Brainstorming for 2021

[Stina]

For those of us in the USA, I know it seems like forever till January gets here, but we really should get our 2021 genres picked out soon. We probably won't be doing any local meetings until well into the spring, so let's open this up to everybody in this group. Even if you've been lurking. A new year is coming, and this is the perfect opportunity to join in the fun!

In this thread, post all your ideas for genres we can assign to months. Yes, I know "genre" isn't quite the right word anymore. We've morphed into PromptLand or ThemeLand, but the name of the game is still GenreLand. We are pretty much just looking for reading genres, themes, categories, topics, etc. that allow everybody to choose their own reading for the month so we can share our literary finds with each other. We have found that it works well to have a mix of the oddly specific and the open to broad interpretation.

I'll start with tossing out a bunch of ideas, and I hope you will follow suit. After a week or two, I will start a thread for a sort of semifinals round where each of you can upvote a certain number (depending on how many there are in total) of others' suggestions. Then sometime in December we will do a final picks round. (The format will be determined by the level of participation.)

[Stina]

My suggestions:
Anti-Racist
Second Chance
Prolific Author
Bird on Cover
Random Selection
Art
Red Cover
TBR Veteran
Queer
Dark Academia
Science
Comfort Read
Book Club
Obscure
Brewing/Fermentation
AI
Cold Setting
Non-WWII Historical
Historical Romance
Long Title
Novella
Neurodivergent
Spicy

[Cheryl]

I cannot guarantee that I will be reading any of these books in the appropriate month, but I am hoping that they will feed the Stina's Challenge List, which is the only one I try to meet.

I am interested in particular in Anti-Racist, Neurodivergent, Non-WWII historical, and Second Chance.

I also know that I need to read more from a variety of perspectives and cultures. Sometimes that means literary works from another culture, sometimes more biographical/autobiographical. And sometimes, for the more historical or deep dives, which are outside of what we are familiar with, even a travelogue or the story of an outsider learning about the culture or history is helpful because it gives me an anchor in the uncharted seas of exploration.

[Cobwebs-Iced-Across-SpaceTime]

SF: Space Opera
SF: Hard SF (strongly Scientific)
Mythology/Legends: Africa
Japan
China
India
Other Asia
South America/Central America: Indigenous
Horror: Cosmic
Science Fiction Fantasy
Dark Fantasy: Indigenous

[Amy]

Have we done Travel?
A book focusing on a specific food ingredient (not a cookbook) - like Salt: A World History; Cod: A Biography of the Fish that Changed the World; Tomatoland: How Modern Industrial Agriculture Destroyed Our Most Alluring Fruit; Banana: The Fate of the Fruit That Changed the World. Or food culture - like Chop Suey: A Cultural History of Chinese Food in the United States or Pizza: A Global History

[Angela]

I have been lurking here forever, but will try to join in for 2021... love some of the ideas thus far, in particular the folklore/mythology and food not cookbook...I was going to suggest LGBTQ, and Stina beat me to it.
Here are a few others I thought about
-a translation
-a new to you author
-a new/first time author
-book about a dream career

I will be back to vote !!

[Stina]

Amy, I think we've had Travel or something similar before, but there isn't a rule against repeats.

Food Microhistory? I'll add Coffeeland to that list of books. :-)

[Andy]

A few from me. Apologies if loads of these have been done before.

Same title as a song.
Gamebook.
Translated from early to modern English.
Set in a city you've never visited.
Monkeys!
A posthumous sequel written by a different author.
Graphic novel about a child.
Written in or includes a constructed language.