PolyWogg’s Reading Challenge for 2026: Non-Fiction

PolyWogg’s Reading Challenge for 2026: Fiction

What books am I considering?

1. Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoyevsky
2. All’s Fair in Love and the Nuclear Apocalypse by Jacob Horton et al
3. Make: Getting Started with 3D Printing (2nd Edition) by Liza Wallach Kloski and Nick Kloski
4. The Paying Guests by Sarah Waters…from a classic list
5. The Fault in Our Stars by John Green…from a classic list
6. Something Wicked by Carolyn G. Hart…from Agatha awards
7. Lost Little Girl by Gregory Stout…from Shamus awards
8. Beat Not The Bones by Charlotte Jay…from Edgar awards
9. The Last Good Kiss by James Crumley…from Edgar awards of sorts, this is book #1 of a two-book series
10. A Case of Loyalties by Marilyn Wallace…this might be hard to find though, from the Macavity list of winners
11. The Age of Innocence by Edith Wharton…from a classic list
12. Rabbit, Run by John Updike…from a classic list, but frequently referred to by Lawrence Block
13. The Postman Always Rings Twice by James W. Cain…from a classic list
14. Neuromancer by William Gibson…from a classic list, a rare sci-fi style story
15. Still Life by Louise Penny…the first of the series;
16. The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo by Taylor Jenkins Reid…from the popular seller’s list
17. Next book in the Rivers of London series by Ben Aaronovitch
18. Stephanie Plum book by Janet Evanovich;
19. Margaret Atwood – The Blind Assassin
20. Lawrence Block – Writing the Novel: From plot to print to pixel
21. Paulo Coelho – O Alquimista (The Alchemist)
22. William Faulkner – The Sound and the Fury
23. Diana Gabaldon – Outlander series
24. Kazuo Ishiguro – The Remains of the Day
25. Donald Jack – Three Cheers for Me
26. Stuart Kaminsky – A Cold Red Sunrise
27. L Harper Lee – To Kill a Mockingbird
28. Gabriel Garcia Marquez – 100 Years of Solitude
29. George R.R. Martin – Game of Thrones series
30. Vladimir Nabokov – Lolita
31. George Orwell – 1984
32. Paul Quarrington – Whale Music
33. J.D. Salinger – Catcher in the Rye
34. Leo Tolstoy – War and Peace
35. Alisa Valdes-Rodriguez – The Dirty Girls Social Club
36. E. B. White – Charlotte’s Web
37. Lu Xun – Diary of a Madman and Other Stories
38. Richard Yates – Revolutionary Road
39. Carlos Ruiz Zafón – Shadow of the Wind

Update January 15: Canada Reads

40. A Minor Chorus by Billy-Ray Belcourt
41. Celestina’s House by Clarissa Trinidad Gonzalez
42. Crossroads by Kaleb Dahlgren 
43. Everything Is Fine Here by Iryn Tushabe
44. Foe by Iain Reid
45. Heated Rivalry by Rachel Reid and Game Changer
46. It’s Different This Time by Joss Richard
47. Julie Chan Is Dead by Liann Zhang
48. Never Been Better by Leanne Toshiko Simpson
49. Oxford Soju Club by Jinwoo Park
50. Restaurant Kid by Rachel Phan
51. Searching for Terry Punchout by Tyler Hellard
52. Slice The Water by PP Wong 
53. The Cure for Drowning by Loghan Paylor
54. The Hunger We Pass Down by Jen Sookfong Lee

Books to give article:

55. When You Least Expect It Lorna Schultz Nicholson
56. Nan Shepherd’s The Living Mountain
57. Byung-Chul Han The Spirit of Hope
58. Marcus Aurelius’s Meditations
59. Byung-Chul Han’s The Burnout Society
60. The Good Soldier by Ford Madox Ford
61. Italo Calvino’s Invisible Cities
62. Robert Macfarlane’s Is a River Alive?
63. Foster by Claire Keegan.
64. Mother Mary Comes to Me, by Arundhati Roy
65. When The Wind in the Willows
66. Terry Pratchett’s Truckers
67. Sarah Crossan’s Where the Heart Should Be
68. The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas
69. Sharna Jackson’s High Rise Mystery series
70. Alice Oswald’s Dart
71. Kingfisher by Rozie Kelly
72. Wise Children by Angela Carter
73. When Will There Be Good News by Kate Atkinson
74. Michael Kohlhaas, a slim novella from 1810 by Heinrich von Kleist, translated by Michael Hofmann
75. Sarah Hall’s Sudden Traveller
76. Amos & Boris by William Steig
77. Sam Lipsyte The Ask
78. Rumer Godden Kingfishers Catch Fire
79. Rumer Godden The River
80. Restoration by Rose Tremain
81. Rose Tremain’s Merivel: A Man of His Time, is just as wonderful – if not more so.
82. Tove Jansson’s The Summer Book.
83. Tove Jansson’s A Winter Book
84. Fear of Description by Daniel Poppick
85. Ultimate Spider-Man by Jonathan Hickman
86. Olga Tokarczuk’s Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead
87. JL Carr’s novella A Month in the Country
88. The Echoing Grove by Rosamond Lehmann
89. Free Food for Millionaires by Min Jin Lee
90. Philip Larkin’s The Whitsun Weddings,
91. Elizabeth Day One of Us,
92. The Man Who Planted Trees by Jean Giono
93. Erin O White’s, Like Family

Master Sources

• There is a website called The Greatest Books which is a compilation of lists of great books — 2073 titles in total.
• Governor General’s awards (Canadian)
• National Book Awards (American)
• Pulitzer prizes (American)
• Man Booker awards (English-speaking)
• Agatha awards (mystery)
• Shamus awards (mystery)
• Macavity awards (mystery)
• Edgar awards (mystery)
• Hammett awards (mystery)
• Abe Books’ list of Top 100 Fiction Books to Read in a Lifetime
• Radcliffe Publishing’s 100 Greatest Novels
• Modern Library’s Fiction or Non-fiction lists
• BBC’s 100 Greatest British Novels
• Guardian’s 100 Best Non-Fiction Books of All-time or 100 Best Novels Written in English
• Time Magazine’s All-Time 100 Novels
• NY Times Best-Seller list
• Project Gutenberg (United States, Canada)