Bookish Challenges to get you Reading More in 2025

I’m not really one for New Year’s resolutions, but let me tell you I love a good reading challenge at the start of a new year! I love using reading challenges to inspire me to read more and read broadly throughout the year. I thought I’d pop in to quickly share some of my reading challenge plans for 2025 and invite you to keep up with my progress during the year.

Reading Goal
I think the simplest kind of reading challenge is to set a number of books that you’re aiming to read across the year. I like to aim for about a book each week, so set mine at 50.

Prompted Reading Challenges
A reading challenge with prompts that you read to is a fun way to diversify your reading a bit, if you’re looking to get outside of your comfort zone. Each prompt will give you parameters within which you chose your own title to read, for instance it might be to read a book for young adults by an indigenous author. You can find tons of these challenges all around the internet – on websites or bookish social platforms like The StoryGraph, which is where I’ve joined some this year. I like the community vibes of the challenges on The StoryGraph, where you can save books against prompts as you plan, and see what else people are choosing for the prompts too. Another way you can use these sorts of challenges is as a basis for a book club where you get together to discuss which books you’re all picking for the prompts and give each other recommendations – I used to have a book club like this at work and I really loved it.

One of the challenges I’ve joined through The StoryGraph this year is Savidge Prompts which is a challenge set by Simon Savidge from Savidge Reads and his mum Louise from Louise Savidge Muses – there is one prompt for each month, plus a few bonus ones at the end.
Some other challenges I have an eye on there are the Aussies Rule Reading Challenge (yay AusLit) and Book Riot’s Read Harder Challenge (which I first joined a good 10 years ago I think!)

Pick a theme/author
The third approach that I think is good for setting reading goals is to pick a theme or author to try and read consistently during the year. This might be to pick a series or long book (hello War and Peace) to commit to reading through the year, or a particular author whose works you’d like to get through.

2025 marks the 250th anniversary of Jane Austen’s birth and I’ve seen a few challenges around to read all of her books which I think could be fun. I’ve also seen a readalong called Wolf Crawl which is a year-long slow read of Hilary Mantel’s Cromwell trilogy hosted by Simon Haisell (more info on that one here) – I’d love to do that sometime too.

There you have a little peek into some potential reading challenges for the year ahead. I’d love to know if you have reading goals planned, or whether any of these have tempted you – let me know in the comments.
I’m planning on checking in here about how I’m going with my challenges as the year unfolds – I hope you’ll join me!

xo Bron