"Read Harder," Take Two

Last year I enjoyed taking on Book Riot's 2015 "Read Harder" challenge, nearly hitting every mark in the challenge. (See the full details of my wrangle with the challenge here.) So I was excited to see that they were doing a second year of the challenge, and decided to start right away in January this time.

Despite this early start, I ended up doing less well with hitting all the marks than I did last year. Changes in my career and personal life resulted in reduced free time for reading, a shorter commute (less time for audiobooks), and a book club responsibility that dictated some of my reading choices for me. So out of the 24 categories, I was only able to meet 16 -- more than half but not particularly great. What can I say other than there's always next year...

Here are the 24 categories from the 2016 challenge and the books (with links to my reviews) that I read for each category. For the most part, I tried not to repeat books even if they fell into multiple categories, instead picking the "best fit" category in which to place them.

Yes, once again, I stretched here and there to meet a goal, doing things like including children's literature. But again, if you don't like children's literature, I'm not sure that we can be friends. :)

1) Read a horror book

• Red Dragon by Thomas Harris
• Ghosts by Alvin Schwartz

2) Read a nonfiction book about science

• The Mind's Eye by Oliver Sacks

3) Read a collection of essays

• Is Everyone Hanging Out Without Me? by Mindy Kaling

A bit of a stretch, but I did view this memoir as more of a loose collection of essays than a strict beginning, middle, and end kind of book.

4) Read a book out loud to someone else

• The Book with No Pictures by B.J. Novak
• The Day the Crayons Quit by Drew Daywalt and Oliver Jeffers
• The Day the Crayons Came Home by Drew Daywalt and Oliver Jeffers

Perhaps not what the designers of this challenge were thinking of, but I read these books aloud several times to numerous audiences and loved throwing myself into the various voices every time! (And I also read aloud many, many, many other children's books throughout the year.)

5) Read a middle grade novel

• The Goblin's Puzzle: Being the Adventures of a Boy with No Name and Two Girls Called Alice by Andrew Chilton
• Josh Baxter Levels Up by Gavin Brown 

6) Read a biography (not memoir or autobiography)

• The Silent Woman: Sylvia Plath and Ted Hughes by Janet Malcolm

7) Read a dystopian or post-apocalyptic novel

• Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut
• The Time Machine by H.G. Wells

8) Read a book originally published in the decade you were born

• Red Dragon by Thomas Harris
  

9) Listen to an audiobook that has won an Audie Award

• Yes Please by Amy Poehler

10) Read a book over 500 pages long

• The Art of Fielding by Chad Harding*

11) Read a book under 100 pages

• The Pilgrim's Progress by John Bunyan

12) Read a book by or about a person that identifies as transgender

13) Read a book that is set in the Middle East

14) Read a book that is by an author from Southeast Asia

15) Read a book of historical fiction set before 1900

• Longbourn by Jo Baker
• The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford by Ron Hansen*

16) Read the first book in a series by a person of color

17) Read a non-superhero comic that debuted in the last three years

• The Battle of the Bulge by Wayne Vansant
  
• Patience by Daniel Clowes
• In Real Life by Cory Doctorow and Jen Wang
• What Lives in the Woods by Joe Ruff

18) Read a book that was adapted into a movie, then watch the movie. Debate which is better

• Death Comes to Pemberley by P.D. James & Death Comes to Pemberley, starring Matthew Rhys, Anna Maxwell Martin, Matthew Goode, and Jenna Coleman [Screen version better]
• Laura by Vera Caspary & Laura, starring Gene Tierney, Dana Andrews, Clifton Webb, and Vincent Price [Book version better]

 19) Read a nonfiction book about feminism or dealing with feminist themes

20) Read a book about religion (fiction or nonfiction)

• The Cow in the Parking Lot: A Zen Approach to Overcoming Anger by Leonard Scheff and Susan Edmiston

21) Read a book about politics, in your country or another (fiction or nonfiction)

22) Read a food memoir

23) Read a play

• Copenhagen by Michael Frayn

24) Read a book with a main character that has a mental illness

• Z: A Novel of Zelda Fitzgerald by Therese Anne Fowler

I must admit I wasn't necessarily thrilled with some of the individual touch points for this year's challenge. While last year had some arguably too-broad topics (e.g., graphic novel), this year's challenge became arbitrarily too specific (e.g., non-superhero graphic novel published within the last three years). I appreciate that the challenge's designers were looking to broaden people's understanding of graphic novels beyond Batman and Superman, but the "debuted in the last three years" part was a silly addition in my opinion. What's the point of that? I read a ton of great non-superhero comics this year that I couldn't include here because they were published in 2006 or 2012 or what-have-you. Finding ones that actually fit the category were just dumb luck after picking up graphic novels I was going to read anyway, and it turns out I liked some of those ones less than the others that were slightly older.

Some other categories were also a little too specific for my liking (e.g., read the first book in a series by a person of color -- why a series? why the first book?), but overall I like the idea of pushing oneself to read books that might otherwise have passed you by because you were too busy reading the same old, same old stuff you usually do. Once again, I'll be looking forward to next year's challenge and seeing what new reads lie ahead.

*Books began, but not finished, in 2016.