Finally, a 2010 Wrap Up

While I’ve said I’m not going to participate in any challenges for 2011, I don’t want to leave any loose ends hanging for 2010 & so here’s a short wrap up from the challenges.

First, the TBR Challenge: I had three non-book bloggers join me in this, and one of them did quite well! Personally, I only read nine of the 12 from the list of 24 from my TBR pile. One thing I realized is how much my taste can change during a year. Some of the books on this list hold no interest for me now, so I had no motivation to pick them up. Some are still books that I want to read, so we’ll see when I get to them.

As for my friends, Tiff rocked her list, reading 17 of the 24. Bunny had a low year for reading altogether and finished having read three on her list. (In her defense, she started a new job in 2010 that she is awesome at!) Stacie had a similar experience as I did. She had a great year of reading, but found her tastes changing so that she only tackled seven on her list.

I love the Theme Quest Challenge. It made me think about the books that I read in a different way, and perhaps some of the themes that could be pulled from them that weren’t readily apparent. The theme I choose – the power of the written word – showed up in the power of Scripture as with the Bible and People of the Book, the influence of classical reading as in Elegance of the Hedgehog and Reading Lolita in Tehran, or even the ramblings of psychopaths, as with The Hour I First Believed. Time traveling characters wrote hints to their future selves in My Name is Memory that help them fulfill their desired destiny. In Founding Brothers, it was letters as well as those written words the were the foundation of our country that showed their stature. Thank you, Stacey, from Unruly Reader for your challenge!

The 2010 Published Challenge was no problem with the number of ARCs I received – it was just a matter of which gained my attention!

While I stopped keeping track, Challenge 24, the goal to limit book purchases to 24 in one year, wasn’t too hard to keep either. I didn’t count books I received from Paperback Book Swap or ARC (since I wasn’t purchasing them) and both of these sources served to feed my addiction quite well.

My own challenge – Mixology – which is more of a goal setting structure than a real challenge – served its purpose in encouraging me to seek out award winning authors who were new to me. I found several who I will certainly pick up again.

And that, my dear readers, is a wrap for 2010!