Book Log 2020 Extra: The Popsugar Reading Challenge

As I've done in years past, I am retroactively taking the Popsugar Reading Challenge. You can see the full list by clicking the link, but here are the challenges that I believe I unknowingly met:

A book that's published in 2020 - The Glass Hotel, Emily St. John Mandel; The Office (Andy Greene); The Last Emperox (John Scalzi); The Warsaw Protocol (Steve Berry); The Splendid and the Vile (Erik Larson)

A book set in a city that's hosted the Olympics - The Girl on the Train, Paula Hawkins (London); The Splendid and the Vile (London); The Siberian Dilemma, Martin Cruz Smith (Moscow), The Imperfectionists, Tom Rachman (Rome); Midnight Riot, Ben Aaronovitch (London); Under Occupation, Alan Furst (Paris); SS-GB, Len Deighton (London); Pietr the Latvian, Georges Simenon (Paris), The Great Believers, Rebecca Makkai (Paris); Warlight, Michael Ondaatje (London), The Shadow of the Wind, Carlos Ruiz Zafon (Barcelona); Agent Running in the Field, John Le Carre (London); The Sympathizer, Viet Thanh Nguyen (Los Angeles)

A bildungsroman - Warlight and The Namesake (Jhumpa Lahiri) may qualify here.

A book with an upside-down image on the cover - Victim 2117 (Jussi Adler-Olsen) 

A book recommended by your favorite vlog, podcast, etc. - A Memory Called Empire (Arkady Martine) and Clyde Fans (Seth) were mentioned on So Many Damn Books, while the Rick Steves travel podcast had an interview with Dan Richards about Outpost. And I've already mentioned Palaces for the People (Eric Klinenberg) and the 99% Invisible episode on it.

A book that passes the Bechdel test - The Fated Sky (Mary Robinette Kowal), The Stone Sky (N. K. Jemisin), Picnic at Hanging Rock (Joan Lindsay), A Memory Called Empire, The Eight (Katherine Neville), Lands of Lost Borders (Kate Harris), Tuesday Mooney Talks to Ghosts (Kate Racculia), Little Women (Louisa May Alcott), and Clean Hands (Patrick Hoffman) all included conversations between two female characters on a subject other than men.

A Book with a map - The Hermit of Eryton Forest, The Rose Rent, The Confession of Brother Haluin (Ellis Peters), as each book at least has a map of the abbey. Pretty sure both Armistice (Harry Turtledove) and Lands of Lost Borders had maps as well.

A book by an author with flora or fauna in their name- The Warsaw Protocol (Steve Berry) seems closest

A book about or involving social media - none of these books are really about social media, but Clean Hands, Tuesday Mooney Talks to Ghosts, Victim 2117, The Siberian Dilemma, and The Glass Hote all have social media mentioned somewhere.

A book set in a country beginning with C - Lands of Lost Borders visits China, while The Glass Hotel and Clyde Fans both take place in Canada (at least in part). 

A book about or by a woman in STEM - The Eight (Katherine Neville) has a female main character who is a computer programmer, while The Fated Sky has several women serving as astronauts.

A book that won an award in 2019 - The Testaments (Margaret Atwood) was a co-winner of the 2019 Booker Prize. The Great Believers won a Stonewall Book Award and an Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Fiction and Non-Fiction. 

A book on a subject you know nothing about - Appetite for America (Stephen Fried) taught me everything I know about the subject of railroad hospitality. Rocket Men (Robert Kurson) is kind of a borderline pick here, as I knew of Apollo 8 and some of the astronauts involved, but none of the detail.

A book featuring one of the seven deadly sins - any of the books with a murder could qualify under wrath, I think, so The Rose Rent, Broken Harbor, His Bloody Project (Graeme Macrae Burnet), Black Diamond, The Sympathizer, A Memory Called Empire, The Girl on the Train, The Hermit of Eryton Forest, The Cold Cold Ground, The Ruin, The Confession of Brother Haluin, The Devil's Cave, Victim 2117, I Hear the Sirens in the Street, and The Secret Place. 

A book with a robot, cyborg, or AI character - The Last Emperox has a sort of holographic database where former emperors can talk about their reigns, give advice, etc. A Memory Called Empire may also fit here depending on how you define cyborg. 

A book with a bird on the cover - The Warsaw Protocol has Poland's double eagle on it.

A fiction or non-fiction book about a world leader - The Splendid and the Vile (Winston Churchill); American Spy, Lauren Wilkinson (Thomas Sankara)

A book by a WOC - American Spy, The Stone Sky, The Namesake.

A book with at least a four star rating on Goodreads - 38 of the books I read meet this, so rather than list all of them I'll mention the one with the highest average rating (4.53), Rocket Men. Honorable mention to The Things We Cannot Say (Kelly Rimmer), which had a 4.51 rating.

A book with a three word title - The Rose Rent, The Last Colony (John Scalzi), The Stone Sky, The Fated Sky, Even the Dead (Benjamin Black). Pietr the Latvian, The Second Sleep (Robert Harris), The Wordy Shipmates (Sarah Vowell), The Human Division (John Scalzi), The Glass Hotel, The Last Emperox, The Devil's Cave (Martin Walker), The Warsaw Protocol, The Lost Continent (Bill Bryson), The Secret Place (Tana French), The Great Believers (Rebecca Makkai)

A book by or about a journalist - The Imperfectionists looks like my only book about journalists, but I read several written by journalists, including The Devil's Cave, Black Diamond, Appetite for America, and An Elegant Defense (Matt Richtel)

Your favorite prompt from a past POPSUGAR Reading Challenge - rather than a favorite, I'm going to use one from 2019 that I didn't have a book for. The prompt was "a book revolving around a puzzle or game," which would fit for both The Eight and Tuesday Mooney Talks to Ghosts. 

ADVANCED

A book with a character with vision impairment or enhancement - Notes from a Young Black Chef (Kwame Onwuachi) and Calypso (David Sedaris)

A book by an author who has written more than 20 books - The Rose Rent, The Hermit of Eryton Forest, and The Confession of Brother Haluin; Agent Running in the Field; Even the Dead (John Banville as Benjamin Black); The Last Colony, Zoe's Tale, and The Human Division; Diary of a Dead Man on Leave (David Downing)

A book with more than 20 letters in its title - Tuesday Mooney Talks to Ghosts, The Splendid and the Vile, I Hear the Sirens in the Streets, The Confession of Brother Haluin, The Hermit of Eryton Forest, Diary of a Dead Man on Leave, The Absolutely True Diary of a Part Time Indian, Notes from a Young Black Chef, Agent Running in the Field

A book published in the 20th century - The Rose Rent, Picnic at Hanging Rock, Pietr the Latvian, Redwall, SS-GB, The Hermit of Eryton Forest, The Confession of Brother Haluin, The Eight, The Lost Continent

A book from a series with more than 20 books - The Rose Rent, The Hermit of Eryton Forest, and The Confession of Brother Haluin, as long as you count the short story collection A Rare Benedictine (aka The Advent of Brother Cadfael) as part of the series.

A book with a main character in their 20s - I don't know that any of the books I read gave ages, but several had characters who were, at least in part, in their 20s: The Glass Hotel, Tuesday Mooney Talks to Ghosts, The Namesake, Midnight Riot, 32 Yolks (Eric Ripert), Notes from a Young Black Chef, among others.

 Book Log 2020 #73: Clean Hands by Patrick Hoffman

A lawyer representing a major bank learns that one of the associates working on the case has lost his phone - which happened to have copies of secret documents on it. While the phone is recovered, someone has copied the documents off of it, and is now blackmailing the law firm It's up to the lawyer - and the ex-CIA crisis manager hired to help - to deal with the mess in a way that keeps them - and the firm - out of trouble.

It's not a bad setup for a thriller that you don't want or need to think about too much, and in that sense the book fit the bill. It's not quite the edge of your seat thrill ride that the linked page makes it out to be, but it's entertaining enough. 

That's a wrap on 2020! See you next year!

 Book Log 2020 #72: Little Women by Louisa May Alcott

I never read this in school, and decided to pick it up as it was a fitting choice for a reading challenge I was doing (it's also one of the free classics in Apple Books, which saved me from a trip to the library/library app).

It's not the most obvious choice for a middle aged man, being a story about four girls and their mother, and to be honest it didn't do much for me. It may have connected more if I had read this while in school, as I'd have been closer in age to most of the characters and could sympathize with the universal challenges of growing up.  

Though to be fair, I also don't read a lot of 19th century fiction, so that may have affected my reading experience too.

 Book Log 2020 #71: The Great Believers by Rebecca Makkai

If you didn't live through the 1980s, it may be hard to credit the way in which HIV/AIDS ran rampant through the gay community. With no antiretroviral or PrEP medication available, thousands died from diseases that would normally be stopped by our immune system. This book tells the story of that period through two characters and timelines - an art gallery development diretor living in 1980s Chicago, and a woman in the present day who has gone to Paris to find her daughter. 

The two stories cover the same ground of loss and grief, but in different scales. The 1980s timeline gives the immediate and varied reaction to what was happening, from fear of contracting HIV to the fatalism that led some to keep doing what they were doing. The present day timeline takes a longer look at how you come to grips with all of the lives and time lost, and how that shapes who you are today.

I did live through the 1980s, but was young enough where this was always a news story rather than a personal one. This book helped me understand the parts of the story that the news didn't show, and reminded me that for many, that story hasn't ended.

 Book Log 2020 #70: The Namesake by Jhumpa Lahiri

The struggle to reconcile personal and cultural identies is at the center of this book, which tells the story of a newly-married couple that moves from India to the US to start a new life. When the couple have their first child, they try to wait for a name to be sent from a grandmother in India, but when the letter never arrives they opt for an unusual name that starts the child on what appears to be a lifelong battle to feel comfortable with himself.

There's a level at which the difficulties each member of the family face are relatable to anyone, as we've all had feelings of not belonging or being different. What sets this novel apart is the way in which the specific issues, be it cultural norms, language barrier, or the generation gap, are so finely and clearly detailed. It's not the easiest read emotionally - it can be quite a downer at times - but it's worth working through to see how each life unfolds.

 Book Log 2020 #69: The Color of Law by Richard Rothstein

If you want to be infuriated by a book, this would be an excellent choice. Not for the writing, but for the subject matter. Rothstein breaks down in meticulous detail how government agencies promoted the de jure segregation of neighborhoods through the discriminatory application of various financial and real estate laws. If you've heard of the practice of redlining, but wasn't sure what it meant, this book will give you all of information you need - and then some - to understand how generations of people who weren't white were locked out of home ownership and the accumulation of generational wealth.

This book helps explain how historical discrimination continues to affect Americans today, from lagging in personal wealth to education outcomes to social status. It is very much worth reading, as angry as it may make you.

 Book Log 2020 #68: Calypso by David Sedaris

This collection of essays proves that you can't go home again. Sedaris purchases a vacation home in North Carolina as a place where his siblings and their dad can get together and relax while enjoying each other's company, but it doesn't quite work out as planned. Themes of aging and mortality run through the collection, from essays recounting age-related medical issues to the passing of Sedaris's mother and sister.

As you might imagine the tone of the book is a bit more subdued, with significant helpings of melancholy and nostalgia. There is still plenty of wit and humor, though, which offsets the heavier emotions that come into play. It does make for a more thoughtful collection of essays, I think, especially if the reader is getting to a certain age.

 Book Log 2020 #67: Heirs of the Founders by H. W. Brands

This book examines the political careers of the three important American political figures of the early 19th century - Speaker of the House Henry Clay, Massachusetts Senator (and later Secretary of State) Daniel Webster, and South Carolina's John C. Calhoun, who would serve in multiple positions before becoming Vice President. We see how each man shaped the issues of the period, from tarriffs to nullification to slavery.

I do think Brands tried to do too much, in that there are a number of places where he'll mention something that begs for detail (like how Clay got himself named speaker in his first term). I also don't think there was enough balance between the three, as the narrative often favored one person over the other two to a significant degree. I don't think these are issues that are specific to this book - any survey of an historical era is going to have to play off detail for length and readability - but they were noticable during the reading.