The 2017 Pick Your Poison Reading Challenge

Wow.  Time has totally gotten away from me.  I'm seriously behind in my blog posts!  Guess I've maybe been reading too much!!!!  I have been a busy little beaver when it comes to reading this year. Per Goodreads, as of today, I have read 217 books for a total of 64,595 pages!  You can see my final tally here:

Niffer's Year In Books2016

(**Note: The number will adjust as I read more books, so while as of today I've only read--Only! Ha!--217 books, there's still 17 more days to the new year and I expect that number to go up.)

Even with 217 books, I have not quite completed my 2016 Pick Your Poison Challenge.  Remember!  The point of the challenge is not just to read a certain number of books, but to read books that meet certain criteria.  I have 6 more books to go to finish all my categories.  6 books...17 days...Can she do it?....

But while we're fretting about whether or not I can finish this year's challenge, we should not forget next year.  I have been putting my poor little brain to work and trying to come up with an even better reading challenge for everyone out there.

Ladies and Gentlemen!  I present, for your reading pleasure, the 2017 Pick Your Poison Reading Challenge!!!!  (drumroll, please.....)

A printable .pdf is available here for your convenience.

A few hints for folks:

This is totally supposed to be a fun challenge.  Don't look at the Freaky Reader challenge and think, "Man, I could never read 104 books."  Check out the Baker's Dozen challenge and think, "You know, I probably will read 8 or 10 books this year.  I bet some of those books will fit into some of these categories."  One of my friends recently commented that she didn't think she could ever do this challenge.  I stalked her Goodreads read books from last year and she had totally completed the Baker's Dozen challenge.  The challenge is as much to stir your creativity as anything.  Is there a river mentioned in the book you're reading right now?  Dude, mark it off for the "A book about a river" category in the "Take It To The Bank" topic.  Reading a mystery and the murder victim has a pet cat?  Check off "A book with a cat in it" under "Critters."  You can do this!

Need help finding books that fit into a category?  Seriously, check out the Lists on Goodreads.com.  Last year I found "a book that takes place on an island" here.  The have a list of books where the dog lives or cats in romance novels.

And if you totally can't find a book that fits, or you're just running out of time, remember you can use a Wildcard category for any of the levels except Baker's Dozen.  (And heck, you can use it for that, too, if you really want to.  I won't judge you!)

And of course, once again, Extra Special (With A Helping Of Stevia On Top) Thanks are due to my friend Good Karma for helping with the fonts and getting me all the files I needed to post this.  (I'm so helpless with it comes to computer stuff.)  You should totally check out her lovely shop here.  And, as always, thanks to the Cafe gang at Creative Breakroom for offering support and suggestions as I put together this list.

I will try to come back with another blog post soon to update my 2016 progress!