My Epic Reading Adventures: 85 Books In 6 Months...Say What?

Prologue

Hello all. Here is the scoop. I joined two reading challenges this year, 100+ Reading Challenge and the 2011 E-book Challenge. The first obviously involves reading at least 100 books in a year. This is the challenge that most concerns me. The fact is that I am epically behind in completing this challenge. When I say epically, I mean that I've read exactly 15 books this year and haven't even reviewed all of those. Meaning I must complete and review 85 books in exactly 6 months. Wow! I know there would be nothing wrong with me not meeting the challenge and starting again next year, but I really want to meet this goal. Some things you just know you have to do for your own peace of mind, and this is one of those things to me.

Last night as I was contemplating (a.k.a flipping out) my predicament I got a rather lovely idea. I thought why not start a blog journal about my journey to finish this challenge. This journal will not only keep me on track with my reading, but will hopefully be entertaining to my fabulous readers. The idea is for me to write every day or couple of days. Thus this will also help me meet my other goal which was to blog more often during the week. I have decided to write my journals in similar manner as my two favorite fictional diary writers Bridget Jones and Georgia Nicolson. By this I mean that I will try to include personal observations, general hilariosity (my new favorite Georgia Nicolson make up word),  and wacky chapter titles. This will be similar to my short lived segments What's Reading Wednesday and Thursday Night Thoughts, which I'm going to abandon because I like this idea so much better. I'm very excited to start this journey, and hope you enjoy reading My Epic Reading Adventures.

Chapter 1: Let Operation Reading Challenge Commence 

Mission: Complete and Review 85 books in 6 months.

My Strategy:

I will:

• Complete 2 or more books a week.

• Read as many short books as possible. It looks like a lot of YA novels and novellas are in my near future. However I will try to mix it up if I can.

• Read more than one book at the same time. I already do this one, but I've got a strategy for this as well. I will read 2 books which I will call Primary Books. These are books I will dedicate 90% of my reading time to. I will also read 2 books that I will call Secondary Books. These would be books that are longer or that I just prefer to enjoy slowly. I will read these for the other 10% of my reading time.

• Try to get around to listening to my audio book.

• Find a way to review more of often and more efficiently. I'm still figuring out this one. There is actually a reason that I don't write more. My learning differences (ADD, dyspraxia, a little dyslexic thrown in the mix). All of these cause difficulties with my writing skills. It can be very frustrating. Sometimes it can take me an hour just to complete writing one paragraph. I'm prone to skip words in my writing, make ridiculous typographical errors, and have trouble spelling short words as opposed to large words (that's weird I know). Unfortunately these mistakes often go unnoticed when I post a blog, because my brain simply can't recognize the mistakes until literally a year after I've posted the blog. I'm not exaggerating. I still go back to read my posts from two years ago and find annoying mistakes. You've probably already noticed some of my jacked up writing moments that I've undoubtedly missed even though I've read and re-read this post. By the way I apologize. The only way to avoid this is to have my mom read over the whole thing. This is not only occasionally unfeasible, but it's quite embarrassing for a 24 year old to have to have her work checked by her mommy. It's a very weird dichotomy because on one hand I love how writing relaxes me, and on the other it makes me crazy. Ha ha. I'm looking into speech recognition software, hopefully that will help me get out of my own way. Let's cross out fingers shall we? Well now I've spiraled into a melodramatic rant. Back to the subject.

I will not:

• Spend the entirety of my Saturdays, Sundays, and general days off work sleeping the day away.

• Start books that I know I will hate.

Progress Status So Far This Week

Books Completed: A Wrinkle In Time

Primary Books Chosen: Knocked Out By My Nunga-Nungas, Fearless #1

Secondary Books Chosen: North and South, Glass

Miscellaneous Comments: I laughed for so long last night while reading Knocked Out By My Nunga-Nungas. I read about half of the book by 3 a.m. and a little of Fearless as well. I had much amusement while reading Fearless during lunch. I had forgotten how lovably sarcastic the main character is. I'm going to start writing my next review tomorrow. I'll let you know later when it will be posted. 

So ends the first installment of My Epic Reading Adventures. Keep it shiny all!