2015 read harder challenge

I keep track of my books (and drinks!) on Instagram with #booksandbeverages.

I didn't write about my goals for 2015 at the beginning of the year, but one of them was to complete Book Riot's Read Harder Challenge. I love book lists and at the end of 2014 I was poring over the end of the year best books lists, vowing to read all the books in 2015 and frantically adding more and more to my library queue.

Here's a sampling in case you're a fellow book nerd:
Washington Posts' Top 50 Fiction Books for 2014
Book Riot Round-Up: The Best Books of 2014
Slate's Best Books 2014
New York Times The Ten Best Books of 2014
Time Top 10 Fiction Books 2014
Time Top 10 Non-Fiction Books 2014
NPR's Best Books of 2014
Wall Street Journal's Best Books of 2014

Oh, and here's a new one: Oyster's 100 Best Books of the Decade So Far

I found that I saw a lot of the same titles mentioned again and again, so I thought Huffington Post's Ultimate List was really helpful - it ranks the top 20 books by the number of other lists that the title has appeared on. There are a couple titles in the top 20 that don't appeal to me, but if I do nothing else, I hope to read most of the others in 2015. I enjoy reading highly acclaimed/recommended books, but if you don't trust other people's opinions and like to choose books on your own, this might not be your thing.

Anyway, the lists were a little overwhelming, but they got me pumped to read a lot in 2015. One thing that the end of the year lists don't help me with, though, is all the books from past years that I still want to read. I like reading current books, but I also like reading everything from classics that I should've read in school to popular books from the last few decades that I missed out on. Book guilt is a whole different topic, but after listening to the Dear Book Nerd podcast, I've realized it's quite a common phenomenon. There are just too many books and not enough time to read them all.

I was pondering how to choose which books I would read in 2015 when I heard about the Read Harder Challenge - 24 different categories to read throughout the year, but you're free to choose whichever books you want (and to interpret the challenge as you wish). This seemed like a great way to read some of the highly touted books of 2014 along with knocking off some of the titles that have been lingering on my To Read List (and cluttering up my nightstand) for years. And of course it's a good way to challenge myself to read genres that I don't usually pick up. For example, sci-fi and romance are not my thing. Poetry makes me think (not fondly) of seventh grade English class. And reading a book published before 1850 might be torture.

Anyway, now that we're a third of the way though the year (and I've completed nine books for the challenge - which conveniently fits into a nice little graphic collage), I thought it would be a good time to check in.

Here are the categories I've completed so far:

AUTHOR OF A DIFFERENT GENDER | A Constellation of Vital Phenomena by Anthony Marra
TAKES PLACE IN ASIA | Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage by Haruki Murakami
AUTHOR FROM AFRICA | Things Falls Apart by Chinua Achebe
YOUNG ADULT NOVEL | The Giver by Lois Lowry
SCI-FI NOVEL | Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury
AWARD WINNER FROM THE LAST DECADE | Let the Great World Spin by Colum McCann
GRAPHIC NOVEL/MEMOIR | Can't We Talk About Something More Pleasant? by Roz Chast
GUILTY PLEASURE | Dear Daughter by Elizabeth Little
BOOK PUBLISHED WITHIN LAST YEAR | Delancey by Molly Wizenberg

*See the rest of the categories at Book Riot.

(I've also read books that aren't part of the challenge - in fact the best book I've read so far this year is Wally Lamb's I Know This Much Is True. Multiple friends commented that this was one of their favorite books and they were right!)

So that's 9 down and 15 to go toward the Read Harder Challenge. Several friends on Facebook also committed to completing the challenge, so I'm interested to see how others are doing, and of course get book recommendations. Do you make reading goals? What are the best books you've read this year? What else are you planning to read, or do you decide in the moment like my husband does?

links | gin + cake + good advice

I've never been inspired to share lists of links like some bloggers do - mainly because I feel so overwhelmed by the amount of information already on the web, the time wasted looking at social media, and the thousands of other people's links I'm inundated with on a daily basis. However, I have this really bad habit of opening 10,000 browser windows at a time and never closing them because "I might want to read this article later" or "I don't want to forget that recipe." Yes, I am a browser hoarder. I'm the person who has so many tabs open you can't even see the tabs. It's bad. I've had the same webpages open for months and months on my phone and iPad. (My computer died a year and a half ago, so I lost all my open browser pages there - maybe because my machine experienced information overload?)

Anyway, I realized that a list of links published to my blog would be a good way organize the thoughts that are clogging up my devices. So I'm writing this as a reminder to myself (and so I can close those 10,000 browser windows!). Maybe someone else will find it interesting (do you like cake and gin?) and maybe not:

+ The Genius of Wearing the Same Outfit Every Day. As a comfort-seeking, lazy, self-employed creature, I LOVE THIS. If Zuckerburg, Jobs, and Obama subscribe to this wardrobe, maybe it leads to success? It would certainly reduce my stress! Boring outfit/no morning decision making = more time for creativity with my art? I'm in.

+ 33 Way to Be An Insanely Productive Person. Why do they make it sound so simple and obvious? "What's your main thing? Ok, so why are you doing all these other things?" * Duh...but yet, so hard to make it actually happen. I need to print this out and staple it to my forehead. (Thanks to Sarah for sharing this - she always has such good advice.)

+ How to Take a Day Off. Again...sounds so simple, and yet...there's just so much that needs to be done...

+ CAAAAAAKE! Specifically, GIANT Coconut Layer Cake. I've literally had this window open for over two years so I didn't forget what sounds like the best cake in the world. (I should've made this recipe before I gave up eggs, and butter, and cream! D'oh!!! I'm still not ready to let this recipe go, though. Will someone make this for me and not tell me what's in it?)

+ More CAAAAAAKE! Gin and Tonic CAKE?! And another one! (A good G&T has long been my favorite drink - and yes, I am an 80 year old man in a 36 year old woman's body. A G&T in cake form could either be awesome...or disgusting. But I'm willing to try and I have a certain cocktail-making, rum-cake-baking friend who will be my guinea pig. I wonder if I can veganize it?)...

+ While googling if I could veganize the G&T cake, I found a recipe for Vegan Gin and Tonic COOKIES. Hmm...

+ I'm really going to sound like a lush with three booze related links, but that same friend made me an amazing Sidecar the other day, and I recently stumbled across this recipe for Blackberry Sidecars. Definitely adding these to my summer menu!

+ Did I say three booze links? I meant four. Gin Brambles: more gin, more blackberries, more happy summer for me!

+ Alright, alright, let's just say the theme of this list is cocktails, because I can't stop. Who could resist a drink called a Scarlet Harlot? Actually chow.com has a whole gallery of fruity summer cocktails. I'm thinking I need to have a weekly cocktail party! Or be invited to a cocktail party by someone who's a better bartender than I am...

And I'm done. Cheers!

* P.S. My main thing is gin. #kidding