The start of a new year means a fresh attempt at the Australian Women Writers Challenge. I was so incredibly close to meeting my goal last year were it not for my lack of paying attention. This year however, I am going to not only meet it, but smash it. In theory.
The Australian Women Writers Challenge is designed to make people read more books by Aussie women. I have been doing it for the last few years, wanting to do it for many years on top of that. In doing so I have discovered some amazing Aussie women, some of whom have become favourite authors. It has broadened my reading, and made me pick up books I may not have otherwise read in the attempt to superficially meet a goal, but then finding I fell in love.
I have taken chances, finally gotten around to reading authors that I have always said I wanted to read, and I have discovered that Aussie stories are just that little bit wonderful and familiar. After reading a large collection of Aussie stories if I go back to an American based story I can immediately see a difference. It feels less familiar, strange and unknown. It was a surprising feeling when that happened.
This year I am setting my starting goal at Reading 25, Reviewing 15. From there I will bump it up. I shouldn’t feel too discouraged, I built up my goal from reading just six, if it takes time to build it up to a higher number then so be it.
If you want to take part in this challenge you can sign up via the website. The challenge runs from 1st January to 31st December so there is plenty of time to complete your goal, and you can sign up at any time during the year until the end of November.
Considering I am not sure I achieved all my set goals from last year, I’m not sure about the wisdom of making new ones, but it wouldn’t be a new blogging year if I didn’t try to make some reading goals. Secretly I’ll also employ last year’s goals as well because they were actually very useful.
As I was tallying up my reads/reviews I realised I am one review short of meeting the goal! I am so annoyed with myself, I should have paid more attention, I could have written a quick review if I noticed earlier, I could have won! But alas, twas not meant to be. I will try again for 2018. I would have loved to have read more Aussie women, I read less than I did last year which is also annoying. I read 142 books this year so surely I could muster up more than 25 but apparently not. Shame on me. Again, goal for next year. It was productive nevertheless, I finally got around to starting some books I’d had on my TBR list for a while, I also finally started reading Liane Moriarty and I’m working my way through her back catalogue, I’m also actively reading more books on my own bookshelves that are crying out to be read.
