Book A Week Challenge 2020 - Read and review 52 books in 52 weeks

For 2020 I have decided to take on the ‘Book A Week’ challenge read and review a book every single week. You read that right. My plan is to read and review 52 books across the year. Now I know some people think I’m going crazy, so I wanted to explain why I have made this decision.

The first time I attempted the book a week challenge was in the summer of 2016. I decided to read and review a book every week for the rest of the year and on the 8th July 2016, I posted the first review of that challenge, which was about The 80/20 Principle by Rich Koch.

I successful stuck to the challenge and by the end of the six months I had reviewed 26 books. However, I realised that whilst the challenge of reading and reviewing a book every week had held me accountable it had impacted the books I had chosen to read. When you know you have to finish a book in a week you become more inclined to choose easier books. I mean, would you try and read a 500+ page book, like Money Master the Game by Tony Robbins, in a week?

As 2017 rolled around I decided I would be more relaxed about my reading and reviewing schedule. I was running PropelHer’s Book Club so I was guaranteed to read at least 12 books across the year and in fact I read many more because I like to read books before I would choose them to be the Book of the Month for PropelHer’s Book Club. However, without the rule of reading and reviewing a book every week I began to review less and less.

According to my Goodreads (you can view my Goodreads account here), I read 6 books in relation to my 2019 reading challenge, but my ‘read in 2019’ shelf contains 20 books. Clearly Goodreads isn’t the most accurate way of me recording what I had read because I know I have read more books than 20.

With that in mind I decided in 2020 to go back to the one book a week challenge, but rather than doing it for 6 months I would do it for the whole year.

Why am I going to review all the books I read?

When most people do the ‘Book A Week’ challenge they read a book a week, so why have I decided to also review the books.

Since I began my book blog ‘Charelle Reads’ I realised that reviewing books forces me to take in more information. When I’m reading with the purpose of reviewing I take more notes and by reading my notes after I’ve finished reading the book I’m able to focus on the key lessons and think about how I’ll apply those lessons in my own life.

Keep up-to-date with my ‘Book A Week’ challenge

I’ll be updating my blog ‘Charelle Reads’ weekly with the latest book, but if you want to have a quick glance over what I’ve been reading I’ll be listing all of the books below.

If you think there is a book I should read and review please let me know. You can drop me an email via my contact form.