10 To Try - 2018 KCLS Reading Challenge

For the year of 2018, my local library system presented a reading challenge called "10 To Try." I ended up completing the challenge, with even more than one book for each category (and a lot of overlap between categories). I wasn't going to post about it, but I just found out that 2019 is also having a "10 to try" challenge that I'm already getting pumped up about, so here's to a new yearly tradition!

Read a Banned Book -  
-Brave New World by Aldous Huxley
-Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison
-The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood
-The Color Purple by Alice Walker
-Naked Lunch by William Burroughs
-13 Reasons Why by Jay Asher
-The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain
-Persepolis by Marjane Satrapi

Read a Biography or Memoir -
-My Life on the Road by Gloria Steinem
-Persepolis by Marjane Satrapi
-On the Road by Jack Kerouac

Read a Book about Food -
-Hunger by Roxane Gay. A little bit less about food, and more about having a relationship with your own body, but I think food is such a prevalent theme that it counts.

Read a Book by a Native American Author -
-Heart Berries by Therese Marie Mailhot. She's Native Canadian, right near the American border, but she's Native and from the Americas, and what are borders anyways.

Read a Book in Translation -
-Persepolis by Marjane Satrapi
-Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoevsky is one that I have been reading. I'll finish it in 2019 and that'll be my first one that counts for one of the 2019 categories (Read a book about crime!), but most of the book was read in 2018.

Read a Book Recommended by a KCLS Staff -
-Bad Feminist by Roxane Gay. I don't know if this have ever truly been formally recommended, but yeah, it's implied. A lot of books are recommended in reference to it.
-My Life on the Road by Gloria Steinem. This was on display at one of my libraries

Read a Book Set in a Place You've Never Been -
-And the Mountains Echoed by Khaled Hosseini. This takes place all over the globe.
-Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn. I mean, it takes place in America, but specifically it takes place along the Missisippi River, and I have never been to that entire region of the country.
-The Color Purple by Alice Walker. Again, America, but in the south where I have never been. Also, much of it takes place in Africa.
-Life of Pi by Yann Martel for India, Mexico, and the entire ocean.
-The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. Takes place around the same area as Gone Girl actually, which regularly references Mark Twain and Tom Sawyer!
-Persepolis by Marjane Satrapi for Iran
-The Hobbit by J.R.R. Tolkeinn

Read a Book That's Been Made Into a Movie or TV Show -
-The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood
-Life of Pi by Yann Martel
-The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne
-The Color Purple by Alice Walker
-Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn
-13 Reasons Why by Jay Asher
-Naked Lunch by William Burroughs
-The Twilight Saga (four books, five films!) by Stephanie Meyer
-The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain
-Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte
-On the Road by Jack Kerouac
-The Hobbit by J.R.R. Tolkeinn
-Rumor has it that Hulu will be developing Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison into a TV show!

Read a Book with a Title Longer Than 4 Words -
-Why I'm No Longer Talking to White People About Race by Reni Eddo-Lodge
-And Then There Were None by Agatha Christie
-The Man Who Mistook his Wife for a Hat by Oliver Sacks
-Half the Sky: Turning Oppression Into Opportunity for Women Worldwide by Nicholas D. Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn only counts if you include the subtitle, but I loved this so much I wanted to include it on the list somewhere.
-The Lifespan of a Fact by John D'Agata and Jim Fingal
-My Life on the Road by Gloria Steinem
-The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain
-Diary of an Oxygen Thief by Anonymous

Read a Young Adult Book -
-13 Reasons Why by Jay Asher
-The Twilight Saga (re-read all four!) by Stephanie Meyer

This was a HUGE reading year for me. Perhaps the biggest I've ever had. Excited for what stories 2019 brings.