Required Reading: April

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Look, the first quarter of 2012 is over. I cannot believe it. (And goodbye, favorite month! Till next year!)

March was all sorts of busy and fun, mostly because of work and the birthday. But this busy status and all the days/nights out was taxing to my reading and I was still oh-so-slow. I am currently behind my reading challenge by 4-5 books, and a part of me is crazily scrambling to catch up. But I can’t seem to.

Even so, the bigger part of me didn’t really mind the slowness because I think I was able to read a lot of good books in the past month. It was more of quality over quantity and it’s a nice way to spend my favorite month knowing you read good books. :D So, a recap:

There were some fun reads and some great reads in the past month too, and like I said, it was quite a nice reading month, even if I was so slow.

Now what’s in store for April?

Required Reading: April

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Required Reading: March

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Well hello there, favorite month!

Okay, January was some sort of a reading high and I blame it on the newness of the year. February was a different story — I don’t exactly know what happened, but I was a slower reader. Sometimes I could go for a day not flipping a book open. Books I normally finish within three to four days, I finish in a week. Maybe I was just too busy, but it felt weird to be reading a book for so long that isn’t even that thick.

But I have another theory. I think I may have gotten soft. Remember, my Required Reading theme for February was zombies, and I thought I would just be able to jump right into the undead shambling goodness…but no. Believe it or not, the zombie books I finished left me…grossed out. The only zombie book I was partially grossed out with was Married with Zombies, and that was an apocalypse book. I thought I had a stomach made of steel from all the zombie books I’ve read…but I was wrong, apparently. Which led to my being a slow reader last month, I guess.

Recap!

  • The Enemy by Charlie Higson (3/5)
  • The Little Prince by Antonine de Saint-Exupery (4/5)
  • The Reapers are the Angels by Alden Bell (5/5)

I read a total of 9 books this month, which isn’t really that bad. But I totally missed out on Warm Bodies (I would have read it if I could, but reviews talked of gross parts so I thought I’d pass for now) and Game of Thrones. I really hope to find time to squeeze GoT soon!

As for the TBR reducing challenge…gasp, my TBR still at 128. Ack. Most of them were galleys, anyway, and I only bought 3 books for February, two of them pre-orders while one is a secondhand book. Can I try to reduce my TBR to 125 next month? I hope so!

Required Reading: March

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Required Reading: February

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January has come and gone…and it’s been a very good reading month, if I do say so myself. I read a total of 12 books — can you believe that? And I finished all Required Reading books too! Here’s a recap:

That was pretty good, yes? I think the books I read in January were pretty good, too, and I enjoyed most of them. I still ended up getting more books so my TBR pile is still solidly on 128. Oh well, I’ll find a way to get that number down.

Did you join last month’s Required Reading challenge? How did you do?

Now we’re on to February!

Required Reading: February

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Required Reading: January

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So yay, it’s the new year! January is one of my favorite months of the year, mostly because of the newness and all the possibilities of a new year. Especially in reading — don’t you like it when you see your read shelf for the year still zero and you wonder up to what number you can get to by December 31 this year? :) I know I do.

And because I had so much fun with this last year (and it really helped me knock off books from my TBR), I am going to have a go at this again. Hello Required Reading 2012! :)

Required Reading is a reading challenge that is really about getting some books off the Mt. TBR. Just as the name of the challenge meant, Required Reading is about choosing some books that must be read within the month. It doesn’t have to be the only books you read in a month, but they should be read (or at least, started) before the said month ends.

I had some rules on this last year that really applied to me, but in case other people want to join me, here are the rules:

  • Books chosen for the challenge should be in the current TBR pile as of the month of the Required Reading post. So if you decided to join at March, the books you choose for the month should be in your TBR pile as of February.
  • Galleys and ARCs can be included.
  • Posting reviews aren’t necessary (but don’t you want that out of the way, too?).
  • I’ll be posting a theme every month but you don’t have to follow that. You can choose a theme for yourself if you want to — what’s important is the books that you put there are books that you want to get to reading.
  • And since this is a TBR reducing challenge, it would be very ideal if the books you choose aren’t a part of any other challenge. Just so you can read more. But seeing as I bent this rule so many times last year, you can bend it too. :)
  • Lastly: have fun. If you don’t finish a book, it’s okay! If you finish it, then…feel free to reward yourself with something. :)

I’ll be posting a linky every month of a Required Reading post so you can leave a link to your Required Reading post there. (Not that there’s a lot of people who joined this last year…but you never know :D)

Now we are on for January. :)

Required Reading 2012: January

I love the end and the start of the year because there are so many books that I end up putting on my wish list after everyone starts making their best-of lists. Of course, that doesn’t really bode well for my book budget. :P It also makes me feel like I should READ. ALL. BOOKS., at least the ones they listed as very good that are in my TBR.

So for January, my required reading list will contain the books that I noticed were in a lot of best-of-2011 book lists among my blogger friends. Let’s call this Best-Of Catch Up. :)

  • Saving June by Hannah Harrington – “Saving June has everything that I look for in my contemporary reads…” (Chachic’s Book Nook)
  • Flat-Out Love by Jessica Park – “Loved it. You know those books where you’re excited to tell the world about? I think this is one of them.  The more I think about Flat-Out Love the more I feel this “I need to pimp this book” feeling.” (Janicu’s Book Blog)
  • How to Save a Life by Sara Zarr – “From the assured writing to the authentic characters, How To Save A Life is a book that will both pluck at your heart strings and make you grin to lasting effect.” (Book Harbinger)

Oh look, all of them are contemporary books! Since I know I will probably end up going through these in a flash, I am adding two more books to the list:

So…that’s a sizable book list, don’t you think? I’ve started on one and already more than halfway on another, so at least I’ve started. :)


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2012 Reading Goals and Challenges

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Ahoy there! Greetings from 2012! :) It’s been 2012 on my side of the world for more than 12 hours, and it’s been quiet so far. But that may be because I’m alone at home right now. :P The best time to blog is always at the start of the year, so I’m going to make use of all that optimistic energy by getting as many posts in now and not just follow this link with all this spare time.

So anyway, a new year means new reading challenges. And if you know me, I’m all about reading challenges. Or, okay, not really, but I like challenging myself to see how far I can go. I’ve got some interesting challenges I’m going to join this year, and instead of making a post/page for each, I thought I’d put them all in one. :) (Oh, and here’s my 2011 reading statistics, if you’re curious :D)

Well, not necessarily buy... :P

Reading Quantity – >125

I don’t really set the number of books I’m going to read since I believe it’s about quality and not quantity, but I am going to try to top last year’s number (125). I don’t know if I can get to 150, but I will try. Let’s see. :) Print books and ebooks will still be here, but I also really want to start trying out more audiobooks this time. They’re fantastic in the gym. :D

Classics – 5 books in 2012

It was very rewarding to finally reach the five book goal for my classics reading challenge. This year, I’m still sticking to five, but I will try to read classic books I haven’t read yet, and no more thin novella-like books. This tentative list contains Sense and Sensibility by Jane Austen, Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte, 1984 by George Orwell and Little Women by Louisa May Alcott. I won’t decide on the fifth one just yet, because I’m still debating if I will finally read Vanity Fair.

Books written by Filipino authors – 20

I didn’t reach my goal last year, but 15 isn’t a bad number. This year, I will try reading the 20 again and hope I get to reach that goal this time around. I think it may be easier now since there’s Flipreads so there are more Filipino ebooks now, and I still have some leftover Filipino books on my TBR pile. Also, I will make it a point to review these books I read.

2-digit TBR pile

This is going to be a little harder than my other goals because…well, book-hoarding is an addiction! But anyway, this year I will try to reduce my TBR pile from 130+ to somewhere below 100. If I can maintain that at the end of the 2012, then good, but I’ll be happy if I manage to reach a 2-digit number for my TBR pile sometime within the year and go back to 3 digits again because of book acquisition. :D

Chunkster Challenge – Chubby Chunkster: 4 chunkster books

Since I read more YA than I read non-YA books, I’ve always felt a little intimidated by those oh-so-thick books. With the amount of books on my TBR pile, I feel like anything more than 400 pages is too much of a time investment. But it’s time to stop thinking that way and start reading those awfully thick books that everyone has been raving about. So this year, I am joining my first Chunkster challenge, at the Chubby Chunkster level, which is 4 Chunkster books. Here’s my list:

  • Pillars of the Earth by Ken Follet (976 pages)
  • A Game of Thrones (A Song of Ice and Fire) by George R.R. Martin (835 pages)
  • The Passage by Justin Cronin (766 pages)
  • The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo by Stieg Larsson (465 pages)

Required Reading 2012

I enjoyed setting monthly books for this challenge, so I’m doing it again this year. Watch out for my first Required Reading post of 2012 coming this week! :)

Re-read Challenge – 10

This is really just for me and my obsession at finding out if the books I liked/loved during the first read. I want to know if I would still like/love them when I read them again. Ignore me, I’m just OC (but if you want to join me, I’ll post about it :D).

Book Acquisition: Borrow instead of Buy

This isn’t a reading challenge, but more of an acquisition challenge. LOL. This year, I plan to really keep track of the books I buy for myself. I tried doing that last year but lost steam later on. This year, I will do better with that, and for books that I kind of want to read but not sure if I’d want to have a copy, I’ve resolved to just borrow. I will only allow myself to buy books for auto-buy authors, and pre-order of books that I really, really want — preorder because it’s cheaper (see this list).

Blogging: Interact and participate more

I will continue to interact with other bloggers and I will up the ante this year. Which means, well, leaving more comments, and participating in Twitter conversations and things like that. I will also participate in Armchair BEA again, and Book Blogger Appreciation Week too (I missed joining BBAW last year because I was too busy).

This also includes participating in local things, like in my book club’s discussions and Filipino Book Blogger events. :) It looks like it will be an exciting year for us, too. :)

Blogging: Come up with blog features and fun stuff

I think it’s time to have some changes in this blog and post things other than reviews. This means some more author interviews, maybe some more giveaways (when I have budget, of course), and then some guest posts here. I’ve got some things under wraps — I will post about it soon. :)

And that’s it! I think these things are pretty doable. I’m not going to stress myself out — I plan to have as much fun (even more, if possible) this year with my reading like I did last year. Let’s do this!

Share your reading goals in 2012 in the comments! I’d love to know what you’re up to this year. :)

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