For many many years I utilized a rather popular reading tracker website/application. Every year the challenge was made of just a number... a count of books read. While I enjoyed this for many years, at some point it felt hollow, disingenuous, and lacked excitement. During 2024 I moved over to a new reading tracking platform, StoryGraph.

StoryGraph has been such an exciting platform to use. It began in 2019, officially launched in 2021, and stole my heart in 2024. It is a reading tracker (website and app) that truly cares about readers. Since I have moved over I have enjoyed so many features from buddy reads to quarter star rating from amazing stats to better recommendations. But one of the things that has truly captured me is the amazing challenges.

Not only can I keep doing the basic "I want to read X number of books", but I can set my page goal, audiobook minutes goal, and so much more. Below is a list of the reading challenges I have joined as of January 2025. If you want to join in on any of these, feel free to click the links and join!

2025 Specific Reading Goals, aka the books have to be read in 2025:

• The StoryGraph Reads the World - a StoryGraph official challenge prompting readers to read books from 10 different selected countries around the world. StoryGraph hosts this each year to encourage readers to read translated works from around the world. The 2024 challenge gave me some of my best reads of the year, and I hope it can do so again this year!

• Up Next Suggestions Based on Your To Be Read (TBR) List - StoryGraph has this really cool feature where you can get suggestions generated from your own list of what you want to read. The description of this challenge explains how to get those suggestions generated. This challenge is a fun way to tackle your "to be read" list utilizing this feature.

• LGBTQ+ Tropes/Myths Busted - Much of LGBTQ+ representation is only allowed in certain ways (think gay people always having to come out in their story, or one of the partners always meeting a tragic end). This challenge turns some of those tropes on their head, challenging you to read 14 books in 2025 that aren't the same old tropes but feature great LGBTQ+ stories.

• Read the Alphabet - Read a book where the title's first letter correlates with a letter in the alphabet, goal being to read one book for all 26 letters in the alphabet. This prompts you to read a little more then a book a week to complete it.

• Monthly Prompts to Smash Your TBR- a prompt for each month is provided where you pick a book that you feel meets the prompt best. This is best for those with a large TBR (100+ books) with a wider range of book types on it.

Author Challenges, aka authors complete works I want to read in my lifetime:

• Jane Austin - All 7 of her works

• Charles Dickens - All 20 of his works

General List Challenges, to be completed in your lifetime:

• NPR's 100 Best Sci-Fi and Fantasy Books - NPR's list as of 2011.

• NPR's 100 Best-Ever Teen Novels - NPR's list as of 2012.

• 100 20th Century Books by Women - Comprised of 100 of the most frequently repeated books when about 250 or so women writers and critics, various writers in a private writer forum, and about 30 male novelists, critics, and poets were asked to by Erica Jong to name their favorite/most recommended books of the 20th century written by women.

Series Challenges, aka series I started and want to finish at some point (if you like any of these you might like the others):

Nonfiction

• The Autobiographies by Frederick Douglass

  • Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, My Bondage and My Freedom, and The Life and Times of Frederick Douglass all written by himself

• Maus by Art Spiegelman

Fantasy

• Mistborn by Brandon Sanderson

• A Song of Wraiths and Ruin by Roseanne A. Brown

• The Witcher by Andrzej Sapkowski translated into English

• The Ending Fire Trilogy by Saara El-Arifi

  • The Final Strife is the first book in the series

• The Locked Tomb by Tamsyn Muir

  • Gideon the Ninth is the first book in the series

• Between Earth and Sky by Rebecca Roanhorse

  • Black Sun is the first book in the series

• Legacy of Orïsha by Tomi Adeyemi

  • Children of Blood and Bone is the first book in the series

• The Broken Earth by N. K. Jemisin

  • The Fifth Season is the first book in the series

• Flowers of Prophecy by Natalia Hernandez

  • The Name-Bearer is the first book in the series

• The Chronicles of Saylok by Amy Harmon

  • The First Girl Child is the first book in the series

• Abhorsen/The Old Kingdom by Garth Nix

  • Sabriel is the first book in the series

• Novels of Elfhame by Holly Black

  • 3 series and 1 standalone book in the Elfhame universe including the books: The Cruel Prince, The Stolen Heir, Tithe, The Darkest Part of the Forest, and their related sequels

Science Fiction

• The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins

• Dune by Frank Herbert

• The Murderbot Diaries by Martha Wells

  • All Systems Red is the first book in the series

• Death-Cast by Adam Silvera

  • They Both Die at the End is the first book in the series

• Chaos Walking by Patrick Ness

  • The Knife of Never Letting Go is the first book in the series

• Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams

• The Locked Tomb by Tamsyn Muir

  • Gideon the Ninth is the first book in the series

  
  

Historical Fiction

• Bold by Elżbieta Cherezińska translated into English

  • The Widow Queen is the first book in the series

Literary

• Before the Coffee Gets Cold by Toshikazu Kawaguchi