2025 Reading Challenge discussion

It is time to start preparing our 2023 list of yearly challenges, and the mods want to hear from you! The poll to vote on your favorite 2023 yearly challenge to return in 2023 is live and (include link).

Do you have a creative idea for a yearly challenge? Please post suggestions in this thread. They can be past yearly, quarterly, or monthly challenges that you think would make a great yearly challenge, or something we have never done before. Yearly challenges should have around 20+ prompts, or the capacity for reading an equivalent number of books.

As always, thank you in advance for your suggestions. Happy reading!

The poll has ended, but we are still looking for fun new ideas for yearly challenges! :)

I'd love to see Bookworms Take Shelfies again :)

Cordelia wrote: "I'd love to see Bookworms Take Shelfies again :)"

You'll be happy to know that Bookworms Take Shelfies was one of our top five challenges for 2022, and will automatically come back. Others are listed in this now-archived post, in case you're curious.
https://www.goodreads.com/topic/show/...

I enjoyed the one where we read books that featured an animal for our own wildlife reserve!

I would love to see bookworm takes as well.

Hi all, I have joined this group a way back, but took while to get on track, looking forward connecting with you all..

I have one idea of “TimeMachine”, where one reads most popular books of the year one is born
e.g. if I someone is born in 1994, they read (https://www.goodreads.com/book/popula...)

What do you think ?

Interesting idea, Jatin! Thanks for the suggestion!

Hoping to have Serial Reader again.

Sue wrote: "Hoping to have Serial Reader again."

Serial Reader ended in the the top 5 in the poll, so it will be back for 2023 :)

This is not a fully thought out idea. It's something that could possibly be built upon.

Idioms
Some examples can be found here: https://www.ef.com/wwen/blog/language...

Idioms are mentioned in the book I am currently reading.

Theresa wrote: "This is not a fully thought out idea. It's something that could possibly be built upon.


Idioms

Some examples can be found here: https://www.ef.com/wwen/blog/language......"

This could work into something fun and clever! If not for a yearly, it could maybe work for a quarterly. Thanks for sharing, Theresa.

Could we have a challenge to clear out the TBRs?

Insiyah wrote: "Could we have a challenge to clear out the TBRs?"

Clear the Shelves was among the five most active challenges for 2022 and will be brought back. TBR Jar finished in the top five in the recent poll, so it will be back as well. Perhaps these will be good for you. 🙂

TerryJane wrote: "Insiyah wrote: "Could we have a challenge to clear out the TBRs?"

Clear the Shelves was among the five most active challenges for 2022 and will be brought back. TBR Jar finished in the top five in..."

I'll look into them. Thanks :)

I like the Time Machine idea

Rachael wrote: "I like the Time Machine idea"

Me, too!

I'll throw some spaghetti at the wall from challenges I've participated in before and some random ideas:

- Build-a-Body cover challenge: use covers to build a body (e.g. covers with faces, covers with necks, covers with torsos, etc)
- The word-find quarterly challenge for this quarter has been great - I'd love to see something like that again!
- Along the same lines, I've also seen challenges where you finish sentences with book titles (e.g. you get a sentence like "I never thought I'd see..." and find a book title that can finish it).
- Some sort of audiobook challenge might be interesting since more and more people are listening to audiobooks. Maybe not so much a yearly challenge, but a monthly or quarterly thing could work. (Or maybe just alternative book formats in general? Audiobooks, ebooks, comic books, etc.)
- Banned book challenge
- A cover challenge of reading two books that have the same or a very similar cover.
- There was a prompt on one of my yearly challenges this year for books related to a tarot card - it might be fun to do a full tarot card challenge, with the Major Arcana (also easy to make this one longer or shorter by adding or taking away cards).
- A trope or plot device challenge (e.g. read a book where someone is a final girl or gets locked in an abandoned castle, etc.)
- Since it IS the 50th year of Disney in 2023, something Disney-themed seems appropriate. Maybe based on princess/prince personalities (read a book where a character is a bookworm, for Belle) or spelling out titles, things like that.
- I did a ladder challenge a few years back I liked - where you start off with one title, then the next book in the challenge has to either share a word with the previous title or be the same title with one word switched out. And then do the same with the next title, and so on until you build as tall of a ladder as you want.

Just some ideas to get things rolling! I was really glad to see challenges from this year return - there were a lot of good ones!

Kristina wrote: "I'll throw some spaghetti at the wall from challenges I've participated in before and some random ideas:

Thanks, Kristina! So many terrific ideas. 😊

Some might work well for quarterly or monthly challenges, too. I hope you'll visit the Member Challenge Ideas thread next year (not yet posted) and throw spaghetti at that wall as well.

Kristina wrote: "I'll throw some spaghetti at the wall from challenges I've participated in before and some random ideas:

- Build-a-Body cover challenge: use covers to build a body (e.g. covers with faces, covers ..."

I love the prince/princess theme!

Kristina wrote: "I'll throw some spaghetti at the wall from challenges I've participated in before and some random ideas:

- Build-a-Body cover challenge: use covers to build a body (e.g. covers with faces, covers ..."

I love the word-find, Disney, and ladder challenges. The tarot cards might be good too.

Theresa wrote: "This is not a fully thought out idea. It's something that could possibly be built upon.


Idioms

Some examples can be found here: https://www.ef.com/wwen/blog/language......"


Good idea. I would like to see this made into a challenge.

Kristina wrote: "I'll throw some spaghetti at the wall from challenges I've participated in before and some random ideas..."

I LOVE the idea of building a chain of books based on related covers (or titles would be fine, too). Also love the idea of books being the answers to questions or the end of a sentence.

I am also enjoying the wordfind challenge.

I don’t know if this is even remotely original or not (probably isn’t) but what about a quarterly challenge where you have to try and read books whose titles make up the alphabet and each book has to be in alphabetical order. No books can have the same author and you should try and cover as many different genres as possible.

Thank you so much for all your ideas, we will use several of them next year!

If you have more ideas for monthly or quarterly challenges in 2023, please share them with us in the new member challenges ideas thread :)