Mission Impossible
Mission Impossible at Evanston Public Library is a community-driven reading challenge where participants are invited to tackle some of the most challenging books ever written. Designed to encourage readers to step out of their comfort zones, this program fosters a love for literature, promotes critical thinking, and creates a shared experience around thought-provoking, often complex texts.
The 2024-2025 selection is The Tale of Genji by Marasaki Shikibu, translated by Royall Tyler, unabridged.
The Tale of Genji is a classic Japanese literary work written by Murasaki Shikibu in the early 11th century. Often considered the world's first novel, the story is set in the Heian period and delves deeply into court life and the lives of women at that time. The novel is known for its rich character development and poetic language.
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The Mission Impossible Book Club has been meeting for 15 years. While we are an established group, we're always thrilled to have new members.
These are the books that we have read over the years:
- 2024-2025 - The Tale of Genji by Murasaki Shikibu
- 2023-2024 - Midnight's Children & The Satanic Verses by Salman Rushdie
- 2022-2023 - The Cairo Trilogy: Palace Walk, Palace of Desire, & Sugar Street by Naguib Mahfouz
- 2021-2022 - No One Writes to the Colonel, One Hundred Years of Solitude, & Love in the Time of Cholera by Gabriel García Márquez
- 2020-2021 - Mrs. Dalloway, To The Lighthouse, & Orlando by Virginia Woolf
- 2019-2020 - Go Tell It On The Mountain, Giovanni's Room, & Another Country by James Baldwin
- 2018-2019 - As I Lay Dying, The Sound and the Fury, & Absalom, Absalom! by William Faulkner
- 2017-2018 - The Brothers Karamazov & Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoevsky
- 2016-2017 - Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes
- 2015-2016 - Moby Dick by Herman Melville
- 2014-2015 - Middlemarch by George Eliot
- 2013-2014 - Swann's Way & Within a Budding Grove by Marcel Proust
- 2012-2013 - The Complete Stories by Flannery O'Connor
- 2011-2012 - War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy
- 2010-2011 - Ulysses by James Joyce