eyes down for a full house reading challenge thread 2021

[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
6/50 - Mythos - Stephen Fry
7/50 A girl in exile - Ismail Kadare
8/50 A walkers guide to outdoor clues and signs - Tristan Gooley
9/50 An offer you can't refuse - Jill Mansell
10/50 Hell's Corner - David Baldacci
11/50 The green mile - Stephen King
12/50 84k - Claire North
13/50 - the book of dust - Philip pullman

14/50 The Thursday Murder Club - Richard Osman
15/50 The Story of English in 100 words - David Crystal

 

[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
12/30 Doris Lessing - A Ripple from the Storm
13/30 Notes From Below - From the Workplace
14/30 Suhaiymah Manzoor-Khan - Postcolonial Banter

Poetry books
Are a rip-off
You're just paying for
A bunch of line breaks.

As you'd expect with a collection from a poet very early in their career, the quality's a bit variable, and there's certainly bits that can be a bit clunkily jargon-y, or earnest and affirmative in a way that doesn't really do much for me, but when it slaps it slaps. I feel like I've encountered "A Prayer For Those who Jeer at the Death of a Baby..." somewhere before, but absolutely no idea where, but that one's great. Now starting a collection of E.M. Forster short stories.

 

[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 Worth Killing For" Peter Swanson
6. "Fellside" - M. R. Carey
7. "The Devil and the Dark Water" - Stuart Turton
8. "In the Dark, Dark Wood" - Ruth Ware
9."Cry Baby" - Mark Billingham
10. "Little Disasters" - Sarah Vaughan

11. "A Song for the Dark Times" - Ian Rankin. Excellent as usual.

 

[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.
5/25. Jojolion - Araki Hirohiko.

I've read all the chapters of this ongoing series that have been released to date, so I'm choosing to count it, even though it likely won't be finished for a couple of years.

 

[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 Generation X: Tales for an Accelerated Culture - Douglas Coupland
4/29 London's Pall Mall Clubs - David Palfreyman
5/29 The Century of Revolution - Christopher Hill

6/29 Outline - Rachel Cusk

Interesting combination of a very pared down, cool detached style of writing to recount a series of heightened (overloaded?) encounters with other characters. I liked the style but ultimately didn’t believe in the characters.

 

[Biddlybee]

1/20 - Foxglove Summer - Ben Aaronovitch
2/20 - The Tiger in the Well - Philip Pullman
3/20 - Love and Obstacles - Aleksandar Hemon
4/20 - The Bees - Laline Paull
5/20 - The Radium Girls - Kate Moore (A)
6/20 - Hood Feminism - Mikki Kendall
7/20 - Many Different Kinds of Love - Michael Rosen (A)
8/20 - Full Tilt - Dervla Murphy (A)

 

[Me76]

1/40 Alternate Lifestyles, Lisa M Hawkins
2/40 Focused and Challenged, Lisa M Hawkins
3/40 It Takes Blood and Guts, Skin and Lucy O'brien
4/40 Naturally Gifted, Lisa M Hawkins
5/40 Unearthly Host, Lisa M Hawkins.
6/40 Later, Stephen King
7/40 Mom Boss, Hilary Grossman
8/40 The Silent House, Nell Patterson
9/40 Logging Off, Nick Spalding

 

[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
16/45 Andre Gide - The Vatican Cellars
17/45 Terry Pratchett - Lords and Ladies

18/45 Robert Jordan - The Path of Daggers

 

[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
6/24 - 20th Century Ghosts by Joe Hill
7/24 - Ramble Book by Adam Buxton
8/24 - Volcano Adventure by Willard Price

 

[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
15/52 - Stephen King - 'Salem's Lot

16/52 - Robert Galbraith - Troubled Blood

 

[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

8/30 The East was Read: Socialist Culture in the Third World - Vijay Prasad (editor)

9/30 The Chaplin Machine: Slapstick, Fordism and the Communist Avant-Garde - Owen Hatherley

10/30 Red Plenty: Inside the Fifties' Soviet Dream - Francis Spufford

 

[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 Worth Killing For" Peter Swanson
6. "Fellside" - M. R. Carey
7. "The Devil and the Dark Water" - Stuart Turton
8. "In the Dark, Dark Wood" - Ruth Ware
9."Cry Baby" - Mark Billingham
10. "Little Disasters" - Sarah Vaughan
11. "A Song for the Dark Times" - Ian Rankin

12. "The Last Thing to Burn" - Will Dean. A very claustrophobic, taut and at times distressing thriller. A very good read but difficult to describe it as enjoyable

 

[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
15/52 - Stephen King - 'Salem's Lot
16/52 - Robert Galbraith - Troubled Blood

17/52 - Ian McEwan - Nutshell

 

[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
12/30 Doris Lessing - A Ripple from the Storm
13/30 Notes From Below - From the Workplace
14/30 Suhaiymah Manzoor-Khan - Postcolonial Banter
15/30 EM Forster - Collected Short Stories

Went into this one with pretty much no expectations whatsoever beyond just knowing that Forster was a part of literature that I'd never really encountered, ended up really liking it. Was not prepared for quite how strange he is, sort of proto-psychedelic in places. I reckon that an argument could be made that at least a few of the stories, like The Story of a Panic and Other Kingdom, count as folk horror. Dunno if anyone's familiar with those stories and has an opinion on that?
The other one I was really really impressed by was The Machine Stops, a sort of almost anarcho-primmo feeling sci-fi dystopia that felt astonishingly prescient for 1909. I suppose predicting Zoom is hardly unique, but he comes pretty close to predicting the specific evil of notifications as well. In some ways it feels like it should be as well-known as like Orwell and Huxley, and looking it up I see it has had a bit of a revival of interest of late, like Oliver Sacks in the New Yorker and this on the BBC.
Next up is Doris Lessing - Landlocked

 

[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
6/24 - 20th Century Ghosts by Joe Hill
7/24 - Ramble Book by Adam Buxton
8/24 - Volcano Adventure by Willard Price
9/24 - Creepshow by Stephen King

 

[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
15/52 - Stephen King - 'Salem's Lot
16/52 - Robert Galbraith - Troubled Blood
17/52 - Ian McEwan - Nutshell

18/52 - Joe Hill - Full Throttle

 

[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
17/69 Felix Weinberg - Boy 30529: A Memoir
18/69 Jon McGregor - This Isn't the Sort of Thing That Happens to Someone Like You
19/69 Colson Whitehead - The Nickel Boys

20/69 Atul Gawande - The Checklist Manifesto
21/69 Jeremy Hardy - Jeremy Hardy Speaks Volumes
22/69 David Szalay - All That Man Is

 

[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
14/45 Salam Pax - The Baghad Blog
15/45 Silvia Federici - Re-Enchanting the World: Feminism and the Politics of the Commons
16/45 Jun'ichirō Tanizaki - A Cat, A Man and Two Women

17/45 Philip K. Dick - Valis
18/45 Voltaire - Everyman Selected Writings

 

[braindancer]

1/20 - The Shipping News - E. Annie Proulx
2/20 - The Testaments - Margaret Atwood
3/20 - The Passage - Justin Cronin
4/20 - The Twelve - Justin Cronin
5/20 - The City of Mirrors - Justin Cronin

 

[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

7. Mhairi McFarlane - Last Night. I have spent the whole of today reading this in one sitting, a lovely entertaining romantic story about friends and grief. Perfect hangover Saturday entertainment

 

[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.
5/25. Jojolion - Araki Hirohiko.
6/25. Stardust Crusaders - Araki Hirohiko.

 

[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
6/24 - 20th Century Ghosts by Joe Hill
7/24 - Ramble Book by Adam Buxton
8/24 - Volcano Adventure by Willard Price
9/24 - Creepshow by Stephen King
10/24 - Jaws by Peter Benchley (reread)

 

[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
16/45 Andre Gide - The Vatican Cellars
17/45 Terry Pratchett - Lords and Ladies
18/45 Robert Jordan - The Path of Daggers

19/45 A N Wilson - After the Victorians: the Decline of Britain in the World

 

[Fozzie Bear]

10/30 Sarah Schulman - The Gentrification of the Mind: Witness to a Lost Imagination

Engaging memoir and look into the gentrification of Manhattan that followed the AIDS/HIV crisis.

 

[hitmouse]

10/30 Sarah Schulman - The Gentrification of the Mind: Witness to a Lost Imagination

Engaging memoir and look into the gentrification of Manhattan that followed the AIDS/HIV crisis.

Oh snap, I'm planning to start reading a Schulman once I eventually get through Landlocked.

 

[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
6/50 Elena Ferrante - The Days of Abandonment
7/50 Elena Ferrante - Those Who Leave and Those Who Stay
8/50 Elena Ferrante - The Story of the Lost Child

 

[imposs1904]

1/35 Dancing in the Dark by Stuart M. Kaminsky
2/35 Adolf Hitler: My Part in His Downfall by Spike Milligan (ReRead)
3/35 Wild Pork and Watercress by Barry Crump
4/35 Who Goes There? by John Wood Campbell Jr.
5/35 Beating the Fascists: The Untold Story of Anti-Fascist Action by Sean Birchall (ReRead)
6/35 Leighton Rees On Darts edited by Dave Lanning
7/35 The Left Left Behind by Terry Bisson
8/35 Bobby Dazzler: My Story by Bobby George

9/35 A Season in Sinji by J. L. Carr

If you liked Carr's best known work, 'A Month in the Country', check this one out. Of all his other novels, this one is the closest in tone to 'A Month in the Country'. Loved it.

 

[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 Generation X: Tales for an Accelerated Culture - Douglas Coupland
4/29 London's Pall Mall Clubs - David Palfreyman
5/29 The Century of Revolution - Christopher Hill
6/29 Outline - Rachel Cusk

7/29 Universities and Colleges A Very Short Introduction - Palfreyman and Temple
8/29 Moonraker - Ian Fleming

I thought I had read all of the Bond books as a teen but have no memory of this one (unfortunately I do remember the film). It's set entirely in England (London and Kent) and is nicely plotted. Fleming's style is better than I remember.

 

[Biddlybee]

1/20 - Foxglove Summer - Ben Aaronovitch
2/20 - The Tiger in the Well - Philip Pullman
3/20 - Love and Obstacles - Aleksandar Hemon
4/20 - The Bees - Laline Paull
5/20 - The Radium Girls - Kate Moore (A)
6/20 - Hood Feminism - Mikki Kendall
7/20 - Many Different Kinds of Love - Michael Rosen (A)
8/20 - Full Tilt - Dervla Murphy (A)
9/20 - Empire's Endgame: Racism and the British State - Bhattacharyya, Elliott-Cooper, Balani, Nişancıoğlu, Koram, Gebrial, El-Enany, De Noronha

 

[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
6/24 - 20th Century Ghosts by Joe Hill
7/24 - Ramble Book by Adam Buxton
8/24 - Volcano Adventure by Willard Price
9/24 - Creepshow by Stephen King
10/24 - Jaws by Peter Benchley (reread)
11/24 - What if? Serious Scientific Answers to Absurd Hypothetical Questions by Randall Monroe