The Year-Long Scavenger Hunt (A 2023 Reading Challenge)

As part of my ongoing, post-Twitter “Social Reboot,” I committed to a couple of quality of life things for 2023 that are, so far, going pretty well: blogging and reading. You’re soaking in the first, while I’ve been successfully squeezing in book reading into times that used to be wasted on doomscrolling, particularly before bedtime. I’ve even stayed up late once finishing a book, and recently spent a few Saturday afternoon hours on the couch finishing another.

It’s been glorious!

I deleted my Goodreads account a few years ago but wanted to use something to track my reading again and maybe write short reviews (which, unlike Goodreads, I’ll capture on the blog periodically), so I signed up for The Storygraph and am liking it so far (with apologies to my long-dormant LibraryThing account).

Comments on blogs aren’t really a thing anymore, especially on this here blog, but I occasionally have someone pop in via WordPress Reader, I think, and while checking out the blog of one such commenter, It’s The Bageler!, I discovered “The Year-Long Scavenger Hunt” at Birdie’s Book Nook.

As Birdie describes it, “It’s basically a bingo… You can choose to read 31 books where each book fits a different prompt or you can choose to find books that fit multiple prompts.” The prompts lean heavily towards genre fiction and diversifying your reading somewhat, but I’d already established my TBR pile for year — pictured in the header above — to which I’ve since added at least 5 more books, not including the ebook trilogy I unexpectedly discovered last month, so a few more may need to be added to the mix.

I’m tracking the hunt/challenge on its own page and was happy to see the four books I’ve read so far already hit multiple prompts, including the nonfiction title I just finished, which I was worried wouldn’t fit in the hunt at all.

Scanning the books on my TBR pile, I suspect I’ll be able to easily hit most of the prompts, although a few may take some special attention, like Sword on the Cover, Title __ Of __, and YA Book. I’m also not sure what a Merlin Character is, so that might take some extra effort as Google couldn’t figure it out. If you know, please tell me!

It’s been a few years since I’ve regularly read much for pleasure so I’m looking forward to making 2023’s challenge (to read at 24 books) more fun, too. That I stumbled across it the old-fashioned way, through the blogiverse, is icing on the cake!

Written by Guy LeCharles Gonzalez

Guy LeCharles Gonzalez is the Chief Content Officer for LibraryPass, and former publisher & marketing director for Writer’s Digest. Previously, he was also project lead for the Panorama Project; director, content strategy & audience development for Library Journal & School Library Journal; and founding director of programming & business development for the original Digital Book World.

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