Around the Year in 52 Books discussion
2023 Plans
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J is Late to the Party
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Better late than never! Have fun with the challenge.
Thanks Bana! Always good to get encouragement. I've been meaning to do another of these challenges, but I believe the last one I actually participated in was 2017.I decided to jump onboard in August and see how far I could make it. At that time, I had just read 3 books for the year. So, I started out, on my break at work, going down the list and trying to find books for topics as well as topics for my 3 books.
I reread Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and then followed it with Through the Looking-Glass and What Alice Found There (which I had never read) because my daughter was acting a play, at school, based on those stories. I purchased a combined edition, with the classic pictures, from Half Price Books, so that we could both read it and that proved to be a good decision, since my daughter was cast as the Red Queen (from the second book), with most of her dialogue coming right from the text. These were pretty easy to slot in for the Light read and the based on chess topics, which they fit very well.
The third book I read this year was Welcome to the Monkey House. Kurt Vonnegut Jr. is possibly my favorite author, and I thought that falling back into my comfort zone would be a good way to ease myself back into reading regularly. At the time, I was taking my daughter to the Seattle Storm Summer Training Camp, a few cities north of us, and had a few hours to burn while I waited for her and opted to spend those at the local library, or in coffee shops. So, I needed a book and grabbed the first thing I saw but hadn't read under Vonnegut.
This one doesn't fit the topic I slotted it into perfectly. The issue is that I had, initially, hand written the topics - and I put them in my own words. This book is not Vonnegut's first novel, that was Player Piano. But it does feature his very first published work, a short story, as well as a few more that actually proceed Player Piano, so I figured I'd fudge the rules a bit,
The next topic that I targeted was the Western. It's not a genre that I read, but I do know a book that was very good and fit the topic well in The Alloy of Law - which I had already read. But I was also aware that a sequel had been released to that, which I had not read; The Lost Metal.Those are part of a larger series by Brandon Sanderson called the Mystborn Series, and I had read books 4 through 6. With The Lost Metal being book 7, I decided to go back and read books 1-3 for other topics on the year. I started each of them intending to read it for the easy topic of Four Colors on the Cover, but inevitably found a better topic, once I was a little way into the book.
Much gratitude to whoever it was that read The Final Empire ahead of me and posted it in the Best Book of the month thread. Either of the other two books in the series could have easily fit the Large Animal prompt, but I chose to use The Hero of Ages there as TenSoon featured more in that book. The Well of Ascension wouldn't appear to fit well for the prompt that I put it into, A book with a Body of Water in the Title, but it actually fits that prompt exceptionally, once we find out what exactly the well is.
At this point in the challenge, I was well into the habit of reading. My new goal was to read as much as possible, although at the same time I did not want to burn myself out. One of the contributing factors to my reading falling off was that I found myself reading too many books to fulfill prompts instead of for the enjoyment. The goal is to keep up the momentum.To do this, I started reading three books at a time; one as an audiobook, one as an ebook, and one as a physical book. This allowed me to take advantage of any time when reading could be accomplished.
To keep the different narratives separate in my head, I also chose to rotate between three different genres; Fantasy, Sci-fi, and Horror.
For Fantasy, I was already reading the Mystborn series, but then rolled on into the Malazan Book of the Fallen series. I chose these because it is a big series with very long books that made good use of my Audible credits.
Gardens of the Moon proved to be a good fit for week 24, due to having so many POV characters. It almost hits all four options, but does not have a tailor.
Deadhouse Gates was an obvious choice for week 28. This series is Grimdark and how! I read a lot of books, this year that could fill this prompt, but I think this book was the darkest.
Finally, Memories of Ice was slotted into week 11. Again, there are quite a few places that it could have been but ultimately it sits here thanks to Dujek Onearm.
I didn't continue the series after book 3, as I found myself getting pretty burned out on it. But it also proved to be a good place to stop since so many of the main characters had died by that point.
For the horror side of things, I mostly read Stephen King. I have had a long running side goal to have read all of his books through the 1980s, which this year I pushed to being a goal of reading all of his books published through 1991. I read 6 Stephen King books this year, and if I read 6 more in 2024, I will achieve that goal.
Christine was the first King book I read this year and I LOVED it. It doesn't hurt that I am a classic car guy and have my own project car that I was working on while listing to the book. I might have made some different narrative choices than King, had this been a book that I had written, but I do think his choices work.
The Dark Half was the book I read next. I wanted to read Needful Things, but found out that this one takes place between Cujo and that book and didn't want to inadvertently stumble across any spoilers. This book is Kings reimagining of Frankenstein, and while I respect some choices he made with the story, it did not work at all for me. The one high point, though, are the bits and pieces we get of the 'other' novel - trashy pulp maybe, but that's the book I really wanted to read.
It was a book that I had been reading and had almost gotten through before falling off reading a few years back. There is a lot of good there, but like a lot of long books it needs a good edit and absolutely drags. There are pointless bits, redundant bits, and extremely unnecessary bits. But I am glad that I can finally say that I read it.
Needful Things was a good reminder of why I love Stephen King. When he is on it, he can really write amazing books. this one is a sort of retelling of The Master and Margarita, but it is also very different from that book. Despite being very long and having so many characters, it just works and no parts seemed unnecessary. This also concludes the Castle Rock sub-arch of King's bibliography and I am glad that I came into this book having read the other parts, as they added to it.
A Stir of Echoes isn't a Stephen King book in that he didn't write it. Although if you didn't know that fact, you'd be hard pressed to not think that it was. The influence of Richard Matheson on Mr. King is very obvious.
Four Past Midnight is a book that I was both looking forward to and dreading to read. I think that the Novella format is ideal for King as it prevents him from being too wordy while still leaving enough room to develop his ideas. Many of King's best work are Novellas. This book had some very strong stories and some very weak ones - granting it a middling overall score.
Cycle of the Werewolf was my first choice for the Week 3 prompt, as I have always wanted to read more werewolf books. There are so many big name and popular monster, vampire, and ghost books - but I can't seem to find much for werewolf. I was disappointed in the length of it, though maybe I lucked out that it wasn't another IT,
The final Stephen King book I read for 2023 was The Talisman. That really soured me on him for a while and the one good thing I can say about it was that it was at least better than The Dark Half.
For the Science Fiction part of my reading cycle, I went with a favorite of mine, Iain M. Banks's Culture series. There are 10 books in that series, and I had already read 5 of them. So, I was trying to complete the series.Culture, while connected by setting, are not actually dependent on each other. So, after reading the first 5 books in order, I started to skip around to the ones I thought sounded more interesting.
Surface Detail was the perfect choice for the Week 43 prompt, since it is about a person working to avenge their own murder. Talk about character motivation!
Matter was my initial choice for Week 22, and it managed to keep that position. This proved to be another very strong read from Banks.
The third and final culture book I read for 2023 was The Hydrogen Sonata. This one I wasn't that impressed with. It falls more under a category I call 'great idea, didn't work out as well as expected.' This was always my choice for the week 38 prompt.
It's interesting, to me at least, that my 2023 reading started with me reading the Alice books for my daughter's 5th grade year in school but then moved into me reading the Hunger Games books for her 6th grade year.At the start of the 6th grade, my daughter's English teacher told them that they would be reading The Hunger Games, so I put my name on the list for the library to line it up and read it at the same time. (I am a bit too old to have already read it at the intended age, though many of my friends read those when the movies came out).
I preceeded this by reading Battle Royale, which I have heard was a major influence on that series as well as Stephen King's The Long Walk and The Running Man (which I read a few years back). This proved an excellent read, I originally had it slotted in for the translated book, but ultimately it found a good home in Week 21 (Asian Diaspora Author).
I was lucky in that The Hunger Games fulfilled the prompt for Week 9, as I would be reading it anyways. Catching Fire was perfect fit for Week 47, since the geometric shape of the arena is pivotal to the plot. While Mockingjay is an obvious option for Week 12.
I didn't even know about The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes, when I started reading the series - since my information was a bit out of date. I found out when we saw a preview for that film at the local cinema while I was still on book 1. This was also an easy one to slot in, as it was a good fit for the week 4 prompt.
At this point in the challenge, I started actually focusing on completing some topics. I had gotten lucky in choosing to read books that I wanted to read and then finding a place to slot them in, but how long could I keep that luck up? Plus, there were a few topics that looked rather hard to fulfill.I initially chose to slot I'm Glad My Mom Died into the Week 52 prompt (surprising title), until I realized that it could also fit week 41 prompt. To be honest, it might have been the only book that fit that prompt that I was interested in reading. But I am glad that I did read this book, which was an unlikely read for me if not for this challenge, and it was also very good.
Next, I slotted in Notes from the Internet Apocalypse for Week 52. But again, I found that it worked better for another week (44). I was surprised to find how few books have non-horizontal titles. Especially considering how many older books have multiple covers. Still, so much of modern book covers fit set patterns that make them obviously fit within certain sub-genres.
Hocus Pocus was another book that I had planned for Week 52. Kurt Vonnegut Jr. is known for his odd titles, and I have a lot of his books on my kindle waiting to be read. It wasn't until I realized that the title was actually Hocus Pocus, or What's the Hurry Son? that it became clear that it would be a better fit for Week 7.
Starter Villain was my first and only choice for Week 51. I'm never good at keeping up with new releases, but my first thought when pushed to read a new book was, 'what has John Scalzi released recently? In fact, I had The Kaiju Preservation Society slotted in for Week 52, until it became apparent that I wouldn't be getting far enough up in line in time to read it by the end of the year.
Heavy Weather was the only book I ever had planned for week 2, mostly because I read very little in 2022, so there wasn't much to choose from. Still, P.G. Wodehouse is one of my comfort reads and I often fall back on him when I want to just enjoy the read.
This is the point in the year when I started getting concerned over my chances to actually complete the challenge. On one hand, I had read a LOT and hadn't stopped reading since getting back into it. But I didn't have much to show for it.The big flaw of my reading choices was length. The Malazan, Culture, and most of the Stephen King books were quite long and that meant that, while my pages read for the year was really impressive, I had not actually read that many books.
I had just two months left on the year but around 22 more prompts to fill and that meant I needed to be reading 3 books a week. That isn't an unreasonable feat, as I have certainly read a book in a day or 2 in three days on many occasions, but it did mean that I needed to pick more books of more reasonable length.
And when I think of a fast read, my first thought is always Robert Asprin. I burned through all of his Myth and Phule series, that had been released up until that point, back in 6th and 7th grade.
So, I picked up an omnibus of the first 3 Thieves world books and followed those with the next 3 Myth books that were released but I had not yet read. This puts him on par with Stephen King for author I have read the most books by, this year, at six.
I also fell back on another comfort read with Dame Agatha Christie, alternating between books featuring Poirot, Ms Marple, or Tommy and Tuppence.
Jules Verne proved to be another source of easy, quick reads. I went to him for a book translated from another language but found quite a few that fit other prompts as well.
Finally, thanks to prompt for week 31, I found Ernest Hemingway who proved to be another good source of fast, exciting, and easy reads.
Anna wrote: "Welcome back to AtY!"Thanks, Anna!
J wrote: "For the horror side of things, I mostly read Stephen King. I have had a long running side goal to have read all of his books through the 1980s, which this year I pushed to being a goal of reading a..."I read Christine years ago, and it scared the heck out of me. The movie, however, was a major disappointment.
Robin wrote: "I read Christine years ago, and it scared the heck out of me. The movie, however, was a major disappointment."There's a part of me that wants the remake to be really good. But I find that, if the book is very good, I don't really need a movie anymore. Its the books with a good idea but a few missteps that need a movie the most.
This brings my little narrative to nobody in particular towards its obvious conclusion. At the end of the 52 week list is where things get more difficult. Well, unless you've been a good kid and worked on the hard topics along the way.I finally sat down and picked books for all the topics. Some of which were well outside my comfort zone and many of which were rather hard to get.
For the challenge that required us to read a book that took place in three different centuries, I decided to nix any books that didn't take place in this universe (most fantasy) and anything that takes place in some made up future (most sci-fi). Then I decided to further focus the challenge down to a book that takes place in the 19th, a book in the 20th, and a book in the 21st century.
Then I hit on a really cool idea. What if these three books covered the same topic?
I chose From the Earth to the Moon (19th), The First Men in the Moon (20th), and A Fall of Moondust (21st). Three classic sci-fi novels which predict what it would be like for humans to travel to the moon in three different ways.
Only trouble being, I couldn't get ahold of a copy of the Arthur C. Clarke book in time to finish it this year.
So instead, I ready Diary by Chuck P. It was what was available. I read another Chuck P. book for the Unesco city book, in Invisible Monsters. For that one, I decided on Seattle, since I live adjacent to Seattle and know all the key landmarks (and I like to judge the writers on how well they actually portray Seattle).
For the foreign language book, I had initially penciled in a Franz Kafka work, and to my surprise, I ended up sticking to the plan and reading The Castle. A bit of a challenging, longer read, but I was ahead of the game here.
For the Spice Girls prompt, I read Coraline. This happened almost purely by accident as I fell asleep with something playing on YouTube and woke up to a Coraline Audiobook. I knew it was a book I needed to read, but finding myself actually reading it was good motivation to actually go ahead and read it.
Plus it made a nice bookend, considering that I started with Alice in Wonderland.
Around the Year in 52 Books
Books mentioned in this topic
Diary (other topics)Diary (other topics)
The First Men in the Moon (other topics)
A Fall of Moondust (other topics)
Invisible Monsters (other topics)
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Authors mentioned in this topic
Jules Verne (other topics)Ernest Hemingway (other topics)
Agatha Christie (other topics)
Robert Asprin (other topics)
P.G. Wodehouse (other topics)
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Right now I am 6 books away from the 52, so I'm feeling positive about my chances.
1. A book set in a location that begins with A, T, or Y
2. A book by an author you read in 2022
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3. A book that fits a suggestion that didn't make the 2023 list
4. A book with an interracial relationship
5. A book with 4 or more colors on the cover
6. A book where books are important
7. A book with ONE of the five "W" question words in the title
8. An author's debut book
9. A book nominated for an award beginning with W
10. A book related to one of the Spice Girls' "personalities"
11. A book about a person/character with a disability
12. A book connected to birds, bees, or bunnies
13. A book that has an object that is repeated on the cover
14. A book with a con, deception, or fake
15. Three books, each of which is set in the 19th century
16. Three books, each of which is set in the 20th century
17. Three books, each of which is set in the 21st century
18. A book related to science
19. A book related to the arts
20. A book with a cover or title that includes a route of travel
21. A book by an Asian diaspora author
22. A book with a faceless person on the cover
23. A book with a body of water in the title
24. A character that might be called a Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, or Spy
25. A book with a tropical setting
26. A book related to pride
27. A book by an author from continental Europe
28. A book that is dark
29. A book that is light
30. A book related to a chess piece
31. A book found by inputting a favorite author on https://www.literature-map.com
32. A book set in a UNESCO City of Literature
33. A book by an author with a first name popular in 1923
34. A novella
35. A book with a school subject in the title
36. A book that has been translated from another language
37. A book with the theme of returning home
38. A book with the sun, moon, or stars on the cover
39. A western
40. A book with a full name in the title
41. A book from the NPR “Books We Love” lists
42. A book related to a ghost, spirit, phantom, or specter
43. A book that involves a murder
44. A book where the cover design includes text that is not completely horizontal
45. A book whose author has published more than 7 books
46. A title that contains a word often found in a recipe
47. A book related to a geometric shape
48. A book with an unusually large version of an animal in the story
49. A book posted in one of the ATY Best Book of the Month threads in 2022 or 2023
50. A second book that fits your favorite prompt
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51. A book published in 2023
52. A book with an unusual or surprising title