Little Taiko's (Stacy) - 2022 TBR Challenge

Doing a slightly different format this year instead of the traditional Primary/Alternate. Instead I'm listing it by genre. Carrying over Pillars of the Earth from my 2021 list.

Biography/Memoir
1. H is for Hawk by Helen Macdonald - January
2. Blues All Around Me by B.B. King - February

Non-fiction
3. The Lost City of Z by David Grann - November
4. Radium Girls by Kate Moore - June

Fiction
5. Midnight at the Bright Ideas Bookstore by Matthew Sullivan - September
6. The Pillars of the Earth by Ken Follett - October
7. This Must be the Place by Maggie O'Farrell - February
8. The Stationary Shop by Marjan Kamali - August

Science Fiction
9. Parable of the Sower by Octavia Butler - November
10. American Gods by Neil Gaiman - December

Historical Fiction
11. Simon the Fiddler by Paulette Jiles - December
12. The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet by David Mitchell - December
13. The Madonnas of Leningrad by Debra Dean - May
14. The Seville Communion by Arturo Perez-Reverte - December

Mysteries
15. Ain't Nobody Nobody by Heather Harper Ellett - January
16. The Sentence is Death by Anthony Horowitz - January

Cozy Mysteries
17. Choked Off by Andrea Frazer - April
18. Still Life in Brunswick Stew by Larissa Reinhart - April

Historical Mysteries
19. The Alienist by Caleb Carr - December
20. A Deadly Affection by Cuyler Overholt - May

Thrillers
21. Next Girl to Die by Dea Poirier - July
22. Beyond Suspicion by James Grippando - April

Classics
23. Great Expectations by Charles Dickens - October
24. Sir Percy Leads the Band by Emmuska Orczy - November

Read: 24
Remaining: 0

Heard good things about H is for Hawk and about Octavia Butler. That's a Mitchell I still want to read, love Japan stories. We're parting ways on the Dickens path, I have to read Two Cities.

I'm excited about H is for Hawk and plan on starting off my year with that one. I adored Kindred by Octavia Butler and have been wanting to read more.

I always wonder when I look at my list which book is going to surprise me and which one is going to cause me more trouble than I thought.

Great list! I like your idea of listing them by genre.

Wonderful list :) I also have The Pillars of the Earth, but I hesitate to add it on any yearly reading challenge cause...well, I'm not sure I can!

I loved American Gods and The Alienist, though, so I hope you enjoy reading them too :)

I like that format. Maybe I should adopt that format in the future to help me broaden my reading horizons. The Lost City of Z caught my eye when it released but I never got around to trying it so looking forward to your review.

Happy reading in 2022 :)

>4 LibraryLover23: - It helps keep my brain organized and makes sure I'm tackling books from all areas of my shelves.

>5 riida: - Pillars is a carry over from 2021. If I don't read it this year I despair of ever actually reading it. Everyone keeps saying how good it is and that it doesn't feel very long. We shall see.

>6 Narilka: - Heard the author speak regarding a different book of his but when he mentioned Z I was fascinated by the story. Granted that was a couple of years ago - time to finally read it.

1. The Sentence is Death by Anthony Horowitz (3 stars)

An amusing mystery series where the author puts himself in the middle of the story as a very reluctant Watson type to Hawthorn’s Sherlock. This is the second in the series.

A divorce lawyer has been found murdered. The weapon was a really expensive bottle of wine and a mysterious message has been scrawled in paint on the wall. The lawyer didn't drink so how did the wine get there and what did the message mean. Horowitz is going about his usual life when Hawthorn shows up demanding that he document the investigation as part of their three book deal arrangement.

There seemed to be quite a bit going on in this book which made it hard to follow. Being inside the narrator’s head was a tad tedious at times however the story started to come together during the last half of the book. Nice light way to start the year.

An early lead! I usually like to start off light too, didn't do that this year so I'm not getting on the scoreboard anytime soon, lol.

Ten genres -- always something to read, no matter the mood? I can get behind that!

Following along this year, too. Happy reading in 2022!

>9 Cecrow: - Yes, I needed a quick boost before I got bogged down with life.

>10 Petroglyph: - I'm very much a mood reader so this should help me get through most of these books.

2. H is for Hawk by Helen Mcdonald (2 stars)

This was not the book that I wanted it to be. A situation where expectations and reality don't mesh. This memoir consists of three interwoven stories, the author coping with the death of her father, her training a hawk, and clips from another book about training hawks. The parts where she was training the hawk were by far the most interesting and I really wanted more of that. Unfortunately it took about a third of the book before Mabel, the hawk, made her appearance. The rest of it just didn't resonate with me.

3. Ain't Nobody Nobody by Heather Harper Ellett (3 stars)

Another sort of underwhelming read though where a book just didn't live up to my expectations. Really wanted to love this since I met the author a few years ago at Bouchercon and she was an East Texas girl like me. The mystery is set in Piney Woods and the events are seen through the eyes of three different people, a former sheriff who's best friend committed suicide, the daughter of the friend, and a young man who worked for the friend and seems to have accidentally found himself part of some illegal dealings. There is humor and overall I enjoyed the characters but it was disjointed with little bits of information being dropped here and there but not in a way that helped me really engage with the book.

Halfway through Blues All Around Me which I'm loving. Should finish that soon and then on to This Must Be the Place I think.

4. Blues All Around Me by B. B. King (5 stars)

This felt more like a conversation with BB King than a traditional memoir which made it quite enjoyable to read. I could imagine him sitting across from me telling me the unvarnished stories from his life. He was incredibly honest and sincere. He was a man who knew his strengths and more importantly his weaknesses and wasn’t afraid to admit them. Loved how much he enjoyed learning new things, especially that he would read about all the things that he wanted to know about. It’s how he learned to fly a plane which is incredible. I'm happy to have a bit of insight into him and his music and will also be eternally grateful that I was able to see him perform in person once.

5. This Must Be the Place by Maggie O'Farrell (3 stars)

This started off quite strong as in the beginning I enjoyed hearing Danial's voice and thoughts. It then alternated to a different character and a different point in time and continued to do so throughout the book. However the longer the book went on, the more exasperated I became by the changes, especially when a random character was brought in to narrate a chapter. I get that it was to help the reader see the main characters through someone else's eyes which quite frankly made Danial and Claudette more likable. Being in their heads did not make them sympathetic at all. My favorite sections were the parts narrated by the various children.

Multiple perspectives can be tricky work for an author, some do it really well while others ...

6. Still Life in Brunswick Stew by Larissa Reinhart (2 stars)

Funny how tastes can change over time. I used to be a fan of cozy mysteries but now I find most of them to be incredibly annoying. This one definitely fell in the annoying camp and the only reason I finished it was because of this challenge. At least it was a quick read and easy to skim to get the key bits. My main problem was the main character and the way that she assumes that she knows better than everyone else and needs to manager their lives. Also, constantly thinking she's better than the local police force which includes bot her uncle and boyfriend. I think the uncle might be the most sane character in the book.

Anyway, at least that is done and I've moved on to Beyond Suspicion which so far is a fun legal thriller.

>17 LittleTaiko:, it's funny how tastes change with time, isn't it? Similarly I've started having trouble enjoying fantasy novels unless the author really knows her/his stuff, otherwise I'm critiquing them too much to just relax and soak it in. I've never gotten much into mysteries, though I might still like reading some more Poirot stories.

>17 LittleTaiko: I find I'm hit or miss with cozy mysteries too these days.

7. Choked Off by Andrea Frazer (3 stars)

Pleasant enough village mystery where the first half is spent setting up all the characters and the actual murder and the second half with the inspector and his assistant investigating. The solution seemed pretty obvious but it was a nice enough way to spend a couple of hours - especially since I read this while flying.

8. Beyond Suspicion by James Grippando (3 stars)

The second book in what appears to be a long running series. It's a legal thriller set in Miami that had at it's crux one of the strangest crimes I've ever read about. I enjoyed this but there was quite a lot crammed into the story with lots of pauses to explain the back story for a character. It all became relevant at the end but seemed a little tedious while reading.

Whew, at least I'm caught up with where I wanted to be this time of year. Next up should be either The Madonnas of Leningrad, A Deadly Affection, or Radium Girls.

Nice! I'd like to be at 8 by end of April but I can't see it happening.

you're doing very well! i've only ticked off three so far from my list this year...and one of them was a DNF :p

9. Madonnas of Leningrad by Debra Dean (4 stars)

Bittersweet novel that I had a hard time putting down. It alternates between modern day Marina who is slipping quickly into Alzheimer's and her younger self who survived the siege of Leningrad. Her mind is desperately grasping to remember the paintings that she helped rescue and how reimagining the paintings kept her sane. A little bit awkward to be reading a book about the devastations of war with Russians garnering the sympathy right now, but it does provide a reminder of how horrible war is, not that watching the news doesn’t provide a similar reminder.

10. A Deadly Affection by Cuyler Overholt. (3 stars)

Slightly uneven mystery set in the 1907 New York with a young female psychiatrist protagonist. It was interesting to see the attitudes towards therapy at that time and how the things we take for granted now were viewed with suspicion. There was also mention of Huntington’s disease as the medical profession was just starting to get a small understanding of it.

On to the next batch - I’ve started Radium Girls which has been quite interesting so far. Also should be starting The Alienist and Pillars of the Earth soon.

I see your point about putting Russians in a sympathetic light at the moment. Not the fault of their average citizen, what's going on, of course, but still it could interfere with reading something like that.

It looks like A Deadly Affection and The Alienist make a nice pairing, both dealing with early criminology methods. I think that's why detective fiction only really got started with Sherlock Holmes (although there's earlier examples), since the timing coincides with these new approaches.

Pillars of the Earth was great when I read it in the 1990s (I like bragging I found it before Oprah did ... but so did a whole lot of other people, it was already a bestseller long before her help.) Didn't like the first sequel nearly as much and left it at that. The movie version was just meh, but the boardgame is fantastic.

I'm not sure I knew there was even a movie version of Pillars much less a boardgame. Most of my book club friends loved the book so I'm happy to finally get to it. Maybe I'll have to invest in the boardgame and have a book club party.

11. The Radium Girls by Kate Moore (5 stars)

Well, this was unexpectedly uplifting and hard to put down even though it's a very tragic story. Once upon a time, radium was the new wonder element, dubbed "liquid sunshine." Companies were advertising that it was included in the following products: jockstraps, lingerie, butter, milk, toothpaste, cosmetics, etc...It might not technically have been included but they sure wanted it to sound like it was since everybody wanted radium.

In 1917 during this craze, one company was producing watches with radium dials which were primarily used in the military. They hired a bunch of young women to paint the dials. Because radium shouldn't be wasted the women developed a technique called lip-pointing where they would put the brushes into their mouth, dip them in the paint, paint the watch and repeat. When they asked if it was safe they were reassured that there wasn't enough radium to hurt them. Oh boy.

Needless to say this does not end well for the girls, even those who didn't work that long dial painting. The first sign that something was wrong for most women was when their teeth became loose and kept falling out. Others developed limps, had one leg become shorter than the other, cancerous growths, etc...Of course the company chalked it all up to female hysteria and doctors in general were confused as to what was causing the problems. It turns out that radium works like calcium and can bury itself into the bone. After that it could manifest itself in many ways.

So many disturbing things including the fact that the shelf life of the radium used is incredibly long and the bodies of these women are still radioactive even after being buried all these years. The callousness of the company owners was appalling.

The book lays out the perseverance of some of the women in finding doctors who could help and lawyers willing to assist in fighting back against a company who was more interested in profits then helping these women. You got a real sense of who these women were, the lives they hoped to have, and the lives they were unfortunately stuck with. Their fighting spirit was inspiring and admirable.

I guess if you didn't know it was dangerous, it must have seemed fun. It's glow-in-the-dark! You can read your watch at night! Can't have been good for the people who bought any of those products either.

Exactly! The girls thought it was quite fun because they glowed. They would sometimes paint it on their faces to get the glowing effect. Yeah, I did wonder how the soldiers fared with these watches since they were the primary target market.

I saw a a short documentary about the radium girls. its a fascinating story, but something about it was too heart rending for me and i thought i would not be able to read their story again. But yeah, its a story worth reading.

12. Next Girl to Die by Dea Poirier (2 stars)

Well, this had potential but just fell short. Claire grew up in Maine but is now a detective in Detroit. She left home to avoid the memory of her sister’s murder. When another young woman is murdered under similar circumstances she is drawn back home. This is where the book started to lose me. Instead of just consulting the local police apparently hire her and she moves back? There are lots of loose ends that never get wrapped up. Even though Claire is a detective she’s still holding on to a childhood promise to her sister that could have helped solve the crime?

Anyway, on to the next one. Still working on Pillars of the Earth and will also be starting The Stationary Shop.

>33 LittleTaiko:, I've had that happen before, where a novel is perfectly fine except for one or maybe two outstanding elements that, once I think of them, I can't shake and just get more and more annoyed that they aren't being addressed.

13. Stationery Shop by Marjan Kamali (3 stars)

I’m really not sure how I truly felt about this book. It’s set partially in Iran during the early 1950’s and follows to teens, Roya and Bahman, who fall madly in love the way you’re prone to do when young. Revolution and family provide obstacles to their being together. The other half is set in the US where Roya is living as an older woman with flashback to her early life in America.

I enjoyed the parts set in Iran and learning more about the coup that put the Shah in charge. Where this book lost me is with the love story. It’s all well in good to be an emotional wreck when you’re a teen but good grief - it’s over 50 years since you last saw each other - the intense reactions just didn’t make sense.

>13 LittleTaiko:, that would be interesting seeing a depiction of Iran from those days. A lot more looks at the other end of the Shah's reign, it's easy to forget he wasn't exactly a poster-boy for democracy either.

That part was quite interesting especially since the main characters were against the Shah and preferred Mossadegh because he was pro-democracy. Think I would have preferred the book to focus more on that aspect instead of the romance.

14. Midnight at the Bright Ideas Bookstore by Matthew Sullivan (3 stars)

This book was different than expected. For some reason I had it in my head that it was going to more of a traditional novel with a hint of fantasy. Instead it’s more of a mystery. Luckily I like mysteries so it wasn’t that big of a deal for it to be different but I had to reset expectations during the beginning.

Lydia is passing time working in a bookstore that has an eclectic group of booksellers and and even more eclectic group of patrons. When one of the patrons commits suicide in the store it sets off a a chain of events that lead to part of Lydia’s past that she would prefer to remain hidden.

Overall this was fine, but the ending sort of bugged me. I just didn’t quite buy some of the decisions that were made.

I’m hoping to finally wrap up some of the many books I have started, with Great Expectations being the one I am most likely to finish first.

15. Great Expectation by Charles Dickens (3 stars)

Have you ever had the feeling that you’ve read a book before but once you start reading, it only rings a few bells? That is this book for me. I could have sworn I read this at some point during my high school days, but other than the first chapter none of it seemed familiar. I mean I knew of Miss Havisham and a bit of her story but that was all.

This wasn’t full of as many quirky characters as you usually find in his novels but it seems that maybe his later books weren’t as whimsical. This was basically a coming of age story recounted by Pip. Pip is a bit of an idiot through most of the book, but I’m fairly sure my older self would think that about me as a teenager as well.

Not my favorite of Dickens but still a good read.

>40 LittleTaiko:, I got about halfway through as a teen, and have had the ending spoiled for me since, but it's lined up for next year.

16. The Pillars of the Earth by Ken Follett (1 star)

I quit, I give up, I just can’t with this book anymore. Oddly, I think I may have enjoyed it more when it came out but reading it now, it just bugged me too much. How many rape scenes and other violence does one really need in a book? I got to the halfway point and was just tired of having to skim or fast forward past so much of the book.

The book annoyed me from the beginning when Tom the builder’s wife died and two pages later he’s sleeping with the mysterious gorgeous woman he met in the woods. He just buried his wife!

The only character I felt vested in was Philip, the prior. I needed more of him and less of everybody else.

>42 LittleTaiko:, I suspect I'd feel same now. I remember it having seemed pretty good when it was new in the 90s, but I read its sequel more recently and thought "Wow, that's a big step down." Now you've got me thinking the first book was probably down there too and I just didn't notice, lol.

>41 Cecrow: - It’s probably hard to not have it spoiled by this point. There were definitely parts that I somehow knew probably through other conversations about the book but others were a semi-surprise.

>43 Cecrow: - Same for me with his Century triology. I remember loving them when they came out, but I suspect I wouldn’t feel the same now.

Not sure I’ll actually make it through the last 8 on the list but I haven’t given up hope just yet.

Next up are Parable of the Sower and Sir Percy Leads the Band. Both are books that I really wanted to read this year.

17. Sir Percy Leads the Band by Emmuska Orczy (4 stars)

Despite all the predictability that the Scarlet Pimpernel books have, they are just so much fun. This was no exception where Percy and his group are faced with once again finding creative ways to save people from the guillotine. It’s like a heist movie but with higher stakes.

18. The Lost City of Z by David Grann (4 stars)

Not that I had exploring the Amazon on my bucket list, but after reading this, it most definitely will never make an appearance on my list of things I’d like to do someday.

There is a comparison in the book between the type of explorer who fares better in the Arctic and the type who prefers the Amazon. I’m firmly in the first camp - give me monotony and cold any day over a million different bugs and animals that can harm you at any given moment.

That said this was still fascinating to read since I could live vicariously through Fawcett and his many expeditions as well as others who gave it a go. It’s not for the squeamish as parts are quite grim and disturbing. Opened my eyes to a small part of South American history too.

19. Parable of the Sower by Octavia Butler (4 stars)

Hopefully grim, is that a thing? It’s slightly weird to be reading a dystopian novel at the end of 2022 that is set in 2025 and seeing ways that the world imagined isn’t completely unfathomable. Now, I don’t think society will digress that badly in three years, but some of the parallels made me a bit uncomfortable.

Lauren is a young woman whose family is in one of the so called safe neighborhoods. The families in the neighborhood are doing the best that they can to survive. Lauren’s journey involves her own path to finding a God that she can believe in and she creates something called Earthseed. I loved Lauren’s voice - her optimism, practicality, naïveté, grit, and stubbornness were a welcome break from all the bad stuff that happens during the book. It’s a dystopian world - lots of bad things occur (rape, murder, etc…) but it’s almost told in a matter of fact way that doesn’t allow anyone to dwell on the horrors for too long.

Finally wrapped up a couple of books that have been in the works for a while. Gotta love a long holiday weekend. I’m almost finished with The Alienist which I’ve been enjoying. Had to switch to a borrowed ebook version since the print was too small in my book. Oh the aging eyes!

>49 LittleTaiko: wow...this was on my tbr this year, but didnt get around to it...hopefully i can read it soon...definitely before 2025!

>50 LittleTaiko: I got this book in LT SantaThing and I enjoyed it too ^_^ i think they adapted this book in Netflix, but I havent seen it yet.

>49 LittleTaiko: & >51 riida:, Octavia Butler's posthumous stock seems to be rising lately, I've been getting interested in that too.

I can also sympathize with the aging eyes problem, hoping for some help from an updated prescription in a week or so.

By coincidence there was a really good article about her that popped up in my news feed today.

https://www.vulture.com/article/octavia-e-butler-profile.html

20. The Alienist by Caleb Carr (3 stars)

This was a well-researched and detailed, maybe a little too detailed, mystery set in 1896 New York City. A team of bands together to assist an alienist, or what we would call a psychologist, put this new medical concept to the test to solve gruesome killings targeting young children. This was at the birth of psychology and there was a lot of suspicion regarding the concept. There is quite a bit of explaining of various thought processes and the reader is taken along as the team debates and investigates different concepts. It was interesting but made for a slow moving read at times.

Still attempting to finish this list. Have Simon the Fiddler and The Seville Communion on the go. The other two - American Gods and The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet, we shall see.

Good luck! You can do it :)

>56 LittleTaiko:, whew, that's a lot from my perspective! I feel almost beat this time of year when I just have one left, lol.

>57 Narilka: - Thanks!

>58 Cecrow: - Well, normally I’d day it couldn’t be done. However, I am about to have two weeks off for the holidays and will be spending some time on a plane. I was also able to get three of the books as a library ebook loan so I could read while flying. That is the only thing giving me hope that maybe, just maybe I’ll be able to finish the challenge.

21. The Seville Communion by Arturo Perez-Reverte (3 stars)

Not sure why I thought this should be a historical fiction novel. Just the first sign that I didn’t understand what this book was supposed to be. Also, thought it was going to be a fast paced thriller which it’s not. What it is, is a book written in the 1999 that has a mystery at the heart of it, but is a very slowly paced book that has lots of historical backstory. The writing style is not my favorite type since I tend to get frustrated with the stop/start of it all. The most inept trio of villains provided much needed amusement amidst all the religious discussions and conversations where nobody says what they actually mean.

>60 LittleTaiko:, sounds like something I might like, but I'm sorry you didn't get what you expected from it.

22. Simon the Fiddler by Paulette Jiles (4 stars)

Fans of Jiles's News of the World should enjoy this prequel offshoot. She weaves an engaging story of Simon, a young fiddler doing his best to avoid participating in the tail end of the Civil War. It's so late in the war that they don't actually know that it's officially over and aren't even sure what they are fighting for. His attempts to make a living through music with a ragtag band of fellow musicians in an incredibly chaotic landscape showed his strength. I like a good story with a protagonist that you can root for and this delivered.

23. The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet by David Mitchell (3 stars)

Well this was an ambitious book, maybe a tad too ambitious? Jacob is a clerk with the Dutch shipping company in 1799. He has been sent to a remote island in Japan for five years to earn money so that he can marry his sweetheart back home. What I enjoyed: learning more about Japan in the late 1700's/early 1800's, the colorful characters, following the often amusing thought processes of different characters, and the balance between exploring Dutch and Japanese interests and their approaches to conflict. What frustrated me: there are so many components and characters that it's sometimes hard to follow, primary characters who just disappear from the narrative, and a rather disjointed plot. I groaned in frustration when the third section started and it introduced a whole new batch of characters. It all sort of comes together in the end but not in the most satisfying way.

So, that leaves me with the task of reading American Gods in the next three days. Luckily I don't have too many pressing things to do so it may actually happen.

Almost there :D

wow! one to go! American Gods the book was a lot better than the Amazon Prime series, if that helps.

The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet is also on my shelf....now not looking forward to it :p disjointed plots make my head hurt...i enjoyed Cloud Atlas though, and that was disjointed...so maybe I'll give de Zoet a try. but not soon ^.^

>66 riida:, practically same story for me! (re Zoet)

24. American Gods by Neil Gaiman (4 stars)

Several words come to mind: Entertaining, long, easy read, amusing, and confusing. There are parts of this book that I’m not sure needed to be included as for the life of me I couldn’t figure out what it had to do with the overall story. The length of the book and the small print size kept discouraging me from reading it. However, from the first page I was totally invested in Shadow and found the pages flying by. Definitely didn’t understand everything that happened but found myself enjoying the ride anyway.

Yay for lots of free time this week so that I could actually read this. Glad I was able to sneak it in just under the wire.

On to 2023!

Congrats on your completion!

>68 LittleTaiko: Wow, amazing! You even have hours left to go for 2022!!! \o/
enjoy the time and get a well deserved break...maybe read a book ;)

i can relate so much to your review of American Gods :D i loved Shadow. and there were parts in the book where i felt like i would really be up to reading the other books in this series (i think there are 4 books)....but by the end of it i was glad to move on to something new :p

That was a pretty slam-bang challenge finish, wow. Same for me with Gaiman, I just can't with that guy for some reason. Did appreciate the House on the Rock scene however, a place I've actually visited in person.

>71 Cecrow: - I didn’t realize it was a real place until reading the book. Now I kind of want to visit.