Lakeland Public Library discussion

A new year means new goals and there are no resolutions we like better than reading more books! A great way to push your book boundaries is with a reading challenge. There are dozens available on the internet and they cater to every taste, sometimes literally (hello, Foodies Read.) Tanya Patrice and Kimberly Lynne over at girlxoxo.com have put together an extensive compilation of book challenges. It's a great place to start and see what calls to you.

A library staff favorite is Book Riot's Read Harder Challenge. This challenge sets an ambitious goal of two books a month, but lets you double up on the categories for those times when life gets in the way of reading.

The first two challenges on Book Riot's 2018 list are to read a book published posthumously and a book of true crime. If you want to tackle the challenge, but you've read Jane Austen's Northanger Abbey and Truman Capote's In Cold Blood, we've made some suggestions below.

If you've started a reading challenge, Read Harder or a different one, share it with us. We'd love to help you find titles to fit your categories, or to just cheer you on!

Posthumous Works:

When Breath Becomes Air by Paul Kalanithi
The Bright Hour: A Memoir of Living and Dying by Nina Riggs
Juneteenth by Ralph Ellison
The Pale King by David Foster Wallace
The Master and Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov
Suite Francaise by Irene Nemirovsky
A Death in the Family by James Agee

True Crime:
Killers of the Flower Moon: The Osage Murders and the Birth of the FBI by David Grann
American Fire: Love, Arson and Life in a Vanishing Land by Monica Hesse
Mrs. Sherlock Holmes: The True Story of New York's City's Greatest Female Detective by Brad Ricca
A Stolen Life: A Memoir by Jaycee Dugard
The Fact of a Body: a Murder and a Memoir by Alexandria Marzano-Lesnevich
Lost Girls: an Unsolved American Mystery by Robert Kolker
The Suspicions of Mr. Whicher: A Shocking Murder and the Undoing of a Great Victorian Detective by Kate Summerscale