Here We Go, 2016!

I have lots of plans for 2016! I accomplished quite a bit in 2015, including knocking out some of those books that had been sitting around on my TBR pile. But this year, I'm trying some new and slightly more varied goals.

Challenges with a reading goal:
Foodies Read 2016
The purpose of this challenge is to read books with a focus on food. They can be fiction or non-fiction, novels or cookbooks, et cetera, as long as food plays a significant role in the book. I've seen several foodie books that I wanted to pick-up lately, so this will be fun! I'm aiming for the Pastry Chef Level, 4-8 books.

Shakespeare 400: The 2016 Bardathon Challenge
Oh, Shakespeare! I have neglected him so much in the last few years--but no more! I'm hoping this challenge will get me back on track reading works by my favorite bard and discovering some new adaptations. I'll be challenging myself at the Mix-and-match Shakespearean Level, 5 books and/or adaptations.

6th Annual Deal Me In Short Story Challenge
Deal Me In is a short story challenge where each participant makes a list of 52 short stories, one for each week of the year, and assigns each one to a card in a deck of playing cards. I'll randomly select a card each week to determine which story to read and post about them from time-to-time.

2016 Alphabet Soup Reading Challenge
I've seen this challenge around for the last few years and keep meaning to try it. Basically, I try to fill a list of the alphabet with titles that I read as the year goes on. It will get more complicated the fuller the list gets, probably, but I haven't done a title challenge for a while--should be fun!

Other challenges:
Charity Reading Challenge
The idea behind this challenge is to motivate people to give back in little ways connected to our reading habits. I plan to participate in this challenge in three ways: 1) I will count the number of books I read this year in any format and donate $1 per book read to a charity (to be determined by me at a later date) in January of next year; 2) When I go through my books before moving this Summer, I will set some aside to give away and donate; and 3) I'm going to try to feature charities and businesses on this blog from time to time that contribute something helpful to the world in a literary fashion.

NoLA StoryCon
This is more of a personal challenge for 2016. I'll be attending NoLA StoryCon in September in New Orleans, Louisiana, and I'm really excited! But I haven't read a lot of the authors who will be there, and I don't know much about New Orleans in general. So, I'm challenging myself to read more books by some of the authors who will be in attendance, which is over 30 people, I think. And I'm also going to read more books about New Orleans or related to the city through the setting or the author. I'm not setting an exact challenge for this, as I'm sure I won't have time to read all of the books I'd like. But it will still be fun to see what I can do!

Also happening:
A Winter's Respite Read-a-Thon 2016
January 18-24 hosted by Seasons of Reading
I don't do read-a-thons very often because I work full-time and often on weekends when they're scheduled, but this one lasts for a full week! I also think that I need to purposely set aside more time to relax in 2016, so this will be a good start.

I'm going to try and redesign my blog this year. I know I've said this several times, and I really need to just do it. But design motivation is difficult to find when I have a book review to type up or an unfinished novel nearby....Anyway, if you all have any ideas or suggestions, let me know. You're the ones reading it, after all! Hopefully this page will be a "Work in Progress" soon!

Thanks for reading about my plans for 2016. Don't forget to subscribe to my blog so you can see me fulfill all of my challenges! And tell me, what challenges or other fun things are you participating in this year?