Mission Impossible
Mission Impossible at Evanston Public Library is a community-driven reading challenge where we 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 2025-2026 author is Thomas Mann. The writings that we will read and discuss include:
- "Tonio Kröger" and "Death in Venice" from Death in Venice and Other Tales, translated by Joachim Neugroschel
- "Mario and the Magician," translated by H.T. Porter
- The Magic Mountain, translated by John E. Woods
Discussion Groups
Reading Schedule
Discussion Prompts
Extra Resources
Discussion Prompts
Monthly Group - coming soon
Every Other Month Group - coming soon
Three Meetings Group - coming soon
Supplemental Information
- Thomas Mann Biography
- Lectures & Readings
- Historical Context
These are the books that we have read over the years:
- 2025-2026 - Death in Venice and Other Tales and The Magic Mountain by Thomas Mann
- 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