As if reading and working for Book Riot and running my own book blog wasn’t enough bookishness in my life, I also spend a lot of time on BookTube. (Not BookTok. I had to delete TikTok to reclaim my life.) That’s where I started hearing about the Hardest Reading Challenge You’ll Ever Do.
Created by Stephanie Gillis (@Qwordy), HRCYED is a nigh-impossible year-long reading challenge that starts in July and is made up of a bingo board where each square is its own mini reading challenge. For example, to complete the “By the 100s” square, you’d have read seven books: one that’s between 100-200 pages, one between 200-300, then 300-400, 400-500, 500-600, 600-700, and a book over 700 pages. Then, you’d have one square done… with 24 still to go.
If there’s one thing I know about people who take on the Read Harder Challenge, it’s that you are voracious readers. Many of you read a truly staggering number of books in a year, and you also often take on multiple reading challenges at once. If you’re looking for one to really humble you, try the Hardest Reading Challenge You’ll Ever Do.
All Access members, read on for more about HRCYED and how it overlaps with the Read Harder Challenge.
If you’re looking to tackle HRCYED, there’s simply not space here for me to list every task in the challenge as well as its customizable prompts and optional points system. Instead, I’ll point you to the resources to get started.
There is a HRCYED website with rules, prompts, FAQs, and more. They also link to the official tracking spreadsheet, which is where I recommend starting; the website is so extensive that it’s a little overwhelming. There are two versions of the challenge: the initial version was last year, and version 2.0 started this month. (You can adjust the start and end dates, so you’re not too late!)
Personally, I discovered this reading challenge through Sarah at Freshly Read Books, who has a whole playlist that shows you how she combined aspects of versions 1.0 and 2.0, how she selected her prompts, and how her progress is going so far. She also designed a pretty and functional bingo board, which she kindly made into a template in Canva that you can copy, as well as some of her graphics for the individual challenges.
Personally, HRCYED is way too intimidating for me, but I’ve been loving watching the reading vlogs of people attempting it. I’ve especially been enjoying Sarah’s take on it.
For those of you trying to combine the 2025 Read Harder Challenge and HRCYED, I think there’s lots of room for that. Many of the HRCYED prompts are broad (like the page count one) and would apply to any number of books you read for Read Harder.
To be specific, though, here are some especially compatible HRCYED and Read Harder tasks:
- HRCYED’s Series Staircase prompt and the 2025 Read Harder Challenge task #20: Read the first book in a completed young adult or middle grade duology.
- HRCYED’s The Last Ten Years prompt and the 2025 Read Harder Challenge task #1: Read a 2025 release by a BIPOC author.
- HRCYED’s Disability Representation prompt and the 2025 Read Harder Challenge task #8: Read literary fiction by a BIPOC, LGBTQIA+, and/or disabled author.
- HRCYED’s Translated Works prompt and the 2025 Read Harder Challenge task #14: Read a comic in translation.
- HRCYED’s Around the World Challenge prompt and the 2025 Read Harder Challenge task #9: Read a book based solely on its setting.
Those are just a few noticeable overlaps, but I’m sure most books you read for Read Harder would also apply to HRCYED in some way.
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