A Few More Reading Challenges

December 26, 2013 by 5eyedbookworm 4 Comments

I hope everyone had a wonderful Christmas with their loved ones! I guess for most of us, we’re still having a slight hangover from the celebrations. I resumed reading A Tale For A Time Being just now and while I rest for a while, I decided to post two more reading challenges that I will join next year.

First up, the  Mental Illness Advocacy Reading Challenge 2014 created by Amanda at Opinions of a Wolf. Please click on the image below to know more about the challenge.

The reason why I got interested in this challenge is because I am a nurse (although I’m not practicing the profession now), and during my duties in a mental hospital, I had witnessed the struggles people with mental illnesses have, whether it is physical or emotional. In modern society, even with all our technology, a lot of people treat mental illness as taboo. Many people avoid talking about it. People who suffer from these illnesses are shunned and often misunderstood. When I was still in nursing school, Psychiatric Nursing was my favorite subject. I may have been lousy memorizing Medical-Surgical nursing notes but Psychiatric nursing was different. In fact, while I may have disposed most of my nursing books, my Psychiatric books are still with me. The mind is highly complex and so are the conditions and struggles people have when it comes to their mental health. I want to join this challenge to help me understand their conditions more – what are the precipitating factors, the emotions that these people go through… What kind of help do they need, how do their conditions affect their loved ones? I hope to have more insights, perhaps even enlightenment of the subject matter after completing this challenge. Understanding them is the first step. Most importantly though, I hope I can be of help to people who suffer from these illnesses.

Here are the books I hope to read for this challenge:

2014 Mental Illness Awareness Reading Challenge

The other challenge is Book To Movie Challenge: The Sequel. This is hosted by Katie of Doing Dewey and Sergio of Tipping My Fedora. If you want to read more about the challenge and join, please click on the image below.

Aside from books, I really enjoy watching movies. I especially like movies that aren’t too mainstream. I like films by David Lynch, Paul Thomas Anderson and Wong Kar-Wai. I also like watching old movies, Japanese and other foreign films. I watched Ballad of Narayama this year. It’s a 1958 film directed by Keisuke Kinoshita. It was a completely different movie for me and I loved the story.

Here are the books I hope to read for this challenge:

For 2014, here are all the reading challenges I plan to join:

1. 7th Annual Graphic Novels and Manga Challenge
2. 2014 TBR Pile Challenge
3. Banned Books Challenge 2014
4. Mental Illness Advocacy Reading Challenge 2014
5. Books To Movie Challenge: The Sequel

Also, I am planning to write a few more reviews of Japanese literature I read this year, until the end of the Japanese Literature Challenge 7 hosted by Dolce Bellezza.

I didn’t enumerate different books for each challenge. Since it’s okay to ‘overlap’ challenges, I did some planning (and research!) so I can minimize the number of books for the challenges. That way, I can still read any book I want throughout the year.

Will you be joining reading challenges next year?