List of our topics through the years.

This is a list of all the monthly challenges offered in the Reading Through Time Group since its inception. This was a self-serving task for me, as I wanted to see them all together, so I didn't get too repetitive too soon, but could see what might want revisiting.

2010
06 – Nineteenth Century
07 – Freedom
08 – American Civil War
09 – Royalty
10 – 1930s
11 – Discovery and Exploration
12 – Viking Era
2011
01 – Crusades
02 – Love/Marriage
03 – 1940s
04 – Religion in History
05 – Renaissance
06 – Regime Change
07 – 1960s
08 – Transportation
09 – Ancient World
10 – The Spooky, Gothic, Horrific or the Unexplained Mysteries of History
11 – The 1920s
12 – Holidays
2012
(The quarterly time periods were added in February 2012, at which time we started having both monthlies and quarterlies going, and this has turned out to work really well for the group.)
01 – Number in the Title
02 – Gilded Age (ca. 1870-1900)
03 – Medicine/Illness
04 – Medieval Times (500 AD to 1500 AD)
05 – Historical Mystery or Crime
06 – French Revolution
07 – Witchcraft in History
08 – Ancient Rome
09 – Seasons
10 – 1950s
11 – Asia
12 – Victorian Era
2013
01 – Cold War Era
02 – Civil Rights
03 – Tudor Era
04 – Heroes & Vagabonds
05 – 1930s
06 – Science
07 – 1770 – 1790
08 – Communication
09 – Edwardian Era
10 – Biographical fiction or Biographies
11 – World War II
12 – Time
2014
01 – New Beginnings
02 – Napoleonic Era
03 – Education
04 - 15th century
05 – Art
06 – Elizabethan Era
07 – Food/Agriculture
08 – World War I
09 – Historical Series & Sequels
10 – 1970's
11 – Disasters
12 – Regency Era
2015
01 – BC
02 – General Religion
03 – 1 – 1000
04 – Crime and Mystery
05 – 1300-1500
06 – Culture and The Arts
07 – The 1600's
08 – Ireland
09 – 1800-1850
10 – Science & Technology
11 - 20th Century
12 – Civil Rights & Equality
2016
(For 2016, the group voted for the monthlies to be “themes” since the quarterlies are “times”.)
01 – Women In Command
02 – Celebrating the Writers
03 – Discoveries and Innovations
04 – Women and War
05 – History of Labor, Unions or the Working Class
06 – School Days, School Days
07 – Weather Related Natural Disasters
08 – Journeys
09 – Water, Water Everywhere
10 – Month of Mystery
11 – Presidents, Veeps & Elections
12 – Choice of Two Eras – Regency and Victorian
2017
01 – First Encounters
02 – Storico Italia
03 – Meeting Madness
04 – It's A Family Affair
05 – Oh What A State of Affairs
06 – Fight for your Rights
07 – Revolution
08 – Art: Making It, Preserving It, Collecting It, Stealing It
09 – Historically Significant Event
10 – Gothic
11 – Noir or Darkness
12 – Twisted Fairytales
2018
01 – Cold
02 – Going Hollywood!
03 – Something Sporty
04 – Clash of Cultures
05 – Southeast Asia
06 – Digging Up the Past
07 – Nautical
08 – Between the Wars (1918-1939)
09 – Let's Have a Drink!
10 – Old MacDonald Had a Farm
11 – She Blinded Me With Science
12 – It's All About the Music
2019
01 – I Will Survive
02 – Be My Valentine
03 – Downtown
04 – The Wonderful Emptiness
05 – Mythology Across Cultures
06 – Cryptography & Code Breaking
07 – Travel
08 – Philosophy and Religion
09 – Women Pioneers
10 – Loss
11 – Marginalized People
12 – Let's Go Retro
2020
01 - 19th Century Ireland
02 – Crime and Mystery
03 – Mothers & Daughters
04 – Off With Her Head!
05 – Explorers
06 – Get Thee to a Nunnery (or a Monastery)!
07 – On The Shore
08 – Epidemics, Famine & Other Health Disasters
09 – I'll Trade You (Economics in a wide sense)
10 – Deception: All Is Not As It Seems
11 – Author Biographies
12 – Predicting the Fugure
2021
01 – Shakespeare's Children
02 – A La Mode
03 – Arghh Matey!
04 – The Sun Never Sets
05 – Meet the Press
06 – Rewriting the Past
07 – Now We Are Free
08 – Food
09 – Time Travel/Prehistoric
10 – Supernatural/Superstition
11 – Reader's Choice
12 – Brrrrr Cold!
2022
01 – Eastern Philosophies & Religion
02 – Rural Life
03 – We are time's subjects, and time bids be gone
04 – Technology
05 – Beginnings
06 – California, the Golden State
07 – Mental Health Then & Now
08 – What can fiction teach us about history
09 – Harvest Moon
10 – Musically Speaking
11 – Ends & Endings
12 – Reader's Choice
2023
01 – Our Feathered Friends
02 – Lions, Tigers & Bears, Oh My
03 – Notorious Women
04 – April Fool
05 – The Big City – Yesterday, Today & Tomorrow
06 – The Fabulous Fifties
07 – Revolutions
08 – Migration and Immigration
09 – School Days
10 – Traditions
11 – Indigenous Peoples
12 – Reader's Choice
2024
01 – Janus
02 – Aquarius & Amethyst
03 – Medicines & Epidemics
04 – Characters with Disabilities
05 – International Labour Day
06 – Wonders of the World!
07 – Vive La France!
08 – The Joy of Reading
09 – Royal to the Bone
10 – Adultery
11 – Biographies & Memoirs
12 – Reader's Choice
2025
01 – Look to the Heavens
02 – Colors
03 – Sweet, Sweet Revenge
04 – All is not what it seems
05 – Fairy Tales
06 – People on the Move
07 – Composers
08 – Don't Let Yourself Get Checkmated!
09 – Highlands & Islands
10 – Autumn
11 – The High Seas
12 – Reader's Choice

The wikis on LibraryThing can be used for many purposes. Here in Reading Through Time, they are a list of the books members have read on each topic. I love to peruse these lists for reading ideas.

DeltaQueen has done a great job setting them up. To make our wikis even more useful, she's also included a link to each month's thread, so you can read the conversation about that topic.

Here are the Reading Through Time wikis:

Monthly Themes Wiki (06/2010 – 09/2017).

Monthly Themes Wiki (10/2017 – 05/2022).

Monthly Themes Wiki (06/2022 – Present).

Quarterly Eras Wiki.

The quarterly wiki has two past time periods of our reading listed: 2016 through 2025 and 2012 (when the quarterlies started) to 2015, so the quarterlies are all complete on one page.

Notes:

Some members include their read books on the wiki. I love that! But I see more books talked about on the threads than are actually listed on the wiki, so my OCD-ness made me scour through previous threads to grab the unlisted (though discussed as “read”) books to include in the wikis for those who aren't comfortable doing it themselves. But I've only completed the third wiki and a smattering of the first so far. (*ETA: 2/1 - Completed updating the wikis through December 2024.)

Reminder: you can get to the current wikis from the top of the Reading Through Time page by clicking the “See More” box under the description.

Just to keep my notes together:

The quarterly reads follow a format that lasts for 4 years per cycle and then repeats.

Prehistory
Ancient and Biblical Times
Arthurian Britain
Medieval Europe / Middle Ages / Vikings (500-1500)
Renaissance / 16th Century
17th Century
18th Century
Napoleonic Era
19th Century Europe & rest of world (excluding Northern America)
19th Century northern America (includes Civil War, excludes the Old West)
The Old West
20th Century - Before WWI (1900-1913)
20th Century - WWI (1914-1918)
20th Century - Between Wars (1919-1938)
20th Century - WWII (1939-1945)
Modern History - 1946 - present

Personally, I wish the earlier time periods were broken down more. It gives such short shrift to the medieval period which is my favorite. And maybe a separate Greek/Roman ancient period. And lump WWI and WWII all together.

>4 WelshBookworm: I believe that the culture and politics surrounding WWI and WWII are very different, including their impact over the next few decades. To combine them would be to miss too much of value and importance.

After discussion in 2024 with Judy (Deltaqueen), we did combine pre WWI & WWI to make a 21st century category. As far as participation, we get more participation in the WWI & WWII eras than any of the others.

Our current breakdown looks like this:
Prehistory
Ancient and Biblical Times
Arthurian Britain
Middle Ages Plus Vikings
Renaissance/16th Century
17th Century
18th Century
Napoleonic Era
19th Century Europe and rest of world (excluding North America)
19th C Northern America (inc Civil War; exc Old West)
The Old West
20th Century: Before WW1 (1900-1913) & WWI (1914-1918)
20th Century: Between Wars (1919-1938)
20th Century: WW2 (1939-1945)
Modern History (1946-1999)
21st Century (2000-current)

Before we begin our next cycle (about 3 years) we can again discuss rearranging our current breakdowns.

>6 Tess_W: One thing I like about our current quarterly breakdown is that its total units are divisible by four. That means that we begin a new cycle with a new year.

That is correct, that is why we combined a time period instead of just adding a new one!

>6 Tess_W: : Thank you! I've updated my notes.

Hello, fellow readers. Reading Through Time is my favorite group! I love both the Monthlies with their themes and the Quarterlies with their eras. But I found that I wanted a guide to help me choose books to read for the quarterlies. Initially, I wanted a list of all the books that sounded interesting to me for each quarter's future reading, without having to go looking back at each thread or each wiki. That quickly expanded to wanting a list of ALL the books.

So I finished a little project, entirely self-serving, for that purpose. I created an aggregate of every book read or discussed from each thread and each wiki of each era of each cycle of the RTT Quarterly Eras, going back to the beginning of time (ha!) of the Quarterlies. .

Then decided I may not be the only lister in this group who might want to see all our books together, so I'm sharing. Having all the titles together also makes it easier to scan the eras before and after the current one to find other books that may overlap the time and work for a current era.

Here is my wiki for RTT Consolidated Quarterly Reads.

There are four sections for each era.

1) “About This Era” - To guide me, I copied some info from the opening post of one of that quarter's threads from the past, and added some links to help me find titles.

2) “This Quarter's Threads” - Links to all the threads for that era. (Because I wanted to keep all the pertinent info for the era together.)

3) “Books read for this time period” -
* Books which members added to the quarterly wikis.
* Books which members noted on the threads that they'd read for that quarter, but forgot to add to the wiki. (If they wrote “Read”, “Completed”, or “Finished”, or if their words made it seem as if it was read for this round of this quarter, I added it to the wiki.)

4) “Books Discussed / Considered for this time period” -
* Books listed on the opening post by the person who opened that era's thread, usually Samantha_kathy, since it's her baby. These books are noted “OP-list”.
* Books which members mentioned as planning to read, considering what to choose from their shelves, or which they noted that they've previously read and recommend.
* Books discussed are only listed once. Whoever I first captured it from, has their name attached, unless it was from the OP-list, then I changed it to whoever actually talked abut that title.
* If the book discussed has already been listed as read for that era, it is not also listed on the “discussed” list. If later declared “read” by anyone, I remove it from “discussed”. No redundancy; just capturing titles here. Year discussed is not noted. (See # note below.)
* Sometimes, a member will post a title and a few lines of what its about, but nothing else! So I can't tell if they mean they've completed it for the challenge, they're recommending a previous read they enjoyed that fits, or they're considering it for the challenge. With nothing said to clarify in those types of posts, these titles end up in the “Discussed” list. If its one that you completed for the challenge, and you want to make use of this wiki, please feel free to move it.
* If someone mentioned a book as part of a series, I note that, but did not go looking for that info for each book. If a year/time period or place was mentioned or showed up when I hovered to fetch the touchstone, I included it.
* Discussion leading to recommendation of an author's other works, but which don't happen to fit that time period, I tried to capture it for listing in it's era.
* Since there is no duplication of titles on the “discussed” section, one cannot use that list to find every book you ever mentioned.

Some notes:

* Since its all about time, I made an attempt to capture the time and/or place, a smidge of info to add to the title as I worked, but I didn't get as many books done as I wanted to.
* I am not a scholar. I just merged the information I was seeking to suit my own needs, in a format that worked for me.
* Apologies for mistakes in alphabetizing, especially foreign language titles. I am also not a librarian.
* In the beginning, I captured people's book links from the threads to add into the lists, then later realized they didn't always link the correct book they were talking about in their posts. I slowed down midway through the project to make sure I went looking for the correct link when they chose a wrong one. But didn't go back to search for or correct any wrong past links.
* I didn't settle on a format early enough. So you'll see inconsistencies. By the end, my preferred format for the listed books turned out to be: Title – Author – about (if series-info) (time & place & any other info) – member (year read)
* (Year *) as year read must mean I moved it from somewhere else to the correct era.
* (#) Any opinions on how to make the list of books “discussed” most useful to everyone who might want to use this wiki? My trial was:1-Prehistory: no member names attached. 2-Ancient/Biblical: member names shortened. In this way, if a search was done for one's own books read, the ctrl-F wouldn't pull up the member name from books only discussed. There would be an accurate total of books read. 3-all the rest of the eras: with a member's name who discussed the book attached to each title. – Is a name even necessary?

Some stats:

* From the beginning of the quarterlies in 2012 through the end of 2024:
* The quarterly era reads have been in progress for 13 years/156 months/39 quarters!
* Number of books members added to the wiki during that time – 741.
* Number of books recovered from the threads, (titles read, but not wiki'd) – 244.
* To bring us to a total number of books read – 985.
* Average number of books read per quarter – 25.25.
* Average number of books read per era – 61.56.
* The highest # of books read for an era (w/ all it's quarters added) is Medieval at 102 books. Of course, it's had one more cycle than all the following eras.
* The largest # of books read for a single quarter was WWI in 2023 with 60 books read.
* The largest # of titles gleaned from a quarterly thread as “read” to add to it's wiki was Between the Wars in 2023 with 22 books.
* Average # of books read but not wiki'd and retrieved from threads was 15.25 titles per era or 6.25 per quarter.
* The lowest # of books read for an era was Napoleonic at 30.

* PS: Please forgive the double post, but I am also posting this on my own thread for my own records, but knowing that many have probably already red-x'd an older thread, I thought it best to post on the new quarterly thread first for visibility in case others want to use the wiki, too.

>1 countrylife: Wow, you've done a lot of work on this! This is interesting to see all this together.

I don't have anything to add re: the quarterly reads, as they aren't something I participate in. Even if I did, I'd have to choose a specific month, since I plan month-to-month what I'll be reading. I suppose I could just plan on the first month of the three, and if I don't get to it, plan on the next month. But really, I've got plenty of monthly challenges to make my way through!

Apologies for a belated response to this. I only just discovered this thread today.

>6 Tess_W: I wanted to say that I am very grateful that you added a 21st Century section. Since we're already a quarter into this century, I was thinking that we needed to make a separate section for it, and I had thought I might suggest it at some point.

But I'm wondering about the 1946-1999 category. Wouldn't it make more sense to call that "20th Century: Postwar" (or Post-WWII) rather than continuing to call it "Modern History"? The further in time we go along, the less modern that time period is going to be.

>12 atozgrl: That is probably a great idea. Let me run it by Judy (admin of this group) .ETA: Tis done!

>1 countrylife: wow thanks for doing that! will help when I am choosing a theme

>6 Tess_W: i really like the between the wars theme, lots of interesting books on that topic

>10 countrylife: wow again! this is the kind of data I enjoy looking at That took a ton of work, thanks for doing that!

how much does it mess up things if I some times use the same book for two or three themes? If its a problem Ill only list it in one

>16 cindydavid4: do you mean 2-3 monthly themes? That is nigh impossible as you are supposed to read a book each month and each month is different. However, I often try to match the monthly theme with the quarterly theme--called a double! As long as your book matches, I can't see that it would mess anything up at all!

>17 Tess_W: heres what I mean Aprils theme was things arent as they seem; I chose this book because the stories are ver different from the norm. May is fractured fairytales and this book is exactly that

Hmmm.....well.....you can do what you want.........however, my interpretion is that you are to read a different book for each monthly theme. However, feel free to recommend it if it fits for that month! We love our recommendations!

P.S. Sometimes I just read a few from a short story collection. I later find some others that fit another theme, so I would use that book again for those short stories that are applicable.

I sometimes combine the Monthly Author Reads author with the Reading through Time monthly theme. For example, in April 2024, I read Hide and Seek a novel by Wilkie Collins featuring a character with a disability.

I also combine some of the reads, when they fit, with the Category (Kits/Cats) in the Category Challenge group or even in the 75's non-fiction read of the month.