A Complete Guide to Reading Challenges

I love a challenge and I love books so it goes without saying that a reading challenge is one of my favorite activities. There are a wide variety of types and styles for reading challenges and even ones geared for kids on summer break, teens, and of course us adults. With so many options and types out there it can be overwhelming to know where to start. This comprehensive guide to reading challenges will answer all your questions and open the door to a new world of reading fun. Challenges can be done solo, as part of an online community, or with a group of friends. Read on to learn more and find your perfect reading challenge. 

What is a Reading Challenge?

A reading challenge is a list of book-related prompts centered around a theme or topic. They can be seasonal, annual, or ongoing. The purpose is to get you to read more books in a fun, engaging, and motivating way. It also provides a way to select which books you are reading and to track your reads throughout the year. 

Most reading challenges will be checklist style or bingo card style which gives you the opportunity to post it somewhere that you will see every day and keep you motivated to read. There is something very satisfying about seeing those checkmarks accumulate or the squares on the bingo card all colored in!

Who Should Do a Reading Challenge?

As mentioned in the introduction reading challenges are for any age and any type of reader. The benefits of participating are that you can have a plan for your reading journey – a goal to work towards. You can focus on reducing your TBR (To Be Read) book pile. Or you can expose yourself to new books or genres you may not typically have explored.

Book challenges are a great way to gamify reading for younger kids. During the summer months away from school kids typically have no desire to read but if you participate in a book challenge with them it can be a race or a game to complete it and often gets them excited to open that next book. For teenagers, it is a great way to remind them that there are a lot of books out there they can enjoy that aren’t related to English class, and participating in a challenge can give them that opportunity to check out some books that speak directly to them or have a reading race with their friends. 

Reading challenges are also a fantastic way to develop a reading habit. Having a list you are working through and a deadline to complete your reading by gives you that extra motivation to read a little bit each day. There is something so satisfying about checking off that box on the challenge list and starting the next book!

Types of Reading Challenges

There are so many different styles and topics when it comes to reading challenges. I’ve included some of my favorites in the Where to Find Them section below. If you can think of a topic there is probably a book challenge for it! Here are a few different categories:

Yearly Challenges

This is the main type you will see if you go searching for a reading challenge to join. These are curated lists typically by websites or bloggers that contain a series of reading prompts to complete over the course of the upcoming year. One of the most popular is the PopSugar Reading Challenge. Some of these lists have 52 book prompts for each week of the year or 12 prompts, one for each month. There are even a few that are seasonal and give you the opportunity to read 3-5 books each season with reading prompts focused on the vibe of that time of year. 

Genre

You name the genre there is a reading challenge for it. These may also fall under the Yearly Challenge category but the reading prompts will all be centered on a particular genre such as thriller, romance, sci-fi, middle grade, and so on. 

Another fun reading challenge that you can create yourself is Genre Bingo. It is just a typical bingo card with each square being a different genre. You can color or sticker each square as you read a book in that particular genre. It is a good way to introduce some variety to your reading and push yourself into some genres you may not typically try.

Celebrity

These are focused on reading the backlist of celebrity book clubs. Check out my post Celebrity Book Clubs Find the One For You for a look at some of the more popular ones out there. These celebrity book clubs put out reading recommendations monthly but if you are just joining the book club you can make a challenge for yourself to read the books from previous years. The Reese Witherspoon and Oprah book clubs would be a healthy backlist to tackle as they have been recommending books for over 10 years!

The Rory Gilmore Challenge is a different type of celebrity challenge. The list is based on all the books that the fictional character Rory Gilmore read during the Gilmore Girls TV series. This one is very popular on social media.

Prize Winners

Similar to the celebrity book club backlist there are reading challenges that you can do that focus on nominees/winners for various book awards. If you are a literary fiction fan you can tackle the backlist of books from the National Book Award, Pulitzer Prize, or Booker Awards. If you are a science fiction or fantasy fan, explore the list of nominees and winners of the Nebula or Hugo Awards. For children, the Newberry Medal is a great source of books for a reading challenge.

Geographical

One of the most popular reading challenges that is ongoing is the Read Around the World challenge. This pushes readers to explore books that are written by authors from different countries or set in other places. Some challenges focus on reading from every country (that’s 197 books!) or reading from each continent. There is also a Read Across the United States Challenge that focuses on reading books set in all 50 states. These challenges don’t typically have a timeline it is more about reaching the endpoint goal of having read all the locations. 

Book Specific

There aren’t a lot of these out there but you will see some typically focused on a larger classic novel. The Les Miserables challenge is one of the more well-known ones which breaks this large novel into readable chunks with a goal of reading a chapter a day. There is also Dracula Daily which is a fun way to read along with kids and teens. The idea is that each day you are emailed the next letter or journal entry from the novel.

General

Then there are all the rest that are general broad category style. As a reader, you can do these on your own, either as a year-long or ongoing challenge. 

A to Z Challenge (also called the Alphabet Challenge): Read books with titles that start with each letter of the alphabet

Read the Rainbow: Read books where each cover is a color on the rainbow

TBR Challenge: Read books only from your bookshelf or that you already own. Often this is done as a quantity of books related to the year for example 24 Books in 2024.

Author Backlist: Read all the books written by your favorite author.

So with so many different types of reading challenges, how do you know where to start, how to join them, or even where to find them? 

How to Participate

The beauty of reading challenges is that your level of involvement can be as little or as much as you want. You can find the challenges that interest you and just print the lists and work on them solo. This gives you the flexibility to set your own timeline for completing the challenge as well as starting the challenge whenever you want. 

A lot of book challenges are part of a social media challenge and have hashtags, Facebook community groups, or Twitter handles. These allow you to be part of a reading community that is working on the same challenge and moving towards the same goal. It is fun to discuss the different books that people are reading for a particular prompt and to celebrate your successes together when you reach certain milestones or finish the challenge. It’s also a great way to connect with other people who have similar reading interests as you if you are doing a challenge for a particular theme.

I recommend if you are a beginner to reading challenges you focus on just 1 or 2 to start. With so many options out there it can be tempting to jump in and try to do a bunch of them but believe it or not, for a beginner it can have the opposite effect and demotivate you to read. It can turn it into a pressure, a “have to” instead of a “want to”. So start small and see if you enjoy it and what style works for you. Some people want a casual 1 book-a-month type challenge, some want one that has no timeline and they can do at their own pace, and some want a long list that pushes them to read more in a year than they usually do. Decide what type of reader you are and pick a challenge in that category. 

You could also gather up some of your friends and create a reading challenge group. Instead of a book club, you work on a reading challenge and you meet monthly to discuss the different books you each chose for the reading prompt. It is a fun excuse to gather and talk about books and you may also discover some new reads!

Where to Find Reading Challenges

Reading challenges are everywhere – it is a huge topic in the reading community. A quick Google search will pull up dozens, and on Instagram, if you follow #readingchallenge you will get hundreds of posts on the topic. Check out your local library as well, many of them run their own challenges and you may be able to connect with some local fellow bibliophiles.

Most of the annual book challenges will be posted around the week of December 1. That is a great time to start looking for them and decide which ones you will join for the upcoming year. 

I have participated in several challenges over the years (and have even made a few of my own) and there are some really fun ones out there. Here are just a few of the best reading challenges:

Birthday Bestseller Book Challenge

Of course, I have to start with one of my own! This is a challenge I created this year in honor of my upcoming 50th birthday. I am reading the #1 New York Times fiction best seller from my birthday week for the past 50 years. You can click on the link above to read more about this challenge. I have just started and it should prove to be interesting. 

Beanstack Reading Challenges

Reading challenges for teens are few and far between. Any of the challenges listed in this blog will work for teens as well as adults. The Beanstack website is a reading tracker app that partners with schools and libraries to create reading challenges for students, kids, and teens. If you click on the link you can type your location in the Find A Site section and see if there are any local challenges. If there aren’t reach out to your school or the Youth Services section of your library and suggest creating one!

Beyond The Bookends

This blog offers a year-long challenge with one prompt per month, as well as seasonal challenges with 9 prompts over each season. Heavily linked to Instagram but you can find information on their website.

The 52 Book Club

This is a checklist-style challenge with 52 prompts for the 52 weeks. The printable for the prompts is always fun with cool graphics. You can participate on your own with the printable or on Instagram or in Goodreads. They also have an active Facebook community.

PopSugar Reading Challenge

The ultimate year-long reading challenge. This is a good one for those that want to push themselves. There is a long list of prompts with additional “advanced” prompts for the overachievers out there. The list is posted on Dec. 1 and includes a printable. Typically there ends up being a community group on Goodreads started by a participant in the challenge and a hashtag on Instagram. For those of you who keep paper reading journals, Etsy has some great sticker sets for this challenge. I personally have bought them from TheStickerPatch on Etsy and they were very good quality. 

Beat the Backlist

This is a great reading challenge to help you tackle the books on your shelves. This is a very free-form reading challenge. The blogger Austin Decker provides a list of prompts to help motivate you but there is also just a blank reading tracker spreadsheet you can download. There is a community group on Discord and Storygraph.

Read Harder Challenge

Released by Book Riot in December every year this is a reading challenge with 24 prompts that encourages you to read outside your comfort zone and try some new genres or topics. You can sign up for the newsletter to get book ideas for the prompts and stay connected. They also have a Goodreads group.

Summer Reading Challenge

Everyday Reading is a great blog about getting kids to read. Every year blogger Janssen Bradshaw creates a cool summer reading log printable full of kid-friendly prompts. My kids are grown but I love doing (and coloring in) the summer log myself!

Uncorked Librarian Reading Challenge

The Uncorked Librarian annual reading challenge is always a fun list that combines book reading and movie watching (and your favorite beverage) with prompts focused on travel and locations. The challenge is set up as a bingo card for each season. There is a strong Facebook group and you can join her newsletter to receive the printables and reading/watching selections for all the prompts.

Vintage Scavenger Hunt

This is a good reading challenge for mystery/thriller fans although I honestly have done this challenge using all types of genres. This a scavenger hunt style challenge – instead of reading prompts it is a list of images and you try to read books with that image on the cover.

What Next

I hope this complete guide to reading challenges has given you everything you need to know about how they work and where to find them. The main thing to remember is that this is a fun way to engage with reading and the reading community and stay motivated to read. Nobody is keeping score. The beauty of a reading challenge is that you can take as long as you want to complete it or start fresh each new year and see how far you get. Most of these you can start at any time and just because it has a year in its title doesn’t mean you have to start (or finish) it that year. 

What reading challenges are you thinking of doing? Do you have any favorites that I didn’t mention above? Comment down below.