My favorite part of any new year is taking the time to set up my new reading log to track my reading for each year. It’s always a joy to craft and refine this Sheets-based log for better reading tracking, and it seems like no matter how happy I am with the log at the beginning of the year, I always have a few tweaks for it at the end of the year! The changes for 2023 are pretty minimal, but I hope they’ll provide even more clarifying and tracking power. And as always, you can tweak it to suit your own needs and tracking desires. Click here to access the 2023 Reading Log.

Because Google Sheets has made a few improvements and different design choices this year, I am happy to walk you through how to use, edit, and refine the Reading Log to personalize it to your tastes and reading habits. While there are many awesome features, you can always delete or hide the ones that you don’t want to use or find distracting. I recommend hiding rather deleting, though — sometimes certain values are connected to other features, and you don’t want to make a big mess of code!

Unfortunately, I am not able to respond to every single request for help due to the high volume of emails I receive and my busy schedule. Please do let me know if you see an error or run into issues, but I recommend checking out the video for troubleshooting, and trying to solve your problem via the Google Sheets help forums first. Happy reading!

Want to see how the log has evolved over the years? Check out the 2020 log, the 2021 log, and the 2022 log!

Beginning in October, here at Book Riot we’ve been watching as a slew of Best Books of the Year lists came rolling in from publications ranging from The New York Times to Buzzfeed. This was a great year for books, but it’s interesting to see just how little overlap there is between these lists.

To test that hypothesis, I compiled every book on ten of the notable “Best Books of the Year” lists: from Amazon, The Atlantic, Barnes & Noble, Barnes & Noble Booksellers (yes, those are two different lists), Book Riot (naturally), Buzzfeed, the New York Times, Publishers Weekly, Vulture, and the Washington Post.

I was looking for overall best of lists, not genre lists, and I was also looking for lists that were roughly ten books long — no cheating with a “100 notable books” list. After that, I tallied every book mentioned on all ten to see which showed up on multiple lists. As expected, the vast majority were mentioned only once. About one in five titles showed up two lists, and only eight made three or more best of lists.

It’s interesting to see the kinds of books highlighted by publications like the Atlantic versus the Barnes & Noble Booksellers’ picks, for example, but by looking at the overlap between them, we can get a sense of the big books of the year.

Here are the best of the best books of 2022, according to all the lists. And if you want to take a look at all 100+ books mentioned on any of these lists, I’ve left that as a bonus at the bottom of the post.

Books on Four “Best Of” Lists: Babel by R.F. Kuang (Barnes & Noble, Booksellers, Book Riot, Buzzfeed): This title got Barnes & Noble’s inaugural Speculative Fiction Book Award, essentially tying for first place for its best book of the year. Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow by Gabrielle Zevin (Amazon, Atlantic, Booksellers, Buzzfeed): This book got a ton of buzz this year, and Amazon’s editors named it their best book of the year overall.

Book on Three “Best Of” Lists: Demon Copperhead by Barbara Kingsolver (Amazon, The New York Times, The Washington Post) The Furrows by Namwali Serpell (The New York Times, Publishers Weekly, Vulture) G-Man: J. Edgar Hoover and the Making of the American Century by Beverly Gage (The Atlantic, Publishers Weekly, The Washington Post) An Immense World by Ed Yong (Booksellers, The New York Times, Publishers Weekly) Siren Queen by Nghi Vo (Book Riot, Buzzfeed, Vulture) Stay True: A Memoir by Hua Hsu (Atlantic, The New York Times, the Washington Post)

Book on Two “Best Of” Lists: All This Could Be Different by Sarah Thankam Mathews (Buzzfeed, Vulture) Constructing a Nervous System: A Memoir by Margo Jefferson (Buzzfeed, the Washington Post) Ducks: Two Years in the Oil Sands by Kate Beaton (Buzzfeed, Publishers Weekly) Easy Beauty: A Memoir by Chloé Cooper Jones (Buzzfeed, Vulture) The Hacienda by Isabel Cañas (Book Riot, Buzzfeed) The Invisible Kingdom: Reimagining Chronic Illness by Meghan O’Rourke (Book Riot, Publishers Weekly) Lessons in Chemistry by Bonnie Garmus (Barnes & Noble, Booksellers)

Our Missing Hearts by Celeste Ng (Amazon, Barnes & Noble) The Rabbit Hutch by Tess Gunty (Barnes & Noble, Publishers Weekly) Strangers to Ourselves: Unsettled Minds and the Stories That Make Us by Rachel Aviv (the New York Times, Vulture) Trust by Hernan Diaz (the New York Times, the Washington Post) Under the Skin: The Hidden Toll of Racism on American Lives and on the Health of Our Nation by Linda Villarosa (Atlantic, the New York Times) We Don’t Know Ourselves: A Personal History of Modern Ireland by Fintan O’Toole (Atlantic, the New York Times) When Women Were Dragons by Kelly Barnhill (Book Riot, Buzzfeed)

Carrie Soto Is Back by Taylor Jenkins-Reid (Amazon)

The Cartographers by Peng Shepherd (Book Riot)

Checkout 19 by Claire-Louise Bennett (NYT)

City on Fire by Don Winslow (Amazon)

The Consequences by Manuel Muñoz (Atlantic)

Constructing a Nervous System: A Memoir by Margo Jefferson (Buzzfeed, WP)

Crying in the Bathroom by Erika L. Sánchez (Buzzfeed)

Cult Classic by Sloane Crosley (Book Riot)

Demon Copperhead by Barbara Kingsolver (Amazon, NYT, WP)

Desert Creatures by Kay Chronister (Book Riot)

Ducks: Two Years in the Oil Sands by Kate Beaton (Buzzfeed, PW)

Easy Beauty: A Memoir by Chloé Cooper Jones (Buzzfeed, Vulture)

The Escape Artist: The Man Who Broke Out of Auschwitz to Warn the World by Jonathan Freeland (Amazon)

Fairy Tale by Stephen King (Amazon)

Fight Like Hell: The Untold History of American Labor by Kim Kelly (Buzzfeed)

Finale: Late Conversations With Stephen Sondheim by D.T. Max (Buzzfeed)

The Furrows by Namwali Serpell (NYT, PW, Vulture)

The Future Is Disabled: Prophecies, Love Notes and Mourning Songs
by Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha (Book Riot)

G-Man: J. Edgar Hoover and the Making of the American Century by Beverly Gage (Atlantic, PW, WP)

Green Lantern: Alliance by Minh Lê and Andie Tong (Book Riot)

The Grimkes: The Legacy of Slavery in an American Family by Kerri K. Greenidge (PW)

The Hacienda by Isabel Cañas (Book Riot, Buzzfeed)

The Haunting of Hajji Hotak and Other Stories by Jamil Jan Kochai (Atlantic)

A Heart That Works by Rob Delaney (Buzzfeed)

Her Majesty’s Royal Coven by Juno Dawson (Book Riot)

High-Risk Homosexual by Edgar Gomez (Buzzfeed)

Horse by Geraldine Brooks (Amazon)

How Not to Drown in a Glass of Water by Angie Cruz (Book Riot)

Icebreaker by Hannah Grace (Book Riot)

Ice Cold: A Hip-Hop Jewelry History by Vikki Tobak (Booksellers)

If an Egyptian Cannot Speak English by Noor Naga (Buzzfeed)

If I Survive You: Stories by Jonathan Escoffery (Buzzfeed)

I’m Glad My Mom Died by Jennette McCurdy (B&N)

An Immense World by Ed Yong (Booksellers, NYT, PW)

The Invisible Kingdom: Reimagining Chronic Illness by Meghan O’Rourke (Book Riot, PW)

It Won’t Always Be Like This by Malaka Gharib (Book Riot)

Lavender House by Lev A.C. Rosen (Buzzfeed)

Lesser Known Monsters of the 21st Century by Kim Fu (Book Riot)

Lessons in Chemistry by Bonnie Garmus (B&N, Booksellers)

The Light We Carry: Overcoming in Uncertain Times by Michelle Obama (B&N)

Manhunt by Gretchen Felker-Martin (Vulture)

The Marriage Portrait by Maggie O’Farrell (Booksellers)

Mecca by Susan Straight (WP)

Mistakes Were Made by Meryl Wilsner (Buzzfeed)

A Novel Obsession by Caitlin Barasch (Buzzfeed)

The Other Mother by Rachel M. Harper (Book Riot)

My Phantoms by Gwendoline Riley (Atlantic)

Our Missing Hearts by Celeste Ng (Amazon, B&N)

The Petroleum Papers: Inside the Far-Right Conspiracy to Cover Up Climate Change by Geoff Dembicki (WP)

Prisoners of the Castle by Ben Macintyre (B&N)

The Rabbit Hutch by Tess Gunty (B&N, PW)

Reader, I Murdered Him by Betsy Cornwell (Book Riot)

Rest is Resistance: A Manifesto by Tricia Hersey (Book Riot)

Search by Michelle Huneven (Book Riot)

Seduced by Story by Peter Brooks (Vulture)

Siren Queen by Nghi Vo (Book Riot, Buzzfeed, Vulture)

Skandar and the Unicorn Thief by A.F. Steadman (B&N, Booksellers)

Solito: A Memoir by Javier Zamora (Amazon)

Song of the Cell: An Exploration of Medicine and the New Human by Siddhartha Mukherjee (B&N)

Spin Dictators: The Changing Face of Tyranny in the 21st Century by Daniel Treisman and Sergei Guriev (Atlantic)

Stay True: A Memoir by Hua Hsu (Atlantic, NYT, WP)

Stolen Focus: Why You Can’t Pay Attention and How to Think Deeply Again by Johann Hari (Amazon)

Strangers to Ourselves: Unsettled Minds and the Stories That Make Us by Rachel Aviv (NYT, Vulture)

Thistlefoot by GennaRose Nethercott (Book Riot)

The Three Billy Goats Gruff by Mac Barnett and Jon Klassen (Booksellers)

Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow by Gabrielle Zevin (Amazon, Atlantic, Booksellers, Buzzfeed)

Trust by Hernan Diaz (NYT, WP)

Turkey and the Wolf: Flavor Trippin’ in New Orleans by Mason Hereford with JJ Goode (Booksellers)

Under the Skin: The Hidden Toll of Racism on American Lives and on the Health of Our Nation by Linda Villarosa (Atlantic, NYT)

The Undertaking of Hart and Mercy by Megan Bannen (Book Riot)

Unlikely Animals by Annie Hartnett (Book Riot)

The Violin Conspiracy by Brendan Slocumb (Buzzfeed)

Weapons of Mass Delusion: When the Republican Party Lost Its Mind by Robert Draper (WP)

We Don’t Know Ourselves: A Personal History of Modern Ireland by Fintan O’Toole (Atlantic, NYT)

The Weight of Blood by Tiffany D. Jackson (Book Riot)

What Moves the Dead by T. Kingfisher (Booksellers)

When Women Were Dragons by Kelly Barnhill (Book Riot, Buzzfeed)

When You Call My Name by Tucker Shaw (Book Riot)

The World Keeps Ending, and the World Goes On by Franny Choi (Vulture)

World of Curiosities by Louise Penny (B&N)

X by Davey Davis (Vulture)

Yinka, Where Is Your Huzband? by Lizzie Damilola Blackburn (Buzzfeed)

You Made a Fool of Death With Your Beauty by Akwaeke Emezi (Buzzfeed)

Young Mungo by Douglas Stuart (WP)

Yesterday, I was standing in front of my desk, piled high with books I had checked out from the library or received for review, trying to decide what to read next. I shifted from foot to foot and gave myself a pep talk. “Pretend you are a normal reader. You’re just picking whatever book looks interesting. You can read whatever you want.”

-record scratch-

You’re probably wondering how I got here. Why am I not a normal reader? What does picking out something to read feel like such an intimidating task that I need to psych myself up and put myself in the right headspace? Well, we start with a kid who loves reading, and we end with an adult who has built their life around books to the extent that reading has become a minefield of expectations and guilt.

It all started with a book blog, which was supposed to just be fun. I was going to record everything I read and share it with people. But then I had a much better idea: I could create a book blog just for bi and lesbian books, since that’s what I wanted to read more of. I could talk about queer women books with people! How fun.

And when I started the blog, something miraculous happened: people started giving me free books. They were self-published ebooks sent from the author, but free books are free books! And well, if someone is going to write a sapphic book (still a rarity back then) and send it to me, the least I could do was read and review it. Besides, now I had a blog to maintain, which meant new content, which meant I needed to be reading more (bi and lesbian) books.

That’s when things started to go off the rails. Because suddenly, there was stress and guilt involved. When you have to read a book, it starts to lose its shine, and those ebooks started to pile up. I could no longer read every book I was sent, so I stopped promising that. Eventually, I started adding more reviewers to my team: they got access to these books for review, and I got additional content for the blog.

Somehow, though, I had managed to pile up more obligations while getting rid of those old ones. I was starting to get more books for review that I was really excited about, and even the occasional ARC (advanced reader copy) in the mail. I was reading more than ever, but my TBR pile grew even faster. And then, of course, I had to start a BookTube channel, because that looked like fun, which meant more content, which meant I needed to read more books. And then Book Riot was looking for more contributors, so I had to apply, and then I had to be producing enough bookish content for three platforms, and it’s hard to do that without reading more…

Meanwhile, my interest in reading — despite being surrounded by books I was excited about all the time — was beginning to wane. No matter how much I read, I was always behind. I didn’t want to read sapphic books, even though that’s what I most enjoyed reading, because that meant I had to write a review for it. But I didn’t want to read non-sapphic books, because what was the point?

That’s also about the time I realized that my reading was far too white, and I should really diversify it more, which led me down spreadsheet rabbit holes of planning the ideal TBR. Diversifying my reading also introduced me to so many incredible new-to-me authors, adding even more to my TBR list.

Then I got the opportunity to co-host All the Books, which sounded amazing, but that meant reading four books every month that were out on the first Tuesday of the following month. That was already almost all my reading in a month, which left very little room for the ARCs I had accepted, and the other new releases I was excited about, and — oh right — all the books I wanted to read that weren’t new releases.

Now, trying to decide what to read next looks like I’m trying to crack some elaborate mathematical equation. I’m factoring in how close the release date is, whether it’s out on the first Tuesday of the month, whether I can cover it on the Lesbrary, how diverse my reading has been lately, how long it will likely take me to read it, when my library due dates are and whether they’re likely to have holds (which means they can’t be renewed) — oh, and whether I feel like reading it right then, I suppose.

To be clear, and I think this should be obvious, I love the bookish internet. Working for Book Riot is beyond a dream job for me — I couldn’t have even imagined this as a possibility when I was younger. Getting to talk about books, especially queer books, with other readers is amazing. I love connecting people to their new favorite book. It’s why I’m doing all this, after all.

But somehow, my dedication to the bookish internet has been matched with a decline in my enjoyment of reading. Reading is tied up with guilt and obligation: I really should be reading those ARCs I requested, I really shouldn’t be leaving my All the Books reading to the last minute, I really should be reading those books I checked out that have a long hold list — and why did I put them on hold when I have so many books I should be reading?

I’ll be honest: I don’t know how to escape it. I still love reading, of course, but it’s much more fraught than it used to be. It’s rare that I ever drop all the baggage around it and just read purely for enjoyment. I’m not even sure I know how to anymore — which is how I ended up giving myself a TBR pep talk. Because this has been my reading life for more than ten years, I don’t remember the before times — but I suspect it still was filled with library hold guilt.

I’m determined to find a way around it, though, because my books are the foundation of my life. I went all in on books early on, and I have no intentions of changing course now. I just need to find the magic incantation that will get me out of my head, at least some of the time, when I’m reading. Here’s hoping I stumble on it next pep talk.

A few years back, I used to be a reader who was almost exclusively drawn to fiction. I had to convince myself to pick up a work of nonfiction every now and then, only because I felt like I had to. Cut to the present, when I actively look forward to new nonfiction releases and find myself taking infinitesimally small, but exhilarating, steps towards my childhood goal of knowing everything about everything. Choosing the right books made all the difference, especially by reading some of the best nonfiction books of all time.

Here I have composed a list of 25 books that I think are readable and among some of the best nonfiction books of all time. This is, of course, not a definitive list, and I am sure to have missed some of your favourites — to compose a definitive list of the best nonfiction books of all time, one would actually have to know everything about everything. These are books that are well written, have had an impact on our understanding of the world, or are books that deal with important, profound themes. I have excluded memoirs, autobiographies, and poetry, for I felt that the scope of this list is too small to do justice to such a wide range of offerings.

A Vindication of the Rights of Woman by Mary Wollstonecraft (1792) This is one of the first works of feminist literature, and has been a foundational text for women’s fight for equal rights. The feminist movement has obviously come a long way since this book was first written in 1792, but Wollstonecraft’s razor-sharp sentences are still awe-inspiring.

On the Origin of Species by Charles Darwin (1859) With this revolutionary text, Darwin changed the world’s understanding of life, and challenged religious dogma. This book is as historically important as it is readable.

The Souls of Black Folk by W.E.B. Du Bois (1903) In this collection of essays, Du Bois identifies racism as the defining evil of the 20th century, and stresses the importance of voting and civil rights — laying the foundation for the civil rights movement.

Nationalism by Rabindranath Tagore (1917) The fact that this brilliant essay features in very few lists of nonfiction classics that I have encountered over the years is telling of how Western-centric these lists (and probably this one, too) still are. Writing at a time when nationalist sentiments were raging in many regions of Asia in order to counter the hegemony of the West, Tagore presciently identifies the perils of rallying behind an idea that is based upon exclusiveness. This essay is a must read — for not only was it ahead of its time, it is ahead of ours as well.

A Room of One’s Own by Virginia Wolf (1929) The question that Virginia Wolf sets out to answer in this essay is why there have not been any women Shakespeares. She concludes that it is for the lack of a steady source of income and a room of one’s own.

Hiroshima by John Hersey (1946) In Hiroshima — one of the earliest works of narrative journalism — Hersey interviews six survivors of the nuclear attack, and these accounts opened the eyes of the American public to the enormous scale of the devastation that had been wreaked by the bombing and made them question the morality of nuclear warfare.

Silent Spring by Rachel Carson (1962) Silent Spring alerted the world to the adverse effects of the indiscriminate use of pesticides, and was a timely warning against human arrogance about the ability to exploit the natural world. This book is both beautifully written and ground-breaking, having helped launch the modern environmental movement.

The Fire Next Time by James Baldwin (1963) The powerful, eloquent essays in The Fire Next Time are infused with dread at the havoc that racism can wreak, and with the hope that awareness about the lived realities of the oppressed, acknowledgement of the injustices they face, and action against the deep-rooted social evil will be able to avert the catastrophe.

Orientalism by Edward Said (1978) In this book, Said formally identifies the derisive, exoticizing lens through which the West looks at the East as orientalism. A foundational text of postcolonial studies, it remains relevant to this date.

Sister Outsider by Audre Lorde (1984) In this collection of essays, Audre Lorde draws upon her experience as a Black lesbian woman in America to write beautifully on a range of topics including race, sexuality, class, feminism, and motherhood. A cornerstone of Black feminism, this book calls out the racism of white feminism.

The Unwomanly Face of War by Svetlana Alexievich (1985) This book is an oral history of Soviet women during the Second World War. It includes accounts of women who were at the front lines alongside men, working as pilots, snipers, doctors, scouts, and so on. It is an important document of women’s experience in war, as well as of the very different challenges they had to face as women, despite their immense contributions, when trying to adjust to civilian life after the war.

Decolonising the Mind by Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o (1987) This collection of essays is an essential work of postcolonial studies. In it, the celebrated writer Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o examines the connection between colonialism, language, and culture, and stresses the importance of combating the cultural and psychological effects of colonialism perpetrated through language.

A Brief History of Time by Stephen Hawking (1988) This immensely readable book about the origins of the universe by the celebrated physicist has remained widely popular since its publication. It continues to inspire and fascinate readers everywhere.

The New Jim Crow by Michelle Alexander (2010) This book is a piercing critique of how the American criminal justice system targets Black people, despite being formally colorblind. It links this form of racial discrimination to the broader history of racism in America, and is an urgent call for reform.

The Warmth of Other Suns by Isabel Wilkerson (2010) Through the stories of three individuals, this book tells the story of the mass migration of Black Americans from the South to northern and western states in the search of dignity and freedom. The writing is beautiful and richly detailed, making the book a riveting read.

Sapiens by Yuval Noah Harari (2011) This broad ranging and popular history of humanity is well written and exceptionally accessible. This is an excellent book for readers trying to get into nonfiction. One might not agree with everything Harari has to say, but he provides a coherent framework to situate oneself in, and a lot of interesting questions to ponder.

Braiding Sweetgrass by Robin Wall Kimmerer (2013) This book is a poetic meditation on our deep connection with nature. It brings together scientific thought and indigenous knowledge to make an appeal to develop a wider ecological conscience and restore the balance in our relationship with the world around us.

Men Explain Things to Me by Rebecca Solnit (2014) The titular essay inspired the term “mansplaining,” and validated the annoyance that women around the world felt at the propensity of (generally less qualified) men to break things down for them that they already know. The collection contains essays on a variety of topics, including marriage, and violence against women.

The Sixth Extinction by Elizabeth Kolbert (2014) Human beings are causing the sixth mass extinction in the history of life on Earth — and it is going to be the deadliest event since the extinction of the dinosaurs. Travelling to different corners of the world and interacting with scientists who are studying different aspects of this catastrophe, Elizabeth Kolbert lays bare in precise prose the havoc that we are wreaking on other inhabitants of the planet. A must-read for a chilling and humbling look at what humankind’s legacy on Earth is going to be.

The Gene: An Intimate History by Siddhartha Mukherjee (2016) This book is an exquisitely written history of the evolution of our understanding of the gene. It is a page-turner despite being over 500 pages long, and through his exploration of the science of genetics, Mukherjee makes one of the most compelling cases against bigotry and discrimination.

I Contain Multitudes by Ed Yong (2016) This is a superbly written book about microbes that will not only arm its reader with an arsenal of cool facts about bacteria, but also deepen their appreciation of the complex interconnectedness between the diverse lifeforms that inhabit the earth.

The Anarchy by William Darlymple (2019) The Anarchy is the story of how the East India Company, a limited liability corporation, became a colonial power, and how a rich and vast country came to be ruled from a boardroom in faraway London. William Dalrymple is an extraordinary writer, and this book is a timely reminder of the dangers of unquestioning subservience to markets, with little to no accountability for the human costs of the pursuit of profit.

Figuring by Maria Popova (2019) Figuring is an ode to the never-ending human search for meaning, through a narrative that blends together the lives of several artists, writers, scientists and visionaries, including Johannes Kepler, Maria Mitchell, Margaret Fuller, Emily Dickinson, and Rachel Carson, among others. This is a book to be savored and reread.

Invisible Women by Caroline Criado Perez (2019) This book exposes the gender bias that has been carried into the data driven era. As men are the default in much of the interpretation of the numbers that determine crucial aspects of modern life such as healthcare, education, and public policy, women find themselves inherently unaccounted for — an important revelation for the modern world.

Time’s Monster by Priya Satia (2020) This book deals with a topic that is both fascinating and timely — Satiya examines the way in which the work of historians in imperial Britain helped sell the imperialist project, to demonstrate how our interpretation of history impacts our present and our future.

Want more nonfiction reading recommendations, or delve deeper into a specific topic? Check out our non fiction archives here.

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Hey, did you know it’s December? Because it is. The last month of another year snuck up on us when we weren’t looking and you know what that means: it’s time to announce our next Read Harder Challenge! 2023 will be our ninth year hosting Read Harder and we’ve had a lot of fun coming up with another batch of tasks. If you’re a Read Harder regular, it’s great to see you again! If this is your first time joining us, welcome to the challenge.

Now onto the challenge deets: it once again consists of 24 tasks (an average of two per month) that invite readers to explore settings, characters, formats, genres, and perspectives that might be outside of their reading norms. How you approach Read Harder is up to you: you might choose to read one book per task, or feed a few birds with one scone and count one book for multiple tasks. The point of the challenge isn’t to do the thing one specific way, but rather to to push yourself outside of your comfort zone. We hope you’ll hold yourself accountable, share your insights, and discover some fantastic reads you might not have otherwise chosen for yourself. And remember: have fun with it! No one from Book Riot is going to show up at your door and check your work, promise.

Need suggestions for the tasks? Say less. All you need to do is sign up for our Read Harder newsletter to get recommendations for each task delivered straight to your inbox. Look for those task recommendations starting the first week in January; we’ll send one email per weekday for each of the 24 tasks.

If you want to join a community of fellow challenge participants, share your challenge progress, and get even more suggestions for tasks, make sure to check out the Read Harder Challenge Goodreads group. It’s a great place to hang out, discuss the tasks, and exchange recs and reviews for titles that fit the bill for those tasks. You can also use the #ReadHarder hashtag all over social media and join in on the discussion there.

Click here for a downloadable and editable PDF of the 2023 Read Harder Challenge tasks. Now let’s get to the tasks!

Read Harder 2023

1. Read a novel about a trans character written by a trans author.
2. Read one of your favorite author’s favorite books.
3. Read a book about activism.
4. Read a book that’s been challenged recently in your school district/library OR read one of the most-challenged/banned books of the year by a queer and/or BIPOC author.
5. Read a completed webcomic.
6. Finish a book you’ve DNFed (did not finish).
7. Listen to an audiobook performed by a person of color of a book written by an author of color.
8. Read a graphic novel/comic/manga if you haven’t before; or read one that is a different genre than you normally read.
9. Read an independently published book by a BIPOC author.
10. Read a book you know nothing about based solely on the cover.
11. Read a cookbook cover to cover.
12. Read a nonfiction book about BIPOC and/or queer history.
13. Read an author local to you.
14. Read a book with under 500 Goodreads ratings.
15. Read a historical fiction book set in an Eastern country.
16. Read a romance with bisexual representation.
17. Read a YA book by an Indigenous author.
18. Read a comic or graphic novel that features disability representation.
19. Read a nonfiction book about intersectional feminism.
20. Read a book of poetry by a BIPOC or queer author.
21. Read a book of short stories.
22. Read any book from the Ignyte awards shortlist/longlist/winner list.
23. Read a social horror, mystery, or thriller novel.
24. Pick a challenge from any of the previous years’ challenges to repeat!

Good luck and happy reading!

For those of us who love reading both fiction and nonfiction, there’s a certain category of book that combines these loves: nonfiction books about books. While I do sometimes read literary biographies, history, and criticism, there’s a particular category that rules them all. I love the books that dive into the fascinating stories behind literary phenomena. Because books, even singularly weird fiction that seems like it must have sprung from an author’s brain fully formed, don’t truly arrive out of nowhere. They reflect the times around them. Authors inevitably draw their ideas from somewhere. A book’s impact can expand beyond those who’ve read it or even people who’ve ever heard of it.

These are the stories I crave. Having more context for books I love, like my problematic fave Little House on the Prairie, enriches my understanding of the series as an adult without detracting from my childhood memories. Then there are books I find loathsome, like Go Ask Alice. Reading about what horrors that book contributed to, like the so-called War on Drugs, stokes my righteous flames of anger. It’s very exciting to share this niche collection of books with you. I know that if this category of books appeals to you, you’ll eagerly tear through this list. So let’s get meta with these books about books.

The Real Lolita: The Kidnapping of Sally Horner and the Novel That Scandalized the World by Sarah Weinman This absolutely gripping book is a blend of true crime and literary criticism. The author makes a very convincing argument for how much Vladimir Nabokov borrowed from the true story of Sally Horner’s kidnapping by a serial child abuser while writing his best-known novel, Lolita. The story is heartbreaking, obviously. It’s sad to see how many people, none of whom are careful readers, think that Lolita is a love story and not a horror novel. It’s even sadder to see the real exploitation behind the inspiration.

The Trials of Phillis Wheatley: America’s First Black Poet and Her Encounters with the Founding Fathers by Henry Louis Gates, Jr. This lyrical book traces the Black American literary tradition back to one author. Phillis Wheatley was an enslaved woman in Massachusetts, originally born in West Africa. She gained emancipation following the publication of her book Poems on Various Subjects, Religious and Moral. Wheatley was famous in her time, and deserves to be more widely known now. She rubbed elbows with many influential figures of the day and was quite famous herself. Henry Louis Gates, Jr. excavates the narratives and discourse that sprang up around Wheatley’s work and Thomas Jefferson’s opinion of it in particular.

Prairie Fires: The American Dreams of Laura Ingalls Wilder by Caroline Fraser For anyone who, like me, tries to hold my childhood fondness for the Little House on the Prairie series alongside the very valid criticism of it, this book is a must-read. Honesty, it’s a must-read for anyone who could use some well-researched history about the pioneer times. Pa’s famed rugged individualism as depicted in the books is easily countered by the historical record, as Caroline Fraser carefully details. The book also chronicles the strained and complex relationship between Laura Ingalls Wilder and her daughter Rose. This book relates to the above book about Phillis Wheatley in showing how narratives from the past held as common beliefs often deserve a more critical look.

Marvellous Thieves: Secret Authors of the Arabian Nights by Paulo Lemos Horta I was spellbound the first time I read One Thousand and One Nights, AKA Arabian Nights, delighting in each of Scheherazade’s nested tales. Folk tales don’t have clear authors, but this book has passed through many different languages and editions on its path to immortality. By that token, there are lots of distinct people associated. With a story that mirrors Scheherazade’s, the author spins a tale of truth and invention, authorship and plagiarism, that will also enchant you.

Unmask Alice: LSD, Satanic Panic, and the Imposter Behind the World’s Most Notorious Diaries by Rick Emerson Have you read Go Ask Alice as an adult? How did anyone ever believe it was written by a person who truly experienced the sex, drugs, and rock ‘n roll of the 1960s and 1970s? Nonetheless, the book added to the moral panic that spun into the War on Drugs. Its sequel, Jay’s Journal, helped spark the Satanic Panic. This riveting book is ideal for those of us who love to hate a scammer story. In great detail, it lays out the lies piled upon lies comprising the career of Beatrice Sparks, author of Go Ask Alice and Jay’s Journal.

Blockbuster! Fergus Hume & The Mystery of a Hansom Cab by Lucy Sussex How about some Australian literary history? Fergus Hume’s The Mystery of a Hansom Cab was a book written to make the author’s name known among the Melbourne theater scene. But it became Australia’s first literary smash hit and a worldwide success. But Hume sold the copyright for 50 pounds, missing out on the fortunes his book made for other people. Diving into the history of crime fiction, publishing, and bookselling and collecting, this book is lively and even gossipy.

In Search of The Color Purple: The Story of an American Masterpiece by Salamishah Tillet One of the things I love about the books behind the books is how genre-spanning they can be. This book tells the story behind Alice Walker’s masterpiece The Color Purple. Combining cultural criticism, literary history, biography, and even memoir, it goes deep on a novel that has been so important to so many people’s intersectional understanding of race and gender. Fans of the book as well as the movie and the Broadway musical will appreciate this intimate and comprehensive book.

One Toss of the Dice: The Incredible Story of How a Poem Made Us Modern by R. Howard Bloch While I don’t always buy what they’re selling, I’m consistently intrigued by books that aim to distill an entire historical era or cultural phenomenon to one distinct origin point. Here is one of those books. It lays the entire movement of Modernism at the feet of one poem by Stéphane Mallarmé. Could it be true that an 1897 poem about a shipwreck that can be ready any which way has influenced contemporary web design? You’ll have to read to find out.

The Beautiful Cigar Girl: Mary Rogers, Edgar Allan Poe, and the Invention of Murder by Daniel Stashower Here’s another entry investigating the overlap between true crime and literary history that I find so fascinating. Edgar Allan Poe is often credited with creating detective fiction through his character C. Auguste Dupin. One of his Dupin stories, “The Mystery of Marie Rogêt,” was based on the real murder of Mary Rogers. That murder was among the first to become a true media spectacle in the United States. The crime was unsolved when Poe began adapting it. You know he would have started a podcast about it had he had the ability to do it. Instead, he tried to solve the mystery through his own fiction. Read this to find out how that went for him.

Black Ink: Literary Legends on the Peril, Power, and Pleasure of Reading and Writing edited by Stephanie Stokes Oliver This book doesn’t present the story behind a single book. Still, it’s a beautiful book tracing Black literary history, as covered by notable Black writers of today. Reading and writing are leisure activities for many of us, but that hasn’t been the case historically for African Americans. Pulling from the works by writers no longer with us, like Frederick Douglass and Maya Angelou, as well as contemporary writers like Roxane Gay and Colson Whitehead, this book provides many perspectives on literature and literacy.

If you also love books about books, you’ll never exhaust that particular category. We’ve rounded up 10 recent novels about books. And if you want more nonfiction, this list of 100 must-read books about books is more than half nonfiction!

I’ve always liked stories that work out okay. Once, when I was 15 or so, I threw a book across the room because the main character stepped aside so her best friend could marry the man she loved, because her friend loved him, too. (That book was, it turned out, a Jane Austen fan fiction retelling, so the pairing was predetermined. But that’s beside the point.) I loved the main character of this book and was furious that she ended up unhappy. I have always grown overly attached to the heroines of books, and I thought for a long time that meant I liked them.

For my 18th birthday, a friend gave me a copy of Geek Love. I was captivated from the first page by the Binewski circus family and their experimental children, in love with this strange family and with Oly, the narrator. Geek Love is not a pleasant book; it’s ugly and mean, and my inclination to like all of the characters was not supported by how cruel they all were to one another. Arty started a cult. The conjoined twins…perhaps I won’t say what happens with them. Miranda is presented as a character we can like, but even she is not necessarily likable.

But I loved every single one of them, while actively disliking most of them. And that made me wonder: Do book characters need to be likable? Do main characters, in particular, need to be likable? For many people, the answer depends on who that character is. A reader can love Patrick Bateman, actual (fictional) serial killer, but hate Bella Swan, (fictional) teenage girl. Sure, that’s because of sexism, and I will neither argue that it’s anything else nor dismiss that as irrelevant. Of course it’s relevant, but what I’m wondering is if it matters that Bella Swan is widely hated — she’s also widely loved, or at least Twilight is. (So is American Psycho, probably.)

Geek Love introduced me to the idea that I don’t have to like someone (fictional) to love them, that a complex and terrible character can be better than a simple and good character (see above, re: Twilight). It also, in retrospect, taught me that I am a simple fool who will convince myself that I like someone because I like their story, or because I think I am supposed to like the main character simply by virtue of their being the main character.

My other favorite book, besides Geek Love, is We Have Always Lived in the Castle. Merricat is very likable…to me. She tells her own story, as Oly does in Geek Love, and that closeness to the character surely contributes to the feeling of intimacy, tricks the reader (me) into liking them. Both are unreliable narrators, withholding information that might make us dislike them until we are in too deep. (Again, whenever I talk about us, or about a generic reader, I really mean myself.)

I think it’s safe to say that I tend to like main characters because I want to like them, whether that’s because I feel like I should, or because I’m happier when I do, or some secret third option. I form parasocial relationships with main characters just as I do with celebrities, and unlike those actual real people, who I know don’t know me the way I (feel like I) know them, characters in books don’t have feelings and whole lives away from me; they exist only in the book, and maybe in an adaptation if we’re lucky, so I do in fact know all of them.

People are prone to fandom. We read, we watch, we discuss, we dissect, we write fan fiction. We do the latter for many reasons, not the least of which is that we need more of the character(s). Is that the same as liking them? Sometimes! But liking someone doesn’t mean they are “likable” per se. Being likable suggests having positive qualities that outweigh the negative ones, but sometimes we like characters who aren’t like that at all. Sometimes we like the Olys and the Merricats more than we like the “good” characters.

Do main characters need to be likable? Absolutely not. They need to be interesting, they need to have stories that draw us in, they need to make us like them, or at least root for them.

My introduction to Fanny Hill happened through a work of historical fiction by Elizabeth Gilbert named The Signature of All Things. It is a birth-to-death story of Alma Whitaker. Gilbert presents the enigma of life from botany to the human body, and folds in science, mysticism, spirituality, psychosexuality, all in one expansive package. A large part of this novel is Alma desiring sexual experimentation, but never acting upon it. What sets her on this discovery is a copy of Fanny Hill: Memoirs of a Woman of Pleasure she finds in an old closet. In many ways, Fanny Hill awakening Alma’s sexuality is symbolic of the novel’s place in history. It was and continues to be an important work in the literary canon, especially when it comes to paving the way for erotic writing to come.

What follows is an account of who Fanny Hill was and what the publishing of this work has meant for the history of erotic literature. It’s also one of the first books to be banned, leading to the formalization of laws around what is considered pornography and not. These laws were what guided the trials of works of literature to come like Lady Chatterley’s Lover.

Who was Fanny Hill?

Framed as two letters written by Frances “Fanny” Hill to an unnamed “Madam,” the novel recounts the fictional Fanny’s experience as a prostitute starting at age 15.
Fanny Hill: Memoirs of a Woman of Pleasure tells the story of an orphaned 15 year old with no skill and very little education named Fanny Hill. She leaves her village to find employment in London, where she is hired by Mrs. Brown. Fanny believed her employment was legitimate and that she would be working as a maid but she discovered that Mrs. Brown ran a brothel and intended to sell her maidenhead. The prostitute that shared her room opened Fanny’s innocent eyes to the sensuality of sex. Over time, Fanny Hill comes to develop an immense amount of pride in her occupation as she flourishes and learns.

History of Publishing Fanny Hill

John Cleland, a man who frequently indulged in gambling and womanizing, wrote the novel in debtors’ prison in 1748. Denied his mistresses, his imagination went into overdrive. In 1772, he told James Boswell, a renowned biographer who penned The Life of Samuel Johnson, that he had written Fanny Hill to show a friend of his that it was possible to write about prostitution without using any “vulgar” terms. To a large extent, he does.

There is a very limited range of sexual acts described and the most interesting moment is the narrator’s shock when a man and a woman actually undress, as most of the sex described involves euphemisms and loosening and tightening of clothes at strategic points.

Fanny Hill is considered the first prose erotica written in English and the first erotic work produced in novel form, but it also remains one of the most banned books in history, and the subject of a number of historically significant obscenity trials. It has only been legally available in America since 1966 and the UK since 1970.

In 1959, persuaded by the Society of Authors, parliament passed a new Obscene Publications Act with the intention of protecting literature and tightening the criteria around what was considered pornography. Even though the act in itself proved unhelpful in initially getting books like Lady Chatterly’s Lover and Fanny Hill on shelves, it proposed an important change. It deemed that the obscenity of a work would not be judged solely on the basis of out of context passages that might seem obscene, but rather the book’s contribution as a whole for the people likely to read them. This was the first step that led to further formalization of laws around obscenity.

This novel kept getting banned until 1973 in the United States; it was the introduction of the Miller test which finally lifted its banning. The Miller test is a three prong obscenity tested used in the United States Supreme Court to determine if something should be labelled as obscene. The work is considered obscene if all three conditions are satisfied:

(a) Whether “the average person, applying contemporary community standards” would find that the work, taken as a whole, appeals to the prurient interest
(b) Whether the work depicts or describes, in a patently offensive way, sexual conduct specifically defined by the applicable state law
(c) Whether the work, taken as a whole, lacks serious literary, artistic, political, or scientific value.

The ban was lifted because Fanny Hill: Memoirs of a Woman of Pleasure was found to be of literary and artistic value. Fanny was defended as an “empiricist,” one who proves “extremely curious about life.” It is in satiating this curiosity that it was proven that Fanny Hill would continue to provide information about the 18th century and would continue to be an important historical work. Coincidentally, the lifting of the ban was also a time of sexual awakening in the 1970s America. Allowing Fanny Hill to take its place in the same literary historical moment as Samuel Richardson’s Clarissa (1747–1748), and Henry Fielding’s Tom Jones (1749).

To understand how the small changes to laws and perceptions led the way to Fanny Hill being widely distributed and published is to understand the significance of reading literature critically and leaving room for tolerance for where you find yourself in disagreement. As Geoffrey Robertson says in his piece on the Lady Chatterly trial, “The damage that gets attributed to books — and to plays and movies and cartoons — is caused by the actions of people who try to suppress them.”

Fanny Hill‘s Relevance Today

Fanny Hill being the first work of literary erotica remains an important part of the literary canon. I’d like to think it was this book that paved the way for many more to come including Henry Miller’s Tropic of Cancer and Anaïs Nin’s erotic writings including Delta of Venus.

Another reason why this remains a relevant work today is because of its story of inception: the journey from publishing to censorship, it is clear to see that these trends live on. A woman’s pleasure is largely ignored, and if it does make it to the market, is wildly censored.

Whether you choose to pick up Fanny Hill or not, it’s cultural value cannot be looked away from. If you are looking for more accounts of how other works have become parts of the literary canon, then head on over to Lady Chatterley’s Lover‘s history next.

As a visitor to Book Riot, you certainly read a lot of books: more than an average person. Your TBR pile grows faster than you can read. Your friends know better than to accompany you to a bookstore if they have another engagement that day. You collect bookmarks, have bookshelves in every room, and judge everyone you meet by the books in their home.

But what about those average people? Not just what are average people reading, but how many books does the average person read?

Reading habits also vary widely from country to country. Literacy is directly tied to poverty, so indigent countries have lower averages. Cultural differences also contribute to reading rates, causing differences between countries that are relatively equally affluent. So let’s look at the numbers, shall we?

I know, that number struck me as fairly low, but not entirely unexpected. However, that number doesn’t really tell the whole story. Remember that if 72% of people were reading at least one book a year in 2016, then 28% weren’t reading even one. And some people read hundreds. To really answer the question “how many books does the average person read?”, we need to look at the median instead of the average.

Statistically, averages are useful, but are heavily skewed by outliers. The median is the mathematical breaking point for a statistical group, with roughly half of all numbers sitting above or below it. The median for the 2016 study and the better indicator of the average reader in America is four. The average American reader reads four books each year. Feeling better about your TBR pile now, aren’t you?

Pew’s research also delves into what formats and genres people are reading, as well as how race, gender, education levels, and professions affect reading habits. Women tend to read more than men. White, non-Hispanic people read more than Black, non-Hispanic or Hispanic people. Higher education levels correlate to more reading. And CEOs read a lot, though I doubt they’re reading a lot of fiction. Print is still leading the way as the chosen method of reading, with ebook and audio trailing behind.

The lowest numbers in their findings came from Argentina (1.6 books per year), Mexico (1.7 books per year), and Colombia (1.9 books per year). Commanding the lead is a tie between France and Canada, both with their people reading an average of 17 books per year. While medians are not provided in this dataset, which would better answer how many books does the average person read, the average generally has some correlation to the mean.

And don’t feel bad about your TBR. Keep reading and collecting. You’re doing fine.

It’s very difficult to know which books will be remembered over time and which will only be in the zeitgeist for a season. The truth, disconcerting to authors hungry for a legacy, is that nearly all books will be forgotten in a matter of generations. Sometimes, because I’m maudlin, I think about all the books humanity will never have any chance to know about. Incunabula, what books printed before 1500 are called, mostly exist in single copies. How many books, therefore, are fully extinct?

Instead of fully spiraling about this staggering loss, I decided to read about the patterns of forgetting. One interesting tendency, as laid out by literature scholar Lise Jaillant, is that middlebrow literature tends to be forgotten more than highbrow or lowbrow literature. I recognize the terms for these distinctions are rooted in phrenology, a troublingly racist pseudoscience. But the terms are still in use, unfortunately. See, for example, this recent article asking where all the middlebrow culture has gone.

What’s especially fascinating about Jaillant’s work was her focus on the novel Forever Amber. It’s a semi-forgotten blockbuster book and the biggest fiction seller for 1945. Forever Amber has continued to have small ripples in culture. For one, the reason anyone has the first name Amber is because this book originated it. Secondly, if you look at a source of book reviews like Goodreads, people are still reading it at the rate of a few ratings and reviews per month. Plus, it’s still in print, as part of Chicago Review Press’s “Rediscovered Classics” series. Of course, that whole rediscovery part certainly implies it was forgotten for some period of time.

What Were the Blockbusters?

This prompted me to look at more books that were the bestsellers of their year. What were the bestsellers that were made into films and printed in lots of editions? How have they fared against the years? If you’re curious about these bestsellers, Lit Hub compiles them nicely, going back to 1918. Plenty of the books that were the number one blockbuster of their year remain in the culture, like All Quiet on the Western Front, The Grapes of Wrath, and The Silmarillion. Many, however, were completely unknown to me.

In addition to reading a lot, I grew up around a lot of books, giving me some familiarity with books popular before my time. Not wanting to rely solely on my own expertise about what books are forgotten or not, I did consult Goodreads to see if, like Forever Amber, the reviews continue to trickle in. Among these forgotten blockbuster books, I developed a taxonomy of sorts. I’ve theorized as to what subculture may remember these books, how trends have changed, and why books sell a lot in the first place. Even then, I don’t have great explanations for why some blockbusters become forgotbusters. Maybe you’ll have a theory.

Some of the forgotbuster books are memorable more for their films than their text. For example, I’d never heard of Anthony Adverse. It’s a historical novel about the fateful life of an infant abandoned at a convent who came of age in the Napoleonic Era. I’m not the only person unfamiliar with the book; it has only 32 reviews on Goodreads. But film buffs may know the title. It won four Academy Awards and starred Olivia de Havilland, a Hollywood legend whose fame has not yet dissolved into the mists of time.

Fans of Olivia de Havilland will get a tour of blockbusters and forgotbusters both. She was in Gone With the Wind, of course, adapted from the biggest selling book of both 1936 and 1937. She was also in Not as a Stranger, which boasts its bestseller status on its cover. Despite that disclaimer, it has garnered 258 ratings and 35 reviews on Goodreads. For comparison, Gone With the Wind has over 1.1 million ratings and over 22,000 reviews.

Not as a Stranger, whose plot summary I have to pull from the film’s Wikipedia article because no page exists for the book, is the story of a dedicated medical student who marries a rich older nurse to fund his studies. He doesn’t particularly like her and cheats on her, but I won’t spoil the ending. The book’s not in print, so you’ll have to snag a used copy if you want to know. Or you can watch the film, featuring Frank Sinatra.

Biblical epics and historical fiction about religious figures were extremely common and popular in years past. Thanks to my mother’s fondness for cinematic biblical epics, I was familiar with some blockbuster titles. One is 1953’s top title The Robe. It traces the journey of the robe Jesus wore to his crucifixion, won by a Roman soldier in a game of chance. That book is more at the Forever Amber level and not a true forgotbuster. It’s still being read quite regularly, according to Goodreads.

Other biblical and religious stories have not had the same legs. The book The Miracle of the Bells topped sales in 1946. In 1948, the film gave Frank Sinatra another forgotbuster appearance. It has 15 measly reviews on Goodreads. 1942’s blockbuster The Song of Bernadette doubles as a cinephile’s book, owing to Jennifer Jones’s Oscar for Best Actress in the 1943 screen adaptation. The book has a mere 111 reviews on Goodreads. The Cardinal outsold all other fiction in 1950, and its 1963 film boasts a cast of well-known actors and six Oscar nominations. It has all of 60 reviews on Goodreads. 

Sometimes in the scant reviews for forgotbusters, readers mention intentionally seeking out past bestsellers out of curiosity. However, for these novels with religious themes, many reviewers specifically mention how the books tie into their faith. More evidence to support my belief that these books no longer appeal to wide swaths of readers.

Other books causing a ruckus at their publication have not enjoyed continued popularity. In 1944, Strange Fruit topped the bestseller list. The author weirdly denied any connection to Billie Holiday’s 1939 song. The novel, which does include a lynching, is about the tragic fallout from a secret interracial relationship. It was banned in Boston and Detroit for lewdness. The book could not even travel through the U.S. mail for a period of time until Franklin D. Roosevelt interceded at the request of his wife.

While the U.S. still has a boggling fascination for an aforementioned old book written by a white lady that clumsily deals with matters of race (yeah, I said it), Strange Fruit hasn’t kept pace. It has 104 Goodreads reviews compared to the Other Book’s over 105,000.

When the Review is More Memorable than the Book

Another forgotbuster is 1957’s By Love Possessed. Despite author James Gould Cozzens being a Pulitzer Prize winner, it seems few readers dive into his backlist. By Love Possessed has 119 ratings and 11 reviews on Goodreads. I believe it’s the most forgotten book I found by that measure! The story follows 50 years in the life of a lawyer, with detailed attention to his professional life. Another controversial forgotbuster, the book was deemed anti-Catholic, antisemitic, and racist by readers and reviewers.

What’s far more interesting than this book is literary critic Dwight Macdonald’s review, titled “By Cozzens Possessed: A Review of Reviews.” It’s been credited with torpedoing Cozzens’s career, and it’s been hailed as one of the best eviscerating book reviews of all time. Having read it, I will accuse the review itself of racism and misogyny. Still, it’s a fascinating artifact, full of hand-wringing about how low reviewers’ standards are. It frets about the potential legacy of this deeply mediocre book. With the benefit of hindsight, it’s a rather humorous mountain out of a molehill. Critics are important, but they aren’t really the people deciding what books are going to last.

That means some forgotbuster books are also forgotbuster movies. Take The Black Oxen. It’s a science fiction story about a woman who undergoes a rejuvenation process. It was the best-selling book in 1923 and was made into a film starring the fabulous silent film legend Clara Bow. The book has 49 ratings and 19 reviews on Goodreads. What’s even worse, no complete version of the film is commercially available, as all known extant copies are incomplete and in mismatched formats.

Similarly, The Private Life of Helen of Troy, the top seller in 1926, was made into a silent film in 1927. On Goodreads, the book has 107 ratings and 21 reviews. The story follows the titular character from mythology, and the film was timed perfectly poorly. 1927 is the year talking films came to the world, the death knell for the silent film era. A single incomplete copy of the film is preserved at the British Film Institute.

So even though we think of anything produced in the age of the internet as forever, I suspect books and their movies will continue to be lost. That means there are future forgotbusters among us. If you’d like an example of a book I think may meet this destiny, I’ll say Hillbilly Elegy. It’s not fiction, I know (winky face). But it was an enormous bestseller, aimed at “middlebrow” readers. It was also adapted to a streaming-only film no one could purchase even if they wanted to. Ultimately, it bears all the hallmarks of a forgotbuster.

If you want to know what blockbusters I think will be studied in English classes generations in the future, I’d wager the Twilight and Fifty Shades end up on some curricula. Books both wildly popular and roundly derided as these have a lot to say about the culture that made them into phenomena.