Take the 2022 WINTER READING CHALLENGE For Adults

If you love reading and you love a Challenge, you're going to love the Library's Winter Reading Challenge for adults. It runs January 3-February 28, 2022.

Download a Winter Reading Challenge form (pdf) or pick up a form at the checkout desk of any library branch or Mobile Library. Or, you can complete the challenge online.

Librarians have assembled 15 new reading categories this year that may delight you, push you outside your reading comfort zone, or introduce you to your new, favorite author.

Read books that match at least five of the 15 categories, turn in your completed challenge form to your library branch and receive the 2022 edition mug for being a Winter Reading Master!

Need help getting started?

Here are suggested titles for each of the 15 challenges.

Young Adult

Last Night at the Telegraph Club by Malinda Lo
What Big Teeth by Rose Szabo
Game Changer by Neal Shusterman
The Girls I’ve Been by Tess Sharpe
Fat Chance, Charlie Vega by Crystal Maldonado
The Gilded Ones by Namina Forna
You Have a Match by Emma Lord
One of the Good Ones by Maika Moulite and Maritza Moulite
Firekeeper’s Daughter by Angeline Boulley
Cemetery Boys by Aiden Thomas
Everything Sad is Untrue by Daniel Nayeri
Iron Widow by Xiran Jay Zhao

Short Stories

Her Body and Other Parties: Stories by Carmen Maria Machado
The Things They Carried: A Work of Fiction by Tim O'Brien
A Good Man is Hard to Find and Other Stories by Flannery O'Connor
How to Pronounce Knife: Stories by Souvankham Thammavongsa
The Rock Eaters: Stories by Brenda Peynado
The Dangers of Smoking in Bed: Stories by Mariana EnrÃquez
Afterparties: Stories by Anthony Veasna So
The Office of Historical Corrections: A Novella and Stories by Danielle Evans
The Tangleroot Palace by Marjorie Liu
Burning Girls and Other Stories by Veronica Schanoes
Even Greater Mistakes: Stories by Charlie Jane Anders

Main Character Over 50

Oh William! By Elizabeth Strout
Razorblade Tears by S.A. Cosby
The One Hundred Years of Lenni & Margot by Marianne Cronin
It's Not All Downhill From Here by Terry McMillan
An Elderly Lady is Up to No Good by Helene Tursten
The Thursday Murder Club by Richard Osman
Deacon King Kong by James McBride
The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo by Taylor Jenkins Reid
Two Old Women: An Alaskan Legend of Betrayal, Courage and Survival by Velma Wallis
Alive, Alive Oh! And Other Things That Matter by Diana Athill
How Y'all Doing? Misadventures and Mischief from a Life Well Lived by Leslie Jordan
Nomadland: Surviving America in the Twenty-First Century by Jessica Bruder

Celebrity Memoir

Yearbook by Seth Rogen
Greenlights by Matthew Mcconaughey
Over the Top by Jonathan Van Ness
We're Going to Need More Wine by Gabrielle Union
Trejo: My Life of Crime, Redemption, and Hollywood by Danny Trejo with Donal Logue
The Misadventures of Awkward Black Girl by Issa Rae
Not My Father's Son by Alan Cumming
They Called us Enemy by George Takei
Just As I Am by Cicely Tyson
Broken Horses by Brandi Carlile

Award Winner

The Nickel Boys by Colson Whitehead
The Overstory by Richard Powers
Interior Chinatown by Charles Yu
The Only Good Indians by Stephen Graham Jones
A Memory Called Empire by Arkady Martine
The Calculating Stars by Mary Robinette Kowal
The Yellow House by Sarah M. Broom
Blacktop Wasteland by S.A. Cosby
A Little Devil in America: Notes in Praise of Black Performance by Hanif Abdurraqib
All That She Carried: The Journey of Ashley's Sack, a Black Family Keepsake by Tiya Miles
Say Nothing: A True Story of Murder and Memory in Northern Ireland by Patrick Radden Keefe
How We Fight For Our Lives by Saeed Jones

About Mental Health

Maybe You Should Talk to Someone: A Therapist, Her Therapist, and Our Lives Revealed by Lori Gottlieb
Broken (In The Best Possible Way) by Jenny Lawson
Hidden Valley Road: Inside the Mind of an American Family by Robert Kolker
Reasons to Stay Alive by Matt Haig
The Round House by Louise Erdrich
This Shining Life by Harriet Kline
Everything Here is Beautiful by Mira T. Lee
Imagine Me Gone by Adam Haslett
The Collected Schizophrenias: Essays by Esme Weijun Wang
(Don't) Call Me Crazy: 33 Voices Start the Conversation About Mental Health by Kelly Jensen

Non-Human Main Character

Klara and the Sun by Kazuo Ishiguro
The Art of Racing in the Rain by Garth Stein
Good Omens by Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett
The Bees by Laline Paull
All Systems Red by Martha Wells
Watership Down by Richard Adams
Ancillary Justice by Ann Leckie
Hollow Kingdom by Kira Jane Buxton
Fox and I: An Uncommon Friendship by Catherine Raven
Perestroika in Paris by Jane Smiley

Time Travel

One Last Stop by Casey McQuiston
Kindred by Octavia Butler
Oona Out of Order by Margarita Montimore
11/22/63 by Stephen King
Faye, Faraway by Helen Fisher
This is How You Lose the Time War by Amal El-Mohtar and Max Gladstone
Recursion by Blake Crouch
What the Wind Knows by Amy Harmon
One Word Kill by Mark Lawrence
An Ocean of Minutes by Thea Lim

Immigrant Perspective

Exit West by Mohsin Hamid
The Ungrateful Refugee: What Immigrants Never Tell You by Dina Nayeri
Home Fire by Kamilia Shamsie
The Best We Could Do: An Illustrated Memoir by Thi Bui
Behold the Dreamers by Imbolo Mbue
On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous by Ocean Vuong
The Undocumented Americans by Karla Cornejo Villavicencio
Pachinko by Min Jin Lee
The Girl Who Smiled Beads: A Story of War and What Comes After by Clemantine Wamariya and Elizabeth Weil
The Beekeeper of Aleppo by Christy Lefteri

Something Scary

My Heart is Chainsaw by Steven Graham Jones
The Last House on Needless Street by Catriona Ward
The Wicked Boy: The Mystery of a Victorian Child Murderer by Kate Summerscale
The Echo Wife by by Sarah Gailey
The Indifferent Stars Above: The Harrowing Saga of the Donner Party by Daniel James Brown
Ring Shout by P. Djeli Clark
American Predator: The Hunt for the Most Meticulous Serial Killer of the 21st Century by Maureen Callahan
This Thing Between Us by Gus Moreno
The Hot Zone by Richard Preston
Chasing the Boogeyman by Richard Chizmar