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Book Challenges. I've done a few in my day. Generally I fail at them. Case in point, last year's Self Challenge. Heck, I can't even ban myself from buying more books. The last few years I've challenged myself with a goal of books to read, starting in 2006 with a 104 book challenge, I've tweaked it over the years depending on what's going on in my life.

This year I'm going to try something different. An idea I got, believe it or not, from a book I didn't really care for. The Happiness Project was a book about a woman's twelve month journey to find what made her happy. I know that books make me happy. I also know that I get anxious when my TBR shelf gets out of hand. So, I'm combining the two goals to get things back to Happy All The Time. So, here's the basics:

• a genre for each month
• a set number of books for that month
• one little exception: I will have one book each month that is different than the genre for book club

January and July: The genre is Old Books. (In my world, this is a genre, deal with it.) I'll be reading the books that have been around the longest on my TBR shelf. The goal is 10 books total for the two months.

February and August: The genre is Favorite Books. I'll be reading books that have been on my re-read list for some time: Diana Gabaldon's Outlander series, Harry Potter, and Charles Dickens. The goal is 6 books total. (Dude, the Outlander and HP books are HUUUGE. Six books are going to be a challenge.)

March and September: The genre is Self-Help. I'll be reading books either from my personal shelf or from the library at work. The goal is 8 books total.

April and December: The genre is Trashy Romance Novels. I used to read these books exclusively. Now I read them sporadically. I have quite a few of them hanging around, most of them quick Harlequin reads. The goal is 12 books total.

May and June: The genre is Oddo. I can read any genre book as long as it's on my Nook (named Oddo). These will mostly be books that I have purchased but may also include library books. The goal is 8 books total.

October and November: The genre is Writing. I have quite a few books that I picked up for research and reference for writing my novel. October I'll spend reading those books. November I'll spend writing for NaNoWriMo. The goal is 3 books.

This brings my total goal to 47 books for the year. This should be completely do-able, even with taking a month off to write.