So, to get me back into reading and writing I looked online for a challenge. I came across an oh-so-popular challenge by The Book Riot. She has some interesting categories, the challenge being to read one from each category in 2015. The link is here, if you're interested: http://bookriot.com/2014/12/15/book-riot-2015-read-harder-challenge/
As I was reading through the categories it struck me that I've already read books from so many of them. Out of 24 I could name books from 17 of them, without repeating authors. I mean, Agatha Christie alone could be several of them, so I made it a point to not use the same author twice. Sometimes the same book fit more than one category, sometimes the nature of the categories lend themselves to this. (LGBT and Indie Presses, for instance.) I think it's a very well-rounded list that took some thought and I appreciate the time and effort that she put into it.
For the challenge I'll start with the ones I haven't already read from and go from there. If it's a category I haven't read by now, then it's probably one that I'm not interested in. But then I suppose that's the point – to reach outside of our interests and try new things.
These are the categories, and the books that I've already read in them.
| Category | Title | Author |
| A book written by someone when they were under the age of 25 | The Mysterious Affair at Styles | Agatha Christie |
| A book written by someone when they were over the age of 65 | News of a Kidnapping | Gabriel Garcia Marquez |
| A collection of short stories (either by one person or an anthology by many people) | For the Relief of Unbearable Urges | Nathan Englander |
| A book published by an indie press | Rolling the R's | R. Zamora Linmark |
| A book by or about someone that identifies as LGBTQ | Becoming a Man | Paul Monette |
| A book by a person whose gender is different from your own | The Face of a Stranger | Anne Perry |
| A book that takes place in Asia | Red Azalea | Anchee Min |
| A book by an author from Africa | The Power of One | Bryce Courtenay |
| A book that is by or about someone from an indigenous culture (Native Americans,Aboriginals, etc.) | The Bean Trees | Barbara Kingsolver |
| A microhistory | ||
| A YA novel | The Prince of Mist | Carlos Ruiz Zafón |
| A sci-fi novel | Fahrenheit 451 | Ray Bradbury |
| A romance novel | ||
| A National Book Award, Man Booker Prize or Pulitzer Prize winner from the last decade | How Late It Was, How Late | James Kelman |
| A book that is a retelling of a classic story (fairytale, Shakespearian play, classic novel, etc.) | Wicked | Gregory Maguire |
| An audiobook | Death of an Expert Witness | P.D. James |
| A collection of poetry | ||
| A book that someone else has recommended to you | Patron Saint of Liars | Ann Patchett |
| A book that was originally published in another language | The History of the Siege of Lisbon | José Saramago |
| A graphic novel, a graphic memoir or a collection of comics of any kind (Hi, have you metPanels?) | ||
| A book that you would consider a guilty pleasure (Read, and then realize that good entertainment is nothing to feel guilty over) | Any of the 413,417,491,274 mysteries I've read | |
| A book published before 1850 | ||
| A book published this year | ||
| A self-improvement book (can be traditionally or non-traditionally considered “self-improvement”) |