Play Book Tag discussion

The voting was very definitive for our two 2026 challenges. We wanted to announce them in advance so you can begin preparing and strategizing.

The challenge winners are:

Down the Rabbit Hole - moderated by BooknBlues

and

GrabTag - moderated by Anita

I will be posting the 2026 Challenge and Activity folder later this week so everyone can begin planning, but meanwhile feel free to discuss here.

Down the Rabbit Hole

Have you ever found yourself stumbling across something in your reading repeatedly? Maybe every book you pick up has a rabbit in it and you become interested in rabbits and seek out books with them so you can find out more. You have gone down a rabbit hole in your reading.

We have developed the Down the Rabbit Hole challenge to encourage this type of exploration and hopefully some interesting and enlightening conversations.

- We will need your help in generating ideas for rabbit hole investigations.
- We will randomize your ideas and present 5 Rabbit Holes a month for you to go down.

Here is an example of 1 month’s choices


Rabbit Holes of the month
Horses
City life
Building/architecture/engineering
AI
WWI/The Great War


-We will present 5 Rabbit Holes each month
-Participants may read any or all
-Extra points for matching PBTag of the month
-Extra points for reading 5 books in a Rabbit Hole or reading 1 book for 5 Rabbit Holes.

For those members who find a Rabbit Hole which they like once a quarter they may designate one rabbit hole as their "warren". They can stay in their warren as long as they want, and every book they read in their warren gets them a raffle entry.

GrabTag

This activity would be based on the top tag list for 2026 (the equivalent of the 2025 list below):

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/...

The idea is pretty simple - - read/grab as many tags on the list that you can in the year, but there would be some parameters:

1. Each book would need to be tagged 5 times with the tag(s) in question.

2. A single book can cover up to 10 tags. These tags need to be specified in your challenge tracker before the book is read/reviewed.

3. Each month, people can nominate tags that aren't on the list of the top tags, and we will throw those into a randomizer and 5 additional "lesser used" tags will be available for capture too. These special tags count for double. i.e. if you read one of them, it counts as two.

4. Goal is to read the most tags by end of the year. If you read all the tags by year end, you get 30 participation points and a raffle entry. There will be participation points given for reading 25% and 50% of the tags as well.

At that time, I will also post a link where you may submit your suggestions for tags that do not appear on the list, but that interest you (for #3 above).

Always excited for the next year! It was fun to see this get published just as I was officially completing Compass for 2025.

Here are my 'notes'/thoughts on the upcoming challenges. Always creative and really great.

1. Rabbit Holes, upon rereading was less frightening and scary to me, and feels like possibly doable. I knew it was everyone else's favorite. And seems I can keep my streak of continuing to do all of the challenges. I can find something in there.

2. I voted for Grab Bag, so I am happy it won. Sounds a bit like Subdue the Shelf but with popular tags?

3. TRIM!!!! Now that the 2026 challenges have been announced, I will get my act together on setting up Trim for 2026 - 2028. 24 Books Baby, 2 year cycle, although you may jump in at any time! Stay tuned, new and old players, I got you, Its a comin'!

Sounds like we could start compiling lists of Rabbit Hole topics and less common tags any time, to be ready when they are requested.

Just want everyone to know I'll be running Going Long - reading fat books again in 2026, following same quarterly structure. Perhaps a rabbit hole or grab bag tag will help you move some of those chubby books of the TBR!

Yes!!! * does a happy dance*

I’m so excited about Down the Rabbit Hole as one of the winners.

Ohh.. Trim for 2026 sounds just what I need for all those intimidating books on my TBR.

@Robin - good suggestion. Fran and I were chatting in the Silk Route Adventure Buddy Read which starts off traveling through Mongolia in 1999 which was struggling post-Russian control. Makes me curious to read more books set more recently there and I suggested she make Mongolia one of the Rabbit Hole topics if it wins, LOL.

I’m joining the going long. So many big fat books to read.

Under the Radar Books wrote: "I’m joining the going long. So many big fat books to read."

Wonderful! Take a look at what was posted in first couple of messages in this year's. I'll just be cutting/pasting with minor edits for 2026 once it's time to set that up. No need to do advance planning on what you read unless you want to do so.

Theresa and I know just what to do to piggy-back Anita and Fran and get you guys all set up for 2026 for those who like to add more challenges and features to their plans. We got you guys.

Under the Radar Books wrote: "Yes!!! * does a happy dance*

I’m so excited about Down the Rabbit Hole as one of the winners.

Ohh.. Trim for 2026 sounds just what I need for all those intimidating books on my TBR."

Great to see you jumping in on our activities! Can we call you URB for short? I have sent you a friend request.

If anyone has ideas for the Rabbit Hole please PM me and I will start compiling a list. I will randomize them and we will only use the suggestions once.

So think about what you like.

Quick question about the rabbit hole, does each book read need a particular amount of tags for it to count?

Sorry if I missed that instruction in a previous thread.

Robin, Yes, URB sounds perfect. 😂

Yay! These were ones I voted for, so I'm happy with these. I'll plan to play both.

Guess I'd better also add the tags to our bookshelf. So, for anyone who reads for these new games/challenges and wants to shelve their books, they will be under the game names:

Down the Rabbit Hole and GrabTag.

ETA: Me participating... we'll see how much. I usually aim to read at least one book per game per month, but obviously things got very derailed this year! And I now also enjoy listening to a few podcasts, so that means a bit less reading time.

Under the Radar Books wrote: "Robin, Yes, URB sounds perfect. 😂.."

LOL! I like it!

By the way, many used to (some still do) call me Cin or LC. My real name is Cindy for those who don't know (most do, but maybe there are newer people who don't).

I have a question for the Grab Tag rules: can we count alternate spellings for a given tag towards the 5 times rules?
For example, I saw for the same book: bookclub, book-club and book club. For another humor and humour, and so on.

So happy with these challenges - congrats to our lovely mods for coming up with a range of great options

Algernon (Darth Anyan) wrote: "I have a question for the Grab Tag rules: can we count alternate spellings for a given tag towards the 5 times rules?
For example, I saw for the same book: bookclub, book-club and book club. For an..."

Even though that seems like a very reasonable request, we are usually very strict on the challenges and very lenient on the monthly reads . . .that's because sometimes people will stretch the rules and that makes other participants sad. I'm open to popular opinion though!

My inclination is to be strict because it's not that hard a challenge and the most popular rendition of the tag will be on the list. But again, let's hear the pros and cons and try to make a collective decision.

Robin P wrote: "Sounds like we could start compiling lists of Rabbit Hole topics and less common tags any time, to be ready when they are requested."

For GrabTag, you'll need to see the top 100 list to affirm your tag idea doesn't make the cut, but definitely please be thinking about your suggestions! As soon as I publish the top 100 list, then I will also provide a link where you may submit your ideas!!

Anita wrote: "Algernon (Darth Anyan) wrote: "I have a question for the Grab Tag rules: can we count alternate spellings for a given tag towards the 5 times rules?
For example, I saw for the same book: bookclub, ..."

I had the same question. Are you going to edit the list we are going to use? If you are going to, and you use only one spelling then it should not matter. If you are not going to edit the list, then it should match exactly.

A question about Rabbit Holes. Using the example above, if I choose 'horses' would I just read one book about horses and then move to one of the other choices and read a book on that subject? Or do I read several books on the rabbit hole I pick?

I am excited for GrabTag.

Linda wrote: "A question about Rabbit Holes. Using the example above, if I choose 'horses' would I just read one book about horses and then move to one of the other choices and read a book on that subject? Or do..."

You choose your rate and interest. You could read just one book or you could read one book in each or 5 books in one area.

Given that Goodreads is going to shortly discontinue personal messaging, please send me your ideas for Down the Rabbit Hole ASAP.

I've only received one person's suggestions and need more.

Booknblues wrote: "Given that Goodreads is going to shortly discontinue personal messaging, please send me your ideas for Down the Rabbit Hole ASAP.

I've only received one person's suggestions and need more."

Fran - you could set up a Google submission form such as Anita used in Play Harder, and it can be used all year.

I sent you some suggestions

I've received a good number of suggestions. If you have a few that you would like to see added, pm me while you can.

We really do have enough, but you may have something we all would like.

Super excited for these!!

As an aside, the FIFA world cup has been chosen. Gifted article, not sure it will work:
https://wapo.st/4rGGE3W

GrabTag

Here is a link to the top tag list for 2026. Shortly, I will be posting a form where you can nominate "special tags" that will be randomly selected and added to the list each month.

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/...