Book Riot is a great website for book reviews in print, podcasts, and video form, but one thing I really like about them is that they host a yearly book challenge called Read Harder. I posted about the first one last year with book suggestions for each task, so I thought I’d do the same for this year’s list! I like their list because it challenges you to read widely, in a way that you may not have otherwise.
Read a horror book– The Damned by Tarn Richardson
Read a nonfiction book about science– Stuff Matters: Exploring the Marvelous Materials That Shape Our Man-made World by Mark Miodownik
Read a collection of essays–The Opposite of Loneliness by Marina Keegan
Read a middle grade novel–Blackbird Fly by Erin Entrada Kelly
Read a biography (not memoir or autobiography)–Maggie Smith: A Biography by Michael Coveney
Read a dystopian or post-apocalyptic novel–Anthem by Ayn Rand
Read a book originally published in the decade you were born–American Psycho by Bret Easton Ellis (I was born in the 90s, but choose one from your own birth decade!)
Listen to an audiobook that has won an Audie Award–The Girl With All the Gifts by M.R. Carey
Read a book over 500 pages long–The Luminaries by Eleanor Catton
Read a book under 100 pages–Ethan Frome by Edith Wharton
Read a book by or about a person that identifies as transgender–Some Assembly Required: The Not-So-Secret Life of a Transgender Teen by Arin Andrews
Read a book that is set in the Middle East–Girls of Riyadh by Rajaa Alsanea
Read a book that is by an author from Southeast Asia–Ilustrado by Miguel Syjuco
Read a book of historical fiction set before 1900–Epitaph: A Novel of the O.K. Corral by Mary Doria Russell
Read the first book in a series by a person of color–The Fifth Season by N.K. Jemisin
Read a non-superhero comic that debuted in the last three years–The New Deal by Jonathan Case
Read a book that was adapted into a movie, then watch the movie. Debate which is better–The Revenant by Michael Punke
Read a nonfiction book about feminism or dealing with feminist themes–How to Be a Woman by Caitlin Moran
Read a book about religion (fiction or nonfiction)–The Road Home: A Contemporary Exploration of the Buddhist Path by Ethan Nichtern
Read a book about politics, in your country or another (fiction or nonfiction)–World Order by Henry Kissinger
Read a food memoir–Voracious: A Hungry Reader Cooks Her Way through Great Books by Cara Nicoletti
Read a play–No Exit and Three Other Plays by Jean-Paul Sartre
Read a book with a main character that has a mental illness–The Man Who Couldn’t Stop: OCD and the True Story of a Life Lost in Thought by David Adam
