Challenge: 50 Books discussion

Favorite books of 2021: (in the order I read them)
-Mothering Sunday by Graham Swift
-Djinn Patrol on the Purple Line by Deepa Anappara.
-Hamnet by Maggie O'Farrell
-The Children’s Bible by Lydia Millet
-A Burning by Megha Majumdar
-Leave the World Behind by Rumaan Alam
-How the Word Is Passed: A Reckoning with the History of Slavery Across America by Clint Smith
-All That She Carried: The Journey of Ashley's Sack, a Black Family Keepsake by Tiya Miles
-Gold Diggers by Sanjena Sathian
-The Thousand Crimes of Ming Tsu by Tom Lin
-Affinity by Sarah Waters
-The Promise by Damon Galgut

Last year's goal was to read at a more reasonable pace, aiming for 75 instead of speed reading as I had been doing for a few years. I have to say I found it hard but succeeded in the end of reading 'only' 78 books instead of my usual 90 or so. I do feel like it was more rewarding to pace myself and actually think about the books I read, so again I am working to read 75 books. Nearly 2 dozen of those are book club related, so I am excited to discover the remaining 50 books for the year.

Susan wrote: "... Last year's goal was to read at a more reasonable pace, aiming for 75 instead of speed reading as I had been doing for a few years. I have to say I found it hard but succeeded in the end of reading 'only' 78 books instead of my usual 90 or so. I do feel like it was more rewarding to pace myself and actually think about the books I read, so again I am working to read 75 books. Nearly 2 dozen of those are book club related, so I am excited to discover the remaining 50 books for the year."

lol... The idea of 75 being "pacing" yourself makes me laugh. There's no way in the world I could ever read that many books in a year, let alone by going slowly or pacing myself! :) Even when I was reading a few hours on the bus each day, or listening to audiobooks, I still didn't hit those heights. And I consider myself someone who loves to read! Those of you who can hit those huge numbers amaze me!

But as I've said lots of other times (in part to remind myself, too!), hitting a big number of books read is fun, but *enjoying* what we read is even better! Hear hear to finding reading rewarding, as you said!

Good luck on enjoying your reading time this year, finding rewarding reads, and reaching whatever goal makes you feel happy!

Jan 2022:
One book club book: Sick Puppy
1. Unhinged by Thomas Enger
2. Cloud Cuckoo Land by Anthony Doerr
3. The Rabbit Factor by Antti Tuomainen
4. Harlem Shuffle by Colson Whitehead
5, Sick Puppy by Carl Hiaasen
6. Bewilderment by Richard Powers

Feb 2022:
Three book club books: Talking to Strangers, Anxious People, and Soul City.
7. N-F Talking to Strangers: What We Should Know About the People We Don’t Know by Malcolm Gladwell (audio)
8. Victim 2117 by Jussi Adler-Olsen
9, N-F A Brief History of Earth: Four Billion Years in Eight Chapters by Andrew H. Knoll (audio)
10. N-F You Say You Want a Revolution?: Radical Idealism and Its Tragic Consequences by Daniel Chirot
11. Anxious People by Fredrik Backman (audio)
12. Hell of a Book by Jason Mott
13. N-F Soul City: Race, Equality, and the Lost Dream of an American Utopia by Thomas Healy

March 2022:
Book Club books: The Snowdonia Killings, Gravel Heart, The Last Ballad, The Lincoln Highwayand Magic for Liars

14. Gravel Heart by Abdulrazak Gurnah
15. The Snowdonia Killings by Simon McCleave
16. Velvet Was the Night by Silvia Moreno-Garcia
17. Magic for Liars by Sarah Gailey (audio)
18. N-F South to America: A Journey Below the Mason Dixon to Understand the Soul of a Nation by Imani Perry (audio)
19. N-F Bring the War Home: The White Power Movement and Paramilitary America by Kathleen Belew (audio)
20. The Searcher by Tana French
21. The Last Ballad by Wiley Cash
22. Nightmare Alley by William Lindsay Gresham (audio)
23.No One Is Talking About This by Patricia Lockwood
24. The Harbor by Katrine Engberg
25. N-F The Cruelty Is the Point: The Past, Present, and Future of Trump's America by Adam Serwer (audio)

April 2022:
Book Club books: Behind Her Eyes, The Shipping News, Even As We Breathe

26. How to Find Your Way in the Dark by Derek B. Miller
27. Behind Her Eyes by Sarah Pinborough (audio)
28. N-F Prisoners of Geography: Ten Maps That Tell You Everything You Need to Know About Global Politics by Tim Marshall (audio)
29. Even As We Breathe by Annette Saunooke Clapsaddle (audio)
30. N-F What It Took to Win: A History of the Democratic Party by Michael Kazin (audio)
31. Something in the Water by Catherine Steadman
32. The Man Who Died Twice by Richard Osman
33. The Shipping News by Annie Proulx

May 2022:
Book Club Book: The Lincoln Highway, The Long Call, Pauli Murray: A Personal and Political Life, The Henna Artist

34. N-F Energy: A Human History by Richard Rhodes (audio)
35. The Lincoln Highway by Amor Towles
36. The Long Call by Ann Cleeves
37. N-F Davos Man: How the Billionaires Devoured the World by Peter S. Goodman (audio)
38. N-F Loaded: A Disarming History of the Second Amendment by Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz (audio)
39. The Next to Die by Sophie Hannah
40. The Henna Artist by Alka Joshi
41. Mexican Gothic by Silvia Moreno-Garcia
42. N-F Cuba: An American History by Ada Ferrer (audio)
43. The Darkness by Ragnar Jónasson
44. N-F Ninety Percent of Everything: Inside Shipping, the Invisible Industry That Puts Clothes on Your Back, Gas in Your Car, and Food on Your Plate by Rose George (audio)

June 2022:
Book Club: When We Cease to Understand the World, The Plot, White Bread: A Social History of the Store-Bought Loaf, The Dante Club, The Final Revival of Opal & Nev

45. When We Cease to Understand the World by Benjamín Labatut (audio)
46. The Plot by Jean Hanff Korelitz (audio)
47. N-F White Bread: A Social History of the Store-Bought Loaf by Aaron Bobrow-Strain
48. May God Forgive by Alan Parks
49. The Dante Club by Matthew Pearl (audio)
50. The Book of Form and Emptiness by Ruth Ozeki
51, The Final Revival of Opal & Nev by Dawnie Walton (audio)

As I compare the books I listed as greats from 2021, I realize how little that is memorable I have read at the half-way point this year. How to fix that?
July 2022:
Book club reads: Only two this month, The Book of Hope: A Survival Guide for Trying Times and A Mother’s Secret
*Could not read A Mother's Secret once I got to the point the whole reason for the book is revealed.

52. N-F The Book of Hope: A Survival Guide for Trying Times by Jane Goodall (audio)
53. The Killing Hills by Chris Offutt
54. The Netanyahus by Joshua Cohen
55. A Curious Beginning by Deanna Raybourn
56. My Monticello by Jocelyn Nicole Johnson
57. N-F Jesus and John Wayne: How White Evangelicals Corrupted a Faith and Fractured a Nation by Kristin Kobes Du Mez (audio)
58. The Harlech Beach Killings by Simon McCleave
59. The Sweetness of Water by Nathan Harris
60. N-F Why We're Polarized by Ezra Klein (audio)
61. Thief of Souls by Brian Klingborg
62. Blonde by Joyce Carol Oates (audio)
63. Matrix by Lauren Groff

August 2022:
Two book club books: Island Queen by Vanessa Riley and Silenced Girls by Roger Stelljes

64. The Trees by Percival Everett (audio)
65. N-F The Year 1000: When Explorers Connected the World—and Globalization Began by Valerie Hansen (audio)
66. Girls Who Lie by Eva Björg Ægisdóttir
67. Silenced Girls by Roger Stelljes
68. Island Queen by Vanessa Riley
69. The Long Weekend by Gilly Macmillan (audio)
70. N-F A Brief History of Neoliberalism by David Harvey (audio)
71. Rubbernecker by Belinda Bauer

Sept 2022:
Three Book Club Books: The Coddling of the American Mind, The Mother-in-Law, and Driver your Plow over the Bones of the Dead

72. White Noise by Don DeLillo (audio)
73. Night Shadows by Eva Björg Ægisdóttir
74. How Beautiful We Were by Imbolo Mbue
75. The Mother-in-Law by Sally Hepworth
76. N-F The Coddling of the American Mind: How Good Intentions and Bad Ideas Are Setting Up a Generation for Failure by Jonathan Haidt
77. N-F How to Hide an Empire: A History of the Greater United States by Daniel Immerwahr (audio)
78. Nightcrawling by Leila Mottley
79. The Tobacco Wives by Adele Myers (audio)
80. A Darker Sky by Mari Jungstedt
81. Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead by Olga Tokarczuk (reread)

Oct 2022:
Two book club books: This is how it Always Is and Take Your Breath Away

82. N-F Wilmington's Lie: The Murderous Coup of 1898 and the Rise of White Supremacy by David Zucchino (audio)
83. The Swimmers by Julie Otsuka
84. N-F The Cold War: A New History by John Lewis Gaddis (audio)
85. The Courier by Kjell Ola Dahl
86. Take Your Breath Away by Linwood Barclay (audio)
87. Women Talking by Miriam Toews (audio)
88. N-F The Attention Merchants: The Epic Scramble to Get Inside Our Heads by Tim Wu
89. This Is How It Always Is by Laurie Frankel (audio)
90. The Shadow Murders by Jussi Adler-Olsen
91. The Night Ship by Jess Kidd (audio)

November 2022:
Two book club reads: The Attention Merchant (read in Oct) and The Appeal

92. N-F In the Houses of Their Dead: The Lincolns, the Booths, and the Spirits by Terry Alford (audio)
93. N-F The Second Founding: How the Civil War and Reconstruction Remade the Constitution by Eric Foner (audio)
94. The Black-Eyed Blonde by Benjamin Black
95. The Appeal by Janice Hallett (audio)
96. Trust by Hernan Diaz
97. The Candy House by Jennifer Egan (audio)
98. Regeneration by Pat Barker

Dec 2022:
No book club books this month!
99. City on Fire by Don Winslow (audio)
100. The Bullet That Missed by Richard Osman
101. The Goodbye Coast by Joe Ide
102. The Passenger by Cormac McCarthy
103. N-F American Midnight: Democracy's Forgotten Crisis, 1917-1921 by Adam Hochschild (audio)
104. Bullet Train by Kōtarō Isaka
105. N-F The Age of Walls: How Barriers Between Nations Are Changing Our World by Tim Marshall (audio)

Finished the year way beyond my goal, but this included 43 audio books. Sometimes that's the only way I could access them without a wait and sometimes it was more convenient. I prefer listening to non-fiction and reading fiction, but that's not set in stone.