By James M. Jackson
Given everything
going on in the country, I decided I needed to shake up my reading routine. The
director of my northern library, the Crystal Falls District Community Library,
is a whirlwind of a leader. As the treasurer of the library’s nonprofit
“Friends” group, I get to work with Evelyn Gathu on a variety of projects. At
our last Friends’ board meeting of 2025, she came in and handed each of us a
“Library Challenge” calendar for 2026.
Surrounding the calendar
are forty-seven different categories of books. The idea is to read a book in
each category. If a book satisfies multiple categories, you pick just one.
Given one category is “A Trilogy,” I’ll need to read forty-nine books to
complete the challenge. I normally read eighty to a hundred books a year, so my
challenge isn’t the number of books, but what kind of books.
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| Orange highlights the ones I read in January |
Some categories will be no problem (A mystery or thriller, A book written by a female author, a book published this year), but when it came to categories such as “A Graphic Novel,” I was clueless. Never read one. Wasn’t much of a comic book reader as a kid. I turned to ChatGPT for help.
I gave ChatGPT a
list of all the books I had rated five-stars in the last ten years, some
general genre preferences (no to horror and romance), and asked it to give me
its top ten suggestions and tell me why I might like the book. One of its
suggestions was Maus: a survivor’s tale – My Father Bleeds History,
written by Art Spiegelman. The book details Art’s conversations with his
father, a holocaust survivor. After finishing it, I went on to read
Spiegelman’s second Maus volume -And Here My Troubles Began, which
fulfilled my requirement to “Read a book you can finish fairly quickly.”
As noted above, I
don’t like horror. When I asked ChatGPT for suggestions about “A book that
scares you,” I told it to find nonfiction books it thought might scare me. It
found highly rated books about the dangers of microplastics, running out of
potable water, superbugs, etc. That was a depressing chat. I chose How
Democracies Die by Steven Levitsky & Daniel Ziblatt.
Another
challenging category was “A book you were supposed to read in school.” Problem
is, I read all the books I was assigned in school—the actual books, not
the Cliffs Notes. So I challenged ChatGPT to look at this from a different
perspective. I gave it my years of schooling and asked for twenty-five books it
would have been important for me to read during those years. Of the
twenty-five, I had read twenty-two. One of the remaining three was Melville’s Moby
Dick, which I knew I did not want to read. The other two I had never
heard of. I asked about those and chose Things Fall Apart by Chinua
Achebe. Included by Time in its TIME 100 Best English-language Novels
from 1923 to 2005, it certainly fits the kind of book I should have
read.
I could go on about
how I’ve made choices, but I’ll close with one more example. I needed to find
“A book written by an author with your initials.” ChatGPT found just the author
for me. He wrote the kind of books I enjoy and even had some set near where I
live: James M. Jackson. Nice to know ChatGPT could find me! I told it that was
me and please find someone else. Crickets. The best that it and two other large
language model AIs could do was suggest JMJ Williamson. Good enough. He has the
same initials as me; nothing in the rules said he couldn’t have more. I
purchased his Collision.
Have you ever
participated in any “Reader Challenges?” I welcome your thoughts on my choices
(see below for the complete list of categories and my current selections) and
look forward to the discussion in the comments.
* * *
What follows is
the complete list of categories. I have included books I have already chosen. Those
chosen with AI assistance are marked with a #. Those I read in January are
noted with an *.
# A banned book:
The Things They Carried — Tim O’Brien
* A book a
friend recommended: Horse - Geraldine Brooks (Recommended by one of my
Readers Group newsletter subscribers)
* A book about a
TV show: In Such Good Company - Carol Burnett (A book of my mother’s I
had not read)
A book at the
bottom of your to read list: Land of Mountains – Jinx Schwartz (oldest
book on my Kindle I haven’t read)
A book based
entirely on its cover
A book based on
a true story
A book by a
female author
A book by an
author that you love
A book by an
author you've never read before
* A book from
your childhood: The Little Engine That Could – Watty Piper
* A book more
than 100 years old: Through the Shadows – Rev. I. C. Knowlton (1885, a
book owned by my great-great aunt, who was a Universalist.)
A book of short
stories: With Our Bellies Full and the Fire Dying – Debra Goldstein
A book published
this year
A book set
during Christmas
A book set in a
different country: The Bone People - Keri Hulme (from my TBR pile)
# A book set in
high school: One of Us Is Lying — Karen M. McManus
# A book set in
the future: The City & The City — China Miéville
A book that
became a movie: Hidden Figures – Margot Lee Shetterly (from my TBR pile)
A book that
might make you cry
# * A book that
scares you: How Democracies Die - Steven Levitsky & Daniel Ziblatt
# A book that
takes place in your hometown: Seven Million - Gary Craig (Rochester, NY)
A book that was
translated from a different language
A book with a
love triangle
# * A book with
a number in the title: Thirteen - Steve Cavanagh
# * A book with
a one-word title: Ishmael - Daniel Quinn
# * A book with
Antonyms in the title: Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet – Jamie
Ford
# A book with
bad reviews: The Postman Always Rings Twice – James M. Cain
A book with
magic
A book with more
than 500 pages
# A book with
nonhuman characters: Children of Time — Adrian Tchaikovsky
# A book written
by an author with your initials: Collision - JMJ Williamson
A book written
by someone under 30
# * A book you
can finish fairly quick: Maus: a survivor's tale. And here My Troubles Began
- Art Spiegelman.
A book you never
got to finish: Everyday Enlightenment - Dan Millman
A book you own
but have never read: (so very many to choose from!)
# A book you
were supposed to read in school but didn't: Things Fall Apart - Chinua
Achebe
A book your mom
or dad loves: (Maybe a Nero Wolfe that my father loved)
# A classic
romance: The Princess Bride - William Goldman
A funny book
# * A graphic
novel: Maus: a survivor's tale. My father bleeds history - Art Spiegelman
* A memoir: A
Reporter's Life - Walter Cronkite (in my TBR pile)
A mystery or
thriller
* A nonfiction
book: The Boston Way - Mark Kurlansky (found at the library while
picking up another book)
# * A play: Waiting
for Godot - Samuel Beckett
# A Pulitzer-prize-winning
book: The Sympathizer - Viet Thanh Nguyen
# A trilogy: The
Three-Body Problem/The Dark Forest/Death's End - Liu Cixin
(assuming I enjoy the first book)
An author's
first book
* * *
James M. Jackson writes justice-driven thrillers with brains and bite, including the Niki Undercover Thriller series and the Seamus McCree series. To learn more information about Jim and his books, check out his website, https://jamesmjackson.com. You can sign up for his newsletter (and get to read Low Tide at Tybee, a novella featuring Seamus, his darts-throwing mother, and six-year-old granddaughter, Megan).
