Over the last month or so, I’ve been trying to decide what reading challenges I plan to do in 2025. Around mid-year this last year, I was getting somewhat burned out on them—just ready to be done with reading challenges for a while, probably because I was putting a lot of pressure on myself to try to complete them.
Pressure isn’t what I want in my reading life, but I also know that reading challenges have been hugely instrumental in the last two years in helping to both diversify my reading diet and give me the impetus to keep moving through books (and both of those have beneficial effects on the other—the faster I move through books, the more I want to read, and the more diverse my reading, the faster I tend to get through books).
In 2024, I participated in the Read Your Bookshelf Challenge, the Buzzword Readathon, and the Beat Your Backlist Reading Challenge. I enjoyed each one; they were all quite different, and several of the prompts had me scratching my head for a while as I tried to find books that would work for them! But overall, I really enjoyed the variety the prompts in those three challenges brought into my reading life.
So, over the last month or two, I’ve been considering what reading challenges I want to do next year. My ideas keep evolving to some extent, but I thought I’d share what I’m currently considering.
Read Your Bookshelf Challenge
I definitely want to do this challenge again. Next year’s challenge is WAY simpler than the last two years’ lists, and reminds me somewhat of the Buzzword Readathon (except this one is simpler). I’m looking forward to it!
L.M. Montgomery Readalong
Chantel Klassen also is hosting an L.M. Montgomery readalong next year, which I’m really tempted to try to do—I’ve been wanting to read Montgomery’s books for years, and have started collecting a few of her books for myself. It would be nice to know if I actually enjoy her writing before I go all-out collecting as many of hers as I can find (who am I kidding? I probably will anyway! #bookhoarder).
5×5 Reading Challenge
One of our family friends did this challenge last year, and when I first heard about it, I decided there was no way I’d want to do that—too much commitment for just one challenge. But the more I thought about it, the more possibilities of potential categories have begged for my attention. Here are the ideas I’ve had so far:
- Books over 500 pages (I tend to read books around the 300-400 page mark, so this would hopefully push me in the direction of some of my long-neglected classics)
- Ancient history (we have several by Barry Fell and others that I’d love to get to)
- Published in the 1970s (this is an entirely arbitrary date, but some of my favorite authors published books around then that I haven’t read yet—some of Elizabeth Sherrill, Mildred Taylor, Meindert DeJong, and Patricia St. John’s books were published in that decade!)
- Books on the writing craft (I’ve been meaning to tackle some of the ones I’ve had on my shelf for ages)
- Added to the shelf in 2024/2025 (because I’ve added around 120 to my shelf this year, and that doesn’t count the ones Mom bought this year…)
- 5 Leo Tolstoy stories/by one author (I’d love to read more of his stories!)
- Oldie goldies (books from my childhood that I’ve been meaning to reread but haven’t yet)
- Backlisted ARCs (I have a few books that I was given in exchange for review years ago, and never quite got to; I’d love to finally clear out that list!)
Obviously, I can’t accommodate all eight categories for my 5×5 challenge, but listing these out has made me REALLY want to do the challenge next year! I’m not sure how I’ll decide which three to kick off the list…I’ll have to think about it!
Brighter Winter Reading Program
And last but not least, the annual Brighter Winter Reading Program was announced last week. I had a lot of fun trying to make my other reading challenges jibe with this one this year, and though I didn’t officially finish it, I liked the extra push it gave me. So, while I’m not going to pressure myself to complete the challenge next year, I do plan on downloading the graphics and seeing how many squares I can fill in in January and February, the two months this program runs.
That makes for four different reading challenges/events that I’d like to participate in next year. We’ll see how many I get to, I guess!
Do you enjoy using reading challenges? Are you planning on participating in any next year? If so, which one(s)? Do any of these pique your interest?
