15 reading challenge ideas to rekindle your love of reading

Whether you read purely for enjoyment or for self-education, starting a reading challenge can provide structure, engagement, motivation, and even community for your reading life.

There are so many options out there, from summer reading challenges and Black History Month reading lists, to reading an author’s entire catalog and only reading books published in a specific year.

A reading challenge—which can be distinct from setting reading goals—is a great tool for enriching your life. In this post, I’ll go over what a reading challenge is, why you should consider trying one, ideas to get you started, where to sign up for one, and more. 

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What’s a reading challenge? 

A reading challenge is a goal-oriented activity to help you discover new books, build or maintain a reading habit, track your reading metrics, or read books within a certain theme, often over a specific period of time. 

Many readers opt for reading challenges over a full year, but you can also do shorter periods like monthly, seasonally, and even for half of a year. It could also be in a variety of formats, like a checklist, bingo card, reading tracker, or even through a book tracking app, like Goodreads or The StoryGraph. 

The main difference between a reading challenge and a reading goal is that reaching challenges tend to be more about the types of books you’re reading, whereas a reading goal is typically more about the number of books, pages, or hours listened to in a given calendar year. 

Why try a reading challenge?

Both newbie and experienced readers go through different seasons of life. Maybe reading brings you joy, but finding books you’re interested in has been hard. Maybe you’ve been craving structure, but not too much structure that it feels overwhelming. Or, maybe you just want to read and discuss books with other readers. 

A reading challenge can help with all of the above. Here are five benefits to trying a reading challenge:

• Structure: A reading challenge can provide a framework for choosing which books you read. Not every book you read within your chosen timeframe has to ladder up to the reading challenge, so you can read a book according to the theme of your challenge, but also read books outside of it.
• Discovery: Finding new authors and genres outside of what you’d normally read is one of the main reasons why readers love challenges. You can even focus on different types of writing like poetry, short story collections, and translations. 
• Motivation: Sometimes having a fun theme is enough to make you pick up a book. A reading challenge can give you something to look forward to, and if you enjoy checking off your progress, it can even provide a little bit of satisfaction along the way.
• Your to be read (TBR) list: What if you could look at your existing TBR differently? You might finally pick up a book you’ve owned for years, rediscover a book you’ve forgotten about, or you might realize that a book you’ve been saving for the “right moment,” is exactly what you’re in the mood for now. 
• Community: Joining a challenge hosted by a reading app, book club, or online community is a great way to meet and interact with other readers.

I often use reading challenges to push myself outside of my comfort zone, discover new genres and authors, and refresh my ADHD brain’s need for dopamine by giving myself something fun to achieve. 

Even with all of those benefits, a reading challenge isn’t the cure for a full-blown reading slump. When you can’t pick up a book no matter how hard you try, it might be time to find out what your reading slump is actually trying to tell you.

15 reading challenge ideas to try

Plenty of reading challenges come with themes and pre-made reading lists, while others give you a framework and let you choose the books you want to read yourself. Both can be fun, or you might prefer one over the other depending on how much structure you want.  

Here are 15 ideas to inspire you before we get into how to make your own reading challenge step-by-step.  

Read your way through a curated list

 1. An author backlist challenge

We all have that one author who holds a special place in our hearts. (For me, that’s James Baldwin!) Choose one author and work your way through their entire backlist—and you can even try reading them in the order of their publication date. 

2. A series challenge

Choose a series you’ve been meaning to start, or even finish, and work your way through it. Think about the type you’re in the mood for, like a single trilogy, long-running series, or a series of interconnected books that take place in the same world, but have different main characters.

3. A classics challenge 

Don’t we all have a list of classics we’ve been meaning to read? Create a themed list using your local library or gathering ideas from your community. For example: Early vampire classics, radical women authors ahead of their time, books that caused a scandal, and books that created a new genre. 

Read with the seasons

4. A seasonal reading challenge

Seasonal reading is so grounding. Choose books set in winter, spring, summer, or fall, or even books that capture the atmosphere of those seasons. The goal is to match your reading with the natural rhythms of the world around you.

5. An identity awareness month challenge

The United States’ yearly calendar is filled with so many opportunities to celebrate our diversity. Choose books by women in March for Women’s History Month, books by Asian authors in May during AAPI Heritage Month, books by queer authors in June for Pride Month, and more. 

6. A book-to-movie adaptation challenge 

It sometimes feels like every other movie release is a book adaptation. Why not read the book first? You can focus exclusively on new releases or create themes for backlist titles.

Read from your existing TBR list

7. A physical TBR challenge

Shop your shelves before adding yet another book to them. Choose a manageable number of unread books and tackle them over the course of a month, season, or year. Add some fun by using a generator, spinner, or even your own custom TBR jar! 

8. The oldest books on your TBR challenge 

Similarly, find the books that you’ve either owned the longest or that have been on your TBR list the longest. Start small with the first three to five, and add more from there. Make sure to plan a nice treat for yourself after finishing this one! 

9. A TBR roulette challenge

If you love the books on your TBR but you just can’t decide what to read next, then using a randomizer may be what you need. This is particularly useful for folks prone to mood reading, who might have decision fatigue. (Guilty!) 

Read outside of your comfort zone

10. A genre exploration challenge

Choose a genre you’re interested in exploring but that you rarely get to read. Maybe you’ve been wanting to try celebrity memoirs, science fiction, or cozy fall books instead of horror this autumn. 

11. A literature in translation challenge

There’s so much to be learned when we read literature translated from other languages. You could read one book from a different language every month, or even choose to focus on literature from a particular region. 

12. A book award challenge

Let someone else do the curating for you by choosing books from a major literary award list. You could work your way through past winners, pick a few finalists each year, or simply browse the lists until something catches your attention. The Booker Prize, Women’s Prize for Fiction, and The Center for Fiction First Novel Prize are all great places to start. 

Read more intentionally

13. A read-around-the-world challenge

Try building a reading list exclusively with authors from different countries—not to be mistaken with books that take place in different countries. You’ll undoubtedly be introduced to new places and perspectives. 

14. Read from Black, Latine, Asian, and Indigenous authors challenge

Choose an author from your own country whose cultural, ethnic, or racial background is different from your own. You might discover a perspective, community, or experience that’s familiar in some ways but different in others.

15. A reading challenge built around a theme you’ve lived through

Choose a theme that has personal meaning to you, like grief, friendship, starting over, belonging, etc., and read books that explore it from different perspectives. It might be just what you need to process your own emotions, find solace in shared experiences, and maybe even get a little advice. 

How to make your own reading challenge

Now that we have a thorough list of ideas, here’s how to actually create your own reading challenge:

1. Choose a theme: What do you actually want to explore through this reading challenge? A genre, a season, an author, etc.?
2. Decide how much structure you want: Do you need a loose framework, a detailed list of specific books, a specified length of time, or something else? 
3. Decide how many books you want to read: Even just 3-5 books is a great number to start with, especially if this is your first time doing a reading challenge.
4. Create built-in alternatives: When your mood or life circumstances change, how will you adjust to keep your reading challenge enjoyable?
5. Decide how to track your progress: A reading journal, spreadsheet, app, printable, or a handwritten list all work.
6. Optional: Invite someone else to participate!

Where can you find reading challenges?

If you don’t want to create your own reading challenge, that’s totally okay. Below are a few ways to find pre-made reading challenges. With the reading lists, prompts, and timing already laid out for you, you might be able to focus even more on your reading.

The Ultimate Reading Challenge by Weldon Owen

The Ultimate Reading Challenge by Weldon Owen includes 25 literary challenges, each paired with a little bookish surprise that you get to reveal when you complete it.

The challenges encourage you to read in different ways, from revisiting a childhood favorite to discovering new books and bringing a little creativity into your reading life. It’s a particularly good choice if you enjoy having something physical to interact with rather than tracking everything in an app.

Book tracking and reading apps

Goodreads is well known for their annual reading goals, as well as other reading challenges that users can create and participate in. If you’re iffy on supporting Goodreads thanks to their parent company, Amazon, then Goodreads alternatives like The StoryGraph, Bookworm Reads, Bookly, and others have reading challenges available in their apps. 

Curious about moving beyond Goodreads? Check out my two in-depth guides:

• The best Goodreads alternatives for every kind of reader
• The StoryGraph vs Goodreads: Which one fits your reading life?

Book communities

Have you ever signed up for a reading challenge with your local library? You’d be surprised how many of them host their own book clubs and seasonal reading challenges. For example, here in Philly the Free Library of Philadelphia is hosting a summer reading quest for all ages! 

The key benefit here is doing a challenge alongside other readers who can participate in it with you. That added dose of social accountability does wonders for motivation!

Forums and social media 

If you’re a Reddit user, you’ll find that many readers have already asked and gotten answers about unique reading challenges. Someone even put together a Rory Gilmore reading challenge with every book read or mentioned on Gilmore Girls. 

If you’re active on BookTok, Bookstagram, or BookTube, many creators also host their own reading challenges for others to follow along with. 

How to choose a reading challenge you’ll actually enjoy

With so many good options to choose from, it can be hard to know which reading challenge to sign up for next, especially as mood readers. If I was making my own reading challenge or choosing one from the above categories, I’d ask myself these questions:

• Does it leave room for my mood to change?
• Are the prompts interesting enough to make me curious?
• Does it fit the amount of time I actually have?
• Does it encourage discovery rather than guilt?
• Can I skip prompts without feeling like I’ve failed?
• Does it make me want to read something right now?

Hopefully this gives you a good idea of what you actually need in this season of reading. 

Remember: You don’t have to finish your reading challenge

Reading challenges are an excellent source of inspiration, motivation and joy, but they shouldn’t become another source of reading guilt.

There’s always going to be another challenge, another reading goal, or another number to hit. While competitive reading metrics can be motivating for some people, I know a lot of us also need reading to remain fulfilling and rewarding.

The best reading challenge is the one you actually want to do. If it makes you more curious about books, more connected to other readers, or more excited to explore the books already on your TBR, then it’s doing its job.