Around the Year in 52 Books discussion

It's really easy to get swept up in all of the shiny newly released books coming out from publishers. This week, however, you are going to dig in that TBR and find a book that is not a new release. Whether you want to go for something really old and get a classic, or just want to dig through a favorite author's backlog, or just need to finally get around to that book you keep meaning to pick up, anything goes as long as it's at least 10 years old.

Lists to persue:
100 Best Books of the 21st Century:
GR Best Book of the 2000s: /list/show/5...
GR Best Book of the 20th Century: /list/show/6
(You can use these two listopias to navigate to different Best Of decades or centuries)

Listopia: /list/show/1...

What are you reading? What are some of your favorite older books?

I'm concentrating on the years 1980-1999, just to narrow it down.

For the Sake of Elena (Inspector Lynley #5) - Elizabeth George
The Bingo Palace - Louise Erdrich
Booked to Die (Cliff Janeway #1) - John Dunning

I recommend Louise Erdrich's Love Medicine and The Beet Queen, both published in the 1980s. Some older books I recommend are The Forsyte Saga, The Age of Innocence, Kristin Lavransdatter, The Code of the Woosters, and And Then There Were None.

I've read 19 of top 100 on this list and they are great. This list includes my favorite Jane Austen, my favorite Dorothy L. Sayers, and my favorite Terry Pratchett.

I have so many books that will work for this... My final option will probably depend on what my Classics Bingo challenge for another group looks like. Once I know the categories for that one, I'll have a better idea. But for right now, some of the ones I'm thinking about:

The A.B.C. Murders
The Thin Man
Go Down, Moses
O Pioneers!

I'm going to use this prompt to read an older Stephen King, there are a lot of his older stuff I've never read. I have 'Salem's Lot down for this but could also read Christine or Cujo.

I'm planning to use this prompt as a chance to read something that is somewhat newer (not a classic) and somewhat popular (not obscure).

Some of my options:
The Unlikely Pilgrimage Of Harold Fry by Rachel Joyce (2012)
Rules of Civility by Amor Towles (2011)
The Paris Wife by Paula McLain (2011)
The Dovekeepers by Alice Hoffman (2011)
The Garden of Evening Mists by Tan Twan Eng (2011)
Half of a Yellow Sun by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie (2006)
The Historian by Elizabeth Kostova (2005)
On Beauty by Zadie Smith (2005)
Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides (2002)
Kafka on the Shore by Haruki Murakami (2002)
The Pillars of the Earth by Ken Follett (1989)
Lonesome Dove by Larry McMurtry (1985)

Wow dalex you have some excellent books on that list!! Middlesex and The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry are two of my favorites!

Emily wrote: "Wow dalex you have some excellent books on that list!! Middlesex and The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry are two of my favorites!"

They are all books that have been on my TBR since forever. I keep putting them off because either I fear they will not live up to their hype or they are painfully long (*cough*) Pillars of the Earth (*cough*). Thanks for the encouragement!

Pillars of the Earth doesn’t feel long, it is a pretty easy read. I believe I actually listened to all 4 of the books in that series, and they are all lots of hours!

The first book on my TBR is Catherine the Great: Portrait of a Woman and it was first published in 2011, so this could be the prompt to finally get me to read that! Also considering:

Cloud Atlas
1Q84
A Lesson Before Dying
White Teeth

Possibles:

The Green Mile
Snow Falling on Cedars
White Oleander
The Kitchen God's Wife
The Hundred Secret Senses
Killing Floor
Déjà Dead
False Memory

I've been meaning to finish The Autobiography of Malcolm X. this might be the year.

Recommendations:
Sister Carrie
O Pioneers!
The Painted Veil
Mrs. Dalloway
Embers
Peony
A Town Like Alice
The Good Shepherd
A Canticle for Leibowitz
Stoner
Jubilee
Red Sky at Morning
The Left Hand of Darkness
The Tremor of Forgery
The Lathe of Heaven
Watership Down
The Sea, The Sea
A Fine Balance
The Remains of the Day
The Winter King
Montana 1948
Snow Falling on Cedars
The God of Small Things
Atonement
Into Thin Air: A Personal Account of the Mount Everest Disaster
Cat's Eye
A Wrinkle in Time

I think I'll try and slot in a Wheel of Time book for this one. I really want to make progress on the series but I'm super slow at reading it ._.

I'll be reading The Calling by Kelley Armstrong, which was first published on 5 April 2012, so will have its 10th birthday in 2022.

All my favourite books are older books, so this is too easy for recommendations! The Discworld books are my favourites, and they're almost all old enough - anything from The Colour of Magic to Snuff fits. So many of my favourite series started more than 10 years ago: Rivers of London, One for the Money, A is for Alibi, Bitten, Nightlife.

For standalones I'd recommend I Am the Messenger, Moloka'i, Marley and Me, Nation, When God Was a Rabbit and A Monster Calls.

A great challenge to tackle off my shelves:

The Girl Who Played with Fire by Stieg Larsson
Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn (If I read after 14th May).
On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft by Stephen King
Hateship, Friendship, Courtship, Loveship, Marriage: Stories by Alice Munro
The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time by Mark Haddon
Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell
The Amber Spyglass by Philip Pullman
Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen
The Book Thief by Markus Zusak
A Game of Thrones by George R.R. Martin
Anne of Green Gables by L.M. Montgomery
The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood
Daughter of Smoke & Bone by Laini Taylor
The Elegance of the Hedgehog by Muriel Barbery
The Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern
Looking for Alaska by John Green
Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert
Attitude Is Everything: Change Your Attitude ... Change Your Life! by Jeff Keller
Gourmet Rhapsody by Muriel Barbery

These are the ones I am most looking forward to in this category but I have so many
Murder on the Orient Express
We Have Always Lived in the Castle
The Master of Blacktower
Full House
Burning Water
Blood Trail

I could recommend one that most people have not read To Your Scattered Bodies Go by Philip José Farmer I loved this whole series.
Jane Eyre has always been my favorite go to book that I have re-read many times.

I read The Hollow Man by John Dickson Carr First published in 1935. This is a locked-room mystery from what is known as The Golden Age. I very much enjoy books from this time, Agatha Christie being my favourite author.

Just finished The Duke and I by Julia Quinn which qualifies.

One of my absolute favorite books qualify: Howl’s Moving Castle

If anyone else is working on the Boxall list of 1001 Books You Must Read Before You Die, there are only 12 books on the combined list that do NOT satisfy this prompt, so that's 1306 other books for the picking. Here's the Listopia for the combined list.

I read A Light in the Attic. This was a very quick read and read it in one sitting. It was entertaining and published in 1981.

I do enjoy some of the classics and other one that would satisfy this would be The Great Gatsby if you want a good story and it is not to long.

Agatha Christie Der Tod wartet
/review/show...

I read:
Outlander by Diana Gabaldon - My Review (not my cup of tea)

I just finished The Shadow of the Wind, first published in 2001. This could also work for 44. A book with gothic elements!

I read Passing - an excellent book standing the test of time.

I would recommend: Beloved, Their Eyes Were Watching God, One Hundred Years of Solitude, and Parable of the Sower.

I had just started reading To Say Nothing of the Dog by Connie Willis when I saw someone on one of these threads say to read Three Men in a Boat by Jerome K. Jerome first. So, I did. :) Since that book was written at the end of the 19th century, it easily fit into this category.

Some books I would recommend:
The Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson
Night by Elie Wiesel
Going to Meet the Man by James Baldwin
Eye of the Needle by Ken Follett
Sister Outsider: Essays and Speeches by Audre Lorde
The Shining by Stephen King
The Hunt for Red October by Tom Clancy
Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Cafe by Fannie Flagg
The Color Purple by Alice Walker
The Bookseller by Cynthia Swanson

Read Hatchet with my daughter. She was reading it for school and loved it. She keeps making me read all the books she enjoys haha. Happy to see something besides a graphic novel or picture book caught her interest.

I went with a classic, William Shakespeare's Othello.

I normally can't concentrate on audiobooks, but for a reason I can't remember right now, I tried (and was successful!) listening to Louise Penny's Still Life.

I also don't usually read murder mysteries, but Meredith, one of the hosts on the podcast Currently Reading (), is SUCH a Louise Penny fan, I thought I'd try one. Also, they are not so focused on the murder, but more the people of the village, so the murder was almost incidental.

Just finished Beyond the Shroud by V.M. Jones.

Continuing my run through the novelisations, I’m reading Back to the Future, Part 3, published in 1990.

Not as insane as the first one, but still pretty strange compared to the movies.

I am reading Swallowdale by Arthur Ransome. Some favourites are Swallows and Amazons by same author, Jamaica Inn by Daphne du Maurier, The hills is lonely by Lillian Beckwith and Village Diary by Miss Read.

I read Practical Magic and really enjoyed it.

I would recommend:
The Hundred Secret Senses
Bridget Jones's Diary
Stardust
Three Wishes
Immoveable Feast

So I read Daughter of Smoke & Bone as it was published in 2011 and while it was a bit slow to get into, I was invested enough to continue the series!!

I read Apocalypse of the Dead by Joe McKinney, published in 2010.

Excitingly a lot of Benjamin January books are over 10 years old! So I read Ran Away by Barbara Hambly

So I listened to I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings. Maybe listening to it wasn't the best format. I only rated it a 2. I was interested in parts of it but it didn't flow for me at all.

I read Home

I virtually never read any book that wasn't published at least 10 years ago, it's far more difficult for me to read anything that is!

Anyway, this one will fill the prompt. Can't go wrong with a Wodehouse!

I read Artists in Crime, originally published in 1938. I love Ngaio Marsh's classic mysteries (she was a peer of Agatha Christie and Dorothy L. Sayers), especially the ones set in artistic or theatrical settings. This was a reread, but I didn't remember who the killer was until 75% of the way in.

This would also work for prompts #1 (Agatha Troy is a major character), #15 (the paperback I read had an artist's palette for the cover art), and #20 (setting is 1930s England).

This is such a wide prompt. I decided to go for a book published just over 10 years ago, in 2011, and read The Dovekeepers by Alice Hoffman.

I was gripped by this book, about some of the women caught up in the siege of Masada, and would thoroughly recommend it.

It would also work for the book with a Jewish character/author prompt and for PopSugar's 'found family' prompt.

I had too many options for this. My BIO option was "read a book published more than 100 years ago." I read Emma by Jane Austen, published in 1815.

I’m reading The Trial by Franz Kafka, originally published in German in 1925.

I re-read Persuasion by Jane Austen. The last time I had read it was about 15 years ago.

I am reading Vampire Academy by Richelle Mead that was published in 2007.

I recommend :

I went with a book published in 2010 which has been sitting on my "up-next" shelf for years!
Blood Work: A Tale of Medicine and Murder in the Scientific Revolution by Holly Tucker
Glad I finally read it so it can come off my list. I did not really enjoy it. I wanted to read it because it's supposed to be about the history of blood transfusions and I work in transfusion medicine so I'm very interested in that. But so much of the story was boring history that had nothing to do with actual transfusion.

Valley of the Dolls first published 1968

Garlic and Sapphires: The Secret Life of a Critic in Disguise by Ruth Reichl

A very long but oh-so-satisfying read was The Way the Crow Flies by Ann-Marie MacDonald. The novel was published in 2003 and is an intense family drama that takes place in Canada in the early 1960's. Read it if you've got lots of time on your hands.

Interpreter of Maladies by Jhumpa Lahiri is a beautiful, award-winning collection of short stories set in India or Bangladesh, or involving Bengali immigrants to the US. It is poignant, insightful, full of loss and longing. ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ here is my review.