The Goodreads Challenge and Other Bookish Ramblings.

This year I have been on a road trip across the United States. I’ve climbed the Pacific Crest Trail. I cared for a quadriplegic, stood up for myself in the board room, cooked in Paris, investigated a family’s murder, and immersed myself in a secret literary society.

This year I fell head-over-heels in love with reading again.

A few weeks ago, I completed my Goodreads Challenge to read 30 books in 2013. Seeing as though there are still 9-ish more weeks to the year, I think I’m safe in declaring that challenge a smashing success. I’ve already reached 32 completed books and I know I’m going to read at least a few more before 2013 concludes.

I see people on Goodreads reading 50+ books in a year, and I don’t pretend that 30-ish books is anything extraordinary, but it was a lot of books for me. I can’t remember a time when I read as much as I did this year. It’s pretty likely that I read more during my childhood days of tearing through the Boxcar Children, the Babysitters Club, Sweet Valley High, and Nancy Drew, but I don’t have a clear memory of the time I spent reading when I was young; it was such a given, normal part of life back then.

Now as an adult, I have to make much more of an effort to create the time and space to read. I adore books, as my giant bookcase proves, but I’ve spent a lot more time as a book collector/hoarder than a reader. I set reading goals the past few years, and much more modest ones at that, but failed to meet them until this year.

There wasn’t anything specific that I changed in order to meet my reading goal other than to just sit down and read. Tea, a lit candle, and a cozy chair help quite a bit too. And, obviously, I had to spend less time watching TV and internetting (which is all for the better). Even a few pages here and there added up to a completed book eventually, and I used the crap out of my Kindle and my library’s digital ebook collection. I even found that enjoyed working out at the gym because it gave me 40 minutes of uninterrupted reading time, which made exercising at least 37% less dreadful.

In the past I’ve often picked up a book that didn’t pull me in right away, and I’d slog through 100-150 pages before forgetting about it altogether. I lost a lot of reading momentum by trying to stick with what didn’t engage me, and the stretches of time between books grew longer. This year, I felt no shame in giving into my “bad reading habits,” such as abandoning those snoozy books or starting to read four different books at once until one book sucked me all the way in. I let myself read a dozen YA books without embarrassment. All that mattered was keeping up momentum and enjoying my time.

A secondary blessing of this year of reading was encountering a whole community of book Youtubers (who calls themselves Booktubers) back in about February or March. I started getting into Youtube as more than a source of cat videos and random tutorials by first following a small handful of beauty girls and comedy-types in the last two years, and then at some point I came across a vlogger who focused primarily on books. She did book reviews, showed books she’d recently bought or planned on reading, and discussed topics relevant to readers and the publishing industry as a whole. Better yet, she acted as my doorway to a whole world of geeky and overly-enthusiastic book lovers like myself. As someone who is notoriously bad at book clubs (as soon as the book club picks the monthly selection, my brain shouts, “Don’t tell me what to read!”), it was super fun to see people expressing their bookishness in a new-to-me way.

No surprise, I’m toying with the idea of starting a Youtube channel dedicated primarily to my love of books (though I’m sure travel, food/cooking, and some creative, artsy-fartsy vlogging would be included at times). I’ve been thinking about doing this for probably six months now, and even reserved and started setting up a Youtube channel, TheBookWanderer, back in August. I set up the requisite rainbow bookcase background for filming, and even made a short, very amateur video of my 4th of July weekend to practice using my DSLR for video and working with editing software.

Now I just need to sit myself in front of the camera and make it happen. It’s nerve-wracking, and I have yet to get over that inevitable self-consciousness of being on camera (and then having to look at and hear myself as I edit-- yikes). I suppose that’s why I’m writing about it now. If I make my ambitions a little more public, I will hopefully feel more accountable and committed to making it happen. Because I really do think I want to give it a try, despite the fact that I’m 30 and already over the hill in the Youtube/vlogger land of spring chickens.

But I’m totally on a tangent here-- this post was supposed to be about the Goodreads Challenge! Once we get closer to the end of December, I’ll likely compile a post with my favorite and least favorite reads of the past year. Or maybe I’ll even film a video about it ;)