This first quarter of 2022 has honestly been a little dismal for me on the reading front. Things have progressively slowed down since I got my freelance job during the second half of last year, but for some reason I’ve had an even harder time getting motivated to read over the past few months. It’s not as if I’ve been reading nothing, but when comparing the numbers to this time last year it is a little disheartening.

I think some of it has to do with the fact that my freelance job, while ultimately involving editing, has me reading a lot too. So, when I do have downtime, I feel less inclined to spend my time reading for fun. Hopefully I can reorganize things a little to better suit what I want, but for the moment I’m finding it all a little vexing.

Goodreads Challenge

At the moment, I am behind schedule on this year’s reading challenge by three books. I set my goal to a more modest 50 this year, and so far I have read only nine books. Considering the length of some of these, I know I can be doing better. It’s odd that I haven’t even been reading comics as much as I could be. Of these nine books, four have been comics, three have been novels, one has been a collection of poetry, and the final one was an artbook. I suppose I should cut myself a little slack, as one of the graphic novels was the digital omnibus containing all of the Scott Pilgrim series. Had I read through the series outside of omnibus format, that would have counted as three or more entries instead of the one.

Scrappy To-Read List

Every year I like to assemble a hand-written list of books to read, all for the thrill of crossing them out as I complete them. As with last year, it’s a list of 12 books that must come from series I haven’t started before. They can begin a series, but no sequels, spin-offs, nothing like that.

As it stands, here is the list:

As you can see, so far I have only read one book so far, which was We Were Liars by E. Lockhart.

This is an amount of progress I find especially unfortunate, as finishing this yearly list oddly means more to me than any other challenge I set out for myself. As it is, it makes for a neat one book per month (though I’m not strictly trying to read one every month), so I’m sad that I’ve only finished one by the end of this quarter. Some of these look to be fairly quick reads, however, so I’m hoping I won’t fall back into my non-list-completing ways.

Series Challenge

Continuing from what I set up last year, I made these little sub-challenges as a way to keep me on top of the series I’m still in the middle of so that I don’t get caught up reading new books instead of finishing things I’ve already started. The first quartet of books is a part of my ongoing read-through of the Terry Pratchett’s Discworld series, which I try to read four books from every year.

I’m happy that I’m actually on track with these, as I typically like to finish one each quarter of the year so I’m not reading them too close together. The Last Continent was supposed to be the last one from last year, but it just wasn’t meant to be. Still, I’m happy to have it done; I enjoyed it more than I thought I would too.

The second quartet for this challenge includes four other books from more random series that I’m still in the middle of that I want to make sure I don’t leave languishing on my shelf.

I’m nicely on track with this so far too, having finally finished Thrawn: Treason by Timothy Zahn, finally finishing off this trilogy of Star Wars novels. They’re fantastic if you want a look at the Empire that’s a little more morally grey, despite the evil the underpins it.

Writing

Nothing, other than the random primordial sea that contains all of my ideas and characters, swimming around in my head and wishing their creator didn’t have goo-brain. I’ve felt a little inspired by writing advice I’ve come across on TikTok, but I’ve done no actual writing and won’t pretend I have.

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How are your reading challenges going? I’d love to hear about them in the comments.

Until next time, thank you for reading!