*** We did not complete the 999 Challenge! ***

While many people are celebrating their 999 Challenge victories, I'm sure there are a few of us, beside myself, who "didn't quite" make it through to the end. Let's do our "boohoo-ing" here while the others do their "woohoo-ing" elsewhere. This is our consolation thread...AND a good place to give ourselves a pat on the back for undertaking this fun challenge. Good try, everyone!

How was this experience for you? Fun? Frustrating? Inspiring? This is the place to share...

See you on the 1010 Challenge?

Esteemed fellow challengers,

In celebration of your year of reading, I applaud your participation in the 999 Challenge (even if you did not complete it). Post your Percentage Completion Rates (which you may update later - but only until midnight 12/31/09) on this thread, and I'll post your stats as a compiled list right here:

ArmyAngel1986 -- 27%
LisaMorr -- 44%
Deesirings -- 50%
juliette07 -- 52%
tropics -- 54% (with note-taking)
bookaholicgirl -- 56%
NeverStopTrying -- 58%
crazy4reading -- 65%
Jenson_AKA_DL -- 74%
moneybeets -- 77%
merry10 -- 80%
SqueakyChu -- 80%
Zoe -- 80% or 81% or 90% (undecided)
ladygata -- 83%
jonesli -- 88%
channywax -- 94%
jhedlund -- 96%
blythe025 -- 99% (!)

P.S. The year is over, folks! :D

I'm hoping to complete my last 999 challenge book today, leaving me with 63/81 read--77%. (I started counting on Christmas of last year, not Jan. 1.) The challenge was lots of fun and inspired me to read some things to fill categories that I might not otherwise have read. However, I noticed that I read almost all of my favorite books from this year between the months of January and June. I feel like as the year went on, I increasingly ignored things I wanted to read in favor of what I should read to complete the challenge. (That, and I just generally read less because I was busy with school.) So I don't know if I'll do the 1010 after all. I like the idea, but I think I want a break after trying (and failing ;-;) to do the 888 and 999.
Still fairly proud of my progress though, I read more books this year than any other year I've logged!

I loved choosing the titles and categories for the year and plan to read all of them EVENTUALLY. However, doing justice to 99 books in a period of just one year is an unrealistic expectation for me, given that I read (usually on-line) a great many newspapers, magazines and blogs. Further complicating matters, I read mostly non-fiction and stopping to take notes while I'm reading slows me down. I also made an effort to write a brief review of each book. Didn't post them "out" there, only on my "999" page and over on the "50 Challenge".

At any rate, the attempt was great fun and next year I'm aiming for a more achievable six books in each of ten categories on the 1010 Challenge.

Percentage this year - 54%.

Season's Greetings, all!

I will be finishing at 72/81 approximately 88%. I read more than enough books this year to complete this challenge and probably a second one, but alas I became distracted by library finds, books on my shelves, books mentioned here (always) and did not spread out the reading enough. By that I mean maybe a cozy mystery along with a tome to even things out, by the time I got close to the end I had all tomes left and became disinterested in them. I will move a few of the books from the 999 that were not read into the 1010, which I will start on Jan 1st. I love choosing categories, and I hope I left myself more "wiggle room" this time around. It's still fun no matter what.

Happy Holidays to everyone!

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Still fairly proud of my progress though, I read more books this year than any other year I've logged!

Kelly, isn't that a sign of success, though? I *knew* ahead of time I'd never read 81 books this year, but I love doing the categories and posting pictures with the categories.

I increasingly ignored things I wanted to read in favor of what I should read to complete the challenge.

For me, that would be a bad idea. I *only* read what I want. It's after I finish a book that I try to put it into a category. If it fits somewhere, great. If not, tough luck! If I'm undecided about what to read next, I use the categories to help me choose a book, but they're not the deciding factor.

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I like your attitude, Carol. It sounds as if you thoroughly enjoy what you read, taking the time to make notes on your books.

Wishing you success (and fun) on your 2010 Challenge! It sounds doable.

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I agree with you, Lisa, about the "wiggle" room. If you leave yourself enough, you're bound to be reading things you like and not which you feel as if you're "forced" to read (a complaint I often hear about these challenges). These are supposed to be fun. There are no Challenge Police! :)

Try what I do and not list books ahead of time. Choose the books freely throughout the year and then add them to your categories only after reading them. If the categories don't fit, change them and make new ones.

I read 47 out of 81 which comes to 58%. I will definitely read most of the ones I did not make it to this year by rolling them forward into future year challenges. I read some wonderful books that I am certain I would not have gotten around to without the structure of the challenge. Yay me! And yay LT! And thanks to everybody else on the challenge who made it such an interesting year. We won't talk about my wishlist or my TBR pile. Nope. Not going there.

Happy New Year, all.

I agree, Kathryn, that it's been an interesting year. At one point, I thought about trying to complete my 999 challenge in 2010, but then I nixed that idea because it sounded too confusing with all the other challenges I'm doing. :)

Happy holidays!

9-- I love your message combined with your username :)

Just finished one more. It was Water for Elephants. That was such a good read that I got through it in record time! I guess I am running out of time, though.

My 999 Challange won't end until Jan. 14th 2010 because that is when I started it. Right now I have read 48/81 which I am proud of since I had some very bad moments during the summer and didn't read as much as I usually do. Now that things are slowly working towards the better again I will hopefully be reading more again.

I will keep you posted as to my progress. Right now my percentage is 59.25%. I don't expect to read over 30 books in about 2 weeks but all I can do is try.

I've read 65/81 books, or 80%. I expect that one more book will get finished before the end of the year, taking me to 81%. And if I include the allowed overlaps, I'm at 90%.

I definitely enjoyed this challenge, at least until about October. Then I felt that my reading was a bit too restricted. So I "allowed" myself to start reading from my 1010 immediately and to carry on with my 999 until February 2010, so that I'd feel I could read anything I wanted.... but in the end, I stuck to books that counted for the 999, so I'm just going to stop here and start fresh on Jan. 1. I'm happy with the experience overall.

I will be doing the 1010 Challenge, but with half-categories of 5 books each. Whenever I finish a half-category, I'll add a new one, which should keep things fresh and mean that I always have a lot of choice in what to read. This should finally make it so that finishing a category is a good thing, not a bad thing!

I gave up at one point - my work became mad with a lot of travel so I was reading books based on size, not topic. Stopped updating my thread even before this so no idea how much I actually read from the initial plan.

For next year, I've reorganized the plans a bit + I will be starting at the beginning of the year (yay me) :)

I'm at 67/81 which is actually amazing, as I've never topped 65 books in a year. I might finish a book before tomorrow's over, but I'm not gonna sweat it. It's all for the fun, and I must admit I've tackled quite a bit of Mt. TBR. Plus, this year I finally got into Roman history, which for me is an accomplishment in itself. Next year I'm doing the 1010 but I'm not obsessed with reading 10 of each category - plus I left room for whatever doesn't fit into the category.

11 - Took me awhile to get back to this thread. Moneybeets, thanks for the kind words.

21/81 (25%), which may be an all-time low of new books read for me. My get up and go got up and went, and took my reading drive with it. I read 30 new books this year, and this is the second year I haven't completed the */*/* challenge.

I almost completed it. I read 76 books out of 81, and my last category that I couldn't finish was "Classics". Hopefully I will be able to finish this next year! I read well over 81 books, just not in the right categories!:) Congrats to those who finished!

It's going to be a close call for me. I have four books left, but I think I can complete them by midnight tomorrow. I'm not out of the game until the clock strikes 12!

Pick four really thin books! :)

Heh Heh! I doubled up for my categories so I finished the nine of them but officially I'm at 65 out of 81 or 80% complete. Good luck for 2010 people and thanks SqueakyChu for this fun thread!

Whether you completed the challenge or not congratulations for participating. Happy New Year to you all.

I echo the sentiments of englishrose and want to add a thank you to everyone who participated in this challenge regardless of completing. You provided inspiration for my own whether or not you knew it. I look forward to seeing you all again next year.

Update: 22/81 (27%). That's going to be the last book of the year for me. 2010 reading officially starts today!

Update: I finished a book just now Highland Hearts by Virginia Brown so I have read 49/81 (60%). My ultimate goal is to read 50 books so I am off to find an easy read and hopefully add one to my 999 challenge as well. I have 7 1/2 hours left for my 50 book challenge this year. Happy New Year everyone!!

I read about 46 out of the 81 so 56% for me. While not terribly impressive, it is better than I did last year so I am happy. And, like some others here, I actually read more books than that but those were in categories that I had already completed for this challenge.

I will be participating in the 1010 Challenge and will just see how I do. I do not pick the books out ahead of time. I just pick the categories and then, as I read, I plug the books into the categories where they fit.

Good luck next year, everyone!

I was so glad to see this thread - thanks for starting it SqueakyChu! Nice to commiserate with fellow non-finishing challengers. I was on track to finish, but then a few days ago we adopted a dog from the humane society and I've barely read a word since. Kind of a bummer since I literally read my eyes out this year, but having the dog more than makes up for it. I read 78 out of 81, so 96%.

I loved how the challenge stretched me in reading directions I probably would not otherwise have gone in. I also read FAR more this year than I ever have in any other year. I probably average around 50 books, so reading 78 is really something.

I'm not sure if I'm going to do the 1010. I just left my job to focus solely on my writing, I started a blog and of course, I now have a dog. I think I might just need to read without even an inkling of pressure. We'll see. I guess I'll decide tomorrow!

Thrilled to see this thread as I have spectacularly landed in the non-finishing group. Thrilled that I have completed some excellent reads and went for 'quality not quantity' (42 .... ) !! I too love the thrill of planning and reflecting upon grouping books - not to mention talking about books. Truth be known - this has been a tough year ... all the more reason for my books ... thank you to all my dear bookish friends and see you in 2010.

I read 41 books in the 999 Challenge, putting me at 50%. My closest-to-complete category was "Memoir / biography / non-fiction with a personal touch," and it was also one of my favourite categories. My other favourite category was "Oprah's Book Club authors."

I did a "reading year in review" post on my 999 challenge thread (http://www.librarything.com/topic/53412#1687701), explaining that 2009 wasn't a particularly good reading year for me, neither in terms of quantity, nor of quality.

I am now ready to focus on 2010. I haven't decided whether to do the 1010 challenge, and I am tentatively eyeing the 75 book challenge. The only trouble with a set number of books, I find, is that I tend to avoid longer books or deliberately seek out short books toward the end of the year to up my numbers.

I finished 2009 one book shy of the challenge. *sigh* Though technically I read over the 81 books I needed to read, the overflow doesn't fit into any of my category reading. Ah well.

I'm still planning to finish the other book and label it as part of the 999 challenge, because I figure that since I started at the end of January last year, I still will be completing it within a year.

I gave up my 999 challenge in October. I had pressures coming in from all different directions (work, college and family) and really wanted to escape with a big fat novel. However I had completed my novel challenges and was left with memoirs and short stories which I really didn't feel like reading. Now I know I could have changed my challenges but I thought it would be easier to just jump ship and not have to think about what I was reading!

I felt kind of bad for a bit but I had lots of supportive messages reminding what reading is really all about which helped hugely.

I did enjoy having my own thread though and think I may take up some more challenges in the future ...when things have quietened down!

I also didn't finish the challenge and read 60 of my 81 999 Challenge books (I think this is 74%?). On the other hand I did exceed my overall goal of 125 books for the year by 11 for a total read this year of 136. I've discovered I'm really easily distracted by recommendations and tend to want to pick up whatever catches my fancy at the moment.

The challenge did help me clean up my TBR pile a bit, not that you can tell since I've acquired so many more TBR books this past year. I am trying out the 1010 challenge (along with a couple other challenges) and am trying to resolve to stick with the books I already have instead of mooching, borrowing or buying others, but I can't promise anything LOL!

I did not complete the challenge, only reading 36 books from my 999 Challenge lists. I read 47 overall, which was almost 20 more books than I read in 2008, so that's cool. Also, I read more different books than I would have otherwise, so I feel very successful in that aspect! I usually read mostly science fiction and fantasy and books for work, and instead read a lot more mystery, read all the Harry Potter books for the first time, read several graphic novels - a new genre for me, read more classics than I would have without this challenge...lol, and read a lot of new-to-me authors.
So, a wonderful year of reading, and I'm glad I joined this challenge!

Well since I have only 2 more days before my year is up I may as well just count what I have finished and give you my percentage. I read a total of 53 books so my percentage is 65%. I am happy with that total for my first time doing a challenge.

I really had fun doing this challenge that I actually signed up for the 1010 challenge, 50 book challenge and a few others. Happy reading all, and I hope to see everyone around the threads!!

I think it's great to see how many folks did better than before thanks to the challenge. It is a lot more fun reading when you can talk to someone about what you read. Congrats to you all as well.

I'm wondering if anyone else is staring at those forlorn empty slots the same way I am and contemplating, however seriously, filling them in at some point, even though the challenge is officially over and a new one begun? How many folks have rolled unfinished categories over into this years challenge?

I'm planning on reading a lot of the books I was going to read last year in 2010.

Last year, I filled almost all my categories in advance (with lots of books from Mount TBR) and although I'm not going to do as much of that this year, I'm sure many of last year's choices will make it onto this year's list.

And I have several of the same/similar categories also.

I have a few of the categories repeated this year. I hope I can finish them this year. The categories I am re-using this year that I did not finish are: TBR, Johanna Lindsey books. I am also repeating YA/Children and authors new to me which I did complete in the 999 challenge.

I don't think I will add any books to my 999 challenge. I am happy with my results for my first challenge.

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I was thinking about doing the rollover, but then decided against it. I might not finish the new challenge either (although I hope to, because it's smaller) so why put myself even more behind than I already am?

ETA: Some of my categories are the same simply because I like them. I plan to repeat many of my categories every year.

The percentage results from last year will stay posted on this thread. Why not simply go for a higher percentage in 2010? The books you read will be the same regardless.

I might not finish the new challenge either (although I hope to, because it's smaller) so why put myself even more behind than I already am?

My thoughts exactly! I'm happy making a fresh start.