Becca Starr is the literature and language librarian at the Portland Public Library. Photo by Sarah Skawinski

Did you make a New Year’s resolution to read more in 2025? The Portland Public Library can help.

Since 2018, the library has launched an annual Reading Challenge. One item to check off the list this winter: “Tell a library worker about a good book.” Becca Starr, literature and language librarian, is ready to hear from you.

In the meantime, they answered five questions about this year’s challenge. This interview has been edited for length.

What are the goals of the reading challenge?

We try and keep a very wide collection, including a lot of different authors, viewpoints, genres, time periods. It started as a way to get people out of their comfort zones and introduce them to authors and topics that they may not have wanted to read before. Some categories are highly specific, and others are general, so folks can have the widest selection of materials that they want to read. But it has been a way to open up other parts of collection to people who may not know that they are there and may find something that is of interest to them.

How does the challenge work?

This year, we’re changing it up a bit. We’re doing a bingo-style card, which has the regular challenge categories like “Read a book by an author from this country,” and we also have actions that folks can take too like “Tell someone about a book you read.” There’s an activity component there too.

So folks can fill out a bingo card, and there’s going to be one each season. If they would like, they can submit their card in person or in any of our branches. They’ll be entered into prizes this time. Our prizes for the first round are going to be local bookstore gift cards.

Let’s pick a category from the bingo card. Could you tell me some books that come to mind?

So my choice is going to be “Read a book with animals in it.” Of course, there’s a lot of different directions that folks can go, and we encourage reading not only across genres but also across age groups. There are a couple of books that come to mind. There’s one that is fairly new and that I have checked out at the moment. It’s called “Pony Confidential” (by Christina Lynch). It is a cozy mystery that is told from the perspective of an ornery pony trying to solve a crime. Something like that I would definitely recommend for folks who love a cozy mystery, and I’m sure the horse girls out there will really love it.

There’s also some really great works I like to call “fabulous works,” books that are a little strange and have magical realism. There are a few books that have come out a few years ago that come up right away for me for adults. The movie recently came out, but there’s the book “Nightbitch” by Rachel Yoder. It’s literary fiction and touches upon themes of motherhood and also explores what would it be like to be a little bit more feral and to join the dogs in your neighborhood, which is a great thought experiment. There is a book called “Chouette” (by Claire Oshetsky), which is “owl” in French. It’s another fabulous tale about a woman who gives birth to an owl-child hybrid and explores what happens with that and the decisions that she makes. For folks who are interested in a side of weird with their literary fiction, all of those are ones that have animals in them.

If someone is in need of good recommendations, how would you suggest they proceed?

They are always welcome to come to the library. At any branch, there is library staff who love to make recommendations. We do it all the time and really enjoy it. They can also, from the comfort of their own home, fill out a “Your Next Great Read” form, which is available on our website. It just asks for a little bit of information about what folks are interested in, what they like, what they don’t like. They can even say if they are working on a reading challenge category. It usually takes us about a week, and we send back a list of anywhere from five to 15 books that might be good choices for them.

It’s so much fun. I spend way too much time on every request. I’m thinking, “There’s got to be a great niche book for this person.”

What are your own reading goals for 2025?

A goal that I’ve set for myself is that I want to get back to browsing the shelves to find books as opposed to looking at lists or looking at what I’m ordering. I want to just go to our shelves and say to myself, “I want something to read. What am I in the mood for?” And pick something more randomly than have my reading goals and the books I want to read plotted out at the beginning of the year. With all the technology that we have now, it is easy to create a curated list, which of course has its place and can be really fun, and a lot of people get a lot of joy out of. But I miss when I was a kid and I would wander into the adult stacks of my public library and see what spoke to me.

To learn more about this year’s Reading Challenge, ask a librarian at one of the four Portland Public Library branches or visit portlandlibrary.com. You can download the winter bingo card or fill out an online form. Complete this season’s challenge by Feb. 28 for a chance to win a gift card to a local bookstore. For inspiration, join the PPL Reading Challenge Facebook page or fill out the form for “Your Next Great Read.” Contact the library for more details at readersadvisory@portlib.org or 207-871-1700 ext. 775.