Summer of Books and Yarn 2024

For a few years now, over in my Everyday Knitter Facebook group I have run a fun summer-long challenge aimed at getting a few books off my TBR (to be read) pile. The reasons for this are entirely selfish I have to say - usually by this point in the year I find I am flagging slightly with my reading goals.

All of my good New Year intentions have long since disappeared and all of the books I downloaded to my Kindle or were given as presents have lost their shiny, appealing newness - and I’m itching to buy lots of lovely fresh ones.

So a good no-fuss, low hassle challenge is just the thing to perk me up. It does help that the summer usually coincides with a bit more downtime. Please note that for ease I start the challenge when the schools break up for summer here - although I acknowledge that this isn’t true for everyone and that everyone’s holiday time is different.

The premise is simple:

🌞 Six weeks

🌞 Six prompts (plus a wild card)

🌞 Join in where you can.

It’s a no-pressure challenge so you are free to dip in and out as you like. Each week we have a prompt and you are free to pick a book you feel best matches that prompt, or you can play a wild card. Tenuous connections to the prompt are welcome - in fact the more tenuous the better.

Book club members: to avoid confusion I won’t be running the book club during July or August but will instead be focusing on the Summer of Books and Yarn. As well as participating in the weekly posts, paid members of my community will have access to:

• Private chat threads so we can still continue to chat about our reading during the summer months.

• A private challenge community on Storygraph (it’s a really lovely reading app that I use pretty much daily and it has a rapidly growing community function there).

• A free Notion reading planner for you to download and use as you like.

How will it work?

Week 1 will start on Monday 22nd July and the challenge will run for six weeks, ending with Week 6 being on Monday 26th August. I will release the list of prompts next week which will give you plenty of time to plan your summer reading.

Each week there will be a dedicated post here on Substack where you can share your choices and discuss progress.

What do you think? Can I tempt you?