Around the Year in 52 Books discussion

Voting for (probably) our final mini-poll this year is now open!

The entire Around the Year challenge list is generated by the group members. We enjoyed the process so much in the past three years that we are creating another list for 2019.

The Process:
The topics for the 2019 RC list will be determined through around 13 mini-polls. Each user will vote for their favorite topics in each mini-poll, which will then add up to the 52 topics (13 polls x 4 topics/poll=52 weekly topics). Suggestions for each poll will be opened until 15-20 suggestions are received+seconded. Then a poll will be opened for voting for one week so you can select your favorite suggestions. This timeframe allows for a completed list in October-November.

The Rules:
- You have 8 votes to allocate to TOP and BOTTOM picks in whichever manner you choose. eg. You may still vote for your TOP 4 and BOTTOM 4, or you could vote for a TOP 7 and a BOTTOM 1, or a TOP 3 and BOTTOM 5, etc. You are allowed to vote for less than 8 total.
- Voting ends October 22
- One vote per poll per user

- see the suggestions thread for more details on some entries.

Poll Entries:
1. A book more than 500 pages
2. A book you stumbled upon (i.e. serendipitous, found in library/bookstore, unplanned, etc.)
3. A book connected to a dwelling (i.e. a palace/castle, hut, cardboard box, etc.)
4. A book about a disaster
5. A book with an unusual narrator, or told from an unusual point of view (i.e. a child, an animal, an inanimate object, etc.)
6. A fiction or nonfiction book where music plays a part in the story
7. A book set in a small town or village
8. A book involving a lie
9. A book you connect to your ancestry/heredity
10. A book connected to a cultural appreciation month (such as Black History Month, LGBTQA Pride Month, Hispanic Heritage Month, Asian American and Pacific Islander Month, Native American Month, Women's History Month, etc).
11. A book with an ensemble cast
12. An extreme book (eg. extremely long, extremely short, about extreme sports)
13. A book set in or about a country or place that no longer exists
14. A book with less than 200 pages
15. The first book on your TBR, sorted by whichever criteria you choose

Survey link

This was a pretty easy vote for me -- 2 up and 6 down. I wanted to stick with just two up, since there will only be two winners... give my choices the best shot. But there are quite a few I would be ok with getting in.

I voted for book with 500+ pages (because I need incentive to read long books) and connected to a cultural appreciation month (because our list is lacking some diversity).

I'm really excited about the cultural appreciation month prompt. We don't have any diversity-driven prompts (other than the indigenous one), and I think this would allow people to read diversity in their own comfort zone.

My favorites were:
Ensemble Cast - I would love to read more books with ensemble casts since I like TV shows with them.
Music - I'm a musician and I liked the dichotomy of it with the STEM prompt.
Lies - Who doesn't love secrets and lies?
Stumbled Upon - I like how this prompt can be personalized to anyone and any genre.
Small Town/Village - It came down to this one and the dwelling prompt, and while I love those suburban family next door books, I didn't like the wording of the dwelling prompt as much. Plus I felt like small town had just as many good options.

For the (probably) last poll, I ended up with four tops and four bottoms. I know only two can win, but I still had four that I liked enough to vote for, although I had even more I wanted to vote down.

My top four were 500+ pages, book you stumbled upon, cultural appreciation, and <200 pages. Hopefully I'll have a little luck with this last round, but we'll see.

At this point, I may just do a challenge with all the books I voted for and leave it at that. I just won't be able to read enough books to do a full 52-week challenge, plus all of my rejects. It won't quite be a rejects challenge, but it won't be the actual AtY52 challenge, either. There are more than 52 books on it, but I think I should be able to finish them all if they're prompts/books that I'm interested in and assuming I don't try to do any other challenges next year. We'll have to see what happens...

I’m probably just an idiot- but what is an “ensemble cast”? What qualifies? Is that like a Game of Thrones style book?

There were a lot of great original suggestions this round. Unfortunately I wasn't real excited about most of them though that's probably because I've got most of my slots filled already so I've lost that "find a book that fits" funness. (My challenge next year will be "half prompts - half rejects" so I'm not doing a full 52.)

I upvoted only two - cultural appreciation (because I love it and diversity is definitely lacking from next year's challenge) and stumbled upon (because it is so fun and I frequently find the same book crossing my path again and again for no reason).

I downvoted six, not really because I didn't like them but because I wanted to give the ones I upvoted a stronger chance.

Sarah, an "ensemble cast" is traditionally used to describe movies/tv shows, but here's the definition I would associate with books:

Ensemble cast: characters are assigned roughly equal amounts of importance and reading time

I think Game of Thrones is the easiest book to reference, where there is no one main character more important than the others. If this prompt makes it, I would probably pick a book with at least 3-4 main characters that all are equally as important to the story.

Here are some lists:
https://www.goodreads.com/shelf/show/...
https://www.barnesandnoble.com/blog/t...
https://writerunboxed.com/2017/09/11/...
https://www.google.com/amp/s/happyeve...

I submitted 3 tops and 5 bottoms, but honestly, I'd be ok with all these prompts. Historically, I've been sticking to nonfiction and these push me in all sorts of different directions. So good!

My tops were:
500 page book -- I'm thinking Anna Karenina, Gone with the Wind, Steve Jobs bio
disaster book I'd like to gain more clarity around world public health issues so this may very well help
cultural appreciation book yes! good suggestion. I'd love to discover a new author in this area

Nice! Thanks for the assist Avery.

I'm confused about the difference between ensemble cast and a book told from multiple perspectives. I had just read The Ensemble when I made the suggestion for multiple perspectives but I had never heard the term ensemble cast of characters. If Ensemble cast is not one of the top wins, I wonder if we could change the wording of the multiple perspective prompt to include ensemble cast of characters.

I am not really sure what to do if 'cultural appreciation month' gets in. I have no reference whatsoever to this as it's not a thing where I am from. Maybe just read something that takes place in a culture different from mine.

I wish I could have used all 8 votes to downvote connected to your ancestry. As someone who's ancestors never seem to have left the country (or county for that matter), it is really hard to fill. We had a similar prompt in Pop Sugar this year and I hated it. I just stuck a random book set in the UK into the prompt to get it over and done with.

Johanne wrote: "I am not really sure what to do if 'cultural appreciation month' gets in. I have no reference whatsoever to this as it's not a thing where I am from. Maybe just read something that takes place in a..."

Here's a link I found that kind of explains what each month is about and the histories behind it. You could really use any diverse book (based on ethnicity, or gender, or sexual orientation, or even disability) to fit with this category.

http://www.diversitycentral.com/calen...

I downvoted ancestry as well for similar reasons. I read Norse Mythology for Popsugar this year, and will find something similar, but to me that prompt is not so interesting.

thanks Emily

I did think the dwelling also covered diversity, as there are people who still live in makeshift dwellings due to their colour, religion , cultures. People living on the streets etc. so voted for that and unusual narrator.
Voted 6 down. To me there are either ones we had last year or what I consider free reads. But mostly I don't feel one way or the other about the rest

@Johanne - I hesitated to suggest "cultural appreciation month" when I realized it's rather USA-centric, but I decided to forge ahead, since every country in the world can appreciate women's history and LBGT history, at least, even if there are not similar month-long recognition programs. So, if it wins, you could read something related to one of those two groups, or a book by an author who identifies with one of those groups.

Martha wrote: "I'm confused about the difference between ensemble cast and a book told from multiple perspectives. I had just read The Ensemble when I made the suggestion for multiple perspectives but I had never..."

I expect there are a lot of books that are both told from multiple perspectives and have an ensemble cast. I hadn’t heard of The Ensemble before but that sounds like it would fit both prompts.

However, I think there are also a lot of books with a large cast which aren’t told from multiple perspectives. I’m not really a fantasy reader so others might correct me here but I think a lot of classic fantasy books have large casts of characters but the story is told by an omniscient narrator, rather than being told from the perspective of any of the characters.

On the other hand, there are also novels that have one main character but their story is told from the perspective of different narrators who might have different views about the main character.

So that’s kind of how I think of the difference between the two prompts...

Bryony, I agree with your analysis of the two, but Martha, I understand why someone would think they're similar.

Personally, I am reserving the multiple perspectives prompt for a book with two different characters both in first-person perspectives.

From reading the summaries of books on my TBR though, it seems like Big Little Lies, Seating Arrangements, and The Thousandth Floor would fall into the ensemble cast category, where there's not one main player.

I agree with Bryony here. In my mind, an ensemble cast would include third person narration featuring a wide variety of characters, while multiple perspectives could be first or third person. I'm personally going to try to limit the multiple perspectives to two or three main characters, so that you truly get that character's perspective (rather than a broader overview of a situation).

Thanks for the explanation!

@Nadine, no worries. I will find something. Just have to figure out how I want to interpret it.

I have some instant downvotes, like others have said, ancestry was a Popsugar prompt this year and my ancestors have not moved around much. I was lucky that Sarah Moss’s new book was about people recreating an Iron Age experience and I used that, but I really don’t want to hunt around for a tenuous link again.

Probably an unpopular opinion but I do not like reading about music. I like listening to it but people trying to explain it in text bores me.

I am not keen on ensemble cast either just because in my experience, I am only interested in some of the characters’ stories and want to skip the rest. I’m looking at you Game of Thrones.

I like the small town/village and disaster ones. If the cultural month gets in I can use How Long 'til Black Future Month?: Stories at least.

I wish the dwelling one was worded a bit differently. Most books have a dwelling in but I really like ones where that dwelling is important to the story eg. houses that are almost characters in themselves.

I really want a page count prompt so I am voting for the greater than 500 pages, the less than 200 pages and the extreme book (which i was going to use to tackle an 800 page book).

There weren't many that I dislike but I am down voting ancestry/heredity for reasons stated by others, my family has been in America, even the same state in the US for hundreds of years and before that they all came from Europe. I read a lot of European fiction so that's not really a challenge for me.

I also am not a fan of a prompt specifically for diversity. First, I read female authors, lgbtq+ authors and characters, and many other authors of (and books about) various ethnicities, cultures, religions, etc. And, every time I pick up a book to fulfill a specific diversity prompt, I usually end up hating the book. The push for diversity has shoved some really bad books out into the world. I don't know how many times that I have seen a character shoehorned in just so the author can say that they have a diverse character in their books. It's frustrating and counterproductive to what the movement was initially intended to do. Anyway, unpopular opinion, I know.

I haven't decided yet if I will downvote any others. I'm going to think about it overnight and vote in the morning.

I went with 3 upvotes, my favorite being Cultural Appreciation week and the others were small town or village and a book over 500 pages.

I’m wondering if Lord of the Rings would be considered an ensemble cast. I voted for it regardless. I think I can find something!

WRT the ancestry/heredity prompt, I really like it since I’ve done genealogy research & have 4 interesting countries to choose from. I could go with a Neanderthal book, also, since most Europeans and Asians have 1-4% Neanderthal genes! If anyone goes that route, I recommend Clan of the Cave Bear.

Pam wrote: "I’m wondering if Lord of the Rings would be considered an ensemble cast. I voted for it regardless. I think I can find something!

WRT the ancestry/heredity prompt, I really like it since I’ve don..."

I downvoted ancestry because as others mentioned, it was on Popsugar this year and I'm not interested in doing it again but if it wins, I am definitely following your advice since Clan of the Cave Bear is on my reading list for next year.

Rachel - Clan of the Cave Bear is a great book! I still need/want to finish the series. I’m sure there are some interesting non-fiction books about Neanderthals, also. Throughout these posts, I see people mentioning the Pop Sugar challenge. I understand why you all wouldn’t want to do the same prompt again, but lots of us don’t do that challenge so it’s new to us. I know, also, it depends where your ancestors are from. I don’t usually read books from or about Poland or Belarus so that’s a challenge for me! If you are from England, then not as challenging. I would also consider a place where an ancestor died. My great-grandfather died in the Mt Pelee eruption 🌋 in Martinique. That could be an interesting take!

I up voted 8 prompts.
The dwelling one sounds like fun. A haunted house, an unusual place to live like a cave or movie theatre, books about renovations or sailing the world.

I have the perfect book for ancestors too. My son's name is Tam and there is a Scottish legend with the MC named Tam. A Swedish author is also a possibility.

Music has quite a few possibilities. With a Every Note Played on my TBR, I will probably use that one.

A disaster, place that no longer exists, and first on TBR rounding out my votes.

Happy and a little sad that this is probably our last vote.

There wasn't a lot I felt strongly about this week. My overwhelming feeling was "Meh, uninspiring". Sorry to those who suggested these prompts, they just didn't excite me mostly. I up-voted 2 and 10 but downvoted 1, 14 and 9. I find page length prompts frustrating ie there is nothing over 500 pages I want to read but several 498 page books that appeal but I can't count them. I really struggled with the ancestry prompt at Popsugar this year. It's the only prompt from multiple challenges that I haven't marked off yet. Would hate to have to repeat it again next year.

I had a really hard time voting on this one. Nothing really jumped out at me either way when I first saw the list, and there were some that initially seemed quite similar that I had to figure out how to differentiate.

I ended up going back to the classic voting style and picking 4 and 4. I voted for 500 pages since it fits with many of the books I'm prioritizing next year. I voted for the book connected to a dwelling (after much consideration) because I have several specific books in mind that would fit. I voted for unusual narrator because I really liked that when it was first suggested and I was disappointed that it didn't make it in. I also voted for the ensemble cast, which was also one that took some consideration to figure out how it differs from multiple perspectives. I liked the comments above about first person vs. third person, so that helped.

I downvoted most of the other setting-related prompts. Small town or village didn't really appeal to me much, and neither did a country/place that no longer exists. I also wasn't a fan of the ancestry/heredity since I'm doing it already for PopSugar this year, and that was enough of a struggle. I also didn't really like the first book on my TBR since it seemed in a way both too narrow and too broad. I don't like being restricted to just one option, but this one lets you play around with your list whatever way you want until you find a book you're willing to read...so to me, it kind of defeats it's own purpose.

I also strongly considered voting for the cultural appreciation month prompt, but I had a strangely hard time figuring out what might fit. It's probably just my own tendency to overthink/stick too closely to the wording, but my first reaction was to think that any diverse book could fit, but I didn't see how those connected to the specific months. For example, I had in mind Anger Is a Gift which might connect to Black History Month, but I also had a hard time thinking it connects since it's not "history." I tend to read quite a few books by women and by or about LGBT authors/characters, so I don't necessarily feel like I need a prompt specifically for that.

for some reason I keep thinking about the book I read this year, Lost Memory of Skin, for the dwelling prompt. It would fit perfectly, without giving anything away, although its probably in the synopsis. And it wasn't a bad book. I think I 3 or 4 starred it. It was an interesting look at young sex offender and how he struggled to find somewhere to live and his relationship with an anthropology professor studying that demographic. Interestingly, I had a lot of sympathy for the MC, despite his social status.

°~Amy~° wrote: "I also am not a fan of a prompt specifically for diversity..."

Amy I do understand where you're coming from, If the only time anyone reads diverse books is for a specific prompt, it's not really helping matters. I don't look at the list and think it's not diverse because I know I can place plenty of diverse books in the other prompts.

But I also understand some people need a push to look outside their bubble.

Pam wrote: "Throughout these posts, I see people mentioning the Pop Sugar challenge. I understand why you all wouldn’t want to do the same prompt again, but lots of us don’t do that challenge so it’s new to us. ..."

I definitely don't have a problem doing prompts from other challenges again, it's just that I did not like doing the prompt in the first place. I felt like everything I chose was cheating because I don't really know about my ancestry (probably Norman if I go back 1000 years). I could just read something that everyone's family went through at some point (eg. the world wars, industrial revolution) but it doesn't inspire me.

Ellie- I understand!

I didn't downvote the ancestry prompt but, like many of you, I'm not particularly excited about it. My ancestors were Irish and English, immigrated to the US in the early 19th century, and moved to Ohio in the mid-19th century. I could easily find some books that would fit this prompt but it is, by and far, pretty underwhelming.

Ellie wrote: "Probably an unpopular opinion but I do not like reading about music. I like listening to it but people trying to explain it in text bores me."

The way this particular prompt is worded - "where music plays a part in the story" - kind of implies that music has to be a super important part of the book but you don't have to necessarily interpret it that strictly.

You could think of it more like "a book connected in some way to music" (which I think was a prompt suggestion at some point). That would allow you to do a book with a word in the title like "song" or a book with a character who is a musician but that fact isn't really integral to the overall story.

Yikes. Sorry about the ancestry suggestion. I haven’t followed Popsugar in a couple of years and didn’t realize this was a prompt. I tried adding the heredity aspect to it to give a bit more wiggle room. I’ve been doing some ancestry tracking in the last few months and have learned things about my family that were unknown (or not talked about), and thought this would be cool. A completely selfish driven idea, but figured there had to be others out there with similar interests.

Manda, out of curiosity, are you using some sort of ancestry site to track? I don't know a lot about my family's origins and would love to discover more info.

Manda - No need to apologize! I don’t think anyone expects members to check the Pop Sugar Challenge before making a suggestion. I love the prompt! I did a bunch of genealogy research 17 years ago and wound up finding a bunch of 2nd & 3rd cousins and, from one of them, discovered the actual town in Belarus where one line came from. It’s pretty amazing how so much info is at your fingertips!

Laura- I recommend Ancestry.com. I don’t know if they still offer it, but they used to offer a free trial period. If you do start researching, good luck and be prepared to invest a lot of time! It’s addictive once you start pulling at threads. It’s also frustrating when you hit dead ends.

Thanks, Pam.

Laura, I echo what Pam said. I’ve been using Ancestry.com. I started back in July and got 2 weeks free. I’ve been able to trace both sides of my family (and my mothers step-fathers family) back to the 1300 and 1400s so far, and still have active roots to follow. In doing this I learned that my maternal grandmother was the first person in her family not born into the Amish. She didn’t know her mother left the Amish at some point and married outside the community.

How does ancestry.com work? You enter your name and it finds your parents from your birth certificate, and so?

Prompt overlap has its pluses and minuses for me. Like, I’m so done with anything to do with reading from school because it’s just come up over and over, but I had two prompts for true crime this year and initially I was not pleased. Turns out, I actually do like the genre so I was happy to be able to read a second book this year and have it count. But then there’s two set at sea and a water related and that hasn’t worked out as well in terms of me living the repetition.

I like the ancestry prompt too, Manda. I think my interpretation of it is a little different though. I thought I would read a book connected to some fact I know about one of my ancestors, which wouldn’t necessarily be related to which country they lived in.

For instance, I have several relatives who I know worked on ships so I thought I could read a book about the history of the shipping industry, or a novel with a character who goes to sea. I also have relatives who fought in the first and second world wars so I could read a nonfiction book about either war, or a novel featuring a character who fought in one of the wars.

I’m actually really hoping this one wins now! I’ll add it to my rejects challenge if it doesn’t though.

Nadine- Ancestry.com doesn’t work exactly like that. You input all of the info you know about yourself and your ancestors. It’s a big database that searches for matches (potential hits) either from other members data or other data records in their database. If you go to their website, you can take a tour. It’s changed a LOT since 2001, when I was using it! Maybe I should try it again since I hit some brick walls pretty quickly.

Bryony- I agree with your approach and was thinking along the same lines, especially for people who don’t know a lot about their ancestry or aren’t interested in a particular country. I see ancestry as including your ancestors’ experiences not just where they lived. Looking at it that way opens a lot of options! I hope it wins, too. If not, it’s a definite yes for my Reject Challenge.

😋 I am definitely putting a spin on the ancestry prompt be reading a legend from the country.
Bryrony's idea about an ancestors vocation is good too.

I liked the ancestry prompt too. I've joined a Litsy group where I'm reading my ancestry, so even if this prompt doesn't make it ancestry is determining a portion of my reading time next year.

I signed up for the ancestry free trial a little bit ago. I think I'm going to have to ask my mom for some more info because I'm not even sure of names beyond my grandparents. I always hear last names but not first names, for whatever reasons. It's pretty crazy how many records they're able to pull though.

For the Popsugar challenge I went with a mystery that flashbacked to a very similar neighborhood to my mom's in the 60s when she was growing up. It was was really cool to read something that reminded me so much of her stories. I had picked it up for something else but I identified so strongly that I just had to use it for my (recent) ancestry.

Shelley- That’s a great idea! I did something similar, just not for a challenge, in reading A Tree Grows in Brooklyn. I read it because I knew that my grandmother grew up there during the same time. I think it’s fun to find that personal connection to a family member.