eyes down for a full house reading challenge thread 2021

[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)
8/52 - Val McDermid - Still Life
9/52 - Patricia Highsmith - Carol
10/52 - Ruth Rendell - The Lake of Darkness
11/52 - Terry Pratchett - Witches Abroad

12/52 - Richard Osman - The Thursday Murder Club

I really enjoyed this. Warm, funny, lots of plot twists - right up my street.

 

[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
7/30 Bertolt Brecht - Threepenny Novel
8/30 Doris Lessing - A Proper Marriage
9/30 Bernardine Evaristo - Girl, Woman, Other

Probably didn't really live up to the hype overall, although I think I liked it more as I went along. Found it a bit hard to gauge the balance of affection and contempt she has for her characters, and there were a few bits that just seemed like bad shallow writing although I suppose the charitable view would be that she was just expressing her characters' worldviews, since it written in a kind of... not first person but not fully third person either, since each chapter definitely takes on a character's voice to an extent? Idk. Anyway, moving on to Ruth Kinna & Clifford Harper - Great Anarchists next.

 

[nogojones]

1/45 Ippolita - In the Facebook Aquarium: The Resistible Rise of Anarcho-Capitalism
2/45 Peter F. Hamilton - Salvation Lost
3/45 Alfred Jarry - The Ubu Plays: Ubu Rex; Ubu Cuckolded and Ubu Unchained
4/45 Philip K. Dick - Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?
5/45 Phillip Neel - Hinterland: America's New Landscape of Class and Conflict
6/45 Christopher Hill - A Nation of Change and Novelty
7/45 Plato - The Last Days of Scorates
8/45 Peter F. Hamilton - Saints of Salvation
9/45 Fyodor Dostoyevsky - Crime and Punishment
10/45 Londa Schiebinger - Plants and Empire: Colonial Bioprospecting in the Atlantic World
11/45 Philip K. Dick - The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch

12/45 Ali Land - Good Me, Bad Me
13/45 Kate Tempest - Brand New Ancients

 

[Fozzie Bear]

7/30 Richard Johnson - Grudge For Life: A Book About Ramleh

Niche hardback book about power electronics / bleak-psychedelia band. There are few casual Ramleh fans and if you aren't mildly obssessed with the group, this is not for you. I enjoyed it. Started writing something longer about it that I might finish elsewhere...

 

[ska invita]

11/45 Philip K. Dick - The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch

this looks like a fun one, i hadnt heard of this.
if you are reading PKDs my favourite Ive read so far is Galactic Pot-Healer < rammed full out of there ideas, verging on silly, definitely on the psychedelic fringe <good fun and not as well known as others I think

 

[colbhoy]

1/9 - A Man Called Ove by Fredrick Backman
2/9 - Taken by Robert Crais

 

[StoneRoad]

30) The Commodore (underway 19/3/21) completed 22/3/21

31) The Yellow Admiral (underway 23/3/21)

 

[nogojones]

this looks like a fun one, i hadnt heard of this.
if you are reading PKDs my favourite Ive read so far is Galactic Pot-Healer < rammed full out of there ideas, verging on silly, definitely on the psychedelic fringe <good fun and not as well known as others I think

I'll have a look out for that. I think I enjoyed the Three Stigmata most out of the ones I've read

 

[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)
8/52 - Val McDermid - Still Life
9/52 - Patricia Highsmith - Carol
10/52 - Ruth Rendell - The Lake of Darkness
11/52 - Terry Pratchett - Witches Abroad
12/52 - Richard Osman - The Thursday Murder Club

13/52 - Stephen King - Later

 

[StoneRoad]

31) The Yellow Admiral (underway 23/3/21) completed 25/3/21)

32) The Hundred Days (underway 25/3/21)

 

[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
7/30 Bertolt Brecht - Threepenny Novel
8/30 Doris Lessing - A Proper Marriage
9/30 Bernardine Evaristo - Girl, Woman, Other
10/30 Ruth Kinna & Clifford Harper - Great Anarchists

Nice short read. Obv everyone's got their own version of the canon and some choices will always be controversial, Kinna and Harper's version includes Proudhon, Godwin, Wilde and Stirner at the expense of Goldman, Berkman, Durruti, Makhno, Magon, or Rocker (or Crass, for that matter). And very focused on the subjects as thinkers, which has its positives - you don't see the thought of Louise Michel considered that often - and its downsides, like you don't really get much about what Bakunin actually did. Is interesting to wonder who would be in an equivalent book of post-1939 figures, since I think Malatesta is the most modern one included.
Oh, and as someone who's never read Stirner I wondered if this would make me more interested in Stirner but he still sounds like a right cock tbh.
Moving on to Dashiel Hammett - The Maltese Falcon next. A re-read, but I can't remember whodunnit, or whathappened.

 

[marty21]

1/70 The Bitterroots - C J Box
2/70 Black 13 - Adam Hamdy
3/70 A Dangerous Man - Robert Crais
4/70 City of the Dead - Sara Gran
5/70 Surviving The Evacuation : Book 18: Rebuilt in One Day - Frank Tayell.
6/70 Outback Outbreak - Frank Tayell
7/70 Big Sky - C J Box
8/70 Hungry - Grace Dent



*****
9/70 The Grey Goose of Arnhem: The Story of the Most Amazing Mass Escape of World War Two - Leo Heaps

 

[Ptolemy]

1/25. Phantom Blood - Araki Hirohiko.
2/25. Battle Tendency - Araki Hirohiko.
3/25. Stone Ocean - Araki Hirohiko.
4/25. Steel Ball Run - Araki Hirohiko.

 

[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
6/35 Adolf Reed Jr - Class Notes: Posing as Politics and Other Thoughts on the American Scene
7/35 Adolf Reed Jr - Stirrings in the Jug: Black Politics in the Post-segregation Era
8/35 Adolf Reed Jr - Nothing Left: The Long Slow Surrender of American Liberals
9/35 Jack Holland & Henry McDonald - INLA: Deadly Divisions
10/35: Cedric Johnson (Ed): The Neoliberal Deluge: Hurricane Katrina, Late Capitalism and the Remaking of New Orleans

 

[D'wards]

1/24 - The Terror by Dan Simmons
2/24 - London's Fields: An Intimate History of London Football Fandom by Mark Waldon
3/24 - Dogs of War by Adrian Tchaikovsky
4/24 - Mystic River by Dennis Lehane
5/24 - Red Dragon by Thomas Harris

 

[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
5. Kate Elizabeth Russell - My Dark Vanessa

6. We Are Wolves - horror anthology written by women, proceeds going to anti-VAWG charities A mixed bag, as most anthologies are, but some good stuff in there and an easy, entertaining read.

 

[bmd]

I want to join in but do I HAVE to do the list thing?

 

[nogojones]

I want to join in but do I HAVE to do the list thing?

We are governed by rules.

...but the real fun is in breaking them

 

[marty21]

1/70 The Bitterroots - C J Box
2/70 Black 13 - Adam Hamdy
3/70 A Dangerous Man - Robert Crais
4/70 City of the Dead - Sara Gran
5/70 Surviving The Evacuation : Book 18: Rebuilt in One Day - Frank Tayell.
6/70 Outback Outbreak - Frank Tayell
7/70 Big Sky - C J Box
8/70 Hungry - Grace Dent
9/70 The Grey Goose of Arnhem: The Story of the Most Amazing Mass Escape of World War Two - Leo Heaps


*****
10/70 Edge of Collapse - Kyla Stone

 

[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

4/30 Failed Fuhrers: A History of Britain's Extreme Right - Graham Macklin

5/30 The Spectre of Babeuf - Ian Birchall

6/30 To Do Something Beautiful - Rohini Hensman

7/30 Rajani Palme Dutt: A Study in British Stalinism - John Callaghan

 

[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
10/45 Katherine Rundell - Rooftoppers
11/45 Carrie Gibson - Empire's Crossroads: a History of the Carribbean from Columbus to the Present Day
12/45 Jonathan Safran Foer - Everything is Illuminated

13/45 Robert Jordan - A Crown of Swords
14/45 Albert Camus - The Stranger

 

[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
12/69 ZZ Packer - Drinking Coffee Elsewhere
13/69 Deborah Eisenburg - Your Duck Is My Duck
14/69 Michael Rosen - So They Call You Pisher!

15/69 Alison Moore - Missing
16/69 Colum McCann - Zoli

Not gonna hit my target this year unless I get my act together soon

 

[Threshers_Flail]

1. Benedict Anderson - Imagined Communities
2. Eric Hobsbawm - Primitive Rebels
3. Jackie Wang - Carceral Capitalism
4. Ishay Landa - Fascism and the Masses
5. Virginie Despentes - Vernon Subutex
6. Catherine Liu - Virtue Hoarders
7. Olivia Laing - Funny Weather

 

[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
7/30 Bertolt Brecht - Threepenny Novel
8/30 Doris Lessing - A Proper Marriage
9/30 Bernardine Evaristo - Girl, Woman, Other
10/30 Ruth Kinna & Clifford Harper - Great Anarchists
11/30 Dashiell Hammett - The Maltese Falcon

Bits and pieces of the plot came back to me as I was reading it, but so did bits and pieces of the plot to LA Confidential and possibly also Farewell My Lovely, so it was still an exciting guessing experience. Quite confused by how Hammett describes Spade as having glowing yellow eyes. Next up, Doris Lessing - A Ripple from the Storm.

 

[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)
8/52 - Val McDermid - Still Life
9/52 - Patricia Highsmith - Carol
10/52 - Ruth Rendell - The Lake of Darkness
11/52 - Terry Pratchett - Witches Abroad
12/52 - Richard Osman - The Thursday Murder Club
13/52 - Stephen King - Later

14/52 - Yazuo Ishiguro - When We Were Orphans

 

[Pickman's model]

6. Alex Gough, Emperor's Axe
7. Alex Gough, Emperor's Spear
8. Barry Sadler, Casca 1: The Eternal Mercenary
9. Barry Sadler, Casca 11: The Legionaire
10. Barry Sadler, Casca 15: The Pirate
11. Alistair MacLean,The Satan Bug

12. Seán Daly, Ireland and the First International

 

[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
10/45 Katherine Rundell - Rooftoppers
11/45 Carrie Gibson - Empire's Crossroads: a History of the Carribbean from Columbus to the Present Day
12/45 Jonathan Safran Foer - Everything is Illuminated
13/45 Robert Jordan - A Crown of Swords
14/45 Albert Camus - The Stranger

15/45 Richard Osman - The Thursday Murder Club

Not at all the kind of thing I usually read but it was recommended, enormous fun.

 

[Pickman's model]

12. Seán Daly, Ireland and the First International

13. Anthony Sattin, Young Lawrence

 

[Fozzie Bear]

8/30 Sylvere Lotringer (ed) - Semiotext(e): The German Issue

Big anthology from the early 80s of arty philosophy and political stuff. Interesting bits about squatting movement especially and some OK stuff on the urban guerilla movements. More accessible than the Italy/Autonomia one. Also includes Guattari, Baudrillard, Virlio and them lot with varying degrees of impenetrability.

 

[butchersapron]

12 - Automation and the Future of Work - Aaron Benanav
13 - Critical Encounters: Capitalism, Democracy, Ideas - Wolfgang Streeck
14 - Unfinished Business: the politics of ‘dissident’ Irish republicanism - Marisa McGlinchey
15 - Ruling the Void: The Hollowing of Western Democracy - Peter Mair (re-read)
16 - Egress on Mourning: Melancholy and Mark Fisher - Matt Colquhoun