In the immortal words of Fleetwood Mac, “you can go your own way.”
So I did. After 15+ years, I quit Goodreads, scampered over to StoryGraph, and—because I’ve never quite finished an official reading challenge even when I hit my annual reading goal—I decided to make my own. Sometimes a girl just needs a win.
Some of my prompts are meant to tackle the precarious piles of unread books scattered throughout my house, some are designed to stretch me into new genres, while others are just a little bit silly.
If you want to connect on StoryGraph, follow me here, or join the challenge.
12 GOOD BOOKS
one year, 12 books, because why the fuck not
A book about finding home in an unconventional place.
- On my list: Stone Yard Devotional by Charlotte Wood, Wonder Valley by Ivy Pochoda.
A book set in or around a National Park.
- On my list: The Last Ranger by Peter Heller, North of Normal by Cea Sunrise Person, The Last Season by Eric Blehm.
A book featuring a cryptid.
- On my list: Devolution by Max Brooks, Cuckoo by Gretchen Felker-Martin, The Twisted Ones by T. Kingfisher.
A nonfiction book about a terrible thing.
- On my list: Say Nothing by Patrick Radden Keefe, The Indifferent Stars Above by Daniel James Brown, Voices from Chernobyl by Svetlana Alexievich.
A book with a bit of magic in it.
- On my list: Piranesi by Susanna Clarke, The Everlasting by Alix E. Harrow.
A book set in or featuring my hometown.
- On my list: Yellow Wife by Sadeqa Johnson, All The Sinners Bleed by S.A. Cosby.
A book set in or around a body of water.
- On my list: The Covenant of Water by Abraham Verghese, These Summer Storms by Sarah MacLean, The Wager by David Grann.
A book written before 1938.
- On my list: The Call of the Wild by Jack London, Dracula by Bram Stoker.
A book written by an indigenous author.
- On my list: The Serviceberry: Abundance and Reciprocity in the Natural World by Robin Wall Kimmerer, Never Whistle at Night: An Indigenous Dark Fiction Anthology by Shane Hawk and Theodore C. Van Alst Jr., Braiding Sweetgrass by Robin Wall Kimmerer.
A historical fiction book not about WWII.
- On my list: Hamnet by Maggie O’Farrell, The Silence of the Girls by Pat Barker, The Terror by Dan Simmons, The Unicorn Woman by Gayl Jones.
A book with a one-word title.
- On my list: Wreck by Catherine Newman, Horse by Geraldine Brooks, Martyr! by Kaveh Akbar.
A book longlisted/shortlisted for, or that won a major literary prize in 2025 (Booker, Pulitzer, National Book Award, etc.)
- On my list: Flesh by David Szalay, The Safekeep by Yael van der Wouden, The Land in Winter by Andrew Miller, Endling by Maria Reva, The Antidote by Karen Russell.
📸📍Venice. May 2017.