Here’s the challenge: commit to reading 50 books and watching 50 movies in the next year, 2012.

You don’t need to know what you are going to read or watch right now (but feel free to start a list). All we ask is that you commit to giving yourself a wild 2012, full of new characters, storylines, and inspiration.

Suggestions:

• Consider setting up a blog so that we can follow and include you in our blog roll. We recommend Blogger or Tumblr.
• Post your reviews of what you read and watch, so others can link up with you to find movies and books they will enjoy.

Linking Up:
If you’re Tweeting about doing the fiftyfifty.me challenge, please use these hashtags so we can all find each other! Keep up with us on Twitter @fiftyfiftyme.

• #fiftyfiftyme — general news, suggestions, updates, the book and movies you’re reading/watching

Some Guidelines:

• Recognize you’re doing this for bragging rights (only); although we promise some fun along the way.
• Join anytime you like, but you only have til the end of 2012 to finish.
• Read and watch at your own pace, just get to 50/50 before 2013
• Finish that stack of half-read books, finally! We’ll let you count them.
• Read/watch in any language. 50/50 is global, yo.

FAQ

Do long books count as 2? What about movies?
If your book is over 500 pages, you can count it as 2 books if you like.

However, if the book is 2000 pages, it’s still just two books — not four! We want to encourage you to read longer pieces. This answer has been posted for the benefit of all you Game of Thrones fanatics out there. Go forth and prosper or whatever it is.

Note: A movie is still just a (one, 1, “ONE”) movie. (That said, installments in a series (example: the individual Godfather movies) would each snag an individual point.)

Can I rewatch/reread? 
Of course you can rewatch and reread… it just won’t count towards your 50/50 ;)

We hope you will use FiftyFifty to inspire you to explore new stuff! Maybe next year we will include a “Reminiscing” theme, but this year around we’re asking you to go fresh.

What should I read/watch?
Anything you like! We have offered a lot of suggestions and will continue to, on our website; these are called Themes.

For example, one thing we have suggested is that you dive deeper into someone’s work and experience a few in a row (whether it’s an author, director, actor, etc.). What this does is allow you to justify why you stayed home all weekend watching Ryan Gosling’s filmography. It will also allow you to use “oeuvre” correctly in conversation with people (who rightfully probably won’t want to be your friends for long, but that is neither here nor that).

We call this “Majoring” in something (or minoring in it). You can read more about that on this post, and on any posts with the tags “Major” or “Minor”.

NOW GO HAVE FUN!!