Book Awards Reading Challenge II

Posted by Susan Whelan Dec 19, 2008

A few years ago I realised that in the busyness of everyday life I had stopped reading more challenging and literary books and was instead tending towards light fiction. My tastes are eclectic and I quite like chick lit, romantic and general fiction, but I found I wasn’t really balancing these books out with classics or literary fiction any more.

So a friend and I put together a list of books that we wanted to read. Classics that we had never managed to read or had simply skimmed through at school or university, modern literary fiction, popular authors – a little bit of everything. Our list was about 600 books long.

The Book Awards Reading Challenge II

While I am now reading quite a lot of books across a wide range of genres, it can still be useful to have a target and something to simply encourage you to branch out and read something new or challenging.

I was quite excited when yesterday I stumbled across the Book Awards Reading Challenge website. Your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to read 10 award winning books between August 1, 2008 and June 1, 2009.

The rules are simple: Read 10 award winners covering at least five different awards. “Award winners” is loosely defined and is up to the discretion of the reader. You don’t need to have all your books selected when you sign up and can adjust your list as you go.

You can register on the Book Awards Reading Challenge website and post links to blog reviews of the books you have read (if you have your own blog).

Possible Awards might include The Man Booker Prize, The Nobel Prize for Literature, The Miles Franklin Literary Award and various others. There are several literary award sites with links to a range of award websites, from literary to popular fiction from around the world.

Widen Your Reading Boundaries

Sometimes you need a little bit of encouragement to try something new. This challenge is a great reason to look around at some of the new writing talent out there. Visit your local library or bookshop and get started.

I have just finished reading the 2008 Man Booker Prize winner The White Tiger by Aravind Adiga, so that's one down and nine to go.