Reading Women Challenge
We've been fans of reading challenges for a while now and are quite excited to get to host our own. Reading challenges are a great way to read outside your comfort zone—and you get to do it with other bookish friends!
It officially begins January 1st, 2019 and ends December 31st, 2019.
Here’s the rundown: complete as many challenges as you can from the list below. If you have one book that covers two categories, feel free to count it for both. It's not a contest. Our goal is to encourage you to read widely (and fight the patriarchy, but that was probably a given), so just have fun with it! To help cheer you on, we’ll be hosting mini giveaways along the way.
Be sure to share your progress, use the hashtag #ReadingWomenChallenge.
Need some recommendations? Scroll to the bottom of this page for a list of resources and join the Goodreads group.
Happy reading!
A + K
Reading Women Challenge 2019
All books read for this challenge must be by or about women.
A mystery or thriller written by a woman of color
Check out our episode about mysteries and thrillers for some great options.
A book about a woman with a mental illness
A book by an author from Nigeria or New Zealand
A book about or set in Appalachia
Find out more about Appalachia on the Appalachian Regional Commission’s website.
For more inspiration, listen to our interview with fellow Appalachian Elizabeth Catte!
A children's book
While it includes middle readers, this prompt does NOT include young adult (YA) literature. There is a separate prompt for that.
A multigenerational family saga
A book featuring a woman in science
A play
A novella
A novella is a text of written, fictional, narrative prose normally longer than a short story but shorter than a novel, somewhere between 17,500 and 40,000 words.
A book about a woman athlete
A book featuring a religion other than your own
If you have no religion, then choose to read about whatever religion you like!
Note: The spirit of this challenge is to read books with a positive representation of a religion other than your own, so we discourage picking up a book about cults or extremist sects of larger religions for this challenge.
A Lambda Literary Award winner
Learn more about the Lambda Literary Awards on their website.
A myth retelling
Check out our crossover with Jean, the host of That’s Ancient History, for more inspiration. Jean also has a guide myth retellings over on her blog!
A translated book published before 1945
While the translation can be published after 1945, the original text must have been published before 1945.
A book written by a South Asian author
The South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC), a contiguous block of countries, started in 1985 with seven countries—Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, the Maldives, Nepal, Pakistan and Sri Lanka—and added Afghanistan as an eighth member in 2007.
A book by an Indigenous woman
This includes Native, First Nations, and Indigenous women from anywhere in the world.
A book from the 2018 Reading Women Award shortlist
2018 RWA Fiction Shortlist
2018 RWA Nonfiction Shortlist
A romance or love story
A book about nature
A historical fiction book
A book you bought or borrowed in 2019
A book you picked up because of the cover
Any book from a series
A young adult book by a woman of color
We define young adult as book targeted toward readers ages 12 - 18.
BONUS:
A book by Jesmyn Ward
A book by Jhumpa Lahiri
Other Resources
Reading Women Podcast Episode Show Notes - Search the show notes of our past episodes (here's a secret, most of the categories are a variation on last year's episodes). They're organized by theme, so it should be pretty easy to zero in on the category you're looking to fill.
Guest Blog Posts - A great resource for international fiction.
Join the Reading Women Goodreads group for a wealth of recommendations and to chat with others about what you're reading.
If you don't find what you're looking for, feel free to send us a message.