Book Riot's 2020 Read Harder Challenge

Hosted by thestorygraph

598 participants, 2727 books added

Starts: Wednesday, 01 January 2020

Ends: Thursday, 31 December 2020

The Read Harder Challenge is back for its sixth year! We’re excited to embark on this annual reading journey once more, and hope you find your way to some wonderful reads through Book Riot’s challenge. Once again, Read Harder has 24 tasks designed to help you break out of your reading bubble and expand your worldview through books. With new genres, new authors, and new points of view, the challenge will (hopefully) help you discover amazing books you wouldn’t have otherwise picked up.

We’ve rounded up another great mix of fun and serious tasks that ask you to consider some topics, forms, and parts of the world you might never have experienced in literature before. All will push your reading limits, and we hope you love them.

Just as in years past, there are 24 tasks, averaging two per month over the course of the next 12 months. You may count one book for multiple tasks or read one book per task. We’ll say it again: “We encourage you to push yourself, to take advantage of this challenge as a way to explore topics or formats or genres that you otherwise wouldn’t try. But this isn’t a test. No one is keeping score and there are no points to post. We like books because they allow us to see the world from a new perspective, and sometimes we all need help to even know which perspectives to try out. That’s what this is—a perspective shift—but one for which you’ll only be accountable to yourself.”

If you want to join a community of fellow challenge-goers, share your challenge progress, and get suggestions for tasks, check out the Read Harder Challenge Goodreads group. It’s a great place to hang out and discover books to fit your tasks and discuss the challenge. You can also use the #ReadHarder hashtag all over social media and join Book Riot Insiders for access to an exclusive Read Harder podcast where Vanessa Diaz and Tirzah Price will offer suggestions, highlighting a new task each episode.

Click here for a downloadable and editable PDF of the 2020 Read Harder Challenge tasks.


Click here for the official challenge page on Book Riot's website and to see the books they recommend for each prompt.

The Book Riot 2020 Read Harder Challenge is sponsored by TBR: Tailored Book Recommendations.

Challenge Prompts