For the past two months, I’ve laid down a challenge — an invitation — to ShelfTalker readers: join me in trying to read one book every day, in any genre, for the month. In May, I did well. In June, not so well. It wasn’t so much that I didn’t read, although a West Wing binge did cut into my nighttime page counts, but more that I neglected to record my books. My fellow challenge-takers, however, did beautifully in June! Caitlin King is the Grand Prize Winner for June – and as such, gets to request an advance reading copy of a book she has been eager to read. (Caitlin, you can email your request to me at ebluemle at publishers weekly dot you know the rest.) Kudos also to Megan G. and Betsy W.! You are also welcome to request ARCs, and I will do my best to get them for you. I will also vow to do better at recording the books I’ve read this month!

July’s challenge is mostly the same: try to average one book a day (you can bulk-read some days to make up for blanks) and record your titles on the Google Doc I’ve set up). July’s twist is to get more diversity into the mix. (Note: this shouldn’t be a twist, of course. It should be the default, easy. It’s simply a richer and more delicious way to read. But it’s still a challenge to find equal numbers of offerings.) If you are dedicated, try at least a 50-50 split between books featuring white main characters and those featuring main characters of color. Resources for great books include: The Brown Bookshelf, the Children’s Book Council’s Diverse Children’s & YA Lit list, We Need Diverse Book’s WNDB’s roundup of resources, and my own diversity database of 1,300+ books, A World Full of Color.
If you’d like to challenge yourself to a month of fabulous books, head to the July page and pop your name in the doc. Happy sunshine and reading!