Adult Reading Challenge
Tue 17/03/2026
Welcome to the Sutton Libraries Adult Reading Challenge 2026
Looking for a gentle nudge to read more this year? The Sutton Libraries Adult Reading Challenge 2026 is here to help you rediscover the joy of reading, at your own pace, in your own way.
This challenge is open to anyone aged 16+, whether you’re a lifelong bookworm, a lapsed reader, or someone who just wants a bit of reading inspiration.
What is the Adult Reading Challenge?
You choose what to read, guided by 24 creative reading prompts. You can dip in casually, aim for the minimum target, or set yourself a bigger personal challenge, it’s entirely up to you.
To complete the challenge, you:
- Read books that match the challenge prompts
- Log what you’ve read using a simple online Form
How many books do I need to read?
- Complete the challenge: read and log 6 books in total
That works out to roughly one book every one or two months, but you can read more or less whenever it suits you.
- Stretch goal: read up to 24 books if you want to tackle every prompt
The Reading Categories
To help you choose your books, we’ve created 24 categories. Each book you read can match one category (but the book itself is always your choice).
- A book from an author you have never read before
- A book with the name of a country in the title
- A non-fiction book on a topic you know nothing about.
- A book set in Paris
- A book being adapted in 2026
- A book by a black author
- A classic book you've always meant to read
- A graphic novel
- A book with a beautiful cover
- The first book you see in a bookstore or library
- A book featuring music
- A librarian recommendation
- A book from a place you've never been
- A book featured at the Sutton Literature Festival
- A book with a character who is not human
- A book shortlisted for the Booker Prize
- A book by an author who shares one of your names
- A book that came out the year you were born
- A book about time travelling
- A short story book
- A book that has a colour in the title
- A book that was being read by a stranger in public transport
- A book with an animal on the cover
- A book with a one word title
How do I log my books?
You’ll be asked to fill in a short Online Form, where you can:
- Enter the book title and author
- Select which prompt it matches
- (Optionally) share a short comment or recommendation
Log your books online
Use our quick form to log your read.
No sign-up needed — you can start and log at any time.
You can log your books at any point during the year, and you don’t need to register in advance. Just start reading and log as you go.
Is there a prize?
Yes!
Everyone who logs at least 6 books by the end of 2026 will be entered into a free prize draw. Details of the prizes will be shared later in the year.
But the real reward is discovering new favourites, getting inspired by other readers, and making reading a regular part of your life again.
Read on your own or with others
You can take part completely independently, but there will also be opportunities to connect with other readers along the way.
Throughout the year, Sutton Libraries will:
- Share reading trends and popular prompts
- Highlight reader recommendations
- Create in-library displays inspired by the challenge
- Hold literary events
You can join at any point during the year. There’s no deadline to start.
Ready to begin?
There’s nothing to sign up for and no reading list to collect. Just:
- Pick a book
- Enjoy reading it
- Log it using the form
Whether you read one book or twenty-four, every page counts. We can’t wait to see what Sutton is reading in 2026.
Looking for inspiration? Check out our librarian recommendations for every category!
My Cat Yugoslavia
By Pajtim Statovci
In 1980s Yugoslavia, a young Muslim girl, is married off to a man she hardly knows, but what was meant to be a happy match quickly goes shockingly wrong. Soon thereafter her country is torn apart by war and she and her family flee. Years later, her son, Bekim, grows up a social outcast in present-day Finland, not just an immigrant in a country suspicious of foreigners, but a gay man in an unaccepting society.
On a visit to gay bar, Bekim meets a talking cat who moves in with him and his boa constrictor. It is this witty, charming, manipulative creature who starts Bekim on a journey back to Kosovo to confront his demons and make sense of the cruel history of his family.
Ghosts in the Hedgerow: A hedgehog Whodunnit
By Tom Moorhouse
A body lies motionless on the ground. Small, with a snouty head and covered with spines, it is unquestionably dead before its time. And all of those gathered around the corpse are suspect. So which one of them is responsible for this crime - and for the disappearance of many many thousands of hedgehogs in recent decades? Is it the car driver, the badger, the farmer, the gardener? Who could possibly have it in for a hedgehog? In poll after poll they come out top as our favourite mammal. And yet their numbers are estimated to have halved in less than twenty years. Magnifying glass in hand, Tom Moorhouse investigates the evidence. On a vital mission to bring those responsible to justice, prevent further murder and save a species, he uncovers a story full of twists, turns and uncomfortable truths about the trade-offs that exist between humans and wildlife. But he can also see a solution.
The Three Musketeers
By Alexandre Dumas
When the young d'Artagnan leaves his home in Gascony with the hope of becoming one of the king's musketeers, it is the start of a wonderful adventure. D'Artagnan soon meets the three musketeers, Athos, Porthos and Aramis. Together they cry, 'All for one and one for all!'
H is for Hawk
By Helen Macdonald
As a child Helen Macdonald was determined to become a falconer. She learned the arcane terminology and read all the classic books, including T.H. White's tortured masterpiece, 'The Goshawk', which describes White's struggle to train a hawk as a spiritual contest. When her father dies and she is knocked sideways by grief, she becomes obsessed with the idea of training her own goshawk. She buys Mabel on a Scottish quayside and takes her home to Cambridge. This book is a record of a spiritual journey - an unflinchingly honest account of Macdonald's struggle with grief during the difficult process of the hawk's taming and her own untaming.
Good Dirt
By Charmaine Wilkerson
When Ebby Freeman travels to France to take a three-month hiatus from her complicated home life, the last person she expects to find is her ex-fiancé Henry, with his new girlfriend in tow. Nearly twenty years earlier, the Freemans were the only African American family living in a wealthy coastal enclave in Connecticut when armed robbers invaded their home and tragedy changed their lives forever. Then, just as Ebby thought she had a new chance at happiness, her storybook romance with Henry fell apart. Now, this unexpected encounter with Henry will force Ebby to reckon with her past and to think on the other loss her family suffered that day - the destruction of a beloved stoneware jar crafted by an enslaved ancestor and passed down through the generations. A piece that might hold not only her family history, but also the key to reclaiming her future.
The Great Gatsby
By F. Scott Fitzgerald
A masterpiece, a dazzling social satire, and a milestone in twentieth century literature, The Great Gatsby peels away the layers of the glamorous twenties in the U.S. to display the coldness and cruelty at its heart.
Daytripper
By Gabriel Ba
The acclaimed Daytripper follows Bras de Olivias Dominguez during different periods in his life, each with the same ending: his death.
Daytripper follows the life of one man, Bras de Olivias Dominguez. Every chapter features an important period in Bras' life in exotic Brazil, and each story ends the same way: with his death. And then, the following story starts up at a different point in his life, oblivious to his death in the previous issue-and then also ends with him dying again. In every chapter, Bras dies at different moments in his life, as the story follows him through his entire existence-one filled with possibilities of happiness and sorrow, good and bad, love and loneliness. Each issue rediscovers the many varieties of daily life, in a story about living life to its fullest-because any of us can die at any moment.
Poignant, heartfelt and thoughtful, this comics landmark is one of the most transcendent pieces of graphic storytelling ever to hit the printed page. Brothers Fabio Moon and Gabriel Ba truly compose one of the industry's masterworks.
Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow
By Gabrielle Zevin
Two kids meet in a hospital gaming room in 1987. One is visiting her sister, the other is recovering from a car crash. The days and months are long there. Their love of video games becomes a shared world - of joy, escape and fierce competition. But all too soon that time is over, fades from view. When the pair spot each other eight years later in a crowded train station, they are catapulted back to that moment. The spark is immediate, and together they get to work on what they love - making games to delight, challenge and immerse players, finding an intimacy in digital worlds that eludes them in their real lives. Their collaborations make them superstars.
Utopia Avenue
By David Mitchell
Utopia Avenue might be the most curious British band you've never heard of. Emerging from London's psychedelic scene in 1967, folksinger Elf Holloway, blues bassist Dean Moss, guitar virtuoso Jasper de Zoet and jazz drummer Griff Griffin together created a unique sound, with lyrics that captured their turbulent times. The band produced only two albums in two years, yet their musical legacy lives on. This is the story of Utopia Avenue's brief, blazing journey from Soho clubs and draughty ballrooms to the promised land of America, just when the Summer of Love was receding into something much darker - a multi-faceted tale of dreams, drugs, love, sexuality, madness and grief; of stardom's wobbly ladder and fame's Faustian pact; and of the collision between youthful idealism and jaded reality as the Sixties drew to a close.
Oryx and Crake
By Margaret Atwood
Pigs might not fly, but they are strangely altered. So, for that matter, are wolves and raccoons. A man, once named Jimmy, now calls himself Snowman and lives in a tree, wrapped in an old bed sheet. The voice of Oryx, the woman he loved, teasingly haunts him. The green-eyed children of Crake are his responsibility.
Convenience Store Woman
By Sayaka Mrata
Keiko has never really fitted in. At school and university people find her odd and her family worries she'll never be normal. To appease them, Keiko takes a job at a newly opened convenience store. Here, she finds peace and purpose in the simple, daily tasks and routine interactions. She is, she comes to understand, happiest as a convenience store worker. But in Keiko's social circle it just won't do for an unmarried woman to spend all her time stacking shelves and re-ordering green tea.
Fire Rush
By Jacqueline Crooks
Yamaye lives for the weekend, when she can go raving with her friends at The Crypt, an underground club in the industrial town on the outskirts of London. A young woman unsure of her future, the sound is her guide - a chance to discover who she really is in the rhythms of those smoke-filled nights. In the dance-hall darkness, dub is the music of her soul, her friendships, her ancestry. But everything changes when she meets Moose, the man she falls deeply in love with, and who offers her the chance of freedom and escape. When their relationship is brutally cut short, Yamaye goes on a dramatic journey of transformation where past and present collide with explosive consequences.
Lily and the Octopus
By Steven Rowley
The world over, man and his dog remain the most faithful of friends. But for Ted, the unexpected arrival of a small 'octopus' that affixes itself to his beloved daschund Lily's head threatens the bond with his one true friend and throws his life into turmoil. Reminiscent of 'The Life of Pi' and 'The Art of Racing in the Rain', 'Lily and the Octopus' captures the search for meaning in death and introduces a dazzling new voice in fiction.
The rest of our lives
By Benjamin Markovits
When Tom Layward's wife had an affair he resolved to leave her as soon as his youngest daughter turned eighteen. Twelve years later, while driving her to Pittsburgh to start university, he remembers his pact. He is also on the run from his own health issues, and the fact that he's been put on leave at work after students complained about the politics of his law class - something he hasn't yet told his wife. So, after dropping Miriam off, he keeps driving, with the vague plan of visiting various people from his past - an old college friend, his ex-girlfriend, his brother, his son - on route, maybe, to his father's grave in California.
The Ministry of Time
By Kaliane Bradley
In the near future, a disaffected civil servant is offered a job in a new government ministry gathering 'expats' from across history to test the limits of time-travel. Her role is to work as a 'bridge': living with, assisting and monitoring the expat known as '1847' - Commander Graham Gore. As far as history is concerned, Commander Gore died on Sir John Franklin's doomed expedition to the Arctic, so he's a little disoriented to find himself alive and surrounded by outlandish concepts such as 'washing machine', 'Spotify' and 'the collapse of the British Empire'. With an appetite for discovery and a seven-a-day cigarette habit, he soon adjusts; and during a long, sultry summer he and his bridge move from awkwardness to genuine friendship, to something more. But as the true shape of the project that brought them together begins to emerge, they are forced to confront their past choices and imagined futures.
The Lottery, and Other Stories
By Shirley Jackson
'The Lottery' is considered a classic work of short fiction, remarkable for its combination of subtle suspense and pitch-perfect descriptions of both the chilling and the mundane
The Color Purple
By Alice Walker
This compelling and cherished classic tells the story of Celie. Raped by the man she calls father, her two children taken from her and forced into an ugly marriage, she has no one to talk to but God, until she meets a woman who offers love and support.
Remarkably Bright Creatures
By Shelby Van Pelt
When Tova Sullivan's husband died two years ago, she talked her way into a job mopping floors at Sowell Bay Aquarium. Keeping busy helps her cope, which she's been doing since her 18-year-old son, Erik, mysteriously vanished. 30 and headlining for washed-up band Moth Sausage, Cameron Cassmore has some serious growing up to do. Then the discovery of an old class ring sends him on a mission to Sowell Bay to track down the father he's never known. Marcellus, a 'prisoner' at the Aquarium, wouldn't lift one of his eight tentacles for his human captors until he forms a friendship with the cleaning lady. Keenly observant, but with time running out, Marcellus deduces that Cameron is a missing key to what happened the fateful night of Erik's disappearance. Now Marcellus must use every trick his old, invertebrate body can muster to unearth the truth for Tova before it's too late.
Wonder
By R. J. Palacio
'Wonder' is the funny, sweet and incredibly moving story of Auggie Pullman. Born with a terrible facial abnormality, this shy, bright ten-year-old has been home-schooled by his parents for his whole life, in an attempt to protect him from the stares and cruelty of the outside world.
Happy reading!