Bookish Challenges to Liven Up Your Reading

Hello, everyone! I saw a lot of talk about reading goals and challenges circulating closer to the new year but I’d been too preoccupied at the time to pay too much mind to them. However, as 2024 wears on and my reading has been falling quite a bit beneath my previously projected rate, I’ve been brainstorming ways to liven up my reading. I think a great way of going about this is looking at some various challenges I’ve seen floating around for a while.

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Goodreads’ Yearly Reading Challenge

I’d say Goodreads’ yearly challenge is one of the–if not the most–popular ways to encourage reading online. Even if it isn’t on Goodreads exactly, I think a lot of readers like to set that goal for themself whether they track it there, on The StoryGraph, a personal journal, or otherwise.

For me, I’d established a goal of 50 books back in January but I’m thinking I may have to personally make an adjustment. At the moment, I’m 4 books behind schedule, and I don’t know when I’ll have time to catch up. Because of those, I might knock it down to something closer to 30. While it’s so fulfilling when you are able to keep on track–and even get ahead–I think this can also be a bit of a drawback with these longer-term year-end goals. It can be very difficult to account for how one’s life will look over the course of an entire year, and it’s actually because of this that I’ve been looking into more invigorating challenges such as the next ones on this list.

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R/BookClub’s 2024 Book Bingo

I’ve seen a bunch of bookish bingo sheets circulating on bookstagram but I never ended up saving any to try to fill out on my own–though they definitely struck my interest.

One I’ve found online is on the subreddit “r/BookClub” where they have threads and printables available for their second annual book bingo. I’m not sure if I’ll follow this one exactly, or stumble across one or more I like on Instagram, or if perhaps I’ll even make my own. However, I do really love this idea, and would really like to give one a try. I also love that if you make your own, you could feasibly customize it to be larger or smaller. In turn, you could use one over many months, or you could do a couple or several throughout the year. I think these are such a fun way of keeping your reads fresh because not only is there an incentive but it also provides prompts if you ever get a little slumpy or stuck (which is definitely where I’m sort of at right now).

If you’re doing any book bingos, let me know! I’d love to learn more.

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The 52 Book Club 2024 Reading Challenge

For some people, fifty-two books in a year is nothing and for others (like myself) it’d definitely count as more of a challenge. Whether you decide (slash have decided) to participate in The 52 Book Club’s reading challenge and match every prompt or just a few, I think this is a great option to invigorate your reading options. The prompts are in an excellent in-between point where they allow for a fair bit of wiggle room without being so obscure that it wouldn’t be a little bit of a challenge. I just think there’s something so fun about a scavenger hunt-like approach to reading. And with something like this, I’m sure you can find other people participating to see the books they choose so it also makes for a great social/discussion opportunity. I didn’t come across this list until today but I love the prompts, and I think I’ll try to implement at least a few into my reading in the upcoming months/year.

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Book Riot’s 2024 “Read Harder” Challenge

Book Riot’s “Read Harder” challenge is similar to The 52 Book Club’s list in that it has a bunch of prompts but only lists twenty-four books (due to it being ’24, I assume) making it a little more approachable. Also, the New York Public Library put out an article giving suggestions for each prompt for those looking for some ideas. Something I love about Book Riot’s list is that it includes several prompts to encourage reading more diversely. It’s definitely something I’ll draw some inspiration from!

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Alphabet Reading Challenge

I’ve seen several different alphabet reading challenges–where you read a book starting with every letter from A to Z–hosted by different people but mostly in passing and, again, I hadn’t saved any. However, I’ve come across one on The StoryGraph hosted by user “serenity_”. I’m still learning the user interface on The StoryGraph but I’m definitely going to give this challenge a try!

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Read the Rainbow

Like the alphabet reading challenge, I’ve seen different iterations of this one but essentially, it’s the idea of reading books where the covers match up with various colors. It looks like the Booklist Queen hosted one last summer, and I’m sure you can find other people hosting it at any given time–and you can do it completely independently as well!

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There are so many other great challenges–The Candid Cover compiled a fantastic list from all corners of the internet be it in the blogsphere, bookstagram, podcasts, or Youtube–but these are some that I’ll be pulling inspiration from personally. I know it probably seems a little late in the year to be talking about goals but I’d like to normalize the concept of adjusting our goals without feeling any shame for it. When I put personal reading goals in place for this year, it was with the idea that I’d have a lot more free time than I’ve ended up having. Because of that, I don’t think there’s anything wrong with a little tweaking here and there (even if you don’t always feel like you have a good enough “excuse”–that shouldn’t stop you from making decisions that will work best for you!). While I think it’s important to have some level of structure for steps closer to success, I think giving oneself grace is just as if not more important! This is definitely something I’m actively having to remind myself (hence this post). 🙂

Are you participating in any reading challenges this year? If so, where did you hear about it/them? Do you have any new or old favorites? Ones that don’t work for you? I’d love to hear your thoughts below!