The 2026 Library Reading Challenge

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.

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.

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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

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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).