AnneDC's 2021 Reading: Chapter 1

Happy New Year to LT friends! I cannot say how happy I am to see the back of 2020. I am looking forward to a fresh start, here on LT and in every other aspect of my world.

Last year I at least set up a thread, kept my reading list up to date, participated in the TIOLI challenges, and read 75 books. But I spent very little time on the site and could not keep up with threads at all. This year I will do better!

I am Anne, I live in Washington DC, I read a lot or at least I used to, and I joined this group in 2010.

I'm very happy to be back for another year and I welcome visitors new and old.

Books Read in 2020

January
1. Lost Children Archive - Valeria Luiselli
2. Jazz - Toni Morrison (R)
3. The Hemingses of Monticello - Annette Gordon-Reed
4. Theater Shoes - Noel Streatfeild (R)
5. Purple Hibiscus - Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
6. The Golden Compass - Phillip Pullman
7. Transit - Anna Seghers
8. The Children's Hour - Lillian Hellman (R)
9. Longitude: The True Story of a Lone Genius Who Solved the Greatest Scientific Problem of His Time - Dava Sobel
10. I Capture the Castle - Dodie Smith
11. Team of Rivals - Doris Kearns Goodwin

February
12. The Vanishing Half - Brit Bennett
13. Paradise - Toni Morrison (R)
14. Devil in a Blue Dress - Walter Mosley
15. Seven Guitars - August Wilson
16. Locking Up Our Own: Crime and Punishment in Black America - James Forman, Jr.
17. Kindred - Octavia Butler
18. Red at the Bone - Jacqueline Woodson
19. A Promised Land - Barack Obama
20. Difficult Women - Roxane Gay
21. Astrophysics for People in a Hurry - Neil deGrasse Tyson
22. The Nickel Boys - Colson Whitehead

March
23. The Unexpected Inheritance of Inspector Chopra - Vaseem Singh
24. The Perplexing Theft of the Jewel in the Crown - Vaseem Singh
25. Love - Toni Morrison (R)
26. Prairie Fires: The American Dreams of Laura Ingalls Wilder - Caroline Fraser
27. Autumn - Ali Smith
28. Fences - August Wilson
29. The Shadow of the Pomegranate - Jean Plaidy
30. A Nail, A Rose - Madeleine Bourdouxhe
31. The Water Knife - Paolo Bacigalupi
32. Between the Woods and the Water - Patrick Leigh Fermor

April
33. Abigail Adams - Woody Holton
34. The Woman Who Wouldn't Die - Colin Cotterill
35. What Katy Did - Susan Coolidge
36. Regency Buck - Georgette Heyer
37. Faro's Daughter - Georgette Heyer
38. Transfer - Naomi Shihab Nye
39. True History of the Kelly Gang - Peter Carey
40. Girl, Woman, Other - Bernardine Evaristo
41. Play it As it Lays - Joan Didion
42. How Democracies Die - Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt
43. Colour Scheme - Ngaio Marsh
44. Radio Free Vermont - Bill McKibben
45. Two Trains Running - August Wilson
46. SPQR - Mary Beard
47. Burnt Sugar - Avni Doshi

May
48. A Room Full of Bones - Elly Griffiths
49. The Age of Doubt - Andrea Camilleri
50. Cockroaches - Harry Hole
51. A Mercy - Toni Morrison (R)
52. Persuasion - Jane Austen (R)
53. Carry Me Across the Water - Ethan Canin
54. Exit West - Mohsin Hamid
55. The Duke and I - Julia Quinn
56. Lincoln - David Herbert Donald
57. The Winter Sea -Susanna Kearsley
58. Strangers on a Train - Patricia Highsmith
59. The River at Green Knowe - L. M. Boston
60. The Library Book - Susan Orlean
61. The Return- Hisham Matar
62. Henry Huggins - Beverly Cleary (R)

June

63. The Photograph - Penelope Lively
64. How the Word is Passed: A Reckoning with the History of Slavery Across America - Clint Smith
65. No Country for old Men - Cormac McCarthy
66. Impeached: The Trial of President Andrew Johnson and the Fight for Lincoln's Legacy - David O. Stewart
67. Mary Barton - Elizabeth Gaskell (R)
68. Home - Toni Morrison (R)
69. How the South Won the Civil War - Heather Cox Richardson
70. The Story of the Lost Child - Elena Ferrante
71. Etiquette and Espionage - Gail Carriger (R)
72. Why Won't You Apologize? - Harriet Lerner
73. Four Fish: The Future of the Last Wild Food - Paul Greenberg

July

74. Assassination Vacation - Sarah Vowell (R)
75. A Month in the Country - J.L. Carr
76. Thirteen Ways of Looking - Colum McCann
77. Red Summer: The Summer of 1919 and the Awakening of Black America - Cameron McWhirter
78. Jennifer, Hecate, MacBeth, William McKinley, and Me, Elizabeth - E. L. Konigsberg
79. The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon
80. God Help the Child - Toni Morrison
81. Moshi Moshi - Banana Yoshimoto
82. Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge, and the Teachings of Plants - Robin Wall Kimmerer
83. Hedda Gabler - Henrik Ibsen
84. The House of the Seven Gables - Nathaniel Hawthorne
85. The Jeffersonian Transformation - Henry Adams
86. She Had Some Horses - Joy Harjo
87. The March - E. L. Doctorow
88. The Night Watchman - Louise Erdrich
89. Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead - Olga Tokarczuk

August
90. The Dance of the Seagull - Andrea Camilleri
91. How the One-Armed Sister Sweeps Her House - Cherie Jones
92. Summerwater - Sarah Moss
93. The Subtle Knife - Philip Pullman
94. Thick: And Other Essays - Tressie McMillan Cottom
95. The Group - Mary McCarthy
96. Last Train to Paradise - Les Standiford
97. I Alone Can Fix It - Carol Leonnig and Philip Rucker
98. House Made of Dawn - Scott Momaday
99. A History of the World in Six Glasses - Tom Standage

September
100. No One Is Talking About This - Patricia Lockwood
101. To Say Nothing of the Dog - Connie Willis
102. Outrage - Arnaldur Indridason
103. The Last Bookshop in London - Madeline Martin
104. The Innocents Abroad - Mark Twain
105. My Darling Detective - Howard Norman
106. The Amber Spyglass - Philip Pullman
107. Transcendent Kingdom - Yaa Gyasi
108. Boy, Snow, Bird - Helen Oyeyemi
109. The Great Believers - Rebecca Makkai
110. The Wheel on the School - Meindert Dejong
111. All for Nothing - Walter Kempowski
112. Good Behaviour - Molly Keane
113. Three Men in a Boat - Jerome K Jerome
114. The Reckoning - Mary Trump

October
115. The Bluest Eye - Toni Morrison
116. A Dying Fall - Elly Griffiths
117. The Invention of Nature: Alexander von Humboldt's New World - Andrea Wulf
118. Death at La Fenice - Donna Leon
119. Dead Wake - Erik Larsen
120. The Outcast Dead - Elly Griffiths
121. Beowulf - Beowulf poet (tr. Seamus Heaney)
122. Bluebird, Bluebird - Attica Locke
123. Sula - Toni Morrison
124. The Mapping of Love and Death - Jacqueline Winspear
125. Flora and Ulysses - Kate DiCamillo
126. The Ghost Fields - Elly Griffiths
127. Henry and Clara - Thomas Mallon
128. Jitney - August Wilson
129. In the Cafe of Lost Youth - Patrick Modiano

November
130. Shuggie Bain - Douglas Stuart
131. Trail of Lightning - Rebecca Roanhorse
132. Homeland Elegies - Ayad Akhtar
133. The Godfather - Mario Puzo
134. Song of Solomon - Tony Morrison
135. Paddy Clarke Ha Ha Ha - Roddy Doyle
136. The Woman in Blue - Elly Griffiths
137. The Memory Police - Yoko Ogawa
138. King Hedley II - August Wilson
139. Nemesis - Jo Nesbo

December
140. Grant - Ron Chernow
141. Klara and the Sun - Kazuo Ishiguro
142. The Enigma of Arrival - V.S. Naipaul
143. Tar Baby - Toni Morrison
144. Train Whistle Guitar - Albert Murray
145. Good and Mad - Rebecca Traister
146. Unsettled Ground - Claire Fuller
147. A Lesson in Secrets - Jacqueline Winspear
148. Whose Body? - Dorothy Sayers
149. Julie of the Wolves - Jean Craighead George
150. In the Dark Streets Shineth: A 1941 Christmas Story - David McCullough
151. State of Terror - Hillary Rodham Clinton and Louise Penny
152. Dark Money - Jane Mayer
153. A Pocket Full of Rye - Agatha Christie
154. A Child's Christmas in Wales - Dylan Thomas
155. Such a Fun Age - Kiley Reid
156. The Children of Green Knowe - L. M. Boston
157. A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens
158. Angel - Elizabeth Taylor
159. The Source of Self Regard - Toni Morrison
160. Hidden Valley Road - Robert Kolker
161. How Music Works - David Byrne
162. Radio Golf - August Wilson
163. A Children's Bible - Lydia Millet
164. Blood, Bones, and Butter - Gabrielle Hamilton
165. The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao - Junot Diaz
166. Krakatoa - Simon Winchester
167. Winter - Ali Smith
168. Thanks for the Feedback - Douglas Stone and Sheila Heen

Currently Reading

Favorite Reads of 2020

Here are the books that most stood out from my 2020 reading, listed in the order I read them.

Fiction
Disappearing Earth - Julia Phillips
The Dutch House - Ann Patchett
Little Fires Everywhere - Celeste Ng
Home Fire - Kamila Shamsie
Hamnet - Maggie O'Farrell

Non-Fiction
Stamped from the Beginning - Ibram X Kendi
Say Nothing - Patrick Radden Keefe
Cooked - Michael Pollan
Caste - Isabel Wilkerson
Why We're Polarized - Ezra Klein

Re-Reads
Emma - Jane Austen
All-of-a-Kind Family - Sidney Taylor
When Will There Be Good News? - Kate Atkinson
A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens

2021 Reading Plans

I'm jumping back into various challenges which I may try to track here.

British Author Challenge

American Author Challenge

Non-fiction Challenge

And I am working on a category challenge, although I haven't set up a thread in the category challenge group for many a year. I think I'll start by putting my categories here and see how inspired I am to set up a whole other thread. I started this in 2010 with 10 books in 10 categories, and I loved the symmetry of that. It's still how I think about it. However, I can't possibly read 21 books in 21 categories, even though I allow books to count in multiple categories. What I do love is having 21 categories to play with.

1. Murder She Wrote (Crime/Mystery series) (21/21 books)

1. Devil in a Blue Dress - Walter Mosley
2. The Unexpected Inheritance of Inspector Chopra - Vaseem Singh
3. The Perplexing Theft of the Jewel in the Crown - Vaseem Singh
4. The Woman Who Wouldn't Die - Colin Cotterill
5. Colour Scheme - Ngaio Marsh
6. A Room Full of Bones - Elly Griffiths
7. The Age of Doubt - Andrea Camilleri
8. Cockroaches - Jo Nesbo
9. The Dance of the Seagull - Andrea Camilleri
10. The Madness of Crowds - Louise Penny
11. Outrage - Arnaldur Indridason
12. A Dying Fall - Elly Griffiths
13. Death at La Fenice - Donna Leon
14. The Outcast Dead - Elly Griffiths
15. Bluebird, Bluebird - Attica Locke
16. The Mapping of Love and Death - Jacqueline Winspear
17. The Ghost Fields - Elly Griffiths
18. The Woman in Blue - Elly Griffiths
19. Nemesis - Jo Nesbo
20. A Lesson in Secrets - Jacqueline Winspear
21. Whose Body? - Dorothy Sayers
22. A Pocket Full of Rye - Agatha Christie


2. Around the World (books set in different countries) (21+/21 books)

1. Nigeria (Purple Hibiscus - Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie)
2. England (Theater Shoes - Noel Streatfeild, I Capture the Castle - Dodie Smith, Autumn - Ali Smith, Unsettled Ground - Claire Fuller)
3. France (Transit - Anna Seghers, The Great Believers - Rebecca Makkai, In the Cafe of Lost Youth - Patrick Modiano)
4. India (The Unexpected Inheritance of Inspector Chopra - Vaseem Singh, Burnt Sugar - Avni Doshi)
5. Belgium (A Nail, A Rose - Madeleine Bourdouxhe)
6. Laos (The Woman Who Wouldn't Die - Colin Cotterill)
7. Australia (True History of the Kelly Gang - Peter Carey)
8. New Zealand (Colour Scheme - Ngaio Marsh)
9. Italy (The Age of Doubt - Andrea Camilleri, The Story of the Lost Chld - Elena Ferrante)
10. Thailand (Cockroaches - Jo Nesbo)
11. Spain (The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon)
12. Japan (Moshi Moshi - Banana Yoshimoto)
13. Poland (Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead - Olga Tokarczuk)
14. Barbados (How the One-Armed Sister Sweeps Her House - Cherie Jones)
15. Canada (The Madness of Crowds - Louise Penny, My Darling Detective - Howard Norman)
16. Iceland (Outrage - Arnaldur Indridason)
17. Ghana (Transcendent Kingdom - Yaa Gyasi)
18. Netherlands (Holland) (The Wheel on the School - Meindert DeJong)
19. Germany (All for Nothing - Walter Kempowski)
20. Ireland (Good Behaviour - Molly Keane)
21. Scotland (Shuggie Bain - Douglas Stuart)
22. Pakistan (Homeland Elegies - Ayad Akhtar)
23. Norway (Nemesis - Jo Nesbo)
24. Dominican Republic (The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao - Junot Diaz)


3. And the Winner is... (Literary prize winners) (20/21 books)

1. The Hemingses of Monticello - Annette Gordon-Reed (Pulitzer Prize, History, 2009)
2. Purple Hibiscus - Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie (Commonwealth Writers Prize, First Book, 2005)
3. The Golden Compass - Philip Pullman (Carnegie Medal, 1995)
4. Team of Rivals - Doris Kearns Goodwin (Lincoln Prize, 2006)
5. Locking Up Our Own - James Forman, Jr. (Pulitzer Nonfiction 2018)
6. Nickel Boys - Colson Whitehead (Pulitzer 2020)
7. Fences - August Wilson (Pulitzer Drama 1987)
8. Girl, Woman, Other - Bernardine Evaristo (Booker Prize, 2019)
9. Lincoln - David Herbert Donald (Lincoln Prize, 1996)
10. The Return - Hisham Matar (Pulitzer, Biography, 2017)
11. True History of the Kelly Gang - Peter Carey (Booker Prize, 2001)
12. The March - E. L. Doctorow (PEN/Faulkner 2007)
13. The Night Watchman - Louise Erdrich - (Pulitzer 2021)
14. House Made of Dawn - Scott Momaday (Pulitzer 1969)
15. To Say Nothing of the Dog - Connie Willis (Hugo Award, novel, 1999)
16. The Amber Spyglass - Philip Pullman (Costa Book of the Year 2001)
17. The Wheel on the School - Meindert DeJong (Newbery Winner 1955)
18. Flora and Ulysses - Kate DiCamillo (Newbery Winner 2014)
19. Shuggie Bain - Douglas Stuart (Booker Prize 2020)
20. Song of Solomon - Toni Morrison (National Book Critics Circle Award 1977)
21. Paddy Clarke Ha Ha Ha (Booker Prize 1993)
22. Julie of the Wolves (Newbery Winner 1973)
23. The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao (Pulitzer 20 )

4. Great States (books set in different states) (18+/18 books)

1. Arizona - Lost Children Archive, The Water Knife
2. New York - Jazz, Red at the Bone, The Godfather
3. Louisiana - The Vanishing Half
4. Oklahoma - Paradise
5. California - Devil in a Blue Dress
6. Pennsylvania - Seven Guitars, Fences, Jitney, Two Trains Running, King Hedley II, Such a Fun Age
7. Maryland - Kindred
8. Florida - The Nickel Boys
9. Nevada - The Water Knife
10. Vermont - Radio Free Vermont
11. Texas - No Country for Old Men, Bluebird Bluebird
12. Oregon - Henry Huggins
13. Georgia - Home, The March
14. Massachusetts - The House of the Seven Gables
15. South Carolina - The March
16. North Carolina - The March
17. North Dakota - The Night Watchman
18. New Mexico - House Made of Dawn
19. Alabama - Transcendent Kingdom, Train Whistle Guitar
20. Illinois - The Great Believers
21. Ohio - The Bluest Eye
22. D.C. - Henry and Clara
23. Michigan - Song of Solomon
24. Alaska - Julie of the Wolves
25. New Jersey - The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao

5. 1001 Books to read before you die (no rereads) (6/18 books)

1. Transit - Anna Seghers
2. Play it as it Lays - Joan Didion
3. The House of the Seven Gables - Nathaniel Hawthorn
4. House Made of Dawn - Scott Momaday
5. The Godfather - Mario Puzo
6. The Enigma of Arrival - V.S. Naipaul
7. Winter - Ali Smith

6. NYRB Classics (subscription books) (7/18 books)

1. Transit - Anna Seghers
2. Between the Woods and the Water - Patrick Leigh Fermor
3. A Month in the Country - J. L. Carr
4. The Jeffersonian Transformation - Henry Adams
5. All for Nothing - Walter Kempowski
6. Good Behaviour - Molly Keane
7. In the Cafe of Lost Youth - Patrick Modiano
8. Angel - Elizabeth Taylor

7. Civil War/Reconstruction (fiction or non-fiction) (8/15 books)

1. Team of Rivals
2. Lincoln
3. How the Word is Passed
4. Impeached
5. How the South Won the Civil War
6. Assassination Vacation
7. The March
8. Henry and Clara
9. Grant

8. Women in Translation (5/15 books)

1. Transit - Anna Seghers (German)
2. A Nail, A Rose - Madeleine Bourdouxhe (French)
3. The Story of the Lost Child - Elena Ferrante (Italian)
4. Moshi Moshi - Banana Yoshimoto (Japanese)
5. Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead - Olga Tokarczuk (Polish)
6. The Memory Police - Yoko Ogawa (Japanese)

9. African-American Literature (15+/15 books)
1. Jazz - Toni Morrison
2. The Vanishing Half - Brit Bennett
3. Paradise - Toni Morrison
4. Seven Guitars - August Wilson
5. Devil in a Blue Dress - Walter Mosley
6. Kindred - Octavia Butler
7. Red at the Bone - Jacqueline Woodson
8. Difficult Women - Roxane Gay
9. The Nickel Boys - Colson Whitehead
10. Love - Toni Morrison
11. Fences - August Wilson
12. A Mercy - Toni Morrison
13. Home - Toni Morrison
14. God Help the Child - Toni Morrison
15. The Bluest Eye - Toni Morrison
16. Bluebird, Bluebird - Attica Locke
17. Sula - Toni Morrison
18. Jitney - August Wilson
19. Song of Solomon - Toni Morrison
20. King Hedley II - August Wilson
21. Tar Baby - Toni Morrison
22. Train Whistle Guitar - Albert Murray
23. Such a Fun Age - Kiley Reid

10. BAC (12+/12 books, 12 of 12 challenges)
1. Theater Shoes - Noel Streatfeild (January)
2. The Golden Compass - Philip Pullman (January)
3. I Capture the Castle - Dodie Smith (January)
4. The Unexpected Inheritance of Inspector Chopra - Vaseem Singh (March)
5. The Perplexing Theft of the Jewel in the Crown - Vaseem Singh (March)
6. Autumn - Ali Smith (February)
7. The Shadow of the Pomegranate - Jean Plaidy (March)
8. Regency Buck - Georgette Heyer (April)
9. Faro's Daughter - Georgette Heyer (April)
10. Mary Barton - Elizabeth Gaskell (June)
11. A Month in the Country - J. L. Carr (July)
12. Boy, Snow, Bird - Helen Oyeyemi (August)
13. Beowulf (October)
14. Klara and the Sun - Kazuo Ishiguro (December)
15. The Enigma of Arrival - V.S. Naipaul (May)
16. Angel - Elizabeth Taylor (November)
17. Krakatoa - Simon Winchester (September)

11. AAC (12+/12 books, 11/12 challenges)
1. The Children's Hour - Lillian Hellman (January)
2. Difficult Women - Roxane Gay (March)
3. Carry Me Across the Water - Ethan Canin (February)
4. Braiding Sweetgrass - Robin Wall Kimmerer (July)
5. She Had Some Horses - Joy Harjo (July)
6. The Night Watchman - Louise Erdrich (July)
7. The Group - Mary McCarthy (May)
8. House Made of Dawn - Scott Momaday (July)
9. To Say Nothing of the Dog - Connie Willis (August)
10. My Darling Detective - Howard Norman (September)
11. Bluebird, Bluebird - Attica Locke (October)
12. Train Whistle Guitar - Albert Murray (November)
13. Julie of the Wolves - Jean Craighead George (December)
14. How Music Works - David Byrne (April)

12. Nonfiction Challenge (12+/12 books, 11/12 categories)
1. The Hemingses of Monticello (January, prizewinner)
2. Team of Rivals (January, prizewinner)
3. Locking Up Our Own - James Forman, Jr. (February, minority lives matter)
4. A Promised Land - Barack Obama (February, minority lives matter)
5. Prairie Fires: The American Dreams of Laura Ingalls Wilder - Caroline Fraser (March, comfort reads)
6. Between the Woods and the Water - Patrick Leigh Fermor (March, comfort reads)
7. SPQR - Mary Beard (April, the Ancient World)
8. Four Fish - Paul Greenberg (May; Animal, Vegetable, Mineral)
9. Last Train to Paradise - Les Standiford (August, transportation)
10. The Invention of Nature - Andrea Wulf (June, discoveries)
11. Dead Wake - Erik Larson (August, transportation)
12. Grant - Ron Chernow (October, heroes and villains)
13. Good and Mad - Rebecca Traister (December, go anywhere)
14. Dark Money - Jane Mayer (November, business, the economy, and policy)
15. Hidden Valley Road - Robert Kolker (December, go anywhere)
16. How Music Works - David Byrne (September, creators)
17. Blood Bones and Butter - Gabrielle Hamilton (December, go anywhere)

13. What a Mess (current politics/economics/social justice/income inequality/antiracism/etc.) (8/9 books)
1. Locking Up Our Own - James Forman, Jr.
2. How Democracies Die - Steve Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt
3. How the Word is Passed: A Reckoning with the History of Slavery Across America - Clint Smith
4. How the South Won the Civil War - Heather Cox Richardson
5. Red Summer: The Summer of 1919 and the Awakening of Black America
6. Thick: And Other Essays - Tressie McMillan Cottom
7. I Alone Can Fix It - Carol Leonnig and Philip Rucker
8. The Reckoning - Mary Trump
9. Good and Mad - Rebecca Traister
10. Dark Money - Jane Mayer

14. Nobel authors (9+/9 books, 5 authors)
1. Toni Morrison - Jazz, Paradise, Love, A Mercy, Home, God Help the Child, The Bluest Eye, Sula, Song of Solomon, Tar Baby
2. Olga Tokarczuk - Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead
3. Patrick Modiano - In the Cafe of Lost Youth
4. Kazuo Ishiguro - Klara and the Sun
5. V. S. Naipaul - The Enigma of Arrival

15. The Founding Fathers (going backwards in my Presidents project) (3/9 books)
1. The Hemingses of Monticello (Jefferson)
2. Abigail Adams - Woody Holton (Adams)
3. The Jeffersonian Transformation (Jefferson, Madison)

16. Presidential biographies (4/6 books)
1. Team of Rivals (Lincoln)
2. Lincoln
3. Impeached (Johnson)
4. Grant - Ron Chernow

17. 19th Century classics (6/6 books)
1. Persuasion - Jane Austen
2. Mary Barton - Elizabeth Gaskell
3. Hedda Gabler - Henrik Ibsen
4. The House of the Seven Gables - Nathaniel Hawthorne
5. The Innocents Abroad - Mark Twain
6. Three Men in a Boat - Jerome K. Jerome
7. A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens

18. The Play's the Thing (plays) (6/6 books)
1. The Children's Hour - Lillian Hellman
2. Seven Guitars - August Wilson
3. Fences - August Wilson
4. Two Trains Running - August Wilson
5. Hedda Gabler - Henrik Ibsen
6. Jitney - August Wilson
7. King Hedley II - August Wilson
8. Radio Golf - August Wilson

19. Tower of Babel (Written and read in another language) (0/3 items)

20. Science is Real (3+/3 books)

1. Longitude - Dava Sobel
2. Astrophysics for People in a Hurry - Neil deGrasse Tyson
3. Four Fish - Paul Greenberg
4. Braiding Sweetgrass - Robin Wall Kimmerer
5. The Invention of Nature - Andrea Wulf
6. Hidden Valley Road - Robert Kolker (some science)

21. Poetry in Motion (3/3 books or I'd settle for 3 poems)
Transfer - Naomi Shihab Nye
She Had Some Horses - Joy Harjo
Beowulf - Beowulf poet

Welcome back!

Best wishes for a better 2021!

Happy New Year, Anne. I did jump over to look at your list of reading. :) I hope you can visit more this year.

Happy reading in 2021, Anne!

Happy new year, Anne.

Happy New Year Anne!

Happy New Year Anne and happy reading.

Hope your 2021 is filled with lots of great books.

Happy 2021, Anne.

And keep up with my friends here, Anne. Have a great 2021.

Happy New Year, Anne! I couldn't manage much participation last year (or the year before) either, but if our friends here are anything, they're welcoming and generous and that's why I love it. I'm glad to see you back, and like you, I have never been so relieved to see a year end.

Happy reading!

Hi Anne!

All the best for 2021!

Happy new year, Anne!

2020 was a shocker but I have the usual great hopes of keeping up on here and getting some more books read. Looking forward to seeing what you think of the Lost Children Archive - have seen it everywhere but not read it or bought it yet.

Wow--lots of lovely visitors since I was here earlier. What a start to the year!

>5 drneutron: Thanks Jim and as I said on your thread, thanks in particular for all the work you do setting us up every year.

>6 DianaNL: Diana, the same to you! I think we are all wishing for a better year.

>7 BLBera: Happy New Year, Beth. I do hope to be visiting more this year and may even take up residence. I've missed keeping up.

>8 FAMeulstee: Thank you Anita. I'm looking forward to a new year of reading.

>9 katiekrug: Happy new year back, Katie. Your thread is one of those that moves so fast it's hard to keep up with, but I will try harder this year.

>10 SandDune: Happy New Year Rhian. I'm looking forward to following your reading this year especially with your new free time.

>11 brenzi: Thanks Bonnie and happy reading to you. Can't wait to see what you're reading.

>12 thornton37814: Lori I hope the same for you--great books by the stack.

>13 ffortsa: Thank you Judy and the same to you!

>14 PaulCranswick: Paul, I love your graphic and I wish all those things for you--and for me too! To a more better year!

>15 AMQS: Anne, it sounds like we are on the same program. I didn't show up at all the year before and barely showed up in 2020. I've missed it, and am hoping I can be a more regular presence this year. At least I'm starting on time, which hasn't happened in several years.

>16 figsfromthistle: Thank you and I wish you the best possible 2021 as well.

>17 cushlareads: Cushla! Happy New Year and it's nice to see you. I am enjoying Lost Children Archive--am about half way through but set it aside in favor of shorter books when it became clear I wasn't going to finish it in 2020.It should be my first completed read of 2021.

I'll be building out the top of my thread a little bit at a time but thought I'd also post my "best of" lists here.

Favorite Reads of 2020

Here are the books that most stood out from my 2020 reading, listed in the order I read them.

Fiction
Disappearing Earth - Julia Phillips
The Dutch House - Ann Patchett
Little Fires Everywhere - Celeste Ng
Home Fire - Kamila Shamsie
Hamnet - Maggie O'Farrell

Non-Fiction
Stamped from the Beginning - Ibram X Kendi
Say Nothing - Patrick Radden Keefe
Cooked - Michael Pollan
Caste - Isabel Wilkerson
Why We're Polarized - Ezra Klein

Re-Reads
Emma - Jane Austen
All-of-a-Kind Family - Sidney Taylor
When Will There Be Good News? - Kate Atkinson
A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens

>20 AnneDC: - I loved Home Fires when I read it a couple of years ago.

>18 AnneDC: - My thread is a lot of chatter, but I always post book covers when I comment on a book, so you can always just skim for those :)

Great "best of" list, Anne. I want to read Stamped from the Beginning; I really liked How to Be an Antiracist. Hamnet was one of my favorites as well.

Dropping off my and wishing you the best of new years in 2021!

Happy New Year, Anne!

>21 katiekrug: I read Home Fire knowing very little about it except that I like the author and have been meaning to read it for a few years (tbr pile). As I was reading, I kept thinking--wow, this is a tragic story in the original, Greek sense of the word. Then afterwards I read up on the book and learned that it was based on Antigone. Of course!

>22 BLBera: I read both Stamped from the Beginning and How to Be an Antiracist last year, Beth. Very different kinds of books--Stamped is a real doorstopper but extremely informative, at least for me. I was reading it kind of at the same time as David Blight's biography of Frederick Douglass and reading the two together helped me make connections I might not have made otherwise. One thing I took away is that antiracism is relatively rare, even among the abolitionists.

Hamnet is another book I stumbled into without knowing in advance what (or who) it was about. Duh!

>23 ronincats: Thank you for the beautiful star, Roni!

>24 norabelle414: Happy New Year to you too, Nora.

I haven't been around here for the start of the year for a few years, so I had forgotten about these memes, and I couldn't resist.

Describe yourself: The Searcher

Describe how you feel: Rage

Describe where you currently live: The Secret Garden

If you could go anywhere, where would you go? The House at Sea's End

Your favorite form of transportation is: Night Boat to Tangier

Your favorite food is: Cooked

Your favorite time of day is: Started Early, Took My Dog

Your best friend is: A Better Man

You and your friends are: Too Much and Never Enough

What’s the weather like: A Thousand Splendid Suns

You fear: Disappearing Earth

What is the best advice you have to give: Maybe You Should Talk to Someone

Thought for the day: When Will There Be Good News?

What is life for you: On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous

How you would like to die: Goodbye Without Leaving

Your soul’s present condition: Home Fire

What was 2020 like for you? Little Fires Everywhere

What do you want from 2021? Exhalation

>20 AnneDC: All of a Kind Family oh, *happy sigh*. I read that one to the girls years ago and we all loved it. I was thrilled when a picture book came out a couple of years ago based on Sydney Taylor's beloved characters written by a favorite author of mine (Emily Jenkins) and illustrated by the great Paul O. Zelinsky. It's called All of a Kind Family Hanukkah and it's wonderful.

>26 AnneDC: - Those are some pretty perfect meme answers, Anne!

January book plans

I probably won't get to all of these, but hope springs eternal.

Currently Reading:
✔Team of Rivals - Doris Kearns Goodwin
✔Lost Children Archive - Valeria Luiselli
✔The Hemingses of Monticello - Annette Gordon-Reed

Other possibilities:
When Breath Becomes Air - Paul Kalanthi
Deacon King Kong - James McBride
✔The Golden Compass - Philip Pullman
✔Longitude - Dava Sobel
✔Purple Hibiscus - Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
Reconstruction - Eric Foner
The Vanishing Half - Brit Bennett
✔Transit - Anna Seghers
✔Jazz - Toni Morrison
Story of the Lost Child - Elena Ferrante
LaRose - Louise Erdrich

>27 AMQS: Anne, I read the All-of-a-Kind Family books to my kids, but I also read them over and over again as a child myself. I swear it was these books that made me yearn to live in a city (which I now do) and also familiarized me with Jewish holidays and traditions.

>28 katiekrug: Katie it's funny how they don't seem to fit, and then they do.

>29 AnneDC: - I read Purple Hibiscus a couple of years ago, and thought it was very good. It was my first Adichie.

I've been toying with reading (or probably listening) to The Golden Compass, as my husband watched the recent adaptation and I was mildly intrigued...

Love your meme responses, Anne!

Just poping in to drop off a star* and say thank You for visting my thread.

I enjoyed your meme answers, Anne. Nice list of possible reads for January. I'm reading Jazz right now. I'm working my way through the books of Morrison that I haven't read. After Jazz, there's only one novel left.

Hi Anne, Lost Children Archive is the only book I've ever read that made me immediately download a song, Laurie Anderson's "Oh Superman." Wonderful book! And I also loved Home Fire and Disappearing Earth just knocked my socks off. Lots of good reading. Oh I just noticed Transit on your list of possibilities. I read it in 2019 and lo and behold the day I finished it the movie (French of course opened at a local theater and I immediately went to see it. Those were in the days when we could go to the movies.

>31 katiekrug: My first Adichie was Half a Yellow Sun, which I loved, and I also enjoyed Americanah, so it's about time I get to Purple Hibiscus.

I've read The Golden Compass trilogy (it's great IMHO) and now am watching the adaptation and feeling the need to go back. The series departs quite a bit from what I remember about the books--which is fine--but it bugs me that I can't recall the original with enough clarity to do a good job nitpicking.

>32 MickyFine: Thanks Micky and welcome.

>33 BBGirl55: Welcome Briony!

>34 BLBera: I had no plans to reread Jazz right now but you all inspired me. The only novel I haven't read already is God Help the Child.

>35 brenzi: Bonnie I will have to keep alert for the song reference. I didn't know there was a movie based on Transit--see what you can learn around here! I've been meaning to read that for the longest time and I think it's one I'll actually get to. I last went to a movie theater on March 13 to see Emma, right before DC shut down. It is a good memory of the before-times.

God Help the Child is a good one, Anne.

You've had a bit of excitement in DC today...

>36 AnneDC: It’s a while since I’ve read the Philip Pullman books, but I think the recent TV adaptations were reasonably faithful, although they did make some changes, and pulled events into Series 1 which didn’t happen until the second book. But a great adaptation - I felt it really captured the spirit of the books. I’m quite inclined to reread them.

Forgot to post this message that I wrote about a week ago. Now that we've managed to uneventfully inaugurate a new President, I can return to reading and breathing.

Unposted from January12:
Well, I've had a hard time paying attention to anything other than this week's violent insurrection in my city. I'm not reading much despite an attempt to participate in a readathon over the weekend, but I did get the Christmas tree down and taken away.

>37 BLBera: That's one I don't think I even have on my shelves, Beth. Maybe I will get to it in February. I'd also like to read The Source of Self-Regard which I do have.

Yes, excitement is one word for it! Fortunately we aren't that close to the capitol, but there were some protestors renting an airbnb in my neighborhood who were roaming around with bullhorns getting into arguments with people, so that was unnerving. Also my daughter had originally planned to go down to the Trump rally as a counter-protestor, but she and her friends changed their minds. When I started seeing news reports I didn't actually know where she was.

The whole situation is appalling.

>38 SandDune: Rhian, I enjoyed the first season of the TV adaptation, and am working my way through the second. I think the series is excellent as a standalone, and faithful to the spirit of the books, but I was thrown by the merging of the Book 2 storyline with events of Book 1, and I'd like to reread to remember the books better.

And I've finished a book, finally the first book of 2021 (Lost Children Archive). And another book! A reread of Toni Morrison's Jazz. Both excellent and enjoyable. Comments to follow once I can tear myself away from Inauguration coverage.

I'm almost done with The Hemingses of Monticello, too--about an hour of the audiobook left.

>40 AnneDC: I will start Jazz next week, Anne.

Great to see you posting. x

> Hi Paul. Nice to see you here on my thread in addition to other locations in the group. Did you ever get to Jazz? I might have missed it on your thread.

I'm settling in to this weekend's Readathon and hoping to finish up my January reads. And waiting for possible snow.

January Statistics

I completed 11 books in January.

Nonfiction: 3
Fiction: 8

Of my fiction reads, 1 was a play, and 3 were children/young adult
Rereads: 4

Format
Audio:2
Kindle: 1
Print: 8 (all on my shelves more more than a year)

Authors
Male: 1
Female: 10

Authors of Color: 4

American: 6
British: 3
Other European: 1
Non-European: 1

New-to-me authors: 6

February Reading Plans

For February, I plan to dive into Black History Month by reading only books by African-American authors. My goal is to read across different genres, but with a focus on Black writers.

Memoir: A Promised Land - Barack Obama
✔ Fiction: The Vanishing Half - Brit Bennett
Fiction: The Nickel Boys - Colson Whitehead
✔SF/Fantasy: Kindred - Octavia Butler
SF/Fantasy: The Fifth Season - N.K. Jemison
✔Crime: Devil in a Blue Dress - Walter Mosley
✔Play: Seven Guitars - August Wilson
Short Stories: Difficult Women Roxane Gay
✔Nobel Author: Paradise or God Help the Child - Toni Morrison
Nonfiction: One Person No Vote - Carol Anderson
✔Nonfiction: Locking Up Our Own - James Forman, Jr.

If I have time I will squeeze in some poetry and children's literature.

Hi Anne! You probably already saw this elsewhere, but a small group of us are reading Paradise this month. Feel free to join in!

https://www.librarything.com/topic/329307

Nice list for February, Anne. I also like to focus on books by African-American writers.

>45 katiekrug: Thanks Katie! Shame on me for not spotting the Morrison reference in >44 AnneDC:. Kudos to you for the eagle eyes!

Nice list of titles for your goal this month, Anne. Much luck bookhorning them all in. :)

1. Lost Children Archive - Valeria Luiselli

Why Now: I've been meaning to read this book throughout 2020 and didn't get to it. Every Christmas my husband gives me the NYT Top 10 Books of the Year, and I love to receive them but struggle to read all of them in a timely fashion. With this book done, I've read all 5 of the fiction selections (however, I did get a whole new set in December, so I'm just treading water.)

Rating: 4.5

Lost Children Archive tells a story of a road trip--a family (two parents and two children) drives from New York to Arizona. None of the family members are ever named--the children, from previous marriages, are referred to as boy (aged 10) and girl (aged 5). The parents, both of whom work documenting sound ("We'd say I was a documentarist and he was a documentarian, which meant that I was more like a chemist and he was more like a librarian."), met and married while working on the same New York project. Now that project is over and their next projects will take them in different directions--he to explore the last of the Apaches, and she to record the stories of children in the New York immigration court system. While this is a summer vacation kind of road trip, and also an attempt at professional compromise, it also seems destined to be a parting of ways.

The novel's structure is unusual--in addition to the road trip theme, the book is structured around seven boxes that are traveling with them in the trunk--four are the father's project archives, one is the mother's, and each of the children asked to have a box of their own. There are also shifts in voice--from mother to boy, alternating with recurring passages from an embedded text, Lost Elegies for the Lost Children.

I enjoyed this book immensely and yet I feel I missed a lot--reading the author's source notes at the end I realized how much went over my head. For example, the contents of the boxes are a sort of bibliography in addition to a structural device, and apparently "The first elegies allude to Ezra Pound's Canto I, which is itself an "allusion" to Homer's Book XI of the Odyssey..." Umm. So, missed all of that. No matter. It was wonderful even without being aware of everything the author was doing, though maybe worth a second read someday.

Aside from the plot--which intensifies as the book goes on, Lost Children Archive explores what it means to document the past, or the present. What stories do we tell, what do we remember, what do we leave out? There are also lots of meanings of "lost" suggested here.

I still find myself grieving for this family and wondering what will become of them. It's not a spoiler to say this is a family about to break apart, as this is suggested in the first pages. Former stepparents don't usually get visitation rights, and I wondered whether the boy and the girl will continue to grow up as siblings or even see each other anymore if the parents separate. How fragile this family is! (How fragile everything is!)

>42 AnneDC: I managed to get it done right at the end of the month, Anne. I liked it plenty even though I think that Sula was probably the better novel.

Hi Anne, I don't think I've visited your thread before - you've read some really interesting books in January.
Your review of the Luiselli makes me want to read it again to look at all the things I missed. I was hyperfocused on her references to archives, as that's an interest of mine. From your mention of the classical texts in the endnotes I realised I missed that entirely. I recently read a reissue of her first book, thoughts on walking (mostly) in Mexico City. I can't get over how young she was when it was first published.
I like your list at >44 AnneDC: what a great idea to read for BHM. Ours is in October in the UK, so I have some time to thinking about doing the same.

>49 AnneDC: This is pretty high on my own list too. Excellent review. x

>49 AnneDC: Every Christmas my husband gives me the NYT Top 10 Books of the Year
What a great gift idea, Anne! Has there ever been a year when you've read some of the books already? Does he know that and adjust accordingly?

>Thanks Katie. I was dimly aware of a plan for Paradise, and that is the reason I put it on my list (since once I read God Help the Child I will have read every Morrison novel and that's appealing) Thanks for the link. I've starred it and look forward to reading Paradise again, with company.

>46 BLBera: Beth, I usually try to read something by an African-American author during Black History Month, but I've never thought to focus only on Black authors and read nothing else. I'm very interested in what kind of book synergy might result.

>27 AMQS: I'm in! I need to get a copy of the book since I apparently checked it out from the library before.

>28 katiekrug: Thanks Micky!

>50 PaulCranswick: Nice that you got to Jazz, Paul. I'll have some comments coming. I think I agree that Sula is the better book, but I really enjoyed Jazz this time around. I think of Sula as very compact and neatly structured, whereas Jazz feels meandering and, well, jazz-like.

>51 charl08: Hello Charlotte. I don't think I've been to your thread, either, at least not this year. (off to check it out) Lost Children Archive was my first exposure to Luiselli but I would eagerly read more.

>53 lauralkeet: Since this gift is no longer a surprise, usually I think to warn him if there are books I've already read. This year I didn't remember, so I got Hamnet (the only one on the list I'd read). However, I read it on my Kindle, and I loved it, so I'm happy to have a print copy. If I do end up with duplicates, I can exchange them at the bookstore for credit or regift them, so it's rarely a problem.

That is a nice gift. Sadly, no one gives me books anymore because they know I read a lot, so they assume they'll get me something I've already read. I keep hinting about gift cards to my daughter, but she thinks, and maybe rightly, that I already have too many books.

>55 AnneDC: that's so nice, Anne. It sounds like a great idea which I may need to "hint hint" at this year. Because ...

>56 BLBera: I have the same problem as Beth!

Anne, thank you so much for your sympathy for our May loss. I'm late to your thread but glad to be here again!

Nobody gives me books these days either, so your husband is a real treasure!

I don't think I can read T. Morrison right now, but I do love your decision to read books by African-Americans in February. I hear the Obama and the Whitehead calling my name, but I'm currently bogged down in other big books. I wish you good reading and look forward to your thoughtful comments.

>55 AnneDC: As you know I recently did a list of my favourite 20 novels from the 1990s and, had I listed 25 then I'm pretty sure that Jazz would have gotten included.

Have a lovely weekend.

>56 BLBera: >57 lauralkeet: Hi Beth and Laura. My husband, and everyone else definitely thinks I have too many books, but he's surrendered. By giving me books, he knows he is giving me something that I want and will like, which is not always the case.

It's interesting the idea that giving books to a reader is risky because they might have already read a particular selection. I totally get that, but it also feels misguided to me. If a friend gives me a book that I've already read (especially if I read and loved it), for me it is the same feeling as getting a heartfelt note or letter, it's a moment of connection. I can think of several times when someone gave me a book I'd already read--it left me much more glad that we enjoyed the same book than disappointed.

>58 LizzieD: Peggy, I was almost positive you'd been here before, but it's nice to see you now. I'm still getting the hang of my reentry to LT and am posting only occasionally, but I am really going to try to be more active here this year.

I'm very excited about my Black History Month reading project and I especially like that I am setting out to read a lot of different kinds of things. I hope to do a better job posting as I go.

>59 PaulCranswick: That's the trouble with those kinds of lists, Paul--where to draw the line? I like that you compiled 100 titles for the 21st century--that allows you 5 books a year instead of 2 a year for your 90s decade. I often find it stressful (though fun) to define favorites--never want to leave anything out.

Jazz by Toni Morrison

Rating: 4.3

Why now: I had zero plans to reread this Toni Morrison novel right now, but several others (shoutout to Beth, Laura, and Katie) were reading it in January and I was enticed. I'm very glad I did! Now I think I might embark on a plan to reread all of Morrison's novels, plus read the one (God Help the Child) I have yet to read.


Mostly set in Jazz Age Harlem, Jazz follows the lives of Joe and Violet Trace--who moved to New York City from the rural South as part of the Great Migration. This sentence from the first paragraph sets the stage and is one I still remember vividly from my first reading of this novel almost 30 years ago. "He fell for an eighteen-year-old-girl with one of those deepdown, spooky loves that made him so sad and happy he shot her just to keep the feeling going."

Although the plot developments are dramatic and startling, this is a novel more about setting, character, and form than about a linear story. The title refers both to the time period and to jazz as an art form--the beautiful language is poetic and even musical, and the structure reflects forms from jazz--the idea of theme and variation, solo instruments branching off from the main structure, etc. If I were more knowledgeable about jazz I'm sure I would see things that I missed.

What I really love about this novel is the setting, where the city is almost a character in its own right. I've read speculation that the mysterious unnamed narrator is the voice of the city, and I love that idea.

I read Jazz the first time when it was new, and I was not even 30. At the time I knew very little about the Great Migration. Having more background definitely enriched this story for me and enabled me to see Joe and Violet in their historical context. It also highlighted the significance of the parts of the novel that take place in the past.

Why Now: For the British Author Challenge, January British Childrens' Classics

When I was a child, I loved Noel Streatfeild books. My mother randomly brought Circus Shoes back from the library and I was hooked--in 2nd grade I discovered a whole shelf of these books in my school library and bonded with the librarian over them. I remember her saying "I'm so glad someone has discovered these books." I rediscovered them when my own kids were little, and they are family favorites, especially Dancing Shoes and Ballet shoes. Theater Shoes I was less familiar with, but it's apparently one of my daughter's favorites because her copy is very battered and dogeared.

In these books, children, usually orphans, train in London for an income-producing career in the performing arts. In hindsight they are formulaic but I still love them. Theater Shoes is set in London during WWII (it was published during the war so it's a real-time look at rationing and shortages and blackouts). The 3 children, Sorrel, Mark, and Holly, aren't strictly orphans, as their father is a naval officer who is missing in action. When their paternal grandfather dies, the children are sent to live with their estranged maternal grandmother. It turns out that their mother came from a celebrated theater family, and the children are promptly enrolled in Madame Fidolia's Children's Academy of Dancing and Stage Training. Also in Theater Shoes the grown-up Fossil sisters from Ballet Shoes make a return appearance.

>49 AnneDC: I loved Lost Children Archive too Anne. And you raise the exact question that haunted me: these step children will be separated and may never see each other again. Heartbreaking. I thought her inclusion of music was brilliant because how do you have a road trip without music? I actually downloaded Laurie Anderson's Superman onto my Apple playlist after reading that section in the book and listen to it often.

>61 AnneDC: Great review, Anne. I'm glad you liked Jazz and that it has inspired you to read more Morrison. Are you still up for reading Paradise this month?

I also loved the Streatfield books when I was a kid, Anne. I read a couple with my daughter, but she gravitated to the Little House books. She LOVED Caddie Woodlawn; they used to act it out at school.

I'm so happy you are reading Morrison with us. This was my first time reading Jazz. The only one I haven't read is Love, which I plan to read later this year.

>65 BLBera: and I should add that I'm delighted to have reading buddies!!

Just downloaded Paradise from the library. When do we start?

>67 ffortsa: I’ll butt in and answer that, Judy. Start anytime; there’s a group read thread here:
http://www.librarything.com/topic/329307#unread

>63 brenzi: Exactly, Bonnie, I thought it was so touching and heartbreaking that the boy was creating an archive for the girl. While he explained it as because she was too young to be able to remember, it also seemed to reflect that they might not be together anymore. I need to listen to the song!

>64 lauralkeet: Laura--yes, I'm in! I just got my copy yesterday and am ready to start. I'm keeping an eye on the thread.

>65 BLBera: My oldest daughter loved the Shoes books and the Little House books, and Anne of Green Gables and All-of-a-Kind Family. My youngest, who's 17, barely reads. :(

I really liked Love, which I read fairly recently.

>66 lauralkeet: >67 ffortsa: >68 lauralkeet: Looking forward to the Paradise read! I hope I like it as much as I did the first time--it's always interesting to come back to a favorite book.

PaulC got me started on the crazy idea of listing my top books of the 21st century. This was time-consuming but very fun, and I know I've set myself up to have to continually delete titles as new books emerge, which will be much less fun.

1. Excursion to Tindari - Andrea Camilleri
2. Jar City - Arnaldur Indriðason
3. Prodigal Summer - Barbara Kingsolver - 2000
4. A Storm of Swords - George RR Martin - 2000
5. The Redbreast - Jo Nesbo
6. The Amber Spyglass - Philip Pullman - 2000
7. Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire - J. K. Rowling - 2000
8. Persepolis - Marjane Satrapi - 2000-2001
9. White Teeth - Zadie Smith - 2000
10. The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay - Michael Chabon - 2001
11. The Siege - Helen Dunmore - 2001
12. The Feast of the Goat - Mario Varga Llosa - 2001
13. Life of Pi - Yann Martel - 2001
14. Atonement - Ian McEwan - 2001
15. Bel Canto - Ann Patchett - 2001
16. Empire Falls - Richard Russo - 2001
17. The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold - 2002
18. The Secret Life of Bees - Sue Monk Kidd - 2002
19. Snow - Orhan Pamuk - 2002
20. Fingersmith - Sarah Waters - 2002
21. The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Nighttime - Mark Haddon - 2003
22. The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini - 2003
23. The Known World - Edward P. Jones - 2003
24. Love - Toni Morrison - 2003
25. Out Stealing Horses - Per Petterson - 2003
26. We Need to Talk About Kevin - Lionel Shriver - 2003
27. Case Histories - Kate Atkinson - 2004
28. Small Island - Andrea Levy - 2004
29. Old Filth - Jane Gardam - 2004
30. Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell - 2004
31. Gilead - Marilyn Robinson -2004
32. Three Day Road - Joseph Boyden - 2005
33. The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo - Steig Larsson - 2005
34. Still Life - Louise Penny - 2005
35. The Book Thief - Markus Zusak - 2005
36. The Uncommon Reader - Alan Bennett - 2006
37. The Inheritance of Loss - Kiran Desai - 2006
38. In the Country of Men - Hisham Matar - 2006
39. Special Topics in Calamity Physics - Marisha Pessl - 2006
40. Half of a Yellow Sun - Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie - 2007
41. The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao - Junot Diaz - 2007
42. In the Woods - Tana French - 2007
43. The Reluctant Fundamentalist - Mohsin Hamid - 2007
44. The Beautiful Things that Heaven Bears - Dinaw Mengestu - 2007
45. The Elegance of the Hedgehog - Muriel Barberry - 2008
46. The Plague of Doves - Louise Erdrich - 2008
47. Sea of Poppies - Amitav Ghosh - 2008
48. A Mercy - Tni Morrison - 2008
49. The Children's Book - A. S. Byatt - 2009
50. Mudbound - Hillary Jordan
51. Wolf Hall - Hilary Mantel - 2009
52. Let the Great World Spin - Colum McCann - 2009
53. Burnt Shadows - Kamila Shamsie - 2009
54. Love and Summer - Wiliam Trevor - 2009
55. Room - Emma Donoghue - 2010
56. A Visit from the Goon Squad - Jennifer Egan - 2010
57. Visitation - Jenny Erpenbeck - 2010
58. Lord of Misrule - Jaimy Gordon - 2010
59. The Lacuna - Barbara Kingsolver - 2010
60. The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet - David Mitchell - 2010
61. Major Pettigrew's Last Stand - Helen Simonson - 2010
62. Brooklyn - Colm Toibin 2010
63. Half Broke Horses - Jeannette Walls - 2010
64. The Sense of an Ending - Julian Barnes - 2011
65. The Sisters Brothers - Patrick DeWitt - 2011
66. Middlesex - Jeffrey Eugenides - 2011
67. My Brilliant Friend - Elena Ferrante - 2011
68. The Memory of Love - Aminatta Forna - 2011
69. Gillespie and I - Jane Harris - 2011
70. Train Dreams - Denis Johnson - 2011
71. Song of Achilles - Madeline Miller - 2011
72. The Night Circus - Erin Morgenstern - 2011
73. The Tiger's Wife - Tea Obrecht - 2011
74. There but for the - Ali Smith - 2011
75. Salvage the Bones - Jesmyn Ward
76. The Garden of Evening Mists - Tae Twan Eng - 2012
77. The Round House - Louise Erdrich - 2012
78. Gone Girl - Gillian Flynn - 2012
79. Painter of Silence - Georgina Harding - 2012
80. How it All Began - Penelope Lively - 2012
81. Life After Life - Kate Atkinson - 2013
82. The Luminaries - Eleanor Catton - 2013
83. The Cuckoo's Calling - Robert Galbraith - 2013
84. A Constellation of Vital Phenomena - Anthony Marra - 2013
85. Transatlantic - Colum McCann - 2013
86. All the Light We Cannot See - Anthony Doerr - 2014
87. Euphoria - Lily King - 2014
88. Station Eleven - Emily St. John Mandel - 2014
89. A Spool of Blue Thread - Anne Tyler - 2015
90. Homegoing - Yaa Gyasi 2016
91. News of the World - Paulette Giles - 2016
92. The Underground Railroad - Colson Whitehead - 2016
93. Pachinko - Min Jin Lee - 2017
94. Little Fires Everywhere - Celeste Ng - 2017
95. Home Fire - Kamila Shamsie - 2017
96. Washington Black - Esi Edugyan - 2018
97. Lost Children Archive - Valeria Luiselli - 2019
98. The Dutch House - Ann Patchett - 2019
99. Disappearing Earth - Amber Phillips - 2019
100. Hamnet - Maggie O'Farrell - 2020

>70 AnneDC: Great list and probably more balanced than my own.

I made it 29 shared authors and plenty of shared books. See that you doubled up on Morrison, McCann, Shamsie and Atkinson. Be interested to see which you would have chosen if you could only have taken 1?

>71 PaulCranswick: I don't know about balanced. It seems skewed in several ways that I can think of. For example, I've selected more female authors than male ones by a considerable margin. And some years (2011) generated a lot more favorites than others.

I thought about adopting your rule and only choosing one book per author, but I decided I was more interested in identifying my top books even if one author wrote several favorites. (There are also multiple Erdrichs, Kingsolvers, Mitchells, and Patchetts). If forced to, I could pick one from most pairs, but some would be a struggle. Life After Life is one of my favorite novels of the century for sure. Case Histories is standing in for the whole Jackson Brodie series, which I also love, for completely different reasons. So, Atkinson gets two entries. If I dropped one I would have to replace it with something that didn't stand out as much.

I did only put the first book as a stand-in for a whole series, so I listed Case Histories, Gilead, Wolf Hall, and Sea of Poppies even though I liked the subsequent books just as much.

This took me forever but it was really nice to think about some of these books that I read years ago.

>70 AnneDC: - Great list, Anne, and it includes lots of titles I also loved.

Looking forward to reading Paradise with you, Laura, Beth, et. al.!

ETA: I meant to also comment on your review of Jazz - I also felt like if I knew more about the music, I would have gotten a bit more out of it. I read The Street by Ann Petry late last year, and the city as character reminded me of that a bit.

Great review of Lost Children Archive, Anne; it was one of my favorite novels of 2020. Like you I kept thinking about the two kids for weeks after I finished it, and wondered what would happen to them.

If you haven't done so already I would recommend reading Tell Me How It Ends: An Essay in Forty Questions by Luiselli, which is very much related to Lost Children Archive.

I also enjoyed your review of Jazz, which will probably be the next novel I read by Toni Morrison.

>70 AnneDC: It's a great list, Anne. It looks time consuming, so I'll enjoy yours for now.:)

>69 AnneDC: and >70 AnneDC: Definitely a great list. Like Paul, I've read 29 of them, and I own or plan to read many more. Thanks for the reference list!

>73 katiekrug: Hi Katie. Making the list reminded me of a lot of good books that I haven't thought about for a long time. I started Paradise a few days ago and am hoping to really dig in over the weekend. The first chapter is brutal.

I have The Street in my stack but have not managed to get to it yet--should I?

>74 kidzdoc: Darryl! What a pleasure to have you drop in. I will look for Tell Me How it Ends. I hope you have a chance to get to Jazz.

I spent a few minutes on your Club Read thread and see that you have a voluminous list of reading ideas. I will stop back when I have more time.

>75 BLBera: You're right, Beth, it was time consuming. Paul started it.

>76 ffortsa: As to books we "plan to read": there are some books I've been planning to read for so long it almost feels like I've read them. Happy to add to the TBR list.

I finished a book! The Vanishing Half. Still organizing my thoughts.

Now moving on to Paradise which is a group read, and a reread.

I am also about 200 pages into A Promised Land which I am loving but have temporarily come to a halt. I'm listening to the audiobook and apparently this week I have not gone outside for any walks (too much cold and snow), nor have I done the dishes (thanks family), which are my two main listening opportunities.

But I wanted to make note of this from Obama's preface on writing in longhand:

And by the time I was ready to get back to work and sat down with a pen and yellow pad (I still like writing things out in longhand, finding that a computer gives even my roughest drafts too smooth a gloss and lends half-baked thoughts the mask of tidiness).

A kindred spirit!

Yes! I feel the same way about writing in longhand.

>77 AnneDC: - The Street was very good, but the ending almost ruined it for me. Still worth a read, I think.

I wanted to read The Street last year because Petry featured in the American Author Challenge and I bought it in preparation but my challenges imploded a bit last year and I never made it. If you want to have a joint go at it?........

>79 BLBera: My kids and my colleagues mock me but it's the only way I can really organize my thoughts.

>80 katiekrug: Thanks for weighing in, Katie. I will keep it on the stack. (Or maybe move it off the stack with Paul's help)

>81 PaulCranswick: Hi Paul. That's a great idea! I've had the book for even longer than that but I did notice Petry was an AAC author--I didn't have the bandwidth to participate in that challenge last year, just watched it go by. What month would you want to take a crack at it? February is all booked up but the rest of the year is wide open.

>82 AnneDC: I feel like saying April, Anne, then that sort of guarantees you'll be around till then!!

In all seriousness I can fit it in any of the upcoming months all being well.

>83 PaulCranswick: Ha ha ha ha ha, sneaky. I plan to be around regardless, but April sounds good.

>84 AnneDC: On!

Great minds, Anne. I was just thinking about what to read next and was thinking I should give Devil in a Blue Dress a try! Then I saw that you are reading it!

>79 BLBera: When I was in college, I always wrote the first and maybe the second drafts of my papers longhand, then switched to the typewriter to get me over whatever hump I'd arrived at. It worked pretty well. I haven't written anything substantial in a long time - but it's definitely true that my 'voice' always seems different when I don't use longhand.

I finished Paradise last night and am still thinking it over. In the meantime, here's my review from 2011 when I read it the first time. I was brand new to the 75ers then and this comes from my very first thread! I gave it 4 stars--I think I'll be upping that this time around. And I think I'll write a new review.

38. Paradise by Toni Morrison

I liked this book a lot. It is powerful and left me with a lot to think about afterward, and yet I found it more accessible than some of Morrison's other books, which I confess sometimes can leave me feeling like I've failed to grasp something important. Paradise opens with a dramatic and disturbing scene, which then is abruptly suspended while the rest of the book, chapter by chapter, fills in the story of the town of Ruby, Oklahoma and its neighbor, the mysterious Convent, and the characters who inhabit both places. The opening scene is not resumed until the end of the book. The novel is set in the 1970's, and yet the town of Ruby is so eerily cut off from the rest of the world that it doesn't feel like the 70's. I don't want to say very much about the story because one of the things I most enjoyed about the book is the way Morrison fills in the details over time, layer by layer. Paradise explores some big ideas: how a people who were victims of persecution can come to persecute others, patriarchy, the search for external scapegoats as an alternative to looking within, and the idea of paradise, and how the longing to preserve something good can come to oppress.

4 stars

>85 PaulCranswick: Looking forward to it, Paul.

>86 BLBera: That's funny, Beth. I just finished it. It was an easy fast-paced read compared to Paradise and Obama's memoir. It's the first of Mosley's Easy Rawlins series and I've never read any of them--I quite enjoyed it. I usually read international crime novels so this was part of my Black History Month reading plan.

>87 ffortsa: I always feel I "think" better with pen and paper at hand.

>88 AnneDC: Those are great comments, Anne.

>88 AnneDC: I enjoyed reading your review from way-back-when, Anne. Paradise has left me with a lot to think about too.

Thanks for sharing your initial review of Paradise, Anne.

I just posted this on the Nonfiction Challenge thread but thought I would post it here too.

I just started reading Locking Up Our Own: Crime and Punishment in Black America. The subject matter is a little different than what I had been expecting, which is all to the good. I have a slight professional connection to the author, James Forman, Jr., as he co-founded a DC charter school for youths who have been involved with the criminal justice system, and my work is with DC's charter schools--probably why I picked the book up in the first place.

I had assumed this would be another look at the problem of mass incarceration in the US, and it is, but it is much more narrowly focused on how this has played out in Washington, DC, where I live. That's immediately moving it from "interesting" to "fascinating" in my book.
And, the question he is specifically exploring is how did a majority black jurisdiction (with a black leadership) end up incarcerating so many of its residents?

In Chapter 1, he looks at a failed city effort to decriminalize marijuana in 1975. Here's what I learned: We associate the beginning of the war on drugs with Nixon, but Nixon-era policies were more concerned with hard drugs and paralleled a national movement to decriminalize marijuana. Decriminalization then enjoyed broad support and was supported by individuals from President Jimmy Carter to William F. Buckley, Jr. A decriminalization effort in DC seemed to have momentum but was thwarted by black activists, clergy, and city councilmembers, who, concerned about the devastating impact of heroin on black communities, extended their prohibitionist approach to marijuana as well. (Some opposed both methadone maintenance clinics and decriminalization of marijuana, partly suspecting a white conspiracy to keep black people addicted and passive. They were not interested in, and were suspicious of, what we would now call a harm reduction approach.) Additionally, opponents of decriminalization downplayed the harms of continued criminalization, since at the time, although police relentlessly enforced marijuana laws, especially against black residents, most did not end up with convictions and few went to prison. No one in 1975 could foresee how this would change.

The writing is clear and the explanations logical and easy to follow--I am so looking forward to reading the rest!

>94 AnneDC: This does sound fascinating, Anne. I'll add it to my list. I want to read The New Jim Crow soon.

Have you watched "College Behind Bars"? It's a PBS documentary, and it is outstanding.

>95 BLBera: Beth, I highly recommend The New Jim Crow. It transformed my thinking on so many things--a 5 star book for me and one of the most influential things I've read in the past 20 years.

The Forman is not as dense, and I have a lot more background for it, but so far he has an unconventional take on a lot of issues. Chapter 2 was about DC's sweeping gun control measures in the 1970s (controversial, but not necessarily for the reasons you'd think. Now I'm settling in to read about the 70's-era DC police force.

I have not seen that documentary. It sounds really interesting.

I am sitting in my warm(ish) house defrosting after a bout with shoveling snow. Or rather, hacking up an inch and a half layer of ice from the sidewalk with a garden spade. Now I can hear the sounds of my neighbors doing the same thing.

Time to relax with a cup of tea and a book while our dinner gets delivered. Feeling lazy.

I think I'll make The New Jim Crow my next nonfiction read, Anne. It's been sitting on my shelf for too long. I've read excerpts, which I thought were fascinating.

Sorry to hear about the ice. We have had relatively little snow this year, just the two weeks of below zero temps, which I hope we are done with now.

I'm just starting The Vanishing Half; it's funny how our reading overlapped this month. Great minds...

I see what you mean about Paradise and The Vanishing Half being like negative images of each other. Mallard is Ruby, just with different shades.

>99 BLBera: Mallard is Ruby, just with different shades.
I love that, Beth.

>97 AnneDC: One of the best things about Malaysia is that there is absolutely zero prospect of me shovelling snow!

Have a lovely weekend, Anne.

>98 BLBera: >99 BLBera: I hope you enjoy The Vanishing Half Beth! I really did.
Yes it was interesting that the towns were negative images of each other--and each equally extreme in their own way. Other than that opening parallel, I didn't find the two books particularly similar. I guess you could say that both these towns become like prisons for the next generation.

>100 lauralkeet: Hi Laura. I love that too. Imagine me, reading both at the same time.

>101 PaulCranswick: Yes I suppose the complete absence of snow negates any prospect of shoveling. How much shoveling do you need to do on your move back to the UK? I'd imagine not that much.

I just spent the morning with my carpenter brother measuring for the floor-to-ceiling bookshelves in my new library.

My 26 year old daughter is well and truly on her own (and has been for a couple of years). She moved back in for a couple of months over the holidays to be part of our COVID bubble, and we cleared out most of her stuff from her bedroom. Now we are going to turn it into a library.

I don't know how long it will take to build the shelves, but at least the process is started.

>103 AnneDC: Cool! I hope we'll see pictures of your library. I've always wanted a house with a library.

>103 AnneDC: ooh, very nice! Our nest was already empty when we moved into our current home, and we made a sort of library/study out of a bedroom that we didn't need. I love the idea of repurposing your daughter's room.

>104 BLBera: and yes to photos!

>104 BLBera: I would love to post pictures of the library once it exists. For now all I can supply is photos of stacks of books lying around in every room of the house, and I'm not going there!

>105 lauralkeet: Converting her room into a library was Kate's idea, and I loved it immediately. It will still have the ability to function as a guest room so that she can sleep there when she comes home--but considering that she lives only about 8 blocks away, it's unlikely that she will come to stay very often.

The Hemingses of Monticello by Annette Gordon-Reed

Why now: many years ago, inspired by a conversation with drneutron at a DC area meetup, I started a chronological read of presidential biographies. It's been a slow project; after 9 years I'm finally at Lincoln. But also, I've been going backwards as well as forwards, because a secondary inspiration was to clean up my shelves of miscellaneous history books I keep accumulating and not reading. So, after I was well out of the founding period, my sister convinced me to read Hamilton, which I did, and then I saw that I also had: another Washington biography, 1776, a book about the divide between Washington and Jefferson, a book about the divide between Adams and Jefferson, a biography of Abigail Adams, Undaunted Courage, another book about Jefferson, another book about Madison, a book about the rivalry between Madison and Monroe, a book about the Adams family, another biography of Andrew Jackson, and The Hemingses of Monticello. How/why I end up with all these books is a very good question, but The Hemingses of Monticello fit some other January challenges so I picked it up.

Rating: 4.0

I wonder if it would have felt different to read this book in 2008 when it was published as opposed to now. I had a hard time shaking the feeling that the author marshalled a great deal of repetitive evidence to convince me of something I already regard as a fact--the existence of a line of Jefferson descendants through Sally Hemings, although that may not have been the author's primary purpose. The book is thorough and meticulously researched, even where there is a notable absence of any historical record (as the author points out, Sally Hemings herself left no papers and Jefferson appears to have intentionally avoided committing any mention of her to paper). Gordon-Reed periodically uses deduction, inference, and speculation to assess the motivations of Sally Hemings and other family members.

As the title suggests, this book is about the Hemings family, rather than about Jefferson. The effort to record the histories of all the members of the sprawling Hemings family accounts for much of the repetitive nature of this book--because the stories of each member are different but also similar, a lot of ground is covered over and over again. It was good, however, to see the Hemingses treated as historical subjects with agency, albeit limited.

I'm not a Jefferson fan. Although I can admire him as a gifted writer and thinker, ahead of his time in many ways, even setting aside his thoughts about slavery, I've come to see him as a man lacking in integrity. To my surprise, this book presented a more sympathetic account of Jefferson than I was expecting. I wondered if this reflected an effort to give the Hemingses a more distinguished ancestry.

Some things I learned reading this book:

-Sally Hemings and her siblings were half-siblings to Jefferson's wife Martha and he came to own them through his marriage.
-Sally and Hemings and her brother James could have remained in France and been free, but returned with Jefferson to Virginia at the end of his tour. (Gordon-Reed spends considerable time speculating on why.)
-Jefferson and Hemings' two oldest children, Beverly and Harriet, were emancipated at adulthood and passed into the white world, effectively disappearing.
-James Hemings, who went to Paris with Jefferson and was trained to be a French chef, eventually committed suicide at the age of 36.
-The financial struggles of their owners were ruinous for enslaved people, because they often would be sold (and families broken up) to cover debts. Jefferson's continual tendency to live beyond his means (which I was aware of) thus had perilous consequences for others (which I had not fully considered. Another point against Jefferson.).
-In his retirement, Jefferson was living at Monticello and financially struggling. One of the burdens on his household was that people--not friends and family but random citizens and tourists--would come to Monticello to visit and stay. Because Jefferson believed in radical hospitality, he never turned these people away, and they were literally eating him out of house and home. (I can't even believe that this was a thing that could happen, and wonder if it was common at the time.)

All in all a worthwhile read, I wish I had got to it sooner. Already it's helping me with some of my February reading. I think a print version would have been preferable to an audio version. It's easier to skim, and I assume there's a family tree, which would have been very helpful.

Purple Hibiscus - Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

Why Now: TIOLI challenge to read a book by an author connected to West Africa. And it's been sitting on the shelf far too long.

Rating: 3.9

I love Adichie's writing: Half of a Yellow Sun is a favorite and I loved Americanah too, but I'd never gotten around to reading her first novel, and I'm glad I finally did.

Purple Hibiscus is a coming-of-age story set in Nigeria after independence, and in the wake of a military coup. 15-year-old protagonist Kambili lives with her brother and parents in Enugu. The family is wealthy--father Eugene is a successful businessman, practices an extreme version of Catholicism, is controlling and abusive, and has high expectations for his two children across every domain. And yet, he is complicated. He publishes a newspaper, the Standard, "the only paper that dares to tell the truth these days" and vigorously protects his journalists. He is brave and outspoken against corruption. He is generous. Kambili idolizes him. I really admired the nuance Adichie brought to these characters.

The novel has three sections--Palm Sunday, Before Palm Sunday, and After Palm Sunday. Obviously events on Palm Sunday are the hinge of the novel, starting with the first sentence: "Things started to fall apart at home when my brother, Jaja, did not go to communion and Papa flung his heavy missal across the room and broke the figurines on the etagere."

All-in-all a great read--I don't think it's as polished as Adichie's later novels, but it's an amazing debut.

The Golden Compass - Philip Pullman

Why now: This was a reread, spurred by watching the His Dark Materials series and having trouble remembering specifics from the books. As it turns out more of my questions relate to Book 2 of the trilogy, The Subtle Knife, so I will have to re-read that, too.

Rating: 4.5

I loved these books the first time around, and the book stood up well to a reread. This is high-quality fantasy for any age. I love the philosophical questions Pullman weaves in. In addition to interesting and appealing characters and a thrilling plot, these books leave you with a lot to think about.

Great comments, Anne. The Hemmingses sounds interesting. I've been looking at the nonfiction on my shelves and am resolved to do better as well.

Purple Hibiscus made me a fan of Adichie; it is a first novel, but so accomplished. I will read anything she writes.

I've never read any Pullman although my son was a fan. I think I have this one somewhere.

Have a great start to your week.

My book club had one of its best discussions about Purple Hibiscus when we read it a couple of years ago. It was my first Adichie - still my only Adichie - but won't be my last.

Purple Hibiscus has stayed with me since I read it several years ago Anne. The abuse was awful and I thought it was such a powerful novel.

The Hemingses of Monticello sounds like a good one. Oh btw, I think I could answer How/why I end up with all these books is a very good question, . Lol

> 110 Either I accumulate nonfiction books faster or I read them a lot slower; I'm not sure which.

I tried to read Purple Hibiscus before, possibly when it was on the Orange Prize list, but I had a defective copy that was missing a huge chunk of pages, so I abandoned it (a good excuse, right?). So now I've come back to it only after having read her later books.

>111 katiekrug: I can see it making for a good Book Club discussion. (Post-COVID resolution: get a book club.)

>112 brenzi: The abuse was so extreme and yet I thought the father character was incredibly complicated, as were the family dynamics in general. I thought the way he cut off his elderly father was especially disturbing. Well, a lot of things were disturbing.

Just catching up here, Anne.

I don't know why I haven't read Purple Hibiscus yet since that her sophomore novel was my favourite so far of the 21st Century!

Hi Anne, Ooh I've been hit a few times: Lost Children Archive, Locking Up Our Own, The New Jim Crow. I am listening to The Vanishing Half right now but it's slow since I do most of my listening in the car and I'm not driving now.

I hope you'll post pictures of your new library! I am inordinately proud of mine. We have a basement here and though it was finished when we bought it we always had some idea of how we might like to change it and discussed and dithered about it for approximately 15 years until we ended up hosting an exchange student. We turned a storage area into an office and then into a bedroom for her/guest bedroom, and turned the living area into a huge library and office for my husband. I love it so!

Shoveling... ugh. Apparently we have a major snow moving toward us which could bring 2-3 feet (very early guesses at this point - cold end up being 2-3 inches too) but my husband is NOT excited about shoveling and I cannot help him this time.

>70 AnneDC: love this list, and I've enjoyed many titles on it! I'd love to make my own but I'm pretty sure I won't :)

>114 PaulCranswick: Hello Paul, I've been away from my thread for a bit--very busy at work for the last couple of weeks and am struggling even to read, let alone post, but I'm appreciating my weekend and hoping to catch up a litle. I think you would like Purple Hibiscus

>115 AMQS: Anne, so nice to see you back! I hope you are recovering well and more comfortable than pre-surgery. I will definitely be posting library pictures when it's finished. I do hope we are done with snow for the year. Probably in DC we've seen the last of it, but maybe not everywhere.

My brother is constructing the bookshelves now and should be coming to install them at the end of the month, or maybe the first weekend in April.

I'm busy trying to think about how to reorganize my collection. It's a bit of a puzzle. I would say I have three main groupings of books--fiction, non-fiction, and children's/YA. Childrens' books mainly reside in my kids' rooms, including the room that will be the library. I have a set of shelves in my living room area that I designated for fiction--but I ran out of space a long time ago. So first, I narrowed it to 20th and 21st century fiction, and moved Austen and Dickens and Dostoevsky and Zola to another part of the house. Then, I ran out of space again, and separated out all series books--so Lord of the Rings and the Girl with the Dragon Tattoo and Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy and Game of Thrones all got moved elsewhere. Of course, I ran out of space again, so now these shelves hold only modern fiction that I have read, and the TBR collection moved up to my bedroom, doublestacked with the books that are already there.

I'm thinking I should start from scratch, and maybe move all the non-fiction books (I think there are fewer) to the living room shelves, and put all the fiction, including children's and adult and old and new and read and unread in the new library.

I could also get rid of some books.

>116 AnneDC: This sounds like a fun problem, Anne. Enjoy reorganizing your books.

Love reorganising books, Anne, but it can hurt the reading numbers. Takes total immersion and you can't turn pages when you are moving the books around.

Missing you here, Anne. x

Well, I've had a lengthy absence from my thread! I've been pretty good about updating the top, and reading, but the last time I scrolled to the bottom it was March.

>117 BLBera: Beth I definitely threw myself into reorganizing books. I still have a few random groups that I can't quite figure out where they belong, but basically all books have a new home somewhere.

Thanks >118 PaulCranswick: for visiting--I've tried to return the visits and that's about all I've managed to do on LT lately.

Since then I've had the one year anniversary of the pandemic shutdown, two vaccinations, a child turn 18, my new library shelves installed and every book in the house moved from one place to a different place (picture to follow), a child graduate from high school (yay Helen!), and multiple holidays that involved more staying home.

I've been fully vaccinated since June 1 and since then have visited a friend's new house overnight, seen a movie in a theater, eaten indoors in a restaurant, gone to a comedy show, celebrated the 4th of July with family, met up with friends for drinks indoors and out, and met my supervisor in person for the first time (she started July 1 2020). And I've managed a lot of reading.

In the second half of the year I hope to post more frequently, and visit some threads!

And here is a list of book possibilities for July--I started way too many books in June. Whichever one I finish next will be my 75th book.

Assassination Vacation - Sarah Vowell - COMPLETED

Reading Now
A Month in the Country - J. L. Farrell
The Invention of Nature: Alexander von Humboldt's New World - Andrea Wulf
How Music Works - David Byrne
Thanks for the Feedback - Douglas Stone and Sheila Heen
The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon
The Jeffersonian Transformation - Henry Adams
Thirteen Ways of Looking - Colum McCann
Red Summer: The Summer of 1919 and the Awakening of Black America - Cameron McWhirter

Other Possibilities

The March - E. L. Doctorow
Flora and Ulysses - Kate DiCamillo
Henry and Clara - Thomas Mallon
EEG - Daša Drndić
Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead - Olga Tokarczuk
Jitney - August Wilson
The Enigma of Arrival - V. S. Naipaul
Moshi Moshi - Banana Yoshimoto
The Group - Mary McCarthy
The Subtle Knife - Philip Pullman
The Night Watchman - Louise Erdrich
God Help the Child - Toni Morrison
Good Behaviour - Molly Keane
House Made of Dawn - Scott Momaday
The House of the Seven Gables - Nathaniel Hawthorne
How the One-Armed Sister Sweeps Her House -
Hedda Gabler - Henrik Ibsen
Reveille in Washington - Margaret Leech

Hi Anne - nice to see a post from you!

>121 AnneDC: - I've read A Month in the Country, The March, and God Help the Child and really enjoyed them all. Good reading ahead!

Hi Anne! You have a lot of books on the go. I really liked A Month in the Country, and Good Behaviour is another favorite. I'm planning to read God Help the Child this month if I can bookhorn it in between some library holds coming my way.

Welcome back, Anne! What fun, organizing books. I hope we do get to see pictures. I've also been reading August Wilson this year. My next one is Seven Guitars.

>121 AnneDC: That's a very ambitious list!

>122 katiekrug: Hi Katie. I don't know what happened--I just kind of stopped with threads. I suspect it has something to do with being on the computer ALL THE TIME for work, as opposed to just most of the time--it makes me really want to be off-line when I'm off.

>123 lauralkeet: I'm still following along with your Morrison project, hence God Help the Child, which is the only one of her novels I haven't read. Actually, I am not sure about Tar Baby. I hope you get to it, and I hope I get to it.

>124 BLBera: I have a theater subscription and they frequently do August Wilson plays--usually one a year. I got the idea to read the whole Century Cycle in chronological order, so that's what I've been doing. My original goal was to read as far as Seven Guitars before the performance of Seven Guitars came up (May 2020). Of course, that performance was canceled, rescheduled, and canceled again, and maybe will come up in the 2021-22 season. Meanwhile I've read on--Jitney is up next.

I will post pictures of my new library shelves. The books are all in--I still need to do some work clearing Kate's stuff out of the room before it will be a relaxing place to hang out.

This weekend I finished my 75th book. (A Month in the Country for the British Authors Challenge

Congratulations on reaching 75, Anne!

>125 AnneDC: I'm planning to read God Help the Child soon -- hopefully this month. I've been reading them in publication order, so after this I will have read them all. It's been interesting and I'm glad I decided to do it.

Congrats on reaching 75, Anne! I am anxious to see more of the Wilson plays on stage.

000h, 75. Good going.

Congrats on reaching the magic number, Anne!

>127 lauralkeet: Thanks Laura. Looking forward to joining you for God Help the Child--it's one I haven't read. I've enjoyed reading Morrison novels in order, and think I'll continue from the beginning until I get to my starting point. And I'm thinking I might choose an author for 2022 for a similar reading project.

>128 BLBera: Thanks Beth. I've seen Jitney, Two Trains Running, and King Hedley II on stage. Should get to Seven Guitars this fall.

>129 ffortsa: Thanks Judy. I've had a hard time posting but I have been getting some reading in.

>130 MickyFine: Thanks Micky. Just about halfway through the year--hopefully plenty more books to come.

June Reading Summary

11 books

6 Fiction/5 NF

1 YA

3 rereads

Authors (fiction):
0 new authors
1 translated
4 female/1 male

Formats:
Audio: 4
Print: 4
Kindle: 1
Audio/Print: 1
Audio/Kindle: 1

On my shelf: 8
New: 3

June micro-reviews



The Photograph - Penelope Lively
3.5 stars
Skillful development of mostly unlikeable characters



How the Word is Passed: A Reckoning with the History of Slavery Across America - Clint Smith
5 stars
We are so overdue for this painful and poetic reckoning.



No Country for Old Men - Cormac McCarthy
3.5 stars
If Breaking Bad was a book.



Impeached: The Trial of President Andrew Johnson and the Fight for Lincoln's Legacy - David O. Stewart
4.0
Things go to hell after Lincoln's assassination.



Mary Barton - Elizabeth Gaskell
4.25
Labor v. capital in Victorian Manchester, with a side of romance



Home - Toni Morrison
4.0
Sparse sentences on home, heart, healing


How the South Won the Civil War - Heather Cox Richardson
4.5
How we got here.



The Story of the Lost Child - Elena Ferrante
4.25 stars
Final installment of Naples friendship saga



Etiquette and Espionage - Gail Carriger
3.25 stars
Escapist reread featuring finishing school on an airship, with vampires, werewolves, and plots to unravel



Why Won't You Apologize? - Harriet Lerner
4.0 stars
A useful book I got for my husband.



Four Fish: The Future of the Last Wild Food - Paul Greenberg
4.25
Q: What fish should I order? A: None of the above.

>126 AnneDC: Congratulations on reaching 75, Anne!

>133 AnneDC: I see you finished The Neapolitan Novels, I thought it was a great story.
We are watching the Italian TV-adaption now, very true to the books.

>134 FAMeulstee: I really liked the Neapolitan Novels, and agree with Anita that the TV adaptation is very well done. It aired on HBO here. I thank that so far they've only done the first two books.

Great June reading, Anne, and nice to see you back. Lucky you to have seen so many Wilson plays. The Penumbra Theater in St. Paul did the entire cycle a few years ago; I wish I would have taken advantage of that.

Interesting Anne that our reading is neck and neck this year - surprising very much to me as I cannot normally keep up.

Hope all is well.

>137 PaulCranswick: We are still neck and neck reading wise but I continue to miss my friend posting here. :(

>137 PaulCranswick: >138 PaulCranswick: Hello Paul and thank you so much for stopping by (and stopping by again) even though I haven't!

My reading, as you note, is going well this year--this was not the case last year, where I found myself too distracted even to read much.

Not so much my posting--I've been committed to updating my list of books read, but that's about it.

I think I'm finding it hard to be online when I'm not "at work". Maybe because 100% of my work time since the pandemic involves being online in one way or another, I find the only way I can set a work/life boundary is to close my laptop.

>136 BLBera: Sorry, Beth, I guess I wasn't really back, or I was back only for a moment. Maybe I'll find a moment to post about the rest of my summer reading, or even about September, as the month draws to a close. I'm very excited that my theater subscription is up and running for a new season--I'm planning to venture back out for my first play on October 1.

>135 lauralkeet: Hi Laura, I completely disappeared after reading God Help the Child. I had some comments, too, and never got around to posting them. I think mainly I was thinking about Sweetness in relation to Sethe from Beloved. Ever since I've been mulling over the idea of "protecting" children even to the point of harming them.

>134 FAMeulstee: Thank you Anita! It took me a few years to get through all the Neopolitan Novels because I didn't read them straight through, but I loved the series. I was aware there was a TV adaptation but haven't yet watched any of it. Something to look forward to!

Hooray for the theater! You've had some great Sept. reading. I loved both The Great Believers and Transcendent Kingdom.

I'd be curious to hear what you thought about the Lockwood.

>139 AnneDC: Nice to see you again, Anne!

Lovely to see you posting, Anne and thank you for your kind words over at my place and being first on my new thread this time.

>140 BLBera: Beth, I spoke too soon. My play was cancelled due to a "non-COVID-related health issue." Hmm. I get to stream a recorded version of the show, and wait for the next play in the season, which won't be too far away.

I loved The Great Believers and had a hard time putting it down once I picked it up. Something about dipping into a past that I can remember, but also that I in some ways missed.
Transcendent Kingdom was very good but I didn't like it as much as Homegoing, which I thought was amazing. But I think I expected that, so I wasn't at all disappointed.

No One is Talking About This was a bit of a puzzle for me. I see that it's on the Booker shortlist. I didn't love it, and wonder whether I missed the point of it entirely. I found the clever parts annoying in the same way I find social media annoying, and I found the transformational part lacking in real transformation.

>141 lauralkeet: Hi, Laura! When I get another spare moment I need to come by and see what you're reading.

>142 PaulCranswick: Paul, we'll see if I manage to keep posting more than a couple of weeks, but hope springs eternal.

Again, I'm so sorry to hear about your mother. It's obvious how special she was to you, and if it's obvious to us here, I know it must have been loud and clear to her.

I didn't say this on your thread, but I'll say it here on mine: I lost my father earlier this month, unexpectedly, although he had many many health issues so perhaps it shouldn't have been a surprise. His decline came so quickly that none of us were able to get there (he lived in Reno), although my stepmother and her daughters were with him at the end.

Anne, I'm so sorry to read about losing your dad. That's really tough, even more so when it's unexpected. Sending hugs.

My condolences on your loss, Anne.

I'm sorry to hear about your dad, Anne.

Your comments about the Lockwood are spot on! I think I see what she was trying to do, but I don't think she did it very well.

>144 AnneDC: Sorry you lost your father, Anne, my condolences.

I'm very sorry to read about your father's passing, Anne.

So sorry to hear about the loss of your father Anne. Like is often the case, it sounds like it happened slowly, then all at once.

>144 AnneDC: That is sad and so stoic of you to think of comforting me instead of thinking of your own pain.

((((((HUGS)))))))) a plenty

Oh, I'm so sorry you've lost your dad. We'll pray for you and your family.

>144 AnneDC: So sorry to hear about your loss Anne.

Just catching up here.

Sorry for your loss. Sending massive * hugs* your way.

I hope all is ok (relatively speaking at least).

Nice to see you reading up a storm anyway. What did you make of Shuggie Bain?

Oh dear--it looks like I took another extended break from my thread. I guess maybe I had a good reason.

Thanks Laura, Micky, Beth, Anita, Darryl, Bonnie, Paul, Jim, Rhian, and >155 figsfromthistle: for the sympathy and good wishes. It's very sad to have lost my Dad but our trip out to Reno in October for his Celebration of Life, and getting to hear what he meant to the extended family he's had around him for the past 20 years gave me a new perspective on his life and personality. He left us while his quality of life was extremely good, despite chronic health ailments. My stepmother deserves a lot of credit for that.

(My parents divorced when I was about 11, and our relationship with Dad has always been a little distant and somewhat limited. For a while when I was an adult he was living near enough to me that we could casually visit a few times a year, but when he remarried and moved to Reno from the east coast in 2003, I didn't see him much. His hearing is bad so phone calls were tough. Paradoxically, during the pandemic I set up a weekly family Zoom call and so for the past 18 months we've been in very regular contact. That's something I'm grateful for now.)

>148 BLBera: Beth, it's nice to agree on the Lockwood. Not my favorite of the Women's Prize shortlist.

>156 PaulCranswick: Thanks, Paul for visiting again. I think I missed an entire thread of yours in my absence. Besides family stuff, I was put in charge of managing my organization's annual conference, which happened the last week in October. I now know much more about event planning and management, but I hope someone else can do it next year!

Shuggie Bain--wow. This was painful to read at times, but so beautifully and wonderfully written. It will stay with me for a while I think.

>157 AnneDC: Great to see you back, Anne.

Shuggie Bain is a painful read and it seemed to take me an age to get through it but it had so much in it to admire too.

A Thanksgiving to Friends (Lighting the Way)

In difficult times
a friend is there to light the way
to lighten the load,
to show the path,
to smooth the road

At the darkest hour
a friend, with a word of truth
points to light
and the encroaching dawn
is in the plainest sight.

Anne, to a friend in books and more this Thanksgiving

Have a lovely holiday, Anne.

Or in other words: Merry Christmas & a Happy New Year!

Forget your stresses and strains
As the old year wanes;
All that now remains
Is to bring you good cheer
With wine, liquor or beer
And wish you a special new year.

Happy New Year, Anne.