Weekly Geeks - Challenges

This week's Weekly Geeks post referred to reading challenges:

"Reading Challenges: a help or a hurt? Do you find that the reading challenges keep you organized and goal-oriented? Or, do you find that as you near the end of a challenge that you've failed because you fell short of your original goals? As a result of some reading challenges, I've picked up books that I would have otherwise never heard of or picked up; that, frankly, I have loved. Have you experienced the same with challenges? If so, which ones? Do you have favorite reading challenges?"
As we pass the halfway point of 2009, how are you doing with your reading challenges? Did you participate in any challenges this year?"

Well, seeing as I'm fairly new to book blogging, I'm also fairly new to reading challenges. I discovered them a little later into 2009 and joined 2 - the 100+ books hosted by J. Kaye and the Read Your Own Books Challenge hosted by Miz B.
They both pulled me in for different reasons. The 1st challenge I honestly wondered how many books I read a year and I don't know the answer, so why not track. Now that it is halfway through the year I find I'm slightly behind a halfway to 100 (I think I'm at 36) and it has me wondering a few things. Should I delibrately pick books that I know I can breeze through just to say I've read 100 books in a year? Or, should I allow myself to deviate from this challenge to savour my books a bit more? Maybe there's a balance in there somewhere. I do know that I've abandoned my own personal classic challenge a bit this year because I know it will take me longer to finish. I try to read at least 2 classics a year. I purchased Vanity Fair back in March and loved it but then put it down. I picked it up again today just as I was pondering this notion. So maybe I will take the extra time to savour a delicious book such as this, but hopefully find a few read in a night books shortly thereafter to balance things out a bit.
The second challenge, I've found so easy because I don't have to know exactly how many of my own books I'd like to read this year, I just note them down as I go.