Reading challenges are a fun way to spice up your reading slump. This semester, HPU Libraries is offering two challenges to introduce some new books to your reading list and expand your literary interests. For each challenge completed, visit Smith Library to enter the Reading Challenge Raffle for a chance to win some free HPU merch.
Challenge One: The Eras Tour Reading Challenge
Taylor Swift’s 2023 Eras Tour was the highest grossing tour of all time. The reading challenge based on her tour features one book related to each era (or album). Each of the books are either directly referenced by Swift in a song from the album or the book is based on the same idea as the song. For example, in “The Outside” Swift references the poem “The Road Not Taken” by Robert Frost. The poem is a bit of a motif in Swift’s discography, with more direct references to it in “Illicit Affairs” from her Folklore album and “Tis the Damn Season” from her album Evermore.
Many of Swift’s other songs also include direct quotes from famous works of literature. “So it goes” from the Reputation album directly borrows its title from Kurt Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse Five. Likewise, the song “Lover” borrows a line from the title of a Shakespeare play “All’s Well that Ends Well”, and references to a “beautiful fool” and a “green light” in the song “Happiness” allude to F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby. This book is another of Swift’s favorites to reference, with another appearance in “This is Why We Can’t Have Nice Things” from Reputation; though, on this track, she references the character Jay Gatsby himself, singing “And there are no rules when you show up here/Bass beat rattling the chandelier/Feeling so Gatsby for that whole year”.
Other references to fictional characters in Swift’s songs include a mention of Peter and Wendy from Peter Pan in the song “Cardigan” and Romeo and Juliet from Shakespeare’s “Romeo and Juliet” in her song “Love Story”. She also references the legend of Achilles from Greek mythology in her song “State of Grace” on the Red album. There are many versions of this story, the most famous being from Homer’s Iliad, but many modern retellings of Greek myths have enraptured readers lately, including Madeline Miller’s Song of Achilles which reimagines the story of Achilles for modern audiences.
Some of Swift’s songs are entirely based on the premise of a book, like “Wonderland” from the album 1989. It borrows the world of Wonderland and many characters and themes from Lewis Carroll’s book Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, including the “madness” the characters experience, the Cheshire Cat’s smile, and the imagery of falling down a rabbit hole.
Swift references other books less directly, copying a similar motif or style from the book in the delivery of her song. For example, Swift’s song “Dear John” is not a direct reference to the Nicolas Sparks novel of the same name, but they both borrow the popular trope of the “Dear John” letter to discuss the ending of a romantic relationship. Similarly, the song “Dear Reader” from Swift’s latest album Midnights does not directly reference Jane Eyre, but she utilizes the same delivery, addressing her audience as “reader” throughout the song just as Charlotte Bronte does in her novel.
Challenge Two: The #booktok Reading Challenge
The social media app TikTok has had a profound impact on the publishing industry, booksellers, and libraries over the past few years. “BookTok” refers to a subset of videos on the app related to book reviews, recommendations, and discussions by both lay readers and industry professionals. Books featured in viral videos on TikTok tend to reach record sales that they likely otherwise would not have reached without the help of the social media juggernaut launching them into the limelight. As a result, books that are popular on the app are now frequently featured on display in bookstores and libraries, and these titles are bought in larger quantities by these institutions to meet the rising demand. Even books that were not published recently experience the BookTok Effect when they trend on the app, with many older books selling out of stores when their viral status creates a surprise surge in popularity.
In this reading challenge, we’ve highlighted a variety of books that have been trending on TikTok over the past year. Popular genres on the app tend to be Young Adult (YA), Fantasy, Romance, Mystery, and Horror. In the YA category, this challenge features Heartstopper, a YA graphic novel. Fantasy novels on this list include Ninth House, A Court of Thorns and Roses, Fourth Wing, Babel, and Legends & Lattes, which is a “High Fantasy/Low Stakes” novel. This genre is also called “cozy fantasy” and is popular on TikTok with readers who want the escapism of a fantasy novel without the dark themes, gore, or violence that many other fantasy novels tend to explore.
In the mystery/thriller category, this challenge features The Housemaid by Frieda McFadden and Bunny by Mona Awad. While there is sometimes disagreement between critics and average readers about the quality of any given novel, Awad’s Bunny is notable for bridging the gap between the two audiences, receiving a Goodreads Choice Award along with being touted the “Best Book of 2019” by Time Magazine, Vogue, and The New York Public Library.
Finally, the last book in this challenge, Daisy Jones and the Six, was made popular both by the author’s near-constant trending status on TikTok and by the Amazon Prime adaptation of the story into a miniseries.
Whether you are looking for your next book obsession or simply want to peak into the psyche of popular fiction readers across the country, BookTok is the place to start.
-Blog post by Kelly Jones, Wanek Center Librarian & Health Sciences Liaison