Around the Year in 52 Books discussion
2023 Plans
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Trish H's Can I Make it Five Plan
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I wasn't sure what to expect from this, but I enjoyed it. I liked the main character, and it was a good story. Plus there were at least three murders.
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At least, as far as I can tell it's her debut book. :-) Indiana Jones meets the Chronicles of St Mary's.
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Book 1 - An Enemy of the People - ***
Written in (and therefore presumably set in) the 19th Century (1882)
Book 2 - The Story of the Stone - ***
Set in 650AD
Book 3 - Death on the Night of Lost Lizards - ****
Written in (and therefore presumably set in) the 21st Century (2021)
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The story of one of the greatest deceptions in WWII. Well written, and reads like a spy thriller, despite the historical subject.
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I read three of Jodi Taylor's St Mary's books in 2022.
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Used for the suggestion: "A book by a writer honored by Queen Elizabeth II" (close call, Poll 13).
Agatha Christie was appointed Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) in the 1956 New Year Honours; and in the 1971 New Year Honours, she was promoted to Dame Commander (DBE),
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Historical mystery set in the Alexandria of Cleopatra (Ancient Egypt)
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Lots of lovely colours on the front of this one (including near-primary Red, Blue, Yellow and Green):
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Translated from Japanese, and a lovely book with a very cool premise. My first 5* book of 2023.
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Various repeated objects, noticeably stylised eyes, plus the gates and the rays coming from the gates.
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A lovely warm book to cheer up the winter.
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I figured a celebrity memoir would just about count here, especially as she was a writer on Saturday Night Live, as well as the creator of 30 Rock.
Sadly, I didn't enjoy it as much as I'd hoped
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The author name is horizontal, but the title is definitely at an angle. I enjoyed seeing the older characters in this take centre stage.
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Enjoyable (hopefully) first in series for a new British urban fantasy series. Reminiscent of Rivers of London, but with its own twist.
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Set in a magical bookshop in London, where the store(room) knows exactly what books need to be unpacked, and has moods of its own.
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"Geometric" always has me scrabbling but on the definition "characterised by or decorated with regular lines and shapes", I figured this was a pretty geometric, so this is what I've used for the prompt.
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This not only has a route of travel on it (dirt road), but is seen from inside the car travelling on it!
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One of my favourite books of all time. I got it off the shelf again having seen the Aaron Sorkin stage play. Mockingbird in the title, plus the recurring theme of "it's a sin to kill a mockingbird"
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Jodi Taylor beats 7 books published:
14 x St Mary's: https://www.goodreads.com/series/1091...
4 x Time Police: https://www.goodreads.com/series/2657...
And at least five other books.
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Change of book plan for this one. Stolen Tears fits a bit better, as one of the main characters in the book is the ghost of a 1940s noir-style private eye.
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Well, the first of these two is read. I reckon c.75% black cover counts as dark, plus the story took various dark turns and had what I'd consider a dark ending. Also, set in Iceland, where the very ground is dark when it isn't covered in snow.
29. A book that is light - Every Day Nature - *****
Both a light coloured cover (over 80% white), and a lovely, light, uplifting read.
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This was a very difficult read, as it made me angry. The main saving grace is that it had an effect and the methods of pest control discussed have changed since it was published.
Carson, herself, was a marine biologist and the book also includes a lot of discussion of biology vs. chemistry
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A description of the MC - Charley surveyed her wild red curls with resignation - relates her to red-headed Ginger Spice. Plus, as the Book Club is made up of the town's movers and shakers, there's a bit of Posh in there, to.
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Set in Reykjavik, which I recently discovered was a City of Literature.
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Published on 11 April, this was the first new book in the Kate Shugak series - one of my favourites, for both the characters and the Alaskan setting - for three years.
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A much shorter read than Station Eleven, the other book I've read by the same author, but it was an interesting twisty time-travel puzzle. She does love her pandemics, though.
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Included for this prompt, as Sam is an amputee.
I know a lot of people love this book, but I wasn't one of them. I found both Sam and Sadie annoying for most of the book, as they never seemed to grow up. I had most sympathy for them at the beginning, when they were actually children, rather than just acting like them. Marx was by far the best of the three main characters.
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Based on the popular British TV show Death in Paradise, set on the tropical Caribbean island of Saint-Marie. A fun read, but odd as it has the characters from the first couple of series, and none of them are still in the show.
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I reached Nancy Atherton by inputting Dana Stabenow: https://www.literature-map.com/dana+s....
In the interests of full disclosure, the Aunt Dimity series has been one of my comfort reads for a while, although the task didn't say it had to be a NEW author you found :-)
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Yes, the POV character is called Gobbelino London. The fact that he's a cat is neither here nor there :-)
It took a while to get into this, but once it got going it was a fun urban fantasy mystery.
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Next installment, for me, of Nghi Vo's Singing Hills Cycle of novellas.
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John tops the US boys' names list for 1923, and also tops the UK lists for 1914, 1924 and 1934 - so therefore probably also 1923.
A fun romp through an alternate world with Kaiju.
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I've seen this described as the first real Cold War spy thriller, and it certainly fits the bill for evoking the grimness of the late-50s/early-60s. I did expect more of George Smiley, but he was really only a bit part - manipulating everything from the wings.
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Georges Simenon was Belgian. Another entertaining and twisty Maigret book.
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This was on the 2022 list. Definitely fitted T. Kingfisher's usual pattern of epic fantasy and cool ideas. I particularly liked the bone dog.
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In this retelling of The Great Gatsby, there's a relationship between Nick Carraway (white) and Jordan Baker (Vietnamese)
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An excellent speculative fiction murder mystery - one of the best books I've read this year. Winner of the World Fantasy Award for Best Novel in 2010.
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I thought I was going to struggle a bit with this prompt, but then I saw Mohsin Hamid in the list in the help thread message. Exit West had been on my TBR for a little while, so it seemed like a good fit. I didn't like it as much as The Reluctant Fundamentalist, but it was pretty decent and very well written.
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From the GR description: "Kinsley Skeenbauer never thought she would go home. At seventeen, she’d left Coventry and didn’t look back. But after a messy divorce, she packed up her stuff and drove toward the only place that she knew would accept her."
Not a bad witchy cozy, although I probably need to read the precursor series first.
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I was pondering this one for a while, but in the end I decided that as you don't normally think of books on the front lines, it would work for this prompt.
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This was posted in the July 2023 thread by kendra: https://www.goodreads.com/topic/show/...
I'm not normally a romance reader, but I'd read Book Lovers, by the same author and enjoyed it, so I gave this a go. A solid three-star for me.
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I enjoyed this more than I expected, and it seems to fit pride in a couple of different ways.
She's a proud woman. She's proud of having dragged herself out of Hell's Kitchen Hollywood. She's proud of some of her movies.
And it also fits the "pride" movement, as she's a bisexual woman who's one true love was also a woman.
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A fun, chocolate-themed cozy mystery.
Chocolate is often used as an ingredient.
"à la" is sometimes part of a dish description, for example pie à la mode or fish à la creme.
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Fits "#6. A book where books are important". The POV character is a book binder and restorer, and the house she's staying in is full of books.
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Great worldbuilding, and I liked one of the main characters, but I wasn't so fond of the other one. Also, the whole book felt too long by 50-100pg.
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Well, I definitely finished on a high with this one. Only the seventh 5* read of the challenge, and three of those were books I'd read before. I liked the main character, and her found family, and I was glad things worked out in the end, as at points I was far from sure that they were going to.
Around the Year in 52 Books
Books mentioned in this topic
Lessons in Chemistry (other topics)Lessons in Chemistry (other topics)
Ocean's Echo (other topics)
Ocean's Echo (other topics)
Sea of Tranquility (other topics)
More...
January
1. A book set in a location that begins with A, T, or Y - Disappearance of a Scribe, Dana Stabenow - 20/01/23
2. A book by an author you read in 2022 - The Nothing Girl, Jodi Taylor - 16/01/23
3. A book that fits a suggestion that didn’t make the 2023 list - Death Comes as the End, Agatha Christie - 19/01/23
4. A book with an interracial relationship - Chosen and the Beautiful, Nghi Vo - 28/07/23
5. A book with 4 or more colors on the cover - Read and Buried, Eva Gates - 24/01/23
February
6. A book where books are important - Every Trick In The Book, Liz Hedgecock - 17/02/23
7. A book with ONE of the five "W" question words in the title - What Happened in London, Kim M Watt - 18/02/23
8. An author's debut book - The Quantum Curators and the Fabergé Egg, Eva St. John - 05/01/23
9. A book nominated for an award beginning with W - The City & the City, China Mieville - 03/08/23
March
10. A book related to one of the Spice Girls' "personalities" - The Book Club Murders, Leslie Nagel - 28/03/23
11. A book about a person/character with a disability - Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, Gabrielle Zevin - 11/05/23
12. A book connected to birds, bees, or bunnies - To Kill a Mockingbird, Harper Lee - 21/02/23
13. A book that has an object that is repeated on the cover - The Golden Enclaves, Naomi Novik - 03/02/23
April
14. A book with a con, deception, or fake - Operation Mincemeat: The True Spy Story That Changed the Course of World War II, Ben Macintyre - 11/01/23
15. Three books, each of which is set in a different century: Book 1 - An Enemy of the People, Henrik Ibsen - 09/01/23
16. Three books, each of which is set in a different century: Book 2 - The Story of the Stone, Barry Hughart - 17/01/23
17. Three books, each of which is set in a different century: Book 3 - Death on the Night of Lost Lizards, Julia Buckley - 12/01/23
May
18. A book related to science - Silent Spring, Rachel Carson - 28/03/23
19. A book related to the arts - Bossypants, Tina Fey - 07/02/23
20. A book with a cover or title that includes a route of travel - Dog on It, Spencer Quinn - 21/02/23
21. A book by an Asian diaspora author - Exit West, Mohsin Hamid - 13/08/23
22. A book with a faceless person on the cover - Daughter of the Morning Star, Craig Johnson - 22/02/23
June
23. A book with a body of water in the title - Ocean's Echo, Everina Maxwell - 27/09/23
24. A character that might be called a Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, or Spy - The Spy Who Came in from the Cold, John le Carre - 23/07/23
25. A book with a tropical setting - Murder in the Caribbean, Robert Thorogood - 10/05/23
26. A book related to pride - The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo, Taylor Jenkins Reid - 29/08/23
July
27. A book by an author from continental Europe - The Night at the Crossroads, Georges Simenon - 24/07/23
28. A book that is dark - The Fires, Sigríður Hagalín Björnsdóttir - 09/03/23
29. A book that is light - Every Day Nature, Andy Beer - 26/06/23
30. A book related to a chess piece - Mystery Mile, Margery Allingham - 24/02/23
31. A book found by inputting a favorite author on https://www.literature-map.com - Aunt Dimity and the King's Ransom, Nancy Atherton - 09/05/23
August
32. A book set in a UNESCO City of Literature - Voices, Arnuldur Indriðason - 02/04/23
33. A book by an author with a first name popular in 1923 - The Kaiju Preservation Society, John Scalzi - 13/07/23
34. A novella - Into the Riverlands, Nghi Vo - 02/06/23
35. A book with a school subject in the title - Lessons in Chemistry, Bonnie Garmus - 11/10/23
September
36. A book that has been translated from another language - Before the Coffee Gets Cold, Toshikazu Kawaguchi - 25/01/23
37. A book with the theme of returning home - Black Magic Kitten, Sara Bourgeois - 10/07/23
38. A book with the sun, moon, or stars on the cover - Sea of Tranquility, Emily St. John Mandel - 24/04/23
39. A western - Open Season, C.J. Box - 11/07/23
October
40. A book with a full name in the title - Gobbelino London & a Scourge of Pleasantries, Kim M. Watt - 05/05/23
41. A book from the NPR “Books We Love” lists - Nettle & Bone, T. Kingfisher - 14/07/23
42. A book related to a ghost, spirit, phantom, or specter - The Ghost and the Stolen Tears, Cleo Coyle - 14/05/23
43. A book that involves a murder - Sworn To Silence, Linda Castillo - 04/01/23
44. A book where the cover design includes text that is not completely horizontal - The Thursday Murder Club, Richard Osman - 16/02/23
November
45. A book whose author has published more than 7 books - Doing Time, Jodi Taylor - 27/02/23
46. A title that contains a word often found in a recipe - Chocolate à la Murder, Kirsten Weiss - 26/07/23
47. A book related to a geometric shape - Women & Power: A Manifesto, Mary Beard - 20/02/23
48. A book with an unusually large version of an animal in the story - Remarkably Bright Creatures, Shelby van Pelt - 05/02/23
December
49. A book posted in one of the ATY Best Book of the Month threads in 2022 or 2023 - Beach Read, Emily Henry - 26/08/23
50. A second book that fits your favorite prompt - Peril in Paperback, Kate Carlisle - 24/09/23
51. A book published in 2023 - Not the Ones Dead, Dana Stabenow - 19/04/23
52. A book with an unusual or surprising title - When Books Went to War: The Stories That Helped Us Win World War II, Molly Guptill Manning - 29/08/23
January
1.
February
6.
March
10.
April
14.
May
18.
June
23.
July
27.
August
32.
September
36.
October
40.
November
45.
December
49.