Around the Year in 52 Books discussion

This prompt is such a fun callback to last year's reading. The book you read this week should be related to something you read in 2025.

Some ideas for connections:
- Same author/series
- Same character names
- Same setting
- Same awards won
- Same color cover
- Featured on the same lists
- Same publication year
- Same page count

The list goes on! Obviously, some of these connections are easier to make than others, so challenge yourself as you'd wish!

This is a pretty personal prompt, but we do have an ATY listopia for you to peruse, even if it's just to find out about new books!

ATY Listopia: https://www.goodreads.com/list/show/2...

What did you read in 2025, and how are they linked?

I'm planning to read Oh, I Do Like to Be by the author of a book I really enjoyed this year, Gods Behaving Badly.

I'm thinking about using the book I am currently reading, Shadow Ticket by Thomas Pynchon, and reading something specifically relating to it.
- Another book by Pynchon: The Crying of Lot 49, Vineland, Mason & Dixon, Gravity’s Rainbow
Set in Hungary - People of the Book, The Bridge on the Drina, Girl at War, Black Lamb and Grey Falcon
- Because there is a character named Daphne, a book by Daphne du Maurier: Mary Anne, The King's General
- Book involving any one of these groups of people: Nazis, Soviet agents, British counterspies, swing musicians, paranormal practitioners, outlaw motorcyclists - an interesting rabbit hole to go down!
- Set during the Great Depression/Big Band Era

I do seem to have several authors 'on repeat' this year, but for this particular prompt, I am following from reading Black Water Lilies with The Other Mother. Also planning To the River: A Journey Beneath the Surface, having read The Lonely City: Adventures in the Art of Being Alone this year.

I'm not a fan of basing my reading on previous reads. It's especially tricky for me this year because I've not had a great year of reading. Working a lot. Lots of health problems.

So since the prompt says "something you read in 2025" and doesn't specify that it has to be a book, I'll probably read through a couple of Goodreads articles until I find something.

My other option is to do one of the upcoming Harry Potter full-cast audio books. I've already read the actual books, but I've been reading info about these new versions, and I'm really excited. They're great comfort reads, and I love a good full-cast audio.

I'm am going to make this easy and read the next book in Abby Jimenez newest series, The Night We Met

current possibilities:

Aim to Misbehave

The Pluto Files: The Rise and Fall of America’s Favorite Planet

The Gruffalo's Child

I think I am going to read American Girls: Social Media and the Secret Lives of Teenagers. I recently finished The Anxious Generation: How the Great Rewiring of Childhood Caused an Epidemic of Mental Illness and I am interested in how the older book, which I have owned too long, compares.

I might need help finding a successor to this book: The Presidents and the People: Five Leaders Who Threatened Democracy and the Citizens Who Fought to Defend It.
I’d like a book like this about the current autocratic president. For each autocratic president, there were one or more strong citizens who fought to protect democracy, the constitution, and the balance of power. Who is emerging as that potential savior today? Who should I be reading about? Any suggestions are welcome. Please use direct message because some members would prefer to not be reminded.

So I was reading this: https://www.goodreads.com/blog/show/3...

and I think I've found a couple of contenders:

Vagabond: A Memoir by Tim Curry
History Matters by David McCullough

This year, I have read the first three Aunty Lee books by Ovidia Yu. I plan to finish the series next year with Meddling and Murder

I think this is the prompt I had the hardest time with, it's the last one I've filled. I went through a few options and had one pencilled in for a while, but I wasn't happy with it.

I got hung up on "because", it felt like my choice needed to be inspired by something when I read it this year - "that's an interesting subject, I want to know more about that", rather than something I could link at the 2026 planning stage. Nothing's really hit me like that with my 2025 reading.

I got membership to another library last week and when I was browsing their catalogue I saw they had System Collapse by Martha Wells. I love Murderbot, read the previous book in the series in 2025, but didn't have this one. Being able to fit it into the 2026 plan makes me very happy! So I'm reading this because I read Fugitive Telemetry, and also because I read the library catalogue :)

Good point Marie! I was thinking more along the lines of “connected to” rather than “because”. I’ll probably rethink this one … but not overthink it.

Oooooo - I just realized I slotted the same book in two different prompts! LOL. Hmmm - back to the drawing board for this one. (picking out another book is NOT a bad problem to have though - LOL)

This year I read The Memory Keeper of Kyiv, and it is fabulous - hard and sad, but fabulous. I am going to read her second book The Lost Daughters of Ukraine by Erin Litteken for this prompt.

I read Mrs. Dalloway (finally!) by Virginia Woolf this summer so I will choose The Hours by Michael Cunningham and I'll probably supplement it with the movie afterwards

Earlier this year I read Daniel Nayeri's Everything Sad Is Untrue, a young adult/middle grade autobiographical fiction recounting the journey he, his mother, and his sister had to take to escape Iran when a fatwah was placed against his mother. It was a wonderful book. For this prompt I am going to read his sister, Dina Nayeri's, adult version take, entitled The Ungrateful Refugee.

I accidentally read the second book in The Borgias series before I read the first, so I will read the first: The Serpent and the Pearl by Kate Quinn