While I may not know what I’m going to do with the rest of my life, I do know there is one goal that I have set. That main goal is to live as long as I can and stay, as healthy as I can both mentally and physically.

Now to achieve that main goal I just can’t say I’m going to live in to my 90s and have that come true. I have to take positive action to help make it happen. Even with that it still may not happen! But at least I’ll have some fun along the way.

About EKs Life Challenges

Now let’s get to the crux of this blog – my chellenges. Now, I know that we all face a lot of difficult challenges throughout our lives and there are certainly challenges that are far more difficult and graver than the ones that I am tackling. My challenges are more like challenging yourself to run a marathon or climbing a mountain, rather than the challenge of overcoming an addiction or moving on after the lose of a loved one.

Reading Challenges

Several years ago I participated in several reading challenges. These challenges were for reading mysteries and historical fiction and a couple of other genres. What I discovered was that these challenges helped me stay focused on what I was reading and helped me read more! For the last several years I have created my own reading challenges. These challenges have included both the number and type of books that I read during the year. The challenges have helped me read a large variety of genres, as well as, tackling new authors. In addition, each year the number of books I’ve read has increased.

This year my goal for the number of books I want to read is sixty-five. As for the individual challenges, you can read about them here.

21-Day Yoga Challenge

so last week I decided to create another challenge. That challenge is a simple 21-day challenge to do yoga every day. When I created the challenge I just wanted to do the three routines outlined in Richard Hittleman’s Yoga 28 Day Exercise Plan. I have done these routines on and off since the 70s. Most recently I typically do the second routine twice a week or more. The challenge is to reintegrate the other two routines into my workouts. I have done those three routines for eight days (one per day) now and I have found that they are having a positive effect on both my mental outlook and how my body feels.

I have been doing those routines in the morning. Yesterday in addition to the my morning yoga, I did a Kundalini Kriya in the afternoon. Additionally I did another Kriya which focused on breathing before bed. Finally, this morning I did a morning wake up Kundalini set before my morning Hittleman routine. The bottom line is that so far the challenge is going well!!

Overall the bottom line is that I am going to be creating a number of these challenges. They will be desinged to help me on my overall quest to live a longer and more healthy life. And also to enjoy life along the way. My hope is that you the reader will be inspired to create some challenges to help create a better you!!!

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So since Christmas I have been very bad about writing anything. Sometimes I find myself in a writing funk and well this is one of those times!  We had a great Christmas and like everyone it went by to quickly. Our whole family spent the morning at.Andrew and Meaghan’s . It’s the one house that has enough room for all of us and all the presents for everyone, particularly the two little ones!

Anyway everyone had a good time and I think all of the kids big and little liked their presents. I know I liked mine! I’ll write more about mine over the weekend.

Over the last week or so I did manage to finish two more books. That brings my total books read in 2016 to 53! Two more than last year, and only 7 from my goal! The two books I finished were: Runaway by Peter May and Reckless Creed  from Alex Kava. Both were really good reads. Runaway is the third book written by Peter May that I read this year. That’s the most by any one author. I guess he is my new favorite.  I will write more about each of these books separately shortly.

Here is the final tabulation of the books that I read for my various Reading Challenges!

Final Tabulation of My Reading Challenges

From the table we can see that I did well on both my Mysteries and Nonfiction challenges. That may be just a slight understatement as the books read for those two challenges accounted for  77% of the books I read in 2016! (41 out of 53)  On three of the other challenges I read 50% of my projected total number of books.On the Science Fiction challenge I only read 1 out of 6. I didn’t read any classics!! Now it also says that I didn’t read any books from the New York Times Bestseller Lists. I believe that some of my mystery and thriller reads like books from Harlan Coben, Linwood Barclay, Jefferson Bass and Karin Slaughter probably spent some time on the bestseller lists!

Top Seven New Mysteries Read

I know that over the last few months when I went into Barnes & Noble I would see that I had read seven books that they had in their new release displays. They were:

1. Without Mercy – Jefferson Bass,
2. The Kept Woman – Karin Slaughter,
3. The Twenty Three – Linwood Barclay,
4. Home – Harlan Coben,
5. The Second Life of Nick Mason – Steve Hamilton
6. Blind Sight Carol O’Connor and
7. Manitou Canyon – William  Kent Krueger

Oh and one I just finished in the last few days Reckless Creed from Alex Kava  Hmm, looking at the above list, I may just put together my top 15 list of 2016!

They were all terrific reads!! Check Them Out!!

So overall it was a great year of reading!! I am still in the process of developing my 2017 Reading Challenges and will possibly reveal them tomorrow! I think some of the Challenges will include reading more books from my own bookshelves and from e-books that are on my Kindle! So I will be back soon with my 2017 Reading Challenges and my proposed January reads!!

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