it's the all-singing all-dancing 2018 reading challenge thread

[iona]

Also, not technically within the remit of the thread but another reading goal is to read at least one article from my "to read" bookmarks each month.

January: Some Thoughts on Language in Science Fiction - David I. Masson

 

[Orang Utan]

1/60 Michael Gillard & Laurie Flynn - Untouchables: Dirty Cops, Bent Justice & Racism in Scotland Yard
)
2/60 Ted Hughes - Crow: From The Life And Songs Of The Crow
3/60 Max Porter - Grief Is The Thing With Feathers

 

[marty21]

1/76 The Thirst - Jo Nesbo
2/76 Alt-America : The Rise of the Radical Right in the Age of Trump. David Neiwert
3/76 Pursuit of Honour - Vince Flynn
4/76 American Assassin - Vince Flynn
5/76 Ardennes 1944 - Anthony Beevor
6/76 The Last Nazi - Andrew Turpin
7/76 The Old Bridge - Andrew Turpin

*****
8/76 Surviving the Evacuation : Book 12 Britain's End . - Frank Tayell.

 

[Beats & Pieces]

30. Shamela - Henry Fielding

 

[Me76]

1/50 Naturally Gifted, Lisa M Hawkins
2/50 Cold Lake, Jeff Carson
3/50 Twilight, Stephenie Meyer

Only read this because I got a google offer on selected books at 99p. My OH bought me the DVDs randomly (off list) about 6 years ago and I got into them in a weird 'I dislike everyone but need to keep watching for the story' type of thing.

I still think the characters are mostly twats but it wasn't a bad read. Won't do the others unless I get them free or on offer though.

 

[BoatieBird]

1/65 - Chinua Achebe - Things Fall Apart
2/65 - Emily Bronte - Wuthering Heights
3/65 - Ruth Rendell - An Unkindness of Ravens
4/65 - Stephen King - Firestarter (1/10)
5/65 - Ruth Rendell - The Veiled One
6/65 - Joanna Cannon - The Trouble With Goats and Sheep
7/65 - Jerome K. Jerome - Three Men in a Boat

8/65 - Ruth Rendell - Kissing the Gunner's Daughter

 

[PursuedByBears]

1/30 Stieg Larsson - The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest
2/30 China Miéville - October: The Story of the Russian Revolution
3/30 Michael Wolff - Fire and Fury: Inside the Trump White House
4/30 Philip Reeve - Mortal Engines
5/30 David Peace - Red Riding 1974

6/30 William Wordsworth - Selected Poems (ed. Stephen Logan)

 

[Pickman's model]

1/50 david lightfoot, "winterman's company"

2/50 michael connelly, "the late show"

 

[Voley]

1/30 The Bottom Corner - Nige Tassell
2/30 Long Road From Jarrow - Stuart Maconie
3/30 Withnail And I - Bruce Robinson
4/30 Tschick - Wolfgang Herndorff

5/30 Lonely Boy: Tales From A Sex Pistol – Steve Jones

“Warts and all” doesn’t even come close to describing this. Alcoholism, theft, heroin addiction, robbery, violence, nicking stuff, child abuse, pilfering, voyeurism, burglary, pillage, death. And, almost incidentally, being the guitarist in a band who made one of the greatest albums of all time. Some of this isn’t easy to read, some of it makes you think he’s a prick of the first order, some of it’s funny, some of it’s sad. It’s got the lot. Did I enjoy it? Yes. And no. And I don’t know. Even when he’s describing stuff that shows him in a really bad light, he’s brutally honest, and weirdly endearing for that. And then abhorrent again. Often in the space of a sentence. I heartily recommend it. Avoid it like the plague.​

 

[imposs1904]

1/25 Blood Sympathy by Reginald Hill (Reread)
2/25 Men in White Suits: Liverpool FC in the 1990s - The Players' Stories by Simon Hughes

3/25 The Same Man: George Orwell and Evelyn Waugh in Love and War by David Lebedoff

 

[colbhoy]

01/10 - Live by Night by Dennis Lehane
02/10 - The Woodcutter by Reginald Hill

 

[Beats & Pieces]

31. The Commodore - Patrick O'Brian

 

[Pickman's model]

2/50 michael connelly, "the late show"

3/50 john burningham, "cannonball simp"

 

[Smokeandsteam]

1/39 High/Perchard (Eds) - The Deindustrialized World
2/39 Jameson. Fredric - Postmodernism, or, the cultural logic of late capitalism
3/39 Gest, Justin - The new minority: White working class poliics in an age of immigration and inequality
4/39 Hall, David - Working Lives: the forgotten voices of Britain's post war working class
5/39 Katznelson, Ira - City Trenches: Urban politics and the patterning of class in the US

 

[QueenOfGoths]

1. "The Last 10 Seconds" - Simon Kernick. Fast pased thriller that loses impetus a bit before the end

 

[Plumdaff]

1/25 A Horse Walks Into A Bar by David Grossman
2/25 Fire and Fury by Michael Wolff
3/25 The Queen of the Tambourine by Jane Gardam
4/25 Stop Walking On Eggshells by Paul T Mason (no, not that Paul Mason) and Randi Kreger

5/25 Everywoman by Jess Phillips. My book group picked this, it wasn't my choice. Ill thought out, shallow politics; astonishing hypocrisy; poorly written and dreadfully narrated to boot. I really tried, given as it was a book club pick, to be fair to her, and I finished the book convinced my loathing was entirely reasonable. I can only be pleased I got it free on an Audible trial.

 

[Fozzie Bear]

1/30 Fyodor Dostoyevsky - The Idiot
2/30 Cyrus Bozorgmehr - Once Upon a Time in Shaolin: The Untold Story of Wu-Tang Clan's Million Dollar Secret Album, the Devaluation of Music, and America's New Public Enemy No. 1
3/30 Gary Budden - Hollow Shores

4/30 Chris Kraus - After Kathy Acker: A Biography

Acker's talent as a writer of transgressive experimental fiction is perhaps only exceeded by her capacity to be irritating as a person.

 

[Ptolemy]

1/25. L'Assommoir - Émile Zola.
2/25. La Bête humaine - Émile Zola.
3/25. Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert.
4/25. Jane Eyre - Charlotte Brontë.

 

[gawkrodger]

1) Wolff - Fire and Fury
2) Feigenbaum - Tear Gas - pleasently surprised. Very much enjoyed
3) Mark Fisher - The Weird and the Eerie
4) Kilcullen - Blood Year: Islamic State and the failures of the war on terror
5) JG Ballard - The Drowned World
6) Geoff Manaugh - A Burglar's Guide to the City

 

[marty21]

1/76 The Thirst - Jo Nesbo
2/76 Alt-America : The Rise of the Radical Right in the Age of Trump. David Neiwert
3/76 Pursuit of Honour - Vince Flynn
4/76 American Assassin - Vince Flynn
5/76 Ardennes 1944 - Anthony Beevor
6/76 The Last Nazi - Andrew Turpin
7/76 The Old Bridge - Andrew Turpin
8/76 Surviving the Evacuation : Book 12 Britain's End . - Frank Tayell.

**********

9/76 The Late Show - Michael Connelly

 

[nogojones]

1/40 - Catherynne Valente - Deathless
2/40 - Robert Louis Wilken - The First Thousand Years: A Global History of Christianity
3/40 - Chester Himes - Cotton Comes to Harlem

4/40 - Zadie Smith - White Teeth

 

[BoatieBird]

1/65 - Chinua Achebe - Things Fall Apart
2/65 - Emily Bronte - Wuthering Heights
3/65 - Ruth Rendell - An Unkindness of Ravens
4/65 - Stephen King - Firestarter (1/10)
5/65 - Ruth Rendell - The Veiled One
6/65 - Joanna Cannon - The Trouble With Goats and Sheep
7/65 - Jerome K. Jerome - Three Men in a Boat
8/65 - Ruth Rendell - Kissing the Gunner's Daughter

9/65 - Donna Tartt - The Secret History (2/10)

 

[kropotkin]

1. The Book of Lost Things - John Connolly
2. The Fifth Season - N. K. Jemisin
3. The Brothers Ashkenazi - I. J. Singer
4. Chronicle of a Death Foretold- Gabriel Garcia Marquez
5. The Origin of Capitalism: A Longer View- Ellen Meiksins Wood
6. ‎ Burial Rights- Hannah Kent
7. ‎ Strike! - Jeremy Brecher
8. ‎ With the End in Mind- Dying, Death and Wisdom in an Age of Denial - Kathryn Mannix
9. ‎Hillbilly Eligy - J. D. Vance
10. ‎ The Golden Age- John C. Wright
11. ‎ American Pastoral- Philip Roth

 

[butchersapron]

11 - Guillaume Faye and The Battle of Europe - Michael O' Meara.
12 - Music, Youth and International Links in Post-War British Fascism: The Transformation of Extremism - Ryan Shaffer
13 - Social Reproduction Theory: Remapping Class, Recentering Oppression - Edited by Tithi Bhattacharya
14 - The Origin of the Jews: The Quest for Roots in a Rootless Age - Steven Weitzman
15 - Tomorrow Belongs to Us: The British Far Right since 1967 - Edited by Nigel Copsey, Matthew Worley
16 - Perry Anderson, Marxism and the New Left - Paul Blackledge

 

[ringo]

The Origin of the Jews: The Quest for Roots in a Rootless Age - Steven Weitzman

Any good?

 

[butchersapron]

Any good?

It's a bit of a misleading title really - it's not actually an investigation into the origins of the jews but an investigation of the idea of origins using the jews as an example. So basically it covers different approaches - paleolingustics, constructivism vs primordialism (i.e the idea of the jews as a modern invented tradition vs some millenia old 'thing'), hybridity (i.e did 'the jews' only come about via assimilation of greek culture post alexander, or possibly as a reverse community self-defence mechanism against the sea peoples), the genetic search, various different theories of ethnogenesis, freud's mad theory of moses being murdered and the resultant jewish history being an attempt at psychological repression via strict ritual.

It's most def not a history style book in any way. I found it very interesting despite not being the book i expected and pointed the way for some further reading.

 

[ringo]

It's a bit of a misleading title really - it's not actually an investigation into the origins of the jews but an investigation of the idea of origins using the jews as an example.

Cheers, not sure if that makes me want to read it or not
I've had this for a few years and not started it yet, maybe I'll have a go at this first

 

[butchersapron]

Cheers, not sure if that makes me want to read it or not
I've had this for a few years and not started it yet, maybe I'll have a go at this first
View attachment 127075

Yes, i was expecting an updated version of that sort of thing to be honest.

 

[billy_bob]

1/50 Christopher Moore - Lamb: The Gospel According to Biff, Christ's Childhood Pal
2/50 László Krasznahorkai - Satantango
3/50 Dennis Baron - A Better Pencil: Readers, Writers and the Digital Revolution
4/50 Mark Twain - The Adventures of Tom Sawyer
5/50 Mark Twain - Adventures of Huckleberry Fin
6/50 Matt Sewell - A Charm of Goldfinches
7/50 Melissa Mohr - Holy Sh*t: A Brief History of Swearing

 

[BoatieBird]

1/65 - Chinua Achebe - Things Fall Apart
2/65 - Emily Bronte - Wuthering Heights
3/65 - Ruth Rendell - An Unkindness of Ravens
4/65 - Stephen King - Firestarter (1/10)
5/65 - Ruth Rendell - The Veiled One
6/65 - Joanna Cannon - The Trouble With Goats and Sheep
7/65 - Jerome K. Jerome - Three Men in a Boat
8/65 - Ruth Rendell - Kissing the Gunner's Daughter
9/65 - Donna Tartt - The Secret History (2/10)

10/65 - Jon McGregor - Reservoir 13

It's been on my list since you said how much you enjoyed it last year May Kasahara. I loved the rhythm and the (extra)ordinariness of it.
Beautiful.