Pages Read Challenge 2015

Whew, it has been a while since I hosted the Pages Read Challenge, but Book Dragon asked if I was hosting it again for 2015 and here we go! It is a fun challenge and I had a lot of fun with this in the past. This challenge was one of the easier ones, in my opinion, as all you had to do was count pages and the rules are not all that difficult.

Now, speaking of rules, here we go:

1) Pick a number of pages you'll be attempting to read in 2015. It doesn't matter whether your goal is 10,000 or 100,000. You can always up your number as we go along, so you don't need to go all up high with your page count.

2) Write a blog post about it in which you will keep track of your page count or come back here and comment with updates when you feel like it.

3) Comment here with your goal number and a link to your blog post (if you have a blog - otherwise, just leave a comment with your name and the goal number). I'll then add you to the list of participants below.

4) The challenge starts January 1, 2015 and ends December 31, 2015. Only pages read after the new year has begun count in for the challenge, but any and every page you read counts for this challenge. I don't care about re-reads, overlaps with other challenges, or e-books! Just count the pages you read, no matter what type of book you're reading :-) See, it's a really easy challenge!

5) As usual: Have fun!

Michelle @ True Book Addict had originally created a wonderful button for the challenge:



Thanks a lot once again, Michelle!

My personal goal will be 15,000 pages for the upcoming year. With a toddler and university, I think this will be challenging enough.

The Book Riot 2015 Read Harder Challenge

The team of Book Riot has created a challenge I cannot resist: the Book Riot 2015 Read Harder Challenge There are 24 themes that we can spread out over the year whichever way we please and I think most of the themes will be manageable for me. The one theme I may have a real problem with is the collection of poetry. I do not like poetry and I don't have any collections of poetry on my shelves. A particularly hard part for me will the number of books. Twentyfour books for this challenge alone - if I don't find books that fulfill two themes - might end up being the majority of my reads for 2015 if my reading is as slacking as this year's (I only read 32 books so far).

Apart from the occasional check in on the Book Riot website, the hashtag #ReadHarder will connect readers on Social Media websites.

The topics are:

A book written by someone when they were under the age of 25

A book written by someone when they were over the age of 65

A collection of short stories (either by one person or an anthology by many people)

A book published by an indie press

A book by or about someone that identifies as LGBTQ

A book by a person whose gender is different from your own

A book that takes place in Asia

A book by an author from Africa

A book that is by or about someone from an indigenous culture (Native Americans, Aboriginals, etc.)

A microhistory

A YA novel

A sci-fi novel

A romance novel

A National Book Award, Man Booker Prize or Pulitzer Prize winner from the last decade

A book that is a retelling of a classic story (fairytale, Shakespearian play, classic novel, etc.)

An audiobook

A collection of poetry

A book that someone else has recommended to you

A book that was originally published in another language

A graphic novel, a graphic memoir or a collection of comics of any kind (Hi, have you met Panels?)

A book that you would consider a guilty pleasure (Read, and then realize that good entertainment is nothing to feel guilty over)

A book published before 1850

A book published this year

A self-improvement book (can be traditionally or non-traditionally considered “self-improvement”)

Merry Christmas!

Merry Christmas everyone! We wish you a joyous holiday, if you're celebrating it. Hopefully, you can spend your time with loved ones, be they family or not. Are you even still reading my blog? I'm such a wuss, honestly. I'm so ashamed! Then again, this past year, I read 32 books so far, when in the past I read over 100. That's what you apparently what you have to get used to, having a toddler and being a full-time student. However, in order to get him accustomed to books and reading, he got a big stack of books for Christmas this year - and he loves them. In the picture, you can see him sitting on great-grandpa's lap.

Now, you may know we live in Germany, so we go with German customs. Baby Jesus is the one bringing the presents here, on Christmas Eve. When no one is in the room, he comes and miraculously the presents appear underneath the tree. It's a nice custom that we stick to, despite Daddy aka my significant other being American. The incredibly bright side here is, that in later years, there will be no kid awake at 4am, trying to make us get up in order to unwrap presents. The wait in the evening is bad enough as it is.

That being said, I shall go back to the festivities. We are about to have dinner here with everyone (again, Germany - presents on the 24th, and both 12/25 and 12/26 are days off for most people, so we get together and eat - and eat, and eat...)