Christian Fiction Devourers discussion

In planning out the monthly challenges for 2026, I would like y'alls feedback/ideas!

~What worked for you that we did this year? What didn't work as well as you'd have hoped?

~Is there something that we have done in the past that you'd like to see brought back? (I'm already thinking about having the 'Pick for Me' challenge return for 2026 . . . are people interested in that?)

~Do you have any ideas of challenges we haven't done that you would like to see done on a monthly basis next year? Or any 'monthly themes' you would enjoy?

I'd like to see Pick for Me return.

I'm happy with all the monthly challenges. There is a nice variety. The decade challenge was fun.

You did a great job with all of the monthly challenges Kate! I really appreciated that you usually posted the challenge numbers a few days before the new month to give a heads up for planning what books would fit.

I really liked how broad most of the monthly prompts were for the Monthly Challenge. It was easy for me hit the prompts. And I really enjoyed how we were able to pick our own authors for the month this year.

I would participate in Pick Me if it were to return.

I loved the Monthly Challenges this year, Kate!

thank you for the feedback thus far!

Further to the 'Author of the Month' type challenge, I've created a poll about how to 'play' in 2026:
https://www.goodreads.com/poll/show/3...

You did a great job with all the monthly challenges this year. I especially enjoyed the Author Match and Genre Match. Thanks for posting the number a few days early each month to help with planning.

Concerning this year's topics - I enjoyed them all, especially the spell out ones, Summer Holidays, Autumn Sweep, Men of Christian Fiction and look forward to Finishing Well. I also appreciate you including Spooky Season and Christmas Reads.

Previous ones that I would like to see considered are: wedding, authors with vowel names, author with same ketter first & last names.

thanks for the feedback!

Yay, I love looking forward to new challenges!! My favorite thing about the new year!! LOL

This past year, I REALLY loved the decades challenge - I thought I'd just do one a month, but ended up doing two or three a month!

Other monthly challenges I enjoyed this year include Spell Out (especially nice to have the one in the fall for THANKS, since by then most people have finished their ABC challenge), Your Heritage, and Christmas.

Some other challenges that might be nice as a monthly challenge include:
Proper Names (it was too easy for a year-long challenge)
Colonial America (maybe just for the month of July as we mark America's 250th)
A challenge to read books where the main character is Hispanic, Black, or Asian (this could be a quarterly challenge instead)

Other challenges I'd like to see:
A quarterly or six month challenge of Build a Bouquet, where you keep track of every flower mentioned in the books you read, to create a bouquet of flowers!
Genre BINGO (to help push us to read genres we wouldn't necessarily read, but since it is BINGO, participants can avoid ones they definitely don't like)
Quarterly Around the World, where each quarter focuses on a different part of the world - Europe, Africa, Asia/Pacific, and the Americas

thank you, Bonny . . . these are some good ideas

Nice job with the monthly challenges Kate!

I particularly enjoyed the way author of the month was handled this year. This helped each of us get to the authors most important to us.

I echo what others have shared in finding it helpful to have the posts for monthly challenges up a 2-3 days before the beginning of the month.

hmmm . . . if I add 'Pick for Me' back to the mix, it looks like it would be helpful if all of the monthly challenges are posted a few days in advance, not just the 2 I had done for this year . . . good to note!

Some of my favorite challenges...
Through the Decades
Title Search
Cover Search
ABC/123
50 States
I like Genre Match and Author Match when we can choose our own
The Pick 3 was fun, I participated a few times

I've though of a challenge to read a book where the title has some type of punctuation, a question mark or apostrophe for example

You are doing a great job

Definitely Genre and Author Match!!!!

My favorites are the following:

1. Monthly Genre Match, in fact did 11 of 12 months as will likely skip December (memoir) for the Christmas challenge instead. Working on those cookies!

2. Let’s Bake, this one surprised me as reading a great deal of Amish books this year made a lot of progress completing so many.

3. Monthly Focus, did the majority of these, know I missed a few.

4. Tea Party, took some of the easy options to complete some of the tasks, but was fun.

5. Bible Story Scavenger Hunt, enjoyed, and got part of the list solved.

6. Complete Series, well, completed some and now have new series incomplete. More in than out, lol.

7. Christmas challenge, going for baking cookies!


When I started reading less in back half of year, really focused on first the genre match, then the latest 6month challenge signed up for.

Read a few book of the months as well, and that buddy read this month A Christmas Flood, is an awesome book I basically read in a day.

great challenges y’all!

thanks, y'all!

I love the monthly focus challenges, and I have really enjoyed the new format for the genre and author challenges.

I appreciate all the work that goes into all these challenges. I especially appreciate getting the genre and author picks a few days early. That makes it so much easier to plan out my months books.

I appreciate the author challenge and the "roll the dice" feature it brought. Also appreciated that it was pre-announced the month before so I could do planning and get in from the library. It allowed me to add favorites or those on my list that I hadn't tried yet. So I was able to do a mix from my list. Just the mystery of who was going to be up next :)

The monthly challenges were wide ranging and interesting even though I know I had to skip a couple of months.

Thanks for all the efforts of variety and fun you bring to us each month!

Thank you for all of the work you put into these challenges! I always have so much fun doing them. :)

I loved the monthly focus challenge this year! Having it all in one place made it really easy for me to keep up with.

I like the bouquet of flowers idea mentioned above. I've never done the "Pick for me" but it sounds fun.

Also I just want to echo what so many others have said that it is so helpful when prompts/numbers for the next month/quarter or whatever is posted early. I'm a planner so I like to know what to look for and have it ready to go. :)

so many useful suggestions! thank you all!

because GoodReads is taking away our ability to send direct messages to each other, I am going to have to look into alternate ways for people to send me their lists for Pick for Me

I enjoy the Author and Genre Match. I haven't participated in Pick for Me in the past but am interested in participating in the future.

one more day remaining to vote in the poll about how we 'play' the monthly author challenge in 2026!
thank you to those who have already voted! 🙂
https://www.goodreads.com/poll/show/3...

Kate wrote: "one more day remaining to vote in the poll about how we 'play' the monthly author challenge in 2026!
thank you to those who have already voted! 🙂
https://www.goodreads.com/poll/show/3......"

Thanks for the reminder. What is the difference between "Author Match" and "Pick an Author"?

sorry . . . I should have explained that . . . author match would be the same format we used this year . . . pick an author would be similar to the 'pick for me' challenge . . . we'd have 12 lists of 5 authors each that people had submitted to choose from each month

Kate wrote: "sorry . . . I should have explained that . . . author match would be the same format we used this year . . . pick an author would be similar to the 'pick for me' challenge . . . we'd have 12 lists ..."

Thanks Kate!

2026 will be an 'author match' year as it was this year . . . I'm glad that this method seems to work well for y'all!

Kate wrote: "2026 will be an 'author match' year as it was this year . . . I'm glad that this method seems to work well for y'all!"

Yeah! I have already made my list of Authors. :-)

I enjoyed the genre match and hope it comes back. I also enjoy the monthly challenge. I have participated the last 2 years.
Can you explain how pick for me works? It sounds interesting.

Firstly, I want to thank you all for the hard work you put into leading this group. It truly is my favourite place to hang out, and that’s entirely thanks to each of you. :)

What worked well for me this year?
Author and Genre Match:
I really enjoyed the new format. I tried a different spin on the author match that I didn’t get a chance to share before you set the challenges last year, but I wanted to mention it now. Each month I chose two authors—one new-to-me and one I’d read before (revisit). I still have a few to catch up on, but I really loved approaching it this way.

Monthly Focus:
Surprisingly, I completed far more of these than I thought I would (I just didn’t get a chance to post updates!). Some of my favourites were: New Beginnings, Spring Clean, Folks in Uniform, My Favourite Things, Autumn Sweep, Men of Christian Fiction, and Finishing Well.
I really enjoyed the variety of the monthly focuses and how easily they could fit into whatever I was already planning to read.

What didn’t work as well?
Decades:
This one didn’t work for me purely because I didn’t plan well—it made it harder to get into. I’d actually love for it to come back in 2026 so I can give it another try!

Is there something we’ve done in the past that you’d like to see brought back?
I know we’ve done some really great challenges over the years, but I honestly can’t remember them all off the top of my head. It would be really helpful if we could catalogue past challenges and suggested ideas somewhere for easy reference in the future.

Bringing Bingo back would be a fantastic idea!

This is probably a little late as I see this has started to be put together but I like the idea of “Pick for Me” returning in 2026, but feel it may need a new spin on it as it fell a little flat in 2024.

Ideas for new monthly challenges or themes:
I’d love to see a “List Challenge,” similar to how we’ve done Author Match and Genre Match. For example, we could each choose a list—like “Most Anticipated 2022 Christian Fiction”—and then pick one book from that list each month.

Happy for anyone to refine or expand on this idea!

thank you Charlene, these are some good ideas! I'm going to use your 2 list idea for the author match game as a level-up kind of idea!

Linda wrote: "I enjoyed the genre match and hope it comes back. I also enjoy the monthly challenge. I have participated the last 2 years.
Can you explain how pick for me works? It sounds interesting."

Linda, 'pick for me' is where those who wish to play will pick 10 books they haven't read yet that they are excited about published between the coming year and the previous year (so for 2026 we're working with books published in 2025-2026), and each month a list will be posted and you pick one of the books this other CFD friend has put on their list and so forth. If you would like to participate, the sign up thread is also 'pinned' in this monthly challenges section.
HTH

Charlene, we keep our reading challenges in the archives near the bottom of the Discussions page. They're archived by year in Archived Reading Challenges folders.

Thanks Andrea I will take a look!

Kate wrote: "thank you Charlene, these are some good ideas! I'm going to use your 2 list idea for the author match game as a level-up kind of idea!"

That reminds me! I forgot to mention that I really enjoyed how you created a lot of ways to Level Up for challenges. I couldn't always take advantage of it due to my own time constraints but I felt like it added a little extra fun and challenge!

Kate wrote: "2026 will be an 'author match' year as it was this year . . . I'm glad that this method seems to work well for y'all!"

Hooray! I'll start thinking about my list.

I love this idea that Charlene had:

"Ideas for new monthly challenges or themes:
I’d love to see a “List Challenge,” similar to how we’ve done Author Match and Genre Match. For example, we could each choose a list—like “Most Anticipated 2022 Christian Fiction”—and then pick one book from that list each month."

To add to that idea - We could pick 13 different lists and whichever list # is chosen for the month that is the list that we pick a book from.

Bridget wrote: "I love this idea that Charlene had:

"Ideas for new monthly challenges or themes:
I’d love to see a “List Challenge,” similar to how we’ve done Author Match and Genre Match. For example, we could e..."

I really enjoyed Listopia, so I love that idea and would participate in that suggestion.

Okay . . . you've definitely given me some food for thought here. Right now, the sign-ups for 'Pick for Me' have stalled out, so if I don't have enough lists for Pick by next Monday morning, I think I will put together a 'Listopia Match' challenge for y'all.

I also really enjoyed Listopia and love the ideas discussed.

Kate - a 'Listopia Match' challenge sounds great.

I realized I had posted this in the annual challenge feedback but forgot to post it here.

I would like to propose a new twist on the monthly decades challenge to go with America's 250th, I think it would be fun to have one that looks at significant periods across the 250 years.

This could be done one of two ways:
- by breaking the 250 years into 12 groupings of 20 years (starting in 1790)
- by breaking the 250 years into significant eras/periods such as - Young Republic (1783-1815), Western Expansion, Antebellum Period, Civil War/Reconstruction, Industrial Revolution, Gilded Age, World War I, Roaring Twenties, Great Depression, World War II, Cold War, Space Race/Age

thank you for the suggestion!

Kate, what's the cutoff date for the Pick for Me? I'm playing catch-up on some things this week but could possibly get a list pulled together on Thursday.

Let's say Monday morning (15 December) at 10 AM Mountain Time.

Perfect. Thank you!

Mulling things over. What would you think of a 'Pick a List for Me' challenge? This would combine the Pick for Me and the Listopia challenges.
Rather than giving a list of 10 books with 2025/2026 pub years, you would give me . . . say 5 different Listopia lists that would be 'featured' to choose from during your month?

Ooh, I love that!

Kate wrote: "Mulling things over. What would you think of a 'Pick a List for Me' challenge? This would combine the Pick for Me and the Listopia challenges.
Rather than giving a list of 10 books with 2025/2026 p..."

I really like that idea! I would participate for sure.

Kate wrote: "Mulling things over. What would you think of a 'Pick a List for Me' challenge? This would combine the Pick for Me and the Listopia challenges.
Rather than giving a list of 10 books with 2025/2026 p..."

I also love this idea. I would definitely participate.

Either way sounds great. Looking forward to the new challenges

how does listopia work?