back by popular demand it's the 2017 reading challenge thread

[Voley]

Ta Signal 11. Will keep an eye out for them an all.

 

[stockwelljonny]

1/25 - Corvus: A Life with Birds by Esther Woolfson

 

[Me76]

1/50 Teenage Revolution, Alan Davies
2/50 The Third Woman, Jonathan Freedland
3/50 The Art of Peeling an Orange, Victoria Avilan
4/50 Courting Trouble, Lisa M Hawkins
5/50 Dr Vigilante, Alberto Hazan
6/50 the Husband's Secret, Liane Moriarty

7/50 Sleep Tight, Rachel Abbot - really good this. With interesting twists.

 

[BoatieBird]

1/65 - Laurie Lee - Village Christmas and Other Notes on the English Year
2/65 - John Irving - A Prayer for Owen Meany (1/10*)
3/65 - Ben Aaronovitch - Moon Over Soho
4/65 - William Boyd - Any Human Heart (2/10)
5/65 - Douglas Adams - Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency
6/65 - John Steinbeck - Tortilla Flat
7/65 - Andrew Michael Hurley - The Loney
8/65 - Tana French - Into The Woods (Dublin Murder Squad 1) (3/10)
9/65 - Larry McMurty - Lonesome Dove (4/10)

10/65 - Denise Mina - The Dead Hour (Paddy Meehan 2)

 

[kropotkin]

Surprisingly good piece of alternate history. Loved the trilogy but never worked out what the fox was?

I only read the first one in the trilogy - they were all together in an ebook but the first one wasn't really good enough to read the rest. I thought it was ok but nothing special really - a murder mystery / special projects type but in an alternate history. The alternative history was thw nest bit, but the rest was not particular special. Need some sci-fi soon that blows me away!

 

[ringo]

What was that like ringo? I've only ever read 'Slaughterhouse 5' and 'Welcome To The Monkey House' by him, both of which I liked.

I'd only read Slaughterhouse 5 before, and possibly Welcome To The Monkey House, can't remember, but nothing for 25 years.

It's very good. I think it's impact in 1973 must have been far greater then now, because so much of what he has to say is familiar and has been absorbed into mainstream thinking. At times it seemed a bit laboured, possibly because the style is detached and objective, to show the ridiculousness of human nature. I didn't realise this was where "Blue Monday" came from

 

[marshall]

13/109 - Keiron Pim, Jumpin' Jack Flash (David Litvinov and the Rock n Roll Underworld) - Blimey, what a life, from Lucien Freud to Ronnie Kray, Clapton to the Queen Mum, Jagger to Donald Camell, he knew everyone, the chapter on his contribution (script assistant) to Performance is fascinating.

14/109 - Joe R Lansdale, Honky Tonk Samurai - such an easy read, love Joe R, great dialogue, looking forward to watching Mucho Mojo on Amazon Prime.

 

[Threshers_Flail]

17/50 Bill Beverly - Dodgers
18/50 Susan Sontag - On Photography

 

[crossthebreeze]

1/30 Laurie Lee - Cider with Rosie
2/30 Nnedi Okorafor - Lagoon

3/30 David Baird - Between Two Fires: Guerilla war in the Spanish sierras
Really interesting - about the communist maquis in the Andalucian mountains post-civil war period (1943—1952). It focuses on one village - Frigiliana, in Malaga province - the men from there who joined the maquis in the sierra, and the villager's experience of guerilla warfare and fascist military repression. Not all heroics - it all ends in paranoia and betrayals, and a lot violence against (non-fascist) civilians along the way, but they made life very difficult for the civil guard and (comparatively) wealthy fascists in the area, living in an incredibly harsh landscape and dangerous situation.

 

[Plumdaff]

1/25 Junk by Melvin Burgess
2/25 The Paying Guests by Sarah Waters
3/25 The White Album by Joan Didion
4/25 Short Cuts by Raymond Carver
5/25 Wide Sargasso Sea by Jean Rhys

6/25 To Rise Again At A Decent Hour by Joshua Ferris.
Liked the premise and some of the ideas in the book more than the actual book.

 

[polly]

1/29 Garth Risk Hallberg, City on Fire
2/29 Raymond Chandler, The High Window
3/29 Nathan Englander, The Ministry of Special Cases
4/29 Dennis Covington, Salvation on Snake Mountain: Snake Handling and Redemption in Southern Appalachia
5/29 Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Americanah

6/29 Octavia E Butler, Kindred

 

[inva]

1/60 The First Civil Right: How Liberals Built Prison America by Naomi Murakawa
2/60 The March on Washington: Jobs, Freedom, and the Forgotten History of Civil Rights by William P. Jones

 

[Beats & Pieces]

15. Decolonizing Dialectics - George Ciccariello-Maher

 

[PursuedByBears]

1/25 Ken Follett - World Without End
2/25 Frances Hardinge - Fly By Night
3/25 Larry McMurtry - Lonesome Dove

4/25 Roald Dahl - Madness (short stories)

 

[Biddlybee]

1/10 - Chocky - John Wyndham
2/10 - Expecting - Chitra Ramaswamy
3/10 - The Spinning Heart - Donal Ryan
4/10 - The Magic Toyshop - Angela Carter

 

[spartacus mills]

11/35 Mikhail Bulgakov - Heart Of A Dog

I loved that!

 

[spartacus mills]

01 Arkady & Boris Strugatsky – Monday Starts On Saturday
02 Jackie Higgins – Why It Does Not Have To Be In Focus, Modern Photography Explained
03 Ed McBain – Fuzz
04 Fyodor Dostoyevsky – Netochka Nezvanova
05 James M. Cain – The Postman Always Rings Twice
06 Spike Milligan – Open Heart University
07 Tom Callaghan – A Killing Winter
08 John Steinbeck – East of Eden
09 Ed McBain – Let’s Hear It For the Deaf Man
10 Laszlo Krasznahorkai – War & War
11 Helen Walsh – The Lemon Grove
12 William Faulkner – Absalom, Absalom!

 

[nogojones]

I loved that!

Yea it was good.

I've had a copy of The Master & The Margrita knocking around for about 25 years that I've never got round to reading, but much more inclined to start it soon after reading this one.

 

[Threshers_Flail]

Yea it was good.

I've had a copy of The Master & The Margrita knocking around for about 25 years that I've never got round to reading, but much more inclined to start it soon after reading this one.

Do it!

 

[SpookyFrank]

1/48 Sanjay Chaturvedi and Timothy Doyle - Climate Terror: A Critical Geopolitics of Climate Change
2/48 Poul Anderson - Tau Zero
3/48 David Mitchell - The Bone Clocks
4/48 Asa Briggs - Victorian Cities
5/48 Howard Zinn - You Can't Be Neutral on a Moving Train
6/48 Jeff Vendermeer - Authority
7/48 Errico Malatesta - At the Cafe: Conversations on Anarchism

8/48 Halldor Laxness - The Atom Station
9/48 M. John Harrison - The Centurai Device

 

[kropotkin]

6/29 Octavia E Butler, Kindred

I read Patternmaster by her last year, which was really good. She later wrote two other books in the series and put Patternmaster as the last in the trilogy- the others weren't anywhere near as good, but I'd recommend Patternmaster.

 

[Shirl]

1/25 Dead Tomorrow - Peter James
2/25 August is a wicked Month - Edna O'brien
3/25 Gallows View - Peter Robinson
4/25 Lady Lupin's Book of Etiquette - Babette Cole
5/25 Talking to the dead - Harry Bingham
6/25 The 50/50 Killer - Steve Mosby
7/25 No Cure for Shell Shock - Dylan Orchard
8/25 Blood,Salt-Water - Denise Mina
9/25 The Letter - Kathryn Hughes Amazon lied to me about this book. Number 1 best seller my arse. I only finished it because I've given up on two books already this year.

 

[kropotkin]

1. Tom Rob Smith - child 44
2. Louisa Lim - People's Republic of Amnesia: Tiananmen Revisited
3. Robin Yassin-Kassab, Leila Al-Shami - Burning Country: Syrians in revolution and war
4. Daniel Kahneman - Thinking, Fast and Slow
5. John Courtenay Grinwood - Arabesk
6. Harsha walia - undoing border imperialism
7. Howard zinn - a people's history of the united states
8. Simon Mawer - the glass room
9. Taking Sides: Revolutionary Solidarity and the Poverty of Liberalism - Cindy Milstein (Editor)
10. Platform Capitalism - Nick Srnicek
11. The Meaning of Race: Race, History and Culture in Western Society - Kenan Malik

 

[polly]

I read Patternmaster by her last year, which was really good. She later wrote two other books in the series and put Patternmaster as the last in the trilogy- the others weren't anywhere near as good, but I'd recommend Patternmaster.

Thanks! I didn't get as much from Kindred as I'd wanted to. I'm still letting it percolate through my brain before I figure out why, but I think at least part of it was her style. But the ideas were so interesting that I'd give another book a go, so thanks for the recommendation.

 

[Beats & Pieces]

16. State Phobia and Civil Society - Mitchell Dean & Kaspar Villadsen

 

[spartacus mills]

I've had a copy of The Master & The Margarita knocking around for about 25 years that I've never got round to reading, but much more inclined to start it soon after reading this one.

I've read that three or four times, one of my all time favourites.

 

[Me76]

Right. I've decided to stick Don Quixote. It's taken me four weeks to get 53% through and I can't say I've enjoyed any of it. I've read two other books in two days because I was giving myself weekends off. Reading shouldn't be work, and even though I was trying to get my classics in. It can stick it's boring shit.

 

[Manter]

1/29 Volker Kutscher Babylon Berlin
2/29 Philip Kerr The other side of silence
3/29 Bill Beverley Dodgers
4,5,6/29 Robert Wilson Charlie Boxer series. (Capital punishment, you will never find me, stealing people)
7/29 Jay Kristoff Stormdancer - lotus trilogy
8/29 Amin the ruins- Ausma Zehanat Khan
Canadian series set among the various diaspora communities there. This one focuses on the Iranian diaspora and a filmmaker who went to Iran and never came back. Not great literature, but I enjoyed it

 

[PursuedByBears]

1/25 Ken Follett - World Without End
2/25 Frances Hardinge - Fly By Night
3/25 Larry McMurtry - Lonesome Dove
4/25 Roald Dahl - Madness (short stories)

5/25 Raymond Chandler - The Big Sleep

 

[Riklet]

1/25 Walking the Portuguese Camino - Porto to Santiago - John Rowan
2/25 Capitalist Realism: Is There No Alternative? - Mark Ficher
3/25 - Dare to Bare Nudist Beach Guide To Gran Canaria - Alex Bramwell
4/25 Lonely Planet Guide to Gran Canaria - Various
5/25 Postcapitalism: A Guide To Our Future - Paul Mason
6/25 100 Mejores Vinos Por Menos de 10e - Alicia Estrada
7/25 Frontlines: Battlefield Tours Of The Spanish Civil War - David Mathieson
8/25 Sherry - Julian Jeffs