Reading Challenges for 2016

Renaissance Granddad’s 2016 Reading Challenges!

Well last year was the first time that I set a goals for both the overall number of books that I was going to read in the year and the types of books. I signed up for three reading challenges: Cloak and Dagger, Historical Fiction, and Nonfiction and created one of my own Science Fiction. While I kept track of the number of books I had read for each challenges I never posted at the websites where I had signed up for the challenges. I guess I should have but I was one of the few men who signed up for the challenges, so I felt kinda alone and funny posting! Also I’m lazy and a loner so it was easier just to post about the books I was reading here!

Anyway this year I have created my own reading challenges. There’s no way I want to make a commitment to read a large number of any one time of book i.e. I am not going to read thirty or forty classic books because that will cut down on the number of mystery books that I have time to read!! So I decided to create several reading challenges.

As I started to create my reading challenges I knew I wanted to read more literature and general fiction and maybe less murder and mayhem books! I also wanted to read more classic literature. Earlier in the month I came across this post at List Challenges  300 Books Everyone Should Read at Least Once. When I checked the books that I had read on this list I discovered that I have only read 30 of the listed books. So I feel that I need tp read books from this list. Therefore, I created my 2016 Literature Reading Challenge. The subcategories that I created are: General Fiction, Classics, NY Times Bestseller list and Award-winners. These categories allow me to read some contemporary fiction, some books that are on the current bestseller lists and some that have won awards like the Pen-Faulkner Award or the Pulitzer Prize. I also want to read some of those classics that I have avoided all these years!! I want to read 6 books from each of the 4 subcategories for a total of 24 books in the reading challenge!!

My second challenge is my mystery/thriller challenge. The two subcategories in this challenge are RGranddad’s Mysteries or the mysteries and thrillers that are books in the series that I read or books from my favorite authors. The second subcategory is Women Mystery Book authors. I have many books by female authors like Linda Fairstein, Sara Paretsky and Dana Stabenow on my TBR shelves that I haven’t gotten around to reading. I thought this would be a good way to make myself read these books. I know I will enjoy them!! I plan to read 10 books from each subcategory or 20 books total!

My final two challenges are a nonfiction challenge and a science fiction challenge. I would like to read ten nonfiction books. After reading The Politics of Deception my current read is In Retrospect by Robert McNamara both deal with history of the 1960s, I have enjoyed both books so I think that many of the nonfiction books I plan to read will deal with the history or politics from 1960 to the present! Of course there will also be some self-help, anti-aging and happiness books mixed in among those reads! Finally, I really did enjoy those Science Fiction books I read in 2015 so I would like to continue to read a few books from that genre! So the 16 books in these challenges added to the books from the other two challenges bring the total for the 2016 Renaissance Granddad Reading Challenge to 60 books!! Whoa!!

Here’s the breakdown! Wish Me Luck!! Bye – I’m off the read now!!

P.S. I love to hear about anyone else’s proposed 2016 reading challenges!!