eyes down for a full house reading challenge thread 2021

[Fozzie Bear]

The John Darnielle Master of Reality one is more like a short novel, which I liked but on the other hand Master of Reality is quite a silly album. Is it at least a good extended article?

Yep I enjoyed it!

 

[hitmouse]

I remember deciding at some point that I was putting the Raincoats one on my to-read list, but I can't now remember if there was something about the book that made it sound particularly interesting, or if it was just on general principles cos Raincoats.

 

[Sweet Meiga]

1/50 Michel Houellebecq - The Map and the Territory
2/50 Adam Stout - Glastonbury Holy Thorn: Story of a Legend
3/50 Michel Houellebecq - Submission
4/50 Michel Houellebecq - H. P. Lovecraft: Against the World, Against Life
5/50 Juri Lotman - Culture and Explosion

 

[Pickman's model]

1. Roderick Conway Morris, 'Jem: memoirs of an Ottoman secret agent' (London: Corgi, 1989)
2. Heather Ann Thompson, 'Blood in the water: the Attica Prison Uprising of 1971 and its legacy' (New York: Vintage, 2017)
3. Laird Barron, 'Worse angels' (New York: G.P. Putnam's Sons, 2020)
4. Alex Gough, 'Emperor's sword' (Basingstoke: Canelo, 2019)

 

[Smokeandsteam]

1/35 Wayne Hussey - Salad Daze
2/35 Steven Morris - Fast Forward: Confessions of a Post-Punk Percussionist: Volume 2
3/35 Paul Gilroy - There Ain’t No Black in the Union Jack: The Cultural Politics of Race and Nation
4/35 Beatrix Campbell - Goliath: Britain’s Dangerous Places
5/35 Ralph Miliband - Parliamentary Socialism: A Study in the Politics of Labour

 

[Ptolemy]

1/25. Phantom Blood - Araki Hirohiko.
2/25. Battle Tendency - Araki Hirohiko.
3/25. Stone Ocean - Araki Hirohiko.

 

[Little Piranha]

1/52 Evelyn Waugh - A Handful of Dust
2/52 Natalie Haynes - Pandora's Jar: Women in the Greek Myths.
3/52 Philip Kerr - The One From The Other
4/52 Peter Swanson - Rules For Perfect Murders.
5/52 David Mitchell - Slade House
6/52 Stuart J. Ritchie - Science Fictions: Exposing Fraud, Bias, Negligence and Hype in Science

 

[billy_bob]

1/69 Seishi Yokomizo - The Inugami Curse
2/69 Valeria Luiseldi - Lost Children Archive
3/69 William Faulker - Light in August
4/69 Nancy Jennings - Bats
5/69 Mark Forsyth - The Elements of Eloquence
6/69 Sholem Aleichem - Tevye the Dairyman
7/69 Sholem Aleichem - Motl the Cantor's Son
8/69 Clive Upton, Stewart Sanderson and John Widdowson - Word Maps: A Dialect Atlas of England
9/69 Shaun Bythell - Seven Kinds of People you Find in Bookshops

10/69 Mignon Fogarty - The Grammar Devotional
11/69 Danny Dorling - The Equality Effect

Depression interfering with my reading at the moment. Can't concentrate for long.

 

[hitmouse]

1/30 Jackie Wang - Carceral Capitalism
2/30 Jerold J Kreisman & Hal Straub - I Hate You, Don't Leave Me: Understanding the Borderline Personality
3/30 Stuart Turton - The Devil & The Dark Water
4/30 Doris Lessing - Martha Quest
5/30 DD Johnston - Peace, Love and Petrol Bombs

A re-read this one, after a thread on here reminded me of it. As a book that's at least partly set in the world of turn-of-the-millenium British anarchism, I suppose it must be one of the novels most likely to feature fictional characters inspired by past or present U75 posters as well. Almost certainly the only novel to ever mention the ICC's polemic with Aufheben over decadence theory. The author's mentioned that it's partly a parody of The Princess Casamassima by Henry James, which years ago inspired me to get an old second-hand copy of that book and then immediately give up because it's 500 pages long and not the easiest read, perhaps this'll finally be the year I properly read that as well. Or maybe not.

Anyway, No One Is Talking About This by Patricia Lockwood just arrived, proper looking forward to that.

 

[StoneRoad]

17) Desolation Island by P O'Brian (underway 6/2/21 & postponed until no 18 read) completed 10/2/21
18) Cuthbert's Way by LJ Ross (underway 6/2/2021) completed 8/2/21

tbh I wasn't very impressed with several of the DCI Ryan series, it had a very good start but two or three of the more recent books were a little below that standard. However, this last one and the immediate predecessor were much more engaging and as good as the first ones.
~~~~
So, back to the horrible old Leopard ...

19) The Fortune of War by P O'Brian (underway 10/2/21)

 

[imposs1904]

1/30 Jackie Wang - Carceral Capitalism
2/30 Jerold J Kreisman & Hal Straub - I Hate You, Don't Leave Me: Understanding the Borderline Personality
3/30 Stuart Turton - The Devil & The Dark Water
4/30 Doris Lessing - Martha Quest
5/30 DD Johnston - Peace, Love and Petrol Bombs

A re-read this one, after a thread on here reminded me of it. As a book that's at least partly set in the world of turn-of-the-millenium British anarchism, I suppose it must be one of the novels most likely to feature fictional characters inspired by past or present U75 posters as well. Almost certainly the only novel to ever mention the ICC's polemic with Aufheben over decadence theory. The author's mentioned that it's partly a parody of The Princess Casamassima by Henry James, which years ago inspired me to get an old second-hand copy of that book and then immediately give up because it's 500 pages long and not the easiest read, perhaps this'll finally be the year I properly read that as well. Or maybe not.

Anyway, No One Is Talking About This by Patricia Lockwood just arrived, proper looking forward to that.

I read Peace, Love and Petrol Bombs a few years back. I'll need to dig it out and have another look at it because I remember bugger all about it.

"almost certainly the only novel to ever mention the ICC's polemic with Aufheben over decadence theory."

You just know that Stewart Home has written trilogy of novels on that very debate.

 

[hitmouse]

I read Peace, Love and Petrol Bombs a few years back. I'll need to dig it out and have another look at it because I remember bugger all about it.

"almost certainly the only novel to ever mention the ICC's polemic with Aufheben over decadence theory."

You just know that Stewart Home has written trilogy of novels on that very debate.

Hah, fair call. I really enjoyed rereading it, I suppose the main disclaimer I'd offer is that it's probably not one for readers who want their narrators/protagonists to be morally sound people, but worth a read if you don't mind books where the characters make questionable life choices.

 

[imposs1904]

Hah, fair call. I really enjoyed rereading it, I suppose the main disclaimer I'd offer is that it's probably not one for readers who want their narrators/protagonists to be morally sound people, but worth a read if you don't mind books where the characters make questionable life choices.

You had me at "questionable life choices".

 

[StoneRoad]

19) The Fortune of War by P O'Brian (underway 10/2/21) completed 12/2/21

20) The Surgeon's Mate by P O'Brian (underway 13/2/21)

 

[QueenOfGoths]

1. "Exile" - James Swallow
2. "Rules For Perfect Murders" - Peter Swanson
3."False Values" -Ben Aaronovitch
4. "The Seven Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle" - Stuart Turton

5. "The Kind With Killing For" Peter Swanson. An at times genuinely distributing thriller with plenty of twists.

 

[Pickman's model]

1. Roderick Conway Morris, 'Jem: memoirs of an Ottoman secret agent' (London: Corgi, 1989)
2. Heather Ann Thompson, 'Blood in the water: the Attica Prison Uprising of 1971 and its legacy' (New York: Vintage, 2017)
3. Laird Barron, 'Worse angels' (New York: G.P. Putnam's Sons, 2020)
4. Alex Gough, 'Emperor's sword' (Basingstoke: Canelo, 2019)
5. Alex Gough, 'Emperor's knife' (Basingstoke: Canelo, 2020)

 

[D'wards]

1/24 - The Terror by Dan Simmons

 

[PursuedByBears]

1/45 Roger Steffens - So Much Things To Say: The Oral History of Bob Marley
2/45 Yuval Noah Harari - Sapiens: a Brief History of Humankind
3/45 Alan Sillitoe - Saturday Night and Sunday Morning
4/45 Liz Braswell - Unbirthday
5/45 Michael Wood - In Search of the Dark Ages
6/45 Bill Bryson - A Walk in the Woods: Rediscovering America on the Appalachian Trail
7/45 Nizrana Farook - The Girl Who Stole an Elephant

8/45 Andrew Chaikin - A Man on the Moon: the Voyages of the Apollo Astronauts

 

[seventh bullet]

1/30 The End of Everything (Astrophysically Speaking) - Katie Mack

2/30 Terror and Democracy in the Age of Stalin: The Social Dynamics of Repression - Wendy Z. Goldman

3/30 The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks - Rebecca Skloot

 

[PursuedByBears]

1/45 Roger Steffens - So Much Things To Say: The Oral History of Bob Marley
2/45 Yuval Noah Harari - Sapiens: a Brief History of Humankind
3/45 Alan Sillitoe - Saturday Night and Sunday Morning
4/45 Liz Braswell - Unbirthday
5/45 Michael Wood - In Search of the Dark Ages
6/45 Bill Bryson - A Walk in the Woods: Rediscovering America on the Appalachian Trail
7/45 Nizrana Farook - The Girl Who Stole an Elephant
8/45 Andrew Chaikin - A Man on the Moon: the Voyages of the Apollo Astronauts

9/45 Jonathan Safran Foer - Eating Animals

 

[Smokeandsteam]

The faster I read, the more my pile of unread books mounts up (along with the money spent after my self-ban on using Amazon).

1/35 Wayne Hussey - Salad Daze
2/35 Steven Morris - Fast Forward: Confessions of a Post-Punk Percussionist: Volume 2
3/35 Paul Gilroy - There Ain’t No Black in the Union Jack: The Cultural Politics of Race and Nation
4/35 Beatrix Campbell - Goliath: Britain’s Dangerous Places
5/35 Ralph Miliband - Parliamentary Socialism: A Study in the Politics of Labour
6/35 Adolf Reed Jr - Class Notes: Posing as Politics and Other Thoughts on the American Scene

 

[hitmouse]

1/30 Jackie Wang - Carceral Capitalism
2/30 Jerold J Kreisman & Hal Straub - I Hate You, Don't Leave Me: Understanding the Borderline Personality
3/30 Stuart Turton - The Devil & The Dark Water
4/30 Doris Lessing - Martha Quest
5/30 DD Johnston - Peace, Love and Petrol Bombs
6/30 Patricia Lockwood - No One Is Talking About This

Strongly suspect I'll re-read this one shortly, although it's a bit of a weird one anyway since I'd read a lot of it (multiple times) before publication cos a hefty section of the book is a re-worked version of The Communal Mind. Very strongly recommended anyway, maybe my favourite living writer?

‘What do you mean you’ve been spying on me?’ she thought – hot, blind, unreasoning. ‘What do you mean you’ve been spying on me, with this thing in my hand that is an eye?’

 

[May Kasahara]

1. Lidia Yuknavitch - The Misfit's Manifesto.
2. Abi Daré - The Girl with the Louding Voice.
3. Caroline Bird - The Air Year.

4. Alice Walker - The Complete Stories.

 

[MsHopper]

1/50 The Goldfinch - Donna Tartt
2/50 The museum of broken promises - Elizabeth Buchan
3/50 - Mystery in White - J. Jeffersin Farjeon
4/50 - in the midst of Winter - Isabel Allende
5/50 - a patchwork family - Cathy Bramley

 

[StoneRoad]

20) The Surgeon's Mate by P O'Brian (underway 13/2/21) completed 15/2/21

21) The Ionian Mission by P O'Brian (underway 16/2/21)

 

[D'wards]

1/24 - The Terror by Dan Simmons
2/24 - London's Fields: An Intimate History of London Football Fandom by Mark Waldon (u75 alumnus Cerberus )

 

[MBV]

1/12. Slade House - David Mitchell (almost finished)
2/12. The Party - Elizabeth Day
3/12. Oh My God, What a Complete Aisling - Emer McLysaght & Sarah Breen

 

[Winot]

1/29 Illness as Metaphor & Aids and its Metaphors - Susan Sontag
2/29 From Counterculture to Cyberculture: Stewart Brand, the Whole Earth Network, and the Rise of Digital Utopianism - Paul Turner

3/29 Garden of Eden - Ernest Hemingway

 

[QueenOfGoths]

1. "Exile" - James Swallow
2. "Rules For Perfect Murders" - Peter Swanson
3."False Values" -Ben Aaronovitch
4. "The Seven Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle" - Stuart Turton
5. "The Kind With Killing For" Peter Swanson

6. "Fellside" - M. R. Carey. Took me a while to get in to this. The characterisation was great, it was quite effecting at times but I never felt I enjoyed it as much as I wanted to

 

[BoatieBird]

1/52 - Susan Hill - The Vows of Silence
2/52 - Kiley Reid - Such a Fun Age
3/52 - Susan Hill - The Shadows in The Street
4/52 - Lisa McInerney - The Blood Miracles
5/52 - Patrick Gale - Take Nothing With You
6/52 - Susan Hill - The Betrayal of Trust

7/52 - Donna Tartt - The Goldfinch (re-read)