Every month at Tough Guy Book Club we issue our Goons a Monthly Challenge. It gets you to do something new, something difficult, and it adds a page to your story. The final challenge for 2025 was to go to a charity shop, opportunity shop or down-market second-hand store, take a photo of yourself in front of the books, and post it in our Pool Hall Facebook group with the tag #DropShop. We didn’t care if you bought anything (let’s face it, it could just be shit on the shelves) but we wanted to see that you went and gave them a chance. Who knows, maybe you’ll find something amazing, rare, or just special to you.

The Pool Hall soon started filling up with pictures of Goons standing in front of sagging shelves of dusty paperbacks, holding up the weird, the terrible, or the genuinely good. Many took the opportunity for a quick bike ride, others made a day of it hitting up every op-shop in their neighbourhood. Some took the whole family along, and a couple made some questionable fashion choices once finished with the books.

Great work to the Goons who paired the Drop Shop Challenge with the end-of-year Book Swap. Our annual tradition where we get the name an address of another TGBC member somewhere in the world and send them a book. Book Swap was never meant to be about spending a lot of money buying a brand new hardcover to send (but you can if you want), it’s about getting a favourite book into the hands of someone else to experience, maybe it's a battered book from your own shelf, but it will still be appreciated. A special Drop Shop find is in full spirit of Book Swap. 

It has been another great year of challenges at Tough Guy Book Club, and it was good to see another one being taken up in force by the Goons around the world. Cheers to one more challenge completed, another page added, and to the end of a great year of TGBC.

By Desmond Doyle