alphabet challenge — BLOG — ANTHONY R. CARDNO

In early 2025, someone posted about an “alphabet reading challenge” – that is, read one book with a title that starts with “A”, “B,” etc. Of course, I can’t do anything by halves, so I also decided to try to read one book by an author whose last name starts with “A,” “B,” etc. But I didn’t make it an intentional challenge – meaning I didn’t track throughout the year to see which letters I was still missing. In fact, I’d forgotten about the project during the second half of the year and only completed filling in the challenge pages this week.

I managed to come pretty close to success even so!

THE BOOK TITLE CHALLENGE

As you may be able to see in the photo, I managed 21 out of 25 letters. I did not read any books whose titles started with K, Q, R, X or Z. Yes, I was inconsistent with whether I counted words like “A” and “The” as the letter the title starts with.

The books I listed, for those who maybe can’t view the photos because of visual issues, were:

Amplitudes (edited by Lee Mandelo)

Black Fire Concerto (by Mike Allen)

Calladita No More (by Hady Mendez)

Don’t Sleep With the Dead (by Nghi Vo)

Everything Is Tuberculosis (by John Green)

Front Seat Passenger, The (by Pascal Garnier)

Girl in the Creek (by Wendy N. Wagner)

I Love The Bones of You (by Christopher Eccleston)

Jaws (by Peter Benchley)

Lies I Tell Myself: Stories (by Jeffrey Ricker)

My Time to Stand (by Gypsy Rose Blanchard)

Natalie Wood: The Complete Biography (by Susan Finstad)

Our Share of Night (by Mariana Enriquez)

Prelude to Mayhem (by Edward C. Aubrey)

Sterling City (by Stephen Graham Jones)

The Art Thief (by Michael Finker)

Upon the Midnight Queer (by ‘Nathan Burgoine)

Vagabond (by Tim Curry)

Wild Spaces (by S.L. Coney)

Yours Cruelly, Elvira (by Cassandra Peterson)

THE AUTHOR CHALLENGE

As you may be able to see in the photo, I managed 22 authors, missing only the letters I, Q, U, and X. Again, for those who may not be able to view the list in the photo, I read books by:

Allen, Mike (Black Fire Concerto and Trail of Shadows)

Beard, Jim (Sgt. Janus and The House That Loved Death and Jack of All Comics!)

Coney, S.L. (Wild Spaces)

Drake, Jerry C. (Hazel Was A Good Girl)

Enriquez, Mariana (Our Share of Night)

Fry, Stephen (Odyssey)

Grant, Mira (Overgrowth)

Hawke, Lydia (Web of Obsidian)

Jones, Stephen Graham (Sterling City and The Buffalo Hunter Hunter)

Kushner, Ellen (The Golden Dreidel)

Landay, William (Defending Jacob)

Miller, Lulu (Why Fish Don’t Exist)

Neill, Sam (Did I Ever Tell You This?)

Obama, Barack (Dreams From My Father)

Perrin, Kristin (How To Solve Your Own Murder and How To Seal Your Own Fate)

Ricker, Jeffrey (Lies I Tell Myself: Stories)

Sullivan, Archer (The Witch’s Orchard)

Trejo, Danny (Trejo: My Life of Crime, Redemption, and Hollywood)

Vo, Nghi (Don’t Sleep With The Dead)

Winkler, Henry (Being Henry)

Yang, Gene Luen, and others (New Super-Man Volume 2)

Zelazny, Roger (A Night in the Lonesome October)

I’m doing this again in 2026 just for the heck of it. Again, I am not planning to put any pressure on myself.

HAPPY NEW YEAR! Here’s hoping for a healthy book-and-story-filled 2026.

I always set myself more than one reading/viewing challenge per year. Some goals carry over from year to year, and some are new. Some are broad and some are themed. And in many cases, books read will help me meet more than one challenge. In 2024 I also started making some formal movies, television, and live theatre viewing challenges.

On the reading side of things, in 2025, I hit my overall book and short story goals but on the viewing side of things, I only got close to my goal for live theater, and majorly dropped the ball on my television and movie viewing goals. Instead of one large annual wrap-up post, I’m going to make a series of shorter posts: one for overall numbers (probably tomorrow), one for books, two for short stories (the first of which will go up on Sunday January 4), one for comic books, one for live theater and other live events (Thursday, January 8), and one for television/movies.

Once again, this year, I’m sticking mostly to the basic challenges:

365 SHORT STORIES CHALLENGE

Every year, I challenge myself to read one short story per day. Some years I keep the pace well, and some years I fall behind and then scramble to catch up (and some years, I catch up and fall behind again, and some years I blow past the goal handily). I’m defining “short story” as anything from flash fiction to novella-length. I am going to once again make an effort to review one or two stories every Sunday in my “Sunday Shorts” feature.

GOODREADS CHALLENGE

Goodreads allows members to set a challenge. In previous years, I’ve set goals ranging from 125 to 150 books. For 2025, I’m setting a goal of 120 to start with (10 books per month), and we’ll see what happens.

MOVIE CHALLENGE

I own a lot of DVDs. (I know, you’re shocked. Shocked!) Every year I say, “This is the year I’m going to make an effort to watch them!” And then, somehow, I … don’t. One year, I did a list of 12 and two alternates as I used to do for the ToBeRead Challenge, called it the ToBeWatched Challenge … and failed it miserably. In 2024, I got about halfway to the goal of 52 movies (an average of one per week). In 2025, not so much. So this year, I’m setting myself the same challenge. This includes movies on DVD, streaming services, and any trips to an actual movie theater (which have become rare for me).

TELEVISION CHALLENGE

Did I mention I own a lot of DVDs? And that I’m subscribed to a lot of streaming services? I did? Well, you won’t be shocked to know that it’s not all about the movies. So I’m setting myself a “TV Series Watch” challenge akin to my Short Story Challenge: an average of one full episode of a television series (regardless of length) for each day in the year, which this year means 365 episodes.

LIVE THEATRE CHALLENGE

I did pretty well with this one in 2025, even though I didn’t manage to post reviews of everything. So I’m continuing the goal for 2026: I want to see at least 1 live theatrical performance per month. Most of them will be in New York City, but I’ll count any play, musical, opera, ballet, or staged reading I see anywhere, regardless of whether it’s fully professional productions, college, community theatre, whatever. (Music concerts, author signings, and conferences/conventions do not count towards this but will be tracked separately.)

COMIC BOOK CHALLENGE

I also own a lot of comic books. I went “cold turkey” on buying new comics about 20 years ago for budget and space reasons. But then in 2018 Seanan McGuire and Saladin Ahmed, two authors whose work I love, started writing various comics for Marvel and thought brought me back into buying monthly comics. And I keep buying more. 2025 was the first year I actually tracked every individual comic book issue (“floppies,” as some people call them) I read, so I’m going to make this an official Challenge for 2026: as with the short stories and the television episodes, I plan to read at least one comic book (new or back issue) for every day of the year … so again, 365 total.

ALPHABET CHALLENGE

I saw at the beginning of 2025 several book bloggers posting about various alphabet challenges: one book title for each letter of the alphabet, one author for each letter of the alphabet. I made a good run at both in 2025 without necessarily making reading decisions based on either, so I think I’m going to do them again in 2026.

NOVELLA NOVEMBER

I’ve made NovellaNovember (or, as another book blogger on Bluesky coined it, Novellavember) a thing for the past few years. My goal is to promote and discuss novellas and short novels (and even novelettes) throughout the month, including publisher, author and editor interviews. I say every year I’m going to shoot for a novella day, but I think I’ll make that a novella every two days for 2026.

OTHER UNOFFICIAL CHALLENGES

There are a few ongoing (in some cases, sort of life-long, or at least second-half-of-my-life long) challenges that I don’t think I’ve ever written about here. For instance, I’m well on my way to having read everything Bram Stoker ever wrote. Here are those challenges, and I’m going to do my best to create dedicated posts early in the year showing what I’ve already read/watched for each challenge and then update as I go along. Again, these are multi-year challenges:

· The Complete Bram Stoker Read-Through

· The Complete Seanan McGuire Read-Through

· The Complete Silvia Moreno-Garcia Read-Through

· The Complete Philip Jose Farmer Read-Through

· The Complete Edgar Rice Burroughs Read-Through

· The Complete Maurice Broaddus Read-Through

The Complete Perry Rhodan Read-Through

· The Complete Dark Shadows Rewatch

· The Complete Doctor Who Rewatch

· The Complete Star Trek Rewatch

· The Complete Planet of the Apes Rewatch

· The Complete Brother Cadfael Read-Through and Rewatch

· The Complete A.A. Fair (Cool and Lam series) Read-Through

· The Complete Marvel Comics 1970s Novels Reread

· The Complete Hard Case Crime Read-Through

· The Complete Radium Age of Science Fiction Read-Through

· The Complete American Mystery Classics Read-Through

· The Complete Doc Savage Read-Through

· The Complete Three Investigators Read-Through

· The Complete Man From U.N.C.L.E. and Girl From U.N.C.L.E. Read-Through and Rewatch

· The Complete All-Star Squadron Reread

· The Complete The Invaders (Marvel Comics) Reread

· The Complete Starman (2000’s DC) Reread

· The Complete Tomb of Dracula Reread

· The Complete Micronauts and ROM Reread

· The Complete Shakespeare Watch (either Live theater or filmed)

· Read A Book or Story From Every Nation in the World

· Read a Book From Every State and US Territory

· Read a Book from Every Canadian Province/Territory

And one of these days I would really like to finish creating a list of every book I remember reading in my life.

ACCOUNTABILITY

So how am I going to hold myself accountable? I’m planning to bring back my monthly Reading RoundUps. (I know, I know … I said this in the 2025 Challenge post and failed miserably at actually doing it. Second time’s the charm?) I’m not going to rename/rebrand because I like the alliterative title (which falls well in line with Series Saturday, Sunday Shorts, and a few other blog series I’m hoping to make regular features again in 2026), but those posts will also track the Viewing challenges.

I would love to hear what YOUR Reading, Writing, or Viewing Challenges are for 2024. Let me know in the comments!