Around the Year in 52 Books discussion

This will be my first time participating in this; I've been wanting to since stumbling into this this year (though not entirely in time to plan accordingly). I will eventually read all 52 books but my order will not really match the order of the list.

I will be dividing the list of challenges in order to make it more orderly in this topic. A lot of my choices are based on the lists from the suggestions given for each category, so hopefully they all fit!

Note: Books listed are subject to (and will likely) change

READ:
07 | 52

NOTES:
✓ → read
★★★☆☆ → book rating

STATS:
Read Page Count: 2.899 pages
Formats: 02 print | 05 ebook

GENRES:
04 fantasy
02 urban fantasy/paranormal
00 science fiction
00 general fiction
01 historical fiction
00 mystery & thriller
02 middle-grade | young adult
01 other genres
00 non-fiction

1. A book from the Goodreads Choice Awards 2016
The Obelisk Gate by N.K. Jemisin

2. A book with at least 2 perspectives (multiple points of view)
A Dance with Dragons by George R.R. Martin

3. A book you meant to read in 2016
The Song of Achilles by Madeline Miller

4. A title that doesn't contain the letter "E"
Magonia by Maria Dahvana Headley

5. A historical fiction
The Luminaries by Eleanor Catton

6. A book being released as a movie in 2017
A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L'Engle

7. A book with an animal on the cover or in the title
Water for Elephants by Sara Gruen

8. A book written by a person of color
Half of a Yellow Sun by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

9. A book in the middle of your To Be Read list
Dragon Rider by Cornelia Funke

10. A dual-timeline novel
Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell

11. A category from another challenge
✓ The Lightning Thief by Rick Riordan (Popsugar 2017: book with mythical creature) ★★★★☆

12. A book based on a myth
The Penelopiad by Margaret Atwood

13. A book recommended by one of your favorite authors
The Bone Doll's Twin by Lynn Flewelling (note: recommended by Robin Hobb)

14. A book with a strong female character
Seraphina by Rachel Hartman

15. A book written or set in Scandinavia
The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo by Stieg Larsson

16. A mystery
13 Minutes by Sarah Pinborough

17. A book with illustrations
The Invention of Hugo Cabret by Brian Selznick

18. A really long book (600+ pages)
✓ The Fox by Sherwood Smith ★★★★☆

19. A New York Times best-seller
The Goldfinch by Donna Tartt

20. A book that you've owned for a while but haven't gotten around to reading
The Curse of Chalion by Lois McMaster Bujold

21. A book that is a continuation of a book you've already read
Traitor to the Throne by Alwyn Hamilton

22. A book by an author you haven't read before
✓ Ghost Talkers by Mary Robinette Kowal ★★★★☆

23. A book from the BBC "The Big Read" list
Watership Down by Richard Adams

24. A book written by at least two authors
✓ Magic Rises by Ilona Andrews ★★★★☆

25. A book about a famous historical figure
The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Díaz

26. An adventure book
Treasure Island by Robert Louis Stevenson

27. A book by one of your favorite authors
Ship of Magic by Robin Hobb

28. A non-fiction
The Power of Myth by Joseph Campbell

29. A book published outside the 4 major publishing houses
✓ The Demons We See by Krista D. Ball (note: self-published) ★★★☆☆

30. A book from Goodreads Top 100 YA Books
City of Bones by Cassandra Clare

31. A book from a sub-genre of your favorite genre
✓ Karen Memory by Elizabeth Bear (subgenre: Steampunk) ★★★☆☆

32. A book with a long title (5+ words, excluding subtitle)
The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland in a Ship of Her Own Making by Catherynne M. Valente

33. A magical realism novel
The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle by Haruki Murakami

34. A book set in or by an author from the Southern Hemisphere
One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel García Márquez (note: in portuguese)

35. A book where one of the main characters is royalty
The Princess Bride by William Goldman

36. A Hugo Award winner or nominee
The Left Hand of Darkness by Ursula K. Le Guin (Winner: 1970)

37. A book you choose randomly
A Natural History of Dragons by Marie Brennan

38. A novel inspired by a work of classic literature
Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel (Based on Farenheit 451)

39. An epistolary fiction
We Need to Talk About Kevin by Lionel Shriver

40. A book published in 2017
✓ The Song Rising by Samantha Shannon ★★★★☆

41. A book with an unreliable narrator
The Thief by Megan Whalen Turner

42. A best book of the 21st century (so far)
The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay by Michael Chabon

43. A book with a chilling atmosphere (scary, unsettling, cold)
We Have Always Lived in the Castle by Shirley Jackson

44. A recommendation from "What Should I Read Next"
Prince of Thorns by Mark Lawrence (series/author rec'ed via 'A Game of Thrones')

45. A book with a one-word title
Fingersmith by Sarah Waters

46. A time travel novel
Kindred by Octavia E. Butler

47. A past suggestion that didn't win
Fragile Things by Neil Gaiman (A book with a simplistic cover)

48. A banned book
Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury

49. A book from someone else's bookshelf
A Tale for the Time Being by Ruth Ozeki (from GR friends' bookshelves)

50. A Penguin Modern Classic
Orlando by Virginia Woolf

51. A collection (e.g. essays, short stories, poetry, plays)
The Paper Menagerie and Other Stories by Ken Liu

52. A book set in a fictional location
Shadow and Bone by Leigh Bardugo

Great list!

Stacey wrote: "Great list!"

Thank you. I've added a few more to my plan meanwhile. I may or may not stick to it.

Welcome to the challenge :)
The 1st year can be the most difficult but you seem to read enough per year and there are plenty of great titles in your plan, so you should have fun. I'm looking forward to see some other opinions on Seraphina and Kindred, 2 of my favorites.

You have a great list there.
We have tons of books in common: A Wrinkle in Time, Water for Elephants, The Penelopiad, The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, Under Heaven, The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle, The Left Hand of Darkness.
I have read and loved One Hundred Years of Solitude, Seraphina and Fahrenheit 451 from your list.

Welcome to the challenge :-)
You are so organized already... I like your idea with the stats, I might copy some of it. I've planned nothing yet, so I'm just stealing ideas from all of you!

There are some books on your list I really enjoyed... Water for Elephants, Half of a Yellow Sun, Burial rites and one of my favorites which I re-read this year: The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo. I hope you'll enjoy them too!

I absolutely hated Watership down, and The Wise Man's Fear I had to give up on. I found it really boring. One Hundred Years of Solitude was not for me either, but I think it's fun to hear others oppinions.

Kindred and A Tale for the Time Being is on my TBR, so I might join you and read them next year :-)

Anna wrote: (...) I have read and loved One Hundred Years of Solitude, Seraphina and Fahrenheit 451 from your list.

Marina H wrote: (...) I absolutely hated Watership down, and The Wise Man's Fear I had to give up on. I found it really boring. One Hundred Years of Solitude was not for me either, but I think it's fun to hear others oppinions.

Thanks Anna and Marina for the encouragement and also I find it funny that you disagree on One Hundred Years of Solitude! I've liked the other two books by this author I've read, specially Love in the Time of Cholera, which was amazing, and I know his other more classically known and loved work is One Hundred Years of Solitude, which I've had a copy of for ages (it's in portuguese, my native tongue) so I felt like this would be a great way to get me to finally read it! I'll let you know if I stand with either Anna or Marina on my enjoyment of it.

I am sure I'll love The Wise Man's Fear, since I really liked The Name of the Wind, but I will actually have to re-read the first one before I tackle this one since I first read it ages ago.

Watership Down is another classic I've had in my shelves for a long time that I never got to, and when I saw it on the BBC list I decided I'd finally get to it. Hopefully I'll like it better than you did, Marina.

And hey, if anyone wants to join me in a buddy-read for any of these shared books in our lists, I'm always available for them!

I also really enjoyed The Name of the Wind, so I was surprised when I just couldn't get through The Wise Man's Fear. I might give it a try at another time, but for now I've given up.

I don't know exactly what a buddy-read entails, never done it, but I'd like to try!

Anna wrote: "I don't know exactly what a buddy-read entails, never done it, but I'd like to try!"

A buddy-read is basically when people read a book together, within the same (more or less) time-frame and discuss it as they read it (either by chapters or sections or just as the mood strikes!).

Sounds cool. :-)

We Have Always Lived in the Castle is fantastic - perfect for that prompt! I'm sadly with Marina on the bunny book though, I wasn't a fan at all.

Jody wrote: "We Have Always Lived in the Castle is fantastic - perfect for that prompt! I'm sadly with Marina on the bunny book though, I wasn't a fan at all."

I do have a couple of alternatives in my TBR to Watership Down that I may pick up if I end up hating that one enough to not want to go on, too, like Lord of the Flies, which is also not a particularly happy book.

I loved Lord of the Flies when I read it in school - I've been meaning to go back and re-read it to see what I think of it now.

Jody wrote: "I loved Lord of the Flies when I read it in school - I've been meaning to go back and re-read it to see what I think of it now."

I could say exactly the same. I'm in the progress of making a list of books I want to prioritize next year. I should add this to the list.

I'm going to add a few rereads to my priority list too. :)

Some of the books in my list are part of series that I need to re-read the previous volumes of before I tackle them, like The Wise Man's Fear. So that's going to be two overly long 600+ novels, not just one!

We also have a ton of books in common, some in the same week: The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay, The Luminaries, The Invention of Hugo Cabret, The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, The Devil in the White City: Murder, Magic, and Madness at the Fair that Changed America, Kindred and A Tale for the Time Being. YAY for future discussions!

I also like that we are reading different works by the same author: both reading Mitchell (The Bone Clocks and Cloud Atlas and Adichie (Americanah and Half of a Yellow Sun).

From your list, Burial Rites is one of my all time favorite books, as is Watership Down. I really really liked The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle, A Wrinkle in Time and Station Eleven. The Princess Bride is a silly classic that works as well for me as an adult as when I was a kid. And even though A Dance with Dragons isn't the best of A Song of Ice and Fire, it's still pretty damn good.

The only one from your list I was disappointed in was The Song of Achilles: I felt like it really didn't add much to an already rich narrative, and would have rather just re-read The Iliad.

...yep, I'm following you now, our tastes are super similar :-)

Sam wrote: "We also have a ton of books in common, some in the same week: The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay, The Luminaries, The Invention of Hugo Cabret, [bo..."
Yay for similar books and I extend my invitation for a future buddy read on any of them.

You know, I never actually read The Iliad. Maybe I should consider doing that sometime in my life. And the Odissey. And other books. So, so many books I should get around to reading. And so little time.

Update: I've finished adding in all my choices. Let's see if the books read by the end of the year will be the ones chosen here.

Xeyra wrote: "Some of the books in my list are part of series that I need to re-read the previous volumes of before I tackle them, like The Wise Man's Fear. So that's going to be two overly long 6..."

If you like audiobooks, I heard that The Name of the Wind is great in this format!