Every year for the past four years, I’ve hosted a Reading Challenge in my Posse Facebook group. This has been the single-best motivator for me to carve out reading time every month. With a full-time day job, full-time writing, and plenty of family and church activities on my daily schedule, finding time to read for pleasure can be difficult. These challenges, however, hold me accountable, prod me to read outside my usual comfort zone, and help me rediscover the joy of searching for a new book to read.
Despite the word “Challenge,” I design our monthly themes to be as broad and easy to complete as possible. The goal is to have fun, not to get bogged down in stipulations. My readers help brainstorm our monthly categories, and many have mentioned how the challenge motivates them to dig through their TBR piles and read books that have been buried for far too long.
Here is a graphic that outlines our monthly themes for 2023:
As you can see, these categories are broad enough that almost any genre will satisfy the criteria. Even nonfiction.
At the end of each month, I will call for the Reading Challenge report, and everyone will share the book(s) they read to fulfill that month’s challenge. It’s a fun way to learn about new books and find connections with other readers who enjoy the same genre or authors that you do.
We kicked thing off this week with our “NEW” challenge. It’s been fun to see the creativity as people chat about which books they are selecting.
*****
To celebrate the NEW Year, our challenge for January is to read a book with the word NEW somewhere on the cover. Here are some examples:
- NEW can be in the title – Like Emily of New Moon by L.M. Montgomery.
- NEW can be part of the author’s name – I just started a book by Ashtyn Newbold.
- NEW can be ancillary text on the cover, like part of a series name, award name (Newbery Medal), or New York Times bestseller mention.
There are lots of fun ways to make this work!
*****
If you would like to join our Posse Reading Challenge, we’d love to have you! Simply click here to join The Posse.
Which monthly challenge sounds the most interesting to you?
If you were to create a theme for one of these challenges, what would you pick?
Latest posts by Karen Witemeyer (see all)
- On-Site Research - February 20, 2025
- Cover Reveal + Book Goodies - February 6, 2025
- 2025 Reading Challenges - January 16, 2025
I am looking forward to the fairy tale trope theme in June. One of my favorite authors has a new book coming out that month with that trope and I cannot wait to read it!
Yay, Rachel! I’m looking forward to that one, too. 🙂 And, yes, I might have been a tiny bit sneaky for picking that theme for the month of June.
Karen, I’ve never participated in this type of challenge before. I just do Goodreads Reading Challenge which is number of books read in a year. Nothing else. I like the freedom of it, to just read whatever strikes me at the moment I finish another book. But I’m tempted to try yours. It looks fun.
I hope you give it a try, Robin. I’ve found that I really enjoy it and still feel like I have plenty of freedom. We are super casual about the challenge, too. People can pop in for one month, take the next month off, whatever works for them.
I hope you give it a try, Robin. I recently finished your novella, A Carol for Christmas, which fits December’s category.
I’ve been a member of the Posse since the beginning and enjoy the unique way it gets me to explore books. As I am one of those people who quip they are on schedule to finish their TBR pile at age 348 (ha ha), I use this challenge to look through books I already have first. Yours is the first online book group I have joined and I love the comraderie. Looking forward to your book in June.
What a sweet recommendation, Betty. It means the world to me that you have enjoyed The Posse so well. This group has been such a huge blessing to me in return. I love all the interaction.
This year, I’m changing how I read. I really want to tackle my tbr mountain. Reading challenges, like yours, are really calling to me. I already have January books chosen, but I definitely will try to participate starting next month. Thank you for this!
That would be fabulous, Nicole. I use this challenge for the same purpose, to finally get to books that have been sitting on my Kindle or in my TBR pile for months/years. 🙂
I love this, Karen! So much fun!
Thanks, Becky. It really has been fun and keeps me motivated to read.
Sounds like a fun challenge. Unfortunately I don’t ‘do’ Facebook and have no desire to be on that platform. But will make note of the list and do it myself.
I completely understand, Yvonne. We will be thrilled to have you participating from the outside. 🙂
I only have 2 challenges when it comes to reading: first, is not to stress myself about the pace of my reading and second is to post reviews of every book that I read (and like) to Amazon.