Last week, I mentioned that I was challenging myself to read 50 books during the months of June, July and August.
Years ago, when I was in grad school, I loved participating in reading “challenges” that other people would host online. These are basically lists of different kinds of books to read organized around a topic, theme, time period, or other categorization.
(Your local library might also be hosting a summer reading challenge, so make sure to check that out as well.)
In preparation for my own reading this summer, I decided to compile a round up of some interesting reading challenges in case they might also inspire your reading in the coming months. Many of these challenges are meant to be for the entire year, but summer could be the perfect time to tackle the books and tasks on these lists!
The Read Harder Challenge: This challenge is designed to break you out of your reading bubble. There are 24 “reading tasks” to tackle in this challenge including reading books in certain geographical locations, books by authors representing diverse identity categories, and reading books outside of your typical genres.
The Reading Women Challenge: Just like it sounds, this challenge is all about reading different female authors across genres. The tasks for this year’s challenge focus on international authors, trans-identified authors, and authors with marginalized gender identities.
The Read Native 2021 Challenge: The American Indian Library Association is hosting this challenge to encourage readers to explore more Indigenous authors and creatives. The challenge includes reading tasks, but also tasks that expose participants to tribal websites, peer-reviewed articles, and more.
The Audiobook Challenge: This challenge is a simple one where you decide how many audiobooks you want to listen to in a certain period of time and then tackle your goal!
The Backlist Reader Challenge: Backlist reading challenges are some of my favorites because they encourage me to dig into books that I already own and that I’ve been meaning to read for a while but haven’t gotten to yet. This is also a great challenge for working through one author or series.
Want to explore even more possible 2021 reading challenges? Here’s a comprehensive list of all the different ones that are available this year.
