Just4thehelluvit Challenge

When I joined my first challenge, I never expected to be swept up in a craze that would carry me for the entire year and beyond. I have discovered that I am not as much a mood reader as I thought. I can read books off of lists, given that the lists are ones I have made up of books I want to read. Challenges have been perfect for getting to books that have lingered in my TBR collection for awhile. I still like the spontaneous book now and then, but with as many challenges as I have been involved in, that gets harder and harder to do. Heck, I joined the Summer Mystery Reading Challenge and the Medical Mystery Madness Challenge because I was not getting my fix of mystery reading in. I figured it it was on a challenge list, I would be more likely to read it. Sure enough . . .

Dana of So Many Books, So Little Time has been feeling the same way. As much as we may enjoy making up our challenge lists, we feel we need an excuse to step outside of those lists once in awhile. Of course we know there is nothing stopping us from reading what we want when we want to (and for me, reading challenge books is what I want to do). It's not like any of these challenges are required reading. And yet, once you are bitten by the challenge bug it is hard to break free and Dana has provided the perfect excuse for the challenge-addicted to do just that, while at the same time allowing us to check another challenge off our list as having been successfully completed.

The The Just4thehelluvit Challenge is just as the title suggests. Just for the hell of it. Read any book (not on any challenge list--no crossovers allowed as it defeats the purpose!); it does not matter how few or how many; and whatever you do, do not make a list.

Not making a list is a lot harder than it sounds after eight months of reading mostly from reading lists I have assigned to myself. I am already thinking of what books I might want to read for this challenge, which kind of defeats the purpose of the challenge, doesn't it?