At the end of the year, it’s time for a final report on how reading challenges went!

I wanted to do more rereading, and have definitely done that…  In the last quarter of the year, I finished rereading the Betsy-Tacy series, and reread a few beloved favorites like If You Want to Write by Brenda Ueland, A Solitary Blue by Cynthia Voigt and The Mischief of the Mistletoe by Lauren Willig.  I also reread Andre Norton’s wonderful Gryphon trilogy, and started into A Series of Unfortunate Events on audiobook.  It’s been a fun time revisiting some old friends this year!

Then we have the random-criteria-challenge…

Out of 50, I had 15 left for the final quarter of the year.  Here are the results:

• A book written by someone under 30: Y Negative by Kelly Haworth
• A Pulitzer Prize-winning book: Tales of the South Pacific by James A. Michener
• A book based on a true story: I tried not to put rereads on this challenge, but I’ll make an exception here and list both the Little House series and the Betsy-Tacy series…each one modeled after the author’s childhood.
• A book based entirely on its cover: The Sixty-Eight Rooms by Marianne Malone
• A memoir: Home by Julie Andrews
• A book that came out the year you were born: Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistlestop Cafe by Frannie Flagg
• A book with bad reviews: Rejection Proof by Jia Jiang
• A trilogy: His Dark Materials by Phillip Pullman
• A book that takes place in your hometown: Loose Changeling by A. G. Stewart…I think.  It’s a little vague, but there’s a reference to a local freeway, and the author is local, so…
• A book that was originally written in a different language: Inkheart by Cornelia Funke
• A book set during Christmas: The Father Christmas Letters by J.R.R. Tolkien
• A book written by an author with your same initials: The Boy Who Spoke Dog by Clay Morgan

That leaves just three I didn’t complete, and those were consciously skipped.  One is a book I was supposed to read in school but didn’t and, well, there aren’t any like that…I was a conscientious student!  Second, a book that scares me–part of what I like about being out of school is that I don’t have to read books that scare me!  And finally, a book that made me cry…no book has ever made me actually shed tears.  Books have been sad or heart-wrenching, but I mostly only cry when I’m frustrated or feeling misunderstood–and that’s one of the things I love about books.  They never make me feel that way.

I don’t know that this challenge really pushed me to read a lot of books different from what I’d normally read…but it was fun to look at my reading differently, and it was a good laid-back challenge for a busy year. 🙂

Let me know if you’re curious to know more about any of these books…and I’d love to hear if you have any reading challenges going on for the year too.  I’ll have an update about my 2016 reading challenges soon!