Student challenge: Begin a Book

Begin a Book 2026 is finished. From 11 until 20 March the ‘book of the day’ and its starting sentence appeared on this page.

Student Challenge Begin a Book a Success

Around 50 students participated in the second edition of the student challenge Begin een Boek this year. During de Boekenweek (Dutch Book Week), this challenge put a Dutch or English-language novel in the spotlight every day. Participating students received background information and the first sentence of the novel. The challenge was to come up with a second and third sentence themselves. “The best result of this challenge is not the number of students who participated, but the variety of participants and their creativity. We see that reading and writing fiction is certainly not only appreciated by students from the faculty of Arts,” says organiser Saskia Visser of Profielversterking Nederlands.

A Challenge for All RUG Students

Thanks to good cooperation with faculty communication officers and student associations, it was possible to reach a diverse group of students. The participating students range from physics to psychology, from art history to spiritual care. With the combination of Dutch and English books, Begin a Book certainly reached international students as well. In the evaluation, one of them gives the advice: “Definitely do more challenges like this throughout the year! As someone not doing an Arts degree but still enjoy literature as a hobby, these events are fun to partake in and connect to the creative side in me.”

Second edition takes reading and writing seriously

The challenge started last year as an idea to encourage students to read more fiction. The university library holds many recent novels, but not all students outside the Faculty of Arts are aware of that. Therefore, Dutch and English students picked interesting books for a broad audience. For example, they chose Het boek van alle angsten by Emy Koopman, an interesting dystopia about a society that turns into a bullying society, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow by Gabrielle Zevin, about two friends who start a video game company.

The first edition already showed that there was more to this challenge than the the love of books, creative writing was also important to the students. “By participating in the challenge, which was wonderfully accessible, the creative writing spark has been rekindled in me!” says one of the participants. Last year, the winner was drawn from the entries, but participants criticised it in the evaluation. Saskia Visser says: “Students really wanted us to choose a winning sentence. Not easy! Do you reward the humorous twist, or the perfect continuation of the writer's style ? I tried to explain it briefly every day. This way, the participants could also learn from each other. This was appreciated, as shown by the evaluation: “The daily reviews are really fun! It is very interesting to see what all kinds of different people come up with and why the winning sentence fits best after all.” Many students also participated multiple times, culminating in over 100 entries.

Why fiction is important for all students

Reading fiction is positioned between scanning—which we do all day on our phones—and studying. We have all become very good at scanning, but studying requires quite a lot: concentration, a critical attitude, and strong language skills. Especially in the age of AI, where you can also ask a bot to create summaries of long texts and write an entertaining piece, Begin a Book is an initiative that shows a different and promising path. “I got to know recent novels, experienced what it is like to write in different styles, and I am one book richer,” says a participant.

The university is a place where students must develop into critical, independent individuals who find their place in society. This involves the factual knowledge and skills you acquire during your studies, but reading and writing fiction also contributes to everyone's development. You explore other times, view the world from a different perspective, stimulate your imagination, and expand your vocabulary. That's too important and too much fun to leave to a chatbot, isn't it?

About the challenge

The opening sentences of a lot of famous books have become immortal. They set the tone and make the reader curious. However, the second and third sentences are also crucial. The Challenge Starting Stories dares you to think about the beginning of recent novels for ten days.