The Challenge

20 Books of Summer is an annual online reading challenge hosted by Cathy Brown of 746books.com, whereby you select a list of 20 books (a great way to make a dent in that ever-growing TBR pile) that you will read, and review, within the time frame (June 1 – September 1 2022). This having been said, Cathy has assured us she is a lenient host, and there is wiggle room to amend your list, reduce numbers etc. as we go on. It’s all meant to be a bit of fun after all! This will be my first time taking part in 20 Books of Summer, but I did follow, and contribute to, Cathy’s Reading Month Ireland , which happens in March and is a wonderful celebration of Irish writing.

My list of 20 books

I’ve chosen the following list of books for this summer’s challenge, all in an effort to tackle a big and delightful pile of unread books that deserve to be read without further delay. The list is made up of a mix of recent acquisitions, books that have been on the shelves for much longer, and a couple of library loans currently pending. As it so happens, over 50% are by Irish women, all fiction, a couple of short story collections/anthologies, a handful of Japanese authors, England and America are also represented, some Greek mythology and an Irish fairytale re-imagined, there are a couple of dystopian novels and just for kicks… coming in at a total of 5308 pages!

1. Intimacies by Lucy Caldwell
2. Wunderland by Caitríona Lally
3. Dance Move by Wendy Erskine
4. The Raptures by Jan Carson
5. Blue Ticket by Sophie Mackintosh
6. The Paper Palace by Miranda Cowley Heller
7. Savage Her Reply by Deirdre Sullivan
8. Lonely Castle in the Mirror by Mizuki Tjusimura
9. The Spinning Heart by Donal Ryan
10. Follow Me to Ground by Sue Rainsford
11. The Blood Miracles by Lisa McInerney
12. The Rules of Revelation by Lisa McInerney
13. How to Gut a Fish by Sheila Armstrong
14. South of the Border, West of the Sun by Haruki Murakami
15. The Inugami Curse by Seishi Yokomizo
16. I, Antigone by Carlo Gébler
17. Make Room! Make Room! by Harry Harrison
18. A Line Made by Walking by Sara Baume
19. Cocktail Bar by Nora Hoult
20. The Long Gaze Back edited by Sinéad Gleeson

Predictions

This is more than I would usually manage to read in 3 months but there will be several opportunities for extra reading over the summer, including 14 hours on a plane to and from Canada, so I’m hopeful I’ll manage the reading part without having to rush it.

The reviewing will be trickier. I tend to stop regularly while reading to jot down lots of notes and quotes, then spend a lot of time writing longer-than-intended reviews, before editing them back, which is an overly lengthy process. As the second half of this year is going to get much busier for me, this challenge is the perfect time to kick back and get into the swing of reading more fluidly and writing shorter, more concise reviews.

Challenge details

The challenge kicks off on June 1st with hashtag #20booksofsummer22 and full details of how to take part can be found in this post at Cathy’s website.

Looking forward to getting reading, and discovering some great new authors and books through everyone else’s posts.