Do you have trouble picking a book to read? We’ve all been there. With so many amazing books in the world, it can get difficult to pick just one. When the struggle is real over here, we find a reading challenge.

What is a reading Challenge? Well that’s simple, it’s a challenge you set up for yourself, or with others, and it creates a sort of list of books for you to read. There are many different challenges out in the world, but I will discuss a few of my personal favorites here. You can also find multiple Book/Reading Groups on Goodreads that participate in such Challenges.

1. My first favorite and one of the more easy is the “Initial” Challenge. What you do is a pick a word, make this word significant to something. For instance it’s the month of August, depending where you are of course this will have different meanings. For me when I think of August I think of Harvest. So take that world Harvest and write it down like so.

H

A

R

V

E

S

T

Then you can choose either author names or book titles that start with the letters in the word. Example, for H you can read Harry Potter, or something from Hemingway.

There are so many ways you can do this. You could do your name, favorite color, or favorite flower. You don’t have to use the Authors name or title either, you could try the main Characters name or the Villains name. Either way, it makes selecting books a little easier when you are limited to a letter.

2. Another Challenge people seem to enjoy is more of a role playing type challenge. You create a point system, a quest system, and a character, then gain a certain amount of points, by reading books, to complete those quests.

For instance, a book with 50-100 pages will be 1 point, a book with 100-150 2 points, 150-200 pages 3 points, so on. Say you create a quest that your character needs to find a hidden object. (your character being you.) In order to find that item you need 3 points. You go back to your point system and find a book within range. You find a book with 150-200 pages, read it, then complete your “quest”. Then it’s on to the next quest.

This one is fun because you are creating your own story while your reading. We find that people who play DnD really excel at this type of challenge. You can make it as difficult or easy as you want. I have personally known people to spend months on this type of Reading Challenge and finishing it is a massive accomplishment.

3. Lastly, and one of my favorites is the traveling challenge. Now I am from the US so I will use that as reference, but there are so many different ways to do this challenge it doesn’t matter where you’re from.

I have always wanted to travel. A long peaceful road trip across the states, seeing all this country has to offer. Unfortunately that’s a little harder then it sounds. With kids, bills, and well, life it probably won’t happen for a long time.

This challenge can help you see the world. What I would do to start is write down all the states in the US. You can specify certain cities also, but that will make this much more difficult. Then you find a book that is based in those states.

Example

– Maine – It, by Stephen King

Because that book is based in that State, you have now visited it. So on and so forth.

You can travel the world this way doing countries instead of states. You can do planets, or made up worlds. There are many ways to twist this challenge to your liking.

Hope you guys enjoyed reading my first blog on here! Thanks so much for all the support. I will have my first review up at the beginning of next week, (unless I finish it earlier). I also have a few more books planned including an early review before release, and an author interview. Until then, Read On!

–Pixie