susanna.fraser hits the books in 2022

I'm Susanna (aka Susan--Susanna is my authorial pen name, but I go by both). I'm a writer with a day job in university research administration. I live in Seattle with my husband and 17-year-old son, and I turn 51 on January 1. (I seriously considered some kind of Area 51 theme for the thread but couldn't stretch it to cover all my challenges.)

I read pretty widely, though my fiction choices skew heavily to science fiction, fantasy, and romance (not coincidentally, the same genres I like to write). In nonfiction, I read a lot of history and science with occasional forays into theology and current events. Besides reading from the CATs and KITs, along with TIOLI over on the 75 Books group, my focuses this year will be reading more books by BIPOC and LGBTQIA authors and trying to reduce my TBR pile as of 12/31/21 by half. (TBR pile=books owned but unread in either paper or electronic form.)

Since last year's theme was lifelong exploration, I decided that this year I'll go with a loose theme of lifelong learning. Drop a star if you'd like to see what's on my syllabus.

Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion 101: BIPOC and LGBTQIA Authors

January:
1. Radio Silence by Alyssa Cole
2. The Sentence by Louise Erdrich
3. Honey Girl by Morgan Rogers
4. The Unbroken by C.L. Clark

Library Time: Making Good Use of What's Already on Hand (i.e. reducing the TBR)

(The building is the Furness Library at my alma mater, U Penn, where I always went to study for midterms and finals because you had to take yourself and your work seriously in a room like that.)

Incidentally, for this challenge books completed before 1/1/22 count, as do books I don't finish. The goal is to reduce the TBR pile, and inevitably that will sometimes mean realizing that some of these books just aren't for me and moving them to my donation pile or removing them from my Kindle TBR collection.

Without further ado, here's the list (which will be updated with anything I acquire through 12/31), since I need to know what I'm dealing with to know when I've cut it in half! Feel free to chime in with recommendations for what I should read first.

On my Kindle
Alaric the Goth
Alternate Peace
The Atlas Six
Bad Witch Burning
Brat Farrar
Briarley - completed 11-11-21
Brown Girl in the Ring
The City of Brass
Clarkesworld January 2021 - completed 11-20-21
Clarkesworld February 2021
Clarkesworld March 2021
Clarkesworld May 2021
Clarkesworld June 2021
Clarkesworld July 2021
Clarkesworld August 2021
Clarkesworld September 2021
Clarkesworld: October 2021
Clarkesworld: November 2021
Clarkesworld: December 2021
The Collapsing Empire
Consolation Songs - completed 11-10-21
Dark Rise
If Darkness Takes Us
Deal with the Devil
The Duke I Tempted
The Element of Fire
Exercised
Fantasy & Science Fiction March 2021
Fantasy & Science Fiction May 2021
Fantasy & Science Fiction July 2021
Fantasy & Science Fiction September 2021
Fantasy & Science Fiction November 2021
Firekeeper's Daughter
Flash! Writing the Very Short Story
Forget the Sleepless Shores
Galactic Stew - completed 12-12-21
The Gaucho's Lady
The Goblin Emperor
Go Tell the Bees That I Am Gone
The Heroine's Journey
How the Dukes Stole Christmas - completed 12-21-21
How to Write Short Stories and Use Them to Further Your Writing Career
Iron & Velvet - DNF 11-27-21
I Should Be Writing - completed 12-24-21
Jade Fire Gold
Leaving Church
Legendborn
Letters of a Woman Homesteader
The Library of the Dead
Lyndon Johnson and the American Dream
The Magnolia Sword
Making Up
A Marvellous Light
More Time For You
No Gods, No Monsters - DNF 1-15-22
Not for Use in Navigation
Now Write! Science Fiction, Fantasy, and Horror
One Last Stop
The Optimist's Telescope
The Oracle Glass
Radio Silence - completed 1-1-22
Season for Scandal
Sex Sleep Eat Drink Dream
Shaking the Gates of Hell - completed 1-1-22
Sisters in Law
Sorcerer to the Crown
Stormsong
Storyteller
Summer Sons
Teach Me
This Year You Write Your Novel
Trust Falling For You
The Twisted Ones
The Unbroken - completed 1-16-21
Victories Greater Than Death - completed 12-26-21
Wholehearted Faith - completed 11-24-21
Winter's Orbit

On my shelves
Akata Witch
Analog Science Fiction and Fact March 2015
Analog Science Fiction and Fact April 2015
Analog Science Fiction and Fact May 2015
Analog Science Fiction and Fact March 2016
Asimov's Science Fiction June 2015
Asimov's Science Fiction July 2015
Asimov's Science Fiction September 2015
Behind Closed Doors
The Best Science Fiction of the Year: Volume 1 - completed 1/25/22
Careless Whispers
Charlemagne's Tablecloth
Citizens
City of Laughter
A Curious Beginning - DNF 12/24/21
Edge of Empire
Empire of Liberty
Family Fortunes
The First Salute
The Glorious Cause
Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell
Learned Optimism
Lest Innocent Blood Be Shed
The Man Born to Be King
The March of Folly
The Mind of the Maker
Napoleon's Wars
The New Jim Crow
The Origins of Sex
Overcoming Writer's Block
A People's History of the United States
The Prince of Pleasure
The Pursuit of Glory
Redcoats and Rebels
Rebecca's War
The Same River Twice - completed 1-6-22
The Secret Country
Solutions and Other Problems
Spill Zone
Team of Rivals
A Vindication of the Rights of Women
Vows Made in Wine
The War of Wars
When the Light of the World Was Subdued, Our Songs Came Through - completed 11-13-21
Writing Her In

TBR Total: 122
Goal to clear: 61
Completed: 14
DNF: 3
Total cleared: 17

Department of Aeronautics and Astronautics (Science Fiction)
1. Radio Silence
2. The Best Science Fiction of the Year: Volume 1

Advanced Readings in Folklore and the Fantastic (Fantasy)
1. The Unbroken

The Homecoming Dance (Romance)
1. Radio Silence
2. Honey Girl

Primary and Secondary Education (Children's and YA)

That's my high school alma mater, though it's been remodeled and expanded since my day.

1. Major Impossible

The History Department (Nonfiction History)

1. Shaking the Gates of Hell
2. The Secret History of Home Economics
3. The Year of Lear
4. Robert E. Lee and Me

Department of Biology (Sciences, mostly biological)

(OK, that's not a very scientific crow image, but it's one of my favorites.)

Divinity School (Theology and Religion)

1. Shaking the Gates of Hell

Electives (Everything Else!)

1. King Lear

CATs

January:
1. King Lear (ShakespeareCAT)
2. The Same River Twice: A Memoir of Dirtbag Backpackers, Bomb Shelters, and Bad Travel (CATWoman)
3. The Sentence (AuthorCAT)
4. The Year of Lear (ShakespeareCAT)

KITs

January
1. Shaking the Gates of Hell (RandomKIT - Home Sweet Home)
2. Radio Silence (AlphaKIT - R&H)
3. Major Impossible by Nathan Hale (AlphaKIT - R&H)
4. The Secret History of Home Economics (RandomKIT and AlphaKIT)
5. Honey Girl (AlphaKIT - R&H)
6. The Unbroken (SFFKit - Morally gray)
7. Robert E. Lee and Me (AlphaKIT - R&H)

BingoDOG



10. Radio Silence
14. Major Impossible
16. The Sentence
17. Honey Girl
19. Shaking the Gates of Hell
21. The Year of Lear
24. The Unbroken

Q1 Log

January:
1. Shaking the Gates of Hell
2. Radio Silence
3. King Lear
4. Major Impossible
5. The Secret History of Home Economics
6. The Same River Twice: A Memoir of Dirtbag Backpackers, Bomb Shelters, and Bad Travel
7. The Sentence
8. The Year of Lear
9. Honey Girl
10. The Unbroken
11. Robert E. Lee and Me
12. The Best Science Fiction of the Year: Volume 1

Hi Susanna, I'm dropping my star and looking forward to following along with you in 2022.

Excellent, I look forward to learning a lot with you to guide us.

Some great topics in here! Happy reading and learning!

Dropping my star, I've picked up several BBs from you in the last couple of years! Good luck with winnowing Mt TBR - I'm doing the same, but halving it is a bigger task than I can manage in a year.

I'll be lurking :) Good luck with your challenge!

Excellent theme! This should help reduce the tbr pile.

I love all your cats! I hope to reduce my TBR also!

I love the kitten in the card catalog drawer! Looking forward to following along.

(PS. A couple of your pictures are missing: >3 susanna.fraser:, >13 susanna.fraser:.)

Enjoy your 2022 reads!

Good luck with your reading plans for 2022.

Happy Reading!

>27 NinieB: Thanks! I found replacements.

Looking forward to following your reading in 2022. From your Kindle list of books to read, I highly recommend The Goblin Emperor - I loved that one.

>32 Crazymamie: I've heard a ton of good things about that one!

1. Shaking the Gates of Hell by John Archibald

Starting my year with a memoir by a fellow white child of Alabama, roughly of my generation (he was born in 1963, I in 1971), who wrestles as I do with whether his own well-meaning, basically kind white Christian family did enough to be part of the solution rather than the problem in the Civil Rights era, only since he is a journalist still living in Alabama and his father was a prominent Methodist pastor, the questions are a bit sharper for him.

2. Radio Silence by Alyssa Cole

I wouldn't call this a light read--there's a lot of angst and a good bit of blood--but it was definitely fun, escapist, and quick. I'm sure I'll read the rest of this post-apocalyptic romance trilogy pretty soon.

3. King Lear by William Shakespeare

This wasn't my favorite of Shakespeare's works when I took a Shakespeare class as an elective in college...and it's still not my favorite now.

4. Major Impossible by Nathan Hale

I'd lost track of this kids' graphic novel series about stories from American history after my own child aged out of reading them, but I recently was reminded of them and decided to catch up. Fun books, though emphatically keyed for their younger audience and their sense of humor.

5. The Secret History of Home Economics by Danielle Dreilinger

History of home economics as a field, largely through the lens of the women who lead the field throughout the 20th century. I would've been more interested in something that focused on the student experience, how the curriculum changed over time, and so on.

6. The Same River Twice: A Memoir of Dirtbag Backpackers, Bomb Shelters, and Bad Travel by Pam Mandel

A rather harrowing memoir of the author's travels, just after high school at age 17-18, through Israel, England, Greece, Egypt, Pakistan, and India, mostly in the company of an abusive boyfriend.

Dropping a star as well. Looking forward to following you this year!

>40 beebeereads: Welcome!



7. The Sentence by Louise Erdrich

I feel like this book shouldn't have worked--magical realism? the author is a minor character story largely set at the bookstore she owns IRL? the actual events of 2020 play a huge role in the story?--but it does, completely.

>41 susanna.fraser: I am hoping this makes it on the list for my IRL book club this year. If not, it will definitely be on my priority list. Really appreciate your comments. You can find me at https://www.librarything.com/topic/338552#7715629

8. The Year of Lear by James Shapiro

A look at the Gunpowder Plot ("Remember, remember, the fifth of November...") and the year that followed through Shakespeare and his contemporaneous works, Lear, Macbeth, and Antony & Cleopatra. It felt surprisingly relevant, given that we just lived through a year that started with political violence and upheaval and ended with a bad wave of an ongoing pandemic (plague in Shakespeare's case).

>43 susanna.fraser: I've got to make time for that one, for sure!

>44 Tess_W: It's interesting. I learned a lot more detail about the Gunpowder Plot and its impact on England and London in particular than I'd ever heard before.



9. Honey Girl by Morgan Rogers

A romance/coming-of-age story wherein the heroine, a hard-driven overachiever with a Plan for every step of her life, marries a girl she meets while drunk in Vegas after completing her PhD.

10. The Unbroken by C.L. Clark

Epic fantasy in a world clearly based on French colonialism in North Africa, with magic and betrayal upon betrayal and lesbian enemies to lovers back to enemies, which I basically read in a single gulp.

11. Robert E. Lee and Me by Ty Seidule

The author is a Southern, historian, and career army officer who grew up steeped in Lost Cause mythology, which he learned to question and ultimately disavow. The final line of the book packs quite a punch, given that I think it was written just slightly before critical race theory became a right-wing pet cause: "The only way to prevent a racist future is to first understand our racist past."

12. The Best Science Fiction of the Year: Volume 1 ed. by Neil Clarke

I've had this anthology of 2015 short stories on my shelf since at least 2017, and it's such a brick of a book it took me forever to want to pick it up and start reading. I'm glad I did, though, since it contains mostly excellent stories by a notable collection of SFF authors.