September is book month in Australia as the book industry gets behind the the Books Alive campaign, which runs from August 26 to September 30. And what better way to celebrate reading than … a reading challenge!
Books Alive Reading Challenge
1. Read as many books as you can from Sept 7 to 30. (This gives us a weekend to buy or borrow books for the challenge.)
2. On Oct 1, post a list of the books you read. If you don’t have a blog or website, you can post your results as a comment to our challenge round-up in October.
3. The list should either link to your reviews of the books or include short comments saying what you thought of each book.
Challenge variations (more difficult)
All-rounder challenge Read as many books as you can from The Guide (50 Books You Can’t Put Down). If you choose this challenge, at least one book should be the anthology or Grug book that you get free when you buy one of the books on the list. (Booktopia has the entire list in its catalogue.)
Romance challenge Read as many books as you can from the list of 2009 R*BY Award finalists. If you choose this challenge, one of the books must be Dark Country or How To Break Your Own Heart. These books are in The Guide and were written by authors nominated for a R*BY Award this year.
Library challenge Read as many books as you can from your local library.
Or devise a theme of your own!
Books Alive Quickie Challenge
This one is more of a meme if you’re too lazy to do a full challenge. (We understand laziness—yes, we do.) The Quickie Challenge is to create your own list of 10 Books You Can’t Put Down. You can choose any theme (e.g. genre, year of publication) or no theme at all. The aim of this challenge is to showcase the best of the best in your chosen genre or theme. You may post the list any time during the Books Alive campaign.
Prizes
We’re planning to give out book prizes. We’re still figuring out how this will work, and we’ll post the details soon.
Shiny, happy buttons
We’ve made some buttons for the challenges, and you’re welcome to download them via Flickr. Otherwise, you can just copy and paste the following code to insert the buttons on your blog:
Standard (235 x 240) (see graphic at the top of this page)
<a href=”http://bookthingo.com.au/books-alive-2009-reading-challenge/” title=”Books Alive 2009 Reading Challenge by bookthingo.com.au”><img src=”http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3149/3880555363_c8c713b841_m.jpg” width=”235″ height=”240″ alt=”Books Alive 2009 Reading Challenge” /></a>
Standard (98 x 100)
<a href=”http://bookthingo.com.au/books-alive-2009-reading-challenge/” title=”Books Alive 2009 Reading Challenge by bookthingo.com.au”><img src=”http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3149/3880555363_c8c713b841_t.jpg” width=”98″ height=”100″ alt=”Books Alive 2009 Reading Challenge” /></a>
Romance Challenge (240 x 113)
<a href=”http://bookthingo.com.au/books-alive-2009-reading-challenge/” title=”Books Alive 2009 Romance Reading Challenge by bookthingo.com.au”><img src=”http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3480/3880555559_31a192c3cc_m.jpg” width=”240″ height=”113″ alt=”Books Alive 2009 Romance Reading Challenge” /></a>
If you’re up for the Books Alive Reading Challenge, leave a comment below to tell us which variation you plan to do and a link to your blog or website if you have one. We’ll post a list of participants on Sunday night.
I’m in. I’ll write a post about it today and come back and post a link when it is ready. I’ll just stick to the standard challenge, I think.
Back soon…
Sounds good to me! Been to the library today so got some to start with.
I think I ought to do this! I’ve so much stuff I’ve bought but haven’t bothered to read! Therefore my theme will be The Books I’ve Bought Ages Ago But Haven’t Yet Read Challenge. Heh.
I’ll be posting at eveninghour.org.
Three weeks isn’t long. I average a book a week so if I read three I’ll be doing well. I’ve got some monster tomes (Shantaram included) waiting on my shelf to be read but I’ll be giving those a wide berth.
Can those of us “up over” play too?
I’m definitely in! I don’t really use my blog anymore, so I’ll just link to my goodreads profile. I’ll create a shelf specifically for the challenge for easy navigation :D
Oh, oops. And I’ll be doing the standard challenge.
Can I just make a post called “10 Books I SWEAR I will read before the end of the year?” :P
AWESOME! I am totally up for this. I just finished Archeron last night so I can wait to start the next one tomorrow. Yay!!!
My blog is @ http://gnomeangel.com and I’ll be trying to read as many as possible for September. Yay!
My theme is basically just going through the To-Be-Read pile. Library books, ARCs, then moving on to the stuff I own but haven’t read yet. So it’s not really a theme, but if you insist on one: “Just Read, Bitch!” ;-)
Okay I haven’t got a blog to add this to, but I will throw my hat in the ring, I might make my theme to read books with new to me authors.
This American is signing up, too. I just finished an epic novel (nearly 1000 pages) last night, so I’m ready for some books of saner length for a while. Let’s see how many….
I am in for the Books Alive Reading Challenge!
Hi Kat! I’m signing up to the All-rounder Challenge :-) I’m planning to read at least three books from new-to-me authors from The Guide. Maggie Alderson’s How to Break Your Own Heart will be one of them; I’m not sure about the others, yet. I have a few plane trips coming up in the next three weeks, so hopefully that will be good reading time!
Count me in for the standard challenge please!
Bronwyn, thanks for posting the link to here on your site :)
I’m in!
Count me in too for a combination of Jen’s Books I’ve Bought Ages Ago But Haven’t Yet Read Challenge and Tez’s Just Read, Bitch! :)
Hi, Kat!
Can I play, too?
I’m in! I just forgot to let you know! I’ll just go with Tez’s “Just Read, Bitch!” theme, also (thanks for that Tez).
I don’t have a blog, but will find some way to share my thoughts..or something!
Hi, everyone!
I hope you’re all enjoying the reading binge for Books Alive month. I noticed some of you have knocked off a few books already. I’ve posted a challenge progress report, so feel free to post your links or talk about your books in the comments there.
For anyone without a place to post their challenge results, we’d be more than happy to post your lists/reviews on Book Thingo. :-)