My reading hit a bit of a slump in May, so when the New York Times came out with their summer reading challenge I decided to use it as an excuse to not only read more books, but also to read books that have been languishing on my shelves and my Kindle.

If you’re looking for a way to boost your attention span and get back to reading books and not just 3 minute social media posts, participating in a challenge such as this one is very beneficial. Since the challenge calls for you to make your own list of ten books to read during the summer, you can easily tailor it to your tastes. That means that you have a higher chance of both completing the challenge and enjoying it than if your would have been assigned a set list of books to read.

Here is the list of books that I selected and why I chose them:

• Read a book published in the last year – I selected “The Faith of Beasts” by James SA Corey. It’s the second book in their new series, The Captive’s War, and though this will be a challenging book because it’s a dystopian sci-fi novel and it isn’t particularly short, I wanted to keep following this series to its conclusion. I expect good writing, a gripping plot, and some thought provoking ideas about human beings as a species.
• Read a book in a genre you don’t typically read – I struggled a bit trying to decide which book to select for this category. I never read horror or romance, but I really don’t like these genres and I wasn’t willing to subject myself to them just for the sake of this challenge (if you love horror and romance that’s great! It’s just my personal taste that makes me avoid them). The NYT selected “Yesteryear” for their choice for this category, and since I very rarely read psychological thrillers I decided to select it too. This was just one of two books that I purchased for the sake of this challenge.
•  Read one of The New York Times’s Best Books of the 21st Century – The list is long so it took me a while to go over it and select a novel. I was debating whether to select “Bel Canto” or “Pachinko” and went with “Pachinko” in the end since I had already purchased it (it was part of the Tournament of Books a few years back). It’s on the long side, but so are most of the books that I had selected.
• Read a really short, or a really long, book – since I have so many long books on my list, I selected to go with a short book for a change – James Stockdale’s “Courage Under Fire“. It’s a transcript of an address that he gave, and it’s less than 30 pages long – but a very impactful set of pages they are.
• Read a classic you’ve been meaning to read (or revisit) – this one was easy – I was in the middle of reading “Meditations” by Marcus Aurelius so I selected it for the classic I was reading. Of course my choice for audiobook also fits this category.
• Read a book that takes place during the summer – this was hard to select, because it’s not a category that is easy to filter books by (unlike genre or length). Eventually I settled on “One Summer America 1927” which is a very long book (600 pages) but one that clearly fit the bill.
• Read a book in translation – I debated whether to read “Breasts and Eggs” or “When the Cranes Fly South” and selected “Breasts and Eggs” because I had a feeling that it would be a more challenging book to read.
• Read a book that’s been adapted for the screen – I’ve had the book “No Picnic on Mount Kenya” gathering dust on my shelf for years. I bought it at the legendary travel bookstore Standfords in London back when the store was a giant one at the end of Long Acre (it’s now not far from there, at Mercer Walk). It’s the story of three prisoners of war who escaped their camp just to climb mount Kenya, and it turns out that it’s been made into a pretty terrible film. I have no intention of watching the film, but this seemed like a good excuse to finally read this book, thus it was chosen.
• Listen to an audiobook – I don’t listen to books – I read them, which made this one a serious challenge. Eventually I purchased “The Odyssey” audiobook, read by Sir Ian McKellen. It was the first audiobook that I’ve ever listened to, a 13 hour event. The book itself could have worked for the “(Re)read a classic” category of course, but I wanted to hear Ian McKellen’s rendering of this text – especially since it’s a work of poetry.
• Check out and read a book from your local library – I went to the local library and after much debate picked up “Sea of Tranquility” even though I had never heard of it before. Emily St. John Mandel has written “Station Eleven,” which I have heard about and is considered to be a very good book, so I decided to give this book a try. It turned out to a real gem, so I’m glad that I found it and that this challenge pushed me to check it out.

The challenge officially ends at the end of August, but you can set your own rules and deadlines of course. I would recommend setting a deadline though, since they are useful motivators and will encourage you to read more every day.

As of writing this I have finished reading five out of the ten books that I’ve selected, and I’m almost three quarters through the sixth one. My secondary goal is to get back to reviewing books on this blog, so I will try and post a review for each of the books that I’ve read.

What do you think? Would you join such a challenge?