This year, for the first time in my life, I signed up for a Goodreads challenge. I decided on the number of books I want to read over the next 12 months (a very modest 50, compared with someone else’s bewildering 300, which I saw float past on my newsfeed) and very quietly I am working towards meeting my target. I have never attempted anything like this before. Reading has always been a very personal thing, a topic to speak about only if someone asks, and I held the firm belief that challenges and targets belonged to my Peloton and not to my bookshelves. Now, however, I have a little percentage tracker on my home page, Goodreads friends applaud my progress each time I finish a book, and it feels … strangely comforting.
The games, challenges and competitions start with gusto in January. No sooner have we dusted ourselves down from everyone’s “best books of the year”, we’re thrown straight into a literary Alton Towers with an endless choice of book rides on which to hop. The Goodreads challenge is the most straightforward, and based purely on numbers, but elsewhere online you can commit to a month of reading stories set in certain time periods or in particular countries, books within specific genres, a year-long A-Z challenge with a selective version of the alphabet (they tend not to bother with X), or even novels only with yellow covers. My particular favourite is a form of book bingo, in which there are no monthly constraints, but you just need to complete all the reading tasks (for example, a book set in France, a book about vampires) in time to shout “Bingo!” very loudly into the internet before New Year’s Day.
