There are few things in life that Laci loves more than books and lists (and completing things well ahead of schedule), so you can imagine my excitement when I discovered the 2019 Popsugar Reading Challenge. The Challenge has been around for five years now, but I’m just now joining the club.
The really awesome thing about the Challenge is that the reading list is not a list of books, it’s a list of prompts for which a wide variety of books could be selected. To help you choose, there’s a Goodreads Group with over 23,000 members contributing to discussion boards relating to each prompt. It’s a fantastic way to branch into new genres, or play it safer with your old favorites.
The Challenge has two parts, the ‘regular’ list of 40 prompts, and an ‘advanced’ list with 10 additional prompts that are a little more difficult or specific. Being an overachiever and an avid reader, I of course did the full 50. Here, I’ll list out what I picked and link to each book’s Goodreads page for descriptions and reader reviews. You can also see my ratings for each book on my Popsugar Shelf and see how I’m progressing on my 2019 reading goal of 100 books.
The Regular List
- A book becoming a movie in 2019
Good Omens by Terri Pratchett and Neil Gaiman - A book that makes you nostalgic
The Phantom Tollbooth by Norton Juster - A book written by a musician
The Rose That Grew From Concrete by Tupac Shakur - A book you think should be turned into a movie
Seafire by Natalie Parker - A book with at least one million ratings on Goodreads
The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini - A book with a plant in the title or on the cover
Nature’s Temples by Joan Maloof - A reread of your favorite book
Animal Dreams by Barbara Kingsolver - A book about a hobby
The Feather Thief by Kirk Wallace Johnson - A book you meant to read in 2018
It was hard to pick just one, but I went with the 2018/19 UC Davis Community Book Project choice The Book of Joy by the Dalai Lama and Desmond Tutu - A book with ‘pop’, ‘sugar’, or ‘challenge’ in the title
Sugar by Bernice McFadden
- A book with an item of clothing or accessory on the cover
Queens of Innis Lear by Tessa Gratton. The best accessory is a crown, for sure - A book inspired by mythology, legend, or folklore
The Gods of New Asgard Series by Tessa Gratton - A book published posthumously
I’ll be Gone in the Dark by Michelle McNamara - A book you see someone reading on TV or in a movie
The Shining by Stephen King, which Joey and Rachel read on Friends and Joey finds so scary that he hides the book in the freezer - A retelling of a classic
When She Woke by Hilary Jordan - A book with a question in the title
Where’d You Go, Bernadette by Maria Semple - A book set on a college or university campus
Lucky by Alice Sebold, a memoir of her college sexual assault experience - A book about someone with a super power
Who Fears Death by Nnedi Okorafor - A book told from multiple character POVs
The Machine’s Child by Kage Baker - A book set in space
Look to Windward by Iain M Banks
Both Natalie Parker and Tessa Gratton are close friends of mine, and I had gotten shamefully behind on their latest books – the Challenge gave me the perfect excuse to catch up!
- A book by two female authors
The Wife Between Us by Greer Hendricks and Sarah Pekkanen - A book with a title that contains ‘salty’, ‘sweet’, ‘bitter’, or ‘spicy’
This Bitter Earth by Bernice McFadden - A book set in Scandinavia
The Core of the Sun by Johanna Sinisalo - A book that takes place in a single day
The Regulators by Richard Bachman (aka Stephen King) - A debut novel
The End We Start From by Megan Hunter - A book that’s published in 2019
Tiamat’s Wrath by Ian Cormac - A book featuring an extinct or imaginary creature
Song of the Dodo by David Quammen - A book recommended by a celebrity you admire
Becoming by Michelle Obama - A book with ‘love’ in the title
Love in the Time of Cholera by Gabriel García Márquez - A book featuring an amateur detective
Sleeping Murder by Agatha Christie
I chose several books from Lit Hub’s 30 Dystopian Novels By and About Women list, including The Core of the Sun, which begins “I lift my skirt, pull aside the waistband of my underpants, and push my index finger in to test the sample.”
Now that’s an opening line.
- A book about family
The Home Place by J. Drew Lanham - A book written by an author from Asia, Africa, or South America
Unbowed by Wangari Maathai - A book with a zodiac sign or astrology term in the title
The Pisces by Melissa Broder - A book that includes a wedding
Our Kind of Cruelty by Araminta Hall - A book by an author whose first and last names start with the same letter
Circe by Madeline Miller - A ghost story
Beloved by Toni Morrison - A book with a two-word title
Find Me by Laura van den Berg - A novel based on a true story
The Girl Next Door by Willow Rose (based on the BTK Killer) - A book revolving around a puzzle or game
The Rule of Four by Ian Caldwell - Your favorite prompt from a past Popsugar Reading Challenge
There were SO MANY good options, but in the end I chose “A book you got from a used book sale” from the 2017 Challenge. For which I read The Fifth Season by NK Jemison
For Black History Month in February, I decided to read only books by African or African American authors. Not all of them counted for the Popsugar Challenge; they included
- 12 Years a Slave by Solomon Northrup
- The Sugar Lacey series by Bernice McFadden
- Dreams From My Father by Barack Obama
- Unbowed by Wangari Maathai
- Beloved by Toni Morrison
- The Hate U Give by Angie Thomas
- The Fifth Season by NK Jemison
- The Home Place by J. Drew Lanham
- Who Fears Death by Nnedi Okorafor
The Advanced List
- A climate fiction book
The MaddAddam Series by Margaret Atwood - A choose-your-own-adventure book
Neil Patrick Harris’ Choose your Own Biography by NPH - An ‘own voices’ book
The Hate U Give by Angie Thomas - Read a book during the season in which it is set
Early Riser by Jasper Fforde (read in winter) - A LitRPG book
Warcross by Marie Lu - A book with no chapters, unusual chapter headings, or unconventionally numbered chapters
Cujo by Stephen King (no chapters) - Two books that share the same title
The Salt Line by Elizabeth Spencer and The Salt Line by Holly Goddard Jones - A book that has inspired a common phrase or idiom
The Stepford Wives by Ira Levin - A book set in an abbey, cloister, monastery, vicarage, or convent
The Murder at the Vicarage by Agatha Christie
Overall, I really enjoyed the Challenge – it got me to read some things I’d been meaning to get around to for a long time (Agatha Christie, Gabriel García Márquez, etc) and some things I probably never would have considered reading (Tupac’s poetry). I’m already looking forward to next year’s prompts!
Laci M. Gerhart 