Around the Year in 52 Books discussion

Is there any more fascinating subject than the mind and how it works? The way people think has captivated authors for centuries, and this week, you are looking for a book that is related to psychology, neuroscience, or the mind. This prompt really lends itself to nonfiction, if that's something you enjoy, or you can go the fiction route with a psychological thriller or protagonist who is a therapist. The options are limitless.

Suggestions:
Books That Put the "Psychology" in Psychological Thrillers: https://crimereads.com/7-books-that-p...
12 Great Books About the Human Mind: https://electricliterature.com/12-gre...
28 Books That Will Open Your Mind: https://calvinrosser.com/28-books-tha...
Books Written on Neuroscience from a Variety of Perspecitves: https://fivebooks.com/category/psycho...

ATY Listopia: https://www.goodreads.com/list/show/1...

What are you reading for this prompt, and do you have any recommendations?

Great lists Emily. Thanks for posting them. One of the authors talked about neuro novels, which is a cool concept. I keep adding more and more books to my list for this category, and I don't know how I'll narrow it down. I might assign a few of these to other prompts, or rejected prompts.

I am seriously considering using Running Is a Kind of Dreaming for this prompt. It's a memoir about a man who overcame clinical depression through running. The author is a psychologist who does ultra marathons. I don't read much non-fiction but this sounds amazing!

Some other possibilities that I think would fit the prompt:
Ask Again, Yes by Mary Beth Keane
After You'd Gone by Maggie O'Farrell
Woman 99 by Greer Macallister
A Head Full of Ghosts by Paul Tremblay
The Impossible Lives of Greta Wells by Andrew Sean Greer
The Swan Thieves by Elizabeth Kostova
Everything Here Is Beautiful by Mira T. Lee
Transcendent Kingdom by Yaa Gyasi

I've had Everything Here Is Beautiful on my ATY list since 2019, and I have checked it out from the library SEVEN different times... And still haven't read it.

Maybe 2022 is the year...

I'm going to go the easy route and do a psychological thriller for this one, I think. I have Greer Henricks and Sarah Pekkanen's newest, The Golden Couple, from NetGalley, and the release date works to use it for this prompt since I'm trying to read in order next year.

I plan to read Animal Dreams by Barbara Kingsolver since it has a connection with dreams. I keep acquiring books by this author, assuming that I will like them, but have only read one! This will be my year to catch up Kingsolver's backlist.

I recommend The Diving Bell and the Butterfly, A Beautiful Mind, and Challenger Deep. Two of my favorite sci-fi classics that I think work are The Lathe of Heaven by Ursula K. Le Guin and Childhood's End by Arthur C. Clarke.

I'm thinking of reading Goodbye Days by Jeff Zentner for this one. It's meant to discuss grief and survivor's guilt. The heavy/sad themes have me hesitant to pick it up, but I'll keep it penciled in for now.

A few recommendations, some of which I mentioned in the initial voting discussion:
The Darkest Minds by Alex Bracken (the characters have mind-related superpowers. Also, the word "mind" is in the title)
More Than This by Patrick Ness (there are a few connections to "mind" and memory in this one; one being mental health related, the other having to do with a major plot reveal)
The Knife of Never Letting Go by Patrick Ness (the men in this society can hear each other's thoughts. It's vital to the plot and the way it comes up on the page is very engaging!)
The Perks of Being a Wallflower by Stephen Chobsky is a great YA "classic" that deals with mental health
Bone Gap by Laura Ruby (features a protagonist with a psychological disorder that prohibits him from recognizing faces)
Reading People: How Seeing the World through the Lens of Personality Changes Everything by Anne Bogel is a fun one if you're interested in personality typing!

Everything is Beautiful sounds great, and it works for at least two prompts.

I'm thinking of reading:
How Emotions Are Made: The Secret Life of the Brain by Lisa Feldman Barrett
Everything Here Is Beautiful by Mira Lee (Also Asian author)
Maybe You Should Talk to Someone: A Therapist, Her Therapist, and Our Lives Revealed by Lori Gottlieb

The Bell Jar - planned for glass

I recommend
Lab Girl
Beloved
Olive Kitteridge
A Thousand Splendid Suns

It's been suggested to me that telepathy would count for this prompt. I am going to do a reread of a favorite book, Dead Until Dark. The main character is telepathic.

My lists are constantly changing, but here are some that I might read:
✅Remember: The Science of Memory and the Art of Forgetting by Lisa Genova, +/or one of her novels.
The Blazing World by Siri Hustvedt
Bewilderment by Richard Powers
Cloud Cuckoo Land by Anthony Doerr
A Million Things To Ask A Neuroscientist - I have an ARC.
One of the books linking neuroscience and Buddhism/meditation.
Also Everything Here is Beautiful, After You'd Gone, Reading People, How emotions are made. I also intend to finally read something by Ursula le Guin next year.

I'm also interested in reading (for > 22 letters or another prompt): Thinking, Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman, or The Undoing Project: A Friendship That Changed Our Minds which is about Kahneman and Tversky. (I read a book by them in school which changed my thinking.)

I recommend:
Eleanor Oliphant Is Completely Fine
We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves
Convenience Store Woman for work related psychology.
A Tale for the Time Being
Ask Again, Yes
The Four Agreements: A Practical Guide to Personal Freedom
Seabiscuit: An American Legend (Demonstrates positive psychology, motivation, leadership and teamwork skills).

Women in Stem + Psychology (some also fit earth day, flora/fauna, academic settings and other tags):
Lab Girl
Still Alice
Migrations
Transcendent Kingdom
Where the Crawdads Sing
Once There Were Wolves

I am going with I Never Promised You a Rose Garden

Adam Roberts' next book is about a hive mind so I might read The This. I'm also interested in reading Tim Clare's Coward: Why We Get Anxious & What We Can Do About It.

I think I will go for something that has an obvious connection to psychology. I have some books on the listopia (fiction especially) but I'm not totally sure how they connect and don't want to end up reading something that has a tenuous link.

With that in mind my options are looking like:
The Silent Patient
The Wisdom of Psychopaths: What Saints, Spies, and Serial Killers Can Teach Us About Success
Moonwalking with Einstein: The Art and Science of Remembering Everything
You Are Not So Smart: Why You Have Too Many Friends on Facebook, Why Your Memory Is Mostly Fiction, and 46 Other Ways You're Deluding Yourself

I thought I would have a lot more options for this prompt than I actually do. That isn't a bad thing as I like to have a few prompts that are easy to pick for.

I’ll probably go with Double Helix by Eileen Merriman. It’s a novel about Huntington’s Disease and it sounds like it is set in the town closest to where I grew up which is a fun bonus.

The Fear Factor: How One Emotion Connects Altruists, Psychopaths, and Everyone In-Between

I just saw this on audible's 2 for 1 sale list today. A reviewer on gr notes that readers tend to be more altruist (which is not at all surprising), and that people from individualistic countries are also more altruistic. This last part is a little surprising so I'd like to read more.

Possible books for this prompt:

I Never Promised You a Rose Garden by Hannah Green
Eleanor Oliphant Is Completely Fine by Gail Honeyman
Flowers for Algernon by Daniel Keyes
Verity by Colleen Hoover
The Girl on the Train by Paula Hawkins
Reasons to Stay Alive by Matt Haig
The Night Before by Wendy Walker
Looking for Alaska by John Green

I will probably read Broken by Jenny Lawson.

(Pretty much all of her books would fit this prompt as her particular brand of biography is largely about dealing with her neurodivergence, and if you haven't read her I highly recommend.)

My choices are:

The Astonishing Color of After - Emily X.R. Pan
Broken - Jenny Lawson
10 Minutes 38 Seconds in This Strange World - Elif Shafak

I recommend:
Furiously Happy: A Funny Book About Horrible Things by Jenny Lawson.
Eleanor Oliphant Is Completely Fine
Brain on Fire: My Month of Madness

I've got a stack to work through:
Everyday Traumas: Remapping the Brain's Response to Stress, Anxiety, and Painful Memories for a Better Life
We're Not Broken: Changing the Autism Conversation
Emotional Inheritance: A Therapist, Her Patients, and the Legacy of Trauma
Nobody's Normal: How Culture Created the Stigma of Mental Illness

I also HIGHLY recommend Divergent Mind: Thriving in a World That Wasn't Designed for You if you haven't read that yet, or Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can't Stop Talking.

I am going to read:

We Are Satellites by Sarah Pinsker. It is speculative fiction about a boy who wants a brain implant to help him with school.

I've already read this otherwise it's what I would pick for this prompt, but The Unseen World is a great option

The Autistic Brain: Thinking Across the Spectrum by Temple Grandin

✅Remember: The Science of Memory and the Art of Forgetting by Lisa Genova, non-fiction.

I highly recommend this book for anyone. She discusses neuroscience in a way that's easy to understand. She discusses several categories of memory issues, which I found very reassuring. She includes examples and tips for all types of situations, including tests, important goals, traumatic memories you'd like to forget, and issues relevant to older adults. I loved every time I heard her say something like 'this isn't a reason to run to the neurologist." I recommend the audio because her inflections make it more interesting. She adds humor and warmth.

Her Fiction books are really good too. Still Alice is excellent.

I'm reading out of order, and read Act Your Age, Eve Brown for this prompt. Both MCs are autistic, which was really interesting to see in a romance, especially since both of them had very different experiences and perspectives. You can easily read this one without having read the earlier Brown sisters' books, though they're well worth a read.

For this prompt, I read Mindful Learning: Reduce stress and improve brain performance for effective learning by Craig Hassed. I took the course taught by the coauthors on FutureLearn several years ago and found it very helpful. This book is a good introduction with the focus on how mindfulness can help with learning for students (from primary school to college) and teachers.

For this prompt I would also recommend Temple Grandin and Kay Redfield Jamison for nonfiction and The Girl Behind the Gates for fiction (it was inspired by the true story of a woman who was forced into a mental institution for decades even though she was not mentally ill when she was committed).

This book would also work for #14, fewer than 5000 ratings on Goodreads or #15, book without a person on the cover.

Kahlia wrote: "I'm reading out of order, and read Act Your Age, Eve Brown for this prompt. Both MCs are autistic, which was really interesting to see in a romance, especially since both of them ha..."

That sounds really interesting. I loved the first book (Chloe Brown), but I couldn't get into the second book at all. I'll try this one instead.

NancyJ wrote: "Kahlia wrote: "I'm reading out of order, and read Act Your Age, Eve Brown for this prompt. Both MCs are autistic, which was really interesting to see in a romance, especially since ..."

I liked this one best of the three. I thought both characters were neurodivergent, but one I thought was written as having ADD rather than autism.

This seemed like a great way to sneak in some self-help, so I'm reading Set Boundaries, Find Peace: A Guide to Reclaiming Yourself for this category.

Other options I considered were Chatter: The Voice in Our Head, Why It Matters, and How to Harness It and The Tale of the Dueling Neurosurgeons: The History of the Human Brain as Revealed by True Stories of Trauma, Madness, and Recovery.

For this one, I read This Close to Okay by Leesa Cross-Smith. The MC is a psychologist which is very pertinent to the story - a very easy to like character.

Could also be used for author with double sets of double letters.

I'm going with Therapy (thriller) and The Power of Different: The Link Between Disorder and Genius (nonfiction). I might throw in The Mental Load: A Feminist Comic too!

I read the The Golden Couple it is a Psychological Thriller and one of the main characters is a therapist.

I would recommend Let's Pretend This Never Happened: A Mostly True Memoir and My Lovely Wife in the Psych Ward.

I don't think that The Golden Couple is the best book of these Authors but I really enjoyed An Anonymous Girl and it too would work for this category.

Interested in all suggestions

I read Exhalation for this prompt. It's a collection of sci fi short stories, and all the stories tie pretty directly into the prompt, with themes/plots focused on memory, sentience, artificial intelligence, epistemology...one story involves the narrator doing brain surgery on themself to learn how memory and consciousness work, for instance.

I read Group: How One Therapist and A Circle of Strangers Saved My Life by Christie Tate. I'm not recommending this book because people should research the book before reading to make sure it will work for them. That's my very strong suggestion.

I read The Push by Ashley Audrain. A well-written story that will have you experience a full range of emotions. In another group, we're discussing the red flags - whoo!

This prompt is what makes reading so fun. I would recommend:
Anything by Toni Morrison especially The Bluest Eye and Beloved. The Sellout is hilarious. A Tale for the Time Being is beautiful.
I'm looking forward to reading Deep Work: Rules for Focused Success in a Distracted World and World War Z: An Oral History of the Zombie War (only because the movie freaked me out)

NancyJ wrote: "Kahlia wrote: "I'm reading out of order, and read Act Your Age, Eve Brown for this prompt. Both MCs are autistic, which was really interesting to see in a romance, especially since ..."

Dani was my favourite of the three, but I think Eve has more in common with Chloe than Dani (in terms of both character personality and plot structure), so it may work better for you.

Tiffany wrote: "I read The Push by Ashley Audrain. A well-written story that will have you experience a full range of emotions. In another group, we're discussing the red flags - whoo!

This prompt..."

Thanks for suggesting The Bluest Eye, I was wondering where to fit this : )

I'm just starting Emma in the Night for this prompt and I'm so excited to try it! One of the characters is a forensic psychiatrist and also seems to involve narcissistic personality disorder. I was a psych major in university, so this prompt was the one I was already most excited for!

A great thing about the challenge is widening your reading - without it, I would probably never have taken The Idiot Brain: A Neuroscientist Explains What Your Head is Really Up To by Dean Burnett from the library.

A really enjoyable read - clear explanations and theories by someone who knows what they are talking about, with lots of humour.

I'm about to start My Lovely Wife in the Psych Ward by Mark Lukach.
I've had this book on my TBR for a while, I don't remember where I got the recommendation from but probably wouldn't have been drawn to read this if not for this prompt.

I read The Trouble with Testosterone and Other Essays on the Biology of the Human Predicament by Robert M. Sapolsky for this prompt.

Actually, not really for the prompt xD Last week I read A Primate's Memoir: A Neuroscientist's Unconventional Life Among the Baboons and really liked Sapolsky's style. So I just chose the shortest popular science book in his bibliography. Couple of essays were not so interesting for me, but 95% of the book were top notch. It's based on facts, but isn't dry at all, and quite witty.
And as I was about to input it in my spreadsheet I realised that it fits the prompt. Lucky!
Definitely going to read another books by Sapolsky, and maybe watch his human behavioral biology course lectures which are available at Stanford University youtube.

NancyJ wrote: "✅Remember: The Science of Memory and the Art of Forgetting by Lisa Genova, non-fiction.

I highly recommend this book for anyone. She discusses neuroscience in a way that's easy to ..."
This is the only book of hers I have yet to read. They are ALL excellent, IMO!

Any of James Patterson's Alex Cross series would work since Cross is a PhD Psychologist. (Trigger warning for Kiss the Girls the second installment in the series--sexual abuse.)

I'm buddy reading the series, one per month, and we're ready for #9. I appreciate Patterson's character development of Cross and his family members. Some of these are a tad gorier than I would prefer, but not too much (except that second one!).

I am going to read
Why We Sleep: Unlocking the Power of Sleep and Dreams

Joyce wrote: "I am going to read
Why We Sleep: Unlocking the Power of Sleep and Dreams"

That one is on my list too, but I also am thinking about Dark and Magical Places: The Neuroscience of Navigation

I am reading All the Things We Never Knew: Chasing the Chaos of Mental Illness by Sheila Hamilton. I'm about 1/3 of the way through, and so far it is a fantastic book. It is really heavy though. I had to put it down for a bit. I think it is one I will read in chunks rather than straight through. It's just a hard (emotional) read. I'm interspersing it with some Jeeves.

I read Snow Country with a lot of the narrative taking place in a sanitorium for those with mental health problems. I did not enjoy it much

I liked The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat and Other Clinical Tales

Anna wrote: "I read The Trouble with Testosterone and Other Essays on the Biology of the Human Predicament by Robert M. Sapolsky for this prompt.

Actually, not really for the prompt x..."

That's great to hear. I wanted to read his new book Behave: The Biology of Humans at Our Best and Worst for a different challenge this year. I was concerned that it would read like a textbook, and it's very long (890 pages). Maybe I should try one of his shorter books first?

For this prompt I read and enjoyed:
The Inflamed Mind: A Radical New Approach to Depression by Edward Bullmore - My Review

I also recommend:
The Other Side of Normal: How Biology Is Providing the Clues to Unlock the Secrets of Normal and Abnormal Behavior by Jordan Smoller

I read The Yellow Wallpaper.

The Bell Jar is one of my all time favourite books.