January 1, 2015 – December 31, 2015
The time has come for us all to make our New Years Resolutions!
As a book blogger (I have been one now for more than 3 years) I know at least one of my resolutions has been how many books I intend to read in 365 days. I’ll admit 2014 didn’t go so well. But, no looking back only forward! With that said I’m intending on reading one book a week. Of course, you don’t have to read 52 books if you don’t want to. In fact, below are the very simple guidelines, and you can work at whatever pace is most convenient to you. This is simply a way to keep you on track and make that dreaded task of picking the next book to read as simple as possible!
Challenge Guidelines
- The challenge will run from January 1st, 2015 – December 31st, 2015. The sign-up link below will remain open all year round. Feel free to sign-up whenever you wish, just as soon as you find yourself getting overwhelmed with picking your next book, perhaps this process will help.
- Anyone can enter! You don’t have to be a blogger or even review the book you’ve read!
- IF you are a blogger, there will be a form going up on January 5th which you can use to keep track of the books you pull out of the jar and link according to the review (examples will be available as well). And participate in the below too!
- IF you are not a blogger, simply snap a quick photo of the book (either name or image of book cover as directed above) and share it on any social networking site you may be a member of (Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, etc.) but be sure to label it with #TBRJarChallenge!
- Any genre, length, or format of book counts. Doesn’t matter when it was published either. E-books, short stories, novellas, or ARC’s are also allowed. There are many ways to do this, but here are two most common (and easiest):
- Write (or type and print) out the title & author of each book on your TBR Jar list.
- Fill out each slip of paper with various genre’s, places, formats, etc of a book you can think of (and know you have a copy of). Here are some examples: Book 400+ pages long, Written in the 20th Century, Takes place in a different country, Male main character, Non-fiction book, Debut Author, Science-Fiction novel, What the Dickens!, etc! Over at POPSUGAR there’s a great list to choose from as well!
- Lastly, you don’t have to follow me to join the challenge, but it’s helpful if you need inspiration or to see whether or not it really works (after all I’m trying this out for the first time myself!). And you do have to at least sign-up with your name and link of either your dedicated blog post or social network address below.
Helpful Tips!
- There are several ways you can do this (please share yours if you do it differently) but I’m going to demonstrate two that you can use for placing your TBR list for 2015 in the jar:
- Write out or type out the name of the book and author on paper (white, multi-colored, ruled, etc.) and cut out each. Doesn’t matter if they are the same size. Neatly fold or crumple up each and place in the jar.
- Create a shelf in goodreads (this is assuming you have an account or can create one) and label it however you like. Here is mine. Find a color printer (preferable to ensure image of the cover is clear as possible) and after printing out the covers of all the books, cut them out. Neatly fold or crumple up each and place in the jar.
- To make this easier on yourself pick books you know you absolutely want to read! This way no matter what you pick out of the jar you won’t cringe and hope you had picked something else.
- Place the jar somewhere you will always see it as a reminder to not only continue reading the book you’ve chosen, but also so you can remember there is another amazing read waiting to be picked from the jar.
- Give the jar a good shake before you make your next pick and try not to cheat by putting back what you pulled out to exchange for another (see the second helpful tip).
- Remember this is supposed to be a helpful way to keep you on track with reading and not be bogged down by choosing your next great read.
- Lastly, be sure to add books as you buy them or once you feel a rhythm going, add a book you were apprehensive about adding before! Don’t let the jar get too empty (try to have at least 5 choices in the jar at any given time).
This reading challenge is hosted by NYC BookWorm. For more information and to sign-up, please see this post.
