Around the Year in 52 Books discussion
2016 Plans
>
J's 2016 Plan - Currently in Overtime
(6.)I haven't used my TBR list much, up until this point. Usually, I'd just put books there that I didn't want to forget about.
In 2015, I ended up putting all of the Discworld books on the TBR, since I was cooking through them at one every 2-3 days. This made it much easier to find them when it came time to rate and mark as read. That was the first time I had more than 10 books on it.
I still don't have 16 books on the list, though. #33 will likely end up being another Reader's Choice.
Still, A Storm of Swords is a very highly rated book. It might be the most highly rated book I've ever read.
(4.)I didn't have a whole lot to choose from for this topic. 2015 was a year in which I read whatever I felt like reading, and that meant a lot of author's that I already thought highly of (and a whole lot of Discworld).
Though I read 56 books last year, there were only three authors who I had not previous read books from: Jerome K. Jerome, Robin Hobb, and George R. R. Martin.
I had initially planned to read a second book by Robin Hobb in this spot, but I couldn't seem to bring myself to do it, after hating Assassin's Apprentice. But the other two were both authors which I liked, so it came down to whim. (A Feast for Crows winning out).
(1.)I'm a falling a little behind on the goal for this year, due to two long books at the beginning.
In 2015, I had set out to read the whole Discworld series (even before Sir Terry's passing), which went well until I hit a snag with getting the later books from the library - this popular series has a wait list. Raising Steam didn't have a wait list because the library still holds a good number of digital copies, but the proceeding and subsequent books did.
I have the final book, The Shepherd's Crown, set for week 31 and will read it once I move far enough up the wait list. I requested it at the beginning of December and am currently 5th on the wait list for the library eCopy.
(41.)I managed to catch back up to the '1 book a week' schedule by picking up one of the shorter books on my list.
The Complete Maus was a book that I was interested in reading prior to jumping into this reading challenge, but it is the first book that I've read so far this year where that decision was influenced by the challenge.
(30.)This was an easy choice for me. I took a big interest in Vietnamese culture during my freshman year of college, traveled there on spring break, and eventually married a Vietnamese woman.
Viet folk tales have been an interest of mine for a while, and I have read a few that I have found online. When looking for a book for week 30 of the challenge, I immediately searched for books of tales from Vietnam, which I had not read and this one, Children of the Dragon: Selected Tales from Vietnam, certainly met the criteria. It's an excellent read, with two well done pictures per tale and 6 stories total. There is also a section at the end of each where the author explains how the story relates to Vietnamese culture, though there was nothing new for me there.
I do wish they had left the accent marks on the names and words that were not translated to English, as it would have been nice to know how I was supposed to pronounce them. I get that these were removed to make it easier for most English readers, but I think it would have been a better idea to leave them on and tell the readers to disregard them if they want in the introduction (in place of the explanation of why they are absent.)
(5.)I had intended to read We by Yevgeny Zamyatin around the time when I read 1984 and Brave New World (in 2012), but was concerned that they would be too similar. Then this challenge came along and gave me an excuse to revisit the dystopian novel type. It's certainly a favorite of mine.
This book could have been for week 48 or 50, quite easily. And the first draft of my list did have it listed for week 50, but I found that those weeks were rather easy to find books for while this one was a bit of a challenge. So I moved it up and found new books to fit those later weeks.
Your 4 stars for We are a nice thing (it seems our ratings are similar), I'll be more confident when I'll start it!I'm looking forward to how you'll like Perdido as I'm curious about it.
(17.)Perdido Street Station is a book that I had been meaning to read for quite a while. I had started it, as an audiobook, a couple years back and decided to bail because I felt that the writing was too rich to waste. I tend to be a reader who likes to re-read and think over well written passages. Plus, there were plenty of words that I had to look up.
Ultimately, I am a bit mixed on it. There were some wow moments that made me want to keep reading and some dumb moments with the opposite effect (characters making very poor decisions). There were exciting moments and very slow parts that were a drag to get through.
(31.)The very last book in the Discworld series and published just last September; The Shepherd's Crown completes my read of the Discworld. I had dived into this series late February 2015, and to my surprise, it took very little time to get through a lot of these. I probably would have completed the whole series in 2015, but I had quite a long wait to get ahold of the Library copy of this. I placed my hold in the first week of December, and my number finally came up 5 days ago..
(52.)It still seems a bit odd to have so many planned books ahead of me, I can feel their weight.
I've read all of the books in the Vorkosigan series and I eagerly awaited the release of the newest book (the 17th), Gentleman Jole and the Red Queen.
I bought it on the release day, but ended up waiting a few weeks before actually starting it. So far, it is the best book I've read this year. But I still don't have a five star book. Then again, I don't have any twos or ones either, so perhaps its a good trade off.
(19.)This author has been on my (theoretical) to read list since 2003. That was my freshman year of college and I encountered a good number of well known authors through my English 101 reader. It was a collection of essays, where the professor would assign one for us to read each week, and I always read an additional one or two.
I targeted the authors that I had heard of but not read, and it gave me a good idea of which authors I would like to read. Of course, there is little time to read while in school and then life comes up. So fast forward to this year and this list and I decided to populate it with authors that I had discovered in that class.
It turns out that the essay from my reader by Richard Wright was an excerpt from this book, Black Boy. The book has two versions. The original version was shorter, and then there is the restored version. I certainly chose the full length version, and having read it, I cannot imagine stopping at the original ending. The last part is definitely required for the whole story.
(26.)This series was what instantly came to mind for this topic. The Game of Thrones series has been quite popular for a while now, but the HBO series made it rather hard to avoid spoilers.
I had been intending to read this even before the series came out, but put it off a little long and inevitably did have spoilers, though I was lucky in that most of those were confined to book 1. I definitely wanted to finish this book before the new season, as I know that it was partially covered in the last season and will likely be covered more in the next. If anything really big happened, it would certainly be talked about.
Now, with A Dance with Dragons down, I'm caught up and waiting for winter to come. Though, it is likely that I will read the prequel books in the interim.
(15.)Alright, that was a really quick burn. I finished my last book, read this one, and am starting the next all in the same day. A few more like that and this challenge will be a cake walk.
The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde could have fit into a number of the categories. Definitely a book with less than 200 pages, a horror, and a book set more than a hundred years ago (which is what I used it for).
It's odd to think but, regardless of how short it was, it had some slow parts. It was more of a short story padded out to be a novella. The idea was big enough that a lot more could have been written, in particular if the author chose to do a lot more show rather than simply tell.
(51.)I'll start out by saying that I think that it was really smart to put a short story for the penultimate week in this challenge, as it gives anyone who is behind a chance to catch up. But when I was making my list, I knew that I would put a short story collection here instead, as I like to mark off physical books. Some short stories do exist, by themselves, in the Goodreads system. I tend to find short stories that I want to read and then complete the collection that they are in, over time, so that it can be marked off.
And so, I chose Sandkings by George R. R. Martin for this. I watched the very first episode of the 90's era Outer Limits on TV when it premiered and was quite impressed. Fast forward to a few months back when investigating George R. R. Martin, and I found out that it was based on one of his short stories, the titular one from this 1980 collection - and it was clear which collection I wanted to read.
Only problem being: I couldn't get it. From amazon, this out of print collection from a well known and popular author is very, very expensive and not available in an eformat. It also wasn't available from my library. So I was left with the options of either tracking down the various short stories to build the collection myself or simply choosing something else. I went with the latter.
I chose to read a few different short stories by Robert E. Howard on Conan the Cimmerian because not completing the massive 1000 page The Complete Chronicles of Conan after checking it out from the library back in 2012 has been weighing on me. Last year, I went back to quite a few short story collections that I had partially read, completing them and checking them off. But not this one, and I would really, really like to say that I had read that whole tome.
It proved rather impossible a few years ago due to how little I was enjoying it and the fact that many of the stories are redundant. What I really appreciate about that collection is that:
1. It includes only Conan stories by his creator: Robert E. Howard.
2. It also includes everything ever written by Howard on Conan including rare/unpublished and incomplete tales.
3. It included a Biography on Robert E. Howard at the end, which was honestly the best part of the whole book. (That man's life should be an Oscar winning biopic.)
I read from the beginning until it was obvious that I would never complete the book before it became was due back to the library (or within a reasonable time to let it get overdue).
Then I started reading the stories from the back, in order to complete all of those which are hard to find or exclusive to this collection.
Finally, I read all of the books for the short story collection King Conan, so that I had something to check off on Goodreads for 2012.
Now with this week's readings, I completed 5 more stories (completing the collection The Sword of Conan), leaving just 5 more short stories and the only Conan novel (The Hour of the Dragon) to finish the whole, massive collection.
Someday...
(8.)Lord of the Flies is likely the book that has been on my (theoretical) To Read list for the longest time. In 6th grade, my friend Mike Hildrum got a group of us into fantasy novels and we all thought we were pretty grown up to be reading books intended for adults. I chose to branch out from there to Sci Fi, but my friend Will Cummins read this book.
I'd always been interested in reading this, as he spoke very highly of it, but never got around to it. And I wasn't fortunate enough to get an English class where it was assigned (though I don't regret the books that I did get to read). Because it is so often assigned, there is always a good wait list for it at Libraries (especially the High School one), which just made it easier to put off.
A very quick read, could be done in a day pretty easily - though I took two.
^Glad to hear I wasn't the only one who hadn't read it. One of my co-workers admitted to not having read it as well.
(22.)After hearing only good things about Jim Butcher's Codex Alera series, I had high hopes of making those 6 books fit into my 2016 plan (somewhere).
The first book, Furies of Calderon, I put here at #22 and planned to put the second at #23, the third at #42, and the fourth at #13. But when I was actually reading the initial book, it became painfully obvious that this could not be.
If I were a professor and had assigned Jim Butcher the task of writing a Fantasy novel and he turned in Furies of Calderon, I'd be forced to give him an A. It's quintessentially a fantasy book. As an art, its less a painting than a collage, taking all the best attributes of Butcher's favorite fantasy books and tossing them together into a heaping pile of trope and cliche'.
But I don't want to read this. I want something new, ground breaking, inventive. I want something with an agenda. And if my reading of other fantasy reader's reviews is any indication -> I want the exact opposite of them.
(14.)I chose Who Censored Roger Rabbit? for this topic, as there were very few books on the list that I had even heard of (except a good number that I had already read), and I didn't have any that immediately came to mind.
Everybody has seen the film, and I don't think I've met a person who doesn't like it. I was a bit surprised to find out that there was a book first,and that made me interested in reading it - at least until I read that they were quite different and that even the author felt that the film was the better version.
So really, this challenge is the only reason I read the book - to fulfill this odd topic. But boy am I glad that I did!
I'd say that the film and book are more similar than they are different, but there are three big changes: they made Jessica and Roger more sympathetic in the film and there is no Judge Doom in the book at all. Though I would agree that the film is better, they are different and I think that both are almost flawless.
But then, I am always more lenient on something that can make me laugh. I don't usually laugh out loud, so when a book can elicit that level of humor, its a good sign that I am enjoying it. The book seems to be built around the jokes, with each scene setting up humor and each joke only making sense in context (so not much that can be quoted and still be as funny) and yet - there is still a really solid detective story here.
That always impresses me. Terry Pratchett pulled it off quite a few times, as well as Jerome K. Jerome and Douglas Adams. But still, a solid story that has regular and hard hitting humor - sign me up!
(9.)Great Expectations is the first Charles Dickens novel that I've read, and I'm hoping that it is a good example of his style. It is his highest rated book on The Big Read.
I wasn't particularly impressed. It was quite humorous in parts, and exciting in parts, but often slow and with unnecessarily challenging use of language (e.g. leaving the subject out of a paragraph, so that I have to read on to even catch what is being discussed).
I'm just not sure that 19th century novels are for me. I'll certainly read more. But what I find particularly jarring is how heavily affected all characters are by their emotions. Nothing about how the characters act seems realistic to me at all (though I certainly didn't live then). I do know that the Naturalism movement occurred in the late 19th century, with the intent of representing actual life in novels. Those books have been more to my taste (e.g. Frank Norris).
I've knocked off a few more Conan short stories this month, mostly because I am a completionist (and apparently my own worst enemy). This gets me another collection completed (1954's Conan the Barbarian) and leaves just one more short story and the novel to have read all of the Robert E. Howard Conan tales.These ones were some of the worst, with "Shadows of Zamboula" being exceptionally racist (even for a Howard tale), A Witch Shall Be Born was just boring, forgoing the action scenes (which are the only reason to even read Conan) for world development, while "The Devil in Iron" was fine until the very rapey conclusion.
(12.)This was one of the topics that it took me the longest to decide what to read for. I chose The BFG because it is by the author of one of my childhood favorites; James and the Giant Peach.
When I brought this home from the library, I showed it to my daughter Eleanor and told her what it was about. She flipped through to look at all the pictures, and when she got to the last picture at the very back, she asked me if that was the giant. I told her that it wasn't but rather, it was the author's picture as it was Roald Dahl.
Now that I've finished the book, I realize that I was wrong and she was right. :)
(20.)Zoe's Tale is the last of my hold over books from 2015 and the book that has been sitting on my Kindle the longest. I had originally intended to read this back in 2012 when I was reading this series, but heard that it was mostly a retread of the previous book in the series. So, I opted to put some time between them.
It also has the distinction of being the first book that I chose for this Reading Challenge. I put it at Week 1 when I read that week, and moved it down once I had read more of the weeks' topics.
And now that I have it out of the way, I can move on to the two new books in the series, released since then.
(10.)I hadn't listed a book on my challenge for week 10, as I had a rather odd plan for this topic. There are a lot of authors on my list already, which are new to me. So really, it came down to which one was so good that I could want to read another book by them.
So, I began reading The Trial with the intent of it being my Foreign Language (week 50) book, but after reading it, I am quite convinced that I want another Kafka book this year. So I bumped it to week 10 and put his Amerika as my week 50.
Other authors who were in contention form this honor include: Octavia Butler, Richard Wright, Charles Dickens, and Kazuo Ishiguro. The latter still has a shot, as when I read Never Let Me Go, if I like it even more than Kafka, he might be able to knock Amerika out of the week 50 slot with his IQ84.
(7.)My first thought, when reading this topic, was of the Thursday Next series by Jasper Fforde. I had read The Eyre Affair a few years back, but it didn't really work for me. And yet, the author and this series are often compared to series that I am a big fan of: namely Terry Pratchett's Discworld and Douglas Adams' Hitchhikers series. I thought that, perhaps, I did not get the humor because I had not read the books being parodied (Jane Eyre and Martin Chuzzlewit, for the first book).
So I read the two biggest books referenced by Lost in a Good Book before coming back to this series: Great Expectations and The Trial. It also references Alice and Wonderland and The Raven, which I have read, and Sense and Sensibility, which I have not.
Understanding the references didn't improve my opinion. Rather, it made me oddly more critical (I'm not sure that Fforde understood The Trial, though I think he nailed Great Expectations.)
It was a quick, easy read but it didn't fit my style of humor and without the humor, I don't think there is much left of interest in the book.
(20.)This choice was pretty easy. There were a few good suggestions on that page, inluding Ubik and this book, My Man Jeeves. I had high confidence in P.G. Wodehouse, even though I had not read him, as I knew that he and Jerome K. Jerome were major influences on Terry Pratchett and Douglas Adams, and I love all of those.
So I decided to toss it in at a point where I needed something light and fun, and it certainly met the criteria. I'll probably read another Wodehouse the next time I want a fun read and continue this until I run out.
The best part of the Goodreads Recommendations Page is the recommendations 'based on my lemmed (DNF) shelf'. It's quite useful to know what to steer clear of.
(35.)In making my list, I had a few secondary agendas. The big ones being: The NPR Top 100 SciFi and Fantasy Book List, The Amazon Top 100 SciFi and Fantasy List, and The Big Read. Hyperion is a check mark for both the former two. It is my 93rd for the NPR list and 53rd for the Amazon list.
What's more, it impressed me enough that I want to read the rest of the series this year. The other four books now populate my weeks 13, 23, and 42.
(27.)This was an easy decision, when making my list, because I really wanted to read a full book by Maya Angelou. I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings is certainly her most talked about book and it is the first in a series of memoirs.
I think it's likely that I'll read the whole set, I am very intrigued about her life and definitely like her writing style. Though the memoir itself didn't hit me as hard as Black Boy. This could be because I could relate more to Richard Wright, but I think his writing style just clicked with me more.
I was very surprised to find out that Maya was not really a writer and is often looked on as a non-writer who had success as a writer. She is so well known for her speeches, poetry, and memoirs that it is interesting to find out that she had such a large career beforehand (as a musician, dancer, and actress).
(25.)I managed to, inadvertently, pick the perfect book for week 25's topic in MASH: A Novel About Three Army Doctors. I wanted a book about being a surgeon and knew that this book, which inspired the movie and tv show, was written by an actual doctor who actually served in the Korean war.
And it was everything I hoped it would be. It is much more of a series of anecdotes based on experiences or 2nd hand stories that the author picked up in Korea. But it is told with an expertise, not so much in story telling, but in being a military doctor. He goes into significant detail about the types of procedures they would do, how they were done, how they could cut corners to save time, what stresses were involved, etc.
It is also apparent where screenwriters were able to take this and go beyond it and produce the superior (or at least more popular appealing) versions for the small and large screens. I hope Dr. H. Richard Hornberger was able to pull in significant royalties from that.
(46.)Well, that's the halfway point, at least in terms of number of topics. This is the 26th that I've completed this year,
I was pretty unimpressed with The Hound of the Baskervilles. It seems to be the antithesis of what I would like to see in a mystery novel. The protagonist, Dr. Watson, was too eager to jump to conclusions given little evidence or none at all, then we were expected to follow him to those conclusions and be surprised when it turns out another way.
No surprises and a tired plot. The upsides being that it is well paced and easy to read, I just burned through it. The one reason I might consider reading more Sherlock Holmes stories is that it isn't much of an investment and at least I could say that I had.
(36.)Cultural studies have long been a major interest of mine, so this topic was one that I was looking forward to (and I think that a few of my other books for this year would qualify as well). When making the original draft of my list, this was one of the first topics that I filled in. I chose Amy Tan's Saving Fish from Drowning, since I loved The Joy Luck Club when I read it in high school English and had yet to read another book by her.
And yet, my plans changed. I really, really wanted to continue reading about Maya Angelou's life after finishing I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings for week 27, and it fit here. Plus, I had become a bit skeptical of how well Saving Fish would actually fit the topic, after reading the description on the back of the book (it's from the perspective of American tourists).
Man am I glad that I read Gather Together in My Name! It was even better than the first book. And surprisingly, it dealt with racial, gender, cultural, and even sexual preference issues.
Really tempted to continue on with this series.
(29.)Stephen King's alter ego Richard Bachman was the first thing that came to mind when I read the topic for week 29, and it seems like most people chose him or J. K. Rowling. I also considered Iain Banks' The Wasp Factory for this topic.
The Long Walk was an enjoyable read and a very unique idea for a book, especially for its time. It does show signs of being an early work by an author (reportedly, this is the first novel that King wrote, and it was simply published later). There was the potential for a lot more.
(45.)High Fidelity was an excellent pick for me this week. The best bit was when he mentioned how to spot a serious record collector in the store, because I'm so guilty of that.
Interestingly, the protagonist had a much smaller record collection in the book than he had in the film. Mine would be somewhere between the two, at just over 3 thousand.
I'll definitely be looking to put a Nick Hornby book into next year's plan.
(18.)Week 18's topic of 'A Book on a Beach Reading List' was one of the odder ones, when I was making the list. I didn't know what sort of books qualified as 'beach reading', but I was pretty sure that the books I normally read would not.
But then when I had populated most of the list, I actually looked up some beach reading lists and found that there isn't really a type. At least, not that I could see. In fact, my decision was made as soon as I noticed a Kurt Vonnegut book listed. If Vonnegut is beach reading, I'm off to get my shorts, sandals, and sunscreen!
I did add a few extra rules for this topic, which are just for me. I did want to actually read the book at the beach. So, I waited for the weather to be nice. I would also need a book that I wasn't embarrassed to read in public and one that wasn't too heavy (even though I read it on the Kindle anyway), as I felt those criteria would be necessary for a beach read regardless of what the lists say. I certainly wasn't going to read Lolita while lounging on a beach with kids playing nearby (and it was on one of the lists that I saw).
Breakfast of Champions met all the criteria that I had set for myself and occurred on one of the lists. The setting doesn't take place anywhere near a beach or even in the summer (November in Ohio), but it was quite light, humorous, and enjoyable and that's what I was looking for.
(42.)After the very strong start of Hyperion, which I read for the week 35 topic, I am quite disappointed with the immediate sequel: The Fall of Hyperion.
Sure, it did conclude the story and I was primarily reading for that conclusion. But it lacks the edge - the originality and surprise turns - of the first. The moral grey gives way to lawful good characterizations.
This does change my plans a bit, as I might put off the other two books, which occur hundreds of years in the future, until a later year my time. A big part of the decision is the amount of recap in book 2. I had read the previous book just a month before and all the retreading was a bore.
(47.)Dandelion Wine was a book that I lemmed back in high school, and I'd been meaning to give it another try. I am a fairly big fan of Ray Bradbury and have been for quite a while.
But this one isn't a SciFi or a Fantasy. It's about an idyllic summer in 1928, based heavily on Bradbury's own life. It definitely had its great parts; it was written quite well and showed that Bradbury insight into childhood. But I just couldn't get interested in the whole ideal of a time when things were so much better. Perhaps it is because my youth and summers of yore look nothing like this and were far from optimistic - Something Wicked This Way Comes fit much better.
It's a Norman Rockwell painting. While I recognize the skill required to make it and the quality, I find it boring and unrealistic. Perhaps simply because it does not fit my version of reality.
(2.)The second week's topic was one of those that I had the hardest time deciding on a book for. The topic was just too broad. I live on the North American continent, so that leaves six others where the book can take place, and I find that Europe is the most common setting already.
I did set extra rules on this one, just to make it more interesting. It had to be a continent on the actual Earth, so no Fantasy or SciFi (for the most part). When I did decide on a book and finally added it to the list, it was Mother Night, because I wanted a couple Vonnegut books.
But that changed when it came time to acquire the books. I want to own Vonnegut's books because I know I will read them more than once, and I did buy 3 new books by him this year, but Mother Night was not one of those and none of those that I bought qualified for the topic.
Fast forward to now and I am absolutely hooked on Maya Angelou's series of biographies. So, when I realized that one of those was set while she toured the world with a production of Porgy and Bess, I found a fit.
And now to find a place for the fourth installment to the series. (I'm looking at week 23).
(33.)A return to form for John Scalzi's Old Man's War series. I was a bit concerned when reading Zoe's Tale for week 20 but The Human Division is closer to the quality of the first two books of the series. That pretty much guarantees that book 6 of the series will be my week 3 pick.
(48.)Well that was a lot of fun! I had this book, Never Let Me Go on my TBR list and put it into the plan for this year fairly early on. But then I somehow managed to rope a decent number of people into reading it with me: I suggested it for the June book of the month, and it won.
It was most certainly a well written book worthy of its praise. The one critique I have is that I wish he had developed the SciFi/Dystopia part of the book a bit more. It certainly wasn't the focus nor point of the book but I still would have liked to see it fleshed out more. Regardless, I'm certainly going to be reading another book by Kazuo Ishiguro in the near future.
(11.)One of my sub-goals for the year is to knock out a few Stephen King books. In particular, I wouldn't mind being able to say that I'd read everything he published in the 70's (and then move on from there). It's a goal I started last year, and I put an impressive 5 books by him on this year's plan in order to make a big step toward that goal.
But this far into the year and this far into my list and I had only read one of the five that I had listed. So it was time to start reading King or risk having them all occur next to each other.
The Shining was pretty damned good and definitely what I'd point to as a great example of the horror genre. It started out quite slow, and I read slowly during the slow beginning but it's paced like a roller coaster. All of that build at the beginning is just climbing the initial hill to build up momentum and every little, seemingly pointless, detail matters for the climax.
As with all Stephen King books that I've read, the characters are what make it. He writes real people into his books and all four of the main characters are well done. They respond to absurd situations in real ways and consider all the possibilities rather than just following the necessary plot threads.
My only regret is having read this in the summer when it's so nice out. This is a book for bad weather, snowed or stormed inside and looking to kill time. Bonus if the power goes out.
(23.)I wouldn't have predicted that Maya Angelou's autobiographies would be the major series that I would read this year, and yet here we are. I just can't put them down. The writing is delicious and each ends leaving me wanting more.
I wouldn't wish a difficult life on anybody and certainly not a great woman like Maya, but man when life deals her a tough time she comes out swinging and I love every minute of it. Ms. Angelou didn't ascend to greatness, she climbed there on her strength of character knocking back anybody and everybody who made the mistake of getting in her way.
Wow...pursuing your list and adding so many books to my TBR list! Never read Terry Prachett, excited to give him a try! Also "Maus" sounds awesome!!
Sir Terry is pretty great. I was just looking at the topics so far for the 2017 just yesterday and thinking, 'I really need to fit a Pratchett in there.'I'm leaning towards Good Omens: The Nice and Accurate Prophecies of Agnes Nutter, Witch, as that's the next big (read:popular) one that I've not read.
(34.)I wanted to read One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest because I loved the movie and know that, often, the book is better than the movie. This book is SO MUCH better than the movie. The film seems a mere shadow of the book, a simplification of it's themes. And I just must read another Ken Kesey book in the near future (time to add to the 2017 plan...)
Overall, I'm feeling that I've read too many great books lately and that I need to pay some toll by reading an atrocious one. Given how many mediocre books one usually has to push through to find the diamonds, it doesn't seem fair to have hit so many 5 star books in such a short period of time. Like I've been cheating by reading established classics.
The Alchemist. Hands down the worst book I've ever read. That should bring balance to the force for you. ;)
^Lol! My 3 friends that have read it have all given this 2 or 1 star. We may have indeed found an all time low. My worst book ever is Lucifer's Hammer.
It's the book equivalent of a "Magic Happens" bumper sticker. I can't even say literary equivalent. That book looks awful. 3.98 avg rating or not.
(16.)I was a bit surprised to see Dracula listed as a Mystery novel, but having read it I definitely see why.
The book itself was pretty hit or miss. It could go from extremely exciting and suspenseful to a trudge. The characters would be very clever and inventive in one part and then completely miss the obvious in another, as the plot required.
This marks the 40th book that I've read for the challenge! I'm curious to see if it will get more difficult to find a book that I want to read as the list slims down. Given being ahead: will I choose to read other books instead of staying on task? Or will I push to complete as soon as possible and simply move on to discard topics?
(13.)Well, I finally settled on a book for week 13. This was hard simply because it could be anything at all. Odd though, as week 39 could also be anything and I decided on that book and stuck to it since my initial draft of the list.
All God's Children Need Traveling Shoes was a great read and I am absolutely certain that I'll be reading the next book in the series and quite possibly could find myself reading the 7th and final book later this year as well. I just can't get enough.
This one could have been a better Week 2 pick than my actual week 2 pick as it takes place 90% in Ghana (while Singin' and Swingin' still has a lot take place in the USA). I learned so much about Ghana.
(39.)Catch-22 was one of the books on my short list to force somewhere into the 2016 plan when I was first making it. I decided to put it in week 39 as 'A book with a number in the title', and it was one of the earliest entries in the list and one that I had never even considered changing.
Well worth the read and definitely humorous as well as philosophical. I do feel like it suffers a bit from its own popularity as the expectations were high and it has had such a big influence on subsequent authors. A big effect of the latter being that, while Catch-22 was quite original in its time, there are many newer books which do the same thing a bit better.
While reading MASH, I was impressed with how close to the book the series had stayed, and yet there was a lot more to the series than what was in the book. That other part (especially the character of Henry Blake) was Catch-22.
In other news, this is my 50th book from The Big Read, putting me on 25% completion.
Around the Year in 52 Books
Books mentioned in this topic
The Inimitable Jeeves (other topics)Player Piano (other topics)
Another Fine Myth / Myth Conceptions (other topics)
Another Fine Myth (other topics)
Myth Conceptions (other topics)
More...
The 2016 List
Completed:
✔ 6. The highest rated on your TBR
✔ 4. A book by an author you discovered in 2015
✔ 1. A book you meant to read in 2015
✔ 41. A book about a major world event (fiction or non-fiction)
✔ 30. A fairytale from a culture other than your own
✔ 5. A book with a title beginning with the 1st letter of your name
✔ 17. A book with a beautiful cover
✔ 31. A work of young adult fiction
✔ 52. A book published in 2016
✔ 19. A non-fiction book
✔ 26. A book everyone is talking about
✔ 15. A book set in the past (more than 100 years ago)
✔ 51. A short story from a well-known author
✔ 8. A classic book with less than 200 pages
✔ 22. The first book in a new to you series
✔ 14. A book with one of the five W’s -or H in the title (Who/What/Where/When/Why/How)
✔ 9. A book that was mentioned in another book
✔ 12. A childhood classic
✔ 20. A book with a first name in the title
✔ 10. A book by an author you feel you should have read by now
✔ 7. A book about books
✔ 21. A book from the Goodreads Recommendations page
✔ 35. An award winning book
✔ 27. A book with a beautiful title (in your own opinion)
✔ 25. A book whose main character is in a profession that interests you
✔ 46. A crime story
✔ 36. An identity book - a book about a different culture, religion or sexual orientation
✔ 29. A book by an author who writes under more than one name
✔ 45. A book related to a hobby or passion you have
✔ 18. A book on a summer/beach reading list
✔ 42. A top 100 fantasy novel
✔ 47. A book with a type of food/drink in the title
✔ 2. A book set in a different continent
✔ 33. The 16th book on your TBR
✔ 48. A dystopia
✔ 11. A book from the Rory Gilmore challenge
✔ 23. The next book in a series you are reading
✔ 3. A book from the Goodreads Choice Awards 2015 (winner or nominated)
✔ 34. A book about mental illness
✔ 16. A book from the top 100 mystery novels
✔ 13. Reader’s Choice
✔ 39. A previous suggestion that did not make it into the list:
A book with a number in the title
✔ 32. A historical fiction book
✔ 24. A "between the numbers" book of a series (0.5, 1,5, 2.5, etc.)
✔ 37. A book that you've seen the movie of but haven't read
✔ 28. A biography, autobiography, or memoir
✔ 43. A book about a thing that goes bump in the night
✔ 50. A book originally written in a language other than English
✔ 38. A book about an anti hero
✔ 40. A novella from your favorite genre
✔ 44. A book you're embarrassed to read in public
✔ 49. A book with a great opening line
Discard Topics:
✔ 146. A children's book written by an author who also writes adult books
✔ 164. A book that came out on your birthday or birthday month from any year
✔ 150. A book written by an author of your nationality
✔ 154. A book by an author that you've read before but weren't so keen on
✔ 9. A book you can finish in a day with a title that starts with the word "the"
✔ 145. A book by an author whose uses an initial instead of a first name
✔ 22. A children's book with an animal on the cover
✔ 180. A book made into a Disney film
✔ 70. A book with nonhuman characters
✔ 153. A book from a prolific author (wrote 50 books or more so far)
✔ 56. A book set on another planet
✔ 32. The smallest book on your TBR list