12 Months to Read 12 Books Recommended By 12 Friends
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I’m just catching up on posts I should have posted a long (long, long time ago..), In 2021 I started doing an annual reading challenge where I read a book a month suggested by a person on social media.
Bear in mind I read all of these 2 years ago, so my memory is a little fuzzy, but I’m going to write up a short review anyway… (Most book links are affiliate links to Amazon)
The Books selected for 2022 were (By month):
January: To Sleep in a Sea Of Stars -Christopher Paolini
Suggested by Kevin Duffield
I really enjoyed this one, I just finished the last Expanse book Leviathan Falls and this felt similar enough that it helped ease me out of that headspace. The audiobook is narrated by the person who plays the female Commander Shepherd in Mass Effect, and she did a really good job.
Having not read anything else by Christopher Paolini I was worried I might not like this, but honestly I think is a really fun science fiction book.
The apendix at the end which explains in a little too much detail all the fake physics was a bit much, but still interesting to see that the author had thought through the technicalities of interstellar travel.
February: Catch 22 – Joseph Heller
Suggested by Jen Doig
This has been on my list to read for decades, I’ve never got round to reading it so I’m glad that it was suggested. It’s not often that a book’s title becomes an idiom. Honestly, this is what I was expecting, which is I think why I didn’t enjoy it. Despite wanting to read it for years, I’d never actually looked into what the book was about, and I wasn’t expecting a farcical set of frustrating skits about the ridiculousness of war.
Maybe if I’d come into it with more insight I’d have enjoyed it more, but honestly I found it really tedious, I didn’t really like any of the characters, and it feels very of it’s time.
This was more Dad’s army than I was expecting I guess…
March: No One Is Talking About This – Patricia Lockwood
Suggested by Liam Dalzell-Greenshaw
Again entered into this one blind, it starts off as a vapid satire of social media, and about halfway through gets real heavy real fast…
The book follows a character who has become an internet celebrity by asking whether dogs can be twins, the answer according to the kennel club is apparently yes, and floats merrily around with the kind of internet drama you’d expect a 30 seconds of fame celebrity on Twitter to get involved in.
Until some family issues bring the main character firmly into reality, and they try to understand the world through the lens of a chronically online person who has just discovered that a world outside of social media exists.
At first I enjoyed this purely out of a sense of nostalgia, as someone who is chronically online myself, although not as much as the main character, it resonated with me, and I could find myself remembering the incidents they were evoking. Then suddenly… It gets heavy, and you experience the character’s world come undone, when things that actually matter happen to someone they love, and none of it makes sense to them.
Good read.
April: She Who Became the Sun – Shelly Parker Chan
Suggested by Annabel Campbell
I read two books that reimagining of the lives of Chinese emperors in 2022, this was the better of the two. I liked half of this book, which feels a little weird, I’m planning on reading the sequel, but I feel I connected with one of the point of view characters but not the other.
I liked this enough to want to read the sequel, which I have picked up. But I don’t think I enjoyed it as much as a lot of other people did. It’s undeniably beautifully written, and the story was really well told, but I think the fact that I just fundamentally didn’t connect with one of the two POV characters meant that the book as a whole didn’t click with me.
May: Any Human Heart – William Boyd
Suggested by Lisa
I’d not heard of this before, there were times when I really enjoyed it and time when I didn’t. The books is written as the diary of a now forgotten fictional author as he lives through the events of the 20th century, and interacts with many of its key figures.
I enjoyed the style, I’m not sure you are supposed to like the main character, who is person of questionable morality if memory serves.
The parts that left the biggest impression on me are the absurd ones, like when the author decides as an old aged pensioner that he can make his money go further by eating dog food, which he quite enjoys; and the part where he is held as a prisoner of war after the war has ended but no one believes he is who he says he is.
It’s not a long book, it’s an interesting window on history as seen through the eyes of the main character, but sullied a little by the fact that the main character is a bit of a twat.
I was recently reading Three Men In A Boat, and while Any Human Heart isn’t quite as farcical, the characters occasional disconnect of the character’s view from reality is similar.
June: Harrow the Ninth – Tamsyn Muir
Suggested by Mehran Baluch
Mehran initially suggested Gideon the Ninth, but I’d already read that so I jumped to the next book in the series.
This book is a very different style to the previous book, and written in a completely different voice, which is in itself interesting, and without wanting to spoil the previous book understandable given the events of Gideon the Ninth.
That was a little off putting to start, but I think once I’d gotten over that I enjoyed this more than the first book. There’s less remembering who is which house, and who hates who or has an alliance with who. Listening to either as an audiobook I think, while narrated quite well, the sheer number of characters can be confusing as you don’t get to fixate on the actual names long enough, and as a result I tend to lose track of which character is which.
This book had a much smaller cast thankfully, but the narrative of the book starts so disconnected from the narrative of the first one that it almost ignores the event of that book for a long time. There’s a story reason for this, but it was a little confusing.
All in I enjoyed it, and plan on reading Nona the Ninth, which I understand is also a departure from the first two books.
July: The Plague Stones – James Brogden
Suggested by Dalis Murray
I don’t normally read paranormal horror thriller books, but I enjoyed the plague stones. The general plot revolves around a character inheriting a house in a village where bad stuff happened, and the village is haunted.
This is no Stardew Valley…
I’m not sure I can talk about the book without spoiling it, but it was a fun read.
August: Pachinko – Min Jin Lee
Suggested by Jehane Penfold-Ward
I’ve not read much Korean fiction, this book is set between Korea and Japan while Korea was occupied by Japan… Which in case you didn’t know wasn’t a good time for the Koreans…
I’ve read a lot of Japanese fiction (Okay mostly both Murakamis and Natsuo Kirino) and it was interesting to read a book with a cultural frame of reference which is at times both very similar and others very different to Japan’s.
The book doesn’t pull any punches. A young girl has a relationship with a travelling business man, and ends up pregnant, only to find out he has a wife. She refuses his charity, and marries a sickly priest on his way to Japan.
What follows is a multigenerational story involving gangsters, kimchi, and of course Pachinko parlours.
I really enjoyed this one, would highly recommend it.
September: A Wild Sheep Chase – Haruki Murakami
Suggested by Fraser Skea
I like Murakami’s books, but they kinda meld into one in my head so I had to go back and check which one this was…
There’s a conspiracy involving the wrong type of sheep being in a picture which might have grave consequences for Japan’s government.
There’s a girl whose ears make people who see them have better sex.
I’m sure there are references to the Beatles in this too…
It’s Murakami being Murakami… If you like Murakami you’ll like this.
October: The Chronoliths – Robert Charles Wilson
Suggested by Gary Flemming
This was a weird one, I enjoyed it but it felt like a much older book. I didn’t check the publication date until after I finished it, but I honestly thought it was published in the 70’s purely because that is the style of science fiction it evokes.
Not in a bad way by any means…
Giant stone monoliths appear on earth, with a chronicle of things to come etched on them, antics ensue, but will trying to prevent what they prophesied make it happen?
Fun read, I always enjoy a good time travel story.
November: The Trouble with Peace – Joe Abercrombie
Suggested by Richard Patterson
I’d already read Richard’s suggestion of The Blade Itself… so I had to jump forward 8 books in this series to book two of the second trilogy.
I’m actually a big fan of this series by Joe Abercrombie, so that wasn’t a hardship. Although, I think the standalone books between the two trilogies are a bit hit and miss, I particularly didn’t enjoy The Heroes, which I found a little tedious.
The second Trilogy follows the children of the characters from the first trilogy, with some familiar faces and some new ones added to the mix. It’s a little difficult to review this book without spoiling the series, but the general themes are people are self serving, or naive, and it doesn’t pay to be a hero.
You have to be realistic…
I’ve just remembered I’ve not gotten round to reading the last book in the series… I should do that. This book and series gets a thumbs up from me, I don’t think the second trilogy is as strong as the first, but it’s still good.
December: Trust Me I’m Lying – Ryan Holiday
Suggested by Nick Tenczar
You are being manipulated and you don’t even know it.
Trust me I’m lying is a confession of sorts, it exposes how easy it is to manipulate public opinion and what appears in media outlets.
It’s an eye opening but cynical read, which I enjoyed a lot.
That’s a Wrap!
All in I enjoyed this challenge enough to do it in 2023, and I’m currently 2 books into my third book challenge in 2024.
I’l write up my 2023 challenge soon, and hopefully try to be more real time with my 2024 challenge, although I’m already running late on that front…