{"id":7894,"date":"2015-12-29T18:26:03","date_gmt":"2015-12-29T23:26:03","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.lettersandsodas.com\/books\/?p=7894"},"modified":"2015-12-29T18:26:03","modified_gmt":"2015-12-29T23:26:03","slug":"read-harder-2015-etc","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lettersandsodas.com\/books\/read-harder-2015-etc\/","title":{"rendered":"Read Harder 2015, etc."},"content":{"rendered":"

I generally like my reading to be directed by my whims, so I didn’t fully commit to the Book Riot 2015 Read Harder Challenge<\/a>. But I did think it looked interesting, so I decided that for 2015 I would track my reading against the challenge categories and see what I was (and wasn’t) reading on my own, perhaps with an eye to further diversifying my reading choices in the future. At this point in the year, I might read another book before the start of 2016, but given what I have checked out from the library at the moment, I doubt I’m going to be ticking any new boxes on this list. So, here goes.<\/p>\n

Things I didn’t read in 2015:
\n– A book written by someone when they were under the age of 25
\n– A book that takes place in Asia
\n– A book by an author from Africa
\n– A book that is by or about someone from an indigenous culture (Native Americans, Aboriginals, etc.)
\n– A sci-fi novel (the closest was probably Speak<\/i> by Louisa Hall, but I’m not sure I’d count it).
\n– A romance novel
\n– An audiobook
\n– A collection of poetry
\n– A book published before 1850<\/p>\n

Hm, so: left to my own devices, I’m not that great with geographical diversity or genre diversity, and I skew towards middle-aged (or older) contemporary authors. And I’ve actually never<\/em> read an audiobook—I generally can’t even manage podcasts, honestly. I really strongly prefer reading things to hearing them.<\/p>\n

Things I did read in 2015:
\n– A book written by someone when they were over the age of 65: I think I read five books that might fit this category, but the most obvious (because it’s explicitly about aging) is Pondlife<\/i> by Al Alvarez. <\/p>\n

– A collection of short stories: The Hollow Land<\/em> by Jane Gardam.<\/p>\n

– A book published by an indie press: I think I read twelve of them over the course of the year, but let’s say Ten Walks\/Two Talks<\/em> by Jon Cotner and Andy Fitch (Ugly Duckling Presse).<\/p>\n

– A book by or about someone that identifies as LGBTQ: I think I read six books that fit this category; the most recent (and probably my favorite!) was Dryland<\/em> by Sara Jaffe.<\/p>\n

– A book by a person whose gender is different from your own: I read 27 books by men this year. 10:04<\/i> by Ben Lerner was probably my favorite. <\/p>\n

– A microhistory: I think three books I read could count for this, but let’s say Photobooth: A Biography<\/em> by Meags Fitzgerald.<\/p>\n

– A YA novel: I read six of them. My favorite this year was definitely Fangirl<\/em> by Rainbow Rowell.<\/p>\n

– A National Book Award, Man Booker Prize or Pulitzer Prize winner from the last decade: The Penderwicks<\/em> by Jeanne Birdsall (which won the National Book Award for Young People’s Literature in 2005).<\/p>\n

– A book that is a retelling of a classic story (fairytale, Shakespearian play, classic novel, etc.): can I count Oreo<\/em> by Fran Ross here, as a retelling of the Theseus myth? I think I can. <\/p>\n

– A book that someone else has recommended to you: six that my boyfriend recommended, one that a friend recommended, and one that my mom recommended. Most recent was the recommendation from my mom, which was Shadow Castle<\/i> by Marian Cockrell.<\/p>\n

– A book that was originally published in another language: I read two: An Attempt at Exhausting a Place in Paris<\/em> by Georges Perec, translated by Marc Lowenthal and Of Walking in Ice<\/em> by Werner Herzog, translated by Martje Herzog and Alan Greenberg. <\/p>\n

– A graphic novel, a graphic memoir or a collection of comics of any kind: I read six books that could fit this category, my favorite of which was El Deafo<\/em> by Cece Bell. <\/p>\n

– A book that you would consider a guilty pleasure (Read, and then realize that good entertainment is nothing to feel guilty over): Waistcoats & Weaponry<\/em> by Gail Carriger.<\/p>\n

– A book published this year: eighteen of them, most recently The Shepherd’s Life<\/i> by James Rebanks.<\/p>\n

– A self-improvement book (can be traditionally or non-traditionally considered \u201cself-improvement\u201d): Happier at Home<\/em> by Gretchen Rubin, and perhaps also The Art of Stillness: Adventures in Going Nowhere<\/em> by Pico Iyer.<\/p>\n

And yes, Book Riot has already put together the 2016 Read Harder Challenge<\/a>, which I may approach in the same spirit as this year’s. (I also kind of feel like maybe I should carry over the 2015 challenge categories for the ones I didn’t do in 2015.) Meanwhile, though it’s not a challenge<\/em>, I feel I should also mention that I’m signed up for James’s TBR Triple Dog Dare<\/a> again for 2016, meaning that between January 1 and April 1, I’ll be trying to read exclusively books I already own. Surely some of the books I already own will tick some of the categories on Book Riot’s 2016 list! <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I generally like my reading to be directed by my whims, so I didn’t fully commit to the Book Riot 2015 Read Harder Challenge. But I did think it looked interesting, so I decided that for 2015 I would track my reading against the challenge categories and see what I was (and wasn’t) reading on […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7894","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-generalmeta"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lettersandsodas.com\/books\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7894","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lettersandsodas.com\/books\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lettersandsodas.com\/books\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lettersandsodas.com\/books\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lettersandsodas.com\/books\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7894"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lettersandsodas.com\/books\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7894\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lettersandsodas.com\/books\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7894"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lettersandsodas.com\/books\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7894"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lettersandsodas.com\/books\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7894"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}