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I write two newsletters for Book Riot. One of them, you’re reading right now. The other is the Read Harder newsletter. Every year, Book Riot puts out the Read Harder Challenge: a list of 24 tasks to diversify your TBR and help you find your new favorite book. Yesterday, we announced the 2026 Read Harder Challenge tasks!
These tasks are a mix of fun topics to spice up your reading life, like Task #20: Read a book set in space, as well as timely topics relevant to navigating our world in 2026, like Task #18: Read a nonfiction book about AI or social media. As always, there are plenty of 2SLGBTQIA+ tasks, like Task #4: Read a novel with a main character who uses they/them pronouns, Task #16: Read a queer picture book, and Task #19: Read a book by an intersex author.
If you want to get recommendations for each of the tasks throughout the year, sign up for the Read Harder newsletter! Free subscribers get two book recommendations for each task, and paid (All Access) subscribers get access to additional four (or more) recommendations per task. Since I’m the one writing these lists, you can be sure I include a ton of queer book recommendations.
Today, I have three recommendations for Task #5: Read a nonfiction book about resistance, and they’re all about queer resistance. I probably don’t have to specify why we included this task for the 2026 challenge. It’s easy to feel overwhelmed by the rise of fascism in the U.S. and around the world. Learning about how people have resisted oppression throughout history helps inspire us to do the same today.
Don’t miss your chance to win a full year of Kindle Unlimited courtesy of Twisted Comics! Sign up to be notified when the Black Mirror Comics: San Junipero graphic novel launches on Kickstarter, and you’ll be automatically entered. You have until January 9, 2026.
 Let the Record Show: A Political History of ACT UP New York, 1987-1993 by Sarah SchulmanThis 736-page history documents one of the most prominent and effective queer activist group in U.S. history: ACT UP. Through interviews with hundreds of ACT UP members, Schulman shares the lessons learned through this radical organization that are applicable to organizers now. It also follows the AIDS activist groups that came out of ACT UP. As a review from The New York Times says, “This is not reverent, definitive history. This is a tactician’s bible.” |
 Our Work Is Everywhere: An Illustrated Oral History of Queer and Trans Resistance by Syan RoseI wanted to provide a few different formats of books to show the ways this task can be approached. Our Work is Everywhere is an oral history of queer and trans activism in comics form. As fellow Book Rioter Laura Sackton describes it, “Reading this beautiful collection of oral histories and interviews feels likes sitting down with a bunch of rad queer and trans artists, healers, and activists, and listening to them talk about what inspires them, angers them, fuels them.” |
 Hine Toa by Ngāhuia te AwekōtukuWhen looking up books about queer history, the results often are all about the U.S.—but queer resistance has taken place and continues to happen across the globe. This is a memoir of a prominent Māori lesbian activist and academic, Ngāhuia te Awekōtuku. It follows her journey from growing up a working-class girl from the pā to becoming a founding member of Ngā Tamatoa and the Women’s and Gay Liberation movements. Her experience of being denied entry into the United States in 1972 for being a lesbian was the catalyst for the formation of several of the first Gay Liberation groups in New Zealand. |
If you want to keep up with the 2026 Read Harder Challenge and get recommendations from me for each task, sign up for the Read Harder newsletter! For triple the recommendations, join All Access.
If you’re already an All Access member, I usually share a list of queer books out this week as a bonus. December is typically a very quiet month in publishing, especially after the first Tuesday, so I only have three books for you today. They’re all sapphic romance novels!
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