Around the Year in 52 Books discussion

I'm jumping in late (August 22!) but I can meet quite a few prompts from things I've already read this year. I hope to get all 52 done by December 31. :)

I'll update this first post to show my challenge status and add a new comment for each book I read (from now on anyhow, once I enter the books I've already read this year).

The 2017 List

Current progress: 52/52 - FINISHED!!! I MADE IT!!!

✔ 1. A book from the Goodreads Choice Awards 2016 - Nutshell
✔ 2. A book with at least 2 perspectives (multiple points of view) - Let the Great World Spin by Colum McCann (4 stars)
✔ 3. A book you meant to read in 2016 - Reading Lolita in Tehran
✔ 4. A title that doesn't contain the letter "E" - All the Birds in the Sky
✔ 5. A historical fiction - The Last Painting of Sara de Vos
✔ 6. A book being released as a movie in 2017 - My Cousin Rachel
✔ 7. A book with an animal on the cover or in the title - Wild Swans: Three Daughters of China
✔ 8. A book written by a person of color - Not Without Laughter
✔ 9. A book in the middle of your To Be Read list - Garbology: Our Dirty Love Affair with Trash by Edward Humes (4 stars)
✔ 10. A dual-timeline novel - Saints for All Occasions
✔ 11. A category from another challenge - Popsugar: book recommended by a librarian - San Francisco Noir
✔ 12. A book based on a myth - When They Severed Earth from Sky: How the Human Mind Shapes Myth (5 stars)
✔ 13. A book recommended by one of your favorite authors - Fallout
✔ 14. A book with a strong female character - Lab Girl
✔ 15. A book written or set in Scandinavia (Norway, Sweden, Finland, Denmark, Iceland) - The Greenhouse
✔ 16. A mystery - Raven Black
✔ 17. A book with illustrations - 750 Years in Paris
✔ 18. A really long book (600+ pages) - Winter by Marissa Meyer (4 stars)
✔ 19. A New York Times best-seller - A Man Called Ove
✔ 20. A book that you've owned for a while but haven't gotten around to reading - The Art Forger
✔ 21. A book that is a continuation of a book you've already read - Scarlet
✔ 22. A book by an author you haven't read before - Rise of the Rocket Girls: The Women Who Propelled Us, from Missiles to the Moon to Mars
✔ 23. A book from the BBC "The Big Read" list - The Wind in the Willows
✔ 24. A book written by at least two authors - The Terracotta Army: The History of Ancient China’s Famous Terracotta Warriors and Horses
✔ 25. A book about a famous historical figure - Caleb's Crossing by Geraldine Brooks (4 stars)
✔ 26. An adventure book - It's What I Do: A Photographer's Life of Love and War (5 stars)
✔ 27. A book by one of your favorite authors - Sourdough by Robin Sloan (3 stars)
✔ 28. A non-fiction - Tangled Vines: Greed, Murder, Obsession, and an Arsonist in the Vineyards of California
✔ 29. A book published outside the 4 major publishing houses (Simon & Schuster; HarperCollins; Penguin Random House; Hachette Livre) - check all the editions - Women's Work: The First 20,000 Years Women, Cloth, and Society in Early Times by Elizabeth Wayland Barber (5 stars)
✔ 30. A book from Goodreads Top 100 YA Books - The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian by Sherman Alexie (5 stars)
✔ 31. A book from a sub-genre of your favorite genre - (non-fiction>food & nutrition) - The Case Against Sugar
✔ 32. A book with a long title (5+ words, excluding subtitle) - The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down: A Hmong Child, Her American Doctors, and the Collision of Two Cultures
✔ 33. A magical realism novel - The Tiger's Wife
✔ 34. A book set in or by an author from the Southern Hemisphere - (author from New Zealand) - The Rosie Effect
✔ 35. A book where one of the main characters is royalty - The Light Princess by George MacDonald (3 stars)
✔ 36. A Hugo Award winner or nominee - The Obelisk Gate
✔ 37. A book you choose randomly - Sofia Khan Is Not Obliged by Ayisha Malik (3 stars)
✔ 38. A novel inspired by a work of classic literature - A Study in Charlotte
✔ 39. An epistolary fiction - Ella Minnow Pea: A Novel in Letters by Mark Dunn (4 stars)
✔ 40. A book published in 2017 - Nabokov's Favorite Word Is Mauve: What the Numbers Reveal About the Classics, Bestsellers, and Our Own Writing
✔ 41. A book with an unreliable narrator - Sweet Tooth by Ian McEwan (5 stars)
✔ 42. A best book of the 21st century (so far) - The Underground Railroad by Colson Whitehead (5 stars)
✔ 43. A book with a chilling atmosphere (scary, unsettling, cold) - The Lost City of the Monkey God: A True Story
✔ 44. A recommendation from "What Should I Read Next" - Nine Parts of Desire: The Hidden World of Islamic Women by Geraldine Brooks (4 stars)
✔ 45. A book with a one-word title - Cress
✔ 46. A time travel novel - The Invisible Library
✔ 47. A past suggestion that didn't win - (family member in title) - The Tiger's Wife
✔ 48. A banned book - Alice in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll (4 stars)
✔ 49. A book from someone else's bookshelf - The Swerve: How the World Became Modern by Stephen Greenblatt
✔ 50. A Penguin Modern Classic - any edition - Cannery Row
✔ 51. A collection (e.g. essays, short stories, poetry, plays) - What is Not Yours is Not Yours
✔ 52. A book set in a fictional location - Alif the Unseen

I have Nutshell on my list, what did you think of it?

Tangled Vines: Greed, Murder, Obsession, and an Arsonist in the Vineyards of California could be a good choice for next year's 7 sins prompt ;)

Sophie wrote: "I have Nutshell on my list, what did you think of it?..."

Hi, Sophie -- I thought Nutshell was great! One reviewer described it as a combination of Hamlet and Stewie (from TV's Family Guy), and that really captures it. The story is told by a completely outrageous fetus, very funny and very clever. I recommended it to my book club and it made for a lively discussion!

And Tangled Vines: Greed, Murder, Obsession, and an Arsonist in the Vineyards of California would definitely fit the 7 deadly sins prompt -- you could probably find them all in that one book! If I'd only known, I could have waited a year to read it. ;)

35. A book where one of the main characters is royalty.
The Light Princess by George MacDonald (3 stars)

I was delighted to get a free copy of this for my Kindle because the author wrote one of my childhood favorites, The Princess and the Goblin. Perhaps because I'm now an adult, and perhaps because this was written about 140 years ago, I was a little disappointed. It's a cute, funny story that has a deeper meaning, but the meaning gets lost (for me) because all the action is so unmotivated. Maybe if I'd read this when I was ten...

35/52

18. A really long book (600+ pages)
Winter by Marissa Meyer (4 stars)

Clever, fun, lots of action, and satisfying to have good conquer evil. It was way too long for me, but super-fans might appreciate every moment with the characters in this last book of the series.

36/52

23. A book from the BBC "The Big Read" list
The Wind in the Willows by Kenneth Grahame (4 stars)

I loved this book as a child (a gift when I was eleven) and when I reread it this week, I was once again enchanted by the peaceable setting, the lyrical language and the whimsical illustrations. I remembered the songs ("Who were the first to cry Noel? Animals all, as it befell, In the stable where they did dwell, Joy shall be theirs in the morning!") and the friendship between Rat and Mole. But half a century later it's clear the world has changed. Children's books no longer make such demands on vocabulary and attention span, and we (usually) have at least a token female. I thoroughly enjoyed rereading the book but I'm uncertain who its modern audience is.

37/52

30. A book from Goodreads Top 100 YA Books
The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian by Sherman Alexie (5 stars)

An absolutely true book that is absolutely great. I wish I had read something like this in high school. JFK wrote (or someone wrote for him) a book called Profiles in Courage, and I found myself thinking about that book and about how much more inspiring it was to read about the everyday courage of this young kid.

39. An epistolary fiction
Ella Minnow Pea: A Novel in Letters by Mark Dunn (4 stars)

Ella Minnow Pea (LMNOP) is a clever satire of absolute power and people's reaction to it. At the same time, it's delightful reading - Nollop (the island nation where the story takes place) is highly literate and everyone writes letters. But when certain letters of the alphabet get proscribed, life gets harder for the islanders (and more interesting for the readers!).

44. A recommendation from "What I Should Read Next"
Nine Parts of Desire: The Hidden World of Islamic Women by Geraldine Brooks (4 stars)

I entered Anne Fadiman's name as an author I really like and got lots of recommendations! I chose this book because I had already purchased it on a Kindle sale and a friend had also recommended it.

Geraldine Brooks, who was a foreign correspondent in the Middle East in the 1980s and 90s, integrates history and personal observations while describing how life is for most Islamic women. It's a sad picture. Throughout the centuries the expansion of Islam brought increasing difficulties for women as repressive measures were adopted from conquered regions, and recent upheavals have borne out the author's comment that women will be the first to suffer when there is unrest. Her portraits of various individuals, both female and male, spotlight both the diversity of life for women and yet how deeply entrenched cultural beliefs about women are among both genders.

9. A book in the middle of your TBR list
Garbology: Our Dirty Love Affair with Trash by Edward Humes (4 stars)

Lots of fascinating stuff in this book -- trash tours in L.A., artists in residence at the S.F. waste facility, floating islands of plastic in the ocean. But the book really got interesting in the last half when the author discussed how (and whether) we can solve what is already a waste disposal crisis. We like to feel good about recycling our cardboard boxes or spending a weekend morning picking up litter, but we need to shift our values to USE LESS in the first place. The book is written with a light touch, but the message is important and not easy. Worth reading and thinking about -- and acting on.

37. A book you chose randomly
Sofia Khan Is Not Obliged by Ayisha Malik (3 stars)

An entertaining, escapist read - sometimes fun, sometimes annoying, mostly predictable. It makes young, westernized Muslim women seeking husbands seem just like young, westernized non-Muslim women seeking husbands, which I guess was the goal, but it's stereotypical and unsatisfying.

2. A book with at least 2 perspectives (multiple points of view)
Let the Great World Spin by Colum McCann (4 stars)

Structuring a novel around the touchstone point of the real-life trapeze walk between the Twin Towers is a clever way to bring together the disparate but interrelated stories of a book's characters, though the walk and walker are a small part of this book -- publicity about it had made me think otherwise. Parts of the book were very moving, gut-wrenching even (the grieving mothers), but other parts were a bit of a slog (the computer guys) or didn't ring quite true (the prostitute). There was so much pain and loss in the book that I had a hard time reading it, but now that I've finished, I'm glad I stuck with it.

48. A banned book
Alice in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll (4 stars)

Yes, I'd seen the movies and heard the poems, but I'd never actually read the book. So I remedied that. It was fun and was probably more fun when it was first written. But where was the Jabberwock? And Tweedle Dee and Tweedle Dum? And the unbirthday party? And the walrus and the carpenter? Apparently I've been conflating Through the Looking Glass and Alice in Wonderland, with a little Disney thrown in. It really is hard to imagine the characters and story now without seeing what we've come to know through film.

27. A book by one of your favorite authors
Sourdough by Robin Sloan (3 stars)

I'm a huge fan of Robin Sloan's Mr. Penumbra's 24-hour Bookstore, so maybe I was expecting too much from this book. It's charming and I enjoyed it, but it was very low key; the story rather moseyed along. I loved the exploration of old-meets-new technology in Penumbra, but that same theme fell a little flat here (pardon the bread pun).

12. A book based on a myth
When They Severed Earth from Sky: How the Human Mind Shapes Myth by Elizabeth Wayland Barber (5 stars)

I always thought that myths were great stories coming from deep within the human psyche to show us what it is to be human. What an exciting revelation to read about the linguistic and cognitive factors that the authors claim shaped the passing on (and distortion) of historical events in preliterate societies -- and in urban legends today. These tales became myth. I was blown away by much of this: the story of Prometheus makes so much more sense now! The chapter "Of Sky and Time" gave me a sense of just how long humans have been, well, "human," and how much they understood.

This is academic reading, not literature, so be prepared -- it's a bit of work to read, but I thought it was well worth it.

25. A book about a famous historical figure
Caleb's Crossing by Geraldine Brooks (4 stars)

The historical figure was Caleb, the first Native American to graduate from Harvard.

Beautifully told in the style of 17th c prose, Caleb's Crossing is much more a tale of Bethia, the narrator, than of the Wampanoag Caleb, whose story intertwines with her own. A Puritan woman's lot was not an easy one and it's painful to feel the restrictions that Bethia had to bear. My only complaint is that the book suffers from an affliction it shares with much historical fiction: the characters think too much like modern people. In some ways that's a good thing, enabling the reader to relate to the story, but it also undercuts the book's ability to transmit a true sense of the past. I doubt that few if any Puritan women would have -- could have -- behaved as Bethia did.

51. A collection (e.g. essays, short stories, poetry, plays)
What is Not Yours is Not Yours by Helen Oyeyemi (4 stars)

The opening sentence of the third story, "drownings," gave me a clue to dealing with all the stories: "This happened and it didn't happen...". But I fell for the book before I read it. I loved the title, and the author's name, and then I fell for the cover. When I opened the book, I was smitten by the story titles -- "sorry doesn't sweeten her tea," "if a book is locked there's probably a good reason for that don't you think." I enjoyed the reading too, though it was rather like diving into the deep end of a pool and not knowing where or when or whether I'd surface. Time and place don't mean much, and characters from one story pass through another where it really doesn't matter that they're there. But I found the book compelling, partly because it was so unusual.

49. A book from someone else's bookshelf
The Swerve: How the World Became Modern by Stephen Greenblatt

I finished this a couple days ago and still haven't rated it because I don't know how! I loved the prologue, possibly the best prologue I've ever read, and the great biography of Poggio, someone I'd never heard of. Greenblatt is an amazing story teller and writer. But the book didn't deliver what the title promised, at least not in a believable way. I don't buy the idea that one book was responsible for making the world modern and frankly, I don't believe Greenblatt really believes that. It seems a disservice to propose the influence of Lucretius' book-poem as more than it was.