2018 Master Reading List

I can't lie... This is probably one of my favorite posts of the entire year. I get to sit down, pick out all the reading challenges I plan on participating in, then make a list of all the books that fit the prompts for each. I'm like a kid on Christmas.

This year, I'll be doing five challenges in addition to reading books that I review for publishers and the ones I pick up along the way. At the end of the year, I'm hoping to read a hundred and fifty books. This total is subject to increase as the year goes on. Like previous years, I'll be doing the Popsugar Reading Challenge. This one always has a lot of really fun prompts and I enjoy every one of them.

I'm also going to be doing Book Riot's Read Harder Challenge again. It has fewer prompts, but they are much tougher than Popsugar's and last year, I was able to diversify my bookshelf so much by reading so many books written by people of color, women, and people in the LGBTQ community. In addition to ten more books from the Back to University list and five ancient classics and Greek mythology works, I'll be jumping in on a new challenge in the Rainbow Readathon with Mia Sutton.

As always, I'll be updating this list through the year as I check books off. So, buckle up. Here we go!

Popsugar Reading Challenge (Count: 50/50)

1. A book made into a movie you've already seen - Life of Pi (Yann Martel)

2. True crime - In Cold Blood (Truman Capote)

3. The next book in a series you started - Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets (J.K. Rowling)

4. A book involving a heist - Doors Open (Ian Rankin)

5. Nordic noir - The Man Who Smiled (Henning Mankell)

6. A novel based on a real person - The Invention of Wings (Sue Monk Kidd)

7. A book set in a country that fascinates you - The Luminaries (Eleanor Catton)

8. A book with a time of day in the title - The Ninth Hour (Alice McDermott)

9. A book about a villain or antihero - The Young Elites (Marie Lu)

10. A book about death or grief - The End of Your Life Book Club (Will Schwalbe)

11. A book with a female author who uses a male pseudonym - Middlemarch (George Eliot)

12. A book with an LGBTQ+ protagonist - Carry On (Rainbow Rowell)

13. A book that is also a stage play or musical - The Phantom of the Opera (Gaston Leroux)

14. A book by an author of a different ethnicity than you - Stay With Me (Ayobami Adebayo)

15. A book about feminism - All the Single Ladies (Rebecca Traister)

16. A book about mental health - All the Ugly and Wonderful Things (Bryn Greenwood)

17. A book you borrowed or that was given to you - Beyond Boundaries (John Townsend)

18. A book by two authors - The Obsidian Chamber (Douglas Preston & Lincoln Child)

19. A book about or involving a sport - Solo (Hope Solo)

20. A book by a local author - Hour Game (David Baldacci)

21. A book with your favorite color in the title - A Spool of Blue Thread (Anne Tyler)

22. A book with alliteration in the title - Peter Pan (J.M. Barrie)

23. A book about time travel - A Wrinkle in Time (Madeleine L'Engle)

24. A book with a weather element in the title - Still Life With Tornado (A.S. King)

25. A book set at sea - The Shipping News (Annie Proulx)

26. A book with an animal in the title - Chase the Lion (Mark Batterson)

27. A book set on a different planet - The Martian (Andy Weir)

28. A book with song lyrics in the title - She's Come Undone (Wally Lamb)

29. A book about or set on Halloween - The Halloween Tree (Ray Bradbury)

30. A book with characters who are twins - Whiskey & Charlie (Annabel Smith)

31. A book mentioned in another book - The Secret Garden (Frances Hodgson Burnett)

32. A book from a celebrity book club - Shadow and Bone (Leigh Bardugo)

33. A childhood classic you've never read - Matilda (Roald Dahl)

34. A book that's published in 2018 - The Immortalists (Chloe Benjamin)

35. A past Goodreads Choice Awards winner - Beneath the Surface (John Hargrove)

36. A book set in the decade you were born - Go Ask Alice (Beatrice Sparks)

37. A book you meant to read in 2017 but didn't get to - Between the World and Me (Ta-Nehisi Coates)

38. A book with an ugly cover - The Long Goodbye (Raymond Chandler)

39. A book that involves a bookstore or library - Mr. Penumbra's 24-Hour Bookstore (Robin Sloan)

40. Your favorite prompt fromprevious Popsugar reading challenges - The Girls (Emma Cline)

41. A bestseller from the year you graduated high school - The Partner (John Grisham)

42. A cyberpunk book - Snow Crash (Neal Stephenson)

43. A book that was being read by a stranger in a public place - Giant of the Senate (Al Franken)

44. A book tied to your ancestry - The Immortal Irishman (Timothy Egan)

45. A book with a fruit or vegetable in the title - The House on Mango Street (Sandra Cisneros)

46. An allegory - The Screwtape Letters (C.S. Lewis)

47. A book by an author with the same first or last name as you - An American Sickness (Elisabeth Rosenthal)

48. A microhistory - Salt (Mark Kurlansky)

49. A book about a problem facing society today - The Hate U Give (Angie Thomas)

50. A book recommended by someone else taking the Popsugar reading challenge - Room (Emma Donoghue)

Book Riot Read Harder Challenge (Count: 24/24)

1. A book published posthumously - The Mysterious Stranger (Mark Twain)

2. A book of true crime - Helter Skelter (Vincent Bugliosi)

3. A classic of genre fiction - A Study in Scarlet (Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

4. A comic written and illustrated by the same person - Smile (Raina Telgemeier)

5. A book set in or about one of the five BRICS countries - The Brothers Karamazov (Fyodor Dostoevsky)

6. A book about nature - Silent Spring (Rachel Carson)

7. A western - True Grit (Charles Portis)

8. A comic written or illustrated by a person of color - Quiet Girl in a Noisy World (Debbie Tung)

9. A book of colonial or postcolonial literature - Things Fall Apart (Chinua Achebe)

10. A romance novel by or about a person of color - The Septembers of Shiraz (Dalia Sofer)

11. A children's classic published before 1980 - To Kill a Mockingbird (Harper Lee)

12. A celebrity memoir - Scrappy Little Nobody (Anna Kendrick)

13. An Oprah Book Club selection - Behold the Dreamers (Imbolo Mbue)

14. A book of social science - The State of Affairs (Esther Perel)

15. A one-sitting book - Fangirl (Rainbow Rowell)

16. The first book in a new-to-you youth or middle-grade series - Matched (Ally Condie)

17. A sci-fi novel with a female protagonist by a female author - All the Birds in the Sky (Charlie Jane Anders)

18. A comic that isn't produced by Marvel, DC or Image - Herding Cats (Sarah Andersen)

19. A book of genre fiction in translation - Sputnik Sweetheart (Haruki Murakami)

20. A book with a cover you hate - Appointment in Samarra (John O'Hara)

21. A mystery by a person of color or LGBTQ+ author - Ripper (Isabel Allende)

22. An essay anthology - Small Wonder (Barbara Kingsolver)

23. A book with a female protagonist over the age of 60 - The Joy Luck Club (Amy Tan)

24. An assigned book you hated or never finished - The Road (Cormac McCarthy)

10 Books from the Back to University Reading List (Count: 10/10)

1. Jane Eyre (Charlotte Bronte)

2. Great Expectations (Charles Dickens)

3. The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes (Arthur Conan Doyle)

4. The Lord of the Rings (J.R.R. Tolkien) (and here, here and here)

5. Howards End (E.M. Forster)

6. Selected Poems (John Donne)

7. The History of Tom Jones, A Foundling (Henry Fielding)

8. Emma (Jane Austen)

9. Possession (A.S. Byatt)

10. I Am Legend (Richard Matheson)

Rainbow Readathon with Mia Sutton Blog (Count: 12/12)

1. January: Red - Great Classic Love Stories (various authors)

2. February: Orange - Committed (Elizabeth Gilbert)

3. March: Yellow - You Are a Badass (Jen Sincero)

4. April: Green - Brave Enough (Cheryl Strayed)

5. May: Blue - The Readers of Broken Wheel Recommend (Katarina Bivald)

6. June: Purple - Save the Date (Mary Kay Andrews)

7. July: Pink - Have a Nice Guilt Trip (Lisa Scottoline)

8. August: White - Yes, My Accent is Real (Kunal Nayyar)

9. September: Brown - Redeployment (Phil Klay)

10. October: Black - People of the Book (Geraldine Brooks)

11. November: Metallic - Stardust (Neil Gaiman)

12. December: Multicolor - The Gay Revolution (Lillian Faderman)

5 Ancient Classic & Greek Mythology Works (Count: 5/5)

1. Ars Amatoria: The Art of Love (Ovid)

2. Daphnis & Chloe (Longus)

3. The Myths of Constellations (various authors)

4. Leucippe & Clitophon (Achilles Tatius)

5. Complete Poems (Catullus)