During 2017 I attempted to follow the 30-20-20-10 reading challenge, that is, to read books from 30 countries, by 20 male and 20 female authors and from 10 decades. The decades proved to be the easiest part of the challenge, I finished them already in January and by now I’ve read books from 20 decades. Reading books by 20 men and 20 women also happened without any real effort, I was finished with this part of the challenge in August without really trying. So in the end it was only the 30 countries that actually worked as a challenge but there I struggled. With a few days left of 2017 I’ve only read books from 21 countries. The challenge still worked in that it made me read a lot more broadly than I normally would but I will need to use 2018 too to finish it.
The other challenge I started in 2017, the classics club, has also been a real treat. Here the challenge is to read and blog about at least 50 classics within 5 years. As I started my list on October 22nd and have already finished my first 5 books on my list I believe I’m well on my way. This challenge has been a lot of fun and also comes with a great community so I look forward to continuing with it during 2018.
Challenges for 2018
- Finish the 30-20-20-10 challenge (read 9 books from countries I didn’t read any book from in 2017).
- Read 12 books from countries I rarely read from (countries I read no more than 1 book from in 2017, this mini-challenge will naturally overlap substantially with the 30-20-20-10 challenge).
- Read and blog about at least 12 books from my Classics club reading list.
- Read at least as many of my unread books (including new books) as I buy in 2018. (I may have cheated and just bought eight new books with a January delivery which won’t count so I will have a head-start on this one).
- Join the Back to the classics reading challenge which should overlap nicely with my reading for the classics club and provide even more great discussion on the classics. Considering my other challenges I don’t want to put too much pressure on this one but I want to finish at least 6 of the 12 categories and hope to do most of them.
I read that in a book 
I’m going to try and read 10 from my classics list, it’s finding a balance of length, difficulty and easy reads isn’t it? Good luck with your other challenges, I like the sound of the 30,20,20,10
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The 30, 20, 20, 10 was the main reason I started doing statistics on my reading so it both challenged me to read more broadly and made me aware of what I’m actually reading. I’d like to continue doing this challenge in some simplified form after I’ve finished it, it’s been a great way to find new authors. Of course most of my reading was still familiar easy reads from countries I normally read from and I’m happy to keep it that way, I just don’t want that to be all I read.
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I agree. One of the most interesting things about putting together my list for the classics club, was seeing how many authors were 19th century white men and trying to balance that!
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I didn’t even think about that when I wrote my list but it looks like I managed quite well anyway. but I’ve previously been thinking of the female authors I would have included in my book canon so whenever I had unread books by any of them those were obvious choices (or in a few cases when they had written books I really wanted to re-read so that I could discuss them).
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