Next year Charlie at The Worm Hole is hosting the eleventh annual What’s In A Name challenge, originally started by Annie, then handed to Beth Fish Reads and now continued by Charlie. For full details go to the sign up post. I’ve been doing this challenge since Annie started it in 2007, just missing the one in 2009! So, this is a must for me.

The basics

The challenge runs from January to December. During this time you choose a book to read from each of the following categories. (Charlie’s examples of books you could choose are in brackets – translations and other languages most definitely count!):

• The word ‘the’ used twice (The Secret By The Lake; The End Of The Day, The Curious Incident Of The Dog In The Night-Time)
• A fruit or vegetable (The Guernsey Literary And Potato Peel Pie Society; The Particular Sadness Of Lemon Cake)
• A shape (The Ninth Circle, The Square Root Of Summer, Circle Of Friends)
• A title that begins with Z – can be after ‘The’ or ‘A’ (Zen In The Art Of Writing; The Zookeeper’s Wife, Zelda)
• A nationality (Anna And The French Kiss; How To Be A Kosovan Bride; Norwegian Wood)
• A season (White Truffles In Winter; The Spring Of Kasper Meier; The Summer Queen; Before I Fall; The Autumn Throne)

I’ll be choosing from the following books – or any others that I come across before the end of 2018:

The word ‘the’ used twice

• The King in the North by Max Adams
• The Lady and the Unicorn by Tracy Chevalier
• The Chapel in the Woods by Susan Louineau
• The House by the Churchyard by Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu
• The Riddle of the Third Mile by Colin Dexter
• The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo by Stieg Larsson

A fruit or vegetable 

• The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck
• Gem Squash Tokoloshi by Rachel Zadok
• The Olive Readers by Christina Aziz

A title which has a shape in it

• Dead Men and Broken Hearts by Craig Russell
• In the Heart of the Sea by Nathaniel Philbrick
• Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad
• Heartstones by Kate Glanville

A title that begins with Z – can be after ‘The’ or ‘A’ 

• Z: a novel of Zelda Fitzgerald by Therese Fowler
• Zed Alley by Dorte Hummelshoj Jakobsen (do short stories count?)

A nationality

• The Welsh Girl by Peter Ho Davies
• Italian Shoes by Henning Mankell

A season

• Absent in the Spring by Agatha Christie
• Summer by Edith Wharton
• The Summer Before the War by Helen Simonson
• The Winter Garden by Jane Thynne
• A Place Called Winter by Patrick Gale