What’s Your Reading Challenge?

January is often a time to set new goals for the coming year. We like to think about our reading goals as challenges. There’s a fun website that has ideas for a lot of different types of reading challenges. Signing up for one of these online challenges where you can interact with other readers can help to keep you motivated. Maybe you always read mysteries but would like to try some science fiction. Or you usually read non-fiction but would like to read more fiction. Perhaps you’ve been meaning to read more classics. Or you want to finally tackle that long historical fiction series that you’ve had on your “to read” list for years. Sign up for one of the challenges on the site, or come up with your own.

If you would like to get inspired by someone else’s reading challenges, a couple of memoirs published last year might be of interest. In Tolstoy and the Purple Chair: My Year of Magical Reading, Nina Sankovitch recounts her year of reading a book a day as a way to cope with the death of her older sister. In The Reading Promise: My Father and the Books We Shared Alice Ozma shares the challenge that she and her father began when she was in fourth grade: they would read together for 100 nights in a row. Rather than ending at 100 nights, though, their reading streak continued until Ozma began college, eight years later. While both memoirs discuss the books each author read, they are also about the connection of literature and reading to our daily lives.

A great place to look for reading suggestions for the year ahead—whether you give yourself a challenge, or not—is NoveList, a resource available to Fairfax County Library customers via the library’s website. You can enter names of authors or books you like, and you’ll get recommendations for similar authors or titles. NoveList includes information about fiction for adults and children, so there is something for everyone. There’s a lot to explore in NoveList, so we challenge you to give it a try this year.

Do you have a reading-related resolution for 2012? Let us know in the comments.