Our 2026 planning continues, and Secret Santa is back! Read on for details.
🏆 Thanks to all the members who shared their yearly theme ideas, and also to the hundreds who voted! Genevieve suggested the winning idea of Award Winners, which will be our theme for 2026! We will look at book awards across time, genre, location, and audience age. Click to see all of our 2026 Themes!
🎨 Do you have an idea for our 2026 look? Submit your design according to the Masthead & Logo Contest guidelines. A poll will follow, and the winner will choose our monthly theme for next June!
🎅 SECRET SANTA! It’s time again for one of our most popular activities: the Secret Santa gift exchange. Sign up HERE before December 1 to spread some holiday cheer by gifting a book and receiving one in return!
🗳️ Thank you for voting for your favorite yearly challenge! Poll results bring back: TBR Jar, Clear the Shelves, Bookworms Take Shelfies, Magical Mystery Tour, and Popsugar challenges. If you have an idea for a new yearly challenge, you can share it in Yearly Challenge Ideas.
GAMES Our fall-inspired Spooky Word Search was a lot of fun. Be on the lookout for more word searches in the future. Scattergories and Word Chain (Book Edition) are still available to play. We have a fun game called Five Letters planned for November. It’s all about using five letters to write a sentence. Have a great idea for group fun? Please share your own Game Suggestions with us!
GROUP READ Our November theme is Pets, and our group read for this month is The Travelling Cat Chronicles by Hiro Arikawa, a contemporary Japanese novel featuring a cat, his owner, and a road trip.
CHALLENGES We’re excited to introduce new monthly challenges for November’s theme of Pets and we will continue our final quarterly challenges with the theme of Fear.
Quarterly Challenges What’s Your Fear Factor? is an open challenge to read books with covers, themes, or titles that reflect phobias. Here’s to Fears features prompts related to a variety of fearsome phrases.
Yearly Challenges can help you reach your reading goals for the year in 2025. Check out A Guide to the 2025 Yearly Challenges to learn more about our year-long challenges!
Do you have an idea for a new challenge? Please let us know! Most of our quarterly and monthly challenges grow from our members’ suggestions. We would love to hear your creative ideas!
TBR TWINS Share a book with an online friend while knocking off a read from your TBR list!
If you’ve signed up for November, find your TBR Twin here. Please reach out to your twin and choose a book to read together! You can also sign up for December TBR Twins here, and we'll pair you with someone to read a book with next month.
BUDDY READS Let’s read some books together! Buddy reads are a great way to read and discuss a book together with fellow group members. Feel free to join any discussion, even if you didn’t sign up!
If you would like to join any, please follow the link and let your buddies know you will join the read! Would you like to suggest a future Buddy Read or join a future one? You can sign up on our current Buddy Reads - Sign Up thread.
FROM THE MODS
Our 2026 planning continues, and Secret Santa is back! Read on for details.
🏆 Thanks to all the members who shared their yearly theme ideas, and also to the hundreds who voted! Genevieve suggested the winning idea of Award Winners, which will be our theme for 2026! We will look at book awards across time, genre, location, and audience age. Click to see all of our 2026 Themes!
🎨 Do you have an idea for our 2026 look? Submit your design according to the Masthead & Logo Contest guidelines. A poll will follow, and the winner will choose our monthly theme for next June!
🎅 SECRET SANTA! It’s time again for one of our most popular activities: the Secret Santa gift exchange. Sign up HERE before December 1 to spread some holiday cheer by gifting a book and receiving one in return!
🗳️ Thank you for voting for your favorite yearly challenge! Poll results bring back: TBR Jar, Clear the Shelves, Bookworms Take Shelfies, Magical Mystery Tour, and Popsugar challenges. If you have an idea for a new yearly challenge, you can share it in Yearly Challenge Ideas.
âť“ Read about What to Expect in 2026.
GAMES
Our fall-inspired Spooky Word Search was a lot of fun. Be on the lookout for more word searches in the future. Scattergories and Word Chain (Book Edition) are still available to play.
We have a fun game called Five Letters planned for November. It’s all about using five letters to write a sentence.
Have a great idea for group fun? Please share your own Game Suggestions with us!
GROUP READ
Our November theme is Pets, and our group read for this month is The Travelling Cat Chronicles by Hiro Arikawa , a contemporary Japanese novel featuring a cat, his owner, and a road trip.
You can join the discussion or post your review of the book!
You can also vote for our December book with the theme of White, as well as nominate a book for January with the theme of Self!
CHALLENGES
We’re excited to introduce new monthly challenges for November’s theme of Pets and we will continue our final quarterly challenges with the theme of Fear.
Monthly Challenges
Fur, Fins & Feathers is an open spell-it-out challenge based on animal names.
Curious Companions has eight animal-themed prompts.
Quarterly Challenges
What’s Your Fear Factor? is an open challenge to read books with covers, themes, or titles that reflect phobias.
Here’s to Fears features prompts related to a variety of fearsome phrases.
Yearly Challenges can help you reach your reading goals for the year in 2025. Check out A Guide to the 2025 Yearly Challenges to learn more about our year-long challenges!
Do you have an idea for a new challenge? Please let us know! Most of our quarterly and monthly challenges grow from our members’ suggestions. We would love to hear your creative ideas!
TBR TWINS
Share a book with an online friend while knocking off a read from your TBR list!
If you’ve signed up for November, find your TBR Twin here. Please reach out to your twin and choose a book to read together!
You can also sign up for December TBR Twins here, and we'll pair you with someone to read a book with next month.
BUDDY READS
Let’s read some books together! Buddy reads are a great way to read and discuss a book together with fellow group members. Feel free to join any discussion, even if you didn’t sign up!
We are reading the following stand-alone books:
The Blue Hour
The Count of Monte Cristo
Fearless and Free: A Memoir
The Grace Year
Isola
The Library
The Light Eaters
Memoirs of a Geisha
Still Life
That’s Not My Name
There Are Rivers in the Sky
And we are starting or continuing these books that are part of a series:
Alex Cross #12: Cross
Arc of a Scythe #3: The Toll
The Cosmere #24: Tress of the Emerald Sea
Cotton Malone #12: The Lost Order
Hawthorne & Horowitz #4: The Twist of a Knife
Kay Scarpetta #13: Trace
One of Us Is Lying #1
Shadow of the Leviathan #2: A Drop of Corruption
If you would like to join any, please follow the link and let your buddies know you will join the read! Would you like to suggest a future Buddy Read or join a future one? You can sign up on our current Buddy Reads - Sign Up thread.
Finally, welcome to all of our new members! We can't wait to get to know you. Please stop in and introduce yourself or say hello to our new members!
Happy Reading, everyone!
Winter, SarahKat, TerryJane, Carri Carey, bailey, Blagica, Theresa, JennH, and Susan