Yearlong Reading Challenges
All of our reading challenges allow you to find books that you’ll love within your preferred genre, or to push yourself outside of your reading comfort zone if that’s your goal.
Below, you’ll find a quick overview of each challenge, and the teal buttons will link you to all the details.
Once you pick your favorite (of course, you can do more than one if you’d like), be sure to officially join using the sign-up forms for each challenge you want to participate in. This will customize your email newsletter so that you receive info about the challenges you’ve selected. Don’t worry, entering your email on more than one challenge sign-up form will not cause you to receive duplicate emails.
BOOK BINGO
New for 2026!
This flexible, customizable challenge combines curated book lists you can browse right away AND the excitement of monthly surprise prompts revealed throughout the year. You have two options: play Book Bingo or read just the 12 secret prompts.
DECADES READING CHALLENGE
Through this challenge, you’ll read some of the best books set in each decade from the 1880s through the 2010s, and you’ll experience the dramatic changes of day-to-day life over the last 140 years!
BOOK LOVER’S CHALLENGE
Our Book Lover’s Reading Challenge celebrates different aspects of reading that we all love, from browsing the aisles of our favorite bookstore or library to losing ourselves in the world of a story.
IN CASE YOU MISSED IT
BACKLIST CHALLENGE
Our ICYMI Challenge will guide you through the best books of the last twelve years. For each publication year prompt, we’ll provide a curated book list with suggestions to fit every reading style.
BOOK VOYAGE: READ AROUND THE WORLD
Are you ready to go on an unforgettable journey from the comfort of your favorite reading chair? Let us be your travel guide! Through the challenge, you’ll experience every continent and the vastly different landscapes and cultures that make up our beautiful planet.
READ AROUND THE USA
Choose from two options: Read regionally as a one-book-per-month challenge or set a bigger goal to read a book from every state, which doesn’t have to be completed in a single year.
LIFETIME OF READING CHALLENGE
Throughout this self-paced challenge, you’ll enjoy a wide range of books featuring main characters of different age ranges. Each decade of life brings different joys and challenges. It’s easy to dismiss those younger or older, but we believe that each generation is worth embracing.
How Our Reading Challenges Are Different
When we launched The Book Girls’ Guide in 2019, our first big idea was to host a yearlong reading challenge. We wanted it to be fun, flexible, and pressure-free while still being intentional and with a bit of structure. Other challenges we had seen followed two main formats. Either everyone was assigned the same book each month, and you were on your own to find a book that fit each prompt.
We developed a hybrid model where we provide a challenge theme with monthly reading prompts, along with a curated list of book recommendations for each prompt. We also provide opportunities for participants to discuss their books with other readers in our private Facebook Group. It’s been so successful that each year we’ve added an additional reading challenge theme, while continuing to offer the past challenges. Many readers are participating in more than one!
Mini Challenges
In addition to our yearlong challenges, we have shorter challenges to enjoy seasonally. Each comes with a printable coloring sheet with space to track your reads. As with our annual challenges, each prompt in these mini-challenges includes plenty of book recommendations.
