BOOK RIOT’S 2021 READ HARDER CHALLENGE

Hosted by bookriot

831 participants, 3475 books added

Starts: Friday, 01 January 2021

Ends: Friday, 31 December 2021

Copied From: https://bookriot.com/read-harder-2021
The Read Harder Challenge is back, and 2021 will be its seventh year! We’re excited to embark on this annual reading journey once more, and hope you find your way to some wonderful reads through Book Riot’s challenge. Once again, Read Harder has 24 tasks designed to help you break out of your reading bubble and expand your worldview through books. With new genres, new authors, and new points of view, the challenge will (hopefully) help you discover amazing books you wouldn’t have otherwise picked up.

We’ve rounded up another great mix of fun and serious tasks that ask you to consider some topics, forms, and parts of the world you might never have experienced in literature before. All will push your reading limits, and we hope you love them.

Just as in years past, there are 24 tasks, averaging two per month over the course of the next 12 months. You may count one book for multiple tasks or read one book per task. The point of the challenge is to push yourself to expand your horizons and break out of set reading habits; the hope is that you’ll discover voices, settings, characters, formats, and more you may not have encountered without that nudge. Be accountable to yourself, share what you learned along the way, and enjoy the experience!

Click here for a downloadable and editable PDF of the 2021 Read Harder Challenge tasks.

Book Riot will be publishing recommendations for each of the tasks in the coming weeks to help you complete this year’s Read Harder (links will be added to the post linked above as the recommendations are posted).

Challenge prompts

1. Read a book you’ve been intimidated to read (358 books added)

2. Read a nonfiction book about anti-racism (179 books added)

3. Read a non-European novel in translation (238 books added)

4. Read an LGBTQ+ history book (112 books added)

5. Read a genre novel by an Indigenous, First Nations, or Native American author (98 books added)

6. Read a fanfic (161 books added)

7. Read a fat-positive romance (104 books added)

8. Read a romance by a trans or nonbinary author (90 books added)

9. Read a middle grade mystery (150 books added)

10. Read an SFF anthology edited by a person of color (51 books added)


SFF = SciFi or Fantasy

11. Read a food memoir by an author of color (59 books added)

12. Read a work of investigative nonfiction by an author of color (113 books added)

13. Read a book with a cover you don’t like (344 books added)

14. Read a realistic YA book not set in the U.S., UK, or Canada (105 books added)

15. Read a memoir by a Latinx author (67 books added)

16. Read an own voices book about disability (102 books added)

17. Read an own voices YA book with a Black main character that isn’t about Black pain (117 books added)

18. Read a book by/about a non-Western world leader (82 books added)

19. Read a historical fiction with a POC or LGBTQ+ protagonist (244 books added)

20. Read a book of nature poems (79 books added)

21. Read a children’s book that centers a disabled character but not their disability (77 books added)

22. Read a book set in the Midwest (205 books added)

23. Read a book that demystifies a common mental illness (154 books added)

24. Read a book featuring a beloved pet where the pet doesn’t die (186 books added)