mindfulness to my reading goal just to make it that little bit more of a challenge. Recently I have moved into a new house and it was the perfect opportunity to examine all the books I actually own. There are so many books on my shelf that have sat unread just waiting to be explored…

Most of the beloved books on my shelf have still not been read… I feel like 2016 is just the time to start… 

 

Thus I have decided that my Reading Goal for 2016 will be to only read new books this year…

Just in 2015 alone, I re-read ‘The Hunger Games’ series and ‘The Chronicles of Narnia’ series. And not to mention every single year I re-read one, some or all of Harry Potter.  The problem is that I love rereading my favourite books so much that it will prevent me from reading something new and fresh. Not only will this save money on my bank account but it will expose me to new and exciting reads. Pushing myself outside of my reading comfort zone will be my bookish motto for 2016.

Sorry Harry Potter books, I need to start expanding my reading universe for a little while…  We will meet again very soon though 🙂 

Not only will I be focusing on new books, but I will challenge myself to read widely in all different genres. My little black dress of books will always be a Dystopian Romance novel. I  always spend the most amount of time in the bookshop browsing in this section. Varying the choices of my books will be on the cards in 2016. I have chosen to start with my Penguins classic shelf of books to begin the challenge for the new year. I am very good at buying these beautiful editions and let them stack up stunningly on my shelf. (Picture above) I am so excited to start reading them and share my thoughts and ideas with all of you guys!

I fee really good about setting this challenge for myself and will track my books just as I did last year on my Goodreads account ‘missbookdependent.’ I am interested to hear if you have set yourself any reading challenges for 2016?

Happy reading,

Miss Book Dependent xo