Recently my sister sent me the Modern Mrs. Darcy 2017 Reading Challenge, and I am so excited to do it! They offer 2 different options, a Reading for Fun challenge and a Reading for Growth Challenge. I actually decided to do both! Here are my picks for the year:

Reading for Growth

• A Newberry Award Winner or Honor Book: Brown Girl Dreaming by Jacqueline Woodson
• A book in translation: The Essential Neruda: Selected Poems (Bilingual Edition)  by Pablo Neruda
• A book that’s more than 600 pages:1Q84 by Haruki Murakami
• A book of poetry, a play, or an essay collection: The New Kings of Nonfiction by multiple authors, edited by Ira Glass (yep, Ira Glass from This American Life!)
• A book of any genre that addresses current events: The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness by Michelle Alexander
• An immigrant story: My New American Life by Francine Prose
• A book published before you were born: The Pickwick Papers by Charles Dickens
• 3 books by the same author: East of Eden The Pearl Travels with Charley in Search of America  by John Steinbeck (my favorite author of all time)
• A book by an #ownvoices or #diversebooks author:Into White by Randi Pink
• A book with an unreliable narrator or ambiguous ending: The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger
• A book nominated for an award in 2017: (will make a selection in this category later in the year when nominees are announced)
• A Pulitzer Prize or National Book Award Winner: Between the World and Me by Ta-Nehisi Coates

Reading for Fun

• A book you chose for the cover: Electrified Sheep: Glass-eating Scientists, Nuking the Moon, and More Bizarre Experiments by Alex Boese
• A book with a reputation for being un-put-down-able: The Accidental Tourist by Anne Tyler
• A book set somewhere you’ve never been but would like to visit: The Old Man and The Sea by Ernest Hemingway
• A book you’ve already read: The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho
• A juicy memoir: Rich People Behaving Badly by Dick Kreck
• A book about books or reading: A Jane Austen Education: How Six Novels Taught Me About Love, Friendship, and the Things That Really Matter by William Deresiewicz
• A book in a genre you usually avoid: A Breath of Snow and Ashes by Diana Gabaldon
• A book you don’t want to admit you’re dying to read: Dune by Frank Herbert
• A book in the backlist of a new favorite author:Field Notes from a Catastrophe: Man, Nature, and Climate Change by Elizabeth Kolbert
• A book recommended by someone with great taste: The Complete Persepolis by Marjane Satrapi
• A book you were excited to buy or borrow but haven’t read yet: Letters of Note: An Eclectic Collection of Correspondence Deserving of a Wider Audience by Shaun Usher
• A book about a topic or subject you already love: Hemingway in Love: His Own Story by A.E. Hotchner

I can’t wait to get started on these books! If you would like to read along with me and support Timshel Living, order through the links above. I’ll be starting out with Hemingway in Love. 

Happy Reading,
K

*Photo courtesy of Unsplash