On books to help you finish Book Riot's Read Harder Challenge 2017

Book Riot’s Reader Harder Challenge is one of the more interesting reading challenges I’ve come across in recent years. It’s a lot to handle and it’s definitely a big commitment, but it broadens your bookish horizons in interesting ways and forces you to think about the books you read from new perspectives. If you’re working on this challenge (or if you even just want some new ideas of books to read), here are some suggestions for fulfilling each category in the 2017 challenge before the end of the year.

Read a book about sports.

• Tigers and Devils by Sean Kennedy
• The Perfect Game by J. Sterling
• The Art of Fielding by Chad Harbach

• Counting Coup: A True Story of Basketball and Honor on the Little Big Horn by Larry Colton
• The End of the Perfect 10: The Making and Breaking of Gymnastics' Top Score from Nadia to Now by Dvora Meyers
• You Will Know Me by Megan Abbott
• Sum It Up: 1,098 Victories, a Couple of Irrelevant Losses, and a Life in Perspective by Pat Summitt
• Away Games by Mike Resnick

Read a debut novel.

• Ways to Disappear by Idra Novey
• The Girls by Emma Cline
• We Love You, Charlie Freeman by Kaitlyn Greenidge
• The Vegetarian by Han Kang
• The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams

• Idaho by Emily Ruskovich
• The Dry by Jane Harper
• Lincoln in the Bardo by George Saunders
• What They Always Tell Us by Martin Wilson
• Long Division by Kiese Laymon

Read a book about books.

• Why I Read: The Serious Pleasure of Books by Wendy Lesser
• Am I Alone Here?: Notes on Living to Read and Reading to Live by Peter Orner
• The Readers of Broken Wheel Recommend by Katarina Bivald
• Reading My Father by Alexandra Styron

• When I Was a Child I Read Books by Marilynne Robinson
• The Thirteenth Tale by Diane Setterfield
• What We See When We Read by Peter Mendelsund
• The End of Your Life Book Club by Will Schwalbe
• The Little Paris Bookshop by Nina George

Read a book set in Central or South America, written by a Central or South American author.

• Thursday Night Widows by Claudia Piñeiro
• The House of the Spirits by Isabel Allende

• Signal to Noise by Silvia Moreno-Garcia
• Aunt Julia and the Scriptwriter by Mario Vargas Llosa
• Love in the Time of Cholera by Gabriel García Márquez
• Perfect Days by Raphael Montes

Read a book by an immigrant or with a central immigration narrative.

• Enrique's Journey: The Story of a Boy's Dangerous Odyssey to Reunite with His Mother by Sonia Nazario

• It Ain't So Awful, Falafel by Firoozeh Dumas
• Funny in Farsi: A Memoir of Growing Up Iranian in America by Firoozeh Dumas
• The Book of Unknown Americans by Cristina Henriquez
• The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down: A Hmong Child, Her American Doctors, and the Collision of Two Cultures by Anne Fadiman

Read an all-ages comic.

• Lumberjanes by Noelle Stevenson
• Princeless, Vol. 1: Save Yourself by Jeremy Whitley

• The Essential Calvin and Hobbes: A Calvin and Hobbes Treasury by Bill Watterson
• Sonic the Hedgehog Archives: Volume 1 by Michael Gallagher, Dave Manak, Patrick Spaziante, Tracey Yardley
• My Dinner With Lulu by John Stanley, Irving Tripp
• Princess Princess Ever After by Katie O'Neill

Read a book published between 1900 and 1950.

• The Wind in the Willows by Kenneth Grahame
• The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett

• The Murder of Roger Ackroyd by Agatha Christie
• Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston
• Strong Poison by Dorothy L. Sayers
• Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier

Read a travel memoir.

• On The Road by Jack Kerouac
• The Voluntourist: A Six-Country Tale of Love, Loss, Fatherhood, Fate, and Singing Bon Jovi in Bethlehem by Ken Budd
• Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: An Inquiry Into Values by Robert M. Pirsig
• Wild: From Lost to Found on the Pacific Crest Trail by Cheryl Strayed

• All God’s Children Need Traveling Shoes by Maya Angelou
• A Small Place by Jamaica Kincaid

Read a book you’ve read before.

• I’m afraid I won’t be much help for this one, but I reread Redwall by Brian Jacques

Read a book that is set within 100 miles of your location.

• All books are set within 100 miles of the California Bay Area
• Going To See the Elephant by Rodes Fishburne
• The Maltese Falcon by Dashiell Hammett

• The Golden Gate by Vikram Seth
• Tales of the City by Armistead Maupin
• Al Capone Does My Shirts by Gennifer Choldenko

Read a book that is set more than 5000 miles from your location.

• From California’s Bay Area, these books definitely count
• The Worst Journey in the World by Apsley Cherry-Garrard
• The Remains of the Day by Kazuo Ishiguro
• Persepolis: The Story of a Childhood by Marjane Satrapi
• The Three-Body Problem by Liu Cixin
• Dragon Springs Road by Janie Chang
• Born a Crime: Stories From a South African Childhood by Trevor Noah

• Beasts of No Nation by Uzodinma Iweala
• Touching My Father's Soul: A Sherpa's Journey to the Top of Everest by Jamling Tenzing Norgay, Broughton Coburn
• Into Thin Air: A Personal Account of the Mount Everest Disaster by Jon Krakauer

Read a fantasy novel.

• The Final Empire by Brandon Sanderson
• The Name of the Wind by Patrick Rothfus

• Uprooted by Naomi Novik
• Sabriel by Garth Nix
• The Magicians by Lev Grossman
• The Fifth Season by N.K. Jemisin
• Woman on the Edge of Time by Marge Piercy
• The Worm Ouroboros by E.R. Eddison
• Phantastes/Lilith by George MacDonald

Read a nonfiction book about technology.

• Alone Together: Why We Expect More from Technology and Less from Each Other by Sherry Turkle

• Packing for Mars: The Curious Science of Life in the Void by Mary Roach
• Connected: The Surprising Power of Our Social Networks and How They Shape Our Lives by Nicholas A. Christakis, James H. Fowler
• Writing on the Wall: Social Media - The First 2,000 Years by Tom Standage
• Smarter Than You Think: How Technology is Changing Our Minds for the Better by Clive Thompson
• The Revenge of Analog: Real Things and Why They Matter by David Sax
• Weapons of Math Destruction: How Big Data Increases Inequality and Threatens Democracy by Cathy O'Neil

Read a book about war.

• The Things They Carried by Tim O’Brien
• On Hallowed Ground: The Story of Arlington National Cemetery by Robert M. Poole
• Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk by Ben Fountain
• Unbroken: A World War II Story of Survival, Resilience, and Redemption by Laura Hillenbrand
• All the Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr

• When Books Went to War: The Stories that Helped Us Win World War II by Molly Guptill Manning
• No Ordinary Time: Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt: The Home Front in World War II by Doris Kearns Goodwin
• Dark Invasion 1915: Germany's Secret War & the Hunt for the First Terrorist Cell in America by Howard Blum

Read a YA or middle grade novel by an author who identifies as LGBTQ+.

• Map of Ireland by Stephanie Grant
• George by Alex Gino
• Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe by Benjamin Alire Sáenz

• Lies We Tell Ourselves by Robin Talley
• The Miseducation of Cameron Post by Emily M. Danforth
• The God Box by Alex Sanchez

Read a book that has been banned or frequently challenged in your country.

• The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian by Sherman Alexie
• And Tango Makes Three by Justin Richardson and Peter Parnell
• The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison
• It’s Perfectly Normal by Robie Harris

• Saga by Brian K. Vaughan

Read a classic by an author of color.

• The Woman Warrior by Maxine Hong Kingston
• Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe
• A Fine Balance by Rohinton Mistry

• Kafka on the Shore by Haruki Murakami
• Go Tell It on the Mountain by James Baldwin
• Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison

Read a superhero comic with a female lead.

• Faith by Jody Houser
• Buffy the Vampire Slayer: Freefall by Joss Whedon, Andrew Chambliss
• The Unstoppable Wasp, Vol. 1: Unstoppable! by Jeremy Whitley

• The Unbeatable Squirrel Girl #1 by Ryan North
• Ms. Marvel, Vol. 1: No Normal by G. Willow Wilson
• Mockingbird, Vol. 1: I Can Explain by Chelsea Cain
• Scarlet Witch #1 by James Robinson

Read a book in which a character of color goes on a spiritual journey

• Labyrinth Lost by Zoraida Córdova
• If the Oceans Were Ink: An Unlikely Friendship and a Journey to the Heart of the Quran by Carla Power
• The Motorcycle Diaries: Notes on a Latin American Journey by Ernesto Che Guevara
• Nomad: From Islam to America: A Personal Journey Through the Clash of Civilizations by Ayaan Hirsi Ali
• The Gospel According to Jesus Christ by José Saramago

• The Kindness of Enemies by Leila Aboulela
• Follow the Rabbit-Proof Fence by Doris Pilkington, Nugi Garimara
• Lovesong: Becoming a Jew by Julius Lester
• Flaming Iguanas: An Illustrated All-Girl Road Novel Thing by Erika Lopez

Read an LGBTQ+ romance novel

• Carry On by Rainbow Rowell
• Guapa by Saleem Haddad
• Someone Killed His Boyfriend by David Stukas
• Tipping the Velvet by Sarah Waters

• The Paying Guests by Sarah Waters
• Bliss by Fiona Zedde
• The Summer We Got Free by Mia McKenzie

Read a book published by a micropress.

• The Rules of Ever After by Killian B. Brewer
• K My Name is Kendra by Kamichi Jackson
• Foundations of Faith by Michael Chrobak

• The Third Squad by V. Sanjay Kumar
• Sing The Song by Meredith Alling

Read a collection of stories by a woman.

• Runaway by Alice Munro
• The Assassination of Margaret Thatcher by Hilary Mantel
• What is Not Yours is Not Yours by Helen Oyeyemi
• The Complete Stories by Flannery O'Connor

• Six Bedrooms by Tegan Bennett Daylight
• Tell Me a Riddle by Tillie Olsen
• Almost Famous Women: Stories by Megan Mayhew Bergman

Read a collection of poetry in translation on a theme other than love.

• Markings by Dag Hammarskjöld
• Then Come Back: The Lost Neruda Poems by Pablo Neruda

• 19 Ways of Looking at Wang Wei by Wang Wei
• Poet in New York: A Bilingual Edition by Federico García Lorca
• I Am the Beggar of the World: Landays from Contemporary Afghanistan by Eliza Griswold
• The Surrender Tree: Poems of Cuba's Struggle for Freedom by Margarita Engle

Read a book wherein all point-of-view characters are people of color.

• The Joy Luck Club by Amy Tan

• Here Comes the Sun by Nicole Y. Dennis-Benn
• The Sorcerer of the Wildeeps by Kai Ashante Wilson
• The Mothers by Brit Bennett
• Serpentine by Cindy Pon

What books are you reading for the Read Harder Challenge? What books would you add to these categories?