Ultimate Popsugar Reading Challenge discussion

Sneak peek #6 - A book published the month of your birthday.

Hey guys! Sneak peek #6!


EDIT: I mulled this over while exercising and decided that it's going to be a pita for each of us to search for these books so we might as well help each other out. So I created twelve listopias for this prompt. I found some months are more difficult than others. Graphic novel collections seem to be released in December a lot, and memoirs seem to be in October. Or maybe that's just the way my tbr is built.

Go add all the books you've found for your months!!

January
February
March
April
May
June
July
August
September
October
November
December

NOTE: I'm in the US, so I was paying most attention to US release dates - these lists may not help much for people in other countries who have different publication dates - I'm sorry about that! I don't want this group to be US-centric, necessarily. If you are in another country with a different release date, you can add your books to the appropriate months, and we will all just operate under a CAVEAT EMPTOR rule: check the release date of the book before reading it for this prompt, just to make sure it works.

We should have 12 different listopias for this.

I honestly hate this prompt. How am I supposed to know what month books were published. I might just used it as an open category.

Only if we make 12 lists by month, but that seems a little excessive.

I agree this is a pain to search for.

I know my library has a new book shelf, maybe I will just go during my birthday month and just pick one.

I'm just checking publication dates of the books I have on my shelf. Life of PI was published September 11, 2001. I know other stuff had to happen on that day, but it was just weird.

The other thing I'm finding is that apparently November is not a popular month for publishing books as I haven't hit one yet. March, April and September seem to be most popular.

I'm thinking about trying month and year, but I may be making this more difficult than it already is.

I may try this too.

I just found out that Cujo was published in August 1981, my month and year of birth.

I haven't read that one and I do like Stephen King.

If you go to “browse” in the GR navigation bar and click on “new releases,” you will be able to see what’s coming a couple months out.

If you like mysteries, you can check out upcoming releases at www.stopyourekillingme.com.

Finding publication months for books already on your TBR shelf might be a bit trickier. I disagree with Katy that November isn’t as popular a month for new releases. There are at least two dozen books out this month by authors I like. It’s an especially good month if you like cozies or romance—lots of Christmas titles out.

Tasheena (Scifantasor) wrote: "The book's goodreads page has the publish date, under the summary."

Only if someone has put it there and if it has been available at all. I have added many books that doesn't have that info, especially when it comes to older books.

My approach to this prompt will be not to choose a book on purpose but wait & see if any of the books I read for other prompts turn out to be published in September.

I just checked 2 1/2 shelves worth of books. The very last one was the only one Published in November. The Bible as History I know nobody else is going to read that, but I need to mark it down somewhere I won't lose it because I'm not going to remember.

Jillian wrote: "So Goodreads publishes a monthly list of the most popular books published that month, so here are the ones for 2019:

January: https://www.goodreads.com/book/popula...
February:..."

Right to the right of the list you can change it to 2018 and that was a much longer list

Katy wrote: "I just checked 2 1/2 shelves worth of books. The very last one was the only one Published in November. The Bible as History I know nobody else is going to read that, but I need to mar..."

The Starless Sea
The Bromance Book Club
Night of Miracles
Where the Crawdads Sing

Go to the list the Jillian posted and then change the year to 2018 right to the right of the list. There were more November (also mine) than we have all been finding/not finding

This is fairly easy to search on your TBR if you are on the full site.

- Click In “my books”
- Click on “want to read” (or any other bookshelf)
- Click on “settings” (along the row that starts with My Books)
- Then you can select “date pub”

Now when you look at your TBR list, you will see the date published. You can sort and it will put books in chronological order, if that helps. Makes it much easier to scan for your birthday month.

Of course the only helps if you are looking for books already on one of your lists.

Jillian wrote: "So Goodreads publishes a monthly list of the most popular books published that month, so here are the ones for 2019:

January: https://www.goodreads.com/book/popula...
February:..."

This is a huge help, thank you. There are at least 4 books on my TBR included on the August lists for 2018/2019, plus the previously mentioned Cujo.

While searching, I think about reading a book published on my actual birthday. Twice I’ve gotten excited and then realized that both those books are ones I am reading to complete the 2019 challenge. So odd. I only have 4 more books to read and 2 of them where published on my birthday!!

Katy wrote: "The other thing I'm finding is that apparently November is not a popular month for publishing books as I haven't hit one yet."

That's weird - I always assumed November would be a big publishing month, because of the Christmas market.

Cendaquenta wrote: "Katy wrote: "The other thing I'm finding is that apparently November is not a popular month for publishing books as I haven't hit one yet."

That's weird - I always assumed November would be a big ..."

That's what I thought, too. I have 3 Christmas books. 2 were published in October and the other September. So, I think like everything else, they have to have books published before Halloween for people to buy them for Christmas.

Here are books I found on my TBR for anyone born in July.

Gods of Jade and Shadow by Silvia Moreno-Garcia
Three Women by Lisa Taddeo
Lock Every Door by Riley Sager
Give Me Your Hand by Megan Abbott
Spinning Silver by Naomi Novik
Dark Matter by Blake Crouch
Monstress, Vol. 1: Awakening by Marjorie M. Liu
Go Set a Watchman by Harper Lee
Between the World and Me by Ta-Nehisi Coates
Ink and Bone by Rachel Caine
Broken Monsters by Lauren Beukes
Etiquette for the End of the World by Jeanne Martinet
Eternal Kiss of Darkness by Jeaniene Frost
Switched by Amanda Hocking
Super Sad True Love Story by Gary Shteyngart
Destined for an Early Grave by Jeaniene Frost
Bent by Sean Michael
The Summoning by Kelley Armstrong
The Final Empire by Brandon Sanderson
The Historian by Elizabeth Kostova
How to Marry a Millionaire Vampire by Kerrelyn Sparks
Running with Scissors by Augusten Burroughs
Colonize This!: Young Women of Color on Today's Feminism by Bushra Rehman
An Offer From a Gentleman by Julia Quinn
Whores and Other Feminists by Jill Nagle
Seventh Son by Orson Scott CardFear and Loathing in Las Vegas by Hunter S. Thompson



Best of my previously read books
Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone actually all seven years are published in july
Chinese Takeout by Arthur Nersesian
The Eyre Affair by Jasper Fforde and most (if not all) of the other books in the series.
The Time Traveler's Wife by Audrey Niffenegger
The Lovely Bones by Alice Sebold
Tempting the Beast by Lora Leigh
The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time by Mark Haddon
Faithfully Feminist: Jewish, Christian, and Muslim Feminists on Why We Stay by Gina Messina-Dysert
Four: A Divergent Story Collection by Veronica Roth
Finding Love in a Coffee Shop by Jordan Lynde
Magic Rises by Ilona Andrews
Seraphina by Rachel Hartman
The Pickled Apocalypse of Pancake Island by Cameron Pierce- a very short, strange read. But Good
The Iron Daughter by Julie Kagawa
Three Nights with a Scoundrel by Tessa Dare
Colonel Brandon's Diary by Amanda Grange you don't need to have read the other 4 in the series first, but you might want to have read Austen's Sense and Sensibility previously.
Cry Wolf by Patricia Briggs
The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society by Mary Ann Shaffer
Pressure is a Privilege: Lessons I've Learned from Life and the Battle of the Sexes by Billie Jean King
M Is for Magic by Neil Gaiman
The Big Over Easy by Jasper Fforde
Darkly Dreaming Dexter by Jeff Lindsay

One thing we could do for a listopia is vote for books we loved and make sure to write the month published in the notes.

There are plenty of books published in November. Just off the top of my head, Erin Morgenstern, Bernard Cornwell, and Rivers Solomon all published books this month.

It would be easier if you added your physical books to your goodreads shelves. Then you can sort by pub date and find the Novembers.

I also like the strategy of just showing up to the library in your birth month and picking a new one.

I think this is a really strange prompt. I understand birth year (I'm glad it's not that again!!), but whoever considered the month a book is published in? It's not a bad or difficult prompt, but it is unexpected so I'm thinking about it a lot. Maybe overthinking? I am definitely prone to that.

Different editions will have been published in different months. Are you going by edition? Or original publish date? Either?

I’m struggling with what to do with different editions too. There’s the date for an ebook and a hardback and a paperback, then other dates for release in other countries, and they are all in different months ... I’m trying to stick with dates for my country only, but I’m taking any edition. So it’s a mess, basically.

Heather wrote: "Different editions will have been published in different months. Are you going by edition? Or original publish date? Either?"

Most of the books I own have neither marked anywhere, so..

If I can’t be be bothered organising my TBR I’ll just read a 2020 release. Bookstagram is always full of publishing day posts or there are The Millions Most Anticipated monthly posts. Planners could always use lists from previous years.

Jillian wrote: "So Goodreads publishes a monthly list of the most popular books published that month, so here are the ones for 2019:

January: https://www.goodreads.com/book/popula...
February:..."

Thanks Jillian!
I checked out the 2019 list and there are five books on my TBR list and three more that look interesting.

This one it's a lil bit hard, specially when I have to pick up one from November (not a very popular month for publishing!), for the ones who wants to match month + the year you were born, I found these lists:

https://www.goodreads.com/list/show/4...

(Says 1980, cause it's my year, but once you click, you can choose your year), and after that, you have to browse book by book to know the month, so yes, it's a lil bit of work, but I think it's worthy.

This prompt can be made a lot easier with some web searching. Just look for "Best Books ", and you will get a ton of results. Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and an amazing amount of blogs all do lists of favorite and upcoming releases in a month.

Here I made Listopias and linked in the opening post also. I was frustrated using the Goodreads lists for "most popular books released" in a given month, because they seem to only go back a few years. This way as we all find interesting books in various months, we can add them to these lists.

January
February
March
April
May
June
July
August
September
October
November
December

Serendipity wrote: "or there are The Millions Most Anticipated monthly posts...."


Oh that's a good idea too!

I have 12 that I found just by checking the books on my Goodreads TBR list. I can do not know how or if I can add to the Listopia. I looked at the Listopia for January and at least 2 of them in there were not published in January.

I found a bunch of options for March and added them to the Listopia, including some of my very favorites:

The Name of the Wind
The Wise Man's Fear
House of Leaves
Last Argument of Kings
Horns
The Paper Menagerie and Other Stories
Strange the Dreamer
Jedi Search

I'm probably going to just check each book that read for its publishing month until I get lucky or until it's the last prompt left.

Nadine wrote: "I’m struggling with what to do with different editions too. There’s the date for an ebook and a hardback and a paperback, then other dates for release in other countries, and they are all in differ..."

It is really messy, right? I've been considering what to do, and I think I'm going with original publication date. Then I don't have to stress about whether I've shelved the same edition as my library or if I decide to listen to the audiobook.

I am also going with the first ever published date and ignore different editions and translations. It just seems easier for me.

In my TBR I keep a list of 2019 releases by release date, so I'll just paste that here. (At the end of the year I remove the dates and integrate it with the rest of my list so I'm glad this prompt came early)

The Gutter Prayer (Gareth Ryder-Hanrahan)* January 17
The Wolf in the Whale (Jordanna Max Brodsky)* January 29
The Reign of the Kingfisher (T.J. Martinson) March 5
The Light Brigade (Kameron Hurley) March 19
The Luminous Dead (Caitlin Starling) April 2
The Grand Dark (Richard Kadrey) June 11
The Escape Room (Megan Goldin) July 30
Hollow Kingdom (Kira Jane Buxton) August 6
Gideon the Ninth (Tamsyn Muir) September 10
The Institute (Stephen King) September 10
Forward [Emergency Skin (NKJ), The Last Conversation (Tremblay)] September 17
Ninth House (Leigh Bardugo) October 8
Call Down the Hawk (Maggie Stiefvater) November 5
A Thousand Fires (Shannon Price) November 5
Eight Will Fall (Sarah Harian) November 26

Highfire (Eoin Colfer) January 28

Michelle wrote: "I have 12 that I found just by checking the books on my Goodreads TBR list. I can do not know how or if I can add to the Listopia. I looked at the Listopia for January and at least 2 of them in the..."

It says January 1 for a lot of books on my shelves but I'm finding when I click on them it's really a different date or Jan 1 ends up being the default for the year when another date isn't specified.

Beth wrote: "Jan 1 ends up being the default for the year when another date isn't specified."

It used to be the default but luckily they changed that, but still there are a lot of books with that date from before the change.

I see this as a prompt to read a book published in 2020....since I check new releases and coming soon releases on the Barnes & Noble website at least once a week, I will simply use one of those books that I wnt to read and would buy anyway...i.e. romances, cozy mysteries, anticipated release.

My month is August...should be good for a wide selection.

Also publisher websites can tell you upcoming release dates.

Katy wrote: "I just checked 2 1/2 shelves worth of books. The very last one was the only one Published in November. The Bible as History I know nobody else is going to read that, but I need to mar..."

Try making a shelf on your Goodreads page of books you're considering for the challenge. Every time you find another recommended book, you can add it to the list.

Katy wrote: "The other thing I'm finding is that apparently November is not a popular month for publishing books as I haven't hit one yet"

Here are a few for November:

11/22/63
Pet Sematary
Jurassic Park
Queen of the Conquered
She Came to Slay: The Life and Times of Harriet Tubman
Mythos: The Greek Myths Retold
I Am Malala: The Story of the Girl Who Stood Up for Education and Was Shot by the Taliban
Becoming
The Book of Lost Things
The Twelve Clues of Christmas
Flowers in the Attic
The Sherlockian

The Snowy Day
The Snowman
Mousenet

Theresa wrote: "I see this as a prompt to read a book published in 2020....since I check new releases and coming soon releases on the Barnes & Noble website at least once a week, I will simply use one of those boo..."

I like this idea. Probably either going to do this, or Gideon the Ninth which has been on my TBR shortlist for a while now.

I'm an April: baby

Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers
The Storied Life of A.J. Fikry
Normal People (in the States)
The Overstory
The Sympathizer
Killers of the Flower Moon: The Osage Murders and the Birth of the FBI
Things in Jars (in the UK, Feb in the States)
Space Opera
The First Fifteen Lives of Harry August
A Boy and His Dog at the End of the World
The Department of Sensitive Crimes
Let's Explore Diabetes with Owls
Leah on the Offbeat
The Thrilling Adventures of Lovelace and Babbage
NOS4A2
The Last Bookaneer: A Novel
The Sisters Brothers
For We Are Many
The Bad-Ass Librarians of Timbuktu and Their Race to Save the World’s Most Precious Manuscripts
Yiddish for Pirates
Tequila Mockingbird: Cocktails with a Literary Twist
Challenger Deep
Greyhound
The Cuckoo's Calling (in the UK)
Shutter Island
The Quick


The Legend of Rock Paper Scissors
The Sea of Monsters
The Unbreakable Code
The Extraordinary Education of Nicholas Benedict
The Last Last-Day-of-Summer
The Wright 3

November has been a hard month but thanks to those of you who've posted lists and book ideas. I think I'll read 11/22/63 or My Sister, the Serial Killer

Dear November-birthday mystery fans, the majority of Agatha Christie's novels seem to have been originally published in Novembers... including Hallowe'en Party! Which is, you know, really bothering me, lol.

Basing this info on the various books' individual wikipedia pages.

Rocio wrote: "This one it's a lil bit hard, specially when I have to pick up one from November (not a very popular month for publishing!), for the ones who wants to match month + the year you were born, I found ..."

Looks like 1980 is as far back as those lists go. Too bad for the Xers and Boomers. :D I'll have to do more digging around to find an April 78 book if I want to do this prompt that way.

Insert Maxwell Smart gif "Missed it by THAT much!"

I find this more random than difficult. I'm a November child and I know there are plenty of UK releases this month. I think October has more big releases but there is still a healthy supply of more books than I have time to read released each month!

I might go with The Vanished Bride.

One easy solution is...... that if you go to your "want to read" shelf, scroll to the bottom of the page and change the "sort" selection to DATE PUB. Then you can easily see the month of publication, then I just looked for April of each year.

Ellie wrote: "I find this more random than difficult. ..."



Yes! it's incredibly random. I guess it's good to have a few random prompts ...