Kyler's 2024 reading

This is my first time participating in this challenge, so please be kind 🙂

Last year, I read a bit over 60 books. This year, I’m challenging myself to increase that number to at least 75, but hopefully more. I also intend to focus on books that I already own. Book collecting and book reading can be two separate hobbies, but should be one.

Book challenges are great personal motivators. My local library organises a summer book bingo every year. Since I started participating in the book bingo, my reading has significantly increased. Hopefully this group’s challenges will help serve that purpose throughout the full year.

To start the year off, I am participating in both the Nonfiction monthly challenge and the American Author challenge. For January, I’m reading:
- American Author: The Prince and the Pauper, Mark Twain
- Nonfiction: Currently undecided!

I already finished three books in 2024 and it is only the third day of the year, so I’m off to a good start! But, only one of those books was from my personal collection...

My top five books last year in no particular order:
1. Goodbye, Again: Essays, Reflections, and Illustrations
2. Madame Restell: The Life, Death and Resurrection of Old New York’s Most Fabulous, Fearless, and Infamous Abortionist
3. All the Living and the Dead: From Embalmers to Executioners, an Exploration of the People Who Have Made Death Their Life’s Work
4. The City is More Than Human: An Animal History of Seattle
5. Pests: How Humans Create Animal Villains

Welcome, Kyler! I'm glad you've decided to join in. Let me know if you have any questions about how things work in the Challenge - happy to help.

January (15 read)
1. Private Book - not mentioning here
2. Why Have Kids? by Jessica Valenti ❀
3. The Responsible Company by Yvon Chouinard ❀ 🎧
4. Foster by Claire Keegan ❤
5. The Prince and the Pauper by Mark Twain ❀ ✫
6. The Keeper: Soccer, Me, and the Law That Changed Women's Lives by Kelcey Ervick ❀ ✒
7. The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue by V.E. Schwab ❀ ❤
8. My Salinger Year by Joanna Rakoff ❀
9. Allergic: Our Irritated Bodies in a Changing World by Theresa MacPhail ❤ 🎧
10. The Death and Life of Great American Cities by Jane Jacobs ❀ ❤ ✒
11. The Hidden Life of Trees by Peter Wohlleben ✒ 🎧
12. The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain ❀ ✫
13. I'm Glad My Mom Died by Jennette McCurdy ✒ 🎧
14. The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time by Mark Haddon
15. Barracoon by Zora Neale Hurston ❀

February (9 read)
16. Strong Female Character by Fern Brady ❀
17. The H Spot by Jill Filipovic ❀ ✒ 🎧
18. On Women by Susan Sontag ✫
19. Who's a Good Dog?: And How To Be a Better Human by Jessica Pierce
20. Small Things Like These by Claire Keegan ❤
21. Radium Girls by Kate Moore ❤ ✒
22. Marie Curie by Robert Reid ❀ ✒
23. The Romance of Mining by T.A. Ricard ❀
24. Better Living Through Birding by Christian Cooper ❀ 🎧

March (3 read)
25. Dead Men Do Tell Tales by William R. Maples ✒ 🎧
26. Breakfast at Tiffany's and Three Stories by Truman Capote ✫
27. A Long Way to a Small Angry Planet by Becky Chambers 🎧

April
28. David Copperfield by Charles Dickens
29. A Closed and Common Orbit by Becky Chambers 🎧
30. The Plan of Chicago by Carl Smith ❀ ✫
31. A Life on Our Planet by David Attenborough ❀ ✒
32. An Immense World by Ed Yong ❤ 🎧

May
33. So Long, See You Tomorrow by William Maxwell ✫

❀ = from my personal library
❤ = favorite
✫ = American author challenge
✒ = nonfiction challenge

Welcome, and happy reading in 2024!

For anyone looking for a short book to increase their read count, Foster by Claire Keegan was a beautifully-written, fantastic short read. It's impressive how the author created such intricate characters in so few pages. It may already be one of my top books of the year.

Welcome Kyler! I definitely have Claire Keegan on my list to read this year, I've heard such good things about her work.

Great always to have new additions to our friendly clan, Kyler.
I'm sure that everyone will be kind.

You have made a great reading start to the year and I can second the recommendations for the writing of Claire Keegan.

I'd like to read the books off the shelves for challenges. Here is my attempt to select books off the shelf:

Nonfiction Challenge:
January: Small or Unknown Award Winner
✔ The Keeper: Soccer, Me, and the Law That Changed Women's Lives ❀ (won the "About Ohio or an Ohioan" of the Ohioana Award)
✔ The Death and Life of Great American Cities ❀ (won the Hillman Prize)
✔ The Hidden Life of Trees by Peter Wohlleben (won the Adult Non-fiction Indies Choice Book Award)
✔ I'm Glad My Mom Died by Jennette McCurdy (won the Goodreads Choice Award and the Alex Award)
February: Women's Work
✔ The H Spot ❀ - Only one chapter of this really fit the assignment but it'll do!
✔ Radium Girls
✔ Marie Curie by Robert Reid ❀
March: Forensic Sciences
✔ Dead Men Do Tell Tales by William Maples
April: Globalization
✔ A Life on Our Planet ❀
May: Wild Wild West
- The Bitter Waters of Medicine Creek ❀
June: Middle Europe
- The Reconstruction of Nations (physical library book)
- White Field, Black Sheep
July: Insect World
- Pests in the City ❀
- Three Seasons of Bees ❀
August: Being Jewish
- The World's Religions (I hope this works) ❀
September: Essays
- Slouching Towards Bethlehem by Joan Didion ❀
October: Music
- Catch a Fire by Melanie B ❀
November: Too Small to See
- The Emperor of all Maladies ❀
- The Black Death ❀ (if not read in April)
- America's Forgotten Pandemic ❀
- Purified ❀
December: Political Biography
- The Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass ❀
- The Roger C. Sullivan Books ❀
- David Dinkins Bio ❀

American Authors Challenge:
January: Mark Twain
✔ The Prince and the Pauper ❀
✔ The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn ❀
February: Susan Sontag
✔ On Women
March: Truman Capote
✔ Breakfast at Tiffany's and Three Stories
April: General Non-Fiction
✔ The Plan of Chicago ❀
May: William Maxwell
✔ So Long See You Tomorrow
- They Came Like Shadows (from the library)
June: Queer Author
- All the Birds in the Sky ❀
- On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous (library)
July: Mona Susan Power
- A Council of Dolls (library)
August: Jeffrey Lent
- A Slant of Light (library)
September: Living American authors who were born outside the US but adopted this country as their home
- The Sympathizer (library)
October: Katherine Anne Porter
- Pale Horse Pale Rider (library)
November: Jewish American Authors
- Something by Michael Chabon (library)
- Mary Doria Russell ❀
December: The Heartland (Regional Authors from the Middle of the Country)
- A book on Chicago or Illinois, preferably with info about agriculture or manufacturing ❀

Good luck with your 2024 reading!

Yesterday I finished The Death and Life of Great American Cities by Jane Jacobs.

The book had some dull points and was a bit outdated in it's terminology, but overall I was shocked that a 60-year-old analysis of land use still holds up so well. Some key points from the book that I will remember and refer back to:
- It's important for our sidewalks and streets to be more diverse in people and use.
- The overwhelming amount of bureaucracy in local governments severely hampers any efforts to reform or improve cities. This has only gotten worse as cities get bigger.
- Lower income housing should be built so they are places where people want to (and can) stay, regardless of their income.

Every architect, land use planner, and local government official with authority over city planning should read this book.

The first two months of this year have been defined by procrastination. The legal writing that I volunteered to complete by January 31 was a bigger struggle than I anticipated, so now I'm still working on it halfway into February. I am avoiding the guilty feelings of not finishing that work by reading other things. This entry is simply another instance of procrastination. It has been great for my reading though! I'm on track to possibly read more than 100 books this year!

Two books have been in my "currently reading" pile (among a couple others) since the beginning of this year: The Romance of Mining and The Egg and I. I've been making slow progress on the mining book throughout the year and hope to get it done shortly, but the other book has been gathering dust. A personal goal of mine is to finish both during the first quarter of the year. The other currently reading books are huge and I'll surely revisit them when time and focus allows.

The biggest surprise this year has been The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue. I owned it on Booksio for a while already, but finally started reading it when I learned that Booksio is going away. What a great book. Now I have a physical copy that occupies prime space on my favorite bookshelf, and I have a stack of additional V.E. Schwab books waiting to be read.

Several books read this year were from my library (or my partner's library) and I decided to bid them farewell after completing them. I put them in a little free library and hope that they will find a good home. These include The Keeper: Soccer, Me, and the Law That Changed Women's Lives, My Salinger Year, The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time, and The H-Spot. Hopefully I'll do the same with other books, so my shelves can get some more space!

Favorites so far (in no particular order):
1. The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue by V.E. Schwab
2. Foster by Claire Keegan
3. Small Things Like These by Claire Keegan
4. Allergic: Our Irritated Bodies in a Changing World by Theresa MacPhail
5. The Death and Life of Great American Cities by Jane Jacobs
6. Radium Girls by Kate Moore

Welcome to the challenge! I see you're in Seattle -- me, too :) Looks like you're reading some good stuff this year! I thought I'm Glad My Mom Died and Radium Girls were excellent, and I have Small Things Like These and The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue on my shelf to get to soon.

>13 curioussquared: It sounds like we have a lot of books on common! Love it.
Highly recommend both of those books. Let me know what you think of them! Hopefully I'll get started on the other V.E. Schwab books soon.

Watching the movie Radioactive after finishing reading Radium Girls and Marie Curie is a bit of a disappointment! It doesn't match the Marie Curie biography and I don't know which is most accurate. I assume the biography is, but now I'm starting to wonder whether I need to find another book on Marie Curie and radioactivity. Maybe a documentary would be a better idea. Any recommendations would be appreciated!

It's amazing how books can create such vivid pictures and realities. Before reading those books, all I knew about Marie Curie is that her work with radium made her sick. But surprisingly, she actually survived working with radium for so much longer than I had imagined. Her work was quite incredible.

>3 Kyler_Marie: Great list so far! Keep at it!!

>17 ocgreg34: Thanks!

Currently reading:
- David Copperfield
- Dead Men Do Tell Tales
- Breakfast at Tiffany's

My library hold of Demon Copperhead came up and I realized that I should probably read David Copperfield first, but it's long! So, David Copperfield has been at my side for the past week and a half, and I'm only halfway through. It's much better (and longer) than I anticipated! Now I want to read every Charles Dickens book that I can get my hands on. But, they are so long and I want to check more books off my list. Sometimes it is important to remember that the goal is not to get as many books finished as possible - it is to enjoy the books I read.

This month, I decided to buy my first e-reader - a Kobo Clara 2E. It isn't my favorite thing yet, but it's already growing on me. It's much easier reading the 800+ page David Copperfield from a small screen and not holding the large book. I just wish that there was an easy way to move my Kindle books over to the e-reader.

It has been almost a month and I am still trying to finish David Copperfield. It is much better than I initially anticipated, but it definitely has some sections that drag on. And, it is a bit frustrating that I haven't made progress on other books as I read this one. I have about 100 pages left. Hopefully I'll power through them this week, because I have some other books that I'd love to start.

I'm also listening to A Closed and Common Orbit, and plan to finish the series once I finish this one.

I'm traveling to Chicago later this month and I really want to read about the area before I go. Here are some of the books that I hope to read this month after Copperfield:
- The Plan of Chicago
- Forever Open, Clear, and Free
- The Chicago River
- Roger C. Sullivan and the Making of the Chicago Democratic Machine and Roger C. Sullivan and the Triumph of the Chicago Democratic Machine
- The Black Death for the Nonfiction Challenge
- Be a Revolution

I know I won't be able to get through all of those books, but it's helpful to have a to-do list and some goals!

After finishing The Plan of Chicago, I traveled to Chicago earlier this month. It was a good trip! But, not a great book - it didn't really have much substance.

The Black Death wasn't the book I anticipated. So, I switched to A Life On Our Planet for the nonfiction challenge instead. It was a good book and I'm glad I read it, although most of the content was a bit hard to swallow.

My reading has dropped off a bit this month and last month after the big push at the beginning of the year. Hopefully my reading motivation will return with the Seattle Summer Book Bingo. I'm anxiously awaiting the first book square announcement, which they usually make in late April.

Earlier this week, I put together an itinerary to visit all 28 bookstores participating in Seattle Indie Bookstore Day. But, upon further reflection, this just isn't the right year to take that on. Instead, I'll be going to at least five local stores and checking out some shops that I have never visited before. It'll be a fun weekend!

For my birthday, my partner got the hardware to build a bookshelf ladder! I'm so excited. Best gift ever.

Currently reading: Roger C. Sullivan and the Making of the Chicago Democratic Machine, Demon Copperhead, and Record of a Spaceborn Few.