Around the Year in 52 Books discussion
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Trish H's Can I Manage Four in a Row challenge
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4. A book that fits your favorite prompt that did not make the list - Les Misérables - ****
Okay, so full disclosure, I did start this this year, but on the theory I read over 500pg of it in 2022, I think it's a fair entry! I'm glad I read it, and enjoyed the majority of it.
Prompts it fits - A book you meant to read in 2021, A book in translation: the first because I did mean to finish it before 31 December, but failed; the second, as it was originally written in French.
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This is one of my favourite Rivers of London books, mainly because it's set around where I grew up.
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11. A book from historical fiction genre - And the Rest is History - ***
I'm reviewing these two together, as they pretty much follow on from each other. St Mary's has always switched between hilarious and dark, but these two are much more on the dark side of that.
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I struggled with this more than I expected, but I'll still try to read more Allingham. In the meantime, two of the main characters in this are Albert Campion and George Abbershaw.
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Hmm. Not awfully exciting, but too many of the characters were selfish idiots. Probably why it only has 864 ratings.
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So this is based on my theory that the Northern Lights are a source of light!
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A great little book about loving books, empathy and caring about others.
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Chaos on CatNet - North America - ****
Notes from Underground - European Russia - *
Death Before Wicket - Australia - **
Of these, I enjoyed the CatNet book the most. Death before Wicket was something of a struggle, and Notes from the Underground are four hours of my reading life that I'm never going to get back.
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The latest Rivers of London book, published this April. I enjoyed it, although it didn't quite flow as well as some of the others.
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37. A book that uses all five vowels in the title and/or author's name - Everything Under the Heavens - ****
A, E, I and U are in the title, O is in the author name (Stabenow). I really enjoyed this one.
33. The next book in a series - By the Shores of the Middle Sea - ***
Read straight on from the previous book in the series due to cliffhangers. I still enjoyed it, but I wasn't quite as convinced by it as I was the first one.
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It did take me a second to realise McCall had two sets of double letters. Sigh.
Alexander McCall Smith does Scandi Crime...without the doom, the gloom...
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Science Fiction, about Mars and exploring Mars (along with other stuff). The main character is female and an engineer, and her daughter is an astronomer as well as performing various other scientific functions.
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Clark has written in this world before, but this was the first full-length novel. Steampunk and magic combined, in a completely different take than normal.
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103pg. The story wasn't quite to my taste, but the author has such a great sense of setting, and I love her various stories with a Vietnamese take on fantasy and SF
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Next in series, where I read its predecessor in February 2021. Much more like the old Longmire, than the two previous to it.
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I will admit, I liked the setting and the story more than the central romance, but it definitely counts. And the protagonists do declare their love for eachother towards the end.
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Doughnuts. There are many, many doughnuts in this book. Plus, wonderful descriptions of Asian food in the St Gabriel Valley.
I didn't expect a book where the key themes were aliens, doughnuts, deals with the Devil and music to work, but I loved it.
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An interesting take on Sleeping Beauty
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Heavily steeped in Lipan Apache stories and myths
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Maggie is a PI on her first case.
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A quick and easy cozy read, where the murder was secondary.
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I bought this when it first came out (at a signing in Birmingham), but it's taken this long to read it. I hadn't realised that the "plague" would be so similar to COVID, though!
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Scholomance #2. I'm looking forward to the third one to round off the trilogy
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Part two of the Raybearer duology. The POV character, Tarisai, has the title "Empress Redemptor" (for #3 The Empress).
Other characters include the Emperor and the High Priestess.
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First published 2004.
This is one of those series that starts well, but even by book two (which I also read this week), it's going downhill
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Listed by Tsipi in Best Books of March 2022: https://www.goodreads.com/topic/show/...
Sadly, I didn't really enjoy it - I loved the world, but I just don't like gangster books.
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Book 1 - The LAND Beyond - ***
Book 2 - To the LAND of Long Lost Friends - ***
Enjoyable reads, both of them, with a slight preference for Book 2
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As a long-term sufferer, I found this book very helpful on a personal level
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Centred around a cruise of the Aegean Islands. Unfortunately, while it started well, and carried on well for about 85% of the book, the authors obviously got bored, and just told you whodunnit in the third-person, without any input from the main characters. I felt rather cheated.
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I'd read this before, but I enjoyed it even more this time.
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First published in 1913 and contemporary to that date
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This entry in the series has two parallel mysteries: one being handled by Vish Puri himself, and the other by his Mummy-ji, who is in her seventies. In the end, she's the one that solves the more high-profile case, despite her family trying to persuade her that she was imagining it all.
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This year's Hugo Best Novel, which is now showing up on the Powells awards page. Sad to say, I didn't enjoy it anything like as much as the first one in the duology, and the ending felt rushed. However, I'm obviously an outlier in that view.
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Actually, another of the Hugo winners this year. The non-human is the Robot of the series name (Monk and Robot).
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Intense emotion - check
Terror with pleasure - well, certainly a lot of terror, but there are pleasurable moments.
Death - lots
Romance - one major one
Darkly picturesque scenery - a sailing ship trapped alone at sea
Macabre, and definitely eerie and gloomily atmospheric!
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Excellent young adult Afro-futurist urban fantasy
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The middle book in the Kingston Cycle, which was one of my favourite discoveries among the Hugo nominees this years. Central to the story is the Royal Knights of the Kingdom trying to defend the country against a massive storm/blizzard, and the weather continues to worsen until the threat of an even larger storm towards the end of the book (which is resolved in the final one of the series)
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I suspect I enjoyed the setting and the mythology more than the story, but it wasn't bad.
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This wouldn't have occurred to me for this prompt until I found it on the Listopia, but thinking about it, it works on two levels. First, the children's game, and second, the game that Frank Abignale played with the authories. Sure, it's veracity is in question, but it was an interesting read!
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Trees are about the largest flora we're going to meet, and this was a fascinating look under the surface of the forests and woods, to the trees themselves.
36. 2 books related to flora and fauna - Book 2 - All Creatures Great and Small - ****
This was the fauna half, dealing with the life of a country vet in the late-1930s.
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I will admit, trying to figure out the difference between Flora and Fauna, and Earth Day was a bit interesting. In the end, I chose this one for the Earth Day prompt, as it was about a project to improve biodiversity, rather than just the individual animals/birds/insects/etc. It's a fascinating story, but it shows the stark contrast between the way to improve the UK for nature, and the will to do so.
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The book wasn't as good as the previous ones in the series, but it does have an ice sculpture of a Horse & Rider on the cover, which is in the list on the topic page.
I may change this out for a penguin if I get a chance to read Away with the Penguins, but it'll do for now.
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By my count, this fits the prompt four ways:
- The title
- The glass plates on the cover
- The fact that the history is about analysing those glass plates, which were taken by telescopes with glass lenses
- And finally, some of the women finally broke the glass ceiling, to gain awards and academic positions in astronomy
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Definitely on the creepy side.
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I know a lot of people love this book, but I'm not one of them. Until about halfway through it was a one-star, but it made it to two by the end.
Around the Year in 52 Books
Books mentioned in this topic
Practical Magic (other topics)Practical Magic (other topics)
Mexican Gothic (other topics)
Mexican Gothic (other topics)
The Glass Universe: The Hidden History of the Women Who Took the Measure of the Stars (other topics)
More...
Total: 52/52
January
1. A book with a main character whose name starts with A, T, or Y - The Crime At Black Dudley, Margery Allingham - 24/02/22
2. A book connected to a book you read in 2021 - Next to Last Stand, Craig Johnson - 13/06/22
3. A book with 22 or more letters in the title - Lies, Damned Lies, and History, Jodi Taylor - 13/01/22
4. A book that fits your favorite prompt that did not make the list - Les Misérables, Victor Hugo - 10/01/22
5. A book by an author with two sets of double letters in their name - The Department of Sensitive Crimes, Alexander McCall Smith - 14/03/2022
February
6. A book with an image of a source of light on the cover - The Saga of the Volsungs with The Saga of Ragnar Lothbrok, Unknown - 09/03/22
7. A book related to psychology, neuroscience or the mind - Depressive Illness: The Curse Of The Strong, Tim Cantopher - 10/08/22
8. 3 books set on three different continents - Book 1 - Chaos on CatNet, Naomi Kritzer - 27/02/22
9. 3 books set on three different continents - Book 2 - Notes from Underground, Fyodor Dostoevsky - 28/2/22
March
10. 3 books set on three different continents - Book 3 - Death Before Wicket, Kerry Greenwood - 01/04/22
11. A book from historical fiction genre - And the Rest is History, Jodi Taylor - 18/02/22
12. A book related to glass - The Glass Universe: The Hidden History of the Women Who Took the Measure of the Stars, Dava Sobel - 12/12/22
13. A book about a woman in STEM - Red Planet Run, Dana Stabenow - 16/05/2022
April
14. A book with fewer than 5000 ratings on Goodreads - Hrafnkel's Saga and Other Icelandic Stories, Unknown - 18/02/22
15. A book without a person on the cover - Foxglove Summer, Ben Aaronovitch - 11/01/21
16. A book related to Earth Day - Wilding: The Return of Nature to a British Farm, Isabella Tree - 28/10/22
17. A book from NPR's Book Concierge - A Spindle Splintered, Alix E Harrow - 03/06/22
May
18. A book by an Asian or Pacific Islander author - The Cat Who Saved Books, Sosuke Natsukawa -
19. A book that involves alternate reality, alternate worlds, or alternate history - A Master of Djinn, P Djeli Clark - 29/05/22
20. A fiction or nonfiction book that is set during 1900 -1951 - Trent's Last Case, E.C. Bentley - 16/08/22
21. A book with one of the Monopoly tokens on the cover - Clobbered by Camembert, Avery Aames - 27/10/22
22. A book with a Jewish character or author - Practical Magic, Alice Hoffman - 14/12/22
June
23. A book that features loving LGBTQIA+ relationship - Winter's Orbit, Everina Maxwell - 28/06/22
24. A book related to inclement weather - Stormsong, C.L. Polk - 02/08/22
25. A book less than 220 pages OR more than 440 pages - Fireheart Tiger, Aliette de Bodard - 29/05/22
26. 2 books with the same word in the title - Book 1 - The Land Beyond, Dana Stabenow - 11/05/2022
July
27. 2 books with the same word in the title - Book 2 - To the Land of Long Lost Friends, Alexander McCall Smith - 12/08/22
28. A book that won an award from Powell's list of book awards - A Desolation Called Peace, Arkady Martine - 16/07/22
29. A book set on or near a body of water - A Cruise to Die for, Charlotte and Aaron Elkins - 15/08/55
30. A book related to mythology - A Snake Falls to Earth, Darcie Little Badger - 21/07/22
August
31. A book published at least 10 years ago - The Family Trade, Charles Stross - 03/08/22
32. A book where the main character is a female detective/private eye/police officer - Crime Wave, Rose Pressy Betancourt - 21/07/22
33. The next book in a series - By the Shores of the Middle Sea, Dana Stabenow - 27/04/22
34. A book with an academic setting or with a teacher that plays an important role - The Last Graduate, Naomi Novik - 27/05/22
35. 2 books related to flora and fauna - Book 1 - The Hidden Life of Trees, Peter Wohlleben - 15/11/22
September
36. 2 books related to flora and fauna - Book 2 - All Creatures Great and Small, James Herriot - 16/10/22
37. A book that uses all five vowels in the title and/or author's name - Everything Under the Heavens, Dana Stabenow - 27/04/22
38. A book by a Latin American author - Gods of Jade and Shadow, Silvia Moreno-Garcia - 07/10/22
39. A book from the TIME list of 100 Best YA Books of All Time - Akata Witch, Nnedi Okorafor - 17/09/22
October
40. A book related to one of the 22 Tarot Major Arcana cards - Redemptor, Jordan Ifueko - 22/07/22
41. A book with a theme of food or drink - Light from Uncommon Stars, Ryka Aoki - 30/06/22
42. A book with a language or nationality in the title - Mexican Gothic, Silvia Moreno-Garcia - 04/12/22
43. A book set in a small town or rural area - Halloween Moon, Kathi Daley - 05/04/22
44. A book with gothic elements - The Devil and the Dark Water, Stuart Turton - 12/09/22
November
45. A book related to a game - Catch Me if You Can, Frank W. Abagnale, Stan Redding - 15/08/22
46. A book with a non-human as one of the main characters - A Psalm for the Wild-Built, Becky Chambers - 02/06/22
47. A book with handwriting on the cover - The Ocean at the End of the Lane, Neil Gaiman - 17/08/22
48. A book posted in one of the ATY Best Book of the Month threads in 2021 or 2022 - Jade City, Fonda Lee - 09/08/22
December
49. A book connected to the phrase "Here (There) Be Dragons" - Moreta: Dragonlady of Pern, Anne McCaffrey - 28/07/22
50. A book that involves aging, or a character in their golden years - The Case of the Love Commandos, Tarquin Hall - 23/02/22
51. A book published in 2022 - Amongst Our Weapons, Ben Aaronovitch - 26/04/22
52. A book with a time-related word in the title - The Mystery Before Christmas, Kathi Daley - 25/07/22