Around the Year in 52 Books discussion

Following in Jody’s steps, I’ve created my own challenge, starting in July 2018 to read 60 different authors out of a choice of 100, before my 60th birthday, which gives me 5 years! The first 40 are new-to-me, the next 20 are one-time reads, and the last 40 are an afterthought and mixture of new and repeat authors for me. I have included an eclectic mix of everything that I like - literary fiction, historical fiction, Arthurian tales, contemporary, sci-fi, non-fiction, translations, fantasy, short stories, and classics.

✅ - Finished *- Reading
Finished: 44/60
% Challenge Complete = 73%

40 New-to-me authors
✅1. Karel Čapek: R.U.R., War With The Newts
2. Peter Carey: True History of the Kelly Gang
3. Joyce Cary: The Horse's Mouth
4. Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra: Don Quixote
✅5. Anton Chekhov: Kashtanka
✅6. James Clavell: Shōgun
7. Bernard Cornwell: The Winter King: A Novel of Arthur
8. Michael Crummey: Sweetland
9. Alexandre Dumas: The Count of Monte Cristo
10. Lawrence Durrell: The Alexandria Quartet
11. Umberto Eco: Foucault's Pendulum
12. George Eliot: Middlemarch
✅13. Tan Twan Eng: The House of Doors
14. J.G. Farrell: Troubles
✅15. Elena Ferrante My Brilliant Friend
16. Anatole France: Penguin Island
✅17. Rómulo Gallegos: Doña Barbara: A Novel
✅18. Günter Grass: My Century
*19. Graham Greene: Twenty-One Stories
✅20. Thomas Hardy: [[book:Two on a Tower|28849]
✅21. Knut Hamsun: Hunger
22. Jane Harper The Dry
23. Thomas Keneally: The Daughters of Mars
✅24. Barbara Kingsolver: The Bean Trees; Demon Copperhead
25. Carson McCullers: The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter
✅ 26. Larry McMurtry: Lonesome Dove
27. Nancy Mitford: The Pursuit of Love
28. Iris Murdoch: The Sea, the Sea
✅29. Ben Okri:Every Leaf a Hallelujah
30. Marilynne Robinson: Gilead or Home or Lila
✅31. Salman Rushdie: Victory City
32.Wallace Stegner: Angle of Repose
✅33. Robert Louis Stevenson: The Beach of Falesá: The Original Text

✅34. William Makepeace Thackeray: Vanity Fair
✅35. Paul Theroux: Burma Sahib
✅36. Abraham Verghese: Cutting for Stone; The Covenant of Water
✅ 37. Evelyn Waugh: Scoop
✅38. John Williams: Stoner
✅ 39. Tim Winton: Island Home: A Landscape Memoir
✅ 40. Stefan Zweig: Chess Story

20 Authors I have read ONCE
✅41. Jane Austen: Pride and Prejudice
42. John Boyne: The House of Special Purpose
✅43. Octavia E. Butler: Parable of the Sower
✅44. Michael Chabon: The Yiddish Policemen's Union
45. J.M. Coetzee: Waiting for the Barbarians
46. Charles Dickens: Oliver Twist
47. Hermann Hesse: The Glass Bead Game
48. Mark Twain: A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court
49. Jack Kerouac: On the Road
✅50. C.S. Lewis: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe
51. Thomas Mann: The Magic Mountain
52. Per Petterson: Out Stealing Horses or To Siberia
✅53. Annie Proulx: The Shipping News and That Old Ace in the Hole
✅54. Mary Doria Russell: Children of God and The Women of the Copper Country
✅55. Nevil Shute: Pied Piper
56. Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn: The First Circle
✅ 57. Leo Tolstoy: The Forged Coupon
58. Jane Urquhart: Away or The Underpainter
59. Simon Winchester: A Crack in the Edge of the World (NF)
60. John Wyndham: The Chrysalids

Let's make it an even 100! 40 Extras (not necessarily new authors)
61. Kingsley Amis: Lucky Jim
✅62. Charlie Jane Anders: All the Birds in the Sky (SF)
63. Saul Bellow: The Adventures of Augie March
64. T.C. Boyle: The Tortilla Curtain
65. Bill Bryson: Shakespeare: The World as Stage
66. Eleanor Catton: The Luminaries
✅67. Joseph Conrad: Typhoon
✅68. Petra Durst-Benning:While the World Is Still Asleep
✅69. Jeffrey Eugenides: Middlesex
70. Shūsaku Endō: Deep River
71. Michel Faber: The Book of Strange New Things
72. Elaine Feinstein: Anna of All the Russias: A Life of Anna Akhmatova (NF)
73. Ken Follett: The Pillars of the Earth
74. Pat Frank: Alas, Babylon
75. Robert Hughes: The Fatal Shore: The Epic of Australia's Founding (NF)
✅76. Jaroslav Kalfar: Spaceman of Bohemia
77. Alfred Döblin: Berlin Alexanderplatz
78. Doris Lessing: The Grass is Singing
79. Primo Levi: If Not Now, When?; The Periodic Table
80. Alistair MacLean: Ice Station Zebra
81. W. Somerset Maugham: The Razor's Edge
82.China Miéville: October: The Story of the Russian Revolution
✅83. Madeline Miller: Circe and The Song of Achilles
84. Tim O'Brien: Northern Lights
85. John O'Hara: BUtterfield 8
86. Yan Lianke: Lenin's Kisses
✅87. Susan Orlean: The Library Book(NF)
✅ 88. Bill Peet: Bill Peet: An Autobiography NF
89. Mario Puzo: The Godfather
90. Ayn Rand: Anthem
✅ 91.Adam Roberts: Jack Glass
✅92. C.J. Sansom: Dark Fire
✅93. Julia L. Sauer: Fog Magic
✅94. W.G. Sebald: The Emigrants
✅95. John Steinbeck: The Grapes of Wrath; Cannery Row; Travels with Charley: In Search of America
96. Stendhal: The Red and the Black
✅97. J.R.R. Tolkien: The Hobbit
98. John Updike: The Centaur
99. Susanna Clarke: Piranesi
100. Émile Zola: Nana

Reserved

Reserved

Yay! Welcome to the fun. 😃 Looking forward to following your journey - your list looks fantastic!

I like your idea about reading new authors. Great list. I read the first of Durrell's Alexandria Quartet this year and will read the rest of the series. Stoner is on my radar too.

Enjoy!

Stoner is amazing. I think I need to reread it - I keep seeing it around and remembering how wonderful it is!

Thank you Jody and Kathy! I can’t believe I just created a 5 year reading plan but I’m excited because these are all authors I’ve been thinking that I want to read (or read more of)! And, the challenge is doable- 1 book per month for the next 5 years. Challenges help motivate me.

Feel free anyone to comment on your favorite books by any of these authors! I just picked one that sounded interesting or was the most popular.

I love that you chose authors instead of books... that gives you more flexibility!

I really like this take on the challenge! I'm unfamiliar with a lot of these authors but I look forward to following along and adding to my tbr!

I did just recently read Middlemarch and really loved it.

Rachelnyc wrote: "I really like this take on the challenge! I'm unfamiliar with a lot of these authors but I look forward to following along and adding to my tbr!

I did just recently read Middlemarch and really lov..."

Thanks Rachel! I designed it this way because I have learned that I need flexibility! I am terrible at pre-selecting books to read and have discovered this with every challenge I have ever done! I am hoping that selecting authors might be different.

WRT Middlemarch, my husband loves this book and keeps telling me to read it! He is the classics reader in our family, not me. But, I haven't heard anyone say they didn't love it so I will commit to reading it sometime in the next 5 years! If not it, then a shorter book by George Eliot.

Emily wrote: "I love that you chose authors instead of books... that gives you more flexibility!"

Thanks Emily! That was my intention, to build in flexibility but still have some structure. The only book that I will say for sure that I will read is Don Quixote.

I’m *that* person ... the one who didn’t love Middlemarch. 😬

lol Jody. I don't usually like books from that time period but something about the writing and particularly the characters, really drew me in.

Tammy shakes fist at Don Quixote. That is one of just a few that I have picked up twice, gotten half way through and then put down twice. It wasn't because it isn't enjoyable. It is, but I just hate toting around a huge book and I would get frustrated! I'm currently reading another book that I've never managed to complete...Crime and Punishment. Third time is the charm! I will definitely be looking at some of your other books to add to personal challenges in the future. Maybe I should put Middlemarch on my list. I did read Silas Marner this year and I really enjoyed it!

I hear ya Tammy! That’s one thing I hate about really big books. I have a couple of strategies. One is read 2 books and bring the smaller book or my Nook when I’m going somewhere and leave the big book for reading at home. The second is to alternate between physical book and audiobook. I did that with a 1000 page Follett book and finished it in a week. The way I’m tackling Lonesome Dove is 14 pages a day either early morning or evening. It’s working out great!

Also, if I don’t like Don Quixote, my husband and dad are going to hear about it since they are the ones that love it so much! I plan on (and we all know how plans go) brushing up on my Spanish and try reading something in Spanish, probably not DQ, though! Maybe some poetry or a novella. Living in New Mexico it is easy to find books in Spanish.

Jody wrote: "I’m *that* person ... the one who didn’t love Middlemarch."

Me too! But I did absolutely adore the mini-series based on Middlemarch.

That’s really interesting to hear, Rachel, because I usually love books from that period. It’s like book bizarro world. 😁

Jody wrote: "That’s really interesting to hear, Rachel, because I usually love books from that period. It’s like book bizarro world. 😁"

My experience reading from that period is primarily stuff I was forced to in school. The fact that I enjoyed Middlemarch so much makes me want to revisit other books from that era to see how I react now.

Thanks for the tip on the mini-series dalex! It's available on Amazon Prime Video so I will definitely check it out.

I’ve decided to give myself until my birthday this month to make last minute tweaks and to have that option every year on my birthday! But the option is only for going forward, not for playing catch-up.

Pam wrote: "I’ve decided to give myself until my birthday this month to make last minute tweaks and to have that option every year on my birthday! But the option is only for going forward, not for playing catc..."

I love that idea! Only allowing myself to change things on my birthday seems like a birthday present to myself haha!

I like that as well! Considering how indecisive I am I think I'm going to steal your idea and keep a few alternates on my list!

I have already made one tweak, but it is for an author/book that I was considering! I replaced Victor Hugo with Mark Twain. I found a B&N edition of A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court at Goodwill today. It has lots of great illustrations, which I love, and it is a King Arthur story!

#1 Finished! Yay.
Rómulo Gallegos
I read Doña Barbara - a Western-type novel set on the llanos (prairies) in Venezuela with bits of romance, adventure, and magical realism. I thoroughly enjoyed it, despite it not being what I expected! 4 stars

One more tweak since I discovered my library only has one English book by Jorge Amado. I switched him out for Karel Čapek, a Czech SF writer!

I decided to expand my original 60 list to 100! Why not make it an even 100? Much more of a challenge! I still need 5 more authors to fill my list. I'm going to look for some more obscure ones, preferably not American or British. Maybe non-fiction.

haha Pam, why stop at 60 when you can just do 100??

You guys are so ambitious. I kinda want to do my own 50 before 50 but I would never finish in time.Maybe shorten it?

Also, all these new list ideas are making me want to search for my old journal where I kept a lot of lists, like series or classics I want to read, or authors I haven't read and throw them on my Infinity list.

Love the new additions Pam!

A few suggestions for non American or British authors:

Arundhati Roy
Orhan Pamuk
Isabel Allende
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
Eshkol Nevo

Tracy, you should definitely create a challenge! It's addictive! In order to make mine more achievable, I am going to try to use as many from my list as possible to fill prompts for the AtY 2019 challenge. At first I wondered if it was cheating but decided that figuring out how to fit them into other challenges is just part of the challenge!

Rachelnyc wrote: "Love the new additions Pam!

A few suggestions for non American or British authors:

Arundhati Roy
Orhan Pamuk
Isabel Allende
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
Eshkol Nevo..."

Thanks Rachel for the suggestions! I’ve read one book by Aduchie but not the others. I thought about adding Allende and probably will. I really want to read something in Spanish, preferably a dual language book. I think I will see what my library has.

Finalized my last 40, including:
1) a non-fiction travel memoir by Isabele Allende
2) an autobiography with illustrations by Bill Peet (one of my favorite children's authors!)
3) a children's/mid-grade dual language book, set in early 1600s New Mexico, where I live. It has only one rating on GR!
4) a non-fiction about the Spanish Flu
5) a modern classic Einstein's Dreams. This is the one I am the most excited about reading!

Love the additional 40! Making lists is fun!

Thanks Tammy! I agree that making lists is fun. I think that I’m more likely to read the books now that they are on a list. I hope that’s the case! I’ve essentially created a real TBR list unlike my GR shelf which is completely unreasonable and meaningless with almost 2000 titles! Many have been added only because I enter GR giveaways, most of which now require you to add the book to your TBR shelf

Rachel- Absolutely include books from other challenges on your list! That’s part of the fun -finding books that satisfy 2 or more challenges. Some people are “purists” and say one book per challenge but they also read 200-300 books a year! That’s great for them but not feasible for me. I’ll be lucky to read 100 (including children’s) this year.

Pam, I agree about the GR To be Read lists. I just drop stuff in there that sounds interesting, but I don't have any burning desire to read everything in my GR list. I make my own spreadsheet with my challenges and lists and I have found that I really stick with that.

Were you the one that gave me that awesome music tip in my 60 songs challenge? If you have other music tips, throw them my way!

Finished #3 and #4

#3 Leo Tolstoy's final novella The Forged Coupon - Loved it! Well worth the read. I had never even heard of the book and accidentally found it browsing at the library. 5 stars

#4 Bill Peet's Bill Peet: An Autobiography- Loved this one, too! It's great for kids and adults. What a great idea for a children's author and illustrator to write his autobiography in a similar style as his books! I had no idea that Peet worked on Disney movies, but of course he did! It seems obvious after reading his book. I now want to go back to the library and check out some of this books that I haven't read like Capyboppy about a capybara. My grandson, who has a fascination with trains used to love The Caboose Who Got Loose. If you love Bill Peet's books, I recommend this one for you! 5 stars

Finished #5!

Stefan Zweig's last publication Chess Story. He committed suicide before it was even published. I loved the writing and the psychological aspect of the story! Short enough to finish in one sitting. Definitely reading more of this author! 5 stars

Finished #6 (only 94 to go!)

Larry McMurtry's Pulitzer Prize winner Lonesome Dove - Terrific western adventure, well-developed characters, heart-breaking. Read it, you won't be sorry! 5 stars!

That's on my list too! I've always avoided westerns, but have heard nothing but good things about it.

Lonesome Dove is on my list too. I don't think I've ever read a real western, but I'm looking forward to that one. Glad to see it gets all the stars. Plus, I love heart-breaking books.

Finished #7!
Adam Roberts sci-fi mystery Jack Glass - I really liked it until the ending, which was a little weak. I want to read more of his books, though! I just bought his newest book The Real-Town Murders, which I will start soon. 3.5 stars

Read #2 but forgot to post it: The C.S. Lewis classic The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe I'm not a big fan of his writing so that will probably be it for me. At least I now know who Aslan is and what happens to him. 3 stars

Katie wrote: "Lonesome Dove is on my list too. I don't think I've ever read a real western, but I'm looking forward to that one. Glad to see it gets all the stars. Plus, I love heart-breaking books."

Same here, its been on my list but I have avoided Westerns like the plague, thinking I would have zero interest. Lonesome Dove is on my list from last years Pop Sugar (?), a genre you've never read before. I threw it on my kindle but never got around to it.

Right now I'm reading my first Western, Blood Meridian, or the Evening Redness in the West, which was not my first choice for Book Riots Western prompt this year ( I had planned on All the Pretty Horses), but my book club picked this for September , so I swapped it out. I am actually really enjoying it, despite the amount of violence so far.

Jody, Katie, Tracy - I highly recommend Lonesome Dove. It's much more than a Western! It is just a great American story with a bit of everything you want in a story, including some heart-breaking scenes. There is one scene that the TV show (either episode #1 or 2) ended with. It was SO dramatic and unexpected! I remember thinking, "I can't believe that just happened!" Frontier life sure was rough! I watched the first 3 (of 4) episodes before finishing the book so it kind of ruined the book a little for me. Of course, there was so much more in the book about the characters' motivations that I still enjoyed it!

Pam wrote: "Jody, Katie, Tracy - I highly recommend Lonesome Dove. It's much more than a Western! It is just a great American story with a bit of everything you want in a story, including some heart-breaking s..."

Im going to try and get it read next year Pam, I have a list of back logged retro challenges planned out in the infinity thread that I want to try and start chipping away at.

Of course then I decided to try a rejects list next year too so... who knows.

But I love getting recommendations from you :-)

Thanks Tracy! I appreciate your comment.

#8 is done! Another terrific author is found.

I read Karel Čapek's classic SF play R.U.R., which introduced the word "robot" (from Czech robotnik "forced worker" ). Capek's brother Josef, who he often collaborated with, coined the word. This is a visionary story, influenced by the era (the Russian Revolution and other revolutionary attempts) about the fate of mankind and the revolution of the robots (that man created to eliminate work). We have seen similar storylines in the Terminator and Westworld but this book was the original Robot Revolution, written in 1921! It's a short play and well worth reading!

You aren't going to need 5 years at the pace you are reading! I love your updates and I'm sure I'll be reading some of your recommendations.

I’m definitely on a roll, Tammy, but it will slow down once only the long classics are left! Now that I’ve finished the ATY challenge, I have more leeway in my choices. Also, I purposely included authors/books I planned to read for challenges in other groups and authors with some shorter books. I feel like I have a good mix for me. I don’t want to take 5 years to finish it, but there may be that one book...!

Great job so far Pam!

I have 3.5 years to complete my challenge of 75 books so now that I've finished the AtY challenge and only have a couple left for Popsugar, I am delving into as many of the long books on my list as I can until the end of the year. Of course, several library holds became available at the same time so that is throwing my plan off a bit.

My main problem in choosing books right now is that I'm afraid that whatever I choose will end up being perfect for one of next year's prompts but I need to get over that. There is always another book to fit, right?! lol

Rachel- That is exactly right! Don’t even think about 2019. I have found, over the last 3 years of doing this challenge, that the right books just appear when they are needed!

I can't tell you how many books I've read recently that fit the old person perspective (and that isn't even one I wanted)!

Pam wrote: "#8 is done! Another terrific author is found.

I read Karel Čapek's classic SF play R.U.R., which introduced the word "robot" (from Czech robotnik "forced worker" ). C..."

Glad to hear you enjoyed Capek. War with the Newts is also an interesting one if you want to read more by him. Great list you have btw! :)

Cross off #9 J.R.R. Tolkien's The Hobbit!

About time I read this book. I enjoyed it and look forward to reading the LOTR trilogy and re-watching the movie!