How the heck am I doing? Reading Challenges update

It is May 2nd, first four months of the year already done, and I haven't yet posted an update on my 2010 Reading Challenges. So, I decided today is a good time to take a look at my progress to date (if any).



The first challenge I decided to try for this year was the RYOB Challenge, or Read Your Own Books. As I wrote in this post, at the start of the year, I had 413 books tagged "tbr" (to be read) in my LibraryThing catalog. I set a goal to read 30 of those books during 2010. Since we're one-third of the way through the year, hopefully I've read about ten of them. Looking again at my LT catalog, the number of books I've tagged as "RYOB 2010" is...eleven! The good news is that I'm on track to meet my goal of 30 books. The bad news is, the number of books tagged "tbr" as of today has increased to 423. It's so hard to resist sales and bargains! See: Mailbox Monday for April 19, for example. Boo hiss boo hiss!



I've also made some progress on my other two challenges, the POC Reading Challenge and the Clover, Bee, and Reverie Challenge. For POC Reading, I committed to Level 3, to read between seven and nine books written by persons of color, or featuring central characters who are persons of color. I've read three of these, all books I already owned. The third was On Beauty by Zadie Smith, which I loved, so I'm hoping to read another of her novels, White Teeth, in the next couple months if I can. I haven't written reviews for any of the three POC books, but I'm hoping to do a post about On Beauty, to then link over on the POC Reading Challenge blog. (Poet Kevin Young, editor of The Art of Losing, is African-American, and there are a number of poets of color included in the anthology, but I wouldn't feel right about "counting" it toward that challenge.)



For the Clover, Bee, and Reverie Challenge, I decided to try the Octave level, meaning eight books of poetry, and at least two "badges." A "badge" is defined as two books that are connected in some way -- same author, same theme, same time period, that kind of thing. I've read four books of poetry so far, and am nearly done with my fifth, so very good progress there. I haven't done a badge yet, though, so I should start thinking about that for my subsequent choices.


To sum up: I'm in good shape to complete my 2010 Reading Challenges, but am not doing as well in the "acquire fewer books" department. Yeah, that sounds like my life! ;-)