Discussion: What's your Favourite Reading Challenge?

Hello, everyone! It's the day of the week when we discuss various bookish topics (and I have to admit that I'm looking forward to writing these posts). This week, I would like to know which is your favourite reading challenge. As bookworms, challenges offer a great way to read both outside of our comfort zones and to read books from our TBR lists. Just a little research on social media and book blogs will bring you a huge number of challenges to choose from.

So, let's get down to it:

What's your favourite reading challenge?

...and how to craft one based on your reading style!

Before I begin, I need to mention that I am not the most active reading challenge reader. I mean, I read a lot but the books I choose are rarely based on a challenge. Maybe this post will help me discover a challenge that I will willingly participate in. Of course, there is The Reading Armchair's Reading Challenge, which is not the easiest one around. It challenges you to read books from different regions and read classics and award-winning books. It's needless to say that I haven't completed it yet, even though this is a promising year.

So, where is a good place to begin? 

The Simple Challenges

If you are like me, the simplest challenge you can take part in is the "read X books in a predetermined time". You all know the Goodread's challenge, where you basically set a number for the books you'd like to read within the year. However, instead of doing it for the whole year, you can also do it for each month. The challenge that I've been seeing a lot and I think that it would be fun to participate in is "a themed book each month". For this one, you know that you will read 12 books. You already know the theme of each month, so you can pick books that have already caught your eye.

Moreover, you can spice things up and create a reading challenge specifically for your reading habits. The challenge on this blog is a great example of this, as I have always been interested in diversifying my reading. An easy way to spice up your reading is to say that you will read "one book of X genre each month". This is not a big commitment and by the end of the year, you will have gone through a significant amount of books in a genre that is not normally your thing. I really liked Book Riot's "DIY Reading Challenges" ideas.

The Difficult Challenges

Apart from the above simple challenges, there are also those who ask you to go all out and actively read books to complete it. They are challenges that ask you to find books with specific colours on their covers and specific words on their titles. They are challenges that ask you to clean your TBR list and others encourage you to read diversely. The most obvious example of a difficult challenge is the "A-Z reading challenge". Some letters are easy to fill, while others are extremely difficult to find any titles. Another one that sounds great is the "TBR jar" (hey, that would be an ideal fit for the How to choose your next read discussion). 

The Fun Challenges

However, we are bookworms and we read for pleasure. So, why not pick a challenge that is also fun? For this category of challenges, I have two ideas: reading bingos and readathons.

A reading bingo is a very interesting concept. If you know of any active reading bingos, let me know in the comments as I think that I would love to try one. If you want a light challenge, you can go for just one line. However, if you want something more demanding, you can go for multiple ones. Here is an old one that Penguin did. I could easily see myself trying this one (I might have even made a bingo with the books that I've read so far).

A readathon is a more demanding challenge as you normally have a short amount of time that you dedicate to reading. They could range from 24 hours to a whole month, although these are the rarer cases. If you are in the hunt for upcoming readathons, I would recommend that you check the directory in Little Book Owl. As for myself, I have spotted readathons that got me thinking. The first one is the "Jane Austen July 2020" readathon, which is always great to have an excuse to read one of her books. The other one is Koreadathon and I'm tempted to join, even though I'm not sure how many books I can read in a week. 

Reading challenges are great and most of the time they are the incentives we need to read novels and genres outside of our comfort zones. For this reason, crafting or joining a reading challenge is a personal matter. It depends on your reading habits and on what you aim to achieve. If, for example, you find it stressful to meet the goals of a more demanding challenge, then you are not benefiting from it. Their ultimate goal is to enrich our reading lists and have us communicate with each other. 

This was it for today! What's your favourite reading challenge? Would you like to participate in a new one?