All About Books discussion

I think I'm challenged when it comes to challenges, so we just aren't going to label it such this year! :-) I love to set out "pyramid" goals every year, but I can't seem to make it work with my grouping this year. So this will be more general. Except for the first category which is my monthly f2f bookclub, I'll consider it good if I manage to read two or three books from each category. I'll set my annual goal at the usual 48 books though I rarely make that either...

If I do make it a pyramid, with 12 categories, I'll allow some overlap among them, with some exceptions...
12 Books: Started, never finished (these will all overlap) (#11)
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6.
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10
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12.

11 Books: Historical Fiction (#6) - can overlap, but NOT including Walter Scott nominees...
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10.
11.

10 Books: Daytimer's Book Club (#1)
1. The Wright Brothers - 3 stars
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10.

9 Books: Next in series (#7) - but not including Mrs. Murphy rereads...
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9.

8 Books: Newest TBR (#9)
1. An Untamed State - 3 stars
2. Upstream: Selected Essays - 4 stars
3. Midnight Riot - 4 stars
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8.

7 Books: Oldest TBR (#8)
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3.
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5.
6.
7.

6 Books: Mrs. Murphy rereads (#7a)
1. Pawing Through the Past - 3 stars
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5 Books: Walter Scott nominees (#5)
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5.

4 Books: Medieval Non-fiction (#4)
1. Foundation: The History of England from Its Earliest Beginnings to the Tudors - 4 stars
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3 Books: Leftover Themes (#3)
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3.

2 Books: Black Lives Matter (#2) - NOT counting Daytimer's books
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2.

1 Books: Understanding Politics (#10)
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1. Daytimer's Book Club:
I'm a librarian and the selector for the group. There are nine of us, so I have to pick books that we have at least nine copies of...

Here is our 2017 list. I like to include a mini-theme and this year I have two: an aviation theme, and a civil war/slavery/civil rights theme. I've already read a couple of the books I chose for the group.

Read 2015 January: The Nightingale (Women)
Read February: The Wright Brothers (Biography)
March: Circling the Sun (Romance)
April: All the Light We Cannot See (Prize Winner)
May: Brown Girl Dreaming (Children's)
June: The Woman in Cabin 10 (Mystery)
July: The Invention of Wings (Historical)
August: The Underground Railroad (Literary)
September: Small Great Things (Current Interest)
October: Homegoing (Foreign Culture)
November: Heart of Darkness (Classic)
Read 2014 December: The Aviator's Wife (Minnesota)


2. Black Lives Matter
6 of the book club books above fit this theme, which is more than usual. I like to have a theme for my own reading anyway of about 10 books, so I'm hoping I'll manage 4 more from this list...

1. Uncle Tom's Cabin
2. Between the World and Me
Read 3. An Untamed State
4. Glory over Everything: Beyond The Kitchen House
5. The Long Song
6. The Home Place: Memoirs of a Colored Man's Love Affair with Nature
7. The Book of Negroes

3. Leftover Themes:
Speaking of themes, there are always books from previous years themes that I didn't get to that I still want to read.

Moby Dick:
Ahab's Wife, or The Star-Gazer (also for the Wife titles theme)
The Art of Fielding
The Rathbones
The Movement of Stars
Railsea

Wife titles:
The Twentieth Wife
The River Wife
The Fugitive Wife: A Novel
The Tiger's Wife

Bird titles:
The Plover
The Sparrow
Peregrine

4. Medieval Non-fiction:
Last year's theme ended up being The Plantagenets, but there were some other things that got left out in narrowing down that topic for my MLA presentation, so this included books I didn't finish and books that got left out that I still want to read.

Read Foundation: The History of England from Its Earliest Beginnings to the Tudors - started, need to finish
The Demon's Brood: A History of the Plantagenet Dynasty - started, need to finish
The Edge of the World: A Cultural History of the North Sea and the Transformation of Europe
The Edge of the Empire: A Journey to Britannia: From the Heart of Rome to Hadrian's Wall
Killers of the King: The Men Who Dared to Execute Charles I
A Great and Terrible King: Edward I and the Forging of Britain
The Wars of the Roses: The Fall of the Plantagenets and the Rise of the Tudors
Blood & Roses: the Paston Family and the Wars of the Roses
Blood Sisters: The Women Behind The War Of The Roses
Eleanor de Montfort: A Rebel Countess in Medieval England

5. Walter Scott nominees (historical fiction):
Wolf Hall
Hodd
Conspirata - also Next in series (below)
Sacred Hearts
The Long Song - also Black Lives Matter
Heartstone - need to read previous in series first (see below)
The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet
Merivel: A Man of His Time - need to read Restoration first (see below)
The Luminaries
The Miniaturist
The Paying Guests
A God in Ruins
Dictator - need to read Conspirata first, see above

6. Other Historical Fiction:
Restoration
King Hereafter - currently reading, group read with Open Seas Yahoo group
The Island House
Hild
Dark Aemilia: A Novel of Shakespeare's Dark Lady
The Butcher Bird - also Next in series
The Pillars of the Earth - started, need to finish
And Ladies of the Club - started, need to finish
His Dark Lady - also Next in series
Bloodline - also Next in series

7. Next in series:
Read Dec 2016 Palace of Treason - Red Sparrow #2
The Wine of Angels - Merrily Watkins #1 - currently reading
Career of Evil - Cormoran Strike #3
The Butcher Bird - Somershill Manor #2
Come Rain or Come Shine - Mitford series
Bloodline - Wars of the Roses #3
Library of Souls - Peculiar Children #3
White Nights - Shetland #2
Speaking from Among the Bones - Flavia #5
His Dark Lady - Lucy Morgan #2
The Kalahari Typing School for Men - No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency #4
The Headhunter's Daughter: A Mystery - Amanda Brown #2
Bertie Plays the Blues - 44 Scotland Street #7
Written in My Own Heart's Blood - Outlander #8
The Endless Forest - Wilderness #6
Poison, Your Grace - Simon and Elizabeth #2
The Dark Rose - Morland Dynasty #2
Moon Over Soho - Peter Grant (Rivers of London) #2

7a. Mrs. Murphy rereads:
Read Dec 2016 Cat on the Scent - Mrs. Murphy #7
Read Pawing Through the Past Mrs. Murphy #8
Claws and Effect - Mrs. Murphy #9

8. Oldest TBR:
A Game of Thrones - Song of Ice and Fire #1
The Bronze Horseman
Juliet
A Rose for the Crown
His Majesty's Dragon
The Cold Light of Mourning
Night Birds' Reign
Sea Witch
Never Buried
A Discovery of Witches
11/22/63Awen: Powys/Mercia, Offa's Dyke, Canu Heledd, 793-796 Ad

9. Newest TBR, AKA Library books that I need to return:
Constance
The Kashmir Shawl
The Red House
London Bridges
The Tower, The Zoo, and The Tortoise
The Pigeon Pie Mystery
Too Many Crooks Spoil the Broth
Pies and Prejudice
Gretel and the Case of the Missing Frog Prints
Once Upon a Crime

10. Understanding Politics, AKA How the Hell did Trump Win?
White Trash: The 400-Year Untold History of Class in America
Hillbilly Elegy: A Memoir of a Family and Culture in Crisis
The Unwinding: An Inner History of the New America
Strangers in Their Own Land: Anger and Mourning on the American Right
Listen, Liberal: Or, What Ever Happened to the Party of the People
The Populist Explosion: How the Great Recession Transformed American and European Politics

11. Here are some books I've started at one time or another, so I'm listing them here. They all overlap other categories...

1. Ahab's Wife, or The Star-Gazer
2. The Plover
Read 3. Foundation: The History of England from Its Earliest Beginnings to the Tudors
4. The Demon's Brood: A History of the Plantagenet Dynasty
5. Wolf Hall
6. The Pillars of the Earth
7. And Ladies of the Club
8. Palace of Treason
9. The Wine of Angels
10. King Hereafter
11. The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo
12. A Constellation of Vital Phenomena

There. That should definitely keep me busy in 2017! I'll keep a running total of my reading here:

1. An Untamed State - Finished Jan. 13. 3 stars.
2. Foundation: The History of England from Its Earliest Beginnings to the Tudors - Finished Jan. 21. 4 stars.
3. The Wright Brothers - Finished Feb. 3. 3 stars.
4. Pawing Through the Past - Finished Feb. 27. 3 stars
5. Upstream: Selected Essays - Finished Mar. 9. 4 stars.
6. Midnight Riot - Finished Mar. 15. 4 stars.

Updated and tweaked. I added a pyramid scheme after all (message #1). Wish me luck!

I finished up Palace of Treason. I'm anxious to get started on my goals, but this one will count for 2016 and not 2017!

Also finished Cat on the Scent. Still probably won't quite meet my 2016 goal....

January plans: I finished 2016 with a mere 36 books reads. So I have my work cut out for me to get it back up to 48, especially since a number of things I want to read are chunksters.

On audio, I'm currently listening to An Untamed State. It's not something I would choose to read, but it is for a librarian's book group that meets 4 times a year here. It also fits my Black Lives Matter theme, since it is about a Haitian American woman who gets kidnapped visiting her parents in Haiti. The writing is quite lovely, even if the topic is horrific.

Next up will be The Wright Brothers for my February f2f bookclub meeting. Neither of these is particularly long, so I also hope to finish listening to Foundation: The History of England from Its Earliest Beginnings to the Tudors. I have 5 disks left of that, but had to set it aside because of Interlibrarian Loan requests that came in and those take priority since they can't be renewed.

On the bedside table, I have finally started King Hereafter. An online group I am in is reading it - has been for two months, and I am quite behind. If I can stick to 20 pages a day, I will be finished with it before a group read starts mid-February of And Ladies of the Club. I am also half through The Wine of Angels on my Nook tablet. It too keeps getting side-tracked. Hoping I can juggle it alongside King Hereafter.

And Ladies of the Club doesn't start until Feb. so those other 5 books are my top priorities right now and three of them are chunksters!

Finished reading An Untamed State. Difficult to rate this one, because of the subject matter. I had thought it would fit my "Black Lives Matter" theme, but it really isn't about race at all, even though it is set partly in Haiti, and the main character is a black woman married to a white man. Here's my Goodreads review: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...

Finished Foundation: The History of England from Its Earliest Beginnings to the Tudors. I love medieval history, so I really hope to read more nonfiction this year. Gave this 4 stars. I think it should have been divided into 2 volumes and expanded each a bit. Trying to cover prehistory up to the Tudors meant that a lot got left out. It also doesn't cover Ireland, Scotland, or Wales - only England. Here's my full review: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
I will probably continue the series.

Next up on audio is The Wright Brothers for my Daytimers book club.

March update: I have failed miserably at keeping on with King Hereafter even though I love this book and author! I just don't read as much as I used to, and I've gotten distracted by having Roku and unlimited data for the first time! So I'm watching the Miss Fisher Mysteries, and NCIS and Medium and Star Trek: Deep Space Nine and other fun stuff. Also haven't touched And Ladies of the Club.

I did finish The Wright Brothers and got halfway through Circling the Sun. That got interrupted for some interlibrary loans that came in - Pawing Through the Past and two others that I haven't started yet. One is Raven Black which I've read, but then watched the BBC version, and now want to reread on audio before continuing the series. Also the audio of the first Miss Fisher series, Cocaine Blues.

Even those have been postponed, (and may have to get returned and re-requested...) while I listen to All the Light We Cannot See for the next book club meeting.

So I'm playing catch up for now and about 4 books behind where I should be for the year...