This is an ongoing challenge that involves reading 100 short stories in whatever order or time frame you want to do them in. A fairly safe challenge to go for, I thought! Plus I got The Years Best Fantasy and Horror for Christmas and to really do it justice I wanted to review the stories individually instead of all as one lump. Reviewing it all together like that is hardly fair considering how many different editors and authors contributed to the book. They should each be judged on their own merits, I think. This doesn’t get me all the way to 100, but it gets me nearly half way there, and I have an older Years Best Fantasy and Horror that I bet will make up the difference.

I promised myself I would only sign up for two more challenges this year and here is one of them. The Chunkster Reading Challenge asks that you read a certain number of book with 450+ pages (of adult literature). And, boy, do I have just the books that can fill those shoes. You see, years ago I started reading a series and finished the first three and then waited for the fourth to come out. When the fourth finally did I started it only to realize I needed to reread the first three to really get number four. That was a depressing seven years ago now. My husband has since read through all four books and has been pestering me to read the series, so here is my promise to him. I will get it read this year, or fail this challenge!

Reading Through The Seasons over at Book Dragon’s Lair caught my eye because I’ve always wanted to do something special to mark the changing of the seasons and this seems to be a great way to do it. You commit to reading four books, one for each season, and each book must have the name of one of the four seasons in its title.

I thought I would take it a step further and actually read four books for each season, one each month of the season (thing is, winter starts late in December, four days before Christmas late, yuck). But, I give myself freedom to change my mind later if I’m not turning up enough winter books to taste, since that’s what I’m starting with. Three more months of winter, how depressing! At least I will have books to cheer me up with.

My first challenge for the new year, the Year of the Historical challenge, is going to be a great excuse to continue in my new found love of historical novels, romance and otherwise. Aside from my fiction tag, historical is my next largest! I was a little worried about how many I would have to buy for the challenge, because I have honestly read all the ones I own, but I recently came into possession of a small smattering that will get me through the first few months so I feel confident signing up for this challenge.

For me historical fiction takes the need to escape into a well written story to the next level. Because the background and setting, the dialog and characters, are all just so foreign and are all at the same time temptingly true. This really was, at least in a way making liberal use of literary license, how people lived during this time, what was happening to them, how they felt about it. It’s like reading a history book and novel all in one and that dual nature is something I really enjoy.

The A-Z Reading Challenge seems like a pretty simple way to start my first dive into reading challenges. I wanted a way to be able to cut down on my extensive TBR back log and to have someone else tell me what to start next for a change. This challenge seems like it can do all of that for me!

The premise is pretty simple: Read authors A to Z. Commit to reading 26 books theoretically speaking.