2025 Classics Reading Challenge

December 9, 2024December 9, 2024

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We’re going to have a great year reading classic books in 2025! Here’s the lineup for this year’s classics reading challenge.

Pendant light illuminating a full bookshelf, with the words "2025 Classics Reading Challenge" superimposed on top.

2025 Reading Challenge for Classic Literature

The Tea and Ink Society Classics Reading Challenge is back for its fourth year, and I’d love to have you join us in reading great literature and expanding our reading horizons! Once again, our monthly challenge prompts are all new this year. I’ve never repeated a topic (although there’s been some overlap) because there are just so many ways you can go with classic literature.

This reading challenge is meant to help you discover new genres, authors, and regions for classic books, as well as to circle back to old favourites or finally get around to reading books you’d always meant to read. Follow along to read a classic book per month! You can adjust this challenge to suit you, but here are some basic guidelines:

All books must be written before 1970 (you can read a rediscovered classic that was published posthumously, for instance, or a short story collection that was compiled and published recently, but the stories themselves were written 50+ years ago)
You may not count the same book for multiple categories
Children’s chapter books are fine (but no picture or storybooks)
Books may be re-reads from titles you’ve read in the past
You may join the challenge at any time, even if you discover this late!

To help guide you through the challenge, I will publish blog posts throughout the year with suggestions for some of the prompts. Where I don’t have a blog post dedicated to a particular theme, I’ll still send out an email reminder to our newsletter list, and may include suggestions there as well. As always, my list of 101 must-read classic books to read will come in handy for some starting inspiration.

We also have a Tea and Ink Society Facebook group, which is a great place to share your reads and to ask for suggestions. To gain access to that group, subscribe to our Tea and Ink newsletter; the group is a perk for members, and you’ll receive a link after you join.

2025 Classics Reading Challenge Plan

January: A classic you discover in a used bookstore

You get a delightful assignment for this month: find a used bookstore and give yourself time to wander and browse. Find something old that tugs at your curiosity and bring it home to read. To get you in the mood for this month’s challenge, read Mary’s lovely ode to secondhand books.

February: A Russian novel or short story collection

Russian literature has given us so much! Read one of the major classics like Anna Karenina or Crime and Punishment, or go with a lesser-known but still foundational work like Dead Souls. Although Russian literature has a reputations for long classics, there are some good short offerings, too, like The Death of Ivan Ilyich or a collection by Chekhov, known for his short stories.

March: A classic about immigrants or pioneers

Read a novel that centers on the immigrant experience or follows the lives of people making a new start, like A Lantern in Her Hand, Moberg’s Emigrants novels, or Brown Girl, Brownstones. I plan to have a blog post on this topic to give you more ideas.

April: A classic set on your own turf

Read a book that’s set where you’re from. It’s up to you how granular you want to get: your region? State/county? Is there anything from your city or town? Go back to the past while staying at home.

May: A book you were supposed to read in school

Is there a book you were assigned back in your youth that you skipped? Or something you started but never finished? Or perhaps there’s a famous classic you feel like you should’ve read in school, but somehow it was never on your reading list? Here’s the nudge you need to read it now!

June: Nonfiction nature writing

Read a book by an author who has explored, celebrated, and learned from the natural world. You could read an environmental apology like Silent Spring by Rachel Carson, a nature travelogue by John Muir, or a blend of nature observations and philosophical musings like Walden. If you’re lucky, maybe you’ll find a copy of a John Cecil Moore book–an author on my wishlist who is frustratingly hard to locate! (Perhaps it’s easier if you’re in the U.K.?)

July: A science fiction novel or short story collection

Take a planetary voyage with C.S. Lewis’s Space Trilogy, battle aliens in The War of the Worlds or Starship Troopers, or explore an early work by Ursula K. LeGuin.

August: A classic by an author you’ve only read once

Is there an author you enjoyed and want to read more of? See what else they have to offer!

September: A classic World War I or World War II novel

In the month World War II both began and ended, read a novel that focuses on the soldiers, the war effort, or civilians during wartime for one of the World Wars. You could read a famous book like A Farewell to Arms or All Quiet on the Western Front, try a wartime mystery (two I love are N or M? and Green For Danger), a thriller (HMS Ulysses is on my TBR), or a homefront story like Spring Magic or Rilla of Ingleside. You certainly won’t have trouble finding a book for this category!

Jane Austen books spread out on a chair, with reading glasses

October: A Jane Austen novel

Jane Austen is always a good idea. Choose from one of her six full novels, or try her novella Lady Susan for something quite different.

November: A poetry collection by one of the Romantic poets

Get swept up into the works of the vastly influential Romantic poets. You could go with one of the “big six”: Keats, Wordsworth, Coleridge, Byron, Percy Shelley, or Blake. Or, explore someone lesser-read, like Charlotte Smith or John Clare.

December: A Medieval or Renaissance classic

You have a wide time range to pick from (476 A.D. with the fall of Rome to about 1600), so you could go with something tending towards ancient or something more “modern.” Perhaps you’ll read Sir Gawain and the Green Knight or The Faerie Queene, the German epic Nibelungenlied, The Song of Roland, or The Poem of El Cid.

Are you looking forward to our classic book reading challenge? I am, and I always love seeing what our members pick! If you use Instagram, you can tag @teaandinksociety to share your reads. I’ll also be posting monthly discussion threads in our private Facebook group, which you get access to as an email subscriber.

Find previous years’ classics reading challenges here:

Checklist for the 2025 Classics Reading Challenge, with monthly prompts listed