#LibFaves20, Reading Challenges, and Other Goings On

 It's a wonderful time of year - the time to celebrate all the amazing books that have come out over the past year and look forward to what next year's reading will bring. 

One thing that's been bringing me joy this past week is the annual LibFaves voting on Twitter. Follow the hashtag #LibFaves20 to see library workers' top 10 books of 2020. Since December 7, library workers have been shouting about one book a day with volunteer tabulators keeping tallies of the titles that have been mentioned. While it's centered on adult books, some folks are including YA and children's books, too. 

I'm eagerly following the hashtag because I have two Audible credits I need to use in the next month and I'm in need of great audiobooks to motivate my morning runs in the cold, so I'm keeping my eyes on what everyone is loving best this year. The fully tabulated list will be posted on EarlyWord when it's ready, so keep a look out for that! 

Another wonderful thing about this time of year is that the 2021 book challenges are starting to come out. I haven't participated in a book challenge in awhile and I doubt that 2021 will be the year for me. But I still love to see the prompts and challenges that others are undertaking. Do your patrons know about and participate in reading challenges? This might be a fun thing to share with them, especially this year when everyone's looking for socially distanced things to do. Challenges I love to spy on are: 

• Book Riot's Read Harder Challenge (I completed the Read Harder Challenge one year and one year only and I'm still proud of it)
• POPSUGAR's 2021 Reading Challenge (and I love their focus on tackling your To-Be-Read list!)

I have a January blog post for our staff blog devoted to highlighting some reading challenges because I think some of our patrons might enjoy them. Reading challenges might not be on their radars, so I like to spread the word. 

And it's not reeeeally a challenge (although it does have challenge elements this year!), but Everyday Reading's printable 2021 Reading Log was just released this week. If I could picture a place in my house where I could spread this out and color it (and if I could picture myself actually devoting time to keeping up with it), I would be ordering a large print of this gorgeous reading log. If you're in need of some stress relief coloring, I highly recommend checking it out! I'm almost convincing myself to give it a shot here. Maybe. 

Also not really a "challenge", but another exciting reading thing happening right now is all  the Mock Newbery discussions. I won't say I'm HAPPY about this because I hate the reasons behind it, but my favorite Mock Newbery run by the Allen County Public Library in Fort Wayne is going virtual this year on Zoom. It's 4 hours away from me, so I wasn't going to make it in person this year, but once they pivoted to virtual, I signed myself up. I'm approaching it with excitement and anxiety - what will a Zoom book discussion look like?! I guess we'll find out! And will I be able to finish (and reread?) all the books before our meeting? I'm going to give it my very best shot. 

School Library Journal's Heavy Medal Blog is also going with full force this year. Now's the time to be reading those 2020 books to be prepared to make ALL THE COMMENTS during the Youth Media Awards webcast on Monday, January 25. 

Are you following any Mock Awards this year? Are there any