What We’re Reading: September Reading Challenge + Staff Book Picks

Grab your annotation supplies and get ready to cozy up with a good book. This September, Cloth & Paper is making a little more room in our routines for reading.

Beginning September 1, we’re kicking off the C&P September Book Club Reading Challenge, a month-long community challenge designed to help us read more, talk about what we’re reading, and make picking up a book part of our daily routine.

We’ll be hosting the challenge in the Cloth & Paper Insiders Facebook Group and Cloth & Paper Subreddit. Join us there beginning September 1 for reading prompts, book recommendations, community discussions, annotation tips, and a few fun giveaways along the way.

There’s no required book and no required genre. Finally start the novel that has been sitting on your shelf for two years. Revisit an old favorite. Listen to an audiobook on your commute. Read one book or ten. Annotate every page or keep the margins completely pristine. The point is simply to make a little more space for reading.

And if the hardest part is deciding what to pick up first, we can help with that.
We asked the Cloth & Paper team to share some of the books they love most. The result is a a list that is as eclectic and diverse as the team. It is spanning fantasy, literary fiction, horror, classics, philosophy, poetry, memoir, self-development, and just about everything in between. So if you’re stuck, grab one of these and get ready to read, laugh and experience literary community with your favorite planners!

Fantasy, Romantasy & Speculative Fiction

Throne of Glass by Sarah J. Maas
The Knight and the Moth by Rachel Gillig
The Poet Empress by Shen Tao
Harrow the Ninth by Tamsyn Muir
The Ministry of Time by Kaliane Bradley
Escaping Exodus: Symbiosis by Nicky Drayden
Annihilation by Jeff VanderMeer

Literary & Contemporary Fiction

Theo of Golden by Allen Levi
Conversations with Friends by Sally Rooney
The Storied Life of A.J. Fikry by Gabrielle Zevin
Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow by Gabrielle Zevin
All the Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr
The Girls by Emma Cline
Acts of Service by Lillian Fishman
My Year of Rest and Relaxation by Ottessa Moshfegh
Welcome to the Hyunam-dong Bookshop by Hwang Bo-reum

Thrillers, Gothic Fiction & Dark Reads

Sharp Objects by Gillian Flynn
Plain Bad Heroines by Emily M. Danforth
A Certain Hunger by Chelsea G. Summers
Patricia Wants to Cuddle by Samantha Allen
MOTHERSUCKER by Kim Bohyun

Young Adult

If I Stay by Gayle Forman
It’s Kind of a Funny Story by Ned Vizzini

Classics, Plays & Poetry

The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde
The Crucible by Arthur Miller
Macbeth by William Shakespeare
Sir Gawain and the Green Knight by the Gawain Poet
Arsenic and Old Lace by Joseph Kesselring
Inferno by Dante Alighieri
The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger
Love & Misadventure by Lang Leav
The Prophet by Kahlil Gibran

Memoir, Essays & Big Ideas

The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho
On Photography by Susan Sontag
Untamed by Glennon Doyle
Wild Tongues Can’t Be Tamed edited by Saraciea J. Fennell
Dear Ijeawele, or A Feminist Manifesto in Fifteen Suggestions by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
Just Mercy by Bryan Stevenson
All About Love by Bell Hooks

Personal Growth, Philosophy & Perspective

When You’re Ready, This Is How You Heal by Brianna Wiest
You Don’t Need a Smartphone by August Lamm
The Mountain Is You by Brianna Wiest
101 Essays That Will Change the Way You Think by Brianna Wiest
Four Thousand Weeks by Oliver Burkeman
Meditations by Marcus Aurelius
Man’s Search for Meaning by Viktor E. Frankl
The Prince by Niccolò Machiavelli
No Mud, No Lotus: The Art of Transforming Suffering by Thích Nhất Hạnh
The Imitation of Christ by Thomas à Kempis
Dare to Lead by Brené Brown
Money and the Law of Attraction by Esther and Jerry Hicks

You may also like