Image by Karolina Grabowska on Pexels.
Welcome to my 3rd year of participating in the Calm Scribe Reading Challenge. If you’re not familiar with it, it’s a list of 26 types of books, and participants get to pick which specific books to read.
I love this because:
- 26 books is a fairly realistic goal (I actually reached it last year!)
- It inspires reaching out of comfort genres to explore new authors and stories.
There’s no rule saying you have to have your books for the year all picked out, but I function better that way. Below is my plan. (The asterisks indicate books from previous years’ lists that I haven’t gotten to yet.)
The 2023 Reading Challenge List
- About climate change: Addressing the Climate Crisis: Local Action in Theory and Practice edited by Candice Howarth, et al.*
- By an Indigenous author: Geronimo’s Story of His Life.
- By a BIPOC or LGBTQ+ author: Feminist Theory: From Margin to Center by bell hooks.*
- Published or set in the 1800s: Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl by Harriet Jacobs.
- For young adults: UnEnchanted by Chanda Hahn.
- Published in 2022/2023: Once Upon Another Time: Fresh Tales from the Far Side of Fantasy by J. Moody, et al.
- By an African author: The Greater Freedom: Life as a Middle Eastern Woman Outside the Stereotypes by Alya Mooro.
- In a genre you don’t usually read: A People’s Guide to Capitalism: An Introduction to Marxist Economics by Hadas Thier.
- Poetry: freedom. by Destiny S. Harris.
- Under 200 pages: First Meeting by Cat Hartliebe.
- Over 500 pages: The Three Musketeers by Alexandre Dumas.*
- Will “make you more cultured”: An American Princess: The Many Lives of Allene Tew by Annejet van der Zijl.
- Won an award: All This I Will Give to You by Dolores Redondo.
- A graphic novel or Manga: Play it Again by Anthony LaFauci, illustrated by Stephen Todd.
- Just for fun: Never Have Your Dog Stuffed: And Other Things I’ve Learned by Alan Alda.*
- Received as a gift: The End of Scarcity by Kristen Ragusin.
- A debut novel: Famished by Meghan O’Flynn.*
- You own but have not read: Why I’m No Longer Talking to White People About Race by Eddi Reno Lodge.
- Of short stories or essays: Look at the Birdie by Kurt Vonnegut.*
- By an immigrant or about the immigrant experience: The Refugees by Viet Thanh Nguyen.
- Published posthumously: Autobiography of Malcolm X.
- Has been translated: This Life or the Next by Demian Vitanza.*
- “You should have read by now”: Women, Race, and Class by Angela Davis.
- Sci-fi written by a female author: The Dispossessed by Ursula K. LeGuin.*
- Relevant to a month’s celebrated event: The Hilarious World of Depression by John Moe (Mental Health Month – May).
- A gothic, horror, or thriller: All Good Deeds by Stacy Green.*
Bonus Books
You may recognize these bonus books as the ones I obviously didn’t get to last 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 Previously and Really Mean to Finish
- The Forging of the American Empire by Sidney Lens.
- Stamped from the Beginning by Ibram X. Kendi.
And, of course, there are still literally hundreds of books on my Kindle—and probably about a dozen on my bookshelf—that I plan to read, hopefully sooner rather than later. So expect another year of me going off-script.
Where I Got My Books
This year, I bought four from Amazon, one was a gift from my mom, and the rest I already had. When I do go looking for books:
- I search Amazon for what I need, then sort by lowest to highest price.
- 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.
- LibriVox.org has free and public domain audiobooks. Fair warning: the navigation leaves something to be desired.
What are your reading goals for the year? @ me on Twitter and let me know! Here’s to another year of good reads.