Book Talk Reading Challenge & Book Bingo, November '25 || Sign-up OPEN

Hello Book maniacs!

Presenting The Reading Challenge for November 2025!

With Lizzie away, Shibani and I are stepping in to guide you through this month’s reading journey!

Most of you know the drill by now, but posting the Rules again nonetheless!

📌 Sign-up Process

As usual, sign-up on the thread telling us how many books you will be able to read in November, also mentioning if you can volunteer as captain. You will then be placed in one of 3 teams.

1 to 5 books

6 to 10 books

11 to 20 books

20 to 35 books

More than 35 books (up-to 50)

Only those who read a minimum of 200 pages will receive the participation (tiered) badge.

Books in any language, any genre are allowed provided they are chapter books. Graphic novels, comics etc., that are heavy on illustrations and low on text aren’t allowed. Books must be a minimum of 60 pages to qualify. This doesn’t apply if you’re continuing a book (or FF) from the previous month. Plays are okay, but we aren’t including poetry at this juncture.

We will also allow FFs/ Online fiction of 18,000+ words OR 60 + pages. Shorter fics can be allowed provided they are logged as the same entry.

For example: If you read 3 FFs that are 6000+ words / 20 pages each, you will log them as one entry of 18000/ 60 pages.

Please note: You can log a maximum of 5 fics in this manner. Which means if you are reading only 10 page (or shorter) fics, they won’t qualify. You will have to read one longer fic so that 5 fics will total to 60 pages.

ARC and beta-reading will also be included. However, reading or proofreading your own work will not count.

All book formats will count: Physical books, e-books, and Audiobooks.

Log only the books you finish or DNF from November 1, 2025 to November 31, 2025.

Log books within 3 days of finishing / DNF-ing them. Please DO NOT log pages that you intend to read or page counts of books that are in your TBR. ONLY FINISHED PAGES SHOULD BE LOGGED!

Add the book title/ author/ format and page count to the post you have reserved in your team’s thread (which will be posted by your captain). You will edit this post as you keep reading. You will also be adding the same page counts in the Google sheet that will be shared in your team’s thread.

IMPORTANT!!!! We are seeing that some members sign up and then do not complete their logs and then it’s up to the captain or the organizers to chase them to get it done. Hence we are making it mandatory that logs need to be completed in both excel sheet and the Team threads for your pages to be counted! If there is a discrepancy, your logs will not be counted and you will not receive the participation badge either.

As a default, please use Amazon’s page counts for logging pages. For ebooks and audiobooks, use Kindle page counts. For paperbacks and hardcovers, use paperback page counts. If you cannot find the book on Amazon, you can use other legitimate sources.

For online fiction and FFs, use word count divided by 300 to log pages.

If you DNF, or if you are continuing a book from September, log only the pages you’ve read. You can use percentage read (at the point of DNF) for ebooks, actual page numbers for paperbacks and for audiobooks, log pages based on number of hours read (40 pages per hour at normal speed)

You are responsible for tracking your own reading. Please keep an accurate log of the books you finish. We trust you to be honest. And while we understand the spirit of competitiveness, please also remember that the Reading Challenge is designed to motivate you to read more and beat your own personal counts, so please don’t cheat on your logs!

Lastly, have fun! Read what you can, how much you can, when you can!

Tags: oh_nakhrewaali

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When you sign up, please don’t forget to mention whether you’ll be joining Bingo or not. We’re also looking for volunteers to be team captains this month! Ideally, we’d love captains who have participated in BTRC for at least three months, played last month’s Bingo, and will be playing Bingo again this time.

The Bingo card will go live at 11:59 PM IST on October 31st, so the deadline for signing up is 31 October 2025, 10.59 PM IST. Late sign-ups for Book Bingo will not be accepted, so please be sure to sign up on time!

1. oh_nakhrewaali (11-20)
2. missFiesty_69 (11-20)
3. sambhavami (1-5)
4. Gags05 (1-5)
5. mayu.x (1-5)
6. Minionite (1-5)
7. TheMinion (1-5)
8. wallflowergirl (1-5)
9. Swetha-Sai (1-5)
10. So-So (1-5)
11. Leprechaun (1-5) BB
    
12. mushat (1-5) BB
13. DazzlingDiya (6-10) BB
14. minakrish (11-20) BB

We are back with Book Bingo hosted by yours truly.

But this time there will be a slight change in how Book Bingo will be played so please read the rules below carefully and feel free to ask any questions or bring up any concerns you may have. I will note some questions into Q&A for easy access.

For the purposes of bingo, only novels/books that are at least 200 pages long will count (this is the typical definition of the length of a novel). Both ebooks and print versions work as long as the length comes from either Amazon or Goodreads.

Please note that books read in October or started in October will not count for Book Bingo.

1 book can only count towards 1 task. You cannot use 1 book to mark off multiple tasks. Additionally, if 2 people read the same book, only 1 person's book will count towards Book Bingo.

As a team you can decide how you want to complete bingo. Points will be awarded as follows:

For every completed task, teams will earn 10 points. Only the first 2 teams completing each task will earn these points.

For every line/colour completed by Nov 7, every team can earn 50 points.

For every line/colour completed by Nov 15, every team can earn 25 points.

For every line/colour completed by Nov 30, every team can will earn 10 points.

For a full house by Nov 15, every team can earn 100 points.

For a full house by Nov 30, every team can earn 50 points.

Teams can choose any 5 lines/colours to complete from 5 rows, 2 diagonals, 5 columns, and 5 colours. After that you will only earn points for the full house. This applies even if you complete full house before tagging me in a completed line. For example, if you complete 3 lines/colours by Nov 7 and then complete full house by Nov 15, you could earn 3 x 50 + 2 x 25 + 100 = 300 points.

Each person in the team can do only a maximum of 4 tasks. If by Nov 3 you are finding that someone in your team is not responding, then you can approach me and if you can show me that this is putting undue pressure on someone else, then I will increase the maximum to 5 tasks for your team. As an example, by undue pressure I mean if someone signed up for 1 to 5 books and only wants to read 2 books and is being forced into reading a third book then that would count. No one should feel like this bingo is a pressure game or forced reading. This of course depends on the number of people in your team playing bingo. If you have 7 people and 1 person can't do 4 tasks, then that's different than if you have 9 people and 1 person can't do 4 tasks.

There are bonus points to be won.

(1) If a line/colour is completed by 5 different members of the team (as in each person does 1 of the tasks), then the team can earn a bonus 50 points per line/colour up to the 5 that you are allowed above.

(2) If every member of the team completes approximately an equal number of tasks, then the team can earn a bonus 200 points. This will be judged mostly based on number of pages. For example, if 1 person does 2 tasks of 600 page books but another person does 4 tasks of 300 page books, then that's about equal. Of course, this will be adjusted to ensure no one is feeling undue pressure to complete extra tasks or bigger books just to get these bonus points.

(3) Only for the first line/colour completed, will these bonus points be awarded. These bonus points will work as follows - the first team to complete any 1 line/colour will get a bonus 100 points, the second team will get 50 bonus points, and the third team will get a thenga. The same line/colour can be completed by all teams as in there's no requirement for 1 team to try and complete a different line/colour if 1 team has already completed it. The points will just be awarded on a first-come, first-serve basis in terms of who tags me! If you complete first, but don't tag me, I won't see it so I can't award you points!

Every time you finish a line/colour or the full house, please tag me in one post with a link to all the finished tasks. Finished tasks need to be posted on IF and so does the tag.

Do not tag me in every completed task. In the bingo game I just finished, I was tagged 200+ times in the span of 3 days to the point where I just started ignoring the tags.

And remember all these books do count towards your regular reading challenge!

The bingo card is not the same as last time. In fact, most of the tasks have been changed and positions have been moved. So please do not start dividing the tasks in your team in advance. It won't help.

The bingo card will be revealed on Oct 31st exactly at 11:59 PM IST. While for some people this may mean that the bingo card will show up earlier than Nov 1, for most the card will basically appear on Nov 1.

Have any questions or concerns, please do let me know here.

All participants will get a fresh Book Bingo badge!

Q1: What does the Book Bingo badge look like?

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Pathaake leke aa jaao saare🎇

Originally posted by: oh_nakhrewaali

Pathaake leke aa jaao saare🎇

If you are tagged more than once, apologies 🫣

Please GA/FA

1-5 books, without bingo please :)

1-5 books, and without Bingo..

Also, Happy Diwali everyone! 🎇 🪔