Let's Talk | The Goodreads Reading Challenge

This was the first year I participated in the Goodreads Reading Challenge and I recently reached my goal of 25 books (which for me is quite a lot). During the whole process of trying to reach that goal, I found out that I have some issues with the whole challenge. I would like to share those issues and find out if anyone feels the same way as I do.

Let me start off my saying that I really like the idea of the Goodreads Challenge and that (for me) it's the perfect way to keep track of all the books I have read in a year. This is also the reason why I will still be setting a new reading goal next year as well. Despite the problems I came across, it was a lot of fun to work toward that goal and finally reaching it felt like such an achievement.

Next year I will be setting a really low reading goal of about 10 books, though, and I have a few reasons why. 

The biggest reason why I made this decision, is the stress the reading challenge gave me this year. I am a student, which means that I am at school during weekdays and work in the evenings and on the weekends. That doesn't leave me much time to read. At certain points I had to push myself to read JUST because I wanted to reach my reading goal. I think this isn't okay.

I also like to read big fantasy novels, which are usually really long. This April, I read A Clash Of Kings by George R R Martin, an amazing novel with the great amount of 1009 pages. I highly enjoyed the book, but even though I loved it so much, I noticed that I was rushing through it, because I didn't have a long time to read a certain book (only about one and a half week), because of my reading challenge.

This is why I decided to set a low reading goal for next year. I will still be able to keep track of how many books I read in a year, but I won't have to rush or push through books. Reading should be fun and not stressful.

My Goodreads

~ Amber