Theme: exchanging with friends

At least in my opinion, there is nothing more frustrating than absolutely loving a book but having no one to talk to about it. This is especially terrible when it is a lesser known book so you can’t even turn to the internet when none of your friends have read the book.

With this month’s challenge, the aim is to fight this nightmare by exchanging your favourite books with friends. Who knows, maybe the recommendations of your friends will end up being your new favourites? Perhaps you will even continue exchanging books afterwards as you discovered that it is a lot more fun if your friends know the books you have read and vice-versa.

Worst-case scenario is that you absolutely hate the books your friend likes and wish you had never picked them up… but even then, at least you gave it a try!

Task: This month, approach one of your fellow reader friends (can be online or in person) and ask them to recommend you a book they loved, which you are then going to read.

There are only two rules you should adhere to, however you can of course modify them according to your personal preference:

1. The book you are reading as part of the challenge shouldn’t be a reread.
2. It shouldn’t be a book you were planning to read next anyway, instead maybe a book you are uncertain whether you want to read it or not or maybe even one you never heard of beforehand.

If you are lucky, the person you are asking for a recommendation will also accept a recommendation in return, so you can both benefit.

If simply asking for any book recommendation doesn’t seem like a good way to go, maybe because your tastes differ a lot of there are certain types of books you really want to avoid, you can of course specify what kind of book recommendation you would like to get, and what kind doesn’t work for you.

You may want to…

• ask for a standalone book (in case you don’t like it, you at least have a solid ending…)
• ask for a book that has a maximum number of 500 (or 400, or 300, or whatever suits you) pages, so you aren’t stuck with that book for ages
• exclude certain genres/types of books
• name any triggers you have to avoid getting a recommendation that includes things that trigger you
• …

At the same time, you can also set rules for yourself (or each other) to step out of your comfort zone. Here are some ideas that you can set for yourself or agree on with your reading partner:

• the book should be a genre you don’t typically read/enjoy
• not DNF-ing the recommendation (or agreeing to which page you should at least read before giving up on the book)
• ….

In the end, the main goal of the challenge is to have fun, so feel free to interpret this prompt in whatever way you want.

I hope you enjoy this challenge! In case you want to take part, I have created some templates to document and share your results. They are available on my Instagram account in my Story Highlights. (Simply click on the Instagram icon on my website)

What is a book your friend has always wanted you to read but you still haven’t read it yet?