Let's start strong. I will have a very ambitious TBR to try to start my year on a high note. There are around 36 books so I would need to read in theory 7.2 books per week.
For the #AYearATHon
Challenge: Bench warmer
Skipping Christmas by John Grisham
Doubling up with my author challenge. So sneaking in a Grisham book seemed like a great opportunity.
I bought this book in 2018 so that has been sitting in my shelves for over 4 years. Funny story, my job relocated my temporarily to another country August 2022. I obviously was not able to bring my books so now they are sitting in a box over at my sister's house. So after requesting the book in the local library I am finally going to read it.
What's the book about you ask?
It follows a middle age couple - Luther and Nora Frank- they have decided to skip the Holidays altogether. Unfortunately they live in a neighborhood that takes their holiday festivities and ornamentation very seriously.
I expect laughs and a great time. Its a perfect fluffy read.
For Buzzwordathon
Prompt words: "Life" and "death"
Life by Lu Yao.
This one book is great because it hits several of my personal goals. It's a translated work from Chinese and it was published in 1982 so before 1990. (It was translated in 2019 but I'm going by the work's original publication date). And its great respected work. See this extract from a goodreads banner: "An essential masterwork from Chinese literary giant Lu Yao—winner of the Mao Dun Literature Prize—available for the first time in English."
What it is about you might be wondering?
In this first-ever translation of Lu Yao’s Life, we meet Gao Jialin, a stubborn, idealistic, and ambitious young man from a small country village whose life is upended when corrupt local politics cost him his beloved job as a schoolteacher, prompting him to reject rural life and try to make it in the big city. Against the vivid, gritty backdrop of 1980s China, Lu Yao traces the proud and passionate Gao Jialin’s difficult path to professional, romantic, and personal fulfillment—or at least hard-won acceptance.
With the emotional acuity and narrative mastery that secured his reputation as one of China’s great novelists, Lu Yao paints a vivid, emotional, and unsparing portrait of contemporary Chinese life, seen through the eyes of a working-class man who refuses to be broken.
Life: the leading edge of evolutionary biology, genetics, anthropology, and environmental science, edited by John Brockman.
I hope to try to get more into nonfiction but specifically science themed ones. I didnt't even read the premise the title alone captured my interest. But I understand that it might be different for other people. So here it is a quick book summary from the back cover:
"Scientists' understanding of life is progressing more rapidly than at any point in human history, from the extraordinary decoding of DNA to the controversial emergence of biotechnology. Featuring pioneering biologists, geneticists, physicists, and science writers, Life explains just how far we've come--and takes a brilliantly educated guess at where we're heading. Richard Dawkins and J. Craig Venter compare genes to digital information, and sketch the frontiers of genomic research. Edward O. Wilson reveals what ants can teach us about building a superorganism--and, in turn, about how cells build an organism. Elsewhere, David Haig reports new findings on how mothers and fathers individually influence the human genome, while Kary Mullis covers cutting-edge treatments for dangerous viruses. And there's much more in this fascinating volume. We may never have all the answers. But the thinkers collected in Life are asking questions that will keep us dreaming for generations."
Death in a Budapest butterfly by Julia Buckley. This is the first book in a series named Hungarian Tea House Mystery.
Another cozy story to give myself a nice break from the heavier reads.
Quick book description:
Hanna Keller runs her family's Tea House, serving up scrumptious snacks and tantalizing teas but when a customer keels over from a poisoned cuppa, Hanna and her tea-leaf reading grandma will have to catch a killer
When I picked up the book from the library. I didn't have time to really look around but from the shelf where my hold was waiting I ran into a few other books that caugh my attention. This are simply cover pick ups. I know, you should have better reasons but oh well.
Extraterrestrial the first sign of intelligent life beyond Earth by Avi Loeb. Another science related nonfiction and better yet the closest real life: first contact.
I do enjoy first contact with aliens scifi books. But trying to find something more
Book blurb:
" Harvard’s top astronomer lays out his controversial theory that our solar system was recently visited by advanced alien technology from a distant star.
In late 2017, scientists at a Hawaiian observatory glimpsed an object soaring through our inner solar system, moving so quickly that it could only have come from another star. Avi Loeb, Harvard’s top astronomer, showed it was not an asteroid; it was moving too fast along a strange orbit, and left no trail of gas or debris in its wake. There was only one conceivable explanation: the object was a piece of advanced technology created by a distant alien civilization."
The night Ship by Jess Kidd. A recent publication, it came out 2022 and its considered a historical Fiction, that should help me diversify my reading genres.
Based on a true story, an epic historical novel from the award-winning author of Things in Jars that illuminates the lives of two characters: a girl shipwrecked on an island off Western Australia and, three hundred years later, a boy finding a home with his grandfather on the very same island.
It will probably make me cry and also I need to find Australian based sorties to wash away the bad taste that a previous book left in my mouth. I don't read stories set in Australia often and the last one I read by Arthur W. Upfield. It was awful- I am not going to continue with this series and probably never going to pick up a book by this same author. The fact that it was written in late 1920s gives it no excuse. We need to open or eyes and admit when old works are promoting biased and clearly false information.
I got sidetracked, apologies about that.
The world we make by N.K. Jemisin. This is the second book in a duology. So because I didn't realize that when I picked up this book, I am adding another book and a short story to this TBR in order to make it possible for me to get to this one book.
What is it about?
Well this second part might present spoilers for the first book so be aware.If you want to avoid that skip the text and read again after the giff below.
All is not well in the city that never sleeps. Even though the avatars of New York City have temporarily managed to stop the Woman in White from invading—and destroying the entire universe in the process—the mysterious capital "E" Enemy has more subtle powers at her disposal. A new candidate for mayor wielding the populist rhetoric of gentrification, xenophobia, and "law and order" may have what it takes to change the very nature of New York itself and take it down from the inside.
In order to defeat him, and the Enemy who holds his purse strings, the avatars will have to join together with the other Great Cities of the world in order to bring her down for good and protect their world from complete destruction.
The first short story opening this world is The city born great. FYI it can be found in Scribd if you have a subscription. Feel free to use the referral code: https://www.scribd.com/g/72ocvr
Like all great metropolises before it, when a city gets big enough, old enough, it must be born; but there are ancient enemies who cannot tolerate new life. Thus New York will live or die by the efforts of a reluctant midwife...and how well he can learn to sing the city's mighty song.
With this, you get a 60-day free trial period and you can then purchase your subscription at approx $8.99 per month. You do not get any extra charge if you use this code, I do get a reward of a 30-day free period if you join using my code.
I have been using Scribd for three years by now I really enjoy it. You can get access to a few audiobooks per month and tons of ebooks. Be aware that audiobooks are limited (you get I believe 2 per month), at least the most popular books or authors, a few older ones are available to hear as many as you want. The ebooks so far I have seen do not have a limit to how many you read in a single month.
The city we became by N.K. Jemisin (this is actually book one).
Five New Yorkers must come together in order to defend their city.
Every city has a soul. Some are as ancient as myths, and others are as new and destructive as children. New York City? She's got five.
But every city also has a dark side. A roiling, ancient evil stirs beneath the earth, threatening to destroy the city and her five protectors unless they can come together and stop it once and for all.
Piece of advice, when you go to the library make sure to have plenty of time and read carefully the descriptions or better yet have StoryGraph, GoodReads or just plain google to make sure you aren't taking a book in a series. It has happened to me several times in the last few months, why do I keep falling for the same thing?
Moving on.
For my another challenges- there are right now 4 of them.
Stephen King
Finder's keeper- the second book of the Bill Hodges trilogy.
The genius is John Rothstein, an iconic author who created a famous character, Jimmy Gold, but who hasn’t published a book for decades. Morris Bellamy is livid, not just because Rothstein has stopped providing books, but because the nonconformist Jimmy Gold has sold out for a career in advertising. Morris kills Rothstein and empties his safe of cash, yes, but the real treasure is a trove of notebooks containing at least one more Gold novel.
Morris hides the money and the notebooks, and then he is locked away for another crime. Decades later, a boy named Pete Saubers finds the treasure, and now it is Pete and his family that Bill Hodges, Holly Gibney, and Jerome Robinson must rescue from the ever-more deranged and vengeful Morris when he’s released from prison after thirty-five years.
Bazaar of bad dreams - this is a short stories collection.
John Grisham
The Brethren - published in 2000
They call themselves the Brethren: three disgraced former judges doing time in a Florida federal prison. One was sent up for tax evasion. Another, for skimming bingo profits. The third for a career-ending drunken joyride.
Meeting daily in the prison law library, taking exercise walks in their boxer shorts, these judges-turned-felons can reminisce about old court cases, dispense a little jailhouse justice, and contemplate where their lives went wrong. Or they can use their time in prison to get very rich—very fast
Matt Haig
The Radleys a YA paranormal story. The theme fits more like October but as I am trying to read them in publication order we'll just go ahead and go through them as they come without regard for the seasonal themes.
The Radleys are an everyday family who juggle dysfunctional lives. Except, as Peter and Helen Radley know but their children have yet to find out, the Radleys happen to be a family of abstaining vampires. When one night Clara finds herself driven to commit a bloodthirsty act, her parents decide to explain a few things.
To be a cat - this is a children magical realism story. It doubles up for the Rapid Readers annual readathon - 21st prompt: the MC is a shapeshifter.
Barney Willow thinks life couldn't get any worse. He's weedy, with sticky-out ears. Horrible Gavin Needle loves tormenting him - Barney has no idea why. And headteacher-from-hell Miss Whipmire seems determined to make every second of Barney's existence a complete misery! Worst of all, Dad has been missing for almost a year, and there's no sign of him ever coming home.
Barney just wants to escape. To find another life... Being a cat, for example. A quiet, lazy cat. Things would be so much easier - right?
Barney's about to discover just how wrong he is. Because he's about to wake up as a cat - and not just any cat. Gavin Needle's cat...
A fast, exciting story from the winner of the Gold Smarties Award, with illustrations from the brilliantly dark and mischievous Pete Williamson.
Talking about the challenges. For the 2023 Classics challenge. I will have one book per month at least.
The picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde published in 1890. There is a lot of remakes or references to this classic work. I read this a few years ago but its a short story so it will not be too much effort to reread it. The author is also from Ireland so that will help in my "read around the world" challenge.
In this celebrated work Wilde forged a devastating portrait of the effects of evil and debauchery on a young aesthete in late-19th-century England. Combining elements of the Gothic horror novel and decadent French fiction, the book centers on a striking premise: As Dorian Gray sinks into a life of crime and gross sensuality, his body retains perfect youth and vigor while his recently painted portrait grows day by day into a hideous record of evil, which he must keep hidden from the world. For over a century, this mesmerizing tale of horror and suspense has enjoyed wide popularity. It ranks as one of Wilde's most important creations and among the classic achievements of its kind.
To make it more interesting as if my TBR is not already huge. I feel the need to add another book by this author so at least I read something new by him. The importance of being Earnest. It is a short story but still its a work that has not been read before, so it counts.
Book description:
Oscar Wilde's madcap farce about mistaken identities, secret engagements, and lovers entanglements still delights readers more than a century after its 1895 publication and premiere performance. The rapid-fire wit and eccentric characters of The Importance of Being Earnest have made it a mainstay of the high school curriculum for decades.
Cecily Cardew and Gwendolen Fairfax are both in love with the same mythical suitor. Jack Worthing has wooed Gwendolen as Ernest while Algernon has also posed as Ernest to win the heart of Jack's ward, Cecily. When all four arrive at Jack's country home on the same weekend the "rivals" to fight for Ernest's undivided attention and the "Ernests" to claim their beloveds pandemonium breaks loose. Only a senile nursemaid and an old, discarded hand-bag can save the day!
Initially I mentioned that I had a 36 book TBR, that has changed. As I am making the post more are added. The final count would need to wait until tomorrow but oh well, for now lets leave an estimate, now it looks like 8 books would need to be read by week.
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