If you saw my Preview of #AScareADay Reading Challenge 2024 post last month, you’ll know I spent my October reading 31 scary stories and poems curated by Dr. Sam Hirst of Romancing the Gothic. This was my third year participating in this spooky season reading challenge, and I loved it more than ever! Every year, I discover new-to-me authors, both contemporary and from centuries past, that I’m excited to explore further. These challenges are also a great reminder of how much I love short stories and poetry—forms I don’t devote quite as much attention to as novels. Plus, this year we explored a format I’ve never really read before: short webcomics. You can find the stories for this year’s reading challenge here, and check out the #AScareADay hashtag on Twitter and Bluesky to see the great discussions we’ve been having all month. Read on to see what I thought of the specific stories from this year’s challenge and stick around to the end of this post to hear about my recent guest appearance on a podcast! Continue reading #AScareADay 2024 Reading Challenge Reflections
Tag: Reading challenge
My 2023 Reading Recap
What a great year for reading it’s been! This is the first year in at least a decade that I haven’t participated in the official Goodreads Reading Challenge, since I stopped using Goodreads to track my reading. I did, however, still set reading goals for myself and keep track of each book I read, and I found 2023 to be one of the best reading years of my adult life.
#AScareADay Reading Challenge Reflections
I just spent the past month reading a scary story or poem for each day of October! This ambitious task was part of a reading challenge created by Dr. Sam Hirst, founder of Romancing the Gothic. I had such a great time last year participating in Sam’s inaugural #AGhostADay challenge, that I was thrilled when they announced they were doing a new challenge this October. While last year’s stories were mainly tales of revenants and hauntings, this year Sam broadened the focus to include as wide a variety of scary stories as possible. Subjects ranged from variations on classic vampires, werewolves, witches, and demons to more unique horrors like infectious fungi, primeval animals, and portals to other dimensions. You can see the full reading list of thirty-one stories for #AScareDay here. And check out the #AScareADay hashtag on (the platform formerly known as) Twitter or the #AScareADay feed on BlueSky to follow the discussion. Continue reading #AScareADay Reading Challenge Reflections
My 2022 Reading Challenge Recap
This year has been a year full of major life changes, including all sorts of changes to my reading habits. One major change is that I’m starting to move away from Goodreads, and am reevaluating how I track and document the books that I read. So this may very well be my last time doing the Goodreads Reading Challenge, specifically, though I will still be tracking my books and setting numerical goals. I’m still experimenting with finding the best alternatives, but one that I’ve started using is StoryGraph. I’m not sure how much I’ll be posting on there, but you can follow along with me at TheGothicLibrary.
My 2021 Reading Challenge Recap
This year has been an amazing reading year for me—though it’s been a real rollercoaster of a year in almost every other way. These days, I’m reading at a pace that I haven’t matched since high school, often finishing more than one book a week. This is the first time in many years that I’ve easily blown past my numerical reading goal. However, I wasn’t quite as successful with my content-based goals. Let me walk you through my year in books:
My 2020 Reading Challenge Recap
Well, it has certainly been a strange year! But if nothing else, 2020 has been a fairly good year of reading for me. As always, I participated in the annual Goodreads Reading Challenge, and this was the first time in many years that I easily met my numerical goal well in advance. The pandemic has changed my reading habits significantly, and many of my goals and priorities shifted from what I thought they would be at the beginning of the year. Let’s take a look back at my year in books!
My 2019 Reading Challenge Recap
Let’s look back at my year of books! Every year I participate in the Goodreads Reading Challenge, setting myself a numerical goal of books to read, as well as some more abstract goals. This year I set myself an easily attainable numerical goal, though I did end up losing sight of some of my larger objectives.
My 2018 Reading Challenge Recap
It’s time for my annual recap! Each year in January, I set a goal for the number of books that I want to read over the next twelve months as part of the Goodreads Reading Challenge. I learned my lesson last year about being too ambitious with my numerical goal, and set my sights a little lower. But it looks like this year I might still fall just a bit short.
My 2016 Reading Challenge Recap
Good news—I just completed my 2016 Goodreads Reaching Challenge! This year, I set myself what I thought was a rather moderate goal: to read 50 books over the course of the year. Though in my high school years I think I could have easily surpassed that number, I’d been repeatedly falling short the last two or three years of doing the challenge because college really cut into my reading time. Ironically, I read far fewer books while studying to be an English major, but that’s what happens when you spend an entire semester reading War and Peace… Now, for my first full year after graduating, I’ve been truly taking advantage of the opportunity to read whatever I want again. And of course, having a book blog to write for weekly has certainly spurred me on.
