My 2023 Reading Challenge

 How is it already time to begin thinking about my book challenge for 2023?

I thoroughly enjoyed my 2022 book challenge. It had many, many categories, more than I knew I could read, and yet … and yet, I read more books in 2022 than I’d read in a single year since I don’t know when. While I didn’t manage to read something in every category, I did cover most of them, plus I read a number of other books that didn’t fit into the challenge.

For this year, I’m going to branch out and read books in a genre with which I have little familiarity: the double genre of science fiction and fantasy. I’ve read a few of the classics – The Hobbit/Lord of the Rings books, (obviously), the Harry Potter books (also obviously), A Wizard of Earth Sea, a bit of Asimov, and such. But I’ve never been much drawn to science fiction or fantasy. Have I been missing something? Let’s find out. Here are the categories for my 2023 Reading Challenge:

  1. A classic from the 19th century
  2. A classic from the 20th century
  3. A time-travel novel
  4. A novel for children or young adults
  5. A Christian novel
  6. A dystopian novel
  7. A novel set in outer space
  8. A re-read from more than 5 years ago
  9. All three books of a trilogy
  10. A novel by an author who is not American or British
  11. A popular novel from the past 5 years
  12. A winner of one of the awards covered in this list

One of my rules for this year will be that a single book cannot satisfy more than one category. So if I read Brave New World as my “20th-century classic,” I would need to read something else for the “dystopian novel” category.

My inspiration for exploring this genre is the work of my new favorite living author, Shawn Inmon. His Middle Falls time-travel series is part of the reason I read so many books this year. I just couldn’t stop reading his wonderful stories! While I wouldn’t classify his books as science fiction, they do use time travel as a major plot element, and time-travel is also an element in fantasy, so there's that. Inmon also has a fantasy Kragdon-Ah series, and this challenge is an excuse to dig into those books this year. (Not that I needed an excuse!)

I’ll be posting my book reviews on Goodreads and plan to share them here as well.

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