June Challenge
6 | A book or author you said you'd never read
Have you ever dismissed a book or author with a hasty "not for me"? It's time to embrace the thrill of the unknown and step outside your reading comfort zone. Our latest reading prompt invites you to take the plunge and explore a book or author you thought you'd never read.
 
Selections for this month's prompt
Need some inspiration?
Find all these titles and more at the Grimsby Public Library or Libraries in Niagara Cooperative. Click on any of the book covers below to visit our online catalogue and place your hold.
It Ends With Us 
by Colleen Hoover

After building what should be a perfect life with neurosurgeon Ryle Kincaid, Lily finds herself in a troubled relationship with an abusive husband and must make a decision about her future, as she reencounters Atlas Corrigan, a man with links to her past
American Psycho: a novel
by Bret Easton Ellis

In a black satire of the eighties, a decade of naked greed and unparalleled callousness, a successful Wall Street yuppie cannot get enough of anything--including murder. 
In Her Highlander's Bed
by Lynsay Sands

Waking up in a strange bed, Allissaid MacFarlane, who risked death to escape her clan's enemy, is unsure if her rescuer is friend or foe, but the more time she spends with him, she realizes she can trust him with her life—and possibly her heart. Original. 300,000 first printing.
Butcher & Blackbird
by Brynne Weaver

"When a chance encounter sparks an unlikely bond between rival murderers Sloane and Rowan, they find something elusive -- the friendship of two like-minded, pitch-black souls who just happen to enjoy killing other serial killers. As their friendship develops into something more, the restless ghosts left in their wake are only a few steps behind, ready to claim more than just their newfound love."
Post Office
by Charles Bukowski

A sequel to Ham on Rye traces the adulthood of Henry Chinaski from his postwar life in the mid-1950s through his resignation from the postal service in 1969, a period marked by a short-lived effort to support himself by gambling at horse races. Reprint. 15,000 first printing.
Wuthering Heights
by Emily Brontë

The tale of the intense love between the gypsy foundling Heathcliff and Catherine Earnshaw. Catherine, forced to choose between passionate, tortured Heathcliff and gentle, well-bred Edgar Linton, surrendered to the expectations of her class. As Heathcliff's bitterness and vengeance at his betrayal is visited upon the next generation, their innocent heirs must struggle to escape the legacy of the past.
Ulysses : the 1922 text
by James Joyce

"Ulysses, one of the greatest novels of the twentieth century, has had a profound influence on modern fiction. In a series of episodes covering the course of a single day, 16 June 1904, the novel traces the movements of Leopold Bloom and Stephen Dedalus through the streets of Dublin. Each episode has its own literary style, and the epic journey of Odysseus is only one of many correspondencies that add layers of meaning to the text.
Fifty Shades of Grey
by E. L. James

When Anastasia Steele, a young literature student, interviews wealthy young entrepreneur Christian Grey for her campus magazine, their initial meeting introduces Anastasia to an exciting new world that will change them both forever. Reissue. Movie tie-in.
The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy
by Douglas Adams

Escaping Earth just before it is demolished to make way for a new galactic highway, reluctant galactic traveler Arthur Dent embarks on a series of off-beat and occasionally extraterrestrial journeys, accompanied by a variety of unusual companions. Reissue. 80,000 first printing. (A Walt Disney Pictures film, releasing June 2005, starring Martin Freeman, Mos Def, John Malkovich, Zooey Deschanel, & Sam Rockwell) (Science Fiction & Fantasy)
A Little Life 
by Hanya Yanagihara

Moving to New York to pursue creative ambitions, four former classmates share decades marked by love, loss, addiction, and haunting elements from a brutal childhood
House of Leaves
by Mark Z. Danielewski

A family relocates to a small house on Ash Tree Lane and discovers that the inside of their new home seems to be without boundaries. A first novel. Original.
My Year of Rest and Relaxation
by Ottessa Moshfegh

After losing her parents, a young college graduate in New York City spends a year alienating the world under the influence of a crazy combination of drugs. By the author of Eileen.
Twilight
by Stephenie Meyer

When seventeen-year-old Bella leaves Phoenix to live with her father in Forks, Washington, she meets an exquisitely handsome boy at school for whom she feels an overwhelming attraction and who she comes to realize is not wholly human
War and Peace
by Leo Tolstoy

The monumental Russian classic brings together an array of characters both fictional and real-life as it reflects the life and times of Russian society during the Napoleonic War. Reprint.
A Clockwork Orange
by Anthony Burgess

"In Anthony Burgess's influential nightmare vision of the future, where the criminals take over after dark, the story is told by the central character, Alex, a teen who talks in a fantastically inventive slang that evocatively renders his and his friends' intense reaction against their society. Dazzling and transgressive, A Clockwork Orange is a frightening fable about good and evil and the meaning of human freedom"
Tender is the Flesh : a novel
by Agustina Marâia Bazterrica

"The electrifying, award-winning, internationally bestselling novel about a dystopian world in which animals have been wiped out, humans are being harvested for food, and society has been divided into those who eat and those who are eaten"
Babel : or the necessity of violence : an arcane history of the Oxford translators' revolution
by R. F. Kuang

A Chinese boy orphaned by cholera and raised in Britain is trained to work at Oxford's prestigious Royal Institute of Translation, the world's center for translation and magic through silver-working, where he must choose between competing loyalties. 125,000 first printing.
Where the Crawdads Sing
by Delia Owens

Viewed with suspicion in the aftermath of a tragedy, a beautiful hermit who has survived for years in a marsh becomes targeted by unthinkable forces. A first novel by the New York Times best-selling author of Cry of the Kalahari.
To place a hold, click on the cover and go to our online catalogue. 
2025 GPL Reading Challenges
To access the full list of challenges any time, visit the Grimsby Public Library's 2025 Reading Challenge page on our website all year round.
 
How to participate
Read a book according to each month's challenge to be eligible to win our grand prize at the end of the year. That's one book a month, and only 12 books total.
(Tip: you don't have to do the challenges in order, as long as you complete all 12 within the year, it still counts!) 
 
Monthly recommendations 
By signing up for this e-Newsletter, you'll get monthly recommendations for each challenge throughout the year straight to your inbox. Every year in January we start again and send you a brand new list of 12 challenges.
Stay on Track
Half the battle of completing a reading challenge is keeping track and staying motivated. Here are a couple ways we suggest to stay organized:
  1. Download, print and fill out the GPL Reading Challenge form
  2. Create a list of what you read using your GPL online account
  3. Use a book tracking website like Goodreads or The Storygraph
Share with us!
Sharing the books you read is not required, but highly encouraged! Share your progress with us and other readers by posting photos and updates on social media using the hashtag #GPLReadingChallenge  and tagging us @GrimsbyLibrary!
Good luck!
Grimsby Public Library
18 Carnegie Lane
Grimsby, Ontario
L3M 1Y1
www.grimsby.ca/library