The #75Booked Challenge
It's like 75 Hard but for readers 📚
One too many clicks on fitness videos that were going viral had my youtube algorithm sucked into the 75 Hard vlog vortex earlier this year. It seems to trend at the start of the year because, well, new year resolutions. Then trended again, which is when I found it, around the middle of the year because of people who had to restart and didn’t finish the challenge until summertime.
Of course this was a challenge started by a male influencer, and of course it’s controversial as heck for myriad reasons, but after watching hours of content, even I started to think I should try it until our friend K snapped me out of it. 😅 When the haze lifted, a little more digging revealed there are some popular variations on the 75 Hard challenge to make it more accessible, like so:
And it has also escaped containment from the fitness tags and been reinvented for other things as well: I’ve seen a style version and the book version I’m about to talk about here.
The #75Booked tag came to my attention via IG user thisstoryaintover whom I follow for her fabulous bookish content. She started her version of the challenge recently and I’ve been watching her daily vlogs about them (super excellent, go check them out!) She, in turn, credited emilypaigebooks for creating the reader version of 75 Hard. Emily explains the rules of the challenge here:
Complete two 45-minute reading sessions daily (one of them being NOT in bed).
Finish a water bottle during each session.
Log all reading in a physical journal.
No purchasing books - all books must already be owned, bought secondhand, or rented through a library service.
Now I have failed just about every challenge I tried in this year of our love, Pedro Pascal, that is 2025. (Please don’t ask about my status on #ReadMyShelf2025 😢 I know it’s been 4 months.) But the eternal optimist in me says that I should totally start 75 Booked at an auspicious time, like, say, 75 days before the start of the Winter Olympics 2026? 😆 Which is November 23rd, 2025, according to the day counters.
Great idea? Horrible? YOU DECIDE!