Happy Canada Day!

Happy Canada Day to all my fellow Canucks -- hope you are having a wonderful long weekend! Mine has been great, even if not so long -- I worked on Saturday. But that's alright, I had lots of fun with our new Adult Summer Reading Program, making recommendation lists and so on, so it was sufficiently bookish :)

And of course, that's the measure of a "good" weekend for me -- how bookish is it? Since I was able to sit outside in the sun reading books and writing letters for a whole day, I guess this one passed :)

But I also  have a new Canada Day tradition these days, thanks to John at the Book Mine Set. I sign up for the Canadian Book Challenge and ponder how I'm going to challenge myself each year.....

This year it is already, amazingly, the 7th Annual Canadian Book Challenge!

The Rules are so simple:

• read 13 Canadian books from July 1 - July 1
• Review them somewhere online
• Link up at the Book Mine Set

Can't get better than that! The previous reviews done for the Challenge are archived at the Book Mine Set and make a great place to start if you're looking for ideas about what to read. Anyone anywhere is welcome to join in.

The original challenge was to read 13 books, one from each province and territory. But the challenge morphs  into whatever you want to make it. I've set myself all kinds of self-challenges, from authors new to me, to 13 books from one province, to reading small press books. For the 6th Challenge I tried to review every Canadian book I read. While I didn't quite make it, I really liked how it made me aware of my reading.

So this year I'm going to do the same: 

Review every Canadian book I read.

But within those parameters, I want to set myself a mini-challenge, and that is to read at least 13 titles that also fit within my own Postal Reading Challenge. There are so many epistolary novels and loads of postal related reading, but I want to find some good Canadian ones to share!

Even if you aren't Canadian, I hope you'll consider joining us -- it's a really relaxed, fun challenge that celebrates the joy of bookish discoveries. It also provides great inspiration to increase the length of your TBR list  -- if you need any help with that ;)