Sign up for our Summer Reading Challenge!

Summer is around the corner and we want you to join us for our next seasonal challenge! We are still having a blast as the spring cleaning challenge winds down.  That challenge closes on June 20th and we will be announcing the winners on June 21st.

For now we want to announce our plans for our summer challenge and we hope that you all join us because we think it is pretty wonderful! Keep reading to find out more. It’s best to sign up early so you can get a “personalized” version.

Summer is a time for travel both near and far. And for those of us with busy jobs that don’t let up over summer months, what better way to travel than immersing yourself in a good book? So for our summer challenge, we want you to travel using your reading. This challenge requires some preparation on our part so please sign up early. The actual challenge won’t start until June 21st.

Here’s the challenge:

We will create reading passports for each participant. These can be hard copies to be mailed out or virtual copies that I’ll send as PDFs -depends on where you live and how early you sign up. Your reading passport will be unique to you (no other reader will have the same passport).

Passports will have approximately 30 pages and at the top of each page you will find a reading destination. Destinations may include a specific country, certain types of locations (beach, mountains, etc), certain types or modes of travel, and other categories. We have a large master list of destinations and your specific destinations will be selected using a randomizer. Some destinations will be tricky and you will need to think creatively to find a book that fits the destination. I will make sure that each person gets at least one “difficult” location.

Once you have your passport, it is your job to read your way through the passport visiting as many places as possible. You may start reading on June 21st.  You choose which book you want to read to fulfill the requirement of your destination. In order for a book to count, your immigration agent (a.k.a. Book Worm or myself) must approve your book choice. This is to make sure that your book actually meets the spirit of the destination. We recommend doing this before you read the book.

Your goal is to read books for as many destinations as possible over the summer months. Be creative in your book selections and share your choices and destinations with other players in the comments section of the summer challenge page.

I will create a scoreboard and instruction page which you will be able to find in the challenges tab at the top of the blog.

The Challenge will officially begin on June 21st and will end on September 22nd at midnight. As usual, cool book prizes will be awarded to multiple winners (most well traveled/read, a randomly drawn winner, and a few other prizes).

Instructions:

• Sign up by emailing us a few things: 1) A name you want to use for your passport (can be your real name or even better a creative name from literature); 2) A photo or image you’d like to use for your “passport”; 3) either your mailing address (if you would like a hard copy passport) or email address for a virtual passport.
• Review your Passport. You will receive your passport from us either by mail or email.
• Pick a destination from your passport options and an appropriate book. It’s a good idea to have either myself or Book Worm approve it before you read it. For example, if you get “France,” you can read a book set in France, by a French author, with France in the title, written in French, etc.
• Read your book and send us the review when you have finished.
• When we have confirmed that you have fulfilled the requirement we will confirm that you can “stamp” or passport and move on. You can only read one destination at a time and only one destination can be crossed off per book (no doubling up).
• Repeat until you have read them all, you want to stop, or until the deadline.

Any questions? Sign up by sending your email to me (jenlane3@yahoo.com). In your email let me know if you want a hard copy passport — I recommend this especially if you send in your request early.

Are you in? Let us know in the comments section and send us an email with the info requested.