Reading Challenges 2012: Ebooks, Global, Europe, Translations + suggestions & links

With the start of the new year many reading challenges opened a new page in the web. The challenges invite readers to join and focus on a defined theme for some of their yearly reading, and to share the titles of the books you read and/or reviews with other participants. Signup for most of the challenges is still open. Here are some of the challenges:

The 2012 Ebook Challenge invites you to read at least 5 e-books in 2012. It offers a monthly roundup post where participants can add their reviews, and also giveaways.

To tour Europe in books - that's the idea of the European Reading Challenge. The books can be anything – novels, short stories, memoirs, travel guides, cookbooks, biography, poetry, or any other genre. The task: Read up to 5 books by different European authors or books set in different European countries.

The Global Reading Challenge challenges you to expand your reading boundaries, go where you haven't been before, move a little outside your comfort zone by reading at least one book from each continent.

The goal of the Books in Translation Reading Challenge is self-explanatory: to read translations of books. "The books don't have to be in English; whatever language(s) you're comfortable reading in is good."

More challenges and challenge overlaps
More challenges can be found at A Novel Challenge - a blog that gathers reading challenge links. A hint from the guidelines: most challenges allow and encourage an overlap of challenges for those who take part in more than one challenge.

Reading Suggestions from this book blog
If you are interested in joining a challenge, and look for fitting books to read: here some categories to browse from this blog:

• Ebooks (Peppermint Bottle, Never Never Stories, Freight, Spiral Jetta, Life Cycle...)
• About a Place (The Tiger's Path - Iraq, A Foal Poem - Mexico,Open City - New York, Habit of a Foreign Sky - Asia, Spiral Jetty - USA, Ayiti - Haitia...)
• International (Foreign Flavours, Writers Abroad Anthology, Black Nature anthology, Oxford Book of Latin American Poetry...)