Allie’s Comments (group member since Dec 22, 2018)

Allie’s comments from the Ultimate Popsugar Reading Challenge group.

Regular Challenge

1. A book that's published in 2021: Concrete Rose✔
2. An Afrofuturist book: Binti✔
3. A book that has a heart, diamond, club, or spade on the cover: The Girls✔
4. A book by an author who shares your zodiac sign: Anne Patchett
5. A dark academia book: We Keep the Dead Close: A Murder at Harvard and a Half Century of Silence✔
6. A book with a gem, mineral, or rock in the title: How Much of These Hills Is Gold
7. A book where the main character works at your current or dream job✔The Other Black Girl
8. A book that has won the Women's Prize For Fiction
9. A book with a family tree
10. A bestseller from the 1990s
11. A book about forgetting
12. A book you have seen on someone's bookshelf (in real life, on a Zoom call, in a TV show, etc.)
13. A locked-room mystery
14. A book set in a restaurant: Kitchens of the Great Midwest✔
15. A book with a black-and-white cover: We Have Always Lived in the Castle✔
16. A book by an Indigenous author:Anoka
17. A book that has the same title as a song:
18. A book about a subject you are passionate about:
19. A book that discusses body positivity
20. A book found on a Black Lives Matter reading list: White Rage: The Unspoken Truth of Our Racial Divide
21. A genre hybrid:Kindred✔
22. A book set mostly or entirely outdoors: The Song of Achilles Between Shades of Gray Picnic at Hanging Rock The Salt PathLeave Only Footprints: My Acadia-to-Zion Journey Through Every National ParkThe Red Tent The Stranger in the Woo[book:The Emerald Mile: The Epic Story of the Fastest Ride in History Through the Heart of the Grand Canyonds: Dead Mountain: The Untold True Story of the Dyatlov Pass Incident Where the Lost Wander On Celtic Tides: One Man's Journey Around Ireland by Sea KayakLands of Lost Borders: Out of Bounds on the Silk RoadOwls of the Eastern Ice: A Quest to Find and Save the World's Largest OwlParable of the Sower Mudlark: In Search of London's Past Along the River Thames The Stranger in the Woods: The Extraordinary Story of the Last True Hermit
23. A book with something broken on the cover
24. A book by a Muslim American author: All-American Muslim Girl✔
25. A book that was published anonymously
26. A book with an oxymoron in the title: The Good Assassin: How a Mossad Agent and a Band of Survivors Hunted Down the Butcher of Latvia✔
27. A book about do-overs or fresh starts
28. A magical realism book:Things in Jars✔
29. A book set in multiple countries: The Patriots
30. A book set somewhere you'd like to visit in 2021: Saint X✔
31. A book by a blogger, vlogger, YouTube video creator, or other online personality: What We Don't Talk About When We Talk About Fat✔
32. A book whose title starts with "Q," "X," or "Z": Queenie
33. A book featuring three generations (grandparent, parent, child) Mastering the Art of Soviet Cooking: A Memoir of Food and Longing✔
34. A book about a social justice issue: Girls Like Us✔
35. A book in a different format than what you normally read (audiobooks, ebooks, graphic novels): Untamed
36. A book that has fewer than 1,000 reviews on Amazon or Goodreads:The Merchant of Venice: A Graphic Novel✔
37. A book you think your best friend would like: Minor Feelings: An Asian American Reckoning✔
38. A book about art or an artist
39. A book everyone seems to have read but you: The Fifth Season
40. Your favorite prompt from a past POPSUGAR Reading Challenge

Advanced Challenge

1. The longest book (by pages) on your TBR list
2. The shortest book (by pages) on your TBR list
3. The book on your TBR list with the prettiest cover
4. The book on your TBR list with the ugliest cover
5. The book that's been on your TBR list for the longest amount of time
6. A book from your TBR list you meant to read last year but didn't
7. A book from your TBR list you associate with a favorite person, place, or thing
8. A book from your TBR list chosen at random
9. A DNF book from your TBR list
10. A free book from your TBR list (gifted, borrowed, library)

Hello, I'm Allie and I live in Lafayette, La. This is the second year I have participated in this challenge, and I am looking forward to it.

Antisocial: Online Extremists, Techno-Utopians, and the Hijacking of the American Conversation, was great. I recommend it!

I finished two books this week: I read Normal People for my bildungsroman and Life Undercover: Coming of Age in the CIA for the "flora or fauna" in the author's name challenge.
Normal People was thought provoking, and like a good book of poetry, I will have to return to it again. There is so much to glean from the novel's structure and study of relationships. I'm still thinking about the characters and how they grew emotionally over the course of their relationship.
Life Undercover was somewhat entertaining, but I also have a lot of skepticism about some of it. It feels like part of Amaryllis Fox's story about her ten years in the CIA is incomplete and simplified- it's only 225 pages and she relies on superlatives to tell the story. Still, it was a fun read, and I'd recommend it to young adults who may have an interest in public service, or people who miss watching Carrie Mathison try to unravel the mysteries of global terrorism.

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1. A book that's published in 2020: Beowulf: A New Translation

✔2. A book by a trans or nonbinary author: Magic for Liars by Sara Gailey * Magic for Liars
✔3. A book with a great first line: Stamped: Racism, Antiracism, and You
4. A book about a book club: The Toni Morrison Book Club
✔5. The Trigger: Hunting the Assassin Who Brought the World to War

✔6. A bildungsroman: Normal People
✔7. The first book you touch on a shelf with your eyes closed: Savage Appetites: Four True Stories of Women, Crime, and Obsession
✔8. A book with an upside-down image on the cover: The Vermeer Conspiracy
Trick Mirror: Reflections on Self-Delusion
✔9. Ninth House
✔10. A book recommended by your favorite blog, vlog, podcast, or online book club: The Only Good Indians
11. An Anthology: The Best American Food Writing 2019 by Sarim Nosrat; Family Papers: A Sephardic Journey Through the Twentieth Century; His Hideous Heart; #Not Your Princess; Sabrina and Corina: Stories;
✔12. A book that passes the Bechdel test: Harley Quinn: Breaking Glass
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/5...
✔13. A book with the same title as a movie or TV show but is unrelated to it: Sweet Little Lies
✔14. A book by an author with flora or fauna in their name: Life Undercover: Coming of Age in the CIA
✔15. A book about or involving social media: Antisocial: Online Extremists, Techno-Utopians, and the Hijacking of the American Conversation
16. A book that has a book on the cover: The Badass Librarians of Timbuktu; Fahrenheit 451
17. A medical thriller: Crisis in the Red Zone: The Story of the Deadliest Ebola Outbreak in History, and of the Outbreaks to Come The End of October
18. A book with a made-up language
19. A book set in a country beginning with "C": Do Not Say We Have Nothing
✔20. A book you picked because the title caught your attention: French Milk
21. A book published the month of your birthday: Such a Fun Age
22. A book about or by a woman in STEM: Lab Girl
The Radium Girls: The Dark Story of America's Shining Women
23. A book that won an award in 2019: Girl, Woman, Other
Trust Exercise
Sabrina & Corina: Stories
24. A book on a subject you know nothing about: Paying the Land
✔25. A book with only words on the cover, no images or graphics: The Collected Schizophrenias: Essays A Very Large Expanse of Sea; Heavy; Exit West; Thick; How We Fight For Our Lives, *Hood Feminism: Notes from the Women That a Movement Forgot
26. A book with a pun in the title: Sigh, Gone: A Misfit's Memoir of Great Books, Punk Rock, and the Fight to Fit In All My Puny Sorrows Monster, She Wrote: The Women Who Pioneered Horror and Speculative FictionThe Big Feminist BUT: Comics about Women, Men, and the IFs, ANDs & BUTs of FeminismBean There, Done That
✔27. A book featuring one of the seven deadly sins: Mexican Gothic
✔28. A book with a robot, cyborg, or AI character: All Systems Red
✔29. A book with a bird on the cover: Sing, Unburied, Sing
30. A fiction or nonfiction book about a world leader:
31. A book with "gold," "silver," or "bronze" in the title
✔32. A book by a WOC: A book by a woman of color: Blood Dazzler: poems by Patricia Smith Blood Dazzler
✔34. A book with at least a four-star rating on Goodreads: Harleen
✔35. A book you meant to read in 2019: Bluebird, Bluebird
36. A book with a three-word title: The Topeka School The Vanishing Half
37. A book with a pink cover: The Source of Self-Regard: Selected Essays, Speeches, and Meditations
✔38. A Western: News of the World
✔39. A book by or about a journalist:
*Heartland: A Memoir of Working Hard and Being Broke in the Richest Country on Earth
Maid: Hard Work, Low Pay, and a Mother's Will to Survive
40. Read a banned book during Banned Books Week
41. Your favorite prompt from a past POPSUGAR Reading Challenge: A book written by a musician: Horror Stories
Year of the Monkey

Advanced, 2020 Edition

A book written by an author in their 20s: Burial Rites
A book with "20" or "twenty" in the title:The House of Twenty Thousand Books2001: A Space Odyssey
A book with a character with a vision impairment or enhancement (a nod to 20/20 vision):
A book set in the 1920s
A book set in Japan, host of the 2020 Olympics
✔A book by an author who has written more than 20 books: Murder in the Latin Quarter
✔A book with more than 20 letters in its title: The Plot Against America
✔A book published in the 20th century: The Wreath
A book from a series with more than 20 books:
✔A book with a main character in their 20s: My Sister, the Serial Killer

Hi, my name is Allie Rosen. I am a teacher and librarian in Lafayette, La. I'm aiming to read 30 books for the challenge, but I will likely commit to more throughout the year.