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HCLS' 2025 Reading Challenge! - hosted by hocolibrary

Read a book published in or before 1940.
Howard County Library System celebrates our 85th birthday in 2025! Celebrate this milestone with us by reading a book that would have been on the shelves when we first opened our doors. For this challenge, select any fiction or nonfiction title published in or before 1940.  

Suggested titles:  

  • The Heart is a Lonely Hunter by Carson McCullers 
  • Native Son by Richard Wright 
  • The Ox-Bow Incident by Walter VanTilburg Clark 
  • Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston 
  • It Can't Happen Here by Sinclair Lewis  
  •  Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier 
  • The Age of Innocence by Edith Warthon 
  • The Sun Also Rises by Ernest Hemingway 
  • Sister Carrie by Theodore Dreiser 
  • The Good Earth by Pearl S. Buck 
All books added
Anne of Green Gables by L.M. Montgomery

Anne of Green Gables

Anne of Green Gables #1

L.M. Montgomery

320 pages • paperback • 1908

fiction classics middle grade funny hopeful lighthearted medium-paced
The Big Sleep by Raymond Chandler

The Big Sleep

Philip Marlowe #1

Raymond Chandler

230 pages • paperback • 1939

fiction classics crime mystery dark mysterious tense medium-paced
Gitanjali by Rabindranath Tagore

Gitanjali

Rabindranath Tagore

80 pages • paperback • 1910

fiction classics poetry reflective slow-paced
Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston

Their Eyes Were Watching God

Zora Neale Hurston

219 pages • paperback • 1937

fiction classics historical literary emotional reflective medium-paced
Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier

Rebecca

Daphne du Maurier

380 pages • paperback • 1938

fiction classics romance thriller dark mysterious tense medium-paced