I wasn’t sure, with 2020 being what it has been so far, that my family would be on board for our annual Summer Reading Challenge, but they were both actually more excited than I was. I think a lot of that has to do with our decision last year to do a re-read of the original Percy Jackson and the Olympians series this summer. We are all looking forward to spending time in that world again.
Our Summer Reading kicks off today and will end on July 31 – 56 days of reading. Here are the details for 2020. (You can read about past years here.)
Family Reading Challenge
We decided that this summer each of us will read the original Percy Jackson novels again. It has been ages since we have read the whole thing, although my teen re-reads them periodically. My husband and son each have their own sets. I’m going to just download them from the library.
In addition to Percy, we are picking one challenge book for each of the other people in the family. My teen has challenged both my husband and me to re-read The Red Pyramid, the first book in the Egyptian mythology series by Rick Riordan. My husband has challenged me to read the third book in the Orphan X series. I read the first book in the series earlier this year (♥♥♥♥), and my husband thinks one of the characters in the third book will appeal to me. I gave my husband five books to choose from, and he decided to read Undercover Bromance as his challenge book. I challenged my teen to read Millenneagram. It’s a true challenge, because he generally rolls his eyes at me when I talk about the Enneagram. I hope he finds this book a quick and interesting read. Finally, my husband is challenging our teen to read Head On by John Scalzi, the sequel to the book he had him read last summer – Lock In – which our son enjoyed.
Last summer, with the 7 Harry Potter books, the two family choice books for each person took us to 9 total. Since there are only 5 Percy Jackson books, we each chose two books for ourselves. The only requirement was that they had to have been previously unread.
I chose Absolutely Truly, a middle grade mystery that has been out for awhile and that I have had on my TBR shelves for years. My second choice is another middle grade mystery. City Spies by James Ponti just released this spring. Every month I put it on my reading list, and every month I don’t get around to it. This summer I’ll finally get my chance to read it. My son will be reading the second and third books in the Cat in the Stacks mystery series. He read the first one a couple summers ago and thoroughly enjoyed it. This challenge gives him an excuse to dig into them. (Classified as Murder – ♥♥♥♥♥ – is one of my favorites in that series.) My husband chose two books off of his TBR shelves, Artemis and Over Watch.
Since prizes worked so well last year, we are going to do that again to help us finish the goal by July 31.
#Bookaday
Teachers, librarians and other book fanatics all over social media (Instagram, Twitter) choose to read a book each day of summer vacation. My #bookaday will run from today to July 31, so 56 books in 56 days. And to help with that I have a Kindle full of Advance Reader Copies and my personal TBR pile for the summer. I haven’t been doing a lot of personal reading lately – I’ve gotten carried away with book requests from Netgalley and those are my priorities every week. I am hoping with more reading time I can find a balance again.
TBR Books
My top priority for the summer is to get ahead on my review copies. These are some of the ones I am most excited to read.
These are some of the new books coming out in June and July that I hope to read.
And finally, I have books on my TBR shelves that I desperately want to get to. We’ll have to see how the summer reading goes!
What are you planning to read this summer?