A Year of Books: The MMC Book Club 2020 Reading Challenge

We love books at The Military Mom Collective. Rachel, one of our co-owners and founder of the MMC Book Club, is constantly talking about reading, looking at new books and authors, and finding more ways to bring people together through books. And 2020 felt like the year to start something new in our book club and community.

In January 2020, the MMC Book Club started the 2020 Book Club Challenge.

We kept it simple: 12 books in 12 categories.

Participants could read one book in each category a month or as many as they chose. We tried to incorporate books from our book club lineup and unique categories to make things interesting. Monthly prizes were drawn for participation, and there is a grand prize to be drawn for participants who completed the challenge later today!

We signed up 24 participants for the challenge, and 4 participants completed all the categories! But even more impressive, our participants read over 120 books – and those are just the books they reported for our challenge. 

Take a look at all that we read this year. You might find a book (or 2 or 10 😉) to add to your TBR list!

Category 1: A Book by a Female Author

• The Hazel Wood by Melissa Albert
• An American Marriage by Tayari Jones
• Confessions of a Domestic Failure by Bunmi Laditan
• This is My Body: a Memoir of Religious and Romantic Obsession by Cameron Dezen Hammon 
• Watching You by Lisa Jewell
• Wayward Son by Rainbow Rowell
• The Testaments by Margaret Atwood
• Family of Origin by CJ Hauser
• Miracle Creek by Angie Kim
• Guardian of Lies by Kate Furnival
• A Long Petal of The Sea by Isabel Allende
• My Sister, the Serial Killer by Oyinkan Braithwaite
• Maybe You Should Talk To Someone by Lori Gottlieb
• Shrill by Lindy West
• Tomboyland by Melissa Faliveno
• Mexican Gothic by Sylvia Moreno-Garcia
• True Colors by Kristin Hannah 
• The Things We Cannot Say by Kelly Rimmer
• The Book of the Unnamed Midwife by Meg Ellison
• Never Look Back by Mary Burton
• Bring Me Back by B.A. Paris
• Mrs. Everything by Jennifer Weiner
• The Space Between Worlds by Micaiah Johnson

Category 2: A Nonfiction Book

• Animal, Vegetable, Miracle by Barbara Kingsolver
• American Sherlock: Murder, Forensics and the Birth of American CSI by Kate Winkler Dawson
• Just Mercy by Bryan Stevenson
• When Breath Becomes Air by Paul Kalanathi
• A Murder Over A Girl: Justice, Gender, and Junior High by Ken Corbett
• The Lazy Genius Way by Kendra Adachi
• Utah Driver’s Manual
• When Time Stopped: A Memoir of My Father’s War and What Remains by Ariana Neumann
• Furious Hours: Murder, Fraud, and the Last Trial of Harper Lee by Casey Cep
• Was America Founded as a Christian Nation? by John Fea
• Final Flight Final Fight: My Grandmother, the WASP, and Arlington National Cemetery by Erin Miller
• Becoming by Michelle Obama

Category 3: A Young Adult Book

• Children of Blood and Bone by Tomi Adeyemi
• Children of Virtue and Vengeance by Tomi Adeyemi
• The Sun is Also a Star by Nicola Yoon
• Perfected by Kate Jarvis
• The Queen of Nothing by Holly Black
• Call Down the Hawk by Maggie Stiefvater
• Lord of the Flies by William Golding
• Red Queen by Victoria Aveyard
• Everything, Everything by Nicola Yoon
• Mockingjay by Suzanne Collins
• A Ballad of Songbirds & Snakes by Suzanne Collins
• The Knife of Letting Go by Patrick Ness
• Find Layla by Meg Ellison
• In an Instant by Suzanne Redfearn
• Throne of Glass by Sarah J. Maas
• Crown of Midnight by Sarah J. Maas
• Scythe by Neal Shusterman
• Catherine House by Elisabeth Thomas

Category 4: A Book with a Red Cover

• The Holdout by Graham Moore
• In a Field of Blue: A Novel by Gemma Liviero
• The Coddling of the American Mind by Jonathan Haidt & Greg Lukianoff
• Love in Lowercase by Francesc Miralles
• In the House in the Dark of the Woods by Laird Hunt
• When Life Gives You Lululemons by Lauren Weisberger
• The Last Flight by Julie Clark
• Nemesis by Jo Nesbo
• Homegoing by Yaa Gyasi

Category 5: A Classic Novel

• 1984 by George Orwell
• The Extraordinary Life of Sam Hell by Robert Dugoni
• The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger
• The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde
• To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee
• The Jungle by Upton Sinclair

Category 6: A Book by a Swedish Author

• The Girl Who Played With Fire by Stieg Larsson
• The Girl Who Takes an Eye for an Eye by David Lagercrantz
• A Man Called Ove by Frederik Backman
• Beartown by Frederik Backman 
• Anxious People by Fredrik Backman

Category 7: A Book Set in the 1920s

• Lady Chatterley’s Lover by D.H. Lawrence
• The Light Between Oceans by M.L. Stedman
• Gods of Jade & Shadow by Sylvia Moreno-Garcia
• Ghosts of Eden Park by Karen Abbott

Category 8: A Female Biography/Autobiography

• Homework: A Memoir of my Hollywood Years by Julie Andrews
• Stay Sexy and Don’t Get Murdered: The Definitive How-To Guide by Karen Kilgariff and Georgia Hardstark
• Is Everyone Hanging Out Without Me? by Mindy Kaling
• One for the Blackbird, One for the Crow by Olivia Hawker
• Hunger by Roxane Gay
• Wave by Sonali Deraniyagala
• Open Book by Jessica Simpson
• Maid by Stephanie Land
• This Will Only Hurt A Little by Busy Phillips
• Code Name: Lise by Larry Loftis

Category 9: A Book That You Have Been Meaning to Read for a Long Time

• The Corrections by Jonathan Franzen
• Becoming by Michelle Obama
• I Am Malala by Malala Yousafazi
• The Great Alone by Kristin Hannah
• Year One (Chronicles of The One) by Nora Roberts
• I Know Why The Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou
• The Last Tudor by Philippa Gregory
• Little Fires Everywhere by Celeste Ng
• Interview With the Vampire by Anne Rice
• Americanah by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
• French Women Don’t Get Fat by Mireille Guiliano
• Dragons of Autumn Twilight by Margaret Weis and Tracy Hickman
• Exit West by Mohsin Hamid
• Flowers in the Attic by V.C. Andrews
• A Woman is No Man by Etaf Rum

Category 10: A Banned/Challenged/Controversial Book

• American Dirt by Jeanine Cummins
• Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close by Jonathan Safran Foer
• 1984 by George Orwell

Category 11: A Book Turned Into a Movie

• The Bridges of Madison County by Robert James Waller
• Wonder by R.J. Palacio
• Little Fires Everywhere by Celeste Ng
• The Fault in Our Stars by John Green
• Call the Midwife by Jennifer Worth
• Stealing Home by Sherryl Woods
• A Discovery of Witches by Deborah Harkness
• Blood of Elves by Andrej Sapkowski
• Where the Crawdads Sing by Delia Owens
• The Mermaid Chair by Sue Monk Kidd

Category 12: A Book That is More Than 400 Pages

• No True Glory by Bing West
• The Witching Hour by Anne Rice
• City of Girls by Elizabeth Gilbert
• The Rise of Majicks by Nora Roberts
• The Things We Cannot Say by Kelly Rimmer
• Nine Perfect Strangers by Liane Moriarty
• What Alice Forgot by Liane Moriarty
• All the Ugly and Wonderful Things by Bryn Greenwood
• Dune by Frank Herbert
• The Book of Longings by Sue Monk Kidd
• The Dutch Girl by Robert Matzen
• The Heartbeat of Wounded Knee by David Truer
• Lovecraft Country by Matt Ruff
• The Witch Elm by Tana French
• The Awakening by Nora Roberts
• The Silent Wife by Karin Slaughter

Want to participate in our 2021 Book Club Challenge? It’s simple!

Sign up here, and Rachel will get you started. Happy reading!