Greg's ( ocgreg34 ) Books for 2022

Happy New Year, and Happy New Book List for 2022!

Completed in January

1. The Appointment by Herta Müller NL
2. Dark Woods by David Pergolini (fiction podcast)
3. Pal Joey by John O'Hara (novella and book of the musical); lyrics in the libretto by Lorenz Hart
4. The Song of the Lark by Willa Cather λ
5. The Girl in the Video by Michael David Wilson
6. Justine by Lawrence Durrell λ
7. Gods of Jade and Shadow by Silvia Moreno-Garcia
8. Nausea by Jean-Paul Sartre λ NL
9. Dark Tides edited by John Questore λ
10. Visitation by Jenny Erpenbeck
11. The Beckoning Fair One by Oliver Onions *

Completed in February

12. A Doll's House by Henrik Ibsen
13. The Marrow Thieves by Cherie Dimaline λ
14. An Episode in the Life of a Landscape Painter by César Aira
15. Flowers for the Sea by Zin E. Rocklyn λ
16. The Great Galeoto; Folly or Saintliness by José Echegaray y Eizaquirre NL
17. Man, Fuck This House by Brian Asman
18. Out of Darkness, Shining Light by Petina Gappah
19. Two Strange Girls by C.J. Halbard
20. The Moonlit Road and Other Ghost and Horror Stories by Ambrose Bierce *
21. Balthazar by Lawrence Durrell λ
22. HEX by Thomas Olde Heuvelt
23. Dead Leprechauns & Devil Cats: Strange Tales of the White Street Society by Grady Hendrix
24. The Thief and the Dogs by Naguib Mahfouz NL

Completed in March

25. Homegoing by Yaa Gyasi
26. The Order of the Day by Éric Vuillard nf
27. I Am in Eskew by David Ward (fiction podcast)
28. The Testament of Mary by Colm Tóibín λ
29. Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World by Haruki Murakami
30. James and the Giant Peach by Roald Dahl *
31. Intimations by Zadie Smith nf
32. Mountolive by Lawrence Durrell λ
33. The Persistence of Vision by John Varley λ
34. This Is How You Lose Her by Junot Díaz
35. The Empress of Salt and Fortune by Nghi Vo λ
36. The Mambo Kings Play Songs of Love by Oscar Hijuelos PP

Completed in April

37. Revival by Stephen King λ
38. The Able McLaughlins by Margaret Wilson PP
39. The Nesting by C.J. Cooke
40. Magmell by Jeff Heimbuch and Lyndsie Scoggin (fiction podcast)
41. Clea by Lawrence Durrell λ
42. We Have Always Lived in the Castle by Shirley Jackson *
43. 33 Revolutions by Canek Sánchez Guevara
44. The Boxcar Children by Gertrude Chandler Warner
45. In a Free State by V.S. Naipaul λ NL
46. Snare by Lilja Sigurðardóttir λ
47. Ikenga by Nnedi Okorafor

Completed in May

48. The Interrogation of Gabriel James by Charlie Price
49. The History of Rome, Book 1 by Theodor Mommsen NL nf
50. The Keepers of the House by Shirley Ann Grau PP
51. Dawn by Elie Wiesel
52. The Professor and the Siren by Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa
53. Miranda in Milan by Katharine Duckett λ
54. Tordotcom Publishing 2022 Debut Sampler by Various Authors λ
55. Life and Times of Michael K by J.M. Coetzee NL
56. The Tunnel by Ernesto Sábato
57. The Second Deadly Sin by Åsa Larsson
58. The Unknown Guest by Count Maurice Maeterlinck NL nf

Completed in June

59. Strange Beasts of China by Yan Ge
60. Wife of the Gods by Kwei Quartey
61. Wizard and Glass by Stephen King
62. Sleep Well, My Lady by Kwei Quartey
63. Patternmaster by Octavia E. Butler λ
64. George's Marvelous Medicine by Roald Dahl
65. Less by Andrew Sean Greer λ PP
66. Electric Forest by Tanith Lee
67. The Lost Honor of Katharina Blum by Heinrich Böll NL
68. Upright Women Wanted by Sarah Gailey λ
69. L'étrange affaire du pantalon de Dassoukine by Fouad Laroui
70. This Thing Between Us by Gus Moreno
71. Zomblog by TW Brown
72. We Should All Be Feminists by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie nf
73. Impact Winter by Travis Beacham (fiction podcast)

* = re-read
λ = lgbtqia+
NL = Nobel Prize for Literature
nf = non-fiction
PP = Pulitzer Prize

Continued in post #39 below...

I've also started my own challenge of reading at least one book (play, novel, poetry, essays, etc.) from each of the Nobel Prize for Literature winners, dating back to René-François Sully Prudhomme (1901).

1901 Sully Prudhomme
1902 Theodor Mommsen
1903 Bjørnstjerne Bjørnson
1904 Frédéric Mistral
1904 José Echegaray y Eizaquirre
1905 Henryk Sienkiewicz
1906 Giosuè Carducci
1907 Rudyard Kipling
1908 Rudolf Christoph Eucken
1909 Selma Lagerlöf
1910 Paul Heyse
1911 Count Maurice Maeterlinck
1912 Gerhart Hauptmann
1913 Rabindranath Tagore
1915 Romain Rolland
1916 Verner von Heidenstam
1917 Karl Adolph Gjellerup
1917 Henrik Pontoppidan
1919 Carl Spitteler
1920 Knut Hamsun
1921 Anatole France
1922 Jacinto Benavente
1923 William Butler Yeats
1924 Wladyslaw Reymont
1925 George Bernard Shaw
1926 Grazia Deledda
1927 Henri Bergson
1928 Sigrid Undset
1929 Thomas Mann
1930 Sinclair Lewis
1931 Erik Axel Karlfeldt
1932 John Galsworthy
1933 Ivan Alekseyevich Bunin
1934 Luigi Pirandello
1936 Eugene O'Neill
1937 Roger Martin du Gard
1938 Pearl S. Buck
1939 Frans Eemil Sillanpää
1944 Johannes Vilhelm Jensen
1945 Gabriela Mistral
1946 Hermann Hesse
1947 André Gide
1948 T.S. Elliot
1949 William Faulkner
1950 Bertrand Russell
1951 Pär Lagerkvist
1952 François Mauriac
1953 Sir Winston Churchill
1954 Ernest Hemingway
1955 Halldór Laxness
1956 Juan Ramón Jiménez
1957 Albert Camus
1958 Boris Pasternak (declined the prize)
1959 Salvatore Quasimodo
1960 Saint-John Perse
1961 Ivo Andric
1962 John Steinbeck
1963 Giorgos Seferis
1964 Jean-Paul Sartre (declined the prize)
1965 Michail Sholokhov
1966 Shmuel Yosef Agnon
1966 Nelly Sachs
1967 Miguel Ángel Asturias
1968 Yasunari Kawabata
1969 Samuel Beckett
1970 Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
1971 Pablo Neruda
1972 Heinrich Böll
1973 Patrick White
1974 Eyvind Johnson
1974 Harry Martinson
1975 Eugenio Montale
1976 Saul Bellow
1977 Vincente Aleixandre
1978 Isaac Bashevis Singer
1979 Odysseas Elytis
1980 Czeslaw Milosz
1981 Elias Canetti
1982 Gabriel García Márquez
1983 William Golding
1984 Jaroslav Seifert
1985 Claude Simon
1986 Akinwande Ouwoe Soyinka
1987 Joseph Brodsky
1988 Naguib Mahfouz
1989 Camilo José Cela
1990 Octavio Paz
1991 Nadine Gordimer
1992 Derek Walcott
1993 Toni Morrison
1994 Kenzaburo Oe
1995 Seamus Heaney
1996 Wislawa Szymborska
1997 Dario Fo
1998 José Saramago
1999 Günter Grass
2000 Gao Xingjian
2001 Vidiadhar Surjprasad Naipaul
2002 Imre Kertész
2003 John Maxwell Coetzee
2004 Elfriede Jelinek
2005 Harold Pinter
2006 Orhan Pamuk
2007 Doris Lessing
2008 J.M.G. Le Clézio
2009 Herta Müller
2010 Mario Vargas Llosa
2011 Tomas Tranströmer
2012 Mo Yan
2013 Alice Munro
2014 Patrick Modiano
2015 Svetlana Alexievich
2016 Bob Dylan
2017 Kazuo Ishiguro
2018 Olga Tokarczuk
2019 Peter Handke
2020 Louise Glück
2021 Abdulrazak Gurnah
2022 Annie Ernaux

Read: 68 of 119 laureates

The Publishing Triangle posted a list on their site of the Top 100 Best LGBTQ novels. They created the list sometime in the late 90s, and a friend and I decided to try our best to read all 100. I think that he gave up a few years ago, but I've made some good headway with my efforts. I must say, though, that I disagree with some of their picks...

1. Death in Venice by Thomas Mann
2. Giovanni’s Room by James Baldwin
3. Our Lady of the Flowers by Jean Genet
4. Remembrance of Things Past by Marcel Proust
5. The Immoralist by Andre Gide
6. Orlando by Virginia Woolf
7. The Well of Loneliness by Radclyffe Hall
8. Kiss of the Spider Woman by Manuel Puig
9. The Memoirs of Hadrian by Marguerite Yourcenar
10. Zami by Audré Lorde
11. The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde
12. Nightwood by Djuna Barnes
13. Billy Budd by Herman Melville
14. A Boy’s Own Story by Edmund White
15. Dancer from the Dance by Andrew Holleran
16. Maurice by E. M. Forster
17. The City and the Pillar by Gore Vidal
18. Rubyfruit Jungle by Rita Mae Brown
19. Brideshead Revisited by Evelyn Waugh
20. Confessions of a Mask by Yukio Mishima
21. The Member of the Wedding by Carson McCullers
22. City of Night by John Rechy
23. Myra Breckinridge by Gore Vidal
24. Patience and Sarah by Isabel Miller
25. The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas by Gertrude Stein
26. Other Voices, Other Rooms by Truman Capote
27. The Bostonians by Henry James
28. Two Serious Ladies by Jane Bowles
29. Bastard Out of Carolina by Dorothy Allison
30. The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter by Carson McCullers
31. Mrs. Dalloway by Virginia Woolf
32. The Persian Boy by Mary Renault
33. A Single Man by Christopher Isherwood
34. The Swimming Pool Library by Alan Hollinghurst
35. Olivia by Dorothy Bussy
36. The Price of Salt (Carol) by Patricia Highsmith
37. Aquamarine by Carol Anshaw
38. Another Country by James Baldwin
39. Chéri by Colette
40. The Turn of the Screw by Henry James
41. The Color Purple by Alice Walker
42. Women in Love by D. H. Lawrence
43. Little Women by Louisa May Alcott
44. The Friendly Young Ladies (The Middle Mist) by Mary Renault
45. Young Törless by Robert Musil
46. Eustace Chisholm and the Works by James Purdy
47. The Story of Harold by Terry Andrews
48. The Gallery by John Horne Burns
49. Sister Gin by June Arnold
50. Ready to Catch Him Should He Fall by Neil Bartlett
51. Father of Frankenstein by Christopher Bram
52. Naked Lunch by William Burroughs
53. The Berlin Stories by Christopher Isherwood
54. The Young and Evil by Charles Henri Ford and Parker Tyler
55. Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit by Jeanette Winterson
56. A Visitation of Spirits by Randall Kenan
57. Three Lives by Gertrude Stein
58. Concerning the Eccentricities of Cardinal Pirelli by Ronald Firbank
59. Rat Bohemia by Sarah Schulman
60. Pale Fire by Vladimir Nabokov
61. The Counterfeiters by André Gide
62. The Passion by Jeanette Winterson
63. Lover by Bertha Harris
64. Moby Dick by Herman Melville
65. La Bâtarde by Violette Leduc
66. Death Comes for the Archbishop by Willa Cather
67. To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee
68. The Satyricon by Petronius
69. The Alexandria Quartet by Lawrence Durrell
70. Special Friendships by Roger Peyrefitte
71. The Changelings by Jo Sinclair
72. Paradiso by José Lezama Lima
73. Sheeper by Irving Rosenthal
74. Les Guerilleres by Monique Wittig
75. The Child Manuela (Mädchen in Uniform) by Christa Winsloe
76. An Arrow’s Flight by Mark Merlis
77. The Gaudy Image by William Talsman
78. The Exquisite Corpse by Alfred Chester
79. Was by Geoff Ryman
80. Thérèse and Isabelle by Violette Leduc
81. Gemini by Michel Tournier
82. The Beautiful Room Is Empty by Edmund White
83. The Children’s Crusade by Rebecca Brown
84. The Story of the Night by Colm Toibin
85. The Holy Terrors (Les Enfants Terribles) by Jean Cocteau
86. Hell Has No Limits by José Donoso
87. Riverfinger Women by Elana Nachman (Dykewomon)
88. The Man Who Fell in Love with the Moon by Tom Spanbauer
89. Closer by Dennis Cooper
90. Lost Illusions by Honoré de Balzac
91. Miss Peabody’s Inheritance by Elizabeth Jolley
92. René’s Flesh by Virgilio Piñera
93. Funny Boy by Shyam Selvadurai
94. Wasteland by Jo Sinclair
95. Mrs. Stevens Hears the Mermaids Singing by May Sarton
96. Sea of Tranquillity by Paul Russell
97. Autobiography of a Family Photo by Jacqueline Woodson
98. In Thrall by Jane DeLynn
99. On Strike Against God by Joanna Russ
100. Sita by Kate Millett

I decided to keep track of the countries where the authors are from, with the goal of finding interesting books from around the world. I managed 31 countries last year, including Oman and Martinique. Let's see how this year goes...

Countries Read in 2022:

Afghanistan
Argentina
Australia
Belgium
Canada
China
Cuba
Dominican Republic
Egypt
England
France
Germany
Ghana
Iceland
Ireland
Italy
Ivory Coast
Japan
Kazakhstan
Malaysia
Mexico
Morocco
The Netherlands
New Zealand
Nigeria
Northern Ireland
Norway
Portugal
Romania
Scotland
Senegal
Serbia
South Africa
Spain
St. Lucia
Sweden
Trinidad and Tobago
Ukraine
United States
Wales
Zimbabwe

Welcome back to the group.

I am slightly ahead of you on the Nobel winners and am keeping a record of authors from all around the world since last year.

>3 ocgreg34: Oh and you are thrashing me on the LGBT 100. I have only managed 15 of them so far, I'm also a little non-plussed as to how some of them fit into the category. Little Women? To Kill a Mockingbird? Are they really LGBT classics? The author's sexuality perhaps?

My own tastes are decidedly heterosexual Greg, but I can certainly appreciate the lyrical sensitivity of most of the authors and books listed and would like to read more of them.

Welcome back, Greg!

Happy reading in 2022, Greg!

>3 ocgreg34: Interesting list, and you have read a lot of them! I have only read 8. And a few books I hope to read someday,

Enjoy your 2022 reads!

>6 PaulCranswick: I think the selection committee included books by LGBTQIA+ authors regardless of the book containing an LGBTQIA+ story line, such as "Death Comes for the Archbishop" by Willa Cather. No inclusive story lines; however, Willa Cather identified as lesbian.

Greetings, Greg, and my earnest wishes for you to have a terrific 2022's reads!

>2 ocgreg34: >3 ocgreg34: Good luck with your challenges, Greg! They look quite ambitious.

Here are my Top Ten Reads of 2021, along with the years that the novels were originally published (since I enjoy making lists)...

1. "Lily and the Octopus" by Steven Rowley (2016) *
2. "Ring Shout" by P. Djèlí Clark (2020)
3. "Walk Two Moons" by Sharon Creech (1994)
4. "The Madonnas of Echo Park" by Brando Skyhorse (2010)
5. "Home Fire" by Kamila Shamsie (2017)
6. "We, the Drowned" by Carsten Jensen (2006)
7. "Drive Your Plow over the Bones of the Dead" by Olga Tokarczuk (2009)
8. "One of Us Will Be Dead by Morning" by David Moody (2017)
9. "The Ten Thousand Doors of January" by Alix E. Harrow (2019)
10. "Voices from Chernobyl: The Oral History of a Nuclear Disaster" by Svetlana Alexievich (1997)

Favorite re-read: "The Halloween Tree" by Ray Bradbury (1972)
Oldest book read: "The Three Musketeers" by Alexandre Dumas, père (1844)

* A word of caution: if you ever had a sick pet, this might be a difficult book to read. I cried during that last 50-60 pages... But it's a fantastic story.

Couldn't find you Greg as there was a problem with the threadbook link to you - it took me to NASA quite remarkably!

Have a great weekend.

>14 PaulCranswick: Hi! I hope you enjoyed your weekend as well.

Oh, here you are again! Like PC I went to NASA & assumed you'd decided to go to Coventry.

Happy February's reading.

Yeah, that was my cut-n-paste error. Sorry about that!

Found you! I like your lists, especially the Nobel Lit author list project. I might borrow that for myself, if you wouldn’t mind.

Have a great weekend!

Karen O

>18 klobrien2: Good morning! And borrow away! I'm always finding challenges and other books to try from other's posts.

>19 ocgreg34: That’s the great thing about LT!

Karen O

>18 klobrien2: >19 ocgreg34: I echo that sentiment. Just about everything in my "static top posts" on my thread were ideas I got from some one else. And that goes for the Google spreadsheets I use to further track my reading outside of here. Happy Weekend All!

Taking cue from mahsdad (and I'm sure quite a few other readers), I'm adding a challenge: to read the Pulitzer Prizes for Fiction.

1918 His Family by Ernest Poole
1919 The Magnificent Ambersons by Booth Tarkington
1921 The Age of Innocence by Edith Wharton
1922 Alice Adams by Booth Tarkington
1923 One of Ours by Willa Cather
1924 The Able McLaughlins by Margaret Wilson
1925 So Big by Edna Ferber
1926 Arrowsmith by Sinclair Lewis (declined)
1927 Early Autumn: A Story of a Lady by Louis Bromfield
1928 The Bridge of San Luis Rey by Thornton Wilder
1929 Scarlet Sister Mary by Julia Peterkin
1930 Laughing Boy by Oliver La Farge
1931 Years of Grace by Margaret Ayer Barnes
1932 The Good Earth by Pearl S. Buck
1933 The Store by T.S. Stribling
1934 Lamb in His Bosom by Caroline Miller
1935 Now in November by Josephine Winslow Johnson
1936 Honey in the Horn by H.L. Davis
1937 Gone with the Wind by Margaret Mitchell
1938 The Late George Apley: A Novel in the Form of a Memoir by J.P. Marquand
1939 The Yearling by Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings
1940 The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck
1942 In This Our Life by Ellen Glasgow
1943 Dragon's Teeth by Upton Sinclair
1944 Journey in the Dark by Martin Flavin
1945 A Bell for Adano by John Hersey
1947 All the King's Men by Robert Penn Warren
1948 Tales of the South Pacific by James A. Michener
1949 Guard of Honor by James Gould Cozzens
1950 The Way West by A.B. Guthrie, Jr.
1951 The Town by Conrad Richter
1952 The Caine Mutiny: A Novel of World War II by Herman Wouk
1953 The Old Man and the Sea by Ernest Hemingway
1955 A Fable by William Faulkner
1956 Andersonville by MacKinlay Kantor
1958 A Death in the Family by James Agee
1959 The Travels of Jaimie McPheeters by Robert Lewis Taylor
1960 Advise and Consent by Allen Drury
1961 To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee
1962 The Edge of Sadness by Edwin O'Connor
1963 The Reivers: A Reminiscence by William Faulkner
1965 The Keepers of the House by Shirley Ann Grau
1966 The Collected Stories of Katherine Anne Porter by Katherine Anne Porter
1967 The Fixer by Bernard Malamud
1968 The Confessions of Nat Turner by William Styron
1969 House Made of Dawn by N. Scott Momaday
1970 The Collected Stories of Jean Stafford by Jean Stafford
1972 Angle of Repose by Wallace Stegner
1973 The Optimist's Daughter by Eudora Welty
1975 The Killer Angels by Michael Shaara
1976 Humboldt's Gift by Saul Bellow
1978 Elbow Room by James Alan McPherson
1979 The Stories of John Cheever by John Cheever
1980 The Executioner's Song by Norman Mailer
1981 A Confederacy of Dunces by John Kennedy Toole
1982 Rabbit Is Rich by John Updike
1983 The Color Purple by Alice Walker
1984 Ironweed by William Kennedy
1985 Foreign Affairs by Alison Lurie
1986 Lonesome Dove by Larry McMurtry
1987 A Summons to Memphis by Peter Taylor
1988 Beloved by Toni Morrison
1989 Breathing Lessons by Anne Tyler
1990 The Mambo Kings Play Songs of Love by Oscar Hijuelos
1991 Rabbit at Rest by John Updike
1992 A Thousand Acres by Jane Smiley
1993 A Good Scent from a Strange Mountain: Stories by Robert Olen Butler
1994 The Shipping News by E. Annie Proulx
1995 The Stone Diaries by Carol Shields
1996 Independence Day by Richard Ford
1997 Martin Dressler: The Tale of an American Dreamer by Steven Millhauser
1998 American Pastoral by Philip Roth
1999 The Hours by Michael Cunningham
2000 Interpreter of Maladies: Stories by Jhumpa Lahiri
2001 The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay by Michael Chabon
2002 Empire Falls by Richard Russo
2003 Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides
2004 The Known World by Edward P. Jones
2005 Gilead by Marilynne Robinson
2006 March by Geraldine Brooks
2007 The Road by Cormac McCarthy
2008 The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Díaz
2009 Olive Kitteridge by Elizabeth Strout
2010 Tinkers by Paul Harding
2011 A Visit from the Goon Squad by Jennifer Egan
2013 The Orphan Master's Son by Adam Johnson
2014 The Goldfinch by Donna Tartt
2015 All the Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr
2016 The Sympathizer by Viet Thanh Nguyen
2017 The Underground Railroad by Colson Whitehead
2018 Less by Andrew Sean Greer
2019 The Overstory by Richard Powers
2020 The Nickel Boys by Colson Whitehead
2021 The Night Watchman by Louise Erdrich
2022 The Netanyahus by Joshua Cohen

My favorite books of 2022 by the month that they were read...

JANUARY: Gods of Jade and Shadow by Silvia Moreno-Garcia
FEBRUARY: HEX by Thomas Olde Heuvelt
MARCH: Homegoing by Yaa Gyasi
APRIL: Ikenga by Nnedi Okorafor
MAY: The Keepers of the House by Shirley Ann Grau
JUNE: Less by Andrew Sean Greer
JULY: And Then I Woke Up by Malcolm Devlin
AUGUST: The Hate U Give by Angie Thomas
SEPTEMBER: The House in the Cerulean Sea by TJ Klune
OCTOBER: Nothing But Blackened Teeth by Cassandra Khaw
NOVEMBER: The Missing American by Kwei Quartey
DECEMBER: The Girl on the Train by Paula Hawkins

>22 ocgreg34: I'm doing them as well, Greg, but you are doing better than I am at present. Although I have read 11 of the ones you haven't read.

Hey Greg, thanks for stopping by my abode, its been a while so I wanted to swing by here.

I can't remember if we talked about this, but I see from your profile that you live in Long Beach. Where abouts? I can probably see your house (well not really LOL) from my balcony. I live in Pedro, and I face the harbor and look right at downtown. Small world.

>25 mahsdad: Hi Jeff. I'm near Bixby Park. Though we're close to the ocean, we can't see it. But, we do get to "enjoy" the Grand Prix this weekend...

If anyone is interested in a book-related movie, my partner and I watched Julieta from Spanish director Pedro Almodóvar. The film is based upon three short stories from author Alice Munro. Very good film, and a bit more somber than most of Almodóvar's films.

>26 ocgreg34: Very cool. Yeah, I can't see you from here. I can imagine that its quite a pain (logistically, and aurally) for the locals with the Grand Prix. Hope you're able to live with it. LOL

>13 ocgreg34: Nice list, Greg. I have read Rowley's The Guncle, but not the one you read. The only books on your list that I have read are Walk Two Moons and The Ten Thousand Doors of January. I will have to see if I can track down the others.

>23 ocgreg34: I loved Homegoing when I read it. The other two books are already in the BlackHole or I would be adding them again!

Last weekend, my partner and I visited the L.A. Times Festival of Books, and somehow, I walked away with only six books. (I must be slipping...)

Star by Yukio Mishima
Tales from the Cafe by Toshikazu Kawaguchi
Selected Fiction by Manoj Das
The Interrogation of Gabriel James by Charlie Price
The Second Deadly Sin by Åsa Larsson
The Pizza Deliveryman's Tale by Ronan Barbour

>30 ocgreg34: SIX!! Great goddesses below us. You have serious self-discipline...which I lack. Wholly and entirely. "Oh look, a book I've never heard of by a minor Burkinabé royal! Oh, I've been looking for one of those!" which I most certainly haven't, but am now.

Snare by Lilja Sigurðardóttir has me intrigued. What made it your April favorite?

>31 richardderus: Believe me... I could have walked away with three times as many books. I love attending the festivals because it's an opportunity to find many independent authors and books that I wouldn't find in a regular bookstore.

As for "Snare", I accidentally read "Trap" first, the second book in the series. "Snare" did a great job of introducing the characters and allowing me to empathize with Sonia and her son Tomas, as well as her love interest Agla, though she has her own issues to deal with. I found it very engrossing and stayed up late to finish it.

>32 ocgreg34: Sold! *sigh*

Definitely a nice haul, even if not as populated as usual. 😀

>30 ocgreg34: I haven't got any of those, Greg, although I have read and enjoyed Asa Larsson.

>35 PaulCranswick: Mishima is one of my favorite authors, so stumbling across a novella of his that I'd not heard of...well, I couldn't pass that one up.

>36 ocgreg34: I will read something of his during my Asia Book Challenge this year when we get to Japan, Greg.

>37 PaulCranswick: The first book of his that I read was "Spring Snow" and would also recommend "the Sailor Who Fell from Grace with the Sea", though the latter has a very sinister aspect to it.

Continued...

Completed in July

74. The Paradox Hotel by Rob Hart λ
75. The Westing Game by Ellen Raskin
76. When the Tiger Came Down the Mountain by Nghi Vo λ
77. A Crime in the Neighborhood by Suzanne Berne WPF
78. Wind, Sand and Stars by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry nf
79. Wild Bird Photography by Tim Fitzharris nf
80. Wisecracker by William J. Mann λ nf
81. Automatons by BP Gregory
82. And Then I Woke Up by Malcolm Devlin
83. The Tiger's Wife by Téa Obreht WPF
84. Grey Bees by Andrey Kurkov

Completed in August

85. Mary: Unleashed by Hillary Monahan
86. The Lincoln Highway by Amor Towles
87. The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Díaz PP
88. Night of the Mannequins by Stephen Graham Jones
89. Death with Interruptions by José Saramago NL
90. Sarah, Plain and Tall by Patricia MacLachlan
91. The Thousand Crimes of Ming Tsu by Tom Lin
92. The Hate U Give by Angie Thomas
93. A Gazelle Ate My Homework by Habib Fanny nf
94. The City of Dreaming Books by Walter Moers

Complete in September

95. The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes by Suzanne Collins
96. The Transformation of Philip Jettan by Georgette Heyer
97. Now in November by Josephine W. Johnson PP
98. Wasteland by Jo Sinclair λ
99. Star by Yukio Mishima λ
100. The Foreign Correspondent by Alan Furst
101. Blackwood by Will Rogers (fiction podcast)
102. Virgins and Martyrs by Simon Maginn *
103. The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini
104. Winter Recipes from the Collective by Louise Glück NL
105. The House in the Cerulean Sea by TJ Klune λ
106. Larry's Party by Carol Shields WPF

Completed in October

107. Bring Me Flesh, I'll Bring Hell by Martin Rose
108. Nothing But Blackened Teeth by Cassandra Khaw λ
109. More Deadly than the Male edited by Graeme Davis λ
110. The Awakening of Sunshine Girl by Paige McKenzie
111. The Fervor by Alma Katsu
112. From a Buick 8 by Stephen King
113. The Resting Place by Camilla Sten
114. The Captive Condition by Kevin P. Keating λ
115. The Man in the Moss by Phil Rickman *
116. 99 Coffins by David Wellington λ
117. Isolation by David Moody
118. Asylum by Madeleine Roux λ
119. The Pizza Deliveryman's Tale by Ronan Barbour
120. The Haunting of Tram Car 015 by P. Djèlí Clark

Completed in November

121. Rabbit, Run by John Updike
122. The Underdogs by Mariano Azuela
123. The Battersea Poltergeist by Danny Robins (podcast) nf
124. The Gilda Stories/Bones & Ash by Jewelle Gomez * λ
125. True Grit by Charles Portis
126. Ironweed by William J. Kennedy PP
127. Annihilation by Jeff VanderMeer
128. Haunted by Danny Robins (podcast) nf
129. Grayson by Lynne Cox nf
130. Replay by Sharon Creech
131. Day Watch by Sergei Lukyanenko
132. The Missing American by Kwei Quartey

Completed in December

133. Little Women by Louisa May Alcott
134. Omeros by Derek Walcott NL
135. The Devil in the Flesh by Raymond Radiguet
136. At Night All Blood Is Black by David Diop
137. The Girl on the Train by Paula Hawkins
138. A Girl Is a Half-formed Thing by Eimear McBride WPF
139. The Secret Life of Amanda K. Woods by Ann Cameron
140. The Witch Farm by Danny Robins (podcast) nf

* = re-read
λ = lgbtqia+
NL = Nobel Prize for Literature
nf = non-fiction
PP = Pulitzer Prize
WPF = Women's Prize for Fiction

>39 ocgreg34: Congratulations on reaching 75, Greg!

Congrats!

Well done, Greg!

>40 FAMeulstee: FAMeulstee >41 drneutron: drneutron >42 PaulCranswick: PaulCranswick

Thank you!

Another list of books to read, since I can't seem to challenge myself enough...

The Women's Prize for Fiction (previously, the Orange Prize for Fiction and the Bailey's Prize for Fiction)

1996 A Spell of Winter by Helen Dunmore
1997 Fugitive Pieces by Anne Michaels
1998 Larry's Party by Carol Shields
1999 A Crime in the Neighborhood by Suzanne Berne
2000 When I Lived in Modern Times by Linda Grant
2001 The Idea of Perfection by Kate Grenville
2002 Bel Canto by Ann Patchett
2003 Property by Valerie Martin
2004 Small Island by Andrea Levy
2005 We Need to Talk About Kevin by Lionel Shriver
2006 On Beauty by Zadie Smith
2007 Half of a Yellow Sun by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
2008 The Road Home by Rose Tremain
2009 Home by Marilynne Robinson
2010 The Lacuna by Barbara Kingsolver
2011 The Tiger's Wife by Téa Obreht
2012 The Song of Achilles by Madeline Miller
2013 May We Be Forgiven by A.M. Homes
2014 A Girl Is a Half-Formed Thing by Eimear McBride
2015 How to Be Both by Ali Smith
2016 The Glorious Heresies by Lisa McInerney
2017 The Power by Naomi Alderman
2018 Home Fire by Kamila Shamsie
2019 An American Marriage by Tayari Jones
2020 Hamnet by Maggie O'Farrell
2021 Piranesi by Susanne Clarke
2022 The Book of Form & Emptiness by Ruth Ozeki

>44 ocgreg34: I love all your lists, Greg.
This one was not among my lists yet. So far I also have read 3 of them.

I keep track of the Nobel, Pulitzer, Booker, and some Dutch prizes on my wiki.

Completed a reading challenge with my local library and not only earned this nifty patch but a few books as well...

>46 ocgreg34: Very cool! What books did you get?

Karen O

>47 klobrien2: Hi Karen!

The books are:

Be More Chill by Ned Vizzini
Farewell to Manzanar by Jeanne Wakatsuki Houston & James D. Houston
Mary: Unleashed by Hillary Monahan
The Hate U Give by Angie Thomas
A Very Large Expanse of Sea by Tahereh Mafi
The Innocent by David Baldacci, which I'm giving to my Mom since she loves these types of books
"Disney Bound: Dress Disney and Make It Fashion" by Leslie Kay-- a book on dressing for Disneyland, which I'm giving as a birthday present to a friend who is a Disneyphile

With October starting soon, I've decided to read only horror novels for the month--just like last year. I started a short story collection called More Deadly Than the Male edited by Graeme Davis featuring stories from Edith Wharton, Harriet Beecher Stowe, Louisa May Alcott, and other women writers from the mid-19th and early 20th centuries.

I'm not sure how I've missed you through the years, Greg, but I'm happy to have a star on your thread now. I love your lists and challenges. You make me wonder why I don't read more. *sigh* (I do know the reason.) I also visited your profile page and see that your share my weakness for Phil Rickman. AND I'll also note that my first LGBTQ book when I was a teen was The Charioteer. It knocked me out.

Happy Reading!

If anyone's interested in a nice, spooky podcast, I recently finished The Battersea Poltergeist from Danny Robins, exploring an actual account of a poltergeist. It was a good blending of dramatization with interviews and research into the phenomenon. (Also, we saw Robins' play 2:22 A Ghost Story in Los Angeles last weekend...excellent!!)

The podcast sounds good. I’ve added it to my mix.

Thank you as always for books, thank you for this group and thanks for you. Have a lovely day, Greg.

Thank you! Happy Thanksgiving to you, too!

Happy holidays and happy reading!

Malaysia's branch of the 75er's wishes you and yours a happy holiday season, Greg.

2022 is quickly winding down, so I'm prepping my Favorites lists for the year. The first one consists of my favorite LGBTQIA+ reads..with the year that each was published. Enjoy!

1. The House in the Cerulean Sea by TJ Klune (2020)
2. Less by Andrew Sean Greer (2017)
3. The Marrow Thieves by Cherie Dimaline (2017)
4. Wisecracker by William J. Mann (1998)
5. When the Tiger Came Down the Mountain by Nghi Vo (2020)
6. Nothing But Blackened Teeth by Cassandra Khaw (2021)
7. Miranda in Milan by Katharine Duckett (2019)
8. The Paradox Hotel by Rob Hart (2022)
9. Upright Women Wanted by Sarah Gailey (2020)
10. 99 Coffins by David Wellington (2007)

Next up...my favorite horror reads from 2022. Get spooky!

1. And Then I Woke Up by Malcolm Devlin (2022)
2. Nothing But Blackened Teeth by Cassandra Khaw (2021)
3. The Battersea Poltergeist by Danny Robins (2021 - podcast)
4. HEX by Thomas Olde Heuvelt (2013)
5. Annihilation by Jeff VanderMeer (2014)
6. From a Buick 8 by Stephen King (2002)
7. The Marrow Thieves by Cherie Dimaline (2017)
8. The Fervor by Alma Katsu (2022)
9. Isolation by David Moody (2014)
10. Two Strange Girls by C.J. Halbard (2018)

For my final post of 2022...my favorite reads from 2022 (and a few honorable mentions). Happy New Year, everyone!

1. The House in the Cerulean Sea by TJ Klune (2020)
2. Less by Andrew Sean Greer (2017)
3. The Hate U Give by Angie Thomas (2017)
4. The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini (2003)
5. And Then I Woke Up by Malcom Devlin (2022)
6. Nothing But Blackened Teeth by Cassandra Khaw (2021)
7. The Thousand Crimes of Ming Tsu by Tom Lin (2021)
8. Gods of Jade and Shadow by Silvia Moreno-Garcia (2019)
9. HEX by Thomas Olde Heuvelt (2013)
10. Mountolive by Lawrence Durell (1958)

Favorite Re-read: The Gilda Stories/Bones & Ash by Jewelle Gomez (1991)
Oldest Book Read: Little Women by Louise May Alcott (1868)
Most Interesting Title: Man, Fuck This House by Brian Asman (2021)