I am a big fan of reading challenges. Every year I do the Goodreads Challenge, where you set a goal for how many books you want to read that year, and it keeps track for you. I’ve already completed my goal for that challenge this year, so I went searching for a new reading goal. The website Book Riot, a great website all about books, has their own challenge called the Read Harder Challenge. It lists 24 reading goals for people to check off. I really like their reading goal choices, because if you try to reach all 24 goals, you’ve read pretty widely in terms of genre, time, culture, and types of publishing. Below you’ll find the complete list from Book Riot, along with suggested reads for each category. Maybe you can use some of these (either the goals or the books) as suggestions for when you pick up your next great read!
A book written by someone when they were under the age of 25- The Tiger’s Wife by Téa Obreht
A book written by someone when they were over the age of 65- Dear Life by Alice Munro
A collection of short stories (either by one person or an anthology by many people)- Make Something Up: Stories You Can’t Unread by Chuck Palahniuk
A book published by an indie press- A Girl Is A Half-formed Thing by Eimear McBride
A book by or about someone that identifies as LGBTQ- Outlaw Marriages by Rodger Streitmatter
A book by a person whose gender is different from your own-Last Bus to Wisdom by Ivan Doig OR The Girl From the Garden by Parnaz Foroutan
A book that takes place in Asia- Patriotism by Yukio Mishima
A book by an author from Africa- Wizard of the Crow by Ngũgĩ wa Thiongʼo
A book that is by or about someone from an indigenous culture (Native Americans, Aboriginals, etc.)- Carpentaria by Alexis Wright
A microhistory- The Telling Room: A Tale of Love, Betrayal, Revenge, and the World’s Greatest Piece of Cheese by Michael Paterniti
A YA novel- Paperweight by Meg Haston
A sci-fi novel- The Martian by Andy Weir
A romance novel- Crystal Cove by Lisa Kleypas
A National Book Award, Man Booker Prize or Pulitzer Prize winner from the last decade- The Flamethrowers by Rachel Kushner
A book that is a retelling of a classic story (fairytale, Shakespearian play, classic novel, etc.)- The Girls at the Kingfisher Club by Genevieve Valentine
An audiobook- Shadow Puppets by Orson Scott Card
A collection of poetry- Dog Songs by Mary Oliver
A book that someone else has recommended to you- A Man Called Ove by Fredrik Backman
A book that was originally published in another language- Notes from Underground by Fydor Dostoyevsky
A graphic novel, a graphic memoir or a collection of comics of any kind-Revival by Tim Seeley
A book that you would consider a guilty pleasure- The Husband’s Secret by Liane Moriarty
A book published before 1850- Lady Susan by Jane Austen
A book published this year- So You’ve Been Publicly Shamed by Jon Ronson
A self-improvement book (can be traditionally or non-traditionally considered “self-improvement”)- How to Be Parisian Wherever You Are by Anne Berest
[…] 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! […]