I Tried Reading 30 Books In 30 Days!

July has been one hell of a month. I’m going to go ahead and crown it the worst month of 2020. Things were hectic and tiring so in hindsight this was probably not a great month to read 30 books in 30 days but how was I to know…

tumblr_p921wt9Uqr1xpxp84o1_540

bouquet-card-special-occasion-creative-watercolor_83728-1052

So how many books did I read???

Despite my valiant efforts, I was unable to complete the challenge but I still ended up reading 25 freaking books! I definitely count that as a victory and I’m glad that I didn’t push myself over to finish five more books.

Here are all the books I read, not including the ones I decided to DNF.

1596188946651

My favourite books that I read during the challenge were:
1. Girl, Serpent, Thorn by Melissa Bashardoust

An f/f persian mythology inspired fantasy story with plot twists and revenge.
2. You Should See Me In A Crown by Leah Johnson

An f/f story about being yourself and speaking out, told through Liz the prom queen candidate’s narrative.
3. I’ll Be The One by Lyla Lee

Incredibly inspiring story about fat girls in the Kpop industry with a bold and cute writing style.
4. Check, Please by Ngozi Ukazu

Adorable and beautifully sketched graphic novel about Bitty the hockey player and pie lover.
5. Lore Olympus by Rachel Smythe

A web-comic that takes a modern twist on the Greek story of Hades and Persephone.

bouquet-card-special-occasion-creative-watercolor_83728-1052

But what did I learn from this challenge?

First off, I want to quickly analyse my progress during July as I attempted to read 30 freaking books.

I started out strong with some graphic novels and shorter books and I remember being confident that I would ace this challenge if I kept up the pace. But of course, life came in the way and pretty soon I was at the point where I was just on track with the challenge. I was absolutely loving what I was reading and I might have read most of my favourite books in the first half of the month.

Day 15 is where I really felt it. The exhaustion of reading so much started seeping in and at the same time I was having a particularly slow time with Robinson Crusoe. I slowly made my progress with it for over 10 days before I gave up and DNFed it. Even after that I was able to ready some pretty great books but I wasn’t reading with the same vigour. Reading felt like a chore.

And to top that off I ran into some personal troubles which basically sapped me of all my energy and somewhere around day 20 I decided to just stop. I was also running the third edition of Indian Lit Readathon with my friends and co-hosts so things were really intense towards the end and I’m so thankful that I decided to give up.

It’s the 8th of August and I still have no motivation to read. That challenge really burnt me out.

exhausted-gif

bouquet-card-special-occasion-creative-watercolor_83728-1052

Lessons I’ve learnt from this challenge

1. Quality over quantity. If I didn’t know this earlier I definitely do now. I would rather read 5 books I know I’ll end up loving than 30 books which are a mix of okayish and good books.

2. Never force yourself to read. Not gonna lie, I do that sometimes because I feel the pressure to catch up on the hyped books as well as the backlist ones. I’ve only been in a minor reading slump once in my lifetime so I honestly didn’t treasure my mental health much when it came to reading.

3. You don’t forget what you read as fast as you would think. When I told my mom about this challenge she was concerned that I would hurry past these books and forget 80% of what I read and even though I brushed her concerns aside, I was secretly worried too. But that definitely did not happen and despite having a horrible memory in general, I remember quite a few details from the books I read in July.

4. What’s the point of reading? Always take time to pause and ask yourself why you’re reading. I could keep on reading acclaimed bestsellers one after the other, back to back, but not enjoy them if I don’t feel the urge to read them but force myself ahead. I read for pleasure and making reading a chore is the last thing I want to do!

5. Don’t attempt this challenge again. It’s safe to say that I won’t be attempting this challenge again. Hell no. I’m in awe of people who continue to read 20 to 30 books on an average every month but I’m not that kind of a person and I’m going to be reading at my own pace from now on. As soon as I get out of this slump…

1566178106808

Have you ever taken part in the 30 books in 30 days challenge? Do you plan to?

How’s your reading been going these days?

What pace do you normally read at? I usually read about 6 – 13 books on a monthly basis.

1570686123472

36 thoughts on “I Tried Reading 30 Books In 30 Days!

  1. This is such an interesting and insightful post! I don’t think I could find the time to even attempt to read 30 books in one month so massive kudos to you for giving it a go! I’m really glad you enjoyed Girl Serpent Thorn and I’ll be the One, both of those are on my TBR for the coming months! Sorry you’re feeling burnt out, I hope your motivation to read returns soon! 💗

    Liked by 2 people

    • Thank you so much, Kate!!!
      Omg yes the only reason I did this was because I didn’t have any classes and well we were under lockdown.
      Ooh, I’m so excited for you to read those books 😍
      Yeah, it’s pretty disheartening but I might be able to ease back in with a reread of the pjo series 😄

      Liked by 2 people

  2. 25 books is still amazing!
    I used to read around 20-25 books a month, but that was when I was home a lot and had not many commitments! Now that I’m working 5 days a week I’m really slowing down! In the beginning I was still trying to force myself to read the same amount. But as you said forcing yourself to read makes you not enjoy the process of reading!

    (www.evelynreads.com)

    Liked by 2 people

  3. this is an amazing feat!! i used to read 25-30 books a month, but last year i read a lot of bad/mediocre books, and this year my goal is 100. most of my books have been 3.5 to 5 star reads, which is really good, and my goal is for over half the books i read to be by authors of color.

    Liked by 1 person

    • Thank you so much! Ah I totally get that. Lately I’ve been very strict with adding books on my TBR because I want to try and pick up books that I know I’ll love.
      That’s an awesome goal! Initially reading aoc books was a conscious effort but I’m happy to say that I mostly gravitaye to those these days ☺

      Liked by 2 people

  4. Honestly, I don’t see many attempt a challenge like this and you did really well! 25 books in a month is amazing, be proud of that. I didn’t do this particular challenge but I did read 34 books in July and only DNF’d one of those so I was super proud of that! Keep it up – if reading feels like a chore take a break – god knows I need to learn that lesson 🙂

    Liked by 1 person

  5. I was really rooting for you but I understand why you had to give it up though. We should definitely not be forcing ourselves to read as it ruins the experience overall. I’m glad you learnt so much through this and found some favourites too! 💖

    Liked by 1 person

  6. This is such a great post Charvi, I don’t think I could even find the courage to attempt this challenge as I typically read between 3-7 a month at the moment and like if I read 10 in a month I feel like I’ve done well haha. You may not have “completed” the challenge but I personally think you still aced it as you read 25 books in a month which is still an accomplishment and you did amazing! Sending you lots of love and healing vibes for your burn out lovely ❤

    Liked by 1 person

    • Thank you, Clo 😘
      It all depends on the reader, 10 books can be a great accomplishment too! Thanks for the healing vibes, I really hope this doesn’t last long 🤞🏽

      Liked by 1 person

  7. Oh my God this sounds exhausting. I’m so impressed that you got as much reading done as you did, and persisted as long as you did, and I’m not surprised that you’re burnt out now. I feel like quarantine has zapped my ability to be a normal reader, and I’m just constantly struggling to catch back up.

    Liked by 1 person

  8. Such an incredible feat! I think it’s awesome you did the challenge. Twenty-five books is a humongous stack of reads. I’ve been wanting to try this challenge for a while, but I’ll admit that I feel intimidated by it. Reading your thoughts and experiences though seem to make me want to try it even more to see what kinds of lessons the adventure would teach me. Maybe to celebrate my birthday month, I will try this. 🙂

    Liked by 1 person

  9. […] Charvi @ Not Just Fiction shared five narrators who transformed her reading experience. I know that the narrator can make or break an audiobook, so it is nice to have some recommendations! I adored The Test by Sylvain Neuvel, and I cannot wait to listen to the audiobook. Charvi also wrote a post about attempting to read 30 books in 30 days, which is definitely worth rea…! […]

    Like

  10. Wow, I admire you!! 25 is still one hell of a record! Congrats 🎉
    I think I could never do that kind of challenge haha… I usually read 3 or 4 books a month (my record was like 7 haha) and I hate when reading becomes a chore – I’ve studied literature, and we had a list of books to read for the semesters, and I just hated having to read books I didn’t choose to read… Reading should be a pleasure!
    Anyway, congrats again!!

    Liked by 1 person

Leave a Reply

Fill in your details below or click an icon to log in:

WordPress.com Logo

You are commenting using your WordPress.com account. Log Out /  Change )

Twitter picture

You are commenting using your Twitter account. Log Out /  Change )

Facebook photo

You are commenting using your Facebook account. Log Out /  Change )

Connecting to %s
https://itsnotjustfiction.wordpress.com/2020/08/08/i-tried-reading-30-books-in-30-days/
itsnotjustfiction.wordpress.com
crawl=CC-MAIN-2022-40
200777
application/http; msgtype=response
sha1:FZHDLNBC5L3EKOVPQIH6LBVGCCDQ6LPU
<urn:uuid:c9e4ad36-7112-489d-9783-f5c3cf419102>
2022-09-29T10:28:25Z
192.0.78.13
text/html
sha1:KFMBT2CWF2OK34BAL7T4PSS2DHERGJPF
<urn:uuid:01591dd6-1ada-42ad-a7db-229592a82fd0>
https://itsnotjustfiction.wordpress.com/2020/08/08/i-tried-reading-30-books-in-30-days/
response
<urn:uuid:015eb513-d77a-411d-a199-6e21a56f6e5f>
isPartOf: CC-MAIN-2022-40
publisher: Common Crawl
description: Wide crawl of the web for September/October 2022
operator: Common Crawl Admin (info@commoncrawl.org)
hostname: ip-10-67-67-194
software: Apache Nutch 1.19 (modified, https://github.com/commoncrawl/nutch/)
robots: checked via crawler-commons 1.4-SNAPSHOT (https://github.com/crawler-commons/crawler-commons)
format: WARC File Format 1.1
conformsTo: https://iipc.github.io/warc-specifications/specifications/warc-format/warc-1.1/