It’s one of our favorite times of the year—time to set new reading goals and challenges for 2022! Roni is sharing the many nerdy reading challenges that she’s tackling this coming year, and Dawn is firmly anti-challenge but has chosen some goals to enhance her reading year. Also, as always, we have our RAD reading recs of the week!

Highlights:

• One of us declares New Year’s their favorite holiday
• The difference between a reading challenge and a reading goal
• Can you count a DNF in a reading challenge?
• Dawn’s audiobook goal
• Roni’s book subscription addiction & Dawn tries to stage an intervention
• Reading goal suggestions
• The pros and cons of reading challenges
• The personality type that fits best with reading challenges
• The book Dawn flat out refused to read in school
• The Pizza Hut Book-It Challenge was our 80s jam
• Roni’s experience with her Read Wide challenge
• One of us has strong feelings about the randomness of some reading challenges
• Roni talks about the personal growth of not finishing one of her reading challenges this year (Update: since recording, she finished it because...personal growth is hard. :) )
• How to choose the right reading challenge for you
• Creating or customizing your own challenge
• Read Your Way to 10k (words not kilometers)
• Dawn’s reading goals
• The Bookish Subscription challenge
• The Indie Author challenge
• The Romance Roots/Fated Mates challenge
• Roni’s reading goals
• RAD Reading recs of the week

Click here to get the full show notes, including links and downloads for reading challenges, our recommendations, and anything else we mentioned in the show.

Find us online:

RAD Reading on Instagram

RAD Reading Facebook Page

RAD Reading Website

RAD Rec Master List

Roni's Happy for Now newsletter

Connect with Roni on her website or @roniloren on Instagram

Connect with Dawn on her website or @dawnalexanderbooks on Instagram

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It’s that time of year, and we’re so here for it. Join us as we get all ourselves together for 2022. We’re sharing which planners we’re using to set goals and organize our year, and then we’re recommending our favorite self-improvement books for improving your home life, reducing distractions, getting control of your time, and boosting your creativity. We've got a long list! Plus, as always, we’ll be sharing our RAD Recs of the week.

Highlights:

• We’ve both ditched the planners we’ve used in the past and switched to new ones
• Which planners we’re using this year – and yes, there are multiple planners because we contain multitudes, okay. No one planner can contain us! ;)
• Roni’s a pushy planner person
• How Dawn lost many hours of her life...planning her planner
• A "happy life" planner
• Dawn made a stencil journal
• Roni is learning to “use the things”
• Roni apparently needs a lot of self-help while Dawn only needs a little
• Books really can fix things
• Books for improving your home life
• Pondering deep questions like “why am I folding my underwear?”
• Books that helped us reduce distractions and tame social media/staring at our phones all the time
• Books that help you take back your time
• Books that give you a creativity boost
• Our RAD Reading Recs of the week
• We still can't say “RAD Reading Rec” without stumbling on our words
• An important change to the podcast
• Listen all the way through the end for bloopers ;)

Click here to get the full show notes, including links to all of our recommendations and anything else we mentioned in the show.

Find us online:

• RAD Reading on Instagram
• RAD Reading Facebook Page
• RAD Reading Website
• RAD Rec Master List
• Connect with Roni on her website or @roniloren on Instagram
• Connect with Dawn on her website or @dawnalexanderbooks on Instagram

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Episode Summary:

This week we’re chatting about how books can help our mental health, the kinds of books that work best for us when we’re feeling anxious or down, and we’re discussing the practice of putting trigger warnings in books. Also, we have our RAD Reading Recs of the week plus a few bonus picks!

Spoiler Alert: Spoiler for the book The Push by Ashley Audrain at 42:55, skip ahead one minute to 43:55 mark if you don’t want a spoiler.

Highlights:

• Roni got a puppy and is feeling loopy from lack of sleep
• Why waiting rooms can be a gift
• Reading and health
• Goat yoga but with teeth
• Calgon, take me away reading moments
• Dark stories in dark times
• Bibliotherapy is a real thing and a cool word
• Someone send Roni recs for dog-themed essay collections!
• That “this is me” feeling when reading
• How A Wrinkle In Time found Dawn at the exact right moment
• Romance, weirdness, and acceptance
• Thoughts on menage and laundry
• The beauty of the guaranteed ending
• Dawn throws shade at Nicholas Sparks (do people still say “throw shade”?)
• Romance vs. “a love story”
• Genre mystery vs. literary mystery vs. cozy mystery
• Dawn’s Apollo 13 anxiety
• Sometimes sad moods and happy comedic books are a bad mix
• What is a trigger warning?
• Are trigger warnings spoilers?
• Transcending our GenX-ness (but Roni’s not giving up her Doc Martens)
• Our personal experiences with triggers in books
• Roni wants a “Does this book have...?” database
• Different ways authors handle trigger warnings
• Roni let Dawn down by not giving her a trigger warning for a movie
• Bonus books recs
• The RAD Reading Recs of the week
• Stay tuned for bloopers!

Click here to get the full show notes, including links to all of our recommendations and anything else we mentioned in the show.

Find us online:

RAD Reading on Instagram

RAD Reading Facebook Page

RAD Reading Website

RAD Rec Master List

Connect with Roni on her website or @roniloren on Instagram

Connect with Dawn on her website or @dawnalexanderbooks on Instagram

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

It’s all about book series today! We're defining the different types of series, talking about why we love reading them, and then we’re giving our favorite series starter books. Let’s do this!

Highlights:

• To series read or not to series read
• Connected series vs. continuing series
• Duets and trilogies
• Shared world series
• Roni remembers a book she forgot she wrote
• Dawn makes friends in parking lots with people pulling things out of their trunks
• Series and fandoms and which fandom Roni was googling a decade ago
• Why we love series
• Why not waiting for a whole series to be written before buying can be important
• RIP one of Roni’s series
• Relief from decision fatigue
• Our favorite series starters recs
• Our RAD Recs of the Week
• How Loren is pronounced

Click here to get the full show notes, including links to all of our recommendations and anything else we mentioned in the show.

Find us online:

RAD Reading on Instagram

RAD Reading Facebook Page

RAD Reading Website

RAD Rec Master List

Connect with Roni on her website or @roniloren on Instagram

Connect with Dawn on her website or @dawnalexanderbooks on Instagram

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

We love upgrading our reading lives, so this week we’re talking about one of our favorite ways to enhance the reading experience--creating our own reading journals! Plus, as always, we’re giving our RAD Reading Recs of the week.

Highlights:

• Why Dawn’s teen journals got her grounded
• The basics of a reading/book journal
• Private journals vs. Goodreads
• Roni avoiding awkward book signings
• What Dawn said that made Roni clutch her pearls
• Unexpected benefits of a reading journal
• Dawn’s epiphany about stencils
• Putting together your journal
• What Roni wishes she’d put in her journal from the start
• Rating systems
• Finding your style
• Digital options
• Dawn’s signal that she’s been kidnapped
• Journaling tips
• Our favorite supplies
• Our RAD Reading Recs

*Note: all book/product links are affiliate links which means the podcast makes a small commission if you make a purchase, but there is no extra cost to you!

Supplies recommended;

• Leuchtturm1917 Journal
• Stabilo Fineliner Pens
• Zebra Mildliner highlighters
• Staedtler Ergosoft colored pencils
• Staedtler Template, Geometric Shapes & Symbols
• Plum Paper Notebook
• Frixion pens
• Prisma Color Pencils

Other resources mentioned:

• Roni’s free Romance Reading Journal
• Rock Your Reading Tracker by Sarah’s Bookshelves
• My Reading Journal by Anne Bogel
• Pensieve app
• Book of the Month club

RAD Reading Recs of the Week:

• Dear Writer, Are You In Burnout? by Becca Syme (Dawn’s rec)
• Big Magic by Elizabeth Gilbert (Roni’s rec)

Find us online:

Facebook

RAD Reading Website

Find Roni on her website or @roniloren on Instagram

Find Dawn on her website or @dawnalexanderbooks on Instagram

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.