Around the Year in 52 Books discussion

For this I read Persuasion by Jane Austen

I typed in Jane Austen (fiction), Kazuo Ishiguro (fiction) and Bill Bryson (non-fiction). Thomas Hardy showed up for all 3. So i'll read Far From the Madding Crowd

Completed July 11

I chose Leigh Bardugo and after looking at some of the results I got, I'll probably wind up reading something either by Samantha Shannon or S.A. Chakraborty. I have books from both authors and yet haven't read anything of theirs yet, so I'm looking forward to both clearing more books off my physical TBR and possibly finding some new favorite authors in the process. :) My three options are:
The City of Brass
The Adventures of Amina al-Sirafi
The Priory of the Orange Tree

I put in Stephen King so of course there were going to be lots of choices. I chose Dean Koontz because it's been literally at least 25 years since I gave up reading his books. He has not improved over the years.

I read Quicksilver by Dean Koontz

I loved Still Life by Sarah Winman. Putting her name in led me to Melissa Harrison and her book All Among the Barley was already on my "want to read" list though I had no memory of the author's name.

I enjoyed both of those - Still Life was such a joyful book.

I tried various authors and chose an author that I hadn't read before (kind of the purpose of this prompt) with a book out that I was interested in. I ended up choosing R.F. Kuang, based on inputting Erin Morgenstern. I had really enjoyed Morgenstern's The Night Circus and The Starless Sea.

The book I read, and really enjoyed (5 stars!) was Babel: An Arcane History. Highly recommended!

I put Ruth Ware in and got Lucy Foley. I read The Hunting Party

I always struggle when asked for a favourite author, because my taste in books is very mood-based, but I decided to use Terry Pratchett because I have re-read the Discworld books so many times and never fail to enjoy them. Most of the names the site threw up were familiar to me (Ursula K. LeGuin, Douglas Adams, Ben Aaronovitch, and of course Neil Gaiman) but my eye was drawn to Iain Banks for some reason so I am going to read The Wasp Factory for this prompt. I've never read any of Banks' books before.

I entered Agatha Christie and got Dorothy L. Sayers


Gaudy Night – Dorothy L Sayers – 2.5**
Book # 10 in the Lord Peter Wimsey series focuses not on Peter, but on Harriet Vane. She is attending an event as an alumnae of Shrewsbury College at Oxford, but what promised to be a pleasant, if awkward, homecoming, turns decidedly ominous with a series of destructive “pranks” and malicious, vile graffiti. Harriet does her best, but has to call in Lord Peter to solve the case. I found it slow-moving and dull.
LINK to my full review


I think I should have picked a different author ...

Another retro-engineered author. I read The Wrong End of the Telescope by Rabih Alameddine - authors I enjoyed who were linked included Siri Husvedt, David Nicholls and Zadie Smith. Also Beatrix Potter, but I think that might be an error!

It took a little bit of reading to realise that the person the narrator was addressing was actually the author, but apart from that, this was a very good read, set on the Greek island of Lesbos during the early days of the refugee crisis there. A compassionate and sometimes angry read, with no easy answers. I don't know if it was intentional that a book set on Lesbos featured a trans lesbian narrator...

For the summer challenge, this would fit both a book set in a coastal town and a book with a lgbtqia+ author.

I used Margaret Dickinson. I am reading Where Earth meets Sky by Annie Murray. Thought this was a new to me author but I have actually read her before.

I was going to reverse engineer this prompt but decided to go with my favorite children's author Avi and find a new-to-me author. I found Kate DiCamillo, whose name I recognized from a podcast discussion a few weeks ago on The Bookcase. I read 2 of her books - The Tiger Rising and the picture book Bink & Gollie (which I also plan to read to my grandson this weekend for his challenge).

What author did you use as your search?

The author I put in was John Connolly


I read The Drop by Michael Connelly

This is my final category to finish the challenge, and I've selected From Doon With Death by Ruth Rendell, suggested from putting Tana French into the map. My goal was to try a new author I'd never read before, and so far I'm really enjoying this. It's a British psychological procedural set and written in the 1960s. I previously hadn't had a lot of luck finding books that hit the right notes of Tana French for me, but this one is doing very well so far. (Crossing fingers), I hope so, as Ms. Rendell has quite the backlog!

I looked at the maps of many favorite authors to find new authors who were very close to at least 2-5 of my favorites on the maps.

When I entered Lily King, Ann Napolitano and Kevin Murphy, they were all close to Emma Straub. I read This Time Tomorrow. I really liked it.

Ann Patchett and other favorites brought me close to Elizabeth Berg, and Sue Monk Kidd - I read The Book of Longings I liked it a lot.

Amor Towles and Emily St John Mandel led me to Anthony Marra - A Constellation of Vital Phenomena and The Tsar of Love and Techno are both excellent.


Meg mason
Amor Towles, Gail Honeyman, Gabrielle Zevin, John Boyne all led me to Annie Hartnett and Unlikely Animals. Loved it

I will continue to use this tool .

I tried it a few times and found the results to be mixed. I ended up using Kurt Vonnegut, which gave me back a lot of authors that I love as well as one that I had been meaning to read: Ernest Hemingway.

I ended up reading The Sun Also Rises, as it proved the easiest to acquire.