Goodreads Annual Reading Challenge

Each year Goodreads, a social networking site for book lovers, allows you to challenge yourself to read more books. It has a widget on its page called the Reading Challenge.

For the Reading Challenge, you select how many books you’d like to read in the coming year, and then each time you read a book, you share it on Goodreads and the Reading Challenge widget tracks it for you. At the end of the year, it provides you with statistics about the books you’ve read, like total number of pages, average length, most popular, and least popular book.

I read 25 books in 2014, so I challenged myself to read 30 books in 2015, and sadly I’m going to fall short at only 16 books. Although, to be fair, one of the “books” I logged was actually a four-book series. And I don’t log the textbooks I read for school. But still, I fell short of my goal.

This, however, is higher than the national average, according to the Pew Research Center: “Among all Americans, the average number of books read in the previous year was 12 and the median number of books read was four. Some 27% of adults said they hadn’t read any books over the past year.”

If you haven’t done so already, I encourage you to check out Goodreads and then sign up for the 2016 Reading Challenge. And then add me as a Goodreads friend so we can hold each other accountable for our goals and help our national average to exceed 12 books per year.

How many books have you read this year? What books would you recommend for our readers’ 2016 Reading Challenge?

Written by Anne Greenwalt, who recommends The Goldfinch by Donna Tartt and MaddAddam by Margaret Atwood.

2 comments Anne Greenawalt, Donna Tartt, goodreads, Margaret Atwood, reading challenge