Book Riot’s 2017 Read Harder Challenge

1. Read a book about sports – Gothic Sports vol 1-2
2. Read a debut novel – The Girl Who Fell from the Sky
3. Read a book about books – The First Among Sequels
4. Read a book set in Central or South America, written by a Central or South American author.– One Hundred Years of Solitude
5. Read a book by an immigrant or with a central immigration narrative. – Goodbye, Vietnam
6. Read an all-ages comic – Ghosts by Raina Telgemeier
7. Read a book published between 1900 and 1950 – Bread Givers
8. Read a travel memoir – Paddle to the Arctic
9. Read a book you’ve read before – Something Rotten
10. Read a book that is set within 100 miles of your location – How Sweet It Is!
11. Read a book that is set more than 5000 miles from your location – The Summer of My Greek Taverna
12. Read a fantasy novel – City of Lost Souls
13. Read a nonfiction book about technology – The Emperor of All Maladies
14. Read a book about war – All the Light We Cannot See
15. Read a YA or middle grade novel by an author who identifies as LGBTQ+ – Boy Meets Boy
16. Read a book that has been banned or frequently challenged in your country. The Book of Bunny Suicides
17. Read a classic by an author of color. – The Sailor Who Fell from Grace with the Sea
18. Read a superhero comic with a female lead. – Bound Beauty
19. Read a book in which a character of color goes on a spiritual journey – The Conch Bearer
20. Read an LGBTQ+ romance novel – Trans-Sister Radio
21. Read a book published by a micropress – Hot Donut Salad
22. Read a collection of stories by a woman – Pilgrims
23. Read a collection of poetry in translation on a theme other than love.
24. Read a book wherein all point-of-view characters are people of color – The Golden Son

Reading the list, it feels like whoever makes the list are a bit obsessed with the color of the skin and sexual orientation.  I personally read all types of books, and being non-white I read plenty of non-white books anyway, but I don’t like the list is putting emphasis on the skin color of the author, when a well written book is a well written book.

Also, growing up, I have to say I didn’t consider myself as a “person of color.”
I am yellow, there are whites, and blacks, and browns, but white is a color too, isn’t it? Just a different spot on the spectrum of color. They most certainly are not colorless people. Using the term is so divisive, there is “white” and the rest of the world that do not qualify as “white”. It is white supremacy!

For the banned book, I didn’t realize that the banned book list is so extensive in the U.S., that in fact an average reader will actually have to make an effort not to read any. However, I found that The Bunny Suicides book was on one of the lists. A bit of googling told me that a mom in Oregon hated this book so much, she tried to get it banned from his son’s school, and planned to burn the book rather than returning it to the school. The school board said they would then be forced to spend money to buy a new copy to review it, and would have to bill the parent, as well as banning her son from future loans as he failed to return titles he checked out.

I also found out that in China they banned the book, because a few students attempted suicide. Now, the students didn’t try to kill rabbits after reading the book, and they suicided by jumping into the river or taking sleeping pills, not copy-catting any of the unusual ways depicted in the book. It’s a sad fact that students in Asia do get a lot of pressure to perform well in school, and news of suicide is sadly not uncommon. However, I do find the bunnies quite innocent. Therefore, of all the banned books I read, I decide to pick the Bunnies Suicide for my banned book title.