Around the Year in 52 Books discussion

Sorry if this is the wrong place for this thread, but I looked around and this seemed like the best place. Is anyone else doing/planning for other challenges for 2023 in addition to ATY? I'm currently working on organizing my lists to decide which challenges I'll do, and I have a few prompts that I'm super stuck on. I've copied the wording exactly as they are on the challenge lists.

Does anyone have any ideas for these prompts:

- A book about animal families - I'm not even sure what this one means, to be honest. Does it want a book about the classification of animals, or a book where the characters are animals that are in a family (ie. Arthur)?

- A book with a classic car - I know nothing about cars! All I could come up with was Christine and I'm not super interested in reading that

- A "comprehensive" book - Again, not really sure what exactly this means.

Rachel - How about a James Bond novel for a classic car prompt? He drove an Aston Martin.

Those sound hard and I’m not exactly sure what they are asking for either. I did find a shelf titled comprehensive: https://www.goodreads.com/shelf/show/...

For animal families, I think either taxonomy (the only one I can think of that's not a textbook would be Wonderful Life: The Burgess Shale and the Nature of History by Stephen Jay Gould) or books with a family of animal characters would do - like Dynasties: The Rise and Fall of Animal Families by Tom Holland or War Bunny by Christopher St. John. I suppose you might even do something like My Family and Other Animals by Gerald Durrell, depending on how strict the challenge is.

For classic cars, there's Chitty Chitty Bang Bang by Ian Fleming and The Lady in the Car with Glasses and a Gun by Sébastien Japrisot. The Bean Trees by Barbara Kingsolver has a road trip in a classic VW Bug.

For comprehensive, I wonder is something like A Short History of Nearly Everything by Bill Bryson or Starry Messenger: Cosmic Perspectives on Civilization by Neil deGrasse Tyson would work.

Jillian wrote: "Those sound hard and I’m not exactly sure what they are asking for either. I did find a shelf titled comprehensive: https://www.goodreads.com/shelf/show/..."

I saw that list, but I didn't really understand the logic behind what was added to it. It made sense at first, but then there's also Circe, The Gilded Ones, and the Speak graphic novel.

Rachel wrote: "Jillian wrote: "Those sound hard and I’m not exactly sure what they are asking for either. I did find a shelf titled comprehensive: https://www.goodreads.com/shelf/show/..."

I saw that l..."

I think there are probably a lot of books with classic cars in different genres, and you'll find them with google searches and with questions like this. I really liked:
The Art of Racing in the Rain.
Go Like Hell: Ford, Ferrari, and Their Battle for Speed and Glory at Le Mans (I read it for a challenge and liked it more than I expected.)
The Bean Trees - I love this author.
https://www.goodreads.com/shelf/show/...
https://www.goodreads.com/shelf/show/car

I would guess that "animal families" refers to anthropomorphic characters like in Watership Down, Peter Rabbit, Winnie the Pooh. The Constant Rabbit is a little different, but I think it would work too.

Is comprehensive related to teaching or testing? https://www.comprehensivebook.com/
The books on the tag list all had only one tag each, so they were each just one person's opinion. I'd go back to the source of the challenge to see what they mean. Do those challenges have groups like ours, where people share ideas, or are you on your own?

Unfortunately not! As far as I've seen this challenge is posted on a blog, and there isn't a group that goes along with it, nor is the blog particularly active aside from posting the yearly challenges.

I've tried doing a search for classic cars and got literally nothing of use. At best it would give me coffee table books that have photos of cars. A friend did tell me that he thinks there's a classic car in Dark Matter but I'm not 100% sure.

Rachel wrote: "Unfortunately not! As far as I've seen this challenge is posted on a blog, and there isn't a group that goes along with it, nor is the blog particularly active aside from posting the yearly challen..."

I just added a few more car ideas.

It doesn't sound as much fun if there's no interaction, but that's just me. If I was doing it on my own, I might design my own challenge based on topics or genres I'd like to explore.

This is the only prompt challenge I do, but I have different types of challenges each year in another group. The 2023 plan hasn't been announced yet.

If you want to go in the taxonomy direction for "animal families," I'd recommend Why Fish Don't Exist: A Story of Loss, Love, and the Hidden Order of Life, which is a lovely narrative nonfiction/memoir about the biologist David Starr Jordan, who identified thousands of new species of fish.

For fiction, Ship Fever: Stories is a beautiful collection of stories about taxonomy/natural history/biology that I think would fit.

Rachel wrote: " A book with a classic car - I know nothing about cars!..."



I really like muscle cars, so cars tend to get my attention. (To me, an old muscle car qualifies as a "classic.") A few ideas:

We Lie Here - full disclosure: I hated this book. But the cover features an old Camaro, and the Camaro features in the plot, too.

Blacktop Wasteland - I loved this book. LOTS of cars, but not all classics. Features street racing and a bank robbery with getaway car. Two that feature: an old classic Nova, and an old souped-up Duster.


And you could always read non-fiction like:
Cannonball! by Brock Yates
Iacocca: An Autobiography by Lee Iacocca (this was a huge bestseller when it was first published - it was everywhere!)
Go Like Hell: Ford, Ferrari, and Their Battle for Speed and Glory at Le Mans

Nadine in NY wrote: "Rachel wrote: " A book with a classic car - I know nothing about cars!..."



I really like muscle cars, so cars tend to get my attention. (To me, an old muscle car qualifies as a "classic.") A few..."

Thank you!! I have We Lie Here already on my TBR for this year, and I had no idea if that car was a classic or if it was involved at all in the plot.

One of the characters in Ben Aaronovitch's Rivers of London books drives a Jaguar Mark 2.

Crowley drives a 1926 Bentley in Good Omens: The Nice and Accurate Prophecies of Agnes Nutter, Witch.

(I did have to google the exact cars for those!)

Kinsey Millhone drives a VW Beetle in the Sue Grafton series.

Phryne Fisher drives a red 1923 Hispano-Suiza H6 inPhryne Fisher Murder Mystery Series Books 1-5 Collection Set by Kerry Greenwood Kerry Greenwood's mysteries