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

[May Kasahara]

1/49 - Dave Eggers - The Circle
2/49 - John Masefield - The Box of Delights
3/49 - Jenny Nimmo - The Rinaldi Ring
4/49 - Sarah Helm - If This Is A Woman
5/49 - Art Spiegelman - Maus
6/49 - Will Ferguson - 419
7/49 - Bram Stoker - Dracula

8/49 - Paul Cornell - Witches of Lychford

 

[Orang Utan]

1/60 Richard Price - The Whites
2/60 Ali Smith - Public Library & Other Stories
3/60 Hannah Eaton - Naming Monsters
4/60 Jeff Vandermeer - Authority
5/60 Simon Garfield - To The Letter - A Celebration Of The Lost Art Of Letter Writing
6/60 Claire North - The Sudden Appearance Of Hope
7/60 Dan Lepard - Short & Sweet
8/60 Stella Gibbons - Cold Comfort Farm
9/60 George RR Martin - A Feast For Crows

 

[billy_bob]

1/25 Kevin Barry - Dark Lies the Island
2/25 Elvis Costello - Unfaithful Music and Disappearing Ink*
3/25 George Saunders - The Brain-Dead Megaphone
4/25 George Saunders - Tenth of December
5/25 Charles Dickens - Barnaby Rudge*
6/25 Kathleen Walker-Meikle - Medieval Dogs
7/25 Jon McGregor - This Isn't the Sort of Thing that Happens to Someone Like You
8/25 Truman Capote - In Cold Blood
9/25 Alison Moore - Death and the Seaside

 

[marty21]

1/75 Sanctuary : After it Happened Book 5 - Devon C Ford
2/75 1916 : The Morning After - Tim Pat Coogan
3/75 Last Stand at Saber River - Elmore Leonard
4/75 After : The Shock - Scott Nicholson
5/75 After : The Echo - Scott Nicholson
6/75 After : Milepost 291 - Scott Nicholson
7/75 After : Whiteout - Scott Nicholson
8/75 After : Red Scare - Scott Nicholson
9/75 Surviving The Evacuation : Ireland - Book 9 -Frank Tayell
10/75 Crisis - Frank Gardner


********************************************************************************
11/75 Outcast London : A Study in the Relationship Between Classes in Victorian Society - Gareth Stedman Jones

 

[Orang Utan]

1/60 Richard Price - The Whites
2/60 Ali Smith - Public Library & Other Stories
3/60 Hannah Eaton - Naming Monsters
4/60 Jeff Vandermeer - Authority
5/60 Simon Garfield - To The Letter - A Celebration Of The Lost Art Of Letter Writing
6/60 Claire North - The Sudden Appearance Of Hope
7/60 Dan Lepard - Short & Sweet
8/60 Stella Gibbons - Cold Comfort Farm
9/60 George RR Martin - A Feast For Crows
10/60 Haruki Murakami - What I Talk About When I Talk About Running

 

[marty21]

1/75 Sanctuary : After it Happened Book 5 - Devon C Ford
2/75 1916 : The Morning After - Tim Pat Coogan
3/75 Last Stand at Saber River - Elmore Leonard
4/75 After : The Shock - Scott Nicholson
5/75 After : The Echo - Scott Nicholson
6/75 After : Milepost 291 - Scott Nicholson
7/75 After : Whiteout - Scott Nicholson
8/75 After : Red Scare - Scott Nicholson
9/75 Surviving The Evacuation : Ireland - Book 9 -Frank Tayell
10/75 Crisis - Frank Gardner
11/75 Outcast London : A Study in the Relationship Between Classes in Victorian Society - Gareth Stedman Jones
**********************************


12/75 After : Dying Light - Scott Nicholson

 

[Pickman's model]

11/75 Outcast London : A Study in the Relationship Between Classes in Victorian Society - Gareth Stedman Jones

yeh have this on my pile for later in the year. what did you think of it?

 

[marty21]

yeh have this on my pile for later in the year. what did you think of it?

Very interesting, lot of stuff about dealing with the London housing shortage , overcrowding, unscrupulous Landlords , seemed a bit familiar

Also about the class struggle and the difficulty of getting class unity ,again , nothing much changes .

 

[Fozzie Bear]

1/25 Malcolm X and Alex Haley - The Autobiography of Malcolm X
2/25 Alex de Jonge - Nightmare Culture: Lautremont & "Les Chants de Maldoror"
3/25 Viv Albertine - Clothes Clothes Clothes Music Music Music Boys Boys Boys
4/25 Endnotes 1: Preliminary Materials For A Balance Sheet Of The Twentieth Century
5/25 Susana Medina - The Bowie Neuro-Transmitter
6/25 Michael Muhammad Knight - The Five Percenters: Islam, Hip Hop and the Gods of New York
7/25 Jane Austen - Pride and Prejudice
8/25 Endnotes 2: Misery And The Value Form

9/25 Kim Gordon: Girl In A Band

 

[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
6/25 David Rodigan - My Life in Reggae
7/25 Alan Garner - The Owl Service

8/25 William Goldman - The Princess Bride

 

[Voley]

9/25 Kim Gordon: Girl In A Band

Any good?

 

[billy_bob]

Any good?

Yeah, I want to know too. I've been burned so many times by mediocre rock memoirs by people I otherwise adore...

 

[Fozzie Bear]

It's ok. The viv albertine book is way better.

She's pretty good on the late 60s California and early 80s in NYC and righteous on Thurston being a dick. There are brief accounts of writing key SY albums which is well done - not spotterish.

But there is a lot of "and then I met" slightly dour accounts of people she worked with.

It's going to the charity shop so can send it on?

I still rate her after reading it.

 

[Voley]

Viv Albertine's book is one of the best music autobiographies I've read so I'd've been surprised if it had been as good as that tbh. Very kind of you to offer to send it Fozzie Bear, thanks. If it's a paperback and won't cost too much I'd love to read it, thanks. I can PayPal the postage or just send it on to billy_bob next if you like.

 

[billy_bob]

I think I'm gonna skip it but thanks for the offer

 

[Signal 11]

3/20 - Redemption Song: The Definitive Biography of Joe Strummer - Chris Salewicz
4/20 - Racecraft: The Soul of Inequality in American Life - Karen E. Fields & Barbara J. Fields

 

[Smokeandsteam]

1/25: On Anarchism - Noam Chomsky
2/25: The Corner Boys - Geoffrey Beattie
3/25: Rebel Cities - David Harvey
4/25: Getting By - Lisa McKenzie

5/25: David Harvey - A brief history of Neoliberalism
6/25 Johnny Marr - Set the boy free

7/25 David Keenan - This is memorial device
8/25 Michael Grenfell - Pierre Bourideu: Key Concepts

 

[Biddlybee]

8/25 William Goldman - The Princess Bride

In the last few days my girl has made an attachment to this book (there's a copy on her top shelf for when she's older)... she takes it to bed with her.

 

[PursuedByBears]

I've just finished reading it to Liberty as a (possibly too exciting) bedtime story!

 

[marshall]

17/109 – Toby Clements, Kingmaker: Divided Souls – historical fiction, War of the Roses, 3rd book of 4, very good.

18/109 – Frank Owen, South – post-apocalyptical, takes place 30 years after the North (America) has whupped the South and left it a disease-ridden write-off. Great.

19/109 – Frank Bill, Crimes in Southern Indiana – backwoods, meth labs, dog fighting, all feels very authentic, great writing.

 

[Biddlybee]

I've just finished reading it to Liberty as a (possibly too exciting) bedtime story!

Heh, I need to wait a few years until she understands it

 

[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
3/60 The Lost Promise of Civil Rights by Risa L. Goluboff
4/60 Helen Macfarlane: Red Republican: Essays, articles and her translation of the Communist Manifesto edited by David Black
5/60 All-American Anarchist: Joseph A. Labadie and the Labor Movement by Carlotta R. Anderson

 

[Pickman's model]

13/50 georges simenon, the rich man

14/50 maurice druon, a king without a kingdom

 

[kropotkin]

Target 45

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 - kenan malik
12. The name of the wind- Patrick Rothfuss
13. Folding Beijing - Hao Jingfang
14. Stories of your life and others- Ted Chiang
15. House of God - Samuel Shem

 

[Orang Utan]

It seems appropriate to post this article here:
How Many Books Will You Read Before You Die?

 

[billy_bob]

It seems appropriate to post this article here:
How Many Books Will You Read Before You Die?

Winston Churchill wrote something eloquent about the crushing feeling you get in libraries, that there's all this knowledge and history and literature in all these books and you'll never see more than a tiny, insignificant fraction of it....

I reckon 2,000 books might be an optimistic but not totally unrealistic target for the rest of my life, assuming that I retire at some point, and don't lose my sight or my marbles before I do so.

It doesn't feel like enough

 

[Orang Utan]

Winston Churchill wrote something eloquent about the crushing feeling you get in libraries, that there's all this knowledge and history and literature in all these books and you'll never see more than a tiny, insignificant fraction of it....

I reckon 2,000 books might be an optimistic but not totally unrealistic target for the rest of my life, assuming that I retire at some point, and don't lose my sight or my marbles before I do so.

It doesn't feel like enough

So Many Books, Not Enough Time.
Feels like it should be our family motto.
It also feels like that with films, TV series and music. So much so that I can't bring myself to reread/watch/listen to things once I've ticked them off the list.
I've managed to account for 563 books on Good Reads, but they're only the ones i remember, and only include the classic kids books that I can recall. I must have read at least the same amount or more before the age of 16 as I read way more as a kid and didn't have the internet.

 

[billy_bob]

So Many Books, Not Enough Time.
Feels like it should be our family motto.
It also feels like that with films, TV series and music. So much so that I can't bring myself to reread/watch/listen to things once I've ticked them off the list.
I've managed to account for 563 books on Good Reads, but they're only the ones i remember, and only include the classic kids books that I can recall. I must have read at least the same amount or more before the age of 16 as I read way more as a kid and didn't have the internet.

I couldn't even begin to estimate how many I've already read. Apart from a couple of years in the 90s where I kept a note of what I was reading, and the last couple of years on this thread, I have no idea. I only keep a few of the books I've read - only if I'm fairly certain I'll either read it again myself or want to enthusiastically press it on other people to read.

The question of whether to re-read is difficult. It cuts down your total, but one of the drawbacks of wanting to read as many as possible is sometimes you get to the end of one and you don't feel you gave it as much/got as much out of it as you couldv'e. And if I love a book, I'm no more likely to never want to open it again than I am to look at a good photo of my son or my wife and then go, well, I've seen that - I can bin it now. One of the reasons I love e.g. East of Eden or Slaughterhouse 5, both read in the last two years, is that as I finished them I knew I could have started again from the beginning immediately and got just as much from them as I did the first time round.

 

[Orang Utan]

I couldn't even begin to estimate how many I've already read. Apart from a couple of years in the 90s where I kept a note of what I was reading, and the last couple of years on this thread, I have no idea. I only keep a few of the books I've read - only if I'm fairly certain I'll either read it again myself or want to enthusiastically press it on other people to read.

The question of whether to re-read is difficult. It cuts down your total, but one of the drawbacks of wanting to read as many as possible is sometimes you get to the end of one and you don't feel you gave it as much/got as much out of it as you couldv'e. And if I love a book, I'm no more likely to never want to open it again than I am to look at a good photo of my son or my wife and then go, well, I've seen that - I can bin it now. One of the reasons I love e.g. East of Eden or Slaughterhouse 5, both read in the last two years, is that as I finished them I knew I could have started again from the beginning immediately and got just as much from them as I did the first time round.

there's also the possibility that a book you didn't enjoy the first time (esp when young) might on a second reading turn out to be a book you end up loving. You're not always 'ready' for some books.

 

[bimble]

1/30 The Dispossessed (Ursula LeGuin)
2/30 Thinking Fast and Slow (Daniel Kahneman)
3/30 Anti intellectualism in American Life (Richard Hofstadter)
4/30 The Winter of our Discontent (Steinbeck)
5/30 The Moon is down (Steinbeck)
6/30 Sweet Thursday (Steinbeck)
7/30 Anil's Ghost (Michael Ondaatje)
8/30 A Short History of Progress (Ronald Wright)
9/30 My promised land (Ariel shavit)
10/30 The Lady in the Lake and other Novels (Raymond Chandler)
11/30 Other Minds - the octopus and the evolution of intelligent life (Peter Godfrey-Smith)