susanna.fraser climbs Mount TBR in 2024

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 our 19-year-old son, who is currently a student at North Seattle College.

I'm an omnivorous reader, skewing heavily to science fiction, fantasy, and romance on the fiction side and history, science, and theology/religion for nonfiction. I plan to continue to read from various CATs and KITs and participate in TIOLI, but I'm not going to worry about missing a month or two here and there.

My main reading goal for this year is to reduce my to-be-read list, AKA Mount TBR, which I'm defining broadly as anything I own but haven't read plus anything on my library "For Later" list or my "Books to Buy Eventually" list on Amazon. Because I add new books to both lists at maybe 10-20 times the rate I actually READ them.

I'm not saying I'll read only from those lists, because that's a vow I'd never keep. There will be new releases from favorite authors that I'll start reading the day they're released, plus recommendations from friends, impulse picks from the library's new releases shelf, etc. But I'm going to mark each book from the TBR with an asterisk, and it would be lovely if those books are at least half of my tally. And to make sure I take this at least sort of seriously, my choices for the AlphaKIT challenges will ONLY come from Mount TBR.

Q1 Log

January:
1. From the Mixed-up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler
2. The Thin Light of Freedom *
3. Once a Laird *
4. Witch King *
5. His Convenient Husband *
6. Demon Daughter
7. Love & Other Disasters
8. Mystic and Rider *
9. You Had Me at Hola *
10. Rental Person Who Does Nothing
11. Ring Shout *
12. American Revolutions *

February:
1. Class: A Memoir of Motherhood, Hunger, and Higher Education
2. Menewood
3. Solutions and Other Problems *
4. Eagle Drums *
5. Egg: A Dozen Ovatures *
6. Red Paint: The Ancestral Autobiography of a Coast Salish Punk *
7. A Fever in the Heartland
8. Marry Me By Midnight *
9. Beginnings, Middles, and Ends *
10. Hid From Our Eyes
11. Huda F Cares *
12. The Sharing Knife: Beguilement
13. If Found, Return to Hell *
14. It Takes Two To Tumble *

March:
1. Curveball
2. Crow Planet *
3. The Red Scholar's Wake *
4. Holy Envy *
5. Codename Charming *
6. The Mosquito: A Human History of Our Deadliest Predator *
7. Some Desperate Glory *
8. Four Weddings to Fall in Love *
9. Disillusioned: Five Families and the Unraveling of America's Suburbs

Q2 Log

April:
1. The Kingdom, the Power, and the Glory
2. Opposite of Always
3. The Holocaust: An Unfinished History
4. One Cowboy, One Christmas *
5. Gods of the Upper Air *
6. A Wing and a Prayer: The Race to Save Our Vanishing Birds *
7. Ordinary Men *
8. Yesterday's Kin
9. A Tempest of Tea
10. Aftermarket Afterlife
11. The Imposition of Unnecessary Obstacles
12. The Exvangelicals
13. Much Ado About Nada *
14. 2020: One City, Seven People, and the Year Everything Changed

May:
1. What Have We Here?
2. All the Birds in the Sky
3. Slow Productivity
4. Woven
5. Recoding America *
6. Yinka, Where Is Your Huzband? *
7. City of Bones
8. Cloistered: My Years As A Nun
9. Prisoners of a Pirate Queen *
10. The Face of Britain *
11. The Fall of Berlin *
12. Careless Whispers *

June:
1. Virology: Essays for the Living, the Dead, and the Small Things in Between
2. Total Creative Control *
3. The Last Report on the Miracles at Little No Horse *
4. A Jewish Paul *
5. Defiant Dreams
6. Julieta and the Romeos *
7. Pests: How Humans Create Animal Villains *
8. Blades of Freedom
9. African American Religion
10. The Sorcerer of the Wildeeps *
11. The Body Is Not an Apology

Q3 Log

July:
1. Above the Trenches
2. Democracy or Else
3. Penric and the Bandit
4. The Amen Effect
5. Slow AF Run Club
6. A Proposal to Risk Their Friendship
7. The Left Hand of Darkness
8. Surviving Autocracy *
9. The Austen Playbook *
10. Homelessness is a Housing Problem
11. The Scandalous Confessions of Lydia Bennet, Witch *
12. I Am, I Am, I Am *
13. A Coup of Tea *
14. The Lonely Hearts Book Club *
15. May We Forever Stand

August:
1. The Mayor of Castro Street
2. To Shape a Dragon's Breath *
3. Where the Wild Ladies Are
4. After 1177 B.C.
5. Elatsoe *
6. Eager: The Surprising, Secret Life of Beavers and Why They Matter *
7. Some of the Best From Tor.com 2021 Edition *
8. Love, Lies, and Cherry Pie
9. Here For the Right Reasons

September:
1. Emily Wilde's Encyclopaedia of Fairies *
2. Scarlett Epstein Hates It Here *
3. The Cat Who Saved Books
4. Judgment at Tokyo *
5. Notes From an Apocalypse *
6. The Backyard Bird Chronicles
7. 84, Charing Cross Road *
8. The Masquerades of Spring
9. Promposal *
10. Unfuck Your Shame

Q4 Log

October:
1. Chicago's Great Fire
2. Buried Deep and Other Stories
3. Wonder Woman Historia: The Amazons *
4. Molly Molloy and the Angel of Death *
5. Emily Wilde's Map of the Otherlands
6. The Message
7. Lady Rogue
8. 100 Disasters That Shaped World History
9. Dead Mountain *
10. The Stanforth Secrets

November:
1. The Mask of Apollo *
2. My Murder *
3. A Sorceress Comes to Call
4. 428 AD *
5. Fake It Till You Bake It *
6. The Witness for the Dead *
7. The Drifter *
8. Lady With a Black Umbrella
9. Bitter Medicine *

December:
1. Queen Victoria's Matchmaking *
2. And What Can We Offer You Tonight?
3. Rivers of London Vol. 12: Stray Cat Blues
4. The Bible With and Without Jesus
5. Arsenic and Adobo
6. Pearl Harbor Christmas *
7. Outlaw Bride *
8. Back Across the Styx *
9. Glory O'Brien's History of the Future *
10. The Deep Sky *
11. We Survived the End of the World *
12. The Best of All Possible Worlds *
13. This Is Your Brain on Parasites *

Books by BIPOC and LGBTQIA authors

Represented by Denali, since I'd love to see more American mountains get their indigenous names back, not least the four Washington stratovolcanoes pictured on my quarterly logs--Mt Baker (Koma Kulshan), Mt Rainier (Tahoma), Mt St Helens (Loowit), and Mt Adams (Pahto or Klickitat).

January:
1. His Convenient Husband * by Robin Covington
2. Love & Other Disasters by Anita Kelly
3. You Had Me at Hola * by Alexis Daria
4. Rental Person Who Does Nothing by Shoji Morimoto
5. Ring Shout * by P. Djèlí Clark

February:
1. Menewood by Nicola Griffith
2. Eagle Drums * by Nasgraq Rainey Hopson
3. Red Paint: The Ancestral Autobiography of a Coast Salish Punk * by Sasha LaPointe
4. Huda F Cares * by Huda Fahmy
5. If Found, Return to Hell * by Em X. Liu

March:
1. The Red Scholar's Wake * by Aliette de Bodard
2. Four Weddings to Fall in Love * by Jackie Lau

April:
1. Opposite of Always by Justin A. Reynolds
2. A Tempest of Tea by Hafsah Faizal
3. The Imposition of Unnecessary Obstacles by Malka Older
4. Much Ado About Nada * by Uzma Jalaluddin

May:
1. What Have We Here? by Billy Dee Williams
2. All the Birds in the Sky by Charlie Jane Anders
3. Yinka, Where Is Your Huzband? * by Lizzie Damilola Blackburn
4. Careless Whispers * by Synithia Williams

June:
1. Virology: Essays for the Living, the Dead, and the Small Things in Between by Joseph Osmundson
2. The Last Report on the Miracles at Little No Horse * by Louise Erdrich
3. Defiant Dreams by Sola Mahfouz & Malaina Kapoor
4. Julieta and the Romeos * by Maria E. Andreu
5. African American Religion by Eddie S. Glaude Jr.
6. The Sorcerer of the Wildeeps * by Kai Ashante Wilson
7. The Body Is Not an Apology by Sonya Renee Taylor

July:
1. Democracy or Else by Jon Favreau, Jon Lovett, and Tommy Vietor
2. Slow AF Run Club by Martinus Evans
3. May We Forever Stand by Imani Perry

August:
1. The Mayor of Castro Street by Randy Shilts
2. To Shape a Dragon's Breath * by Moniquill Blackgoose
3. Where the Wild Ladies Are by Aoko Matsuda
4. Elatsoe * by Darcie Little Badger
5. Love, Lies, and Cherry Pie by Jackie Lau

September:
1. The Cat Who Saved Books by Sosuke Natsukawa
2. The Backyard Bird Chronicles by Amy Tan
3. Promposal * by Raechell Garrett
4. Unfuck Your Shame by Faith G. Harper

October:
1. The Message by Ta-Nehisi Coates

November:
1. The Mask of Apollo * by Mary Renault
2. Fake It Till You Bake It * by Jamie Wesley
3. The Witness for the Dead * by Katherine Addison
4. Bitter Medicine * by Mia Tsai

December:
1. And What Can We Offer You Tonight? by Premee Mohamed
2. Arsenic and Adobo by Mia Manansala
3. The Deep Sky * by Yume Kitasei
4. We Survived the End of the World * by Steven Charleston
5. The Best of All Possible Worlds * by Karen Lord

Reserved for Seattle Public Library Summer Book Bingo

1. The Fall of Berlin 1945 * (From a Library)
2. Careless Whispers * (BIPOC Romance)
3. Virology: Essays for the Living, the Dead, and the Small Things in Between (LGBTQIA+ Poetry/Essays)
4. Total Creative Control * (Queer Joy)
5. The Last Report on the Miracles at Little No Horse * (SAL Speaker)
6. A Jewish Paul * (Read in the Sun)
7. Defiant Dreams (Refugee/Immigrant Memoir)
8. Julieta and the Romeos * (Young Adult)
9. Pests: How Humans Create Animal Villains * (Environmental)
10. The Body Is Not an Apology (Body Liberation)
11. Slow AF Run Club (Recommended by a Librarian)
12. Surviving Autocracy * (Something that Scares You)
13. Homelessness is a Housing Problem (Housing/Poverty Justice)
14. The Scandalous Confessions of Lydia Bennet, Witch (Retelling)
15. I Am, I Am, I Am * (Recommended by Independent Bookseller)
16. A Coup of Tea * (Cozy)
17. The Lonely Hearts Book Club * (Friendship)
18. May We Forever Stand (Black Art/Artists)
19. To Shape a Dragon's Breath * (One Big Book)
20. Where the Wild Ladies Are (In Translation)
21. Elatsoe * (Fantastical)
22. Ten Birds That Change the World (Sky Creatures)
23. Some of the Best From Tor.com 2021 Edition * (Short Story Collection)

CATs

January:
1. From the Mixed-up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler (PrizeCAT)
2. The Thin Light of Freedom * (HistoryCAT)
3. Once a Laird * (CalendarCAT)
4. Ring Shout * (PrizeCAT)
5. American Revolutions * (HistoryCAT)

February:
1. Red Paint: The Ancestral Autobiography of a Coast Salish Punk * (PrizeCAT)
2. Marry Me By Midnight * (HistoryCAT, CalendarCAT)
3. It Takes Two To Tumble * (HistoryCAT, CalendarCAT)

March:
1. Curveball (CalendarCAT)
2. Crow Planet * (CalendarCAT, PrizeCAT)
3. Holy Envy * (CalendarCAT)
4. The Mosquito: A Human History of Our Deadliest Predator * (HistoryCAT)

April:
1. The Kingdom, the Power, and the Glory (HistoryCAT)
2. A Wing and a Prayer: The Race to Save Our Vanishing Birds * (CalendarCAT)
3. Yesterday's Kin (PrizeCAT)

May:
1. All the Birds in the Sky (PrizeCAT)
2. The Fall of Berlin * (CalendarCAT)

June:
1. The Last Report on the Miracles at Little No Horse * (CalendarCAT)
2. Julieta and the Romeos * (PrizeCAT)
3. African American Religion (HistoryCAT, CalendarCAT)

July:
1. Above the Trenches (HistoryCAT)
2. Democracy or Else (CalendarCAT)
3. A Proposal to Risk Their Friendship (PrizeCAT)

August:
1. The Mayor of Castro Street (CalendarCAT)
2. To Shape a Dragon's Breath * (PrizeCAT)
3. Where the Wild Ladies Are (CalendarCAT)
4. Elatsoe * (PrizeCAT)

September:
1. Scarlett Epstein Hates It Here * (CalendarCAT)
2. Judgment at Tokyo * (HistoryCAT)
3. Notes From an Apocalypse * (PrizeCAT)

October:
1. Chicago's Great Fire (HistoryCAT, CalendarCAT)
2. 100 Disasters That Shaped World History (HistoryCAT)
3. Dead Mountain * (HistoryCAT)
4. The Stanforth Secrets (PrizeCAT)

November:
1. The Mask of Apollo * (HistoryCAT)
2. 428 AD (HistoryCAT)

December:
1. And What Can We Offer You Tonight? (PrizeCAT)
2. The Bible With and Without Jesus (HistoryCAT)
3. Pearl Harbor Christmas * (CalendarCAT)
4. We Survived the End of the World * (HistoryCAT)

KITs

January:
1. The Thin Light of Freedom * (AlphaKIT)
2. Witch King * (SFFKit)
3. His Convenient Husband * (RandomKIT)
4. Mystic and Rider * (SFFKit)
5. You Had Me at Hola * (AlphaKIT)
6. American Revolutions * (AlphaKIT)

February:
1. Class: A Memoir of Motherhood, Hunger, and Higher Education (RandomKIT)
2. Eagle Drums * (AlphaKIT, SFFKit)
3. Egg: A Dozen Ovatures * (AlphaKIT)
4. A Fever in the Heartland (AlphaKIT)
5. Marry Me By Midnight * (AlphaKIT)
6. Beginnings, Middles, and Ends * (AlphaKIT)
7. Hid From Our Eyes (AlphaKIT)
8. Huda F Cares? * (AlphaKIT)
9. The Sharing Knife: Beguilement (RandomKIT)
10. If Found, Return to Hell * (AlphaKIT)

March:
1. Crow Planet * (AlphaKIT, RandomKIT)
2. The Red Scholar's Wake * (AlphaKIT, SFFKit)
3. Holy Envy * (AlphaKIT)
4. Some Desperate Glory * (SFFKit)

April:
1. Opposite of Always (AlphaKIT, SFFKit)
2. One Cowboy, One Christmas * (AlphaKIT)
3. Gods of the Upper Air * (AlphaKIT)
4. A Wing and a Prayer: The Race to Save Our Vanishing Birds * (AlphaKIT, RandomKIT)
5. Ordinary Men * (AlphaKIT)
6. The Imposition of Unnecessary Obstacles (AlphaKIT)
7. Much Ado About Nada * (AlphaKIT)

May:
1. Slow Productivity (AlphaKIT)
2. Recoding America (AlphaKIT)
3. City of Bones (SFFKit)
4. Prisoners of a Pirate Queen * (AlphaKIT)
5. The Face of Britain * (RandomKIT)

June:
1. Virology: Essays for the Living, the Dead, and the Small Things in Between (AlphaKIT)
2. Total Creative Control * (AlphaKIT, RandomKIT)
3. A Jewish Paul * (AlphaKIT)
4. Defiant Dreams (RandomKIT)
5. Julieta and the Romeos * (AlphaKIT)
6. Pests: How Humans Create Animal Villains * (AlphaKIT)
7. Blades of Freedom (AlphaKIT)
8. The Sorcerer of the Wildeeps * (SFFKit)
9. The Body Is Not an Apology (AlphaKIT)

July:
1. Penric and the Bandit (RandomKIT)
2. The Amen Effect (AlphaKIT)
3. Slow AF Run Club (AlphaKIT)
4. The Left Hand of Darkness (SFFKit)
5. Surviving Autocracy (AlphaKIT)
6. The Scandalous Confessions of Lydia Bennet, Witch (AlphaKIT)
7. I Am, I Am, I Am * (AlphaKIT)
8. May We Forever Stand (AlphaKIT)

August:
1. The Mayor of Castro Street (AlphaKIT)
2. To Shape a Dragon's Breath * (AlphaKIT, RandomKIT)
3. Where the Wild Ladies Are (AlphaKIT)
4. Elatsoe * (SFFKit)
5. Eager: The Surprising, Secret Life of Beavers and Why They Matter (AlphaKIT)
6. Love, Lies, and Cherry Pie (RandomKIT)
7. Here For the Right Reasons (AlphaKIT)

September:
1. Emily Wilde's Encyclopaedia of Fairies * (RandomKIT, SFFKit)
2. The Cat Who Saved Books (AlphaKIT)
3. The Backyard Bird Chronicles (AlphaKIT)
4. 84, Charing Cross Road * (AlphaKIT)

October:
1. Buried Deep and Other Stories (AlphaKIT, SFFKit)
2. Wonder Woman Historia: The Amazons * (SFFKit)
3. Molly Molloy and the Angel of Death * (SFFKit, RandomKIT)
4. Emily Wilde's Map of the Otherlands (SFFKit)
5. 100 Disasters That Shaped World History (AlphaKIT)
6. Dead Mountain * (AlphaKit)

November:
1. The Mask of Apollo * (RandomKIT)
2. My Murder * (RandomKIT, AlphaKIT)
3. A Sorceress Comes to Call (SFFKit)
4. Fake It Till You Bake It * (AlphaKIT)
5. The Witness for the Dead * (RandomKIT)
6. The Drifter * (AlphaKIT)
7. Lady With a Black Umbrella (AlphaKIT)

December:
1. Queen Victoria's Matchmaking * (AlphaKIT)
2. Outlaw Bride * (AlphaKIT)
3. Back Across the Styx * (AlphaKIT)
4. Glory O'Brien's History of the Future * (AlphaKIT)
5. The Deep Sky * (AlphaKIT)
6. The Best of All Possible Worlds * (AlphaKIT)
7. This Is Your Brain on Parasites * (AlphaKIT)

BingoDOG



1. A Fever in the Heartland
2. It Takes Two To Tumble
3. The Thin Light of Freedom
4. The Sharing Knife: Beguilement
5. His Convenient Husband
6. Some of the Best From Tor.com 2021 Edition
7. Love & Other Disasters
8. Once a Laird
9. A Jewish Paul
10. You Had Me at Hola
11. The Holocaust: An Unfinished History
12. Demon Daughter
13. Crow Planet
14. From the Mixed-up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler
15. 84, Charing Cross Road
16. Prisoners of a Pirate Queen
17. The Exvangelicals
18. The Last Report on the Miracles at Little No Horse
19. Rental Person Who Does Nothing
20. All the Birds in the Sky
21. Emily Wilde's Encyclopaedia of Fairies
22. Defiant Dreams
23. Ring Shout
24. Disillusioned: Five Families and the Unraveling of America's Suburbs
25. Yinka, Where Is Your Huzband? *

Fantasy and Science Fiction

1. Witch King *
2. Demon Daughter
3. Mystic and Rider *
4. Ring Shout *
5. Eagle Drums *
6. The Sharing Knife: Beguilement
7. If Found, Return to Hell *
8. The Red Scholar's Wake *
9. Some Desperate Glory *
10. Opposite of Always
11. Yesterday's Kin
12. A Tempest of Tea
13. Aftermarket Afterlife
14. The Imposition of Unnecessary Obstacles
15. All the Birds in the Sky
16. City of Bones
17. Prisoners of a Pirate Queen *
18. The Sorcerer of the Wildeeps *
19. Penric and the Bandit
20. The Left Hand of Darkness
21. The Scandalous Confessions of Lydia Bennet, Witch
22. A Coup of Tea *
23. To Shape a Dragon's Breath *
24. Where the Wild Ladies Are
25. Elatsoe *
26. Some of the Best From Tor.com 2021 Edition *
27. Emily Wilde's Encyclopaedia of Fairies *
28. The Cat Who Saved Books
29. The Masquerades of Spring
30. Buried Deep and Other Stories
31. Wonder Woman Historia: The Amazons *
32. Molly Molloy and the Angel of Death *
33. Emily Wilde's Map of the Otherlands
34. My Murder *
35. A Sorceress Comes to Call
36. The Witness for the Dead *
37. Bitter Medicine *
38. And What Can We Offer You Tonight?
39. Rivers of London Vol. 12: Stray Cat Blues
40. Back Across the Styx *
41. Glory O'Brien's History of the Future *
42. The Deep Sky *
43. The Best of All Possible Worlds *

Romance

1. Once a Laird *
2. His Convenient Husband *
3. Love & Other Disasters
4. Mystic and Rider *
5. You Had Me at Hola *
6. Marry Me By Midnight *
7. The Sharing Knife: Beguilement
8. It Takes Two To Tumble *
9. The Red Scholar's Wake *
10. Codename Charming *
11. Four Weddings to Fall in Love *
12. Opposite of Always
13. One Cowboy, One Christmas *
14. Much Ado About Nada *
15. Yinka, Where Is Your Huzband? *
16. Careless Whispers *
17. Total Creative Control *
18. Julieta and the Romeos *
19. A Proposal to Risk Their Friendship
20. The Austen Playbook *
21. Love, Lies, and Cherry Pie
22. Here For the Right Reasons
23. Molly Molloy and the Angel of Death *
24. Lady Rogue
25. The Stanforth Secrets
26. Fake It Till You Bake It *
27. The Drifter *
28. Lady With a Black Umbrella
29. Outlaw Bride *
30. Back Across the Styx *
31. The Best of All Possible Worlds *

YA/Kidlit

(The image is Paricutin, which is a very young mountain in Mexico, less than a century old.)

1. From the Mixed-up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler
2. Eagle Drums *
3. Huda F Cares? *
4. Opposite of Always
5. A Tempest of Tea
6. Julieta and the Romeos *
7. Blades of Freedom
8. Above the Trenches
9. To Shape a Dragon's Breath *
10. Elatsoe *
11. Scarlett Epstein Hates It Here *
12. Promposal *
13. Glory O'Brien's History of the Future *

History (fiction and nonfiction)

1. The Thin Light of Freedom *
2. Once a Laird *
3. Ring Shout *
4. American Revolutions *
5. Menewood
6. Egg: A Dozen Ovatures *
7. A Fever in the Heartland
8. Marry Me By Midnight *
9. It Takes Two To Tumble *
10. The Mosquito: A Human History of Our Deadliest Predator *
11. The Kingdom, the Power, and the Glory
12. The Holocaust: An Unfinished History
13. Gods of the Upper Air *
14. Ordinary Men *
15. 2020: One City, Seven People, and the Year Everything Changed
16. The Face of Britain *
17. The Fall of Berlin *
18. A Jewish Paul *
19. Blades of Freedom
20. African American Religion
21. Above the Trenches
22. A Proposal to Risk Their Friendship
23. May We Forever Stand
24. The Mayor of Castro Street
25. After 1177 B.C.
26. Judgment at Tokyo *
27. Chicago's Great Fire
28. 100 Disasters That Shaped World History
29. Dead Mountain *
30. The Stanforth Secrets
31. The Mask of Apollo *
32. 428 AD
33. The Drifter *
34. Lady With a Black Umbrella
35. Queen Victoria's Matchmaking *
36. The Bible With and Without Jesus
37. Pearl Harbor Christmas *
38. Outlaw Bride *
39. We Survived the End of the World *

Science

1. Egg: A Dozen Ovatures *
2. Crow Planet *
3. The Mosquito: A Human History of Our Deadliest Predator *
4. Gods of the Upper Air *
5. A Wing and a Prayer: The Race to Save Our Vanishing Birds *
6. Virology: Essays for the Living, the Dead, and the Small Things in Between
7. Pests: How Humans Create Animal Villains *
8. Eager: The Surprising, Secret Life of Beavers and Why They Matter *
9. The Backyard Bird Chronicles
10. This Is Your Brain on Parasites *

Religion

1. Huda F Cares? *
2. Curveball
3. Crow Planet *
4. Holy Envy *
5. The Kingdom, the Power, and the Glory
6. The Exvangelicals
9. Cloistered: My Years As A Nun
10. A Jewish Paul *
11. African American Religion
12. The Amen Effect
13. The Bible With and Without Jesus

I love all your pictures, what a great way to tackle Mt TBR.

I'm pretty sure after all my book-buying of 2023 that my own Mt TBR is actually a volcano, it's just spewing out more and getting taller and taller! :D

Great pics! Good luck with your TBR in 2024

Good luck with your 2024 challenge! Wonderful photos!

Happy reading in 2024! Love all the mountain pics!

Have fun with your 2024 challenge and on reducing your Mt. TBR!

Great pictures, I especially love the CAT and KITs. Good luck with your reading in 2024.

Good luck scaling the mountain!

Those are wonderful images. Good luck with your climbing!

Happy reading in 2024, and good luck with the wish list black hole.

Thanks, y'all!

I had some spare time the past two nights, so I sat down and consolidated all my TBRs into a single monster list in a Google spreadsheet...and it's 633 books long. The crazy part is that it seems less daunting now that it's all listed in one place, sorted by title, author, genre, and location. The overwhelming majority is the library For Later shelf, which wasn't really designed for the way I was using it, since it's not sortable and displays only 25 books per page.

Really, I wish I'd done something like this ages ago. Now if I'm in the mood for, say, a nice historical romance, I can easily find one that meets at least one TIOLI or Category challenge without having to sort through multiple different lists. I'll add a new tab for everything that gets added to the list in 2024. Those won't count toward the goal, but this is too good a system not to maintain.

(And it's not like I expect to read all 633 of those books--I'm sure I'll read my fair share of first chapters and think, "Nope, not for me," but then I can take them off the list, which is its own kind of satisfaction.)

>26 susanna.fraser: Congrats, that spreadsheet sounds like quite a feat! And as you say, now it will be easy (or easier) to find something from your own TBR that fits the various challenges.

>26 susanna.fraser: There's something very satisfying about counting and categorising all of Mt TBR, isn't there? Mine is currently at 569, which is the highest it's been in a very very long time.

>26 susanna.fraser: What an accomplishment! I have a spreadsheet but there is not really enough detail about each book. You're an inspiration.

I do love a good spreadsheet! That reminds me my TBR spreadsheet is quite out of date and needs a tidy-up.

Wow, congrats on the spreadsheet! I'm still trying to determine my TBR after multiple moves in the last years. I bet it will be so satisfying when I finally have a list and definite number.

Oh, and Boromir and Claire and Jamie in one thread (plus beautiful mountains and cute animals)? I have to stop by here more often :-)

I'm trying to focus on my TBR this year too. Good luck to you, and to everyone else doing the same! The spreadsheet sounds like a great way to get everything in one place. I need to do something about my unread ebooks, but I don't think I'll be going there anytime soon...

1. From the Mixed-up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler by E.L. Konigsburg

Somehow I missed this utterly delightful Newbery winner during my childhood (probably because of the lack of horses). I'm so glad the PrizeCAT category led me to this one.

2. The Thin Light of Freedom * by Edward L. Ayers

And my first step up Mount TBR was this look at the Civil War and Reconstruction that's been on my Kindle for several years. Ayers focuses on two communities, one in northern Virginia and one in southern Pennsylvania, and it's a different lens for very familiar history. The political arguments are depressingly familiar--we definitely haven't made a clean break with this part of the past.

>33 susanna.fraser: Always wanted to read this from the time my kids were small!

>35 Tess_W: It's such a fun book. In a weird way it pushes the same buttons for me as a nice kids' portal fantasy, only Narnia is NYC and the Met.

>33 susanna.fraser: One of my favorites as a kid! I was a big fan of the "child runs away and has adventures" genre.

3. Once a Laird by Mary Jo Putney

So that's my third books finished by midnight on Jan. 1...which means I'm currently on pace to finish 1095 books this year! (Sure! Of course that will happen...)

This was a rather gentle and slow-paced historical romance, which in some ways felt like a travelogue of the author's visit to the Orkneys, but sometimes it's nice to read something not too heavy on the drama.

4. Witch King * by Martha Wells

I bounced off this book when I first tried to read it last year because some part of me was hoping/expecting Murderbot, but fantasy, which it just isn't. (There are similarities, e.g. importance of found family, a protagonist who's extremely powerful and feared by most of the surrounding people because of his/its nature, etc., but you don't get that delightfully snarky first person narration.) This time I was better able to read it on its own terms and loved it (though not as much as Murderbot--few things in fiction are as lovable as Murderbot).

>39 susanna.fraser: Murderbot’s almost certainly going to be my “reread a favorite book” BingoDOG.

>40 Charon07: It's in the running for me in that category as well, though I could also pick a Bujold book or one of the Rivers of London series. (Or Jane Austen, or Dorothy Sayers, or Louisa May Alcott...I'm a frequent rereader.)



5. His Convenient Husband * by Robin Covington

A quick, charming take on the green card marriage trope, where NFL player Isaiah marries Russian ballet dancer Victor when his bid for asylum fails. (Slight content warning that the sex scenes are a bit toward the explicit end for what I like to read, more play-by-play than color commentary. Though this is an area where one person's content warning is another's recommendation, of course!)

6. Demon Daughter by Lois McMaster Bujold

New Penric & Desdemona, which I devoured at a gulp and will no doubt return to to slowly savor in the future.

>42 susanna.fraser: I'm slowly collecting all the Penric & Desdemona omnibus editions, though I haven't even started the series yet. Glad to hear there are still new ones coming out!

>43 christina_reads: It's an excellent series, IMHO.



7. Love & Other Disasters by Anita Kelly

A fun contemporary LGBTQ romance set against the backdrop of a fictional cooking competition show.

8. Mystic and Rider * by Sharon Shinn

This book kinda felt like reading a D&D campaign, but in a good way--a bit more episodic and "tell" rather than "show" for my usual tastes, but ultimately it held my interest and I liked the characters.

9. You Had Me at Hola * by Alexis Daria

A fun contemporary romance whose Latinx hero and heroine are costars in a telenovela.

10. Rental Person Who Does Nothing by Shoji Morimoto

This book's title caught my eye on the new releases table at my local library, though I was somewhat surprised to discover it was a memoir rather than a novel. The author, clearly burned out by capitalism and its associated cultural demands as expressed in Japan, turned to a life of just showing up for people, in ways that don't demand much of them or him. Want to try a new restaurant but feel weird about going alone? He'll come eat with you. Feel like you'd get more work done if someone else was in the room? He'll just sit there and quietly read while you write or draw or tidy or whatever. It's a short book, sort of bizarrely fascinating in the mundanity of it all.

>47 susanna.fraser: That does sound fascinating!

11. Ring Shout by P. Djèlí Clark

Alternate history fantasy/horror set in 1922 Georgia. SO GOOD.

12. American Revolutions * by Alan Taylor

A big-picture history of the American Revolution which pulls in more of a perspective from Loyalists, the British, French, and Spanish, the Native Americans, and the enslaved than the standard high school history class version.

13. Class: A Memoir of Motherhood, Hunger, and Higher Education by Stephanie Land

A follow up to Land's first memoir, Maid, this one focusing on Land's senior year in college, in her mid-30's, as a single mother of a 6-year-old and pregnant with her second child.

14. Menewood by Nicola Griffith

The sequel to Hild is long, earthy, sometimes gory, often confusing, utterly heartbreaking at points, and wholly fascinating.

15. Solutions and Other Problems by Allie Brosh

This memoir veered between "almost pulled a muscle in my abs laughing" and way more bleak and nihilistic than I was expecting.

16. Eagle Drums * by Nasugraq Rainey Hopson

This is a middle grade retelling of an Iñupiaq myth, which I found interesting as an Own Voices look at another culture, but it felt a bit overlong for a straightforward retelling but not quite fleshed out enough for a novel in its own right, somehow.

17. Egg: A Dozen Ovatures * by Lizzie Stark

Culture history/food history/memoir/life science book about, well, eggs. Mostly the bird variety, but human eggs come up too.

18. Red Paint: The Ancestral Autobiography of a Coast Salish Punk by Sasha LaPointe

A memoir of overcoming trauma, both personal and generational.

19. A Fever in the Heartland by Timothy Egan

A 100-year-old true horror story of when the KKK controlled an American state, with a sadistic con artist at the helm. I wish it didn't feel so very timely.

20. Marry Me By Midnight * by Felicia Grossman

A gender-bent Cinderella story set in the London Jewish community of the 1830s.

21. Beginnings, Middles, and Ends * by Nancy Kress

A concise and practical look at structuring short stories and novels, one I can see myself referring back to as I try to improve my own writing process.

22. Hid From Our Eyes by Julia Spencer-Fleming

I'd lost track of this series and only recently discovered that this "new" entry had come out in 2020. It was good to revisit the characters, but since the book the back matter claimed was coming in 2022 still hasn't been released, I won't be surprised if this is the last visit we get.

23. Huda F Cares? * by Huda Fahmy

Humorous YA (or maybe middle grade) graphic novel based on the author's experiences growing up in an American Muslim family as one of five sisters.

24. The Sharing Knife: Beguilement by Lois McMaster Bujold

I don't normally count re-reads in my annual log, but I'm making an exception in this case because it's a BingoDOG category. This whole series has been one of my prime comfort re-reads over the past 8 often terrible years (not personally terrible, for the most part--just the politics and pandemic of it all). In Murderbot terms, these books are my Sanctuary Moon. I can't imagine any other case where I'd root for a couple with an age gap as yawning as that between Dag and Fawn, but Bujold manages to convince me that these two are right for each other.

25. If Found, Return to Hell * by Em X. Liu

A rather cozy fantasy novella about a young wizard whose boring call center job gets more interesting when he takes a call from a client who's accidentally merged with a runaway demon prince.

>62 susanna.fraser: This series is definitely on my TBR list! But since I've already started acquiring the Penric & Desdemona omnibus volumes, I'll probably read those first...but I just want to read all the Bujold right now!!!

>64 christina_reads: I love pretty much everything of hers I've read, though I think I'm somewhat unusual in being so fond of the Sharing Knife books--they're tied with the Penric & Desdemona series and my favorites among the Vorkosigan Saga (Memory, Komarr, A Civil Campaign, and Captain Vorpatril's Alliance).



26. It Takes Two To Tumble * by Cat Sebastian

A lovely m/m historical romance between a vicar and a naval captain, set in the English Lake District in 1817.

27. Curveball by Peter Enns

A look at a more expansive version of Christian theology than the evangelicalism I grew up in, by an author who found the same challenges in such a faith that I always did.

>65 susanna.fraser: >66 susanna.fraser: I'm taking BBs for both of these!

>67 MissBrangwen: Always glad to provide a BB!



28. Crow Planet * by Lyanda Lynn Haupt

A book on living as an urban naturalist, with a focus on my beloved American Crows, by a writer who like me lives in the crow-dense confines of Seattle--and a book with enough Buddhist and Benedictine spirituality worked in that I ended up counting it toward my religion list as well as my science one.

>68 susanna.fraser: I've added this to my wishlist. You might like to look up some of the books by Esther Woolfson - another urban nature writer, this time in Aberdeen in Scotland.

>69 Jackie_K: Thanks for the suggestion!



29. The Red Scholar's Wake * by Aliette de Bodard

I can sell this one with an elevator pitch: Lesbian pirate romance In! Space!

>50 susanna.fraser: Mainly trying to catch up on threads but I added American Revolutions to my wishlist.

30. Holy Envy * by Barbara Brown Taylor

A thought-provoking book about engaging with other faiths as a Christian, though I have to say it had enough overlap with her earlier Leaving Church that I'd recommend reading one or the other rather than both.

31. Codename Charming * by Lucy Parker

A lovely romcom, sequel to Battle Royal, where a bodyguard and a personal assistant to fictional British royals start fake-dating in a convoluted scheme to stop the paparazzi from making false claims that the PA is having an affair with her royal employer.

32. The Mosquito: A Human History of Our Deadliest Predator * by Timothy C Winegard

This wasn't really the book I was hoping for--I was expecting something of an epidemiological deep dive, but it was more military history survey with added information about the impact of malaria and yellow fever casualties.

33. Some Desperate Glory * by Emily Tesh

Dystopian space opera (although with an ultimately hopeful ending) that kept me turning pages.

34. Four Weddings to Fall in Love by Jackie Lau

Another fun sexy romcom set in Toronto's Asian-Canadian community by one of my go-to authors.

35. Disillusioned: Five Families and the Unraveling of America's Suburbs by Benjamin Herold

A fascinating if grim look at five families experiencing suburban life in different parts of America (specifically, Pennsylvania, Illinois, Georgia, Texas, and California) in roughly 2015-21.

I'm a somewhat weird American insofar as I've never actually lived in a suburb. I was raised not even in a small town, but in an unincorporated rural community 7 miles from the small town where I went to school through high school, and where my paternal ancestors have lived since roughly 1820. Then I went to Philadelphia for college and have spent my entire adult life barring a year in Bristol, England, and a brief sojourn with my parents after coming home from England living within the city limits of Philadelphia and then Seattle.

36. The Kingdom, the Power, and the Glory by Tim Alberta

A thorough journalistic overview of the current state of the American evangelical church and how it got into its current disarrayed, politically state. Alberta is a bit more forgiving and optimistic than I am, though I don't know if the fact he's still an evangelical while I'm an ex-vangelical is cause or effect.

37. Opposite of Always by Justin A. Reynolds

YA romance with a Groundhog Day-style time loop at its core.

38. The Holocaust: An Unfinished History by Dan Stone

A short history, and one that's on the scholarly end--in some ways it's as much about the concept of the Holocaust, both when it took place and in how it's been remembered and forgotten ever since. I'm glad to have read it (it's not the kind of book you'd say you enjoyed, of course), and I'd recommend it to anyone with a solid grounding in the basic history of the Holocaust and the European theater of WWII.

39. One Cowboy, One Christmas * by Kathleen Eagle

I needed a break from dense and dark, and this romance with a snowbound rodeo cowboy fit the bill nicely.

40. Gods of the Upper Air * by Charles King

A surprisingly fascinating look at the lives of key early anthropologists from the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

41. A Wing and a Prayer: The Race to Save Our Vanishing Birds * by Anders Gyllenhaal

A look at the conservation efforts being devoted to a range of American birds.

42. Ordinary Men * by Christopher R. Browning

A look at the mostly self-described (in the form of archived court transcripts) experiences of a group of mostly blue-collar middle-aged policemen who became perpetrators during the Holocaust. I would've liked to learn more about the men's lives after the war--how do you ever live with yourself after committing such atrocities?--but that was beyond the scope of the book and the primary source material.



43. Yesterday's Kin by Nancy Kress

Science fiction novella, which I finished because of the short length even though I wasn't crazy about it because the characters seemed more like types than people.

>82 susanna.fraser: I've added this to my wishlist. I read his The Moldovans years ago, and it was a surprisingly interesting trawl through the history and politics of the Moldovan lands.

44. A Tempest of Tea by Hafsah Faizal

A rather dark YA fantasy novel--I warn about the dark aspect because some part of my brain expects any book with "tea" in the title to be cozy!

45. Aftermarket Afterlife by Seanan McGuire

13th in the InCryptid series, and trust me that you'll be completely lost if you haven't read the previous books (frankly I got a little confused on some of the secondary characters who hadn't been in recent books much).

46. The Imposition of Unnecessary Obstacles by Malka Older

Second in a series of cozy mysteries set in a future where humans have colonized Jupiter and some of its moons (via floating platforms in the gas giant's atmosphere).

47. The Exvangelicals by Sarah McCammon

The author is about 10 years younger than me, but so much of her childhood/young adult experience and later estrangement from the evangelical form of Christianity resonated with me.

48. Much Ado About Nada * by Uzma Jalaluddin

Contemporary romance loosely based on Jane Austen's Persuasion and set in Toronto's Muslim community.

49. 2020: One City, Seven People, and the Year Everything Changed by Eric Klinenberg

It was a bit harrowing to revisit the early pandemic, but also a useful reminder of how bad it was, not to mention the unique form that badness took in the US.

50. What Have We Here? by Billy Dee Williams

Memoir by the actor. I don't think I'd realized quite how old he is (87 as of this writing). To be honest I mainly know him as Lando Calrissian, but he's had a fascinating life and is part of my parents' generation (born 5 years after my mother) rather than my older brothers'. (My brothers were all teens when I was born and are Baby Boomers to my Gen X.)

>92 susanna.fraser: When my mother found a celebrity attractive, she would say: "he can eat crackers in my bed anytime" ("ew, Mom, gross!"). Billy Dee Williams and Stuart Whitman were two that fell into the cracker-eating category.

>93 ReneeMarie: The version of that I always heard was "I wouldn't kick him out of bed for eating crackers."



51. All the Birds in the Sky by Charlie Jane Anders

This book is a trippy and fascinating mashup of science fiction and fantasy whose first third is YA and has definite touches of romance.

52. Slow Productivity by Cal Newport

An short, rather interesting book on doing less to do more, mostly focused on creative people and knowledge workers. It gave me some ideas to try out both in my day job and in my writing and other personal projects.

53. Woven by Joshua Barkman

Joshua Barkman, author of the False Knees webcomic, has for the past several years done a month-long serial story for Inktober, which he then self-publishes in book form. 2023's story is a beautiful meditation on creativity, loneliness, and rediscovering what gives you joy.

54. Recoding America by Jennifer Pahlka

All about the handicaps facing government as it tries to deliver good service quickly in the digital era, with many examples of how it can be improved. The pain points struck extremely close to home for me as someone whose day job is on the financial side of academic research administration at the University of Washington, where we are currently going through new system implementation hell.

55. Yinka, Where Is Your Huzband? * by Lizzie Damilola Blackburn

Sort of Bridget Jones meets Crazy Ex-Girlfriend in London's Nigerian immigrant community.

56. City of Bones * by Martha Wells

An early Martha Wells book (originally published in 1995). It's not as good as Murderbot by a long shot, but you can see the roots of her talent and the sort of grumpy outsider with a heart of gold she likes to feature.

57. Cloistered: My Years As A Nun by Catherine Coldstream

I've been fascinated by nun memoirs ever since I first read the novel In This House of Brede. The various monasteries and convents always come out looking worse than Brede Abbey, of course--in this case the author's Carmelite convent morphed into a personality cult. It's an unusual memoir of its kind in that Coldstream doesn't give up on her faith altogether and still values prayer and silence in her secular life as a writer, teacher, and wife. You get the sense if she'd entered a better-run convent, she probably would've stayed in for life and considered her life a good one.

58. Prisoners of a Pirate Queen * by Marshall J. Moore

Second in a cozy, heartwarming pirate series by an author I discovered on TikTok.

I love how eclectic your selections are! I've marked a few to check out. So, thanks!

>102 purpleiris: I definitely have preferred genres, especially with fiction, but I read whatever strikes my interest, and a lot of things do! :-)



59. The Face of Britain * by Simon Schama

Art history, and national history via art.

60. The Fall of Berlin * by Antony Beevor

This book covers the Soviet Union's final push into Germany in 1945 (with very occasional side notes on what the Americans and British were up to, mostly about how the Americans were way too trusting of Stalin, though I'm not sure it was so much naïveté as rational unwillingness to immediately provoke a shooting war with an erstwhile ally, especially with the war against Japan still ongoing).

My knowledge of the Eastern European events of WWII are heavily skewed toward Holocaust history, so much of the military detail and civilian (especially German civilian) perspective was new to me. I found it surprisingly thought-provoking, given the current state of the world, to wrestle with how much sympathy I should feel for German civilians being murdered or brutalized by the Red Army. Presumably most of them didn't actually commit Nazi atrocities themselves; on the other hand, I think the majority of adult Germans had to know their government was brutal and murderous, so...

...One of my church's prayers of repentance includes repenting of the wrongs done on our behalf. I take that prayer as a call to be clear-eyed about the injustices committed by our governments and the unfair structures that are baked into our societies, and to push back against them as much as we can. But I am by no means sure how hard you need to push back, and at how much risk to your own prosperity or personal safety, to absolve yourself of culpability for the evil done on your behalf. The lines between complicity, innocent bystander status, and resistance aren't drawn in black and white.

I don't know. I really don't. I just know that for as satisfying as revenge feels, becoming brutes because you've been brutalized is no way to build a world where everyone shall sit under their own vine and fig tree, and no one shall make them afraid. Mercy has to temper justice or the cycle never ends.

And I also know that for as much as I want to do the right thing, to stand up for justice and generally choose the harder right over the easier wrong,* I also want to be safe and keep my family safe, and not to stick my neck out so far as to get my head chopped off, figuratively or otherwise. And for all that it's easy to see WWII, especially in Europe, as something of an ultimate conflict of capital-G Good vs. capital-E Evil, it's healthy to be reminded that the on-the-ground experience was mostly people just wanting to keep themselves and their loved ones safe.

* My older brother Jim is a West Point graduate, and I still remember attending services in the Cadet Chapel as a child there for a visit and encountering the Cadet Prayer. One phrase has stuck with me all my life, "Make us to choose the harder right instead of the easier wrong, and never to be content with a half truth when the whole can be won." It's as good a rule to live by as any I've heard since.

61. Careless Whispers * by Synithia Williams

A quite good contemporary romance, part of a series about the children of, to put it bluntly, a rich jerk, though I enjoyed this author's earlier books featuring basketball players more.

62. Virology: Essays for the Living, the Dead, and the Small Things in Between by Joseph Osmundson

A set of essays, some very personal, some more general, like a long-form version of a newspaper editorial, about viruses and their impact on our lives, mostly but not exclusively focused on COVID-19 and HIV.

63. Total Creative Control * by Joanna Chambers & Sally Malcolm

Just a delight of a contemporary romance.

64. The Last Report on the Miracles at Little No Horse * by Louise Erdrich

I always love Erdrich's writing, and the same is true in this case, though I think my enjoyment suffered to some degree because this book is several books into a linked series.

65. A Jewish Paul * by Matthew Thiessen

I picked this up because I heard the author interviewed on a podcast and liked what he had to say. I think this book does a good job of peeling back two millennia of history and theology and creeds and trying to see Paul’s epistles on his terms and those of his readers.

66. Defiant Dreams by Sola Mahfouz & Malaina Kapoor

Memoir of a young woman who, as a teen in Kandahar with minimal education due to the restrictions on women and girls, but from a well-to-do family who could afford things like computers and an internet connection, taught herself English and gave herself the equivalent of a high school education, and through sheer stubbornness and help from friends made online eventually made it to college in the US and is now a physicist.

67. Julieta and the Romeos * by Marie E. Andreu

A lovely, almost gentle YA romance--gentle in the sense that everything is human-scale, with the over-the-top aspects only in the heroine's imagination (there's a tiny bit of Emma Woodhouse in her DNA, though it's not at all an Emma retelling). I liked the fact that all the Romeos are fundamentally decent young men--it's not the kind of story where she has to work out who is least the asshole.

68. Pests: How Humans Create Animal Villains * by Bethany Brookshire

I enjoyed this one a lot—the basic thesis is that peskiness is in the eye of the beholder, and that “pest” animals became that way out of some combination of thriving in human-created environments (rats, mice, deer, coyotes), because we encroached on their turf (elephants, wolves), or because we imported them, whether accidentally or on purpose, far from their native environment to one where they become a menace (rabbits in Australia, those %#{%$& starlings crowding out the chickadees and finches from my bird feeders).

69. Blades of Freedom by Nathan Hale

I'd lost track of this series of children's graphic novels on American history when my kid aged out of reading them, but something reminded me of them the other day, so I checked this one out. I've gotta say, I'm extremely impressed at how Hale manages to make the Haitian Revolution and its impact on the Louisiana Purchase comprehensible and only somewhat sanitized for a middle-grade reading level.

70. African American Religion by Eddie S. Glaude Jr.

Part of the Very Short Introduction series, providing a brief but comprehensive look at traditional African religions as expressed in hoodoo/conjure, the Black church (which, fittingly, forms the bulk of the book), and African-American Islam.

71. The Sorcerer of the Wildeeps * by Kai Ashante Wilson

This fantasy novella (or short novel--I know it won a bunch of novella awards, but it feels on the long end for the category) is more literary than my usual tastes in its nonlinear narrative, ambiguously tragic ending, and the studied elegance of the prose (not that I don't like good writing--I'm just usually more into subtle, unobtrusive elegance). But for all that I'm glad to have read it.

72. The Body Is Not an Apology by Sonya Renee Taylor

I read this for the Body Liberation category of the Seattle Public Library summer book bingo. I wouldn't have picked up if it weren’t for the challenge, and I did have to push myself through it, though I agree with her perspective and liked the last chapter with its ideas for practical action.

Wow, halfway through the year already! How did that happen?!



73. Above the Trenches by Nathan Hale

More graphic novel-format kids' history, informative and amusing as always. This one focuses on WWI aviation, mostly the Lafayette Escadrille.

74. Democracy or Else by Jon Favreau, Jon Lovett, and Tommy Vietor

A how-to for getting involved in democracy by the hosts of Pod Save America, and one that hits hard for me right now as a big-D Democrat who loves small-d democracy, given that debate on Thursday and that Supreme Court ruling today.

75. Penric and the Bandit by Lois McMaster Bujold

A new Penric & Desdemona book, which had to be read as soon as possible!

76. The Amen Effect by Sharon Brous

Me to my husband earlier today: So I'm reading this book by a rabbi I heard interviewed on a podcast...
Him: Of COURSE you are.

Anyway, I'm so glad I happened to listen to the podcast in question, because this book was moving and inspiring on multiple levels.

77. Slow AF Run Club by Martinus Evans

An extremely inspirational read for me, given that I am an overweight 53-year-old and also a beginner-level runner.

78. A Proposal to Risk Their Friendship by Louise Allen

Historical romance with a somewhat old-school Regency feel, though the sex scenes were a little more explicit than a trad Regency would allow. I enjoyed it, even though I was expecting an old friends to lovers story from the description, and instead it's about two people who meet in the beginning of the story and are in denial about the fact they're attracted as more than friends from the get-go.

79. The Left Hand of Darkness by Ursula Le Guin

A science fiction classic I'd never read before, but picked up because it matched this month's SFFKit. It took me awhile to get oriented to the fictional world, and it's definitely a bit more challenging than the more escapist fare I tend to prefer, but I'm glad to have read it.

80. Surviving Autocracy * by Masha Gessen

This book was completed in early 2020, and it focuses on the Trump administration's impacts on American political culture. It made for interesting and grim reading, four years later, especially given the events of everything from the debate through yesterday's assassination attempt.

81. The Austen Playbook * by Lucy Parker

So the bad news is that covid finally got me, 4.5 years in. I started feeling sick Tuesday evening, tested Wednesday morning and got a negative result, so I tried to push through a full day of WFH even though I try to take off work when I have a bad cold, because our team is so behind on everything right now. But I kept feeling worse and discovered I had a fever of 100 F early that afternoon, so I signed off early to curl up in bed. Then I decided to test again on Thursday just in case, and got two bright pink lines. Sigh. So I've spent the past four days in bed reading, in between listening to podcasts and following political news on social media.

I'm now several books behind on logging all that reading, so I'm testing my potential readiness to go back to work tomorrow (I'm 100% WFH, so contagion isn't an issue) by trying to log some of them. Right now signs point to "no," since I don't think I could do 8 hours of sitting at the computer and typing, even leaving aside the fact that my job is way more stressful and mentally taxing than logging a book!

Anyway, this was a nice contemporary romance by an author who consistently does a great job of making her characters feel like part of an interesting, three-dimensional community, in this case the London theater scene.

>125 susanna.fraser: Ugh, hope you feel better soon! And glad you enjoyed The Austen Playbook...I keep waiting for Parker to return to that series!

Hope you feel better soon!

>126 christina_reads: >127 DeltaQueen50: I'm feeling a bit better today than yesterday (though now my husband, whose symptoms started a day or two after mine and seemed destined to stay far milder, is the one spiking a fever and feeling lethargic, unfortunately).



82. Homelessness is a Housing Problem by Gregg Colburn

I read this for one of the library book bingo categories, though I was already broadly familiar with the author's arguments because he's on the faculty at UW, where I work, and he's one of the researches who tends to show up on the campus website and newsletters. Basically, his research shows that homelessness is highest where you have a combination of a strong economy (so high average income and population growth) but an inflexible housing supply due to combinations of regulations and geography, which leads to a drastic shortage of affordable housing. Seattle and San Francisco exemplify this, since their geography, hemmed in as they are by water and mountains, doesn't give them much room to spread out, and various regulations for better and worse stifle new construction where there is space. This contrasts with, say, Atlanta and Charlotte, which also have strong economies but plenty of room to build new housing (even if the sprawl and traffic border on intolerable, at least in Atlanta--I don't know as much about Charlotte), or Rust Belt cities with a lot of unemployment and low average income, but with ample available housing because the population has shrunk.

83. The Scandalous Confessions of Lydia Bennet, Witch by Melinda Taub

This fantasy retelling of Pride and Prejudice is an utter delight from beginning to end.

>129 susanna.fraser: Taking a BB for this one.

Hope you and your husband are feeling better soon! Take lots of time to recover.

>131 rabbitprincess: Thanks! I worked a half-day today, which since I work from home meant working from 9-11, then logging back on at 1 PM and working another two hours, which was fine, so I'm going to try to keep that up for the rest of the week. I'm better, but nowhere near 100%.



84. I Am, I Am, I Am * by Maggie O'Farrell

A memoir of the author's near-death experiences, of which she's had more than her fair share, ranging from a bout of encephalitis as a child to an encounter with a threatening hiker who actually had his camera strap around her throat--the police didn't take her account too seriously, but came back to interview her a few days later when another woman hiking alone ended up strangled with the self-same implement.

85. A Coup of Tea * by Casey Blair

Cozy fantasy, which took awhile to get started but ended up being quite enjoyable.

86. The Lonely Hearts Book Club * by Lucy Gilmore

An enjoyable, if rather saccharine book that's basically about the power of friendship. (This is one of those cases where I stepped outside my usual reading categories to meet a library book bingo category.)

87. May We Forever Stand by Imani Perry

A history of “Lift Every Voice and Sing” and its role in a century plus of Black culture and activism.

88. The Mayor of Castro Street by Randy Shilts

This biography was published in 1982, so just a few years after Harvey Milk's murder and over forty eventful years ago. It's fascinating and well-written, all the more so for the way it made me reflect on contemporary politics and culture (effective political organizing, police brutality, right wing backlash to change) and all of our history that hadn't yet happened then.

89. To Shape a Dragon's Breath * by Moniquill Blackgoose

Really excellent YA fantasy wherein Anequs, a 15-year-old indigenous girl in an alternate universe version of 19th century New England, bonds with a hatchling dragon but has to go to a colonizer boarding school to be able to keep it. It manages to hit all the key beats of outsider-in-magic-school fantasy while being strikingly unique due to the worldbuilding.

>137 susanna.fraser: This one sound's interesting. Taking a BB.

90. Where the Wild Ladies Are by Aoko Matsuda

A collection of modern retellings of Japanese folktales, at once interesting and weird.

91. After 1177 B.C. by Eric H. Cline

I found this book significantly dryer and more of a slog than I remember the author's earlier book, 1177 B.C. as being, though that's probably because the relative paucity of evidence for life in the aftermath of the Late Bronze Age Collapse forces any nonfiction account to be a story of dig sites, pottery, grave goods, etc. rather than the people who once inhabited them.

92. Elatsoe * by Darcie Little Badger

Though I agree with the reviewers who say the protagonist of this novel comes across as closer to 14 or 15 than 17, I thoroughly enjoyed this YA fantasy/horror debut novel about a Lipan Apache girl who can call upon ghosts and is seeking to investigate and avenge her cousin's death.

>92 susanna.fraser: The cover is amazing! I'm adding it to my ever-growing wish list.

>142 MissBrangwen: I think you'll enjoy it.



93. Eager: The Surprising, Secret Life of Beavers and Why They Matter by Ben Goldfarb

When I was growing up in rural Alabama, my dad used to regularly break up a beaver dam that threatened to inundate a couple of acres of our land, though it seems like the beavers always came back. And I now live in a big city on the other corner of the country, about a block from a little undeveloped bit of city Parks & Recreation-owned creek, wood, and wetland labeled Beaver Pond Natural Area, which certainly bears marks of beaver activity at some not-too-distant point, though I couldn't say if they're there now. But for all that, reading this book made me realize how little I knew about our big rodent neighbors, and gave me a new appreciation for their role in shaping habitats.

94. Some of the Best From Tor.com 2021 Edition *

With this short story anthology, I finished my annual Seattle Public Library summer reading bingo card.

95. Love, Lies, and Cherry Pie by Jackie Lau

Enjoyable rom-com by a go-to author.

96. Here For the Right Reasons by Jodi McAlister

More contemporary romance, this time a story set on a fictional Australian reality TV romance show where 2020 pandemic restrictions prevent eliminated contestants from leaving the set.

97. Emily Wilde's Encyclopaedia of Fairies * by Heather Fawcett

A sort of gaslight fantasy, set in an alternate version of our world circa 1900 where there are fairy realms, featuring a neurodivergent scientist heroine aiming to further her career with the first scholarly paper on an obscure branch of the Fae and her pesky colleague whom she suspects is High Fae himself.

>147 susanna.fraser: An intriguing description! Did you like the book?

>147 susanna.fraser: This one is on my tbr, I snatched it when it was a kindle deal some months ago! I don't know when I will get to it, but it sounds intriguing.

>148 christina_reads: I did like it--it reminded me a bit of the Invisible Library series, if you've read those.



98. Scarlett Epstein Hates It Here * by Anna Breslaw

A coming-of-age YA novel, a bit darker than much of its kind, mostly because the protagonist doesn't realize the degree to which her problems are self-generated until very late in the book. (As one character tells her, she has an inferiority complex and a superiority complex at the same time.)

>150 susanna.fraser: Haha, The Invisible Library series is on my list for this year! I own the first few books but have only read book #1 so far.

99. The Cat Who Saved Books by Sosuke Natsukawa

I finished this book because of its short length, but I frankly didn't enjoy it as much as I hoped. The book felt like it should be whimsical and charming, but all the characters--including the titular cat--were more or less sarcastic and cruel to each other and themselves, and the writing style (at least in this translation) was awkward and in some cases felt more like a summary than a story.

100. Judgment at Tokyo * by Gary J. Bass

My 100th book of the year was a huge one--994 pages not counting the footnotes. I'm impressed with how well Bass kept such a long history interesting and made it easy to keep track of the many people involved. I'm not anywhere near as well-informed on the Pacific theater of WWII as on the European side, but after this book I feel a bit less historically lopsided.

101. Notes From an Apocalypse * by Mark O'Connell

A set of essays somewhere on the boundary between journalism and memoir featuring the author's adventures meeting doomsday preppers and aspiring Martian colonizers, touring Chernobyl, and reflecting on the world he's brought two young children into.

>154 susanna.fraser: I've added this to my wishlist. I do like reading essays.

>155 Jackie_K: I think you'll enjoy it--O'Connell has a distinctive voice and a leavening of humor.



102. The Backyard Bird Chronicles by Amy Tan

Several years of the journals of a far more avid amateur birder than I am, and one that makes me want to pay more attention to my own dark-eyed juncos and spotted towhees.

103. 84, Charing Cross Road * by Helene Hanff

This is such a slow reading month for me that I'm seeking out short books from my shelves and Kindle to get my book count closer to my standard! Anyway, this slim collection of letters, charming and heartwarming in the best possible way, fit the bill for an evening read.

>157 susanna.fraser: So good! I can definitely relate to picking short books to boost my numbers. :)

104. The Masquerades of Spring by Ben Aaronovitch

A prequel to the Rivers of London series set in 1920s Manhattan. Given the time frame, the only familiar character we see is Nightingale, though Molly is mentioned. This was another quick, fun read for me.

105. Promposal * by Raechell Garrett

YA romance with a heroine who was so believably 17 and immature I occasionally wanted to shake her, but a fun read nonetheless.

106. Unfuck Your Shame by Faith G. Harper

Self-help, a little on the woo-woo side for my tastes, but a worthwhile use of my time to read.

107. Chicago's Great Fire by Carl Smith

A look at the famous fire and the rebuilding that immediately followed it. Largely a local history that probably would've connected better with me if I'd ever done more than change planes in Chicago, but I was struck by how the more things change, the more they stay the same politically--particularly in how the committee in charge of distributing the aid sent by a generous world made people jump through hoops to prove that they were deserving victims who'd get back to work ASAP and not grow dependent on handouts.

108. Buried Deep and Other Stories by Naomi Novik

Short stories by an author I've always enjoyed. I especially enjoyed the ones set in Temeraire's world and the one that gave a glimpse at one of her current projects.

109. Wonder Woman Historia: The Amazons * by Kelly Sue DeConnick

Graphic novel origin story for the DC Universe Amazons, intricate in both art and story.

110. Molly Molloy and the Angel of Death * by Maria Vale

A surprisingly delightful little gem of a fantasy romance.

>165 susanna.fraser: Taking a BB for this one

>166 lowelibrary: It's so lovely!



111. Emily Wilde's Map of the Otherlands by Heather Fawcett

It's a measure of how much I enjoyed the first book in this series that I read the second one the very next month--though it also helped me remember the characters and plot. I should try doing that more often. In any case, I enjoyed this book just as much, though I'd note as an FYI to potential readers that it's definitely more "fantasy with romantic subplot" than romantasy or fantasy romance, since I get the sense that some of the more negative reviews were from readers expecting something a bit sexier.

>167 susanna.fraser: I definitely need to nudge this series up my TBR! Also, I've been using the "one book in the series per month" technique for a couple years now, and I've found it super helpful as well! Long enough between books that I don't get bored with the series, but short enough that I still remember major characters and plot points.

112. The Message by Ta-Nehisi Coates

This book is basically three long personal essays on how writers shape the world we live in by the stories they tell about conflicts and history.

113. Lady Rogue by Amanda McCabe

I do love a nice old-school Regency romance from time to time. This one is a bit light on conflict and heavy on characters from prior books I haven't read, but it was still a nice relaxing book for a stressful time. (Basically anything between now and Election Day is a stressful time. And depending how things turn out, the time after may be MORE stressful. Sigh.)

114. 100 Disasters That Shaped World History by Joanne Mattern

A kids' book I stumbled across looking for books that fit this month's HistoryCAT, and one that made me feel elderly since more than half of the disasters were from my lifetime, though only one of those was one I'd actually lived THROUGH as opposed to being alive DURING, namely the March 1993 "Storm of the Century" blizzard/windstorm on the East Coast. I was in college in Philadelphia then, and was in Florida for spring break when the storm hit. It didn't snow that far south, but the wind picked up a chunk of heavy wooden fencing and slammed it into my friend's parents' van they'd let us borrow for the trip, breaking the glass, and we had to find someone to repair it before we could start back north, which took some doing. (And yeah, that was one of several disasters where saying it "shaped world history" was a bit of a stretch. Sure, it was a dramatic winter storm with a fairly high death toll for late 20th century America, but Hurricane Katrina or the Boxing Day Tsunami it wasn't.)

>171 susanna.fraser: - When I saw the title, I was thinking it might be a good book for my husband who loves disaster books. But I don't think a kids' book would be a good idea. (ha, ha)

>172 dudes22: Yeah, I'd say it's mainly useful as a prompt to drive you to look up more information for interesting disasters you haven't heard of or had forgotten. (E.g. the Arctic-Vesta ship collision, which was entirely new to me and left me shocked that it took the Titanic ~60 years later to force passenger ships to carry enough lifeboats for all on board!)

115. Dead Mountain * by Donnie Eichar

An investigation of the Dyatlov Pass incident, wherein 9 young Russian hikers inexplicably abandoned their tent on a freezing night in February 1959, to quickly perish of hypothermia or falling off a cliff in the cold and dark, a mystery that's spawned a million conspiracy theories.

116. The Stanforth Secrets by Jo Beverley

Old-school Regency romance by one of my original favorite romance authors, though this wasn't my favorite of her works, largely because it had a level of classism I found off-putting. Sure, the genre is set in a highly classist era, but I don't like it when it seems like the author seems to think lower-class characters shouldn't have ambitions.

117. The Mask of Apollo * by Mary Renault

Historical fiction set in the 4th century BCE Hellenistic world (mostly Athens and Syracuse), narrated by a talented actor who bears witness to a great deal of war and philosophy over the course of his career. Rambling compared to my usual choices of fiction, but very compelling.

118. My Murder * by Katie Williams

A murder mystery in a near-future science fictional world where, though how it's done is never explained, it's possible to clone a person as an adult and somehow restore most of their original memories. The narrator is one of a group of five victims of a serial killer brought back to life.

119. A Sorceress Comes to Call by T. Kingfisher

I finished this book on Tuesday night, but forgot to log it. (Gee. What could have possibly distracted me. Sigh.) It was, however, a welcome escape at a time I desperately needed one.

120. 428 AD by Giusto Traina

Sort of a walk around the Mediterranean, looking at various political and religious events going on around the Roman Empire at a time of transition. I think I would've found it more interesting to do a deep dive into any one of the places, but it was a bit thought-provoking to reflect on how all these kings and empresses and bishops and generals were trying to find stability and anchor themselves in a chaotic world.

>178 susanna.fraser: I loved that book -- glad you enjoyed it too!

121. Fake It Till You Bake It * by Jamie Wesley

A fun romcom featuring the ever-popular fake dating trope and set in a cupcake shop owned by a trio of NFL players.

122. The Witness for the Dead * by Katherine Addison

A sort of slice-of-life cozy fantasy mystery, which I enjoyed despite being continually confused by the complex and convoluted character names.

123. The Drifter * by Susan Wiggs

Historical romance set on Whidbey Island, a place I know quite well and have often gone to for romantic and/or relaxing weekends away. I enjoyed it (though it took a bit of a turn for the melodramatic toward the end).

124. Lady With a Black Umbrella by Mary Balogh

A traditional Regency romance, and one of Balogh's earlier works. I enjoyed it, though it showed its age in some ways--I can't imagine a more recently published romance novel where the hero jokes that he's going to beat the heroine once a week after they're married! It's absolutely clear that he's joking, but STILL.

125. Bitter Medicine * by Mia Tsai

A fantasy romance with excellent worldbuilding and appealing lead characters. This is the author's first book, and I look forward to reading more from her in the future.

126. Queen Victoria's Matchmaking * by Deborah Cadbury

A look at how Queen Victoria in the last 20 years or so of her reign tried to make suitable royal marriages for her grandchildren that would bring her descendants happiness while fostering stability at home and abroad...and failing on pretty much all counts, especially the stability abroad part.

127. And What Can We Offer You Tonight? by Premee Mohamed

A creepy, evocative novella that partakes of elements of science fiction, fantasy, and horror all at the same time.

128. Rivers of London Vol. 12: Stray Cat Blues by Ben Aaronovitch

I'm always a bit disappointed by the Rivers of London graphic novels, since they're so slight compared to the novels and novellas and the art style is pretty basic, and yet I buy them every time they're released as methadone between said novels and novellas.

My 2025 thread is up: https://www.librarything.com/topic/366337#n8692718

129. The Bible With and Without Jesus by Amy-Jill Levine

A fascinating look at some of the passages from the Old Testament/Tanakh that are most prominently cited in the New Testament, and how the Christian and Jewish interpretations thereof have developed over time.

130. Arsenic and Adobo by Mia Manansala

First in a culinary mystery series, and good escapist fun.

131. Pearl Harbor Christmas * by Stanley Weintraub

A snapshot of WWII in late December 1941, framed by Churchill's visit to Washington DC. A quick, interesting read, though maybe not the best choice for anyone who still admires Douglas MacArthur.

132. Outlaw Bride * by Jenna Kernan

A quite gritty Western historical romance, all about survival in the wintry 1850s Sierra Nevada featuring two characters who remained persistent despite unhappy pasts.

133. Back Across the Styx * by Karalynn Lee

This was a Santa Thing gift from a couple years back, IIRC. It's fantasy romance, with a setting nestled into both Greek history and Greek mythology.

134. Glory O'Brien's History of the Future * by A.S. King

A YA coming-of-age story that's somewhere on the magical realism/fantasy border.

135. The Deep Sky * by Yumei Kitasei

Science fiction mystery aboard a generation ship striving on its way to found Earth's first colony outside of the solar system, as long as they can figure out who's trying to sabotage the mission and get the ship back on course before it's too late.

136. We Survived the End of the World * by Steven Charleston

The author is both an Episcopal priest and a Choctaw elder, and he wears both hats as he talks about Native American apocalyptic prophecy in response to the deadly impact of colonialism (e.g. Tecumseh's brother Tenskwatawa and Wovoka and the Ghost Dance) and the lessons it can offer us in our own tumultuous times.

137. The Best of All Possible Worlds * by Karen Lord

A pleasingly rambling science fiction romance where the hero and heroine slowly forge an unbreakable bond in a world where he's a refugee from the destruction of his homeworld and she's part of the task force trying to help him and his fellow survivors adjust and rebuild. It's rather reminiscent of Becky Chambers on some levels.

138. This Is Your Brain on Parasites * by Kathleen McAuliffe

An overview of the science that increasingly suggests that the parasites that live on and in us (whether as disease vectors or as neutral-to-beneficial symbionts like healthy gut bacteria) influence our behavior both directly and indirectly.