Pick a prompt, any prompt ….


 ……. Well, not just ANY prompt…….

In 2015 I was part of a group that started an online reading challenge. Pick a prompt for each month, challenge the members to read a book that meets the prompt, then post your thoughts on the book you chose. I fell out of the group several years ago but a chance message asking me to pick a month and a prompt for 2024 drew me back. I jumped and added 12 books to my TBR goals for the year.

There is no shortage of Book Challenge groups to be found. Search the web, go to GoodReads, Reddit or Shelf Reflections. Pinterest has a board with no fewer than 470 suggested challenges! Our group - Book Lovers Club - choose monthly prompts from The 52 Book Club's 2024 Reading Challenge. That group does a challenge a week - a little difficult for me unless I didn't read anything else and that would eliminate a whole lot of my TBR shelves. 

I didn't get back in until later in January so I will have to backtrack to month one. I put Lone Women by Victor LaValle in this month's stack to fill that requirement - "book with title starting with "L". I just started my February book this weekend to meet "an author everyone has read but you. I am a little embarrassed to admit I chose Barbara Kingsolver, arguably one of America's greatest living writers and winner of the Pulitzer Prize for fiction. The Poisonwood Bible has lived on my shelves for years, along with The Lacuna and Prodigal Summer. When this challenge popped up, I started scouring the shelves for an author important enough to be someone "everyone" has read but I seem to have avoided. There she was - Barbara Kingsolver - along with a copy of her debut novel, The Bean Trees. At a lean 232 pages, I added it to my February stack. 

Want to join us? Let me know. Here are the prompts so far ....

March              apostrophe in the book title

April                 about finding identity

May                 features the ocean (or sea, tide, etc.)

June                hybrid genre

July                 women in STEM

August            character-driven novel

September      ?

October            set in a land-locked country

November        magical realism  (my pick!)

December        ?


       

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