| A book with an important tree | A Western: All the Pretty Horses by Cormac McCarthy | A book about a journey made with a non-car form of transportation (train, bus, boat, plane, walking, horse, etc.): Solito by Javier Zamora | A book with a one-word title: Recursion by Blake Crouch | A book by an author you’ve never read before with at least 10 published books |
| Pick and read a book off of a friend’s shelf without their input: Meditations by Marcus Aurelius | A book about or inspired by a real crime: Misery by Steven King | A book first translated into English in the last five years | A book with a queer protagonist: Jade Legacy by Fonda Lee | A science fiction/speculative fiction book: Children of Ruin by Adrian Tchaikovsky |
| A book by an author you’ve disliked/been underwhelmed by before but want to give another chance: The Symposium by Plato | A book on the NYT’s 100 Best Books of the 21st Century list | FREE SPACE (Any book): The Crossing by Cormac McCarthy | A book about a specific/niche subculture: Inherent Vice by Thomas Pynchon | Read a book with a book club (or make a one-off book club and read a book with a friend): Moscow X by David McCloskey |
| A book with no chapter breaks: Pedro Páramo by Juan Rulfo | A book with a time of day in the title (day, night, morning, dawn, dusk, etc.) | A book a friend wants you to read: Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel | A book on Time’s The 100 Must Read Books of 2024 list | A non-fiction book published in 2025 |
| A book translated from a language spoken by your ancestors | A book about books: Kafka on the Shore by Haruki Murakami | A book with a ghost in it: Lincoln in the Bardo by George Saunders | A book with a movie or tv adaptation that you’ve already seen | A novel by a poet |