Greg's ( ocgreg34 ) Reads for 2021

I'm glad to be able to participate with this year's challenge! Good luck to everyone!

Completed in January

1. After Me Comes the Flood by Sarah Perry
2. Surviving the Theseus by Randy Noble
3. ArchEnemy by Frank Beddor
4. Jacob's Room by Virginia Woolf λ
5. The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness by Michelle Alexander nf
6. Ghosts by César Aira *
7. Celestial Bodies by Jokha Alharthi
8. We, the Drowned by Carsten Jensen

Completed in February

9. The Comedienne by Wladyslaw Reymont NL
10. The Supernatural Enhancements by Edgar Cantero
11. Skin Deep Magic by Craig Laurance Gidney λ
12. The Red Threads of Fortune by JY Yang λ
13. Xala by Sembène Ousmane
14. The Mist in the Mirror by Susan Hill
15. The Short Reign of Pippin IV by John Steinbeck NL
16. The Gay Haunt by Victor J. Banis * λ

Completed in March

17. Button, Button: Uncanny Stories by Richard Matheson
18. Uncle Silas by J. Sheridan Le Fanu
19. A White Coat Is My Closet by Jake Wells λ
20. One of Us Will Be Dead by Morning by David Moody
21. Home Fire by Kamila Shamsie
22. The Marvelous Land of Oz by L. Frank Baum
23. The Descent of Monsters by Neon Yang λ
24. A Medicine for Melancholy by Ray Bradbury *
25. "Oh..." by Philippe Djian
26. Down Among the Sticks and Bones by Seanan McGuire λ

Completed in April

27. The Play of Death by Oliver Pötzsch
28. Juneteenth by Ralph Ellison
29. A Town Like Alice by Nevil Shute
30. Happy Times in Norway by Sigrid Undset NL
31. We'll Always Have Paris by Ray Bradbury λ
32. The Piano Teacher by Elfriede Jelinek NL
33. The Lady Astronaut of Mars by Mary Robinette Kowal
34. The Ten Thousand Doors of January by Alix E. Harrow
35. It's Harder This Way by Travis Hill λ
36. To This Day by Shmuel Yosef Agnon NL

Continued in post 25

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

Last year, I managed to read books from 22 countries; this year, I plan on breaking that number.

Countries:

Argentina
Australia
Austria
Belarus
Brazil
Canada
Denmark
England
France
Germany
India
Ireland
Israel
Japan
Kenya
Malaysia
Martinique
Mexico
New Zealand
Norway
Oman
Pakistan
Poland
Scotland
Senegal
Singapore
South Africa
South Korea
Spain
Sweden
United States

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

Read: 62 of 118 laureates

Happy reading in 2021, Greg!

I look forward to seeing where your reading takes you this year. All the best!

Hope you have a great year of reading.

Welcome back!

And keep up with my friends here, Greg. Have a great 2021.

I am doing the same challenge, Greg. I have read something from around 70 of the Laureates so far and hope to get at least one per month done this year.

If you're interested I will read The Tin Drum by Grass this month.

Mo Yan, Le Clezio, Soyinka, Sholokov, Sienkiewicz, Gao Xingjian, Lagerlof, Sillanpaa, Undset, Agnon and Canetti are all on the shelves to be read this year.

>9 PaulCranswick: Sigrid Undset has become one of my favorites. My next book from her is "Happy Times in Norway" which is about the year before the German invasion.

>10 ocgreg34: I generally like writers from Scandinavia so I am expecting to be wooed!

>7 drneutron: Happy to be back!!

>6 thornton37814: Thank you!

>5 RandyMetcalfe: I just barely started a 630-pg epic from Denmark ("We, the Drowned"). It's very good so far.

>4 FAMeulstee: Happy reading to you as well!

Here's the list of my favorite books from 2020, along with the years in which they were originally published:

1. "The Cabin at the End of the World" by Paul Tremblay (2018)
2. "The Black Tides of Heaven" by JY Neon Yang (2017)
3. "Mexican Gothic" by Silvia Moreno-Garcia (2020)
4. "The Calculating Stars" by Mary Robinette Kowal (2018)
5. "Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry" by Mildred D. Taylor (1976)
6. "Half of a Yellow Sun" by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie (2006)
7. "Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance" by Robert Pirsig (1974)
8. "No-No Boy" by John Okada (1957)
9. "The Death of Bernadette Lefthand" by Ron Querry (1993)
10. "Silver in the Wood" by Emily Tesh (2019)

Bonus - Favorite Re-Read: "Flowers for Algernon" by Daniel Keyes (1959)

>16 ocgreg34: I read Silver in the Wood last year, too, and loved it, and Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry was one of my favorite books as a kid!

>17 scaifea: "Drowned Country" is a great sequel to "Silver in the Wood", and I recommend it.

>18 ocgreg34: I have it waiting on my shelves! I'm glad you enjoyed it, too - I hope to get to it soon.

>16 ocgreg34: I loved Half of a Yellow Sun, Greg.

>20 PaulCranswick: I'm glad you enjoyed it! I added a number of the author's books to my library list and plan on tackling a few of them this year.

Favorite books by month:

January: We, the Drowned by Carsten Jensen
February: The Red Threads of Fortune by Neon Yang
March: One of Us Will Be Dead by Morning by David Moody
April: The Ten Thousand Doors of January by Alix E. Harrow
May: Voices from Chernobyl: The Oral History of a Nuclear Disaster by Svetlana Alexievich
June: Drive Your Plow over the Bones of the Dead by Olga Tokarczuk
July: Line by Niall Bourke
August: The Madonnas of Echo Park by Brando Skyhorse
September: Chamber Music by Doris Grumbach
October: The Hunger by Alma Katsu
November: Ring Shout by P. Djèlí Clark
December: Lily and the Octopus by Steven Rowley

Great to see you back posting.

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. Théresè 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

Continued...

Completed in May

37. Laughing Boy by Oliver La Farge
38. The Vanishing by Bentley Little
39. Voices from Chernobyl: The Oral History of a Nuclear Disaster by Svetlana Alexievich NL nf
40. A Visitation of Spirits by Randall Kenan λ
41. The Ruined Map by Kōbō Abe
42. Extinct by Ike Hamill
43. Daytripper by Fábio Moon and Gabriel Bá (graphic novel)
44. Interior Chinatown by Charles Yu
45. The River Between by Ngugi wa Thiong'o
46. Maggot Moon by Sally Gardner

Completed in June

47. Beneath the Sugar Sky by Seanan McGuire λ
48. Drive Your Plow over the Bones of the Dead by Olga Tokarczuk λ NL
49. In an Absent Dream by Seanan McGuire λ
50. The Fire Next Time by James Baldwin λ nf
51. The Council of Twelve by Oliver Pötzsch
52. The Diving Bell and the Butterfly by Jean-Dominique Bauby * nf
53. Remote Control by Nnedi Okorafor
54. Dhalgren by Samuel R. Delany λ

Completed in July

55. The Financial Expert by R.K. Narayan
56. Line by Niall Bourke
57. The Horla by Guy de Maupassant *
58. Three Men in a Boat by Jerome K. Jerome
59. Of One Blood: Or, The Hidden Self by Pauline Hopkins
60. Tokyo Ueno Station by Miri Yū
61. The Postcard Killers by James Patterson & Liza Marklund λ
62. Jonathan Livingston Seagull by Richard Bach
63. Le Poème du Rhône by Frédéric Mistral NL
64. The Hollow Man by Dan Simmons

Completed in August

65. The Friendly Young Ladies by Mary Renault λ
66. Mo' Meta Blues: The World According to Questlove by Ahmir "Questlove" Thompson and Ben Greenman nf
67. The Madonnas of Echo Park by Brando Skyhorse
68. Sulwe by Lupita Nyong'o
69. Come Tumbling Down by Seanan McGuire λ
70. A Boy's Own Story by Edmund White λ
71. The Year the Yankees Lost the Pennant by Douglass Wallop *
72. Eat a Peach: A Memoir by David Chang nf
73. 1862 by C.J. Halbard
74. The Invisible Girl in Room Thirteen by Stephen Simpson

Completed in September

75. American Dirt by Jeanine Cummins
76. Jocelyn by John Galsworthy NL
77. The Best Supernatural Tales of Arthur Conan Doyle by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
78. Chamber Music by Doris Grumbach λ
79. Hammers on Bone by Cassandra Khaw
80. The Posthumous Memoirs of Brás Cubas by Joaquim Maria Machado de Assis
81. Comemadre by Roque Larraquy λ

Completed in October

82. The Shapeshifters by Stefan Spjut
83. Just after Sunset by Stephen King λ
84. Gil's All Fright Diner by A. Lee Martinez
85. Ice by Anna Kavan
86. Her Mad Song by C.J. Halbard
87. Dark Harvest by Norman Partridge *
88. Strawberry Spring by Stephen King (podcast from iHeart Radio)
89. The Crows (Pagham-on-Sea Book 1) by C.M. Rosens
90. The Halloween Tree by Ray Bradbury *
91. The Hunger by Alma Katsu λ
92. Safer at Home: A Ghost Story by Zoe Cannon
93. The Passage by Justin Cronin
94. The Stepford Wives by Ira Levin
95. The Lost Village by Camilla Sten

Completed in November

96. Curious, If True by Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
97. FEAR: A Modern Anthology Of Horror And Terror (Volume 1) edited by Crooked Cat λ
98. Ring Shout by P. Djèlí Clark λ
99. In the Heart of the Country by J.M. Coetzee NL
100. Turbulence by David Szalay
101. The Circus by Jonas Karlsson
102. Light House by Jeff Heimbuch (podcast)
103. The Three Musketeers by Alexandre Dumas (père)
104. The Boy Who Cried Fabulous by Lesléa Newman *
105. Mary Rose by Geoffrey Girard

Completed in December

106. Walk Two Moons by Sharon Creech
107. The Flanders Road by Claude Simon NL
108. Saving Winslow by Sharon Creech
109. Ruby Holler by Sharon Creech
110. The Guncle by Steven Rowley λ
111. Black Shack Alley by Joseph Zobel
112. The Anomaly by Michael Rutger
113. Lily and the Octopus by Steven Rowley λ
114. The Devil and the Dark Water by Stuart Turton

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

What a way to start the month of September: reading my 75th book this year! "American Dirt" by Jeanine Cummins.

Congrats!

>26 ocgreg34: Congratulations on reaching 75, Greg!

>27 drneutron: drneutron: and >28 FAMeulstee: FAMeulstee: Thank you!

I finally reached 100 books read--and much earlier than I thought I would. :-)

Well done Greg and great to see you posting!

>24 ocgreg34: I have read a very paltry 14 of the 100 books listed although I do have a goodly number on the shelves.

>32 PaulCranswick: I scanned your reading list so far, and I think that I've read maybe two of them? But it's giving me lots of ideas to add to my reading list.

A Thanksgiving to Friends (Lighting the Way)

In difficult times
a friend is there to light the way
to lighten the load,
to show the path,
to smooth the road

At the darkest hour
a friend, with a word of truth
points to light
and the encroaching dawn
is in the plainest sight.

Greg, to a friend in books and more this Thanksgiving

>34 PaulCranswick: Thanks, Paul. I hope you had a joyful Thanksgiving.

I stole this from richardderus' thread...who stole it from another thread....

1. Name any book you read at any time that was published in the year you turned 18: Foucault's Pendulum by Umberto Eco

2. Name a book you have on in your TBR pile that is over 500 pages long: Drood by Dan Simmons (946 pgs.)

3. What is the last book you read with a mostly blue cover? The Passage by Justin Cronin

4. What is the last book you didn’t finish (and why didn’t you finish it?) Dreamcatcher by Stephen King, because the military as portrayed in the book was over-the-top stereotypical and felt too ridiculous to be believable

5. What is the last book that scared the bejeebers out of you? Light House by Jeff Heimbuch

6. Name the book that read either this year or last year that takes place geographically closest to where you live? How close would you estimate it was? The Madonnas of Echo Park by Brando Skyhorse. The setting lies roughly 40 miles from where I live.

7.What were the topics of the last two nonfiction books you read? Cooking and mental health (Eat a Peach by David Chang) and hip-hop music and music in general (Mo' Meta Blues: The World According to Questlove by Amir "Questlove" Thompson)

8. Name a recent book you read which could be considered a popular book? The Three Musketeers by Alexandre Dumas

9. What was the last book you gave a rating of 5-stars to? And when did you read it? Light House by Jeff Heimbuch, and I finished it about a week ago.

10. Name a book you read that led you to specifically to read another book (and what was the other book, and what was the connection) A Glastonbury Romance by John Cowper Powys, which led me to Moon Magic by Dion Fortune. Dion Fortune is referenced quite often in the novel due to the magical aspects of the story.

11. Name the author you have most recently become infatuated with. Alma Katsu

12. What is the setting of the first novel you read this year? A dilapidated house in the Norfolk coast of England.

13. What is the last book you read, fiction or nonfiction, that featured a war in some way (and what war was it)? The Three Musketeers by Alexandre Dumas, and it involved the siege of La Rochelle (1572 - 1573).

14. What was the last book you acquired or borrowed based on an LTer’s review or casual recommendation? L'étrange affaire du pantalon de Dassoukine by Fouad Laroui

15. What the last book you read that involved the future in some way? Line by Niall Bourke

16. Name the last book you read that featured a body of water, river, marsh, or significant rainfall? The Lost Village by Camilla Sten

17. What is last book you read by an author from the Southern Hemisphere? In the Heart of the Country by J.M. Coetzee

18. What is the last book you read that you thought had a terrible cover? Curious, If True by Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell

19. Who was the most recent dead author you read? And what year did they die? Alexandre Dumas (père) who died in 1870

20. What was the last children’s book (not YA) you read? The Boy Who Cried Fabulous by Lesléa Newman

21. What was the name of the detective or crime-solver in the most recent crime novel you read? Jacob Kanon from The Postcard Killers by James Patterson and Liza Marklund

22. What was the shortest book of any kind you’ve read so far this year? The Boy Who Cried Fabulous by Lesléa Newman

23. Name the last book that you struggled with (and what do you think was behind the struggle?) The Circus by Jonas Karlsson, because it didn't feel like a new story, and the ending was predictable.

24. What is the most recent book you added to your library here on LT? The Boy Who Cried Fabulous by Lesléa Newman

25. Name a book you read this year that had a visual component (i.e. illustrations, photos, art, comics) Daytripper by Fábio Moon and Gabriel Bá

>36 ocgreg34: I return your visit at last! My facility's wifi returned yesterday, so all is normal again.

I congratulate you on your fortitude: Drood frightens me with its heft. (Plus Dickens, so strikes two and three, it's out.)

The Curious Case of Dassoukine’s Trousers was a fun, wry, dryly witty collection, so I hope it thrills and delights you when it comes to the top of the TBR.

The Boy Who Cried Fabulous is such a great title! I've got to get it just so I can leave it around for others to see.

That meme is an evergreen inspiration to look over one's trail of empties, isn't it. I think I'll do it again next year!

>25 ocgreg34: Your lambda for QUILTBAG titles is inspired! Another thing I've needed to find and here it is: a simple graphic shortcut to find my λ reads...thanks for the inspiration.

Sword Art Online Manga series

>37 richardderus: Most of Dan Simmons' books seem to be well over 500 pages. But if you have the opportunity, I highly recommend "The Terror" about two British ships that are icebound in the 1840s while trying to locate the Northwest Passage. It has a definite horror element to it and some LGBTQIA+ characters.

>39 ocgreg34: I saw that was made into a TV series with Ciaran Hinds. That I might do, but 769pp!! My poor fingers are not up to it, and the Kindlebook is too steep for me.

The North Water was a similarly themed book, and though its one queer character was not in the least admirable, it had zero to do with his queerness so I was fine with it.

>40 richardderus: The first season of the TV series follows Simmons' book quite closely, adjusting some of the characters and events to suit TV. The second season uses a completely unique story, set during WWII and focusing on the internment camps of the Nisei (Japanese) Americans. I particularly enjoyed the second season as it begins in Terminal Island, which lies only a few miles from where I live. It spurred me to locate the Japanese Fishing Village Memorial which stands near the site of the original village.

>41 ocgreg34: You make it sound very appealing. I'll see if it's available anywhere I'm already a subscriber.

Happy week-ahead's reads.

>42 richardderus: I watched both seasons on Hulu.

Have a lovely holiday, Greg.

It's the beginning of a New Year, so it must be time to share my list of my Top Ten Favorite Reads from 2021. As with past years, I thought it would be difficult to whittle down my list because I enjoyed so many of the, but choosing ten turned out to be surprisingly easy. Which just strikes me as odd...

Here it is: my Top Ten Reads of 2021 (along with the years that the novels were originally published)

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)

* 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.