Around the Year in 52 Books discussion
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36. A book with six or more words in the title
I do have a lot of options! This is what I'm considering:- Dancing Lessons for the Advanced in Age (one of my favorite Czech authors)
- Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead
- A Short History of Tractors in Ukrainian (I'm sensing an Eastern Europe theme developing)
- Señor Vivo and the Coca Lord (okay, mixing it up now)
- Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil
- The Man in the High Castle
What would I recommend? I'm partial to If on a Winter's Night a Traveler and We Have Always Lived in the Castle
And to my Nephew Albert I Leave the Island What I Won Off Fatty Hagan in a Poker Game... 19 words must be a record
I think I'm going with Everyone Knows Your Mother Is a Witch or How Much of These Hills Is Gold unless there's a 2021 pubbed, long-titled book that strikes my fancy.Things I'd recommend that are further down the listopia or less well-known:
In the Shadow of the Banyan
A Tale for the Time Being
The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet
From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler
Young and Damned and Fair: The Life of Catherine Howard, Fifth Wife of King Henry VIII
Where the Dead Pause, and the Japanese Say Goodbye: A Journey
Everything You Want Me to Be
I have a lot of options for this prompt:The Girl with the Louding Voice (I'll probably read this one)
The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo
The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society
The Southern Book Club's Guide to Slaying Vampires
The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo
The Ocean at the End of the Lane
As for recommendations:
The 100-Year-Old Man Who Climbed Out the Window and Disappeared
The Ten Thousand Doors of January
The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes
Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe
The Girl Who Saved the King of Sweden
My likely choice right now is A Girl Is a Body of Water. I second the recommendations for Aristotle and Dante, and A Tale for the Time Being - both are faves
Please I have the option to slot in another Women’s Prize winner here - When I lived in Modern Times.
Options on my shelves:The Crimson Petal and the White
A Tale for the Time Being
True History of the Kelly Gang
The Book of Strange New Things
We Have Always Lived in the Castle
The Man in the High Castle
Library options:
A Traveler at the Gates of Wisdom
The One Hundred Years of Lenni and Margot
I Am, I Am, I Am: Seventeen Brushes with Death
Notes from a Young Black Chef: A Memoir
What's Left of Me Is Yours
Dear Friend, from My Life I Write to You in Your Life
I do have a lot of options! I'll probably go with The Case of the Missing Books by Ian Sansom, but I also have:The Time Traveller's Guide to Medieval England: A Handbook for Visitors to the Fourteenth Century by Ian Mortimer
The Last Days of the Romanov Dancers by Kerri Turner
The Other Side of the Dale by Gervase Phinn
Brother of the More Famous Jack by Barbara Trapido
All That Is Solid Melts into Air by Darragh McKeon
To The Bright Edge of the World by Eowyn Ivey
As for recommendations, I would absolutely recommend (all from my 4.5 or 5★ list:
The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society by Mary Ann Shaffer
The Shelly Bay Ladies Swimming Circle by Sophie Green
The Inaugural Meeting of the Fairvale Ladies Book Club also by Sophie Green
The Forgotten Letters of Esther Durrant by Kayte Nunn
All the Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr
The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency by Alexander McCall Smith
So You Don't Want to Go to Church Anymore: An Unexpected Journey by Wayne Jacobsen
In the Valley of Blue Gums by J.H. Fletcher
The Last Painting of Sara de Vos by Dominic Smith
The Book Woman of Troublesome Creek by Kim Michele Richardson
The Secret Runners of New York by Matthew Reilly
Yep lots of options for me too. Already on my Kindle are The Girl in the Italian Bakery or The Things We Wish Were True but I may use this to finally read Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil. I could also use a Flavia de Luce but I don't think I will.
Like others I have sooo many options for this one. I counted 70+ on my TBR!So I'm going to narrow it down to books without a subtitle - that gives me ~20 options.
The ones I'm most interested in at the moment are:
The Most Fun We Ever Had
Djinn Patrol on the Purple Line
The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo
So. Many. Options. Even limiting it to exactly six words doesn’t narrow down the list much so I’m not completely sure what I’ll use for this prompt.
I went through my TBR for this list and I limited it to that the book I chose also had to fill the criteria for the English edition if there were an English edition. Just to limit the choices :-)My options at the moment:
Den ökända historien om Frankie Landau-Banks ( The Disreputable History of Frankie Landau-Banks )
Det blå mellan himmel och hav ( The Blue Between Sky and Water )
Jag ångrar av hela mitt hjärta det där jag kanske gjort (no English edition available, title by my translation I regret with my whole heart that thing I might have done)
Arthur: gatuhunden som lämnade djungeln och hittade hem ( Arthur: The dog who crossed the jungle to find a home )
Sluta aldrig gå - Från gatan i Sao Paulo till Vindeln i Norrland ( Never Stop Walking: A Memoir of Finding Home Across the World )
I'll go with Travels with a Donkey in the Cevennes and Selected Travel Writings by Robert Louis Stevenson since I'm reading it with another group in 2021.
The Lost City of the Monkey God by Douglas Preston
Mod
Mod
I considered submitting a prompt with a similar title structure - The ____ of ____ ____ where the second set of blanks is a name.The Story of Edgar Sawtelle
The Secret Life of CeeCee Hawkes
The 7½ Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle
The Bookish Life of Nina Hill
The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo
The Overdue Life of Amy Byler
5 of those I read this year alone, and I could go on and on.
I just finished The Invisible Life of Addie Larue, and a highly recommend. It was so wonderful. It’s a book I can see myself rereading multiple times. Sidebar: Nancy, I think you’ll absolutely love it based on our mutual love of Nightingale!
Alicia it's on my list for next year (I just moved it to Goodreads award nominee), glad to know it's a must-read!
Anyone heard anything about the book The Particulars of Peter: Dance Lessons, DNA Tests, and Other Excuses to Hang Out with My Perfect Dog
1. What are you reading?I Am, I Am, I Am: Seventeen Brushes with Death
2. Did you have a lot of options for this prompt?
I really didn't...clearly I like snappy titles!
3. What would you recommend?
With Their Backs to the World: Portraits from Serbia, How to Fall Apart: Things I’ve Learned About Losing and Finding Love, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo etc, All the Light We Cannot See
I ended up reading Så som du hade berättat det för mig (ungefär) om vi hade lärt känna varandra innan du dog by Jonas Hassen Khemiri
Non-fiction will work really well here. These are already on my 2021 plan to readSay Nothing: A True Story of Murder and Memory in Northern Ireland
Being Mortal: Medicine and What Matters in the End
Born a Crime: Stories From a South African Childhood
This was the first challenge that I completed this year. I did so with The Phone Booth at the Edge of the World by Laura Imai Messina. Surprisingly enough, I did not find many books of fiction in my collection that satisfied this prompt, but I did spot a few: An Alchemy of Masques and Mirrors, All the Ugly and Wonderful Things, and A Girl Is a Body of Water.
Seems to me that most of the titles with 6 or more words could also be used for the you Read What?! prompt.... the titles get a little bit nutty sometimes. LOL.
Mod
Ok, this just popped up on a friend's to-read list: The Persecution and Assassination of Jean-Paul Marat as Performed by the Inmates of the Asylum of Charenton Under the Direction of the Marquis de Sade ... that may the longest title I've ever seen. 
I read...
, John GlattNot a book I would typically read but an employee of mine wanted me to read it as we had watched the documentary. Some insights in the book that weren't included in the doc, simple read but informative. I would recommend it.
1. What are you reading?When I Am Through with You
2. Did you have a lot of options for this prompt?
For 6 words? I had a fair amount! But I couldn't find any books that were more than 6 words!
because I liked the title.
I read The Knife of Never Letting Go by Patrick Ness. I had quite a few options, but I really wanted to fit this one in this year, so it was an easy choice.I've got loads of recommendations for this one! I loved all these, and couldn't narrow it down:
We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves
The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time
The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet
The Amazing Maurice & His Educated Rodents
My Sister Lives on the Mantelpiece
The Colour of Bee Larkham’s Murder
The Mirror World of Melody Black
I read Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress by Dai Sijie. It wasn't easy to find a book with 6 words; I had more books with 5 words.
I'm going to read She Caused a Riot: 100 Unknown Women Who Built Cities, Sparked Revolutions, and Massively Crushed It for this prompt. Oddly, I did have a lot of options on my TBR for this prompt... I was surprised. So things might still get shuffled...
But I'd recommend:
Quackery: A Brief History of the Worst Ways to Cure Everything - self-explanatory. Very interesting and pretty funny.
I'll Be Gone in the Dark: One Woman's Obsessive Search for the Golden State Killer - I didn't expect it to be so moving. Highly recommend.
The Girl With All the Gifts
White Fragility: Why It’s So Hard for White People to Talk About Racism
We Need to Talk About Kevin
Wild Things: The Art of Nurturing Boys
The Spy and the Traitor: The Greatest Espionage Story of the Cold War
The 7½ Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle
The Ocean at the End of the Lane
A Court of Thorns and Roses
Homicide: A Year on the Killing Streets
All Joy and No Fun: The Paradox of Modern Parenthood
Mod
On the subject of The _____ of _____ _____, I just heard an online talk yesterday by Margarita Montimore, author of Oona Out of Order. The British publishers wanted to use a title that fit the x of y format, so they used The Rearranged Life of Oona Lockhart. They thought it would appeal to people who liked those other "life" or "death" books. To me, it is a terrible idea, just causing confusion.
There seem to be trends, for instance a few years ago, all the "Girl" books - Girl on the Train, Gone Girl, Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, etc. There were also a lot of "light" books recently, - All the Light We Cannot See, The Light Between Oceans, How the Light Gets In, and I know there are more. I think a distinctive title is best but I guess publishers know that some readers want what is already familiar.
Fantasy books also often have a title these days x of y and z, such as A Court of Thorns and Roses. These came after the many x of y books, such as Game of Thrones and many others.
1. What are you reading? The Girls Are All So Nice Here2. Did you have a lot of options for this prompt? It was pretty easy to find books that would fit.
3. What would you recommend?
The Girl with All the Gifts
I Was Told It Would Get Easier
1. What are you reading? The House in the Cerulean Sea by T.J. Klune2. Did you have a lot of options for this prompt? Not really, I only had one other book that qualified on my to-read list, and I used it for a different category.
3. What would you recommend? Well I highly recommend The House in the Cerulean Sea it was AMAZING!
I also really enjoyed Dusk or Dark or Dawn or Day by Seanan McGuire that would qualify. It's also fairly short so it's a quick read, but thought-provoking.
Good Omens: The Nice and Accurate Prophecies of Agnes Nutter, Witch would also qualify with the full title, and it is an amazing book as well.
1. What are you reading? The Way I Used to Be2. Did you have a lot of options for this prompt? Not out of the books I already owned. I'm trying to get most of them read this year. I almost feel like I'm cheating with this one since the words are so short but it fits the prompt.
3. What would you recommend? The Ocean at the End of the Lane, Will My Cat Eat My Eyeballs? And other Questions about Dead Bodies, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, All the Light We Cannot See - those are some of the ones that come to mind. I feel like I read a lot of 5 word titled books but 6 seems hard to come by.
1. What are you reading? I Am Not Your Perfect Mexican Daughter2. Did you have a lot of options for this prompt? Lots if I include nonfiction
3. What would you recommend? A lot that have been mentioned already.
1. I read The Eye of the Elephant: An Epic Adventure in the African Wilderness2. Yes. I read all of the books listed below
3. I would recommend these for fiction:
Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead - Wild book. I used it for the Warwick Prize prompt
The Girl Who Wrote in Silk - historical fiction
The Secret Lives of Church Ladies - short stories
✅And Every Morning the Way Home Gets Longer and Longer - short story
These nonfiction books are all pretty good if you're interested in the topics:
✔The Book of Joy: Lasting Happiness in a Changing World
✔Panic in Level 4: Cannibals, Killer Viruses, and Other Journeys to the Edge of Science
✔Dear America: Notes of an Undocumented Citizen
✔Prisoners of Geography: Ten Maps That Tell You Everything You Need to Know About Global Politics
EDIT - I moved some books around, and for this prompt I used:
✅And Every Morning the Way Home Gets Longer and Longer - short story
1. What are you reading?I read The Southern Book Club's Guide to Slaying Vampires by Grady Hendrix
2. Did you have a lot of options for this prompt?
Yes, I was considering a few other options
3. What would you recommend?
The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society and The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo were the two others on my short-list.
Severina wrote: "1. What are you reading?I read The Southern Book Club's Guide to Slaying Vampires by Grady Hendrix
2. Did you have a lot of options for this prompt?
Yes, I was considering a few o..."
I second the recommendation for the first two books. I have not read The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo though.
Vanessa Yu's Magical Paris Tea Shop by Roselle Lim
was the book I slotted in here. I can not recommend it though.
For this one I read The Deeper the Water the Uglier the Fish, a good story about a very dysfunctional family. I have many book titles that would have worked here; in fact, a couple of them I'll use for other challenge prompts such as Sharks in the Time of Saviors and It Is Wood, It Is Stone. Some past favorites are: The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, In the Heart of the Sea: The Tragedy of the Whaleship Essex and
True History of the Kelly Gang.
A Wizard’s Guide to Defensive Baking is fun, fun, fun. A young adult book that is creatively young and fresh(ly baked). Murderous sourdough starter and gingerbread golems. What else can you ask for?There are many great books recommended here. I want to add To Say Nothing of the Dog for those in mood for a light adventure unlike any other.
1. What are you reading? Where the Grass Is Green and the Girls Are Pretty by Lauren Weisberger2. Did you have a lot of options for this prompt? No
3. What would you recommend?
Mod
2. Did you have a lot of options for this prompt? No- I should have paid more attention here! I was trying to find 6 words, not as part of a subtitle
3. What would you recommend? I barely found this one! But lots of good ideas upstream!
1. What are you reading? Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet by Jamie Ford.
2. Did you have a lot of options for this prompt?
There are a surprising number of long titles out there. Like Pamela, I wanted to avoid subtitles.
What would you recommend?
The book I read dealt simply with prejudice (bitter) and a moving love story (sweet). Also recommended: If Nobody Speaks of Remarkable Things; We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves; The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat and Other Clinical Tales; The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy; Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress
Around the Year in 52 Books
Books mentioned in this topic
If on a Winter’s Night a Traveler (other topics)The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet (other topics)
This Is How You Lose the Time War (other topics)
The Priory of the Orange Tree (other topics)
I Am Not Your Perfect Mexican Daughter (other topics)
More...
Authors mentioned in this topic
Mariko Tamaki (other topics)Jean M. Auel (other topics)
Fredrik Backman (other topics)
Robert Dugoni (other topics)
Jamie Ford (other topics)
More...
Listopia: https://www.goodreads.com/list/show/1...
Optional Questions:
1. What are you reading?
2. Did you have a lot of options for this prompt?
3. What would you recommend?