For this year's reading challenges, I decided to do something very different and drastic.  I am going to read women authors.  I feel like I've been neglecting all those wonderful female authors sitting on my shelves.  I will be tailoring my challenge participation to account for this overall goal.  I do have a few exceptions.  I may read a male author if 1) I've already started the series and desperately want to finish it (i.e. Song of Ice and Fire) 2) It is a book club selection (out of my hands) or 3) If it is a male author writing nonfiction specifically about a women subject (e.g. a biography of Kate Chopin).  Other than those three exceptions, I want to discover some wonderful women authors. From The Geeky Zoo Girl:

One of my favourite challenges to take part in during 2012 and 2013 was The Book Blogger Recommndation Challenge, which was hosted by Reading with Tequila but seems to have since disappeared.

In case you don’t know, the challenge was simple: book bloggers nominated their favourite books, and then a list was made, with books nominated the most often at the top.  To take part in the challenge, you picked a level and read a specified number of recommended books from the list.

I think it’s a really great challenge, because you get to discover books other bloggers loved and share your own favourites (and isn’t that kind of the point of book blogging?).  I put out a call for book recommendations, and have had some great feedback already, so I’m going to try hosting it for 2015.  I’m still putting the list together but there will be at least 100 titles to choose from – if I’m a few short, I’ll be using people’s end of the year favourites lists or something to make sure we hit that.

The rules are crazy simple:

1. The challenge runs from January 1st 2014 to December 31st 2015
2. There are five levels to choose from. You can increase your goal as many times as you want, or (because we all know real life happens!) you can decrease your goal once at any point throughout the year.
3. The full list of books to choose from will go up on New Year’s Eve
4. You don’t have to commit in advance to your choices, though of course you can plan them if you want to.

I want to recommend some books!

Please do!  You can either vote using the form available here, or leave a comment on this post. I’ll be taking recommendations up until the 25th of December – that gives me a few days to add them in before the full list goes up on New Year’s Eve.

Is there a giveaway?

There will definitely be a giveaway at the end of the year.  I haven’t figured out the details of that yet but I’ll let you know!

The LevelsBronze – 3 books Silver – 5 books Gold – 10 books Platinum – 25 books Diamond – 50 books +

I did this 2 years ago and enjoyed the challenge.  I think I'll join the Gold level this time around.