The 2025 Reading Challenge: 12 Prompts to Push Past Your Comfort Zone

A reading challenge only works if it pushes you somewhere you wouldn’t have gone on your own. Here are 12 prompts, one a month, designed to do exactly that: not just pad a book count.

1. A book published the year you were born. Context for your own timeline.
2. A book in translation. Most readers’ shelves are more monolingual than they realize.
3. A book you were assigned in school and never finished. Give it a real second chance as an adult.
4. A book under 150 pages. Proof that brevity isn’t the same as slightness.
5. A book by an author from a country you’ve never visited.
6. A book recommended by someone whose taste is nothing like yours.
7. A book in a genre you claim to dislike. One data point, honestly evaluated.
8. A book that won an award you’ve never heard of. Escapes the same five bestseller lists.
9. A book written more than 100 years ago.
10. A book you own but haven’t read (most people have several).
11. A book adapted into a film or show you haven’t seen either version of. Then watch the adaptation.
12. A book that took you outside your comfort zone in subject matter, chosen deliberately this time.

How to Actually Finish This

Don’t do them in order, and don’t treat a missed month as a failure: the point is the range you cover over a year, not a perfect streak. Pair a hard prompt with an easy one if you’re behind.

Related: Reading Strategies That Actually Help You Read More

Written by the BookPros editorial team
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