Hello all!
This is the first actual blog post I am writing after taking my summer break and I have to say… I didn’t really miss it. Part of me really loves writing in this format but with where my brain and body are at right now because of my chronic illness, I don’t feel as focused or motivated to write. I have decided that I am going to finish up the year with posts every other week since I have enough planned out and then I’ll decide what I want to do moving forward in time for 2023.
In the meantime, let’s get excited about my Grown Up Summer Reading Challenge 2022 wrap up! I had such an awesome time organizing and hosting the challenge again this summer. I made some changes from the year before that I think worked better, so I will share those with you along with our final stats and prizes and what not. Let’s go!
2022 Changes:
This year’s main changes were:
1. I switched how the prize levels worked; and 2. I set up a discord channel and threads to keep people engaged and more organized vs on IG chat group.
Otherwise, it was the same: contribute $10 to the prize pot in order to participate and sign up/pay by June 30th so we all start reading July 1. I asked for booklists or trackers every 2 weeks to do updated stats and track every book read by a participant. I only missed one so the final total is accurate to what people sent me vs the total I put into the final list–I wasn’t going back in to figure out which one I missed since we read almost 700 books!
2022 Stats:
Here you’ll find the stats for books read, genre types, number of participants, repeats, most read book, etc.
I read the most books (82) but right from the start I pulled out of the running for most books since that prize is purchased by me separately from the prize pot and I read ridiculously fast. Our winner read 66 and was actually the same person as last year even though she didn’t intentionally read as aggressively as last year to up her total.
2022 Prizes:
This year, I did the participation sticker like last year and once again had it custom designed by a former classmate of mine. It turned out so well and everyone involved got one of these.
Once you read 5 books, you received a color-it-yourself bookmark, made by my bestie, who also was super kind and donated them so we could put our money towards other prizes!
If you read 10 books, you got to pick one magnet of 17 designs by Rebecca on Etsy. She is a Canadian maker and was a delight to deal with for my two sort of bulk orders.
Everyone also got one entry into the extra prize draws, so once you hit 20 you’d get an extra entry for every 10 (20, 30, 40, etc.) Our extra prizes this year were:
- $10 7-eleven card
- $10 Starbucks card
- $20 Ciniplex card
- $25 Indigo card
- Magetic fridge poetry kit
- Tote bag and notebook with bookish saying (also from a Canadian maker on Etsy)
- $50 card to a local bookstore of your choice
Then, our winner of most books got to choose the genre for their blind date with a book prize pack from ReadByAndyCo, another Canadian maker on Etsy and IG.
Final thoughts:
As I said, I really enjoyed running this challenge–in fact, it was easily one of the best parts of my summer! As of now, I plan to host it again next summer but, as with everything in my life, that will be tentative based on how health things and life in general are going. I did already have one return participant offer to help co-host if that would help, so I appreciate having that option and we’ll see if it’s necessary once we get there. It makes me happy that people like the challenge so much that they want to help me make it happen.
As for other reading challenges or events before next summer, I plan to do a book exchange type situation in time for the Christmas, etc. holidays so stay tuned for details near the end of November and then next year in April I’ll hopefully do my birthday challenge again, which is more of a passive one that doesn’t require sign up, fees, tracking, etc.
For now, that’s all! Happy reading in the mean time!
-Katie
Chronically KD 