In 2022, I found a wonderful way to expand my reading horizons and to force myself to read more in general.

I don’t remember exactly how it happened, but I came across The 52 Book Club website, which hosts the annual reading challenges.   Each challenge is composed of 52 different reading prompts with the goal to read 52 books in 52 weeks, each one matching one of the challenge categories.

I joined the challenge a few months into the year, but still managed to read 40 books! You can see the full list of books, which I read in 2022 here.

How do you find the books to read? There are a couple of really good resources:

• Gooodreads group;
• Facebook group;
• StoryGraph, which has a way to find and track your books for this challenge.

I used both Goodreads and StoryGraph applications on my phone to keep my reading log, however after discovering a user group in Goodreads, I am just going to stick with that going forward so I don’t have to update two apps.

I do all my reading on Kindle and get my books online from the local library using Libby application. Sometimes I have to put a book on hold and wait a few weeks, but most of the time, I can download the book right away.

The prompts for the 2022 challenge were really diverse and made me try the books, which I would have never considered otherwise. For example, I read a couple of westerns (Whyskey When We’re Dry, The Sisters Brothers), gothic novels by Daphne du Maurier, and a non-fiction book about the history of Ellis Island. This is what this challenge is all about. At the end of the day, it doesn’t matter how many books you read (I do want to complete the full challenge in 2023 with all 52 books!) or whether your book selection meets the requirements of each prompt.

Your challenge, your rules.

Follow my progress for the 2023 Reading Challenge here.