Calling all readers!
It’s a day of rejoicing because the Summer Reading Challenge 2022 is here … or the Winter Reading Challenge for my Southern Hemisphere friends! If you can believe it, this is the seventh summer of the challenge.
If this is your first year, welcome! If you’ve been doing this challenge from the beginning, I bet you’ve felt this too . . . With the turning of April into May, I’ve begun to notice a low buzz of reading excitement. I think to myself, “It’s coming!”
Eight summers ago the primary emotion of my summer was resentment. I associated childhood summers with spaciousness, a bit of boredom, and reading. My adult summers felt the opposite—crowded, busy, and no leisurely reading. While there’s much I love about being an adult, I missed summer reading and decided something needed to change.
I also noticed that left to my own, I read the same kind of book over and over, always meaning to get to other types of books. I don’t make time to read certain kind of books because I have work, responsibilities, and intentions that, it turns out, are very weak intentions. So, thank you one and all of joining in and during this challenge we all become more well-rounded readers!
It will start on June 1 and run through August 12, 2022. To enter, read seven books from 25 categories.
What’s different?
- I read Gone to the Woods by Gary Paulsen this spring and it is so fantastic that for the first time I’m choosing a book for us. (I’ll share more about it later.)
- A few new categories
- No COVID or Olympic focus this year
What’s the same?
- Many categories will be similar because reading is reading. But you will notice a few new gems
- Counting a book of more than 700 pages as two books.
- Choosing a penalty book within the first week of the challenge. A penalty book or category is one you declare to yourself I will read or be penalized. The last four summers I’ve selected a penalty book and it worked! I read books I’d been meaning to read for ages and I am all the richer for reading them. This year Dutch: A Memoir of Ronald Reagan by Edmund Morris is my penalty book. Can I tell you how many years I’ve meant to read this book?! I think the answer is 20 years. This is the summer!
- Like previous years, if you do not read your “penalty” book, you will subtract two books from your total.
What’s in it for you?
- All who comment between August 11-15th with the names of the books they read will be entered to win one of ten $10 Amazon gift cards.
Drumroll . . . here are the categories!
- Gone to the Woods: Surviving a Lost Childhood by Gary Paulsen. This is a memoir told in Young Adult style. Not for young kids because parts of his childhood are shocking and heartbreaking, but the writing is so good. Keep reading when it gets hard, I don’t want to spoil it, so just keep reading!
- A Biography or about history
- A book you already own
- A book you’ve been wanting to reread
- A book a friend recommended
- A Young Adult book (YA)
- A book with a great cover
- A book of poetry
- A memoir or autobiography
- A graphic novel
- A book for professional development (loosely defined)
- A book longer than 700 pages (counts as two books)
- A book with a verb in the title
- A play
- A book about a country or culture you have never visited
- A book with the number 7 in the title or subtitle (in honor of this being the 7th anniversary)
- A book that won an award
- A book by someone with a different view point than you recommended you read
- A mystery
- A classic
- An audiobook
- A book with an animal
- A book less than 100 pages
- A book you want to discuss with others
- A book you read as a child
Download the 2022 Summer Reading Challenge
Download the Summer Reading Challenge 2022, print it off, and track your progress. But most of all, have fun and read books you might not read in other times of the year!
My penalty book is Dutch: A Memoir of Ronald Reagan by Edmund Morris
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In short: Read seven books from June 1 to August 12, 2022.
Are you in? What books are you looking forward to reading during the challenge?
Happy Reading, Amy
Thank you Amy! I love this challenge, because I also have a hard time reading other books and this challenge is always helpful (even if I don’t always finish it). I do not have a penalty book this year, but I have printed off the challenge and I am ready to start June 1st!
I’m joining again!
Count me in!
I’m in!
I’m in. I have to think about what my penalty book will be….
Is there something missing in this part of the list?
A book by someone with a different view point than you recommended you read
A mystery
Okay. I reread and got it. Sorry!
Excited to join in again this summer! I think I am going to make Tess of the d’Urbervilles my penalty book this year. It has been on my list for years.
I’m in! First timer here (and why I replied on Instagram – rookie mistake!)
Okay, I finished Gone to the Woods. Thank you for recommending it. It’s definitely not my usual type of book, but it’s good, and I’m glad I read it. I’m super curious about why you wanted all of us to read it, though?
Hey Amy! I began the challenge June 1 but forgot to respond. Was it necessary to respond with the name of our penalty book before now? We were at Disney last week and brought back covid, so I’ve been off my game!! If it’s NOT too late, my penalty book is Water for Elephants, a book I’ve wanted to read for a long time but always manage to not choose!
LeAnne!! I’m just now checking comments! How bad of me :)! It’s not too late … even if you haven’t started Water for Chocolate, it’s still not too late (both to choose it and to read it!). Love you friend!