When you are a kid in school, there are always reading challenges. You have Accelerated Reading or challenges by your teachers. Unfortunately, once you leave school, all the encouragement to read stops.
Reading challenges for adults can be a great way to continue to set reading goals and find fun ways to encourage yourself to read.
Each year, I make a new reading challenge. This is a fun way to focus your reading. It can encourage you to read more or to read books outside your normal genres. It is also a great way to track your reading, which I recommend everyone does so they know what they have read!
You don’t have to make a year-long challenge. It can be longer, a seasonal challenge, or a challenge for each month. Either way, a reading challenge can be a lot of fun.
Let’s look at what makes a good reading challenge, tips to enjoy the challenge, and 20+ ideas for reading challenges you can start.
What’s a good reading challenge?
A good reading challenge is enjoyable and encourages you to read more. Those are the only requirements. Reading challenges give you a reading goal to work towards and help you explore different genres, topics, or authors you might otherwise not read.
Tips for enjoying a reading challenge
Tips to get the most out of a reading challenge:
- Pick a challenge that interests you. Don’t try to force yourself to read poetry if you absolutely hate it.
- Don’t start a challenge that is unrealistic for you. For example, if you’ve been lucky to read a couple of books a year, don’t start trying to read a book a week. If you hate nonfiction, don’t try to read about every U.S. president.
- Don’t have an all-or-nothing mindset. If you are too strict, it will make it too much pressure and take the fun out of it. You don’t have to read every book in the challenge. Give yourself a break and allow some flexibility.
- Take time to reflect on the book or journal about it.
- Encourage others to join the challenge or find a group, book club, forum, social media group, etc… While reading is typically solitary, discussing books can be one of the best parts.
List reading challenge ideas for adults
Let’s look at this reading challenge list.
1. Reading goal
You can make your own reading challenge by setting a goal of how many books you want to read in a year. You keep track of the books you read and count them.
This is a great way to encourage you to read more but have a lot of flexibility with what you read.
Let’s look at some popular reading goals.
12 books in 12 months
Read a book a month.
23 book in 2023
Read 23 books in 2023.
52 Book Challenge
Read a book a week. The kind of book doesn’t matter. The point is to encourage you to read more.
I have done this for several years and loved it! It pushed me to read more.
2. Award-winning challenge
Choose an award and read books that have won that award. You could choose from the Pulitzer Prize, Booker Prize, or National Book Award.
3. The New York Times Bestseller challenge
Instead of critical acclaim, you can read books with commercial success by checking out which books are bestsellers.
My 2017 reading challenge was to read the #1 New York Times Bestsellers. I read the books listed as #1 for “Combined Print & E-Book Fiction” and “Combined Print & E-Book Nonfiction,” but you could read whatever list is most interesting to you.
Honestly, this has been my least favorite reading challenge. I would only recommend this for people who like very popular books and/or like reading books that are different from what you usually would pick.
I did not read them all, and I stopped reading many of them because I thought they were terrible. If you read the fiction list, you will get many romance books and mysteries.
If you read the nonfiction, you will get many points of view that will wildly differ from yours or you may find objectionable. I think reading diverse viewpoints is good, but a constant stream of what is popular at the moment will not be for everyone.
4. Nonfiction challenges
If you want to read more nonfiction, you can pick a nonfiction challenge that focuses on a topic.
Wellness
Read different wellness books.
Biographies (or autobiographies)
Check out biographies or autobiographies of people throughout history that you would like to learn more about.
Go through the American Presidents
You can go even more specific than just biographies and get a subtopic.
In 2018, I worked my way through the American Presidents. I skipped over the Presidents I felt I already knew about (Washington, Jefferson, Jackson, Lincoln).
I used recommendations from this list and stuck to books that were on audiobook or were under 300 pages (you will be amazed at how few there are—most Presidential biographies are massive).
It was an interesting challenge.
Books about women in history that should be known
After reading about the Presidents, I felt I should read about women in history.
Each month, I read about a different woman I didn’t know much (or any) about. I loved this challenge. There are so many interesting women in history that you do not learn about in school.
Some of my favorites were:
- Born Criminal: Matilda Joslyn Gage, Radical Suffragist by Angelica Shirley Carpenter
- The Zookeeper’s Wife by Diane Ackerman
- Cleopatra by Stacy Schiff
5. Read an entire series
One year I read all the Harry Potter books (I think I was 19 and I had never read them before!).
If there is a series that you have been interested in, challenge yourself to read the entire series this year.
The good thing about this challenge is that there are series to match people who read different amount—trilogies and longer series (my favorite is the Red Rising series).
6. Audiobook challenge
Challenge yourself to listen to more audiobooks. If you haven’t listened to audiobooks before, give them a shot!
Audiobooks can be listened to while in bed, driving, cleaning, or exercising. They can help people who say they are too busy to read still enjoy great books.
I love audiobooks, and over the years, I have gotten way more than I could listen to at the time, and they have slowly accumulated. Now I have a TON of audiobooks. This year, my challenge is to listen to them!
7. Books you own but haven’t read
Along the same line, if you have a huge pile of books you own but have never read, make this the year you read them! That can be your reading challenge.
8. Movies based on books that you want to see
How many times have you watched a movie only to find out it was based on a book? Or you know it is based on a book, but decide to watch the movie first and then never get to reading the book? Or (this is my go-to), you end up not reading the book or watching the movie because you “have to read the book first” and yet never actually get the book?
This year, make a list of movies based on books that you want to see, and then read the book first!
If you have already watched the movie, you can still read the book and compare the two.
9. Classics you have never read
Pick books that are considered classics that you have never read.
Read something from Jane Austen, Shakespeare, Hemingway, and Mark Twain.
Pick up a book that is read in school: To Kill a Mockingbird, The Great Gatsby, Fahrenheit 451, and Lord of the Flies.
For more ideas, you can check out Abebooks‘ or Penguin’s classic book lists.
10. Banned books
Read books that have been banned at some point. I started with Uncle Tom’s Cabin by Harriet Beecher Stowe.
Here are lists of more banned books (a lot are also on the lists of classics books) by Stylist and Goodreads.
Make sure you look up a little about the banned books you read to find out when and where it was banned and why.
11. Ask for recommendations
Each month, ask a family member, friend, colleague, or librarian for a book recommendation. You could even ask a stranger. You will get a variety of books and some insight into the person.
12. Read a certain author
Pick an author you liked and then read everything they have published.
Conversely, you can try reading authors you haven’t read before.
Or you could try to read different books from debut authors.
13. Your to-read list
If you’re anything like me, you have a list a mile-long of books you want to read. This year, challenge yourself to start reading them!
14. Books from different countries
Read a book each month set in a different country or by an author from a different country. Or you can read books about different countries.
Travel around the world through literature.
15. Books from different time periods
Read a book written in each century.
Read a book written in each decade.
Read a book from every year that you have been alive.
Pick a time period and interval and work your way through!
16. The Rory Gilmore Reading Challenge
Are you a fan of Gilmore Girls? If so, consider trying the Rory Gilmore Reading Challenge. This is one that I want to do. You read all the books referenced on Gilmore Girls (339!). Here is a blog about taking this challenge that lists when (what episode) some of the books were mentioned.
17. Read each genre
This year, try to read a book from each genre. If you only read mysteries, you might be surprised to find that you like poetry.
Check out:
- short stories
- epistolary novels
- memoirs
- science fiction
- mysteries
18. Book club challenge
I love book clubs! They are an excellent way to challenge yourself to read more or to read different books. Plus, you get excellent discussions and camaraderie. Who doesn’t love talking about the latest book they read?
Join a book club either in-person or online and read what they are reading.
19. Work your way through the alphabet
Pick a book that begins with A and work your way through the alphabet!
You can also do this with authors—start with an author whose name starts with an A and work your way to Z.
20. Diversity challenge
Read books with characters with identities and viewpoints that differ from your own, or read authors from diverse communities (or ideally, do both).
21. Seasonal challenge
Read books tied to a specific season (or even holiday), such as reading beach reads in the summer and holiday stories in the winter.
22. Read in different settings
Instead of trying to read more or read different types of books, you could challenge yourself to read in different settings, such as:
- to a pet
- to a child
- in the library
- in a bookstore
- while running or walking
- under the covers
- in the bath
- on the couch
- at the kitchen table
- at a restaurant
- in a park
- on a beach
- in the car (either with an audiobook or not moving if you get car-sick)
23. Judge a book by its cover challenge
This time, do judge a book by its cover—pick books with beautiful covers.
24. Reading the rainbow
You can also pick books based on the cover by reading books that have covers that go in order of the rainbow—you read a red cover first, an orange color cover next, then yellow, green, blue, indigo, and violet.
25. Established reading challenges with categories for each month
There are a ton of reading challenges that have a different thing for each month. This can be nice if you want variety. I did this reading challenge in 2016, and I loved it.
A challenge you could do:
- Book with a strong female protagonist
- Book with a number in the title
- Book you can read in a day
- Book you started but didn’t finish
- Book from the year you were born
- Book with an unreliable narrator
- Book set in your area (such as city or state)
- Reread a book you loved
- Book translated from a different language
- A book that won an award in the last year
- Book with a one-word title
- A nonfiction book about a topic you know nothing about
26. Reading prompts or bingo
Get monthly bingo boards or reading prompts for you to try to accomplish. This challenge will constantly be a surprise, which can be fun.
Leave a comment on what your favorite reading challenge is, and share this post with your friends!
Happy reading!