{"id":2818,"date":"2019-10-08T22:33:45","date_gmt":"2019-10-08T21:33:45","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.thomascreedy.co.uk\/?p=2818"},"modified":"2019-10-11T22:47:13","modified_gmt":"2019-10-11T21:47:13","slug":"challenge-completed","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.thomascreedy.co.uk\/challenge-completed\/","title":{"rendered":"Challenge Completed!"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Challenge<\/p>\n

As October rumbles on, I’m excited to have finished my reading challenge for the year. I decided to aim for 125 books back in January – not knowing then that I’d spend some time off work, and return to work for a publisher! Those two factors have of course made it\u00a0easier<\/em> to read a larger number of books than average, but I’d suggest that a few other things have also helped.<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. Re-starting a daily quiet time. This meant that I end up reading (I assume, by the end of the year) four books without particularly trying – alongside bible, prayer and silence.<\/li>\n
  2. Making the most of ebooks – the Amazon kindle ecosystem, for its faults, is great for snatching a bit of reading time here and there. Syncing reading across devices means you can grab a few pages whilst walking or travelling, or settle in with the device you favour to get some serious reading done.<\/li>\n
  3. Tracking it. By having a goal in mind, I’ve been conscious of the need to finish books, but also start them. In 2018, I aimed for 125 books and fell short – but I still read over 100! The goal is there to give me something to aim for, not to make me feel guilty, and tracking it is immensely helpful for a sense of scale.<\/li>\n
  4. Talking about it. I find writing and sharing book reviews very enjoyable – not everyone does – but I love telling people what I’m reading, to see if they’ve read it, or if they have things to recommend. I’ve ended up with a few books this year that I wouldn’t have expected to read – just by talking about books and reading generally!<\/li>\n
  5. Not being afraid of a pile. Having multiple books on the go is a great way to do this – I am a note taker\/underliner\/corner folder\/bookmarker – and it means that (true example) if you are wading through a long history book, you can also be enjoying some trashy military sci-fi, and reading snippets of some deeper more devotional theology.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    I’d reiterate that a few months of time off work, and working for a publisher since September, do mean that I’m in a privileged position regarding both reading time and access to books. But I hope these five points are helpful for thinking about reading more generally – whether you want to read more, read differently, or start reading! (Obviously audiobooks would have increased this further – but I personally don’t really like them. Each to their own!)<\/p>\n

    If you are particularly bored\/interested, you can see what I read over at my goodreads profile<\/a>. I now need to catch up on a backlog of reviews…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    As October rumbles on, I’m excited to have finished my reading challenge for the year. I decided to aim for 125 books back in January – not knowing then that I’d spend some time off work, and return to work … Continued<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2819,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"kt_blocks_editor_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[554,606],"tags":[610,980,247],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thomascreedy.co.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2818"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thomascreedy.co.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thomascreedy.co.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thomascreedy.co.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thomascreedy.co.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2818"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.thomascreedy.co.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2818\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2820,"href":"https:\/\/www.thomascreedy.co.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2818\/revisions\/2820"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thomascreedy.co.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2819"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thomascreedy.co.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2818"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thomascreedy.co.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2818"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thomascreedy.co.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2818"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}