Book Talk Reading Challenge & Book Bingo ~ Oct 2025 Sign up open!

Hello Book maniacs!

Presenting The Reading Challenge for October 2025!

Can you believe it’s been 6 months since we began the Reading Challenge??!! Thank you all for participating and making this a success!

Let me start with some exciting news!

To commemorate this special occasion, we have this extra special badge designed by Shibani!

Everyone who has participated (meaning signed up and logged the minimum required pages) in at least 3 of these last 6 Reading challenges will be awarded this badge. I’ll be posting the final list before the badges are awarded; if there are any discrepancies or errors or you find your name missing, please let me know.

Most of you know the drill by now, but posting the Rules again nonetheless!

As usual, sign-up on the thread telling us how many books you will be able to read in October, also mentioning if you can volunteer as captain. You will then be placed in one of 3 teams

1 to 5 books

6 to 10 books

11 to 20 books

20 to 35 books

More than 35 books (upto 50)

Only those who read a minimum of 200 pages will receive the participation (tiered) badge.

Books in any language, any genre are allowed provided they are chapter books. Graphic novels, comics etc that are heavy on illustrations and low on text aren’t allowed. Books must be a minimum of 60 pages to qualify. This doesn’t apply if you’re continuing a book (or FF) from the previous month.

Plays are okay, but we aren’t including poetry at this juncture.

We will also allow FFs/ Online fiction of 18,000+ words OR 60 + pages. Shorter fics can be allowed provided they are logged as the same entry. For eg:

If you read 3 FFs that are 6000+ words / 20 pages each, you will log them as one entry of 18000/ 60 pages.

Please note: You can log a maximum of 5 fics in this manner. Which means if you are reading only 10 page (or shorter) fics, they won’t qualify. You will have to read one longer fic so that 5 fics will total to 60 pages.

ARC and beta-reading will also be included. However, reading or proofreading your own work will not count.

All book formats will count: Physical books, e-books, and Audiobooks.

Log only the books you finish or DNF from October 1, 2025 to October 31, 2025.

Log books within 3 days of finishing / DNFing them. Please DO NOT log pages that you intend to read or page counts of books that are in your TBR. ONLY FINISHED PAGES SHOULD BE LOGGED!

Add the book title/ author/ format and page count to the post you have reserved in your team’s thread (which will be posted by your captain). You will edit this post as you keep reading. You will also be adding the same page counts in the Google sheet that will be shared in your team’s thread.

IMPORTANT!!!! We are seeing that some members sign up and then do not complete their logs and then it’s up to the captain or the organizers to chase them to get it done. Hence we are making it mandatory that logs need to be completed in both excel sheet and the Team threads for your pages to be counted! If there is a discrepancy, your logs will not be counted and you will not receive the participation badge either.

As a default, please use Amazon’s page counts for logging pages. For ebooks and audiobooks, use Kindle page counts. For paperbacks and hardcovers, use paperback page counts. If you cannot find the book on Amazon, you can use other legitimate sources.

For online fiction and FFs, use word count divided by 300 to log pages.

If you DNF, or if you are continuing a book from September, log only the pages you’ve read. You can use percentage read (at the point of DNF) for ebooks, actual page numbers for paperbacks and for audiobooks, log pages based on number of hours read (40 pages per hour at normal speed)

You are responsible for tracking your own reading. Please keep an accurate log of the books you finish. We trust you to be honest. And while we understand the spirit of competitiveness, please also remember that the Reading Challenge is designed to motivate you to read more and beat your own personal counts, so please don’t cheat on your logs!

Lastly, have fun! Read what you can, how much you can, when you can!

Tags: oh_nakhrewaali

Moving on to the next part of the challenge…. Book Bingo!

This month the Reading Challenge will have an extra component - the Book Bingo game. Teams will be given a Bingo card that will have tasks you need to complete as a team.

When you sign up, please indicate if you’re also signing up for Book Bingo.

Each team will have 25 tasks to do; depending on the number of people in each team, you will be required to complete at least 2 tasks (aka read 2 books) for your team. If you do so, you will receive this special badge (courtesy of Shibani)

Captains, please post your team’s thread like always. The first post will have names of team members and rules as usual and in the second post, you can post the Bingo Rules & mention who is doing what task.

Please also mention how the book relates to the task given. For eg: If the task is ‘Read a mystery book’, please post a short blurb of the book that highlights the genre, so that it’s easy for me to verify if the task has been completed accurately.

The Bingo card will be posted on Oct 1st at 8 pm IST. You will have until Oct 3rd 8 pm IST to decide on the tasks and then the Bingo will officially begin. You also have this time period to clear any doubts/ queries about the tasks.

Ideally, we would like for the 25 tasks to be divided as equally as possible between all team members. However, if you find a team member is non-responsive by Oct 7th OR if a team member signs up for tasks and does not complete at least one task by Oct 15th, you can assign the same task to someone else in your team/ another volunteer can pick it up.

Each completed task carries 10 points.

Every row (5), diagonal (2) & colored group task (5) completed by a team carries an additional 50 points, but will be awarded only to the first team to complete them. For eg: If your team finishes all the Red colored tasks first, your team is awarded 50 points. Only those teams that tag me (I will be checking the time stamps) on completion will be considered for points.

Completing all the tasks on the grid (aka Bingo) carries 100 points, and will be awarded to the first team that completes it.

At the end of the challenge, we will total up the points and the winning team gets a special siggy.

If you have any questions, ask away on the thread.

Else, sign up for another exciting month of reading!

Idea credit: Gumnaamhaikoii

Q & A

Links to Team Threads

1. Leprechaun (1-5) -BB

2. Foreverlazy (11-20) - BB

3. oh_nakhrewaali (6-10) - BB

4. Bee222 (1-5) - BB

5. Leenaaa (1-5)

6. Queen0fdarkness (1-5)

7. ssttuuttii (1-5) - BB

8. sambhavami (1-5)

9. Lizzyndarcy (1-5)

10. OfTheHeart (1-5) - BB

11. monsoon_barsha (1-5) -BB

12. Ragazza_dolce (1-5) - BB

13. nutmeg7 (1-5) -BB

14. Gumnaamhaikoii (1-5) -BB

15. LadyWhistledown (11-20)

16. missFiesty_69 (6-10) - BB

17. WildestDreams (11-20) - BB

18. MoodyMango (1-5) -BB

19. TheMinion (1-5)

20. minakrish (1-5) - BB

21. wallflowergirl (1-5) - BB

22. SoniRita (1-5)

Tagging the usual suspects!

Want to sign up for October?

1-5 as usual

Sign me up!

11-20 books.

Love the bingo idea!!!

Can we sign up without going for the bingo part? I am usually very busy nowadays and probably won't be able to contribute to team activities

Siging up

6-10 books

Volunteering to be captain incase no one is available

Captains, please post your team’s thread like always. The first post will have names of team members and rules as usual and in the second post, you can post the Bingo Rules & mention who is doing what task.

Please also mention how the book relates to the task given. For eg: If the task is ‘Read a mystery book’, please post a short blurb of the book that highlights the genre, so that it’s easy for me to verify if the task has been completed accurately.

Ok, can we just do something like

task #1--- details of the task ---- volunteer (the name is hyperlinked by the person's post where they pick up the task and they explain while taking up a task why they picked a book)

Coz

A. Too much text sometimes coz of blurbs and stuff

B. It kinda feels too much work for me to go. They'll anyway have to explain why they have picked a post, why not just use it in a more readable and less stress (for me) way?

M I making sense?🤭