Challenge: 50 Books discussion

Sticking with 75 again this year. We'll see what happens!
Best books of 2023 in descending order of when I read them:
Harvest by Jim Crace
Trespasses by Louise Kennedy
Vaster Wilds by Lauren Groff
Claire of the Sea Light by Edwidge Dandicat
If I Survive You by Jonathan Escoffery
Birnam Wood by Eleanor Catton
Our Missing Hearts by Celeste Ng
Heart's Invisible Furies by John Boyne
Rabbit Hutch by Tess Gunty
The Sentence by Louise Erdrich
The Cold Millions by Jess Walter

Jan 2024:
Book Club picks: Where Lost Girls Go, Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead, The Weight of Ink, Tom Lake, and How the World Really Works
1. Fallen Idols: Twelve Statues That Made History by Alex von Tunzelmann (audio)
2. How the World Really Works: A Scientist's Guide to Our Past, Present and Future by Vaclav Smil (audio, second listen)
3. The Bird Tribunal by Agnes Ravatn
4. Last Best Hope: America in Crisis and Renewal by George Packer (audio)
5. Where Lost Girls Go by B.R. Spangler
6. Wildland: The Making of America's Fury by Evan Osnos (audio)
7. Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead by Olga Tokarczuk (third time!)
8. Myth America: Historians Take On the Biggest Legends and Lies About Our Past by Kevin M. Kruse (audio)
9. The Weight of Ink by Rachel Kadish
10. Age of Vice by Deepti Kapoor
11, Blowout: Corrupted Democracy, Rogue State Russia, and the Richest, Most Destructive Industry on Earth by Rachel Maddow

Susan wrote: "Sticking with 75 again this year. We'll see what happens!"

75 is absolutely "Wowser!" astonishing to me :D Good luck!

Tiffany wrote: "Susan wrote: "Sticking with 75 again this year. We'll see what happens!"

75 is absolutely "Wowser!" astonishing to me :D Good luck!"
Well, realistically I will surpass it. I keep trying to slow down and be more reflective about what I read, but I struggle with that. I discovered audio books last year and have become addicted. Any free time I have I have a book on the go, along with whatever I'm reading in hard copy and ebooks. I ended up at 102 last year after getting off to a painfully slow start.
The beginning of this year has been challenging, but at some point I will post the most memorable books of the year like I did last year. I like having that info for when I look back to see what I've enjoyed most and sharing ideas with friends.
Hope your 2024 is stellar...thanks for the interaction!

Feb 2024
Book Club books: Death at La Fenice, Swing Time, Cloud Cuckoo Land, The Undocumented Americans

12. After the Fall: Being American in the World We've Made by Ben Rhodes (audio)
13. Tom Lake by Ann Patchett
14. Fantasyland: How America Went Haywire: A 500-Year History by Kurt Andersen (audio)
15. Cloud Cuckoo Land by Anthony Doerr (third time!)
16. Swing Time by Zadie Smith
17. Death at La Fenice by Donna Leon
18. The Girl in the Eagle's Talons by Karin Smirnoff
19. The Unwinding: An Inner History of the New America by George Packer (2nd reading, audio)

Mar 2024
Book Club: Lady in the Lake, Cultish: The Language of Fanaticism, Our Missing Hearts

20. Death Writes by Andrea Carter
21. The War Below: Lithium, Copper, and the Global Battle to Power Our Lives by Ernest Scheyder
22. Evil Geniuses: The Unmaking of America by Kurt Andersen
23. Lady in the Lake by Laura Lippman
24. Cultish: The Language of Fanaticism by Amanda Montell (audio, twice!)
25. The Fraud by Zadie Smith
26. Profiles in Ignorance: How America's Politicians Got Dumb and Dumber by Andy Borowitz
27. The Distant Echo by Val McDermid
28. The Professor and the Madman: A Tale of Murder, Insanity and the Making of the Oxford English Dictionary by Simon Winchester (audio)
29. Our Missing Hearts by Celeste Ng (reread)
30. The Impostors: How Republicans Quit Governing and Seized American Politics by Steve Benen

Apr 2024
Book Club Picks: The House of Doors and Case Histories

31. The Hunter by Tana French
32. The Big Lie: Election Chaos, Political Opportunism, and the State of American Politics After 2020 by Jonathan Lemire
33. Tyranny of the Minority: Why American Democracy Reached the Breaking Point by Steven Levitsky
34. Bootstrapped: Liberating Ourselves from the American Dream by Alissa Quart
35. North Woods by Daniel Mason
36. The House of Doors by Tan Twan Eng
37. The Word is Murder by Anthony Horowitz
38. On Animals by Susan Orlean
39. Case Histories by Kate Atkinson
40. The Mother Tongue: English and How It Got That Way by Bill Bryson
41. The Last Devil to Die by Richard Osman
42. The Housemaid by Freida McFadden
43. The Catalogue of Shipwrecked Books by Edward Wilson-Lee

May 2024:
Book Club books: The Night Watchman, The Housemaid's Secret, A Fever in the Heartland: The Ku Klux Klan's Plot to Take Over America, and the Woman Who Stopped Them

44. A Fever in the Heartland: The Ku Klux Klan's Plot to Take Over America, and the Woman Who Stopped Them by Timothy Egan
45. A Bird In The Hand by Ann Cleeves
46. The Economic Weapon: The Rise of Sanctions as a Tool of Modern War by Nicholas Mulder
47. The Resilience of Southern Identity: Why the South Still Matters in the Minds of Its People by Christopher Alan Cooper
48. Run Me to Earth by Paul Yoon
49. The Housemaid's Secret by Freida McFadden
50. The Kingdom, the Power, and the Glory: American Evangelicals in an Age of Extremism by Tim Alberta
51. The Gold Pawn by L.A. Chandlar
52. The Night Watchman by Louise Erdrich

June 2024
Book Club Books: Ginger's Shoes, The Berlin Letters, Horse (reread)

53. Humanly Possible: Seven Hundred Years of Humanist Freethinking, Inquiry, and Hopeby Sarah Bakewell
54. All the Beauty in the World: The Metropolitan Museum of Art and Me by Patrick Bringley
55. A Stranger in the Family by Jane Casey
56. Ginger's Shoes by Steve Lindahl
57. The Great Game: The Struggle for Empire in Central Asia by Peter Hopkirk
58. Fulfillment: Winning and Losing in One-Click America by Alec MacGillis
59. The Berlin Letters by Katherine Reay
60. Attack from Within: How Disinformation Is Sabotaging America by Barbara McQuade
61. A Beautiful Place to Die by Malla Nunn
62. Horse by Geraldine Brooks (reread)
63. Crook Manifesto by Colson Whitehead
64. Rogues: True Stories of Grifters, Killers, Rebels and Crooks by Patrick Radden Keefe
65. Age of Revolutions: Progress and Backlash from 1600 to the Presentby Fareed Zakaria
66. The Age of Magical Overthinking: Notes on Modern Irrationality by Amanda Montell

July 2024
Book Club: Shadows Reel, The Heaven & Earth Grocery Store, An Invisible Thread

67. Shadows Reel by C.J. Box
68. Knowing What We Know: The Transmission of Knowledge: From Ancient Wisdom to Modern Magic by Simon Winchester
69. A Litter of Bones by J.D. Kirk
70. The Gauguin Connection by Estelle Ryan
71. Smoke and Ashes: A Writer's Journey through Opium's Hidden Histories by Amitav Ghosh
72. The Heaven & Earth Grocery Store by James McBride
73. Thicker than Water by J.D. Kirk
74. The Killing Code by J.D. Kirk
75. An Invisible Thread by Laura Schroff
76. Age of Revolutions: Progress and Backlash from 1600 to the Present by Fareed Zakaria
77. Land: How the Hunger for Ownership Shaped the Modern World by Simon Winchester
78. The Age of Grievance by Frank Bruni
79. Blood and Treachery by J.D. Kirk
80. Troubles by J.G. Farrell

August 2024
Book Club books: Don't Believe It, The Great Circle, Less

81. The Cemetery of Untold Stories by Julia Alvarez
82. Don't Believe It by Charlie Donlea
83. The Last Bloody Straw by J.D. Kirk
84. A Whisper of Sorrows by J.D. Kirk
85. The Year That Broke America: An Immigration Crisis, a Terrorist Conspiracy, the Summer of Survivor, a Ridiculous Fake Billionaire, a Fight for Florida, and the 537 Votes That Changed Everything by Andrew Rice
86. About Time: A History of Civilization in Twelve Clocks by David Rooney
87. Less by Andrew Sean Greer
88. Broke in America: Seeing, Understanding, and Ending U.S. Poverty by Joanne Samuel Goldblum
89. The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain
90. The Housemaid Is Watching by Freida McFadden
91. Homo Deus: A History of Tomorrow by Yuval Noah Harari
92. Great Circle by Maggie Shipstead
93. The Big Man Upstairs by J.D. Kirk

Sept 2024:
Book club books = James, The Island, The Well-Lived Life: A 102-Year-Old Doctor's Six Secrets to Health and Happiness at Every Age, Leave the World Behind

94. The Island by Adrian McKinty
95. The Well-Lived Life: A 102-Year-Old Doctor's Six Secrets to Health and Happiness at Every Age by Gladys McGarey
96. James by Percival Everett
97, Homegrown: Timothy McVeigh and the Rise of Right-Wing Extremism by Jeffrey Toobin
98. A Death Most Monumental by J.D. Kirk
99. A Snowball's Chance in Hell by J.D. Kirk
100. Leave the World Behind by Rumaan Alam (audio/reread)
101. The Bee Sting by Paul Murray

Oct 2024
Book Club books: The Engine House, A House with Good Bones, The Cemetery of Untold Stories

102. The Dawn of Everything: A New History of Humanity by David Graeber
103. The Engine House by Rhys Dylan
104. Doppelganger: A Trip into the Mirror World by Naomi Klein
105. The Cemetery of Untold Stories by Julia Alvarez (second read)
106. Ahead of the Game by J.D. Kirk
107. A House with Good Bones by T. Kingfisher
108. How Democracies Die: What History Reveals About Our Future by Steven Levitsky
109. His Bloody Project: Documents Relating to the Case of Roderick Macrae by Graeme Macrae Burnet
110. Looking for the Good War: American Amnesia and the Violent Pursuit of Happiness by Elizabeth D. Samet

November 2024
Book Club Books: Hamnet, Bottoms Up and the Devil Laughs: A Journey Through the Deep State

111. The End of the Myth: From the Frontier to the Border Wall in the Mind of America by Greg Grandin
112. Bottoms Up and the Devil Laughs: A Journey Through the Deep State by Kerry Howley
113. The United States of War: A Global History of America's Endless Conflicts, from Columbus to the Islamic State by David Vine
114. Stigma by Jørn Lier Horst
115. Hamnet by Maggie O'Farrell (third time!)
116. Prequel: An American Fight Against Fascism by Rachel Maddow

Dec 2024
Book Club Books: None!

117. The Singularity by Balsam Karam
118. Strange Sally Diamond by Liz Nugent
119. Sisters in Hate: American Women on the Front Lines of White Nationalism by Seyward Darby
120. Poverty, by America by Matthew Desmond (listened 3 times!)
121. Forrest Gump by Winston Groom
122. The Beaver Theory by Antti Tuomainen
123. Real Enemies: Conspiracy Theories and American Democracy, World War I to 9/11 by Kathryn S. Olmsted
124. Dark Money: The Hidden History of the Billionaires Behind the Rise of the Radical Right by Jane Mayer
125. An Isolated Incident by J.D. Kirk
126. The Cold War: A World History by Odd Arne Westad