Around the Year in 52 Books discussion
2021 Plans
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J Austin's Excellent Reading Adventures 2021 ⭐️(1 left!)
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I have gotten off to a running start on this:1. A book related to “In the Beginning...�
The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin by Benjamin Franklin
It's a book he began but never finished, and it includes background on the beginning of the United States.
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2. A book by an author whose name doesn't contain the letters A, T or Y
The Sentinel by Lee Child
I read this because I have read all of the Reacher novels, and greatly enjoyed many of them. This one was just so-so. I can only hope that as Andrew Child continues to take over from his father, that he improves.
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4. A book with a monochromatic cover
The Looking Glass War by John le Carré
I so enjoy the work of John le Carré, and this one was a treat!
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8. A book set in a state, province, or country you have never visited
Old Goriot (La Comédie Humaine #23) by Honoré de Balzac
What a soap opera this novel is! It started slow and pulled me in. I'll read more Balzac.
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15. A book that features siblings as the main characters
The Family Upstairs by Lisa Jewell
This is a moderately competent page-turner featuring no characters I could really care much about.
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24. A book about racism or race relations
Interior Chinatown by Charles Yu
What an excellent book! It is playful, adventuresome, charming. It brought tears to my eyes more than once. I have recommended this to several people.
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31. A book by an author whose career spanned more than 21 years
The Sorrows of Young Werther by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
I was occasionally maddened by this book, but was so glad I read it.
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I am currently reading Portrait of a Lady by Henry James, which I see as a match for prompt #51. A book whose title refers to person(s) without giving their name
I just finished a book for the challenge, and also forgot to note the last one: 29. A book that you consider comfort reading
The Bookish Life of Nina Hill by Abbi Waxman
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42. A mystery or thriller
A Colder War by Charles Cumming
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I just finished a book for the challenge! I listened to the audiobook version of A Russian Journal, and then went off to find an ebook version so that I could see the photographs. This book was engaging and funny, and the historical detail was fascinating. The book describes a trip by writer John Steinbeck and photographer Robert Capa to the Soviet Union in 1947. This is definitely worth your consideration! 34. A book with a travel theme
A Russian Journal by John Steinbeck, with photographs by Robert Capa
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25, A book set on an island
Jar City by Arnaldur Indriðason
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This is a dark mystery set in Iceland. Lovers of things like the Wallander books might well enjoy it.
51. A book whose title refers to person(s) without giving their name
The Portrait of a Lady by Henry James
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This was a great read. It was published as a serial in 1880-1881 in Atlantic Monthly and McMillan's. It must have been a sensation at the time. James is in no hurry to tell the story, but his language is charming, and it is I think the earliest novel I have read that engages so much with the inner life of characters. Five stars!
16. A book with a building in the title 
The Dutch House by Ann Patchett
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This is a very good novel. The Tom Hanks audiobook version is especially excellent! Five stars!
Hi Jennifer,Thanks for visiting my 2021 plan. I also listened to the audiobook of the Dutch House. I can still hear Tom Hanks! He made the book rating go from a 4⭐️ to 5⭐️.
Happy Reading in 2021!
Linda wrote: "Hi Jennifer,Thanks for visiting my 2021 plan. I also listened to the audiobook of the Dutch House. I can still hear Tom Hanks! He made the book rating go from a 4⭐️ to 5⭐️.
Happy Reading in 2021!"
Linda, I so agree with you! I told a friend that it was a good novel but a *great* audiobook and that if she tackles it, she should definitely give the audiobook a try.
Happy reading!
3. A book related to the lyrics for the song "My Favorite Things" from The Sound of Music
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The Shawl by Cynthia Ozick
This is such a breathtaking book. Here's a great review (though I was glad not to have read it before I read the book):
6. A love story
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The Song of Achilles by Madeline Miller
I enjoyed this slightly less than Circe, but The Song of Achilles is still brilliant. The end of the book, especially, was a surprise and a delight. Wow!
I am now off to look up another of her novels, Galatea.
14. A book set in a made-up place
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The Warden by Anthony Trollope
What a delightful book! I will be happy to visit this made-up place, Barsetshire, again! The unexpected delight was finding that this book is deeply concerned with questions of social justice and wealth. I both read this and listened to the Simon Vance audiobook, and can heartily recommend the audio version.
52. A book related to "the end"
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The Death of Ivan Ilych by Leo Tolstoy
This novella is a small masterpiece. Wow. What a read. I read it via the audiobook narrated by George Guidall, who was excellent as always.
44. A book whose title contains a negative
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Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro
This book is an excellent read -- understated and beautiful and sad. I am very glad to have read it.
21. A book whose title and author both contain the letter "u"
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On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous by Ocean Vuong
Wow. I am now off reading more about Ocean Vuong:
Also, Vuong posted a playlist to go with the book:
40. A book with flowers or greenery on the cover
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The Language of Flowers by Vanessa Diffenbaugh
This book started off well, and has some merit, but by the end, I just wanted it to be over. It is a carefully structured book and becomes very predictable.
5. A book by an author on USA Today's list of 100 Black Novelists You Should Read
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No Longer at Ease by Chinua Achebe
12. A book eligible for the Warwick Prize for Women in Translation
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Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead by Olga Tokarczuk
I found this a strange but charming book. I recommend it to lovers of experimental literature and other strange things.
The narrator, Janina, is a lover of the poetry of Robert Blake, whose philosophy was all about imagination as the most important element of human existence. It's interesting, as we also know that she was in the past a builder of bridges, which leaves one wondering if she was more of a rationalist when she was younger. At this point in her life, she is fascinated by astrology, weaves stories about animals., and is an unconventional but passionate teacher of young children.
Some of her musings on astrology go on for long enough to have you confront the aims of storytelling, as she is not being bound by the usual rules. Her mind is like a kaleidoscope, and she is shaking the elements around and making up a story that fits. Her stamina can be confronting. And I know I have met this quality in real life, and not wanted to be with it.
Sometimes, though, Janina's storytelling is out-and-out charming. There's a section in which she talks about her love of a TV weather channel that was laugh-out-loud funny and brilliant, for me.
The book also deals with tact that she is an older woman, old enough to be largely invisible even to her friends, and I really appreciated that.
Anyone who reads this expecting a genre mystery (as a cover blurb suggests) will be disappointed, I suspect. I love mysteries
but had to quickly give up any expectations in that department.
It was a strange ride, and one I enjoyed and learned from!
43. A book with elements of magic
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Star Daughter by Shveta Thakrar
This is a first novel, and a bit rough around the edges. While the world created is very rich and the interplay of characters is interesting, I felt like there were some pacing issues. That said, Thakrar is gifted enough that I picked this book up after having read a short story of hers in A Thousand Beginnings and Endings two years ago. Her storytelling jumped out at me then. This book felt as if she had trouble keeping things together in a full-length novel, but I was still charmed.
47. A non-fiction book other than biography, autobiography or memoir
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Other Minds: The Octopus, the Sea, and the Deep Origins of Consciousness by Peter Godfrey-Smith was my pick. It's a charming and passionate book, though more anecdotal and less science-based than I expected. Learning more about octopi and cuttlefish was the highlight of the book. I was also especially interested in the discussion of the evolutionary value of aging. Most striking to me was the amount of feeling that Godfrey-Smith communicated and generated in me, while stopping short of saying things that would have gone too far in the area of speculation. It's a fun consciousness raiser.
41. A book by a new-to-you BIPOC author
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Elatsoe by Darcie Little Badger is a delightful book! It's a smart, funny, charming page-turner of a book. I was truly delighted to visit this world, and I very much enjoyed the relationships, the dialogue and the whodunit. I am looking forward to reading more by Darcie Little Badger.
37. A book from the Are You Well Read in World Literature list
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The Travelling Cat Chronicles by Hiro Arikawa
49. A book with an ensemble cast
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Children of Blood and Bone by Tomi Adeyemi
What a great read! I really enjoyed the world, the characters, and the adventure, and will be looking for the next volume in the series!
If you have any findness for audiobooks, that version is stellar. Bahni Turpin's reading was amazing.
46. A winner or nominee from the 2020 ŷ Choice Awards
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And Now She's Gone by Rachel Howzell Hall was a really solid page-turner! Hall did an excellent job building a set of mysteries connected by both theme and the facts. I very much appreciated this new cut on the classic noir mystery. At a certain point, I was pretty sure how the main mystery would be resolved, but I still enjoyed the characters and seeing how things would be accomplished. I'll be recommending this one to a variety of mystery-loving friends!
If you enjoyed Raymond Chandler's The Big Sleep, you will almost certainly enjoy this!
I am off to read more by Hall!
48. A book that might cause someone to react “You read what?!?�
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I chose The Riddle of the Sands by Erskine Childers as my read for #48 because people are so surprised when I tell people that this, a recognizably modern espionage novel, dates to 1903, and when I describe the author. Erskine Caldwell was a British intelligence officer during World War I, an Irish gun smuggler (the
in 1914, and he used his own yacht!), served as minister of propaganda, and died at just 52, in front of a firing squad on the order of the Irish Free State. What a character, and what a life!
The book is an odd but appealing read. There's enough detail about sailing and guerilla warfare to scare many off, but I found it fun.
The Irish times has run some articles on him, including:
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You may well have seen taken during the Howth gun running, which was organized to bring in arms the for the 1916 Easter Rising (see also by William Butler Yeats.
23. A cross genre novel
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What an excellent read! Djinn Patrol on the Purple Line by Deepa Anappara could just6 go in the "literary" category, but it also pulls from investigative journalism, coming of age YA, and mysteries. I could not put it down. Jai, Pari, Faiz and the many people in this neighborhood came alive for me. I want to recommend to half the people I know! This would make for an excellent book club discussion, too.
30. A long book
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Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra was an amazing read. I had read excerpts before, but the entire book is much better than I realized from those excerpts. What a wonderful book. It is sometimes no-holds-barred Monty Python funny and sometimes sad, and everything in between.
36. A book with six or more words in the title
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One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
Wow. Solzhenitsyn's first book is a page-turner. I read The Gulag Archipelago, 1918 - 1956: An Experiment in Literary Investigation, Books I-II many years ago, and now want to re-read it.
32. A book whose cover shows more than 2 people
The Name of the Roseby Umberto Eco
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This was a DNF for me years ago. This time I finished it. It's more my thing these days -- a big wild gothic filled with history, religion and philosophy, with a gothic whodunnit to solve and a question about how a particular boy survived a crucial series of events under the tutelage of his mentor.
26. A short book (<210 pages) by a new-to-you author
The Life of Lazarillo de Tormes.
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The book is officially by Anonymous, as some of the content was dangerous at the time. One eminent scholar thinks that it was written by Alfonso de Valdés, but so far there's no certainty.
It is a book that likely influenced Miguel de Cervantes, whose Don Quixote influenced books like Huckleberry Finn. It's like having come across a bit of the DNA of the novel! I am probably benefitting from a good translation by W.S. Merwin, as the book was very readable. Lazaro jumped off the page as a character!
45. A book related to a codeword from the NATO Phonetic Alphabet
Kim by Rudyard Kipling
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I finally picked this up because I have seen it over and over on "best of" lists, including .
I did not read this write-up by The Guardian until after I read the novel, but I find the last paragraph right on point. It talks about the multiple levels of the story. As you read the book, each of these opens up gradually, building and combining to make the book richer.
"Kim, therefore, engages the reader at three contrasting levels. It fictionalises Kipling's own Indian childhood (his father, John Lockwood Kipling, was actually the curator of the Lahore museum, already described). Second, it tells an adventure story of the kind that became especially popular in the heyday of the British Empire (see also the popular works of GA Henty, not selected for this series). Finally, and most importantly, it unfolds a boy's own story in which, through the trials of the Great Game, Kim will be given greater insight into his divided east-west inheritance. The key to this strand of the novel, which shadows a thrillerish spy story, is Kim's friendship with an ancient Tibetan lama who is on a quest to find the sacred and fabled "River of the Arrow". Kim becomes his guru's "chela" or disciple, and joins him on his journey while at the same time pursuing a public-school education sponsored by the lama. In the end, Kim must make his choice. "I am not a Sahib," he tells his guru, "I am thy chela." He might play "King of the Castle" on a great British cannon, but he knows where his loyalties lie."
It's a book that has much about it that is beguiling but also much that is irritating. Reading it will have you chew on a number of vexing and fascinating questions. See the "Reputation in India" section of for a start on the many questions reading this book will likely raise. It had me look up The Intimate Enemy: Loss and Recovery of Self Under Colonialism by Ashis Nandy.
✔️13. A book written by an author of one of your best reads of 2020
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Farewell, My Lovely by Raymond Chandler
What a book. The narrator, Philip Marlowe, makes a stack of statements that are racist, sexist, and homophobic. For some, that will be reason to not read the book.
The language, though, is amazing.
And Walter Mosley, another author I love, credits this book with changing his life.
"When I asked Walter Mosley to name a favorite passage from literature, he chose two sentences in Raymond Chandler's The Long Goodbye. He credits this brief narrative instant with germinating his career and calling: 'He was looking at me and neither his eyes nor his gun moved. He was as calm as an adobe wall in the moonlight.' "
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I enjoyed the audiobook version. Elliott Gould's narration was faultless, and he has a great voice for this story.
✔️9. A book you associate with a specific season or time of year
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Winter Counts by David Heska Wanbli Weiden
✔️28. A book connected to ice
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The Eiger Sanction by Trevanian
This book had some aspects that I really enjoyed, and some aspects that were tiresome. It was a two or three star read until I got to the climbing section, which was spectacular.
✔️7. A book that fits a prompt suggestion that didn't make the final listA book with a color in the title
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Crome Yellow by Aldous Huxley
I am not awfully good at reading funny books, but this one has won me over. It is a ridiculous confection of a book. I love it. I want to lure others into reading it.
A quotation from F. Scott Fitzgerald, posted in Wikipedia, convinced me I had to read this book. Fitzgerald is said to have" observed how within the novel's ambiguous form Huxley created structures and then demolished them 'with something too ironic to be called satire and too scornful to be called irony.'"
my review
✔️10. A book with a female villain or criminal
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My Sister, the Serial Killer by Oyinkan Braithwaite
I forgot to note this one when I read it back in April! It was a 5 star read for me!
I have been busy reading books for the Summer Challenge and not knocking books off this list. I have read 21 of 26 books for that challenge, just because I wanted to read extras for some of the sections.Back in the game!
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The Sixth Extinction: An Unnatural History by Elizabeth Kolbert
This is an excellent nonfiction read. I highly recommend it.
✔️19. 3 books related to "Past, Present, Future" - Book 2
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The Plague Year: America in the Time of Covid by Lawrence Wright
This is an excellent nonfiction read. It was a page-turner, despite my familiarity with much of the material. It is well-researched, and added to my knowledge. I highly recommend it.
I listed to the audiobook version. Eric Jason Martin's narration was excellent.
✔️20. 3 books related to "Past, Present, Future" - Book 3
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The Story of Evolution in 25 Discoveries: The Evidence and the People Who Found It by Donald R. Prothero
What a wonderfully readable and informative book!
✔️22. A book posted in one of the ATY Best Book of the Month threads
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Project Hail Mary by Andy Weir
Valerie wrote: "Now, what are you going to do?"Howdy! After doing tons with the summer challenge, I am back to working on the regular challenge. My next book was for prompt 17, a book with a Muslim character or author
✔️17. A book with a Muslim character or author
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The Unquiet Dead by Ausma Zehanat Khan
What an excellent read! I almost put it down partway through the first chapter, and then gave it one more try. Once I got going, it was a page turner. There were some places where it dragged a bit, but I think I will be going back to read another book with these characters.
The Srebrenica massacre is critical to the story, so be prepared for that.
✔️11. A book to celebrate The Grand Egyptian Museum
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The Cairo Brief by Fiona Veitch Smith
Pleasant historical mystery that features a controversy about Egyptian artifacts.
✔️27. A book with a character who can be found in a deck of cards.
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The Golden Hour by Beatriz Williams
Adding this after the fact. It features the Duke and Duchess of Windsor (Wallis Simpson).
✔️35. A book set in a country on or below the Tropic of Cancer
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A Carrion Death by Michael Stanley
This is set in Botswana.
✔️39. A book involving an immigrant
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The Reluctant Fundamentalist by Mohsin Hamid
What an excellent book! Hamid is also the author of Exit West, also a great read. I recommend both highly.
Around the Year in 52 Books
Books mentioned in this topic
Exit West (other topics)The Reluctant Fundamentalist (other topics)
A Carrion Death (other topics)
The Golden Hour (other topics)
The Cairo Brief (other topics)
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Authors mentioned in this topic
Mohsin Hamid (other topics)Michael Stanley (other topics)
Beatriz Williams (other topics)
Fiona Veitch Smith (other topics)
Ausma Zehanat Khan (other topics)
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What's left: 38
✔️1. A book related to “In the Beginning...�
✔️2. A book by an author whose name doesn't contain the letters A, T or Y
✔️3. A book related to the lyrics for the song "My Favorite Things" from The Sound of Music
✔️4. A book with a monochromatic cover
✔️5. A book by an author on USA Today's list of 100 Black Novelists You Should Read
✔️6. A love story
✔️7. A book that fits a prompt suggestion that didn't make the final list
✔️8. A book set in a state, province, or country you have never visited
✔️9. A book you associate with a specific season or time of year
✔️10. A book with a female villain or criminal
✔️11. A book to celebrate The Grand Egyptian Museum
✔️12. A book eligible for the Warwick Prize for Women in Translation
✔️13. A book written by an author of one of your best reads of 2020
✔️14. A book set in a made-up place
✔️15. A book that features siblings as the main characters
✔️16. A book with a building in the title
✔️17. A book with a Muslim character or author
✔️18. 3 books related to "Past, Present, Future" - Book 1
✔️19. 3 books related to "Past, Present, Future" - Book 2
✔️20. 3 books related to "Past, Present, Future" - Book 3
✔️21. A book whose title and author both contain the letter "u"
✔️22. A book posted in one of the ATY Best Book of the Month threads
✔️23. A cross genre novel
✔️24. A book about racism or race relations
✔️25. A book set on an island
✔️26. A short book (<210 pages) by a new-to-you author
✔️27. A book with a character who can be found in a deck of cards
✔️28. A book connected to ice
✔️29. A book that you consider comfort reading
✔️30. A long book
✔️31. A book by an author whose career spanned more than 21 years
✔️32. A book whose cover shows more than 2 people
✔️33. A collection of short stories, essays, or poetry
✔️34. A book with a travel theme
✔️35. A book set in a country on or below the Tropic of Cancer
✔️36. A book with six or more words in the title
✔️37. A book from the Are You Well Read in World Literature list
�38. A book related to a word given by a random word generator
✔️39. A book involving an immigrant
✔️40. A book with flowers or greenery on the cover
✔️41. A book by a new-to-you BIPOC author
✔️42. A mystery or thriller
✔️43. A book with elements of magic
✔️44. A book whose title contains a negative
✔️45. A book related to a codeword from the NATO Phonetic Alphabet
✔️46. A winner or nominee from the 2020 ŷ Choice Awards
✔️47. A non-fiction book other than biography, autobiography or memoir
✔️48. A book that might cause someone to react “You read what?!?�
✔️49. A book with an ensemble cast
✔️50. A book published in 2021
✔️51. A book whose title refers to person(s) without giving their name
✔️52. A book related to "the end"