Jenn Vs. Ash 2020 Challenges

Yay challenges! This should have been posted a couple weeks ago but we're just a bit behind. If you haven't already check out where we made our very own reading challenge! 

We had a really hard time picking between challenges so we have quite a few we plan on doing. Oops.

The Alphabet Soup Challenge means that by December 31, 2020
your bowls must be filled by one book for each letter of the Alphabet.
Each Letter Counts As 1 Spoonful
This challenge will run from January 1st, 2020 until December 31st, 2020.
You can join anytime. You do not have to post a review of the book. Books can come from any genre.
You do not need to link up each spoonful.
Make a page or a post or a Goodreads shelf where you will keep track of your spoonfuls. I keep track of mine on my Challenge Page.
Crossovers to other challenges are allowed and encouraged!
It’s an alphabet challenge!!! The challenge is to read one book that has a title starting with every letter of the alphabet.
You can drop the A’s and The’s from the book titles.
Except For those pesky Q, X, AND Z titles then the word that starts with the challenge letter can be anywhere in the title.
So there are two different ways you can set up your own A-Z Reading Challenge.


A - How I plan to do it: Make a list on your blog from A-Z. Throughout the year, as you go along, add the books you are reading to the list. Towards the end of the year, you can check and see which letters you are missing and find books to fit.

OR

B - Make a list now of 26 books, picking one for each letter of the alphabet.

Books can be read in any order and all formats – print – e-book – audio – are acceptable for this challenge!

Ash-

I love these challenges. I've actually made my list for the most part already with books I already physically own. I'm trying to finish as many of the books I already own as possible this year, so I figure this was a good one to help me with that. To make it even more difficult on myself I'm going to do it in alphabetical order. Go me.

Jenn-

I am choosing option A on this challenge. I am going to try and do them in order as much as possible and mark them all as I read them, then at the end of the year mark in the letters i missed. 

Any genre, any format, any length.

Any book published in 2019 or earlier is fair game.

Re-reads count. And you don’t have to own the book!

With this one there is also several mini challenges, bingo cards, prompts, etc that you can follow.


You do NOT have to be on a team to participate in Beat the Backlist. If you're not interested, please select the appropriate option below.
THE TEAMS:
The Borrowers
--You're a borrowing fiend! You love getting books from the library or your friends.
The Re-Readers
--You're always revisiting stories and probably have a few tattered copies of your all-time faves.
The TBR Stackers
--For every book you read, you're adding a bunch more to your TBR. It never ends!
The Multi-Taskers
--You're the kind of reader that isn't satisfied with reading just one book at a time, you like to read multiple!

Ash-

I have like 400 books I physically own that I'm trying to get through this year, along with all of my audio books. I know it won't happen, but I'm going to try. I love prompts and things to follow because it helps me decide what to read next. So I'm going to be doing as much as I can of this bingo card. I am also team TBR stacker. But I can be Team Re-readers, team TBR stacker, and Team Multi-tasker. 

Jenn-

Oh so many books I need to get through. We will see how this one goes. I have more old than new but I tend to stick with new releases. So I need to get through my backlist. I am on Team Multi-Tasker. 

Book Jar portion of the challenge

Find the books you want to list - perhaps books from long-term challenges, as mentioned above, or even a yearly challenge you've signed up for, have picked your books, but want to read more randomly.
List your books on paper. I created a Word doc, added titles, printed them out, cut each title into a strip, folded up and placed in a jar. I know it seems like a lot of work, but drawing slips of paper from a jar makes me feel like a kid again.
Draw one book per month (or as often as you like)
Three draws allowed, in case you're just not in the mood for that one, or you can't find the book (or maybe your hold hasn't come in at the library).
That's it! Easy!Book List portion of the challenge

To tackle the second part of my dilemma, this is where the Book List portion comes in. In my case, I have a book catalogue (see image in challenge button - that's one page from my catalogue) which I use to keep track of the books I own. It is arranged by author last name, alphabetically. Each letter has it's own section and I number each book. What I do is randomly select a letter of the alphabet (1-26) and then randomly select a number from the section of that letter. So, if the letter 'A' has 115 titles, I would randomly select from 1 - 115. (I use Random.org for this.)

You may have a book catalogue like me, or maybe you have a Goodreads list, or a list somewhere else. Whatever your list, get the total number of books, say 95 books, plug in 1 - 95 in the randomizer and Voila!
Draw one book per month (or as often as you like)
Three draws allowed, in case I'm just not in the mood for that one, or I can't find the book (same as book jar guideline above).
Final challenge parameters

You can do both Book Jar and Book List, or do one or the other. If you do both, that will be 24 books in a year. If you do just one, 12 books in a year.
Note: If there's a month you just have too much on your plate to do a draw, don't beat yourself up about it. We all have A LOT to read.
I will do a post at the beginning of each month sharing the books I've drawn for myself. Participants can share their random read picks in the comments. Also, every month after January, in the month beginning post, we can share how we did with the previous month's choice(s), share review links, etc.
Challenge runs January 1, 2020 - December 31, 2020

Ash-

I already put most of my books on a spinny wheel randomizer thing and made my list. Because I like to know ahead of time what I'm reading. I only did like the first 6 of them for 6 weeks. So I decided only to do the randomizer one on the computer and not the other. 

I also changed it to one a week instead of one a month but we'll see how that goes. 

Jenn-

I will do the same as Ash and use the wheel thing, I have not yet because that takes time and well I don't have a lot of that right now. I tried talking Ash into doing it for me and she said no. Rude! 

The challenge will run from January 1st, 2020 to December 31st, 2020. Books must be read during this time frame to count. Sign up is open from now until December 1st, 2020, so you may join even just for the last month of the year.
Series can be already completed as well as still ongoing. For ongoing series, the goal is to catch up to the most recent book published by the end of 2020.
We don’t care if you have only 1 book or 10 books to read in order to finish your series, as long as you’ve started the series before 2020 (ie read at least one book in the series), it counts. Re-reads are not required.
Any format and length of book counts – print, ebook, audio, ARC, etc.
Series can be any length (even if it’s just a Duet).
Crossovers from other challenges are totally acceptable!
Reviews are not required, but highly encouraged.

We offer you 3 different “Celebrity” levels of achievement for this reading challenge:

C-LIST SERIES FINISHER ⇒ COMPLETE 1-4 SERIES.
B-LIST SERIES FINISHER ⇒ COMPLETE 5-8 SERIES.
A-LIST SERIES FINISHER ⇒ COMPLETE 9+ SERIES.

Ash-

There are so many series challenges to pick from. The other one I was thinking about was from Series to Finish but they have a point system and that gets hella confusing after a little while. So I decided this one was the easiest and the best. I am going to try to be a B list reader. I want to finish as many series as I can but some of my series are long. So here are a few of the series I want to finish:

Jenn-

I am going for it with the 9+ series crazy right... 
here are the ones I want to finish... 

Shatter Me by Tahereh Mafi - I have read 2 out of 6
The Folk of the Air by Holly Black- I have the last one left 
Sookie Stackhouse- I have read 7 out of 13
Blood of Eden by Julie Kawaga- I have the last one left
Touch series by Laurie Faria Stolarz- Have read 1 out of 5
Study series by Maria V Snyder - I have read 1 out of 6
The Others by Anne Bishop- I have read 3 out of 7(I am not sure if another is coming out this year)
Stalking Jack the Ripper by Keri Maniscalco- I am on the last one.
Campers and Criminals by Tonya Kappes- I have read 6 out of 11 (more might be coming out this year)
Blood Coven Vampire by Mari Mancusi- I am on 6 of 8

I have many more that I am up today on except for this years release. I will add those in as I read them but I am not posting them all here. 

The concept of the StartOnYourShelfathon is simple: from December 18th 2019 to December 31st 2020, join us in this readathon and read as many unread books that you own on your bookshelf
The theme of this readathon will be stars.
Set goals for yourself and read, read, read! Every time you read a book and every time you achieve a goal for yourself, you will get to collect a ‘star’.Work towards getting a ton of stars!
Download your very own star map
Give yourself an amateur star-collector name and add it to the star map!
For every unread book that you read for the #StartOnYourShelfathon, that is one star found – and you can add a sparkly star to your star map!
Re-reads of books that you have already read do not count.
Collect additional stars for completing goals that you set for yourself!

Yellow stars: For finishing an unread book as part of the readathon.
Blue stars: For finishing a readathon goal you set for youself.
Red stars: For reading and finishing an unread book that ended up being a new favourite!

Start as many star maps as you wish to help Castor! Create constellations of your own, stick the stars wherever you wish on your star map.

Ash-

This is one I'm also super excited for, because as I explained there are 15000000 books on my TBR. 

Here is the star map I chose!

Jenn-

This one sound like a lot of fun. I need to think of my readathon goals for the Blue stars. I think I will come up with one every month. 

The 2020 Tackle My TBR Reading Challenge runs January 1, 2020 – December 31, 2020. You can join at any time, but the link-up closes on November 30.
The goal is to read at least ONE book from your TBR every month. It can be an ARC, ebook, audiobook or print – your choice. Any reading is good reading!
If one TBR book a month isn’t enough, set your goal higher! Do you think you can read five a month? Ten? Go big or go home! There are some goal levels below if that’s your thing.
You don’t have to be a blogger to participate. You can track your progress on Goodreads, Insta, Facebook, Twitter, YouTube… wherever you want!
Use #TackleMyTBR2020 on social media.

Safety: read 12 TBR books
Blitz: read 13-24 TBR books
First Down: read 25-36 TBR books
Field Goal: read 37-48 TBR books
Hail Mary: read 49-60 TBR books
Touchdown: read 61+ TBR books

And because reviewing is so important, I’ve added a couple of bonus levels!
Extra Point: review half of the TBR books you read
Two-Point Conversion: review all the TBR books you read

Ash-

I'm going to do the HailMary and the two- point conversion. Because part of the point of me reading is to review. Sooo. 49-60 reviews coming up here.

Jenn- 
So for this one... this one is a big one for me. I want to do the touchdown. I need to get through these books on my TBR shelf. I am not couting anything added on my TBR in 2020 and I am doing at least 1 a month from my physical TBR and the rest from my audio books that I already and kindle ones I  own. I will try and review as many as I can. This will be challenging.