Image by Sincerely Media from Unsplash. Edited in Affinity Photo.
I did The Calm Scribe’s reading challenge last year (see my planned book list and my results post). I was excited because it’s a list of 26 types of books, and I get to pick which specific books to read.
Why not just say “read 26 books this year” and go? Because I tend to choose the same types of books. (If you look at my Kindle content, you can tell exactly when I switched from my crime thriller phase to my fantasy phase.) With Calm Scribe’s challenge (props to his wife, who creates the list with him), it challenges you to look at new genres and authors, and even invites you to revisit old favorites.
Check out The Calm Scribe’s Reading Challenge for 2022 here. You’re not expected to have your books for the year all picked out, but I function better that way. If you’re curious to see what I plan (hope) to read this year, read on. (The asterisks indicate books that were on last year’s list that I never read.)
The Reading Challenge List
- About climate change: Addressing the Climate Crisis: Local Action in Theory and Practice edited by Candice Howarth, et al.
- Written by an Indigenous author: Life Among the Piutes: Their Wrongs and Claims by Sarah Winnemucca Hopkins.
- Written by a BIPOC or LGTBQ+ author: The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison.
- Set in the Middle East: About the Night by Anat Talshir*.
- For children: Dinosaur Valley by N.S. Esther.
- Published in 2021/2022: Perhaps She Will Die by Joe Scipione.
- By an Oceanic author: Golden Blood by Melissa Pearl*.
- In a genre you don’t usually read: Flatland—A Romance of Many Dimensions by A Square (Edwin A. Abbott).
- Of Poetry: Edgar Allan Poe’s Complete Poetical Works*.
- You can read in a day: Phantom of the Opera by Gaston Leroux*.
- Over 500 pages long: The Three Musketeers by Alexandre Dumas*.
- A classic you should have read by now: The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde.
- An audiobook: Alice in Blunderland: An Iridescent Dream by John Kendrick Bangs.
- A graphic novel or Manga: X-Men Free Comic Book Day 2020 story by Jonathan Hickman and Tini Howard.
- A nonfiction bestseller: Never Have Your Dog Stuffed: And Other Things I’ve Learned by Alan Alda.
- From a recommendation: We Do This ‘Til We Free Us by Mariame Kaba*.
- An author’s debut novel: Famished by Meghan O’Flynn*.
- A book you read and loved a long time ago: Through Violet Eyes by Stephen Woodworth.
- Short stories: Look at the Birdie by Kurt Vonnegut*.
- With one of the five W’s in the title: Polk, Harper, & Who by Panayotis Cacoyannis.
- By a recently deceased author: Feminist Theory: From Margin to Center by bell hooks.
- That has been translated: This Life or the Next by Demian Vitanza.
- A book “everyone else has read”: 1984 by George Orwell.
- A sci-fi written by a female author: The Dispossessed by Ursula K. LeGuin.
- A Nordic Noir: The Girl Who Played with Fire by Stieg Larsson.
There are also two bonus books this year:
- Found in an independent or second-hand bookstore: No Disrespect by Sister Souljah.
- By an indie/self-published author: A Death at Dawn by Gabrielle Grey.
Books I Started Last Year and Hope to Finish This Year
- Rage Becomes Her by Soraya Chemaly.
- The Fifth Season by N. K. Jemisin.
- The Forging of the American Empire by Sidney Lens.
- Stamped from the Beginning by Ibram X. Kendi. (Actually, I started this one in 2020. I may have forgotten about it.)
Where I Got My Books
Most of these, I already had. Some have been collecting digital dust on my Kindle for years. I purchased others during the pandemic. (One was a Christmas gift. Thanks, Dad!) The rest I got from:
- Amazon (I’d search for what I needed, then sort by lowest to highest price. Some were free; one was $1.)
- PDFDrive.com has PDFs, MOBI, and EPUB files for a bunch of books. (I try to only download public domain/creative commons works, or books I’ve purchased but need in a more accessible format. Content creators–especially marginalized content creators–deserve to be paid for their work.)
- Project Gutenberg has loads of public domain books to choose from.
- I got my audiobook from LibriVox.org. It’s all free and public domain, but the navigation leaves something to be desired. (I’ve already listened to my free audiobook from Audible.)
What are your reading goals for the year? @ me on Twitter and let me know! Here’s to another year of good reads.