Around the Year in 52 Books discussion
2021 Plans
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Hannah's Second Time Around
1. A book related to “In the Beginning...”The Fellowship of the Ring by J. R. R. Tolkien ✭✭✭✭
2. A book by an author whose name doesn't contain the letters A, T or Y
Virgil Wander by Leif Enger ✭✭✭✭
3. A book related to the lyrics for the song "My Favorite Things" from The Sound of Music
Spinning Silver by Naomi Novik ✭✭
4. A book with a monochromatic cover
My Dark Vanessa by Kate Elizabeth Russell ✭✭✭✭
5. A book by an author on USA Today's list of 100 Black Novelists You Should Read
Girl, Woman, Other by Bernardine Evaristo ✭✭✭✭✭
6. A love story
Red, White & Royal Blue by Casey McQuiston ✭✭
7. A book that fits a prompt suggestion that didn't make the final list
Remnant Population by Elizabeth Moon ✭✭✭
8. A book set in a state, province, or country you have never visited
Une si longue lettre by Mariama Bâ ✭✭✭✭
9. A book you associate with a specific season or time of year
The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett ✭✭✭✭
10. A book with a female villain or criminal
My Sister, the Serial Killer by Oyinkan Braithwaite ✭✭✭✭✭
11. A book to celebrate The Grand Egyptian Museum
Woman at Point Zero by Nawal El Saadawi ✭✭✭✭
12. A book eligible for the Warwick Prize for Women in Translation
Convenience Store Woman by Sayaka Murata ✭✭✭✭✭
13. A book written by an author of one of your best reads of 2020
The Song of Achilles by Madeline Miller ✭✭✭✭
14. A book set in a made-up place
The Fifth Season by N.K. Jemisin ✭✭✭
15. A book that features siblings as the main characters
The Vanishing Half by Brit Bennett ✭✭✭
16. A book with a building in the title
The Two Towers by J. R. R. Tolkien ✭✭✭✭
17. A book with a Muslim character or author
Midnight's Children by Salman Rushdie ✭✭✭✭
18. 3 books related to "Past, Present, Future" - Book 1
Greenwood by Michael Christie ✭✭✭
19. 3 books related to "Past, Present, Future" - Book 2
I Still Dream by James Smythe ✭✭✭✭
20. 3 books related to "Past, Present, Future" - Book 3
The History of Bees by Maja Lunde ✭✭✭✭✭
21. A book whose title and author both contain the letter "u"
The House in the Cerulean Sea by T.J. Klune ✭
22. A book posted in one of the ATY Best Book of the Month threads
Piranesi by Susanna Clarke ✭✭✭✭✭
23. A cross genre novel
Dark Matter by Blake Crouch ✭✭✭
24. A book about racism or race relations
Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents by Isabel Wilkerson ✭✭
25. A book set on an island
Ella Minnow Pea: A Novel in Letters by Mark Dunn ✭✭✭
26. A short book (<210 pages) by a new-to-you author
Every Heart a Doorway by Seanan McGuire ✭✭✭✭
27. A book with a character who can be found in a deck of cards
The Master and Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov ✭✭✭
28. A book connected to ice
The Comet Seekers by Helen Sedgwick ✭✭✭✭✭
29. A book that you consider comfort reading
Wise Child by Monica Furlong ✭✭✭✭✭
30. A long book
Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell by Susanna Clarke ✭✭✭
31. A book by an author whose career spanned more than 21 years
The Dutch House by Ann Patchett ✭✭✭✭
32. A book whose cover shows more than 2 people
My Brilliant Friend by Elena Ferrante ✭✭✭✭
33. A collection of short stories, essays, or poetry
Ship Fever: Stories by Andrea Barrett ✭✭✭✭✭
34. A book with a travel theme
Migrations by Charlotte McConaghy ✭✭✭
35. A book set in a country on or below the Tropic of Cancer
The Garden of Evening Mists by Tan Twan Eng ✭✭✭
36. A book with six or more words in the title
This Is How You Lose the Time War by Amal El-Mohtar and Max Gladstone ✭✭✭
37. A book from the Are You Well Read in World Literature list
Katalin Street by Magda Szabó ✭✭✭✭
38. A book related to a word given by a random word generator
Man's Search for Meaning by Viktor Frankl ✭✭✭
39. A book involving an immigrant
Miracle Creek by Angie Kim ✭✭✭
40. A book with flowers or greenery on the cover
Lab Girl by Hope Jahren ✭✭✭
41. A book by a new-to-you BIPOC author
Homegoing by Yaa Gyasi ✭✭✭✭
42. A mystery or thriller
The Silent Patient by Alex Michaelides ✭✭
43. A book with elements of magic
The Light Fantastic by Terry Pratchett ✭✭✭✭
44. A book whose title contains a negative
Everything I Never Told You by Celeste Ng ✭✭✭
45. A book related to a codeword from the NATO Phonetic Alphabet
Ballad of the Whiskey Robber: A True Story of Bank Heists, Ice Hockey, Transylvanian Pelt Smuggling, Moonlighting Detectives, and Broken Hearts by Julian Rubinstein ✭✭✭✭
46. A winner or nominee from the 2020 Goodreads Choice Awards
The Midnight Library by Matt Haig ✭✭
47. A non-fiction book other than biography, autobiography or memoir
When Elephants Weep: The Emotional Lives of Animals by Jeffrey Moussaieff Masson and Susan McCarthy ✭
48. A book that might cause someone to react “You read what?!?”
Children of Time by Adrian Tchaikovsky ✭✭✭✭✭
49. A book with an ensemble cast
Anxious People by Fredrik Backman ✭✭✭
50. A book published in 2021
The Anthropocene Reviewed by John Green ✭✭✭✭✭
51. A book whose title refers to person(s) without giving their name
The Paladin by C. J. Cherryh ✭✭
52. A book related to "the end"
The Return of the King by J. R. R. Tolkien ✭✭✭✭
My Personal 2021 Translated Fiction Challenge
(borrowed from The Storygraph's 2020 Translated Fiction Challenge)
1. A book translated from Hungarian
Katalin Street
2. A book translated from Italian
My Brilliant Friend
3. A book translated from Norwegian
The History of Bees
4. A book translated from Japanese
Convenience Store Woman
5. A book translated from Arabic
Woman at Point Zero
6. A book translated from Russian
The Master and Margarita
7. A book translated from any language of your choice
Une si longue lettre
Book 1: The Fellowship of the Ring 03/04/2021ATY Prompt: #1 A book related to “In the Beginning...”
Rating: ✭✭✭✭
It's a bit late, but I'm finally officially kicking off the 2021 challenge! I spent the first few months of the year slowly making my way through a couple of more challenging books that had been left til the end of my 2020 challenge (and fighting off a bit of a pandemic/February-induced reading slump), but I'm now firmly on the 2021 train.
I knew as soon as I saw the "In the Beginning" prompt that I would want to use it (and the accompanying "End" prompt and some prompt somewhere in the middle) to reread The Lord of the Rings trilogy this year. I always like to make an effort to do some rereading every year, because I often find it to be very fulfilling, in a personal way, and it's easy to get swept up in the excitement of flying through new books and forget that I like to return to old favorites as well. And there was something about the wording of this prompt that really made me feel like a reread was in order. Perhaps it's because there's something about returning to the beginning of a story that you know the end to already that's especially significant to me. Any and every book can have "a beginning" but to me, it can only be the beginning if you have the end in mind to compare it to.
Book 2: Virgil Wander 03/12/2021ATY Prompt: #2 A book by an author whose name doesn't contain the letters A, T or Y
Rating: ✭✭✭✭
I didn't have a lot of options for this prompt, especially because I felt compelled to be pedantic and not use any authors who go by their initials. I considered rereading Sue Monk Kidd's The Secret Life of Bees, which I've been meaning to do for awhile, but I decided that since I just did a reread, I'd pick up something new. I didn't know much about Virgil Wander at all, just the very basic premise, but I had heard very good things. This sort of contemporary fiction tends to be hit or miss for me, but I really enjoyed this one! I found it to be tonally and thematically similar to A Man Called Ove (is there a secret Midwest/Scandinavian small town contemporary fiction with a brush of magical realism genre that I didn't know about??) but a bit odder and a bit darker, both of which really appealed to me. I found this a very soothing, pleasant read, and I liked that I didn't know very much about it going in - it felt like a pleasant wander in the woods.
Book 3: Spinning Silver 03/21/2021ATY Prompt: #3 A book related to the lyrics for the song "My Favorite Things" from The Sound of Music
Rating: ✭✭
I didn't love this book, but I did love that it so perfectly fit this prompt! I chose it to match the line "Silver white winters that melt into spring," which is literally exactly what this book is about, both literally and symbolically. I especially appreciate that I feel like it really matches the spirit of the song, which is so picturesque - one of the things that I did actually like about Spinning Silver was it's lovely imagery and atmosphere. And could it be any more perfect that the line in the song is about "silver white winters" when in this book, silver is so symbolic of winter?
I think I'd like to try another Naomi Novik, even though this wasn't my favorite - I've heard a lot of people say that they really liked either Uprooted or Spinning Silver and didn't care much for the other. I was surprised to see that this had been on my TBR for as long as it had been (I must have heard about it right when it came out but I don't remember it or why I specifically wanted to read it) and I feel like I'm making good progress on my TBR backlist!
Book 4: My Dark Vanessa 03/23/2021ATY Prompt: #4 A book with a monochromatic cover
Rating: ✭✭✭✭
I had a couple of different options for this prompt, the other most seriously considered being The Ocean at the End of the Lane. But I decided to go with My Dark Vanessa for two reasons - first, because it's a book everyone's reading right now and I wanted to know what everyone's talking about and second because I felt like a grayscale photograph cover was an ever so slightly more "correct" way to fill the prompt. (I'm really enjoying choosing just the right books to fill the prompts this time around, now that my options are a bit more open.) I am very glad I chose it, since I tore through it and I've been reading a lot of slower paced books lately. And I thought it was very good, even though "hard hitting contemporary" isn't my typical genre.
Book 5: Girl, Woman, Other 03/29/2021ATY Prompt: #5 A book by an author on USA Today's list of 100 Black Novelists You Should Read
Rating: ✭✭✭✭✭
My first five star read of the challenge! I had a bunch of options to choose from for this prompt, but I definitely wanted to choose an author I hadn't read before (which was still 90/100 of the authors on the list). I still had quite a few on my TBR, but I decided to go with Girl, Woman, Other, even though that was a newer addition, just because again I wanted to know what everyone was talking about. I tend to like Booker Prize winners - the pretentiousness that I often hear people complain about seems to be something I rather like in a book (Possession, the 1990 winner, was one of my favorites of last year). And I did indeed enjoy Girl, Woman, Other immensely, kind of in a similar way as I did Possession. The characters were multifaceted and somewhat prickly in an interesting way, the story was dense and layered, and it offered my curious American soul a peek into inscrutable British culture.
Book 6: Red, White & Royal Blue 04/5/2021ATY Prompt: #6 A love story
Rating: ✭✭
I'm not much of a romance reader, but I do enjoy something sweet and fluffy every once in a while to break up some of the heavier books I read. A lot of the books I read could have fit themselves into this prompt in one way or another, but I wanted to choose a real romance novel, where the romance was the main point of the story, just to diversify my reading a bit.
Red, White & Royal Blue was definitely a love story, though it did incorporate more political drama than I was expecting (that seems silly in retrospect, obviously a story about the son of the US president and a prince of England falling in love is going to involve political drama, but I mean political drama about the campaign at large, not about their relationship). I enjoyed parts of it but didn't love it, mostly because I found the pacing to be a little uneven.
Book 7: Remnant Population 04/18/2021ATY Prompt: #7 A book that fits a prompt suggestion that didn't make the final list
Rating: ✭✭✭
I chose to read Remnant Population because the premise so perfectly fit the prompt to read "a book with an introverted protagonist," a suggestion I liked a lot and voted for, but which ended up in the bottom of that week's vote. Remnant Population follows an old woman who chooses to stay behind, alone, on a colonized planet that is being abandoned by the corporation who initially settled it, because it was deemed unfit for colonization. And she loves it. What could be more introverted than reveling in the blissful solitude of having a whole planet to yourself? A big theme of the story is about how the main character lived her whole life for other people, especially her husband and children, and views her newfound solitude as a chance to finally live her life for herself and discover what she actually likes and wants.
I had mixed feelings about this book - I absolutely loved the premise and themes, but felt like the execution left something to be desired. I wavered between 3 and 4 stars, but ultimately rounded down to 3 because it took me so long to read. But I know I'll be thinking about this book for a long time.
Book 8: Une si longue lettre 05/02/2021ATY Prompt: #8 A book set in a state, province, or country you have never visited
Translated Fiction Prompt: #7 A book translated from any language of your choice
Rating: ✭✭✭✭
I keep a book map where I mark the settings of all the books I read in an effort to hit every country (or at least get a more even spread across the map), so I knew immediately that I wanted to choose a book set in a place I had never "visited" in either real life or in a book. There were plenty of options, but I decided to use this prompt to fill another goal I had, which was to read a book in French (I want to keep my skills brushed up). So I chose Une Si Longue Lettre, which is set in Senegal, which I can use for my translation challenge, plus adds a pin on my book map to a continent that I've been neglecting (Africa is second only to South America on my least read continents list.)
Technically, I cheated a bit, because I had to quickly read the last chunk of this one in English because I need to get to some library books before they get returned. But I'm going to keep reading the French - the language of this story is beautiful and I've been enjoying it very much.
Book 9: The Secret Garden 05/07/2021ATY Prompt: #9 A book you associate with a specific season or time of year
Rating: ✭✭✭✭
When I decided I wanted to try reading in order, I was a bit worried about this prompt - when I think of books associated with specific seasons, I definitely think of cozy winter books or spooky fall books, not really spring and summer books. But I eventually decided that this would be a good opportunity to add another reread to my list and The Secret Garden was the springiest book I could think of.
I ended up being so glad I reread it! It was quite slow to get in to, but the descriptions of the garden were so beautiful and I was unexpectedly very fascinated by the relationship dynamics and personalities of the characters. An excellent spring read.
Book 10: My Sister, the Serial Killer 05/09/2021ATY Prompt: #10 A book with a female villain or criminal
Rating: ✭✭✭✭✭
I really enjoyed this one - it was exactly the kind of book I needed. April was a slow book month for me, not bad books, but all slower paced and some that took some extra concentration. My Sister, the Serial Killer was so fast and so compelling that I blew right through it and loved it the whole way through.
Obviously, with a title like that, this book was an easy pick for prompt 10. I knew very little about the story going in, so I was pleased to discover that the question of how this story fit the prompt was a bit more nuanced than I expected - there's definitely one female criminal, but is she a villain? Is there another female criminal? Is she a villain? One thing I really liked about this story was the moral ambiguity and the freedom the author allowed the reader to interpret the characters and their motivations, rather than spelling everything out too clearly. I think I'll be thinking about this one for awhile!
Book 11: Woman at Point Zero 05/15/2021ATY Prompt: #11 A book to celebrate The Grand Egyptian Museum
Translated Fiction Prompt: #5 A book translated from Arabic
Rating: ✭✭✭✭
This was a short book (<150 pages) that really packed a punch. I chose it because I really wanted to use a book that was set in Egypt for this prompt, since I hadn't yet gotten to pin Egypt on my book map. And then, when I was looking for potential books to read that would fill my "translated from Arabic" slot in my translated fiction challenge, I happened upon this one. So this was the kind of challenge book that I truly would have never read except for the fact that it filled my prompts so well - and even though I love working through my backlist, I also love when I'm encouraged towards something new, especially when I end up enjoying it so much. This book was very moving and powerful, and I'm really glad I got the opportunity to read a book about an Egyptian woman's experience from such a famous and influential Egyptian woman.
Book 12: Convenience Store Woman 05/17/2021ATY Prompt: #12 A book eligible for the Warwick Prize for Women in Translation
Translated Fiction Prompt: #4 A book translated from Japanese
Rating: ✭✭✭✭✭
I tend to enjoy the books I read in translation, plus I'm doing a translation challenge this year, so I was very pleased when this prompt was added to our list. I've been hearing about Convenience Store Woman ever since I read Eleanor Oliphant Is Completely Fine and it was on the longlist in 2019, so it seemed like the perfect opportunity (I did also really want to read Katalin Street, which was shortlisted in 2019, especially because it's translated from Hungarian, but Convenience Store Woman came in first from the library, so I went with it. I'll fit Katalin Street in later!)
I really enjoyed this book - I found it to be the perfect balance between odd and relatable. I couldn't put it down and I felt like that was saying something, given that it's not like it really has much of a plot!
Book 13: The Song of Achilles 05/25/2021ATY Prompt: #13 A book written by an author of one of your best reads of 2020
Rating: ✭✭✭✭
I fell hard for Circe last year, so I asked for a copy of Circe and a copy of The Song of Achilles for Christmas. I almost never buy or request books that I haven't already read, because I prefer to only own books that I love and will reread, but I felt so confident in Madeline Miller based on Circe that I was willing to take the risk for The Song of Achilles. And I was absolutely right. I adore Madeline Miller's writing, I find it beautiful and soothing, and studying the classics in college gave me a real appreciation for these stories already. Personally, I found that Circe's story resonated a bit more with me, but I still loved Patroclus and Achilles, especially the early parts of the story as they grow up with Chiron.
Book 14: The Fifth Season 06/02/2021ATY Prompt: #14 A book set in a made-up place
Rating: ✭✭✭
I debated a bit about whether this book technically fit this prompt, because it's set in the very far future on earth, but of course, the earth of the future is a made up place (and in fact is quite different than the earth of our current day: completely different continents, different cities, etc.) It made me think about the different levels of fictional places that are in different kinds of stories - from totally made up places like Narnia or Middle Earth, to sci fi stories set on different (real) planets, to stories set in made up countries, or real countries but made up cities. I recently had a conversation with a friend of mine who grew up in New York City and who was complaining about books that are ostensibly set in NYC but clearly in some made up version of it!
Anyway, my original intention was to read a book set in the most made up kind of place, the kind that has no relation to reality whatsoever, but The Fifth Season got bumped from its previous spot in favor of Girl, Woman, Other, so I wanted to make sure I got it in soon. I had mixed feelings about the book as a whole, but did very much enjoy the setting and worldbuilding and will likely continue the series.
Book 15: The Vanishing Half 06/07/2021ATY Prompt: #15 A book that features siblings as the main characters
Rating: ✭✭✭
Sometimes I think certain prompts are voted onto the list because they suit a certain popular book and everyone votes for it thinking "ah, yes! That would be the perfect chance to finally read ______!" The Vanishing Half has been so popular since it came out last summer and I am glad this prompt gave me a good reason to read it, even though I had mixed feelings about it.
Coincidentally, one of my main critiques is about the subject of this prompt: The Vanishing Half is about twin sisters and I was very interested in their story and characterization and felt a bit let down in the second half of the novel when we moved away to focus on other members of their family. But the way the book explores their similarities and differences and love and competition in the first half made it a perfect read for this prompt.
Book 16: The Two Towers 07/10/2021ATY Prompt: #16 A book with a building in the title
Rating: ✭✭✭✭
When I decided I wanted to read The Fellowship of the Ring for the first prompt of the year and The Return of the King for the last prompt of the year, I knew I had to find a good place in the middle for The Two Towers. Since I've been moving rather slowly, prompt 16 did coincide with the middle of the year - hopefully I'll be able to pick up the pace a bit!
It took me a long time to read this book, for many reasons, but I did thoroughly enjoy myself and I picked up the pace quite a bit at the end. I absolutely adore this series (though I can't quite give them five stars because of the slow pacing) but I have to give this one credit for being the only book so far this year that's made me cry.
Book 17: Midnight's Children 07/14/2021ATY Prompt: #17 A book with a Muslim character or author
Rating: ✭✭✭✭ (3.5)
I was actually reading this at the same time as The Two Towers, which was definitely not the best choice and I suspect part of the reason that I'm waffling between three and four stars. There was a lot of this book that I loved, and in fact, as I read it, there were certain things that I just wanted to keep talking about with people and sharing about with people, which is always a good sign of a book I'm loving. But my god, the pacing of this book. I got lost in the hazy middle portion for weeks on end. This book is exhausting - to Rushdie's credit, he knows it's exhausting and you know as you're reading it that that feeling is deliberate and I have considerable respect for that, but the fact remains that it is exhausting.
I chose this book from my TBR backlist because I like to do my best to choose books that fit both options in these "either/or" prompts. Midnight's Children is very much about being Muslim: it centers around a Muslim family living in majority-Hindu India and focuses especially on the history of the Partition of India, which was very much to do with tensions between Muslims and Hindus in India. Rushdie is clearly drawing from his own life as an Indian Muslim and religion is an extremely important element in the book. I've read that Rushdie identifies now as an atheist, but I think he still fits for the spirit of this prompt.
Book 18: Greenwood 07/25/2021ATY Prompt: #18 3 books related to "Past, Present, Future" - Book 1
Rating: ✭✭✭ (2.5)
As I started collecting ideas for this multiweek prompt, I noticed a trend that I thought would be perfect: three books that cover a broad span of time from the past, through the present, and into the future (technically, I counted a book as long as it had at least three sections: pre-21st century, somewhere in the 2000-2020 range, and post 2021). And I found three books that fit this mold!
Greenwood is basically part speculative/dystopian fiction and part historical fiction. It had a very cool structure (similar to Cloud Atlas), where the book started with one character in the future (2038) and then worked backwards through her family, visiting her father in 2008, her grandmother in 1974, her great grandfather and his brother in 1934, and a brief look at those two brothers as children in 1908. And then, it works its way forward again, passing through each time once more. The structure is explicitly shown to be like the rings of a tree (and tree rings as markers of time are an important symbol in the book): you trace your way inwards and then back out, and those inner rings are necessary for the outer rings to build on.
I loved this concept and many parts of the book, others I was not so fond of. I'm wavering between three and four stars, might change it later.
Book 19: I Still Dream 08/01/2021ATY Prompt: #19 3 books related to "Past, Present, Future" - Book 2
Rating: ✭✭✭✭ (3.5)
I Still Dream was suggested to me on the weekly thread for this prompt after I made a comment about my plan to read three books that each incorporate the past, present, and future. I Still Dream starts in 1997 and each section takes place ten years after the previous one: 2007, 2017, 2027, 2037, 2047. I didn't know this going into it, but the past and memories of the past actually ended up being a very significant theme in the story, so I felt like that made it all the more appropriate for this prompt. Especially considering 1997 is pretty recent to be truly considered "the past" (though I'd say that the 1997 portion of this book felt very strongly grounded in that time, especially given the character's focus on music and computers).
I really enjoyed this one and I'm REALLY enjoying the interpretation I chose of this prompt! It was very interesting to read these last two books back to back and I'm sure I'll have more reflections on this once I finish the last of the three books.
Book 20: The History of Bees 08/04/2021ATY Prompt: #20 3 books related to "Past, Present, Future" - Book 3
Translated Fiction Prompt: #3. A book translated from Norwegian
Rating: ✭✭✭✭✭ (4.5)
This has been such a successful set of prompts! I love how it turned out that each of these books took a different approach to a similar premise (having parts of the story set in the past, present, and future.). Unlike the previous two, The History of Bees contained three distinct timelines (1851, 2007, 2098) which it alternated between from chapter to chapter. The three sections were loosely related from the beginning - they clearly all focused on people whose livelihoods were related to bees, plus there was an interesting parallelism between each protagonist and a significant relationship with his/her son - but they grew more connected as the story progressed.
I thought that it was very interesting that although the only similarity I was seeking in choosing these three books was the past/present/future structure, 2 out of the 3 were "cli fi." Of course, this makes sense: the climate crisis is a perfect subject to follow from our past into a speculative future (the subject of the third book, the development of smart technology and artificial intelligences, also makes perfect sense.)
I'm a sucker for a story told in an unconventional chronology, so I found it so fun to read these three back to back. The "separate threads coming together" feel of The History of Bees (plus the natural history element that I always love) pushed it to be my favorite out of the three - funny, because it's the one I was most skeptical about!
Book 21: The House in the Cerulean Sea 08/13/2021ATY Prompt: #21 A book whose title and author both contain the letter "u"
Rating: ✭
Am I being too harsh? I'm not sure - it's possible that this is getting such a low rating from me because I truly expected to love it, based on how everyone I know who's read this book has loved it. It just did not work for me: I was on board for the premise and I love a good uplifting, found family story, but the writing style, the humor, the characters, the tone, even some of the moral message (obviously I'm all for acceptance and diversity and happy LGBTQ relationships, but this book suffered from the "X Men Problem" - you know, when you construct a fantasy allegory for prejudice, doesn't it somewhat undercut your point if you make the fantasy people who are feared by the general population genuinely dangerous?) weren't to my taste.
But it fulfilled the prompt, so on we go.
Book 22: Piranesi 08/14/2021ATY Prompt: #22 A book posted in one of the ATY Best Book of the Month threads
Rating: ✭✭✭✭✭
Wow, I loved this. Best book of the month for me, too! I found Piranesi to be so compelling - I read the whole thing today and I was totally enraptured by the setting and writing and mystery of this book. I originally added it to my TBR because I saw Erin Morgenstern recommend it, which makes perfect sense to me. Honestly, this book was kind of exactly what I wished The Starless Sea was (and they are pretty similar, actually - atmospheric, sort of meandering books about strange, labyrinthine places).
Book 23: Dark Matter 08/20/2021ATY Prompt: #23 A cross genre novel
Rating: ✭✭✭
This was a perfect book for the cross genre prompt, because it really did feel like a cross: obviously very sci fi, due to the plot, but so much of a thriller in terms of writing style and tone, honestly much more so than I expected. I like science fiction better than I like thrillers, so I definitely appreciated the parts of this novel that were more sci fi better. Interestingly, I much preferred the second half of this one to the first half. During the first half, I was concerned that I had guessed the whole plot of the book, but it turned out that the second half had a further twist I wasn't anticipating. Fun!
Book 24: Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents 08/27/2021ATY Prompt: #24 A book about racism or race relations
Rating: ✭✭
My first nonfiction of the year! (Which is bad news, considering my intention is to read at least 6, something I had no problem doing last year - I wonder why I've been so fiction-based lately??). I knew that this prompt was a perfect opportunity to read some nonfiction, even though there are so many excellent fictional stories about racism, and many I have on my TBR. But I realized that since I'm somewhat new to nonacademic-nonfiction, it would be a great opportunity to dive into one of the recently published books about race relations in America that everyone's been talking about lately.
I ended up having mixed feelings about this book - Wilkerson's writing was often very powerful, moving, and striking, and there were individual chapters of the book I really liked, but the overall organization and argument didn't work very well for me and I wish it had included more information about the Indian caste system, as well as some analysis of how capitalism and colonialism relate to caste.
Book 25: Ella Minnow Pea: A Novel in Letters 08/28/2021ATY Prompt: #25 A book set on an island
Rating: ✭✭✭
This was a very short and quick book that also would have worked to fill the next prompt: A short book (<210 pages) by a new-to-you author. I'm glad I chose it for this one, though, because the island was an extremely significant factor in the setting. The premise of Ella Minnow Pea is that an island off the coast of South Carolina secedes from the US to become the nation of Nollop: a country devoted to language, more specifically the pangram phrase "The quick brown fox jumped over the lazy dog." When their town center cenotaph decorated with this sentence starts losing letters, the town council decides to forbid the usage of each letter that falls, under threat of banishment to the States (and as the story progresses, the book itself begins to lose letters). So both the country and the fact that it's an enclosed, island nation, are pretty significant to the plot.
This was fun to read, though I imagine it could easily come across as a bit pedantic. I would only recommend it to people who take a lot of joy in language tomfoolery, as certain parts of this book are a bit of a challenge to read, just practically speaking, and I can imagine that being frustrating if you aren't really enjoying the wordplay.
Book 26: Every Heart a Doorway 09/04/2021ATY Prompt: #26 A short book (<210 pages) by a new-to-you author
Rating: ✭✭✭✭
I had a lot of fun with this book. I picked it up because I saw it recommended by someone who said that they didn't love the plot particularly, but they were compelled to read it and the rest of the series because the worldbuilding was so fun and clever and compelling. And that's exactly how I felt about it, too! It was the perfect book to read for this prompt because with a review like that (which seems a bit risky), the fact that this book was so short really swayed me to give it a chance. I also happen to own practically the whole series from a free ebook giveaway from tor.com, so I'll definitely be continuing.
Book 27: The Master and Margarita 10/02/2021ATY Prompt: #27 A book with a character who can be found in a deck of cards
Rating: ✭✭✭
Oh man, I had mixed feelings about this one. I'm quite fond of Russian literature, but my experience has been nearly entirely limited to the 19th century. So I was intrigued to read a Russian classic from the 20th century, especially one set during the Stalin era, a time period I find interesting.
So it doesn't surprise me that my favorite parts of this book were the parts set in Stalinist Moscow, where Bulgakov gave such a fascinating and satirized window into this particular world with all its idiosyncrasies. I found many parts of this novel very funny, sometimes in a surreal way and sometimes in a just genuinely clever way. However, it did take me an awfully long time to read and there were several sections where I put the book down and had a hard time picking it back up again. My suspicion is that I could have really benefited from reading this as part of a group or even in school and I would have enjoyed it a lot more. I just felt like there was a lot of context I was missing.
I chose to read it for the deck of cards prompt because the devil (the fifteenth Major Arcana card in the Tarot deck) is a very prominent character.
Book 28: The Comet Seekers 10/04/2021ATY Prompt: #28 A book connected to ice
Rating: ✭✭✭✭✭
Choosing this book was a bit of an experiment. I heard of it from the Storygraph, a Goodreads-equivalent that has a very sophisticated recommendations algorithm. The creator of the site likes to say that she wants the algorithm to direct you to books that you, specifically are likely to love, regardless of what other people think of them, so the site is not really set up to make average ratings a very prominent feature. The Comet Seekers was very high up in my recommendations when I first tried out the site, but it has a pretty low Goodreads rating: 3.57 stars. I'd typically never read a book with a rating that low - it would definitely put me off. But because I wanted to experiment with the Storygraph's recommendation algorithm, I gave it a shot. And I loved it! I understand exactly why so many people did not enjoy this book, but the algorithm was right on the money: those things did not bother me and the things that I did love about this book (the beautiful prose, the strange, magical realism premise, the weaving together of storylines, the science, the structure) all worked so well.
I chose it for the prompt about ice partly because a small portion of the book is set in Antarctica, but mostly because comets are made of ice and comets are absolutely central to this story.
Book 29: Wise Child 10/08/2021ATY Prompt: #29 A book that you consider comfort reading
Rating: ✭✭✭✭✭
Wise Child is not just a book I consider comfort reading, it's practically the book I consider comfort reading. Not only is it a beloved book from my childhood that deeply informed my worldview, but reading it is such a pleasant, soothing, joyous experience. So much of the story follows the daily life of Wise Child and Juniper in their ancient Scottish village: their work with herbs and healing, their studies of language, their daily chores. And somehow Monica Furlong manages to infuse this simple, largely quiet story with a real sense of purpose and meaning. It's just absolutely one of my favorite books of all time.
What's more, I read it this past week while I was on vacation - complete chance that this prompt and my plans coincided!
Book 30: Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell 11/02/2021ATY Prompt: #30 A long book
Rating: ✭✭✭ (3.5)
This certainly was a long book (at 782 pages, likely the longest of the year) and it took me a particularly long time to read (though this was perhaps also due to life events this month). In fact, I fear it may have officially laid the chances of me completing the challenge this year to rest. However, I did enjoy it and I'm absolutely glad I read it. This would have been an excellent choice for the cross genre prompt, not just because it was a mix of historical fiction and fantasy, but because it really genuinely felt like a period piece - the pacing and emphasis on interpersonal relationships really reminded me of Austen or Bronte. It was also a delight to read this long book after recently reading Clarke's other, very short book.
Book 31: The Dutch House 11/06/2021ATY Prompt: #31 A book by an author whose career spanned more than 21 years
Rating: ✭✭✭✭
This was an excellent example of serendipity: I picked up a copy of The Dutch House recently from the Little Free Library down the street, largely because I knew it was on my TBR somewhere and because it was such a lovely hardback copy. I had no idea where I was going to fit it in or even if I would be able to read it soon, but then I discovered that Ann Patchett's first book came out in 1992! This was my first experience with her as an author and I really enjoyed this book, much more than I thought I would (I guess this is technically historical fiction, a genre I enjoy, but it reads like contemporary fiction, a genre I don't read much of and rarely fall in love with). I have a few other novels by Patchett on my TBR though and I'm excited to read more - her writing style really worked for me! How nice that this prompt led me to an author I enjoyed, so I can read her significant backlist!
Book 32: My Brilliant Friend 11/16/2021ATY Prompt: #32 A book whose cover shows more than 2 people
Translated Fiction Prompt: #2 A book translated from Italian
Rating: ✭✭✭✭
I have to admit that this is a book that I avoided for a long time because of how unattractive I find the cover - it just looks so much like a soap opera or something. But I really enjoyed it, especially after I got a feel for the writing style. For perhaps the first half of the book, I was a little unsure - I felt like the writing was maybe a bit too overwrought, the characters and motivations and little too distant, a bit too "tell not show." But eventually, I had a realization that totally changed my opinion. I suddenly realized that the effect of the book was as though you were getting a perfect window into Elena, specifically, through her own writing, and that therefore it made perfect sense that the other characters are somewhat opaque, because it's meant to be an insight into how she sees them, not how they truly are. I definitely want to read the rest of this series.
Who even are these people on the cover??
Book 33: Ship Fever: Stories 11/23/2021ATY Prompt: #33 A collection of short stories, essays, or poetry
Rating: ✭✭✭✭✭
Ship Fever was another Storygraph recommendation, given, I assume, because I told it that I love books about natural science and biology. I didn't mention that I have a specific passion for 19th century natural science and history, but wow, this book was so incredibly well suited for my tastes. It was so fun to read about Mendel and Darwin after reading The Gene: An Intimate History earlier this year, but I have to say that what really set this book apart was not just that the subject matter was so interesting to me, but also the flawless writing and brilliant way that Barrett connected her characters' personal lives and feelings with the science. And the fact that it was a collection of short stories only improved the experience, I think, especially because I appreciated that the stories shared a clear theme without being too similar.
Book 34: Migrations 11/27/2021ATY Prompt: #34 A book with a travel theme
Rating: ✭✭✭
I try to go into books knowing as little as possible about them, and when I started this one I thought for a moment that using it for "travel" was going to be a bit of a stretch (I was worried that the migration was going to be a more metaphorical theme to the story, not so much a literal one.) But I was wrong! This book definitely fit the theme, in fact, I would even say that the theme of travel was far stronger than the secondary one of climate change/climate grief. I had mixed feelings about this book, but the atmosphere and writing about the ship's journey and the ocean were definitely one of its strong suits.
Book 35: The Garden of Evening Mists 12/18/2021ATY Prompt: #35 A book set in a country on or below the Tropic of Cancer
Rating: ✭✭✭
I'm a bit disappointed in this one - I expected to really love it, given the reviews I've seen, which were heavily weighted towards five stars, but I ended up only really loving certain limited pieces of it. It also took me a very, very long time to read, since I found it to be so slowly paced. However, it perfectly fit the prompt, being set in Malaysia. Interestingly, though, the characters were almost exclusively not Malaysian - Malaysia is a very multi-ethnic country to begin with and the book was very much focused on the invasion of the Japanese army during WWII, so many characters were Japanese, with several others, including the protagonist, being ethnically Chinese, with a handful of South Africans thrown in for good measure. Although I found myself frustrated with the structure of the novel and the character development he setting of the Cameron Highlands and the way the traditional Japanese gardens were adapted for a new environment were beautifully described and absolutely fascinating to me.
Book 36: This Is How You Lose the Time War 12/22/2021ATY Prompt: #36 A book with six or more words in the title
Rating: ✭✭✭
I wonder if there's any sort of common theme or style among books with long titles. In this case, I think the long title fit the style of the book extremely well - this novella may be short but my goodness is it wordy. I liked reading this one, but I wanted more from it - I get that Gladstone and El-Mohtar are going for a hazy suggestion of different worlds rather than explicit worldbuilding, but I really wanted to understand the story a bit more.
Book 37: Katalin Street 12/26/2021ATY Prompt: #37 A book from the Are You Well Read in World Literature list
Translated Fiction Prompt: #1 A book translated from Hungarian
Rating: ✭✭✭✭
Originally when I looked through this list, I was planning on reading The Housekeeper and the Professor (which I do still hope to read soon!). But I was also in the market for a book written in Hungarian for my translation challenge, and the obvious choice for that seemed to be a book by Magda Szabó, apparently the most translated Hungarian author. So I was pleased to discover Katalin Street on the list as well, especially since I had seen a glowing review of it from the We Didn't Start the Fire thread from last year and had added it then to my TBR. I ended up really enjoying this strange, sad, beautiful book and immediately added the rest of Szabó's translated works to my list!
Book 38: Man's Search for Meaning 12/28/2021ATY Prompt: #38 A book related to a word given by a random word generator
Rating: ✭✭✭
I very much enjoyed this prompt! I tend to really enjoy these more thematic interpretation style prompts - I just find it fun to think about the topic and choose and book and then think about that theme while I read the book. So I wanted to be strict with this one and not give myself too much leeway. I used the random word generator and only asked it for one word: perceive. My immediate thoughts went to psychology and neuroscience, but as I browsed some lists, I happened to remember that I had a physical copy of Man's Search for Meaning on my shelf that I had never gotten around to. It seemed perfect: Frankl's entire idea is about perception and how important the way you perceive your life and your place in the world is.
I'm glad this prompt gave me the opportunity to read this book, which had been on my list for several years. It didn't end up being my favorite, but I did find some ideas that were meaningful for me.
Book 39: Miracle Creek 12/28/2021ATY Prompt: #39 A book involving an immigrant
Rating: ✭✭✭
Miracle Creek is a courtroom thriller, but probably its strongest element is its focus on a family of Korean immigrants and how their family struggles through their difficult early years in a new country. It was especially interesting to read an interview with Angie Kim that was in the back of my copy in which she talked about her own experience immigrating from Korea in a very similar way as the characters in the book do. An awful lot of this story is pulled from Kim's experience in various ways, and I did think that you could tell that (in a positive way) while reading.
Book 40: Lab Girl 12/31/2021ATY Prompt: #40 A book with flowers or greenery on the cover
Rating: ✭✭✭
Not too much greenery on the cover - my copy was the one with just the one sprig of holly leaves and the single acorn - but it still felt like the right thing to choose. I really, really love books about nature and natural scientists, so I knew as soon as I saw this prompt that I was going to want to use a book that fit those themes. This was pretty easy, as so many books about natural history and science are decorated with flowers and greenery. I considered using Ship Fever: Stories for this prompt as well, which would have been perfect (what a gorgeous cover!) but decided to use it for short stories instead. Anyway, I had mixed feelings about Lab Girl, but I did really love the beginnings of each chapter, where she shared fascinating details about trees and plants, so an ultimate success for this prompt, I think.
Once again, I've reached the end of the year having read over 52 books and yet not completed my challenge! And once again, I'll be finishing out with my plan here before moving on to "next year's" books. But first, the 2021 round of stats and superlatives!
2021 Reading Stats and Superlatives
Totals:
56 books (1 less than last year)
19,756 pages (a bit more than last year!)
40 ATY Challenge prompts filled
14 rereads (doubled from last year!)
23 books crossed off my TBR
9 of those added to my TBR before 2020
19 books chosen spontaneously
8 books in translation (2 Russian, 1 Hungarian, 1 Italian, 1 Norwegian, 1 Japanese, 1 Arabic, 1 French - and also a stat that doubled from last year!)
Author Stats:
47 authors read this year
62% female, 38% male (this seems to be my typical distribution)
28% POC (doubled from last year! Yay!)
50% American authors (this is down 15% from last year, which I'm happy with)
23% British authors, the rest an assortment of one or two books per country with 16 countries total (this year, the British authors were extremely highly represented in my 4 and 5 star books, only one book by a British author got less than that)
40 new authors discovered this year
7 previously read authors
Authors I'm most excited to read more from: Magda Szabó, Ann Patchett, Iain M Banks
Setting Stats:
These stats are not comprehensive, because I read some books set entirely in fantastical or science fiction locations. However, I added 42 books this year to my reading map, including some fantasy stories that were set or partly set in real countries. Of those 42 books (some of which are represented on more than one continent, so percentages won't add to 100%):
57% were set in North America (mostly U.S., one Canada)
36% were set in Europe (featuring the U.K, Ireland, Greenland, France, Italy, Hungary, Poland, Russia, Turkey, and Greece)
12% were set in Asia (featuring Pakistan, India, Bangladesh, China, Malaysia, and Japan)
7% were set in Africa (featuring Nigeria, Senegal, and Egypt)
And 1 book was set in Antarctica.
This was the first time I had added a book set in Hungary (Katalin Street), India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh (Midnight's Children), Malaysia (The Garden of Evening Mists), and Senegal (Une si longue lettre).
Genre stats:
4 nonfiction books, 52 fiction books
Most read genre: Fantasy (23%)
Best read: Piranesi by Susanna Clarke
18% Young Adult
Best read: Turtles All the Way Down by John Green
14% Science Fiction
Best read: Hellspark by Janet Kagan
13% Classics
Best read: Watership Down by Richard Adams
13% Historical Fiction
Best read: Ship Fever: Stories by Andrea Barrett
7% Contemporary
Best read: Girl, Woman, Other by Bernadine Evaristo
3% Mystery/Thriller
Best read: My Sister, the Serial Killer by Oyinkan Braithwaite
3% Narrative Nonfiction
Best read: The Gene: An Intimate History by Siddhartha Mukherjee
3% Memoir
Best read: Lab Girl by Hope Jahren
And again, exactly 1 romance: Red, White & Royal Blue by Casey McQuiston
I succeeded in my goal this year to read more fantasy! For next year, I'd like to explore contemporary/literary fiction more.
I did NOT succeed in my goal to read more nonfiction. :( We'll try again next year!
Rating Stats:
5 Star Reads: 18%
Most memorable: Piranesi by Susanna Clarke
Piranesi was absolutely one of my top favorite books of the year and I'm giving it the most memorable spot because of how quickly I fell in love with it - I think by the end of the first page.
4 Star Reads: 34%
Most memorable: Surface Detail by Iain M. Banks
I suspect that the only reason Surface Detail didn't get 5 stars is because I listened to it on audio and I got a bit lost in the end. Otherwise, I was blown away by the clever and complicated plot and worldbuilding.
3 Star Reads: 25%
Most memorable: Remnant Population by Elizabeth Moon
This was one of those books where the parts I loved I really loved, but a significant chunk of the book was not about the part I loved.
2 Star Reads: 20%
Most memorable: Spinning Silver by Naomi Novik
I had a suspicion I wasn't going to like this one, as I'm really quite picky about fairy tale adaptations. At the beginning, though, I thought that maybe I was wrong - I really enjoyed the first 25% of this book.
1 Star Reads: 4%
Most memorable: The House in the Cerulean Sea by T.J. Klune
Nothing prepared me for not liking this book! I seriously thought I was going to love it based on the reviews of everyone I know and I just didn't at all.
Recommendation Stats
This is the first year I started taking notes when I added books to my TBR to record where I had heard about the book from and sometimes also what made me want to read it. So, out of the 42 new reads of this year, I found:
31% from ATY Discussion threads
23% had been on TBR for too long for me to know where I had first heard of them
10% from the Storygraph algorithm
7% from Youtube
7% were introduced to me by real-life friends, including gifts and buddy reads
5% from Goodreads recommendations
5% from google searches I did on specific topics in order to fulfill ATY prompts
5% from social media
1 book I bought because I had loved another book by that author
and 1 book recommended by the Kindle app based on what I had been reading lately.
I think these are some of the most useful stats I've collected! Of particular note:
I get a lot of recommendations from the ATY group, but they're quite hit and miss - some of my best books came from there but also some of my worst. No surprise there, because its such a diverse group with lots of different tastes!
The Storygraph algorithm is incredible - out of the four books I read from there, 3 were five star books!
The recommendations I got from friends and from Youtube were all very successful, all four and five star books, which is great.
Superlatives:
Longest book: Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell by Susanna Clarke at 782 pages
Shortest book: Technically Endgame by Samual Beckett at 60 pages, but it's a play. The shortest novel was Woman at Point Zero by Nawal El Saadawi at 128 pages.
Newest book: Piranesi by Susanna Clarke (September 2020)
Oldest book: The Death of Ivan Ilych and Other Stories by Leo Tolstoy (1886)
Most recent addition to TBR: The Comet Seekers by Helen Sedgwick (September 2020)
Longest on TBR: Watership Down by Richard Adams (August 2016)
Book I was most surprised by: The Comet Seekers by Helen Sedgwick
The Comet Seekers was recommended to me by The Storygraph's algorithm, but I was hesitant to pick it up because its dismal rating on Goodreads. Turns out, I absolutely loved it, it was perfect for me. Shows you can't always trust the ratings!
Best book outside of my comfort zone: My Sister, the Serial Killer by Oyinkan Braithwaite
Once again, a thriller gets this spot! Mystery/Thriller isn't my typical genre, but this wasn't a typical thriller either.
Biggest disappointment: The House in the Cerulean Sea by T.J. Klune
After hearing nothing but good things for months and months, I was surprised to find I didn't enjoy this one at all. I love fantasy and found family kind of books, but I really didn't like the characters and I've found I don't really tend to like "uplit."
What was I thinking?: Pretty Little Liars by Sara Shepard
In case you're curious about the high number of YA novels this year and the high number of rereads, this year I felt compelled to reread 9 total books from the Pretty Little Liars series over the course of about a week. They were just as terrible as I anticipated. This happened while I was reading The Gene: An Intimate History and in the dead of a quarantined winter, so hopefully it was a cabin fever kind of thing and won't be repeated next year.
Series I'm most excited for: The Culture series by Iain M. Banks
Surface Detail wasn't even the first in the series (but you can read them out of order.) I was so impressed, I really can't wait to dive into these.
Couldn't stop reading: Piranesi by Susanna Clarke
A lot of times my five star reads aren't my quickest reads - in fact, a lot of times I'll find that a book that I speed through quickly doesn't really stick with me. But this one I read straight through in a day and it may have been my favorite of the year.
Can't believe I waited so long to read: Watership Down by Richard Adams
I never felt particularly drawn to this one, I guess because I thought it was going to be about very anthropomorphic rabbits, like the animals in Redwall? But no, the rabbits are so delightfully rabbity and have such an intriguing society!
Favorite reread: Wise Child by Monica Furlong
Rereading this book was one of the highlights of my year and reconfirmed it as a true favorite.
Most thought-provoking book: Hellspark
Hellspark was a wonderful, surprising find off my TBR, a book that could have been handpicked for me. I loved considering the messages about communication, sentience, and intelligence in this book.
Most challenging book: The Gene: An Intimate History
I tried reading this twice, the second time I took extensive notes as I went. It was absolutely worth it, this book was full of fascinating details that I still think about.
Runner Up: Midnight's Children by Salman Rushdie
The non-chronological timeline, the overwhelming amount of detail, and the allusions to a complicated period of history that I was only loosely familiar with before I read all made this a serious challenge, but I was proud and happy that I read it.
Favorite character: Lord Lynn Margaret, known as Maggie, from Hellspark.
Maggie is the A.I. computer and ship "belonging" to Tocohl, the main character of Hellspark. Maggie is a delightfully inquisitive and clever character and I just completely fell in love with her.
Favorite relationship: Sam and Frodo from The Lord of the Rings
I know, everyone loves them. But rereading The Two Towers this year made me remember just how much. The loyalty! The gentleness!
Book 41: Homegoing 01/06/2022ATY Prompt: #41 A book by a new-to-you BIPOC author
Rating: ✭✭✭✭
Wow, I'm so glad I read this! And I'm glad I chose it for this prompt: I always enjoy having my first experience with an author be their debut work. I've been hearing an awful lot of buzz about this book since it came out, so I knew that I needed to fit it in somewhere on this list (and there were quite a few prompts that I could have chosen for it.) It almost completely lived up to the hype for me, especially as a debut novel - the structure of this book was a seriously impressive feat. I'm interested to read Gyasi's other book now!
Book 42: The Silent Patient 01/07/2022ATY Prompt: #42 A mystery or thriller
Rating: ✭✭
Neither mysteries nor thrillers are exactly "my genre." I'm not really drawn to them and I'm always a little wary whenever I go into them. I never expect to love them and I rarely do (though the past few years, I've been surprised to find that I tend to read and love exactly one mystery or thriller each year.) So I keep reading them, one because you never know, and two because I do like to read the things that everyone talks about, even if I tend to get to them a few years late. So I decided that I should take the opportunity for this prompt to read something that there really was a whole lot of buzz about and The Silent Patient certainly fit that bill. Plus, I happened to find a copy at the Little Free Library. I was right, it wasn't really for me, but at least now I know the big twist that everyone was talking about two years ago!
Book 43: The Light Fantastic 01/16/2022ATY Prompt: #43 A book with elements of magic
Rating: ✭✭✭✭ (3.5)
I actually started reading The Paladin for this prompt, but quickly discovered that there's actually no magic at all in that book, even though it's fantasy. So I decided to put it off until later and instead squeeze in a quick Discworld novel. Fits the prompt perfectly, of course, plus contributes to my goal to read more series and works by authors I already know and like this year. I've found these early Discworld books to be quick and fun, though a little uneven.
Book 44: Everything I Never Told You 01/16/2022ATY Prompt: #44 A book whose title contains a negative
Rating: ✭✭✭ (2.5)
This was an interesting one. I wasn't a big fan of Little Fires Everywhere, but I have this (mostly unsuccessful) habit of often wanting to try a second book by an author if the first one didn't hit me the way I had hoped. I also hoped that I would be better prepared for what I expected this book to be - I used to really not be into "domestic drama" kind of books, but recently I've started to like character dramas about unhappy families (see The Dutch House), so I thought it would be worth a shot. And I did like it better than Little Fires Everywhere, and I actually quite liked the middle section that focused on Lydia's perspective. But I really didn't like the beginning, which was focused on the parents. I know that Celeste Ng writes these tricky, unlikeable characters on purpose, but I found the parents, and to a lesser extent Lydia and Nath, to be so cruel to each other that I had a hard time sympathizing with them at all. And I think they were meant to be deeply flawed people, I'm not saying they were poorly written. I just needed them to be a little less flawed in order to connect with them and I wanted to connect with them.
Book 45: Ballad of the Whiskey Robber: A True Story of Bank Heists, Ice Hockey, Transylvanian Pelt Smuggling, Moonlighting Detectives, and Broken Hearts 01/24/2022ATY Prompt: #45 A book related to a codeword from the NATO Phonetic Alphabet
Rating: ✭✭✭✭ (3.75)
This was not my typical kind of read. I don't read a ton of nonfiction to begin with, and of what I do read, true crime and sports writing are both practically at the bottom of the list. But this was on my TBR backlist because it had been recommended by John Green, who said the story was told in a great way, so I gave it a chance. And I actually had a lot of fun! I definitely found some parts of it more compelling than other parts, but it really helped that I had just read Katalin Street and I was therefore quite interested in the history of Hungary and Budapest specifically following WWII. And I'm glad this worked for me because I really struggled with this prompt! W for whiskey, which played a big role in this unbelievable story.
Around the Year in 52 Books
Books mentioned in this topic
The Return of the King (other topics)The Fellowship of the Ring (other topics)
The Two Towers (other topics)
The Return of the King (other topics)
The Paladin (other topics)
More...
Authors mentioned in this topic
Magda Szabó (other topics)Ann Patchett (other topics)
Iain M. Banks (other topics)
My goal is to read in order, but without creating a full plan ahead of time. I intend to plan out my reads by month, working enough in advance that I can acquire the necessary books in time (as I'll mostly be reading from the library). I won't be listing out potential ideas here, as I've been using the listopias for that, but I'm trying to have a few options for each prompt, unless I own the book - I don't want to be held up by not being able to get a particular book in time from the library!
My 2021 Goals
Read at least 6 nonfiction books
Read at least 1 book in French
Reread at least 5 books
Read at least 20 books from my TBR (at least a year on the list)
Read at least 7 books in translation
Current Count
Challenge Books Read: 52
New Reads/Rereads: 47/5
Fiction/Nonfiction: 46/6
From the TBR/Newly Discovered: 34/18
Original English/Other Language: 44/8