BOOK THOUGHTS
Possible Reading Challenge
How do you pick the books you are going to read?
I am not a “mood” reader. I don’t pick my next read on whim. If I did, I’d read mostly mysteries, with a few ex-pat memoirs and novels "by women, for women" thrown in. Classics, heavy fiction, history, chunky biographies, and short stories don't jump out at me. I love reading long books, serious books, genres outside my comfort zone, and even short stories when I read them. But I'm not typically in the mood to read them. I need some kind of structure to my reading plan to tackle those books. My two IRL book clubs, Instagram buddy reads, and blog challenges give me that kind of structure.
Today I had a crazy idea of organizing my reading based on the names of each month. (I didn’t say I need formality to find structure!) I occasionally see Instagram posts of stacks of books that spell the name of the month with the first letters of each title. Clever. Now I’m obsessed with the idea of reading a spelling stack of books each month for a year.
There are a total of 74 letters in the names of the twelve months. May is the shortest, with three letters. September and December are the longest, with nine letters each. A total of 74 books in a year is doable. I usually read close to twice that many, so I would have plenty of flexibility to work in other books.
I could come up with a whole new challenge based on this wild hare. It would need a clever name and I'm not good at that. I'd probably end up calling it the Spell the Month Challenge. Not very catchy. On the other hand, instead of a new challenge, I could use the idea as a theme for my TBR 25 in '25 Challenge and the Mt. TBR Challenge hosted each year by Bev at My Reader's Block. I signed up with Bev this year to read a total of 60 books off my TBR shelves. I could probably stretch it to 74.
I could come up with a whole new challenge based on this wild hare. It would need a clever name and I'm not good at that. I'd probably end up calling it the Spell the Month Challenge. Not very catchy. On the other hand, instead of a new challenge, I could use the idea as a theme for my TBR 25 in '25 Challenge and the Mt. TBR Challenge hosted each year by Bev at My Reader's Block. I signed up with Bev this year to read a total of 60 books off my TBR shelves. I could probably stretch it to 74.
Or the whole idea could fade away. But for now, here’s a stack of books spelling October. I picked mysteries because I’m already looking to game my own system and bring in the mystery books.
Overture to Death by Ngaio MarshCome Away Death by Gladys MitchellTelling of Murder by Douglas RutherfordOn the Danger Line by SimenonBullets for the Bridegroom by David DodgeExcellent Intentions by Richard HullRed Threads by Rex Stout
Happy reading, however you pick your next book!
