- Savannah G.
- Wednesday, May 29
Do you pick your reads solely based on whether the cover is interesting or not? Then the Broader Bookshelf 2024 Reading Challenge is perfect for you!
Take a gander at these peacocking covers and their eye-catching plumage!
Curious about the history of the challenge, and want to know more about the prizes? Check out this post.
2024 Prompts:
1. Read a book suggested by a Richland Library staff member.
Your friendly local library staff are more than happy to help you find a great book! Browse our Staff Picks. You can also get a Personalized Reading Recommendation.
2. Read a fiction or nonfiction title that confronts the topic of aging or death.
![Five silhouettes of black women stand with various hairstyles against an orange background.](/sites/default/files/styles/3_2_1360x907/public/2024-04/It%27s%20not%20all%20downhill%20from%20here.jpg.webp?itok=7sX-nqVm)
Note: I love the bright colors of this cover! It reminds me somewhat of art by Annie Lee where the faces aren't drawn in but the poses, positions, and backgrounds are incredibly dynamic. One look at this cover and I thought, "I want to know these ladies stories."
Confident that her best days are still ahead, a successful businesswoman relies on close friends and her resourcefulness when an unexpected loss turns her world upside down.
![Picturesque scene of a body of water with a sailboat on it with houses on a distant shore in the background, in the foreground two white silhouettes stand on either edge of a swath of green grass, the edges of the image look like they are overlayed on the central image creating distorted shadows.](/sites/default/files/styles/3_2_1360x907/public/2024-04/The%20other%20valley.jpg.webp?itok=jAX1JADx)
Note: I like this cover because it feels very dreamlike. The overlapping folds versus the very idyllic background immediately caught my eye. The figures even seem out of time with each other.
A novel about an isolated town neighbored by its own past and future, and a young girl who spots two elderly visitors from across the border: the grieving parents of the boy she loves.
![Against a light blue background with heavy shadows closing in from the corners sits a house with roots floating in the middle of this empty space.](/sites/default/files/styles/3_2_1360x907/public/2024-04/We%20ate%20the%20dark.jpg.webp?itok=BEZIpJKA)
Note: I love anything that looks even a little bit spooky! And this cover definitely fits the bill. It also interested me to see this house seemingly floating in space but still rooted in something.
Five years after Sofia Lyon disappeared, her remains are found stuffed into the hollow of a tree bursting through the floorboards of an abandoned house in the woods. The women who loved her flock home to the North Carolina hills to face their grief.
3. Read a book by or about someone that identifies as ability diverse.
![In a black starry sky the sun crests over colorful rolling hills.](/sites/default/files/styles/3_2_1360x907/public/2024-04/Everyone%20knows%20you%20go%20home.jpg.webp?itok=g6dY-4ku)
Note: I thought these multicolored hills were just so beautiful! I especially love the different textures they seem to have. I wonder what they symbolize, whether the view of the setting sun (or rising) looks differently from each.
From the acclaimed author of Chasing the Sun comes a new novel about immigration and the depths to which one Mexican American family will go for forgiveness and redemption.
![A naked man sitting on the beach on a sunny day gazes out at another man who, submerged up to his shoulders, smiles in the direction of the first man.](/sites/default/files/styles/3_2_1360x907/public/2024-04/Just%20by%20looking%20at%20him.jpg.webp?itok=RwaWx0Lx)
Note: This cover looks a little steamy doesn't it? It brings to mind vacations in faraway places, sweltering heat, and the excitement of the forbidden.
Unable to stop cheating on his boyfriend with various sex workers, and grappling with an intensifying alcohol addiction, a successful TV writer with cerebral palsy, Eliot, searches for redemption, but soon learns that facing his demons is easier said than done.
![Within a mint green boarder floats various images on a yellow background. The images rage from a globe, an eye, pills, an accessible van, a medicine canister, a wheelchair, and other accessibility tools mostly in a bright pastel purple, orange, and the same mint green of the boarder.](/sites/default/files/styles/3_2_1360x907/public/2024-04/Against%20technoableism%20rethinking%20who%20needs%20improvement.jpg.webp?itok=9PxLGdDS)
Note: This cover is funky! The colors immediately drew my eyes, I wanted to understand every component.
A manifesto exploding what we think we know about disability, and arguing that disabled people are the real experts when it comes to technology and disability.
4. Read a book set in Georgia or Alabama.
![A black woman and black man with their eyes closed lay side by side, tucked into one another. The light shining upon them casts a rainbow across their glowing faces.](/sites/default/files/styles/3_2_1360x907/public/2024-04/A%20love%20song%20for%20Ricki%20Wilde.jpg.webp?itok=d6ki-QB0)
Note: The way the skin is lit here is just spectacular.
Leaving behind her socialite family in Atlanta, Ricki Wilde moves to New York to open a flower shop as the Harlem Renaissance swirls around her in the new novel from the author of Seven Days in June.
![A medical mannequin, one half with the muscle exposed, stands amongst an array of blooming flowers against a pitch black background.](/sites/default/files/styles/3_2_1360x907/public/2024-04/Bloom.jpg.webp?itok=kY9HSF0M)
Note: I like the use of negative space in this cover. I wonder from where do these flowers bloom? And I love the addition of the little cupcakes which I'm assuming are the artisanal soaps in question.
Ro becomes obsessed with a woman she met at the farmer’s market selling artisan soaps, and discovers she both wants to be her and have her while beginning to wonder which of them is actually becoming consumed by the other.
![Tall grass and wildflowers make up the foreground, in te background there is a dense thicket of trees and a blue mostly cloudless sky.](/sites/default/files/styles/3_2_1360x907/public/2024-04/Saving%20the%20wild%20South%20the%20fight%20for%20native%20plants%20on%20the%20brink%20of%20extinction.jpg.webp?itok=bNQLkOQz)
Note: This cover immediately fills me with nostalgia. I can almost feel the itch of the tall grass, taste the warmth of the air, and hear the sweet whisper of the wind.
The American South is famous for its astonishingly rich biodiversity. In this book, Georgann Eubanks takes a wondrous trek from Alabama to North Carolina to search out native plants that are endangered and wavering on the edge of erasure. Even as she reveals the intricate beauty and biology of the South's plant life, she also shows how local development and global climate change are threatening many species, some of which have been graduated to the federal list of endangered species.
5. Read a book about war.
![In the background Union soldiers dressed in blue march on their horses while a fire blazes behnd them. The soldier on the very edge of the picture carries an American flag with 34 stars. In between the picture is a large rectangle of black, the edges frayed to resemble a ripped picture. In that black rectangle is the title and author's name.](/sites/default/files/styles/3_2_1360x907/public/2024-04/Silent%20cavalry%20how%20Union%20soldiers%20from%20Alabama%20helped%20Sherman%20burn%20Atlanta%2C%20and%20then%20got%20written%20out%20of%20history.jpg.webp?itok=2SsgKxq1)
Note: This is another cover I picked because it made me feel a bit nostalgic. The cover resembles an image you'd see in a high school history textbook. What simpler times.
Part American history, part family saga, part scholarly detective story, a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist brings to life the little-known story of the First Alabama Cavalry--renegade Southerners who played a decisive role in the Civil War but who were scrubbed from the history books.
![Two images are superimposed on top of one another. One the image of a woman's face against a dark almost black background and the other birds and trees against a pale blue sky. On top of these images, as if painted over these two images, are white bands where the title and name of the author sit.](/sites/default/files/styles/3_2_1360x907/public/2024-04/All%20our%20yesterdays%20a%20novel%20of%20Lady%20Macbeth.jpg.webp?itok=-yWlNFRH)
Note: This title makes me feel like the woman is being unraveled or undone. And there's plenty of symbolism possibly at work here. Do the birds mean freedom from her old life? What of the trees and sky? The tears in her image? I love a cover that leaves you with more questions than answers.
Scotland, the 11th Century. Born in a noble household and granddaughter of a forgotten Scottish king, a young girl carries the guilt of her mother’s death and the weight of an unknowable prophecy. When she is married at fifteen to the Mormaer of Moray, she experiences firsthand the violence of a sadistic husband and a kingdom constantly at war. To survive with her young son in a superstitious realm, she must rely on her own cunning and wit, especially when her husband’s downfall inadvertently sets them free. Suspicious of the dark devices that may have led to his father’s death, her son watches as his mother falls in love with the enigmatic thane Macbeth.
![In the background the this cover is a small log cabin on a large stretch of green field, behind it are wooden posts and a windmill. The sky is slightly overcast with white and golden clouds. In the left edge of the cover there are painted on flowers in white, red, and peach on what looks like a yellowish painted siding. On this siding is also a small drawing of a turtle and Japanese Kanji.](/sites/default/files/styles/3_2_1360x907/public/2024-04/The%20turtle%20house.jpg.webp?itok=nLkanSTh)
Note: I like this cover because it's pretty. The clouds look soft and the house somewhat inviting. And, though I'm not an expert, the ukiyo-e flowers are such a nice touch I can't help but be drawn in.
In a novel that moves between late 1990s small-town Texas and pre-World War II Japan and occupied Tokyo, a grandmother and granddaughter connect over a beloved lost place and the secrets they both carry.
6. Read a graphic novel by a marginalized author or illustrator (BIPOC, or LGBTQIA+).
![A black and white cartoon image of a woman standing on a staircase. The stairs in front of her have red liquid trailing down them. Above her towers a red figure. Inside of the figure are images of blue and pink crashing waves. It looks down upon the woman, its eyes blocked by a pink diamond shaped star.](/sites/default/files/styles/3_2_1360x907/public/2024-04/A%20guest%20in%20the%20house.jpg.webp?itok=liTuIMwW)
Note: This cover is just so cool! I love how saturated the colors are! I'm wondering what's the role of water here. Is the transition from blue to pink to red in the waves within the silhouette symbolic or does it translate to something literal within the text?
In Emily Carroll's haunting adult graphic novel horror story A Guest in the House, a young woman marries a kind dentist only to realize that there’s a dark mystery surrounding his former wife’s death.
![In a neon yellow is a figure with purple skin. Their neck is separated from their torso by exposed wiring and teal hands with sharp and jagged nails reach out to grip at their clavicle. Their head is also segmented in different parts by hands, fingers, and wiring. Where their brain would be is a dissected video camera with a red light indicating it's recording cradled above more fingers and hands which press against their segmented skull.](/sites/default/files/styles/3_2_1360x907/public/2024-04/Blink.jpg.webp?itok=1mj_C6wO)
Note: What's not to love about this cover? There's a lot going on and I want to know what it all means! The hands piecing apart the body, the wires, the camera! It brings to mind being surveilled or used for surveillance. Of being rewired maybe? Who's hands are those? I have a lot of questions and I'm very excited for the answers!
Wren Booker is haunted by a childhood she can't fully remember. When she comes across a cryptic website streaming video feeds from the ruined building of her nightmares, she tracks it down and re-enters the failed social experiment she narrowly escaped as a child.
![The sky is black an filled with stars. Below a woman slides towards a base on a baseball field wearing a blue and white uniform and cleet shoes. Standing in front of her is another woman who has long pink hair and brown skin. Her skirt billows in the wind and she's wearing thigh high pink stockings with blue high heels. In her hand is a catcher's mitt holding a baseball.](/sites/default/files/styles/3_2_1360x907/public/2024-04/Grand%20slam%20romance%20Book%201.jpg.webp?itok=1NkIknor)
Note: 1. I love magical girls 2. I love baseball 3. I LOVE MAGICAL GIRLS!
Mickey Monsoon and their softball team, the Belle City Broads, are poised to sweep the league this season, until Mickey's old flame, Astra Maxima, shows up to catch for the Broads' fiercest rival, and Mickey discovers Astra has become a magical girl since they last met.
7. Read a Blind Date with a Book selection (March, July and December).
Be on the lookout for these special displays during the months of March, July and December at each location. Read a teaser description and choose a wrapped book for a surprise checkout!
8. Read a book with If or When in the title.
![Set into a deep purple background are vibrant green leaves, purple, lavendar, and bright pink flowers of various shapes. On a puff flower sits a green and blue dragonfly.](/sites/default/files/styles/3_2_1360x907/public/2024-04/If%20you%20leave%20me.jpg.webp?itok=icevA_8Y)
Note: Who doesn't love pretty flowers? I really enjoy the different textures at play here. I wonder why there are seemingly different art styles for a few of these flowers. What does that say about the story inside? And the addition of bugs also makes me curious. What are they trying to tell me?
Forced into the life of a refugee when the North Korean army invades her home, 16-year-old Haemi is forced to choose between love and security in ways that resonate throughout generations of her family.
![In the center is the cutout image of a child's silhouette, on the back a backpack with a single toothbrush sticking out of it.](/sites/default/files/styles/3_2_1360x907/public/2024-05/If%20you%20see%20them%20young%2C%20unhoused%2C%20and%20alone%20in%20America.jpg.webp?itok=dwqZLrX8)
Note: What I enjoy about this cover is its simplicity. The colors are nice in that they're complimentary but the standout here is the cutout silhouette of a young child.
A moving exploration of the crisis of homeless youth--told through the inspiring stories of a woman on the frontlines and the kids themselves.
![On a navy blue background are two silhouettes of a male and female form outlined by vines, troical birds, and flowers.](/sites/default/files/styles/3_2_1360x907/public/2024-05/When%20we%20were%20birds.jpg.webp?itok=Aado4GEB)
Note: I just think this cover is gorgeous all around! If you've made it this far you can obviously tell I have a thing for flowers and interesting motifs.
In Trinidad, Yejide, who has the power to guide the city's souls into the afterlife, and Darwin, a grave digger going against his mother's wishes never to interact with the dead, meet at an ancient cemetery where fate beckons them both.
9. Read a book that takes place on a college or university campus.
![A woman wearing traditional Chinese makeup stands against a blue and white porcelain background which itself is lain over a jade green background. The woman also wears a pair of red cat-eye sunglasses that reflect a modern cityscape in the lenses.](/sites/default/files/styles/3_2_1360x907/public/2024-05/Heart%20sutra.jpg.webp?itok=JGUCBYU9)
Note: I really enjoy the juxtaposition between the porcelain art in the background which is a highly coveted and ancient style of Chinese art with the images of a modern city in the glasses. I also love how rich the colors are, the red especially stands out against the jade green of the rest of the cover.
At a national Beijing center for religious training, the institute’s two youngest disciples, Yahui, A Buddhist nun, and Gu Mingzheng, a Daoist priest become friends and possibly more as they uncover the corruption seeping into the foundation of the institute.
![This cover looks like a piece of textile art, with various vibrantly colored bands across the bottom, some of them with batik prints. Atop them sits a city skyline, a yellow sun, and branches on which leaves and lemons hang.](/sites/default/files/styles/3_2_1360x907/public/2024-05/Lucky%20girl.jpg.webp?itok=WODHyNMy)
Note: This cover is awesome! I love the texture of it which are reinforced by the batik style prints, which is a textile art used in many parts of the world including many parts of Africa. There's also the bands of color which reminded me immediately of kikoi cloth, is cotton sarongs that are often dyed rich and vibrant colors.
While attending college in New York in the 1990s, African immigrant Soila witnesses insidious acts of racism that expose the blind spots afforded by her privileged upbringing in Kenya, and must choose between honoring her Kenyan identity or following her own path as she searches for a place to belong.
![On a coral background sits a single branch with two ripening apples upon it.](/sites/default/files/styles/3_2_1360x907/public/2024-05/Something%20about%20her.jpg.webp?itok=JTND6jYJ)
Note: I love coral pink, it's one of my favorite colors so liking this cover is a no-brainer. I also love the two apples which I'm taking as representation of the two MCs of this title. I love the style in which they're painted, I love the movement of the leaves, the arching of the branch. I just love this cover.
When they meet at the Poetry Society, Aisling and Maya, two very different young women, find their connection unexpected as they embark on a surprising journey of self-discovery and modern love.
10. Read a novel set in the 1980s.
![On a minty green background sits the silhouette of a vintage teapot. In that same minty green color is the silhouette of a roaring bear with a woman's bust in its stomach. A ribbon coils around the entire image and there are delicate looking lace corners.](/sites/default/files/styles/3_2_1360x907/public/2024-05/Tell%20the%20wolves%20I%27m%20home.jpg.webp?itok=kHUFi_EE)
Note: Why the bear?
Her world upended by the death of a beloved artist uncle who was the only person who understood her, fourteen-year-old June is mailed a teapot by her uncle's grieving friend, with whom June forges a poignant relationship.
![A gradient of purple lines shoot out into the foreground from a single glowing white dot, at the very top of that vortex of color sits the title in blocky white letters.](/sites/default/files/styles/3_2_1360x907/public/2024-05/Beautyland.jpg.webp?itok=x7ucJdqC)
Note: I immediately thought of the style of graphic design that was popular in the 70's and 80's with the use of bubble lettering and 3D elements that made things pop off the page.
A woman who doesn't feel at home on Earth and was born with knowledge of a faraway planet is encouraged by a friend to share what she knows in the new novel from the author of Parakeet.
![Four girls stand posed together in distinctly late 80s attire and hair styles. They are drawn in a cartoon style and colored in with a bright blue color. The background is a neon yellow to pink gradient starting as yellow at the bottom and going to magenta near the top. The girl in the very front is leaning forward on the handlebars of a bike smoking a cigarette.](/sites/default/files/styles/3_2_1360x907/public/2024-05/Paper%20girls.%20Volume%201.jpg.webp?itok=rXztfKkB)
Note: Don't these girls just look spunky? They look less like they deliver newspapers and more like a tough girl gang. And maybe they're both!
Supernatural mysteries and suburban drama collide in the early hours after the Halloween of 1988 for four twelve-year-old newspaper delivery girls.
11. Read a book based on the theme of addiction.
![In the center of the cover is a black and white picture of a UFO slinging through space. The type face for the title looks similar to newspaper font.](/sites/default/files/styles/3_2_1360x907/public/2024-05/Homesick%20for%20another%20world.jpg.webp?itok=wlx8pO6j)
Note: This cover immediately made me think of The Twilight Zone! Or The Outer Limits which I always liked a little more. I love the grainy photo quality if the UFO and I think the font adds to the familiar yet far off feel of this cover.
A highly anticipated first collection by the award-winning author of Eileen features protagonists who stumble on their own base impulses in their unsettling and laugh-out-loud pursuits of fulfillment.
![In hazy orange, pink, blue, and purple light two figures kiss, bodies pressed close to one another.](/sites/default/files/styles/3_2_1360x907/public/2024-05/The%20lookback%20window.jpg.webp?itok=So9Qy9hN)
Note: I thought this cover had a very intimate and romantic aura. I think it's an interesting choice considering the subject matter and only makes me want to crack this bad boy open all the more!
A victim of sex trafficking, Dylan, when a new law is passed, allowing him to sue his abusers, is forced to look back on what happened to him, exploring a drug and sex-fueled world of bathhouses, clubs and strangers’ apartments, emerging with a new purpose—extracting justice on his own terms.
![A white android like figure sits crosslegged in the center of this cover. Around their head gears form a halo, a ring of light like that of a start button on a game console surrounds them, intersecting their torso which us exposed wiring. What looks like curcuitry overlaps the bulk of the image.](/sites/default/files/styles/3_2_1360x907/public/2024-05/Machinehood.jpg.webp?itok=7874CiHz)
Note: Look at this cover and tell me it isn't the coolest thing ever! I end up reading a ton of sci-fi because the covers are some of the best of any genre. It also looks like the android is doing a mudra though it's hard to tell which one with them turned to the side.
The Machinehood operatives seem to be part human, part machine, something the world has never seen. They issue an ultimatum: stop all pill production in one week. Global panic ensues as pill production slows and many become ill.
12. Read a book by or about someone from an Indigenous culture (Native American, Aboriginal, First Nations, etc.).
![In the foreground a woman sits atop a horse, a baby wrapped close to her chest. They stand amidst a field of wildflowers. Behind them dark mountains loom. The sky is afire with dusk, vivid yellow fading to green and blue (separated only by a smattering of whispy clouds) until ultimately that to gives way to a nigh sky full of stars.](/sites/default/files/styles/3_2_1360x907/public/2024-05/Woman%20of%20light_0.jpg.webp?itok=X3jDt67Q)
Note: There are two versions of this cover, both of which I absolutely love, but this one is my favorite! I, like anyone who was really into poetry as a teen, am a big fan of dusk.
In 1930s Denver, Luz "Little Light" Lopez, a tea leaf reader and laundress, begins having visions that transport her to her Indigenous homeland in the nearby Lost Territory where she must save her family stories from disappearing into oblivion
![In the center of the felt black background is a beaded buffalo out from which beaded vines sprout. On the various vines there are vibrant beaded leaves and flowers with small beaded hearts between them.](/sites/default/files/styles/3_2_1360x907/public/2024-05/A%20grandmother%20begins%20the%20story.jpg.webp?itok=jCvakcV9)
Note: Beadwork is an art form integral to many Indigenous cultures around the world. The Metis people are generally known for their fantastic floral beadwork and the way they connect motifs by stems or tendrils. This cover is awesome without the explanation but even cooler in context.
The story of the unrivaled desire for healing and the power of familial bonds across five generations of Métis women and the land and bison that surround them.
![Greta is in bold black font at the top of the cover, from the "e" hangs a mesh basket of bright green limes with the "&" balanced percariously above them. The bottom of the mesh bag is ripped open with one of the limes about to tumble out on to the bold "Valdin" beneath.](/sites/default/files/styles/3_2_1360x907/public/2024-05/Greta%20and%20Valdin.jpg.webp?itok=SPXiJ429)
Note: Another pick for color! I really enjoy the soft pink background, they make the limes stand out. For this cover I really enjoy the minimalist vibes.
Valdin is still in love with his ex-boyfriend Xabi, who used to drive around Auckland in a Ute but now drives around Buenos Aires in one. Greta is in love with her fellow English tutor Holly, who doesn't know how to pronounce Greta's surname, Vladisavljevic, properly. From their Auckland apartment, brother and sister must navigate the intricate paths of modern romance as well as weather the small storms of their eccentric Maori-Russian-Catalonian family.
13. Read a book that has been on your TBR forever.
That book that has been sitting on your bedside table for a year? The book your best friend has been begging you to read? How about the one you bought and promptly stuck on your bookshelf never to have opened? Any and all of these will work!
14. Read a book by a Pulitzer or Nobel Prize winning author.
![The cover is a painted forest scene in which the very center of the image shows the forest floor where to men on horses are stopped by a giant fallen tree. Surrounding this image is another piece of the same painting but turned upside down as if on a wheel. And then surrounding that image the same forest turned back side up.](/sites/default/files/styles/3_2_1360x907/public/2024-05/The%20Overstory.jpg.webp?itok=SsBavsH5)
Note: I like the sort of bullseye this cover creates by shifting the image. It reminds me of the sort of image puzzles you find in some video games where you have to keep turning the image to reveal the true picture.
Presents an impassioned novel of activism and natural-world power that is comprised of interlocking fables about nine remarkable strangers who are summoned in different ways by trees for an ultimate, brutal stand to save the continent's few remaining acres of virgin forest.
![Against a pea green background float mauve limbs bent in various angles, between then the title sprawls down the cover.](/sites/default/files/styles/3_2_1360x907/public/2024-05/Chronicles%20from%20the%20land%20of%20the%20happiest%20people%20on%20earth.jpg.webp?itok=r5uIsjgh)
Note: I won't lie... I picked this one purely because it looked goofy.
Duyole Pitan-Payne realizes that someone is trying to stop him from assuming a prestigious job in the United Nations after discovering that a wily entrepreneur is stealing body parts from a Nigerian hospital for use in rituals.
![The background is a cloud of red elemental dust, a pillar of smoky green and grey cosmos throtles through the middle. Blown out stars pepper the image.](/sites/default/files/styles/3_2_1360x907/public/2024-05/Life%20on%20Mars.jpg.webp?itok=lumr7Rwp)
Note: I love space. I think space is the coolest thing there is so any covers with any celestial images has my vote of confidence.
With allusions to David Bowie and interplanetary travel, Life on Mars imagines a soundtrack for the universe to accompany the discoveries, failures, and oddities of human existence.