top of page
Search
Writer's pictureunabridgedpod
1 hour ago19 min read

285: Our 2025 Reading Challenges and Looking Back on 2024


Happy New Year! In this episode of Unabridged, we're diving into our 2025 reading challenges and reflecting on the highs and lows of our 2024 goals. Join us as we share our experiences with various reading challenges—what worked, what didn’t, and the lessons we’re carrying forward. We're also introducing our 2025 Unabridgedpod Reading Challenge. We'd love for you to join us!


Whether you’re new to reading challenges or a seasoned pro, this episode offers inspiration and insight to shape your reading life for the year ahead. Don't forget to check out our Patreon shop for discussion guides, book club resources, and more to support your reading journey!


Bookish Check-in

Ashley - Ashley Herring Blake’s Make the Season Bright (Bookshop.org | Libro.fm)

Jen - Thomas Hardy’s Far from the Madding Crowd (Bookshop.org | Libro.fm)


Our Reading Challenges


Challenge Update for 2024



New Challenges for 2025



Lit Chat Game

Listen in to hear our latest round of the Book Riot Lit Chat game!


(A note to our readers: click on the hashtags above to see our other blog posts with the same hashtag.)


Interested in what else we're reading? Check out our Featured Books page.

Loving what you see here? Please comment below (scroll ALL the way down to comment), share this post using the social media buttons below (scroll down for those as well!), and find us on social media to share your thoughts!

 

Want to support Unabridged?


Check out our Merch Store! Become a patron on Patreon.​ Follow us @unabridgedpod on Instagram. Like and follow our Facebook Page.

Subscribe to our YouTube channel.

Check out our Teachers Pay Teachers store. Follow us @unabridgedpod on Twitter. Subscribe to our podcast and rate us on Apple Podcasts or on Stitcher. Check us out on Podbean.

 

Full Transcript of the Episode:

[00:00:34] Ashley: Hi, and welcome to Unabridged. Happy New Year. We are going to be talking today about our 2025 reading challenges. We're also going to look back a bit on 2024 and what we did for those reading challenges and reflect on that a little bit. Before we get started today, I just want to remind you that this season we have a shop in Patreon.

[00:00:54] You can click on the link in the show notes. That just takes you to our discussion guides, our book club guides, things like that. Those do not require any kind of membership on Patreon. They're just single item purchases. It does really help us support the podcast whenever you purchase. So if you'll just check out what's available, we appreciate it.

[00:01:12] And that's just patreon. com slash unabridged pod. And it is in our show notes. Before we get into our reading challenges, we wanted to share our bookish check in. Jen, what are you reading?

[00:01:25] Jen: So for the first time in my life, I am reading Thomas Hardy's Far From the Madding Crowd. This is part of my Chunky Classics buddy read, and I've read some Hardy before. I've read Tess, of course, multiple times, but this is one that I've heard good things about. And I've just started, so I'm not very far, but thus far it has wonderful character development, amazing writing, all of the things that I expect from Hardy.

[00:01:54] So the book starts with a character named Gabriel Oak, who is living in Wessex, which is a place that Hardy apparently invented for this book. And then people started talking about it like it was a real place. He has this interesting introduction where he talks about that. But Gabriel Oak has just recently come to the farming life.

[00:02:13] He is living as a shepherd and one day he's on his land and he sees this mysterious new woman who is visiting her aunt. Her name is Bathsheba Everdeen, which I think is an amazing name, and I'm just a few chapters in, but clearly Hardy is doing a lot of work to make sure that we know that she is not conventional, and she does some things that are probably not considered to be ladylike, and so Gabriel Oak is very intrigued by her.

[00:02:45] So just because of the synopsis, I know that there are going to be some socioeconomic differences between them eventually and that the romance is going to continue, or the attempt at romance, is going to continue through the book. But yeah, that's really all I know. I'm excited. So I think, I think this will be a fun one for discussion.

[00:03:04] Ashley: That sounds great, Jen. I have read none of Hardy's, or very little. I was like, have I read any? Not much. So that sounds really cool.

[00:03:13] Jen: I love Tess of the D'Urbervilles. I read that first in high school and you know, as it is when you look back on a book you read in high school and you realize you got just the surface of it, even though my teacher did a great job teaching it. And then I revisited it in grad school and again as an adult and it's brilliant.

[00:03:29] It's really brilliant. So I'm hoping for similar brilliance from this one. 

[00:03:38] Jen: It is chunky. It lives up to the name of our buddy reads. So, you know, when you have time for a good chunky book, or you want to spread it out... We spread them out over a couple months, which is nice. So,

[00:03:46] Ashley:That's a good idea. Maybe I could do some audio. We'll see.

[00:03:49] Jen: What are you reading?

[00:03:51] Ashley: So, we are Recording a little bit early and I have been enjoying reading some holiday reads this season. As I talked about in the Holly Chase episode that we did in December, I am pretty picky about holiday reads. But this is Ashley Herring Blake's Make the Season Bright.

[00:04:07] And I'm listening to this thanks to the Libro FM ALC program. And I am loving this. It is a second chance romance. And it's between... you get to know, very quickly, Charlotte, who is a, she's in a quartet, she's a professional musician, and you find out that she is a very talented musician, and she's very focused on her professional life, but she also is pretty lonely.

[00:04:38] She has a mom who is a very, very, very famous author, and the mom made it clear from as early as she could remember that she did not intend to have a child. That was not really in her plan, and so while she did, in fact, raise her, she was pretty removed and has been removed for a Charlotte's adult life as well.

[00:04:59] And then you get to meet Brighton, who is, She also is a musician. She was in a band and was kicked out of the band right before they were super successful. And so she's kind of reeling from that. And you get to know that Brighton and Charlotte had grown up together, they had fallen in love, and they, things kind of fell apart, in a pretty dramatic way.

[00:05:26] And so, through an unusual set of circumstances, they wind up in the same location over the holidays and have to kind of face each other after all these years apart. And so, I am thoroughly enjoying it. I think it is clever and fun. And sometimes I'm impatient with second chance romances, but in this situation, I just feel like the circumstances are really genuine.

[00:05:50] I think that it speaks to how people change as they become adults and how hard it is as a pretty young adult to make your relationships work out. And so, I mean, I just think it's lovely. So again, that is Ashley Herring Blake's Make the Season Bright, and I am loving it.

[00:06:09] Jen: That sounds so good. Yeah, it's interesting talking about the holiday reads because I've definitely cut down on mine over the years, but that sounds like one I'll have to add to my list.

[00:06:17] Ashley: Yeah, again, it's part of the ALC program, and so, I do feel like anybody who has those... I have been pleasantly surprised by how sweet it is, and it's just an interesting story.

[00:06:28] Okay, before we talk about 2025, we want to look back a little bit on 2024. We wanted to update you on the challenges that we did for that and how it went. So a little bit of reflection, and then we'll jump into 2025. Jen, do you want to share about yours?

[00:06:42] Jen: Sure. So, I've been actually doing a lot of reflection on this because by one metric I was very successful, and I'll list the challenges that I did here in just a minute. I ended up doing a lot and even more than I anticipated, which in some ways is satisfying, but also I realized it was really overwhelming, and it very much shaped my reading life, which is one thing we want to challenge to do, but in such a way that I was never just, or rarely, I should say, just picking up a book because I wanted to pick up a book.

[00:07:15] I was always thinking about what category it could check. And I just don't always want to read like that. So I will just say looking forward, when we talk about our 2025 ones, I I'm going to cut back, but what I ended up finishing. I always do the Tournament of Books and Camp T. O. B. And so Tournament of Books is a competition that happens in March, where they have like a bracket of books, and that's really fun.

[00:07:39] I did Book Riot's Read Harder Challenge, which I really... That one did challenge me in some categories to read books that I might not otherwise have picked up. I talked about doing the Biblio Lifestyle Challenge, and I ended up not doing that one. I did 24 Backlist in 2024, I did the clear yourself challenge, which is a quarterly challenge on Instagram that they put out different prompts that you have to meet, and they have to be books that have been on your shelf for a while.

[00:08:07] I, of course, did the Unabridgedpod reading challenge. I did the decolonize your bookshelf reading journey on StoryGraph and that is from Paperbacks_N_Fry Bread on Instagram. So paperbacks underscore N underscore fry bread. And that one was another one that really, I read some books that I wouldn't otherwise have read, but it is quite a long challenge, like the read harder challenge.

[00:08:33] And then I fell into some monthly buddy reads and things. So there's one called, it all started with the Arctic that ReadwithToni does. So I'm reading a book from the Arctic every month. We did a read of all of Alif Shafak's backlist and I did Laidback Lit Club, which every month gives you four prompts that you have to do.

[00:08:52] So you can see why, looking back, I'm like, each one individually was great, but it is a lot. And

[00:09:02] Ashley: lot, Jen.

[00:09:02] Jen: I got overwhelmed. I probably shouldn't have read that whole list to you all just now, but I wanted to fully portray how much it ended up being, and just how much that did shape my reading. And again, I, I like the directions each individual challenge took, but looking at it overall, I just don't know that I want my reading year to be about the challenges I'm trying to meet.

[00:09:24] So, so that's where I am reflection wise.

[00:09:27] Ashley: Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. And I do think it's hard to resist sometimes because there are such good things out there, and the more you know, Oh, I really love this one, or this is going to be really great, it's hard... You don't want to miss out. But then, yeah, that makes a lot of sense that it also becomes really overwhelming.

[00:09:46] Jen: And as you know, I am a compulsive person. So once I say I'm going to do it, I feel really Like I really need to do. I even have some guilt. I've forgotten all about the Biblio lifestyle one that I didn't ever even sign up for. And I'm still like, Oh no, I didn't do that.

[00:10:01] Ashley: Yes. Ha ha ha.

[00:10:04] Jen: What about you, Ashley? What is you looking back?

[00:10:06] What are you thinking about your year?

[00:10:08] Ashley: Yeah, I tried to simplify from the year prior. And I feel like I did do that. And then I did not fulfill the challenges I chose. So, and I feel okay about that. So of course, I did the unabridged pod challenge, because we work on that... We try to help everybody who participates by reading things for our episodes, or for our buddy reads, that complement that.

[00:10:31] So that was easy. And I had accountability for that, which was great. I did some of the Uncorked Reading Challenge. I've done that in the past, and I do like that one a lot. It's a lot of fun. It's a great one to sign up for if you are interested in... They do Canva graphics, so it's like really easy to kind of keep track of doing it, and it's seasonal, so it's four different seasons, and then you can read for each of the seasons.

[00:10:57] And I really like all that. I think there's a lot of good support for it. Christine is the person who does that. She's in Asheville, North Carolina, and she does a lot of great things to support people who are participating. So I love it. But this year I had to be like, it's fine. I'm going to do a couple of these and that's fine.

[00:11:12] I'm going to do a couple on this one, and that's fine. So I was very flexible with that. And then I had signed up for M Judson is one of our local independent bookstores. They're right downtown. I love them. They do great events. They're where I saw Jeanette Walls speak. They have lots of fun things going on.

[00:11:27] And so I signed up for that challenge. I will say, I'm going to sign up again, and I'll talk about it, but they don't release the challenge until after the year has started. So I said I would do it because we recorded, and then they released the challenge, and it was this like double helix this last year and required some

[00:11:45] maneuvering to make everything fit. And I just found by about April that I did not have the bandwidth to do that maneuvering to complete the challenge. So I just wound up being really flexible with it. Again, I did fill out some, I did read some things I would not have otherwise read in order to participate, but I had to be like, I'm not going to do that...

[00:12:04] I think it wound up being 24 things. And I just was like, I'm not going to do all 24. And by summer, especially, I was just like, okay, I decided to do this grad program. I am loving it, but it is in person. It is a lot of work. I am taking three courses per semester and I just had to be like, okay, I have my client work.

[00:12:20] We have the podcast that we love. I have my kids, and I'm doing this grad program that's temporary. So I need to make space for those things. And so I just had to be really flexible and I am glad for that. I would like to strike a little bit more of a balance this coming year of being a little bit more involved in the challenges that I agree to. I really think i'm just going to focus on M.

[00:12:38] Judson and ours. And then, I want to be more attentive to them, and maybe just a little bit more... I think if I had structured better earlier on in the year, it would have been easier. Because, I mean, I read plenty each month to make it work. It wasn't like yours, Jen, where it's so many that it's overwhelming.

[00:12:54] So, I think I could have done it, but I think I needed to be a little bit more forward thinking so that by the time I got to each month, I wasn't like, kind of frantic to figure it out. Because that's where it was easier to drop it than to fulfill the requirement, you know? So I mean, all in all, I didn't do great, but I feel fine about it.

[00:13:10] So there you go. Yeah.

[00:13:14] Jen: That kind of reflection is important and I hope everyone listening is just hearing that, and feeling that, that I love that you said you did part of them. Cause I feel like for me it's like all or nothing. And I think it's okay to say, yeah, some of this is great. I was just thinking like some... We've been putting out in December our lists of favorite books of the year, and two of my favorites of the second half of the year came from decolonize your bookshelf reading journey,

[00:13:40] so they can drive us to regrade things, but it would also have been okay if I had just chosen those categories that I knew would push me a little bit and not worried about some of the others, and the documentation and all of that, because that's part of it, too, right? It's not just the reading. It's the documentation in the organization that also takes up bandwidth.

[00:13:58] Ashley: Yeah. Right. That's a great point. Yeah. And yeah, that was part of it for me, was just not wanting to take the time to do the

[00:14:07] Ashley: thing. I mean, I think even, it's been a sign of how hectic this year has been, but even just my normal tracking, which I do through Good Reads and on a spreadsheet... I mean, even that has kind of fallen by the wayside for me this year, and I keep thinking how do I not have enough, like, mental space or time to just do this, like, very simple task, but I think that the more, you know, the more that our lives feel full, the harder it is to do some of those things.

[00:14:31] So, yeah, that's a good point.

[00:14:32] Jen: Yeah.

[00:14:33] Ashley: Well, we want to share with you new challenges for 2025. We are so excited to talk about our unabridged pod challenge. We hope that those of you who have been reading along will join us again this year. And if you haven't participated before, we'd love for you to join us. So we want to share about that.

[00:14:47] And then we'll talk a bit about the others we're planning to participate in as well.Jen, do you want to start us off?

[00:14:54] Jen: Sure. So for the unabridged pod reading challenge, we have 12 categories, so you could aim to do a book a month and I'll just read through them really quickly and give some explanation about a few of them. So the first one is book that fits into two genres. So here that could be a historical mystery, for example.

[00:15:14] So it falls into historical fiction, but also mystery. So I don't think you need to overthink that one, but yeah, there are a lot of books that fall into this, this kind of category. Romantasy is a new word because of the mix of romance and fantasy. So if you're into Romantasy, you've got an easy fit there.

[00:15:30] But again, yeah, you can decide how much you want to challenge yourself with all of these. There's no one overseeing your choices. So it's totally up to you if you just want it to be a way to track your reading, or to push yourself a little bit. Or if you just, yeah, you just find yourself satisfied by checking off some categories.

[00:15:48] So the second one is book about someone with neurodivergence. And then a graphic novel or comic book. A retelling from a secondary character's perspective. So our January book club pick will satisfy that one if you're reading along with Percival Everett's James with us. A romance featuring a character with a disability. A book you've read before.

[00:16:10] So rereading, I know is something, some of us do a lot and some of us never do. So that will push some of us more than others. Book that has been on your shelf for a long time. And you can define how long a long time is. Book about a social justice issue. Book by a BIPOC author that has been adapted for stage or screen.

[00:16:32] Book about a culture other than your own, and culture here again is one of those words that you can define in many ways, so that's really up to you. Book by a debut LGBTQ+ author. An audiobook read by a new to you narrator. I think we all have our favorites, but sometimes it's fine to just go looking for a new narrator because I know for me that can make a big difference and sometimes I will read just because of who narrates it.

[00:16:56] So those are our 12 categories. We'll have information on our website. If you want to join us, we have some groups on Instagram and Facebook where people can encourage each other or give each other ideas. And yeah, we'll have all of that posted. We will post on Instagram and Facebook with links as well.

[00:17:13] Ashley: Yeah, I'm so excited for that. I love those categories, Jen.

[00:17:16] Jen: I'm excited, too. It's always fun. It's fun. And then we sort of plan... As Ashley said, we'll plan some of our episodes and some of our buddy read picks to go along with these categories. So if you read along with us, we will help you meet these, these expectations or these categories along the way throughout the year.

[00:17:35] Ashley: I love it.

[00:17:36] So after sharing with us about 2024, what are you thinking for, in addition to our Unabridged Pod Challenge, what are you thinking for your others? What are you planning to do this year?

[00:17:45] Jen: So I'm going to go back to my classics. I can't give up Tournament of Books. I love that reading experience too much, so I'm going to stick with Tournament of Books and Camp TOB, which is just over the summer, and then I'm going to do 25 backlist in 2025 because I continue to own a lot of books, and I want to prioritize reading them.

[00:18:03] And I'm going to do my best to just do those. Now we'll see because Paperbacks and Frybread just put out the decolonize your bookshelf reading journey for 2025, and it has amazing categories on there, but I'm just trying to tell myself I don't have to sign up for the challenge to read some of those categories.

[00:18:19] And so I'm just going to try to keep it to those three. We shall see. You'll get the update next year and you can see if I truly reformed, or if I fell back into all the things.

[00:18:32] Ashley: And I will say, Jen, you do read a lot of books. And so I think that helps you get through a lot of different challenges. So I mean, listeners, thinking about how many books you'd normally totally read in a year is important. Not that you need to know a specific number, but if you are, you know, if you're often only reading one book a month, for example, then, like, one challenge is probably plenty because you want to have a little bit of flexibility.

[00:18:55] Whereas if you're reading hundreds, you do have more flexibility because you have more slots to fill. So I do think that makes a difference, but for all of us, we want challenges to push us, but we don't want it to mean that we never get to pick up stuff for fun, so I think it is finding that balance.

[00:19:09] Jen: Yeah. What about you, Ashley? What are you going to do for 2025?

[00:19:13] Ashley: In addition to ours, the only one I'm going to profess to participate in is the M. Judson Challenge here in Greenville. I really, I don't know what it will be because they release it after we record for this, which was how I wound up with the double helix situation last year, but I love their events.

[00:19:30] One of my larger 2025 goals, a big reason I went to the grad program here at Furman, which is in Greenville, is to connect more with the local community. And I have really been enjoying doing that. I've met some amazing people. I have enjoyed making those connections. And so. and participating in this challenge is just consistent with that larger goal to kind of plug into the local community here.

[00:19:53] So, that's what I'm thinking about.

[00:19:55] Jen: I love that synchronicity of your larger goal matching up with your reading challenge goal. That sounds perfect.

[00:20:00] Ashley: Yay. Well, and I think it also helps to make it happen, you know,

[00:20:04] Jen: Mm hmm.

[00:20:04] Ashley: When they align, it makes it a little bit easier, but...

[00:20:07] Jen: Well, we hope you will read along with us for the Unabridged pod reading challenge. We love doing those.

[00:20:12] Ashley: And like Jen said, if you're reading with our buddy reads or book club

[00:20:16] then that is a great way to participate in the challenge. And, you know, you always can encourage yourself to try some different things as well, but a lot of times you're going to get support along the way if you read with us.

[00:20:27] So we appreciate you joining, and we love doing that, and we're excited to hear more about it from what you read. We wanted to wrap up today with our Lit Chat game. This is just a Book Riot game that Jen pulls a question from, and we both answer, and it is always an adventure.

[00:20:45] Jen: Right. Let's see.All right. What currently popular book or series will be read for generations to come? What makes you think so?

[00:20:57] Ashley: I anticipate that Percival Everett's James, which we are discussing for our book club this year, will be read for generations to come. I think that is absolutely a phenomenal text. I think it is a groundbreaking text, and I think it will last for the ages. What about you, Jen?

[00:21:16] Jen: And that was the first thing that popped into my head too, after, and we'll talk about this next episode, but after rereading it, I'm even more confirmed about its greatness. And I think Everett's backlist is something I would love to read more of. I've read a handful of his books, and they have all been

[00:21:34] amazing and quite, quite different from each other. So I think he's an author whose breadth would make him like, he's kind of like Colson Whitehead who also publishes amazing, brilliant books, but they're all very different from each other. I think those people who can span genres are so fascinating.

[00:21:52] So yeah, I think visiting the backlist will be interesting. Sometimes that adaptation makes a difference, too. So

[00:21:59] his novel Erasure was adapted into the film American Fiction. And sometimes I think that puts authors on the map in a way because they're more out there in front of pop culture and the general public becomes more aware of their work instead of just the kind of narrow audience that literary fiction sometimes finds.

[00:22:22] Ashley: Sounds like a good one for our challenge.

[00:22:24] Jen: Yes. Oh yeah. I didn't even think about that.

[00:22:26] Ashley: There you go.

[00:22:27] Jen: Mm hmm. Perfect. Oh yeah, and Colson Whitehead's Nickel Boys was just adapted as well. And I think that'll be it for some 2025 Oscars. So accidentally I will say that book as well.

[00:22:42] Ashley: There you go. I love it.

[00:22:43] Jen: Yeah.

[00:22:44] Ashley: Well, we are so excited to enter another reading year with you all. We hope that you have had a happy new year, and we love participating in this reading community with you, and wish you a great reading experience for 2025. Thanks for joining us and we'll talk to you next time.

[00:23:03] Jen: Thanks everyone.

 

We are proud to partner with Bookshop.org and have a curated Unabridged store as well as affiliate links. We're also honored to be a partner with Libro.fm and proudly use affiliate links to support them and independent bookstores.

0 views0 comments
bottom of page