2025 reading challenges I will complete

Hello friends!! Welcome to me rambling a post about which 2025 reading challenges I will participate in. I mean, I will complete!!

Ok, so like, 2024 was not the raging success that I thought it would be. But I’m going to put it down to the very non-confident way that I phrased the post. Let’s be honest, “2024 reading challenges I’m… doing?” was more of a question. And that’s 100% why I didn’t finish any of them. That’s the reason we’re going with anyway. So, to kickstart us of in a new year, let’s really get down to business on the 2025 reading challenges.

Despite the Roland business gif (very profesh), as per last year, I will be flying by the seat of my pants in this post (as with all my posts) and making it up as I go. Ummm, and due to the Canadian postal strike (yes, it’s even affected us poor plebs in Australia), I still don’t have my Always Fully Booked 2025 planner, so we’re just leaving that one out for now.

So, let’s go find some books to read!

2025 reading challenges I will complete 💪

As per usual, I’ll be doing the Goodreads reading challenge for 100 books. I have also (informally) signed up for the 12 in 12, 25 in 25 and Beat the Backlist challenges — more info on these below.

Then of course, there are the T5T posts of books that I will definitely* read, series I’ll start and series I’ll finish. This year I added in authors I want to try, and books I want to reread. Plus we do anticipated reads each quarter.

On top of all these, I was inspired by Jason (@ezeekat) who does a ‘reading the books we already own’ series. Jason did his by literally going along a shelf and reading the books. I looked at doing that with my shelves and went “yeah, nah” (which is a hard no in Aussie slang). So I did something different instead. I went to random.org and asked it to give me a number between 1 and 26, for each letter of the alphabet. I got a 25, which is letter Y. So, by the end of 2025, I plan to read all 7 books on my TBR that start with a Y, plus any I gain during the year. (For the record, I had already put Yolk by Mary H. K. Choi on my 25 in 25, so I’m not switching it out.)

It kind of sounds like I have the whole year’s books planned out. However, I am a mood reader. So, I will probably only read a small percentage of anything I plan in advance. Sometimes I hype a book up in my head, then by the time I get to it, I don’t want to read it any more. Or, more often than not, I start something, am enjoying it, and then I get distracted by something shiny and new. This is why I have 22 books on my ‘currently reading’ list. But, at least I have options!!

12 in 12 challenge for 2025

The cool thing about the 12 in 12 challenge is that you may recognise some of the people who have submitted recommendations to me. They might be you!! But in order to keep identities safe for those who aren’t all over social media, I’ve just done first names in this version.

If you can’t read book titles / don’t recognise covers, ask me which ones you’re curious about, because these don’t link anywhere.

25 in 25 challenge

OK, so because I’m really weird, the thing I love most about this year is that it’s a square. Like, what brings me joy is a 5 x 5 book cover square. Yes, I am super weird.

Because this list is all my own making, I went for options that I thought I would still want to read in several months’ time. This means that there are five books on this list that aren’t out yet and won’t be out until later this year. IF any of the books for later this year get delayed (I’m looking at YOU, Silverborn… already been delayed FOUR TIMES… *shakes fist*) then I’m taking it as a FREE PASS. Yup, I’m not even going to swap it out. It’ll be like a free square on a bingo card.

Again, if you can’t read book titles / don’t recognise covers, ask me which ones you’re curious about because these don’t link anywhere.

Beat the Backlist 2025

In 2025, we’re going camping!! Like, not real camping. Just image themed camping. For Beat the Backlist.

OK, this post is like stupid long now, so this is the LARGE bingo card for Austine Decker’s Beat the Backlist in 2025. I may use books from above to complete prompts. But, I will figure that out later. Likely after I’ve read the books to see where best to use books to fill prompts.

Clicking on the bingo card will take you to the Beat the Backlist website, where you can find out more about the challenge, the prompts and see the smaller bingo card too.

What reading challenges are you doing in 2025?