Never mind the virus here's the 2022 reading challenge thread

[marty21]

1/75. The Story of England - Michael Wood .
2/75 Broken Rails : How Privitisation Wrecked Britain's Railways - Christian Wolmar .
3/75 Black and British : A Forgotten History - David Olusoga.
4/75 Shackleton: A Biography - Ranulph Fiennes
5/75 The Secret Barrister: Stories of the law and how its broken - The Secret Barrister
6/75 The Nanny State Made Me : The Story of Britain & How to Save it. - Stuart Maconie
7/75 Conquistadors - Michael Wood.
8/75 Shadows Reel - CJ Box
9/75 Hope & Glory - Stuart Maconie
10/75 Killing Floor - Lee Child
11/75 Die Trying - Lee Child
12/75 Tripwire - Lee Child
13/75 The Visitor - Lee Child
14/75 Echo Burning - Lee Child
15/75 Without Fail - Lee Child
16/75 Persuader - Lee Child
17/75 The Enemy - Lee Child
18/75 One Shot - Lee Child
19/75 The Hard Way - Lee Child
20/75 Sing Backwards and Weep - Mark Lanegan
21/75 Bad Luck and Trouble - Lee Child
22/75 Nothing to Lose - Lee Child
23/75 Gone Tomorrow - Lee Child
24/75 61 Hours - Lee Child
25/75 Worth Dying For - Lee Child

 

[Signal 11]

8/10 - The Disordered Cosmos: A Journey into Dark Matter, Spacetime, & Dreams Deferred - Chanda Prescod-Weinstein

 

[PursuedByBears]

1/45 David Katz - People Funny Boy: the genius of Lee Scratch Perry
2/45 Onjali Q Rauf - The Star Outside My Window
3/45 Joe Abercrombie - The Trouble with Peace
4/45 P G Wodehouse - Something New
5/45 Thomas Harding - White Debt: the Demerara Uprising and Britain's legacy of slavery
6/45 Terry Pratchett - Men At Arms
7/45 Art Spiegelman - Maus
8/45 Andrea Levy - Small Island
9/45 Bex Hogan - Viper
10/45 Robert Jordan - Crossroads of Twilight
11/45 Katherine Applegate -The One and Only Ivan
12/45 Andrew Marr - A History of Modern Britain
13/45 Alan Moore & David Lloyd - V for Vendetta
14/45 Evan Ross Katz - Into Every Generation a Slayer is Born: how Buffy staked our hearts
15/45 Pete Brown - Man Walks into a Pub: a sociable history of beer
16/45 Brian Groom - Northerners: a history, from the ice age to the present day
17/45 Ellis Peters - A Morbid Taste for Bones (Cadfael #1)
18/45 Joe Abercrombie - The Wisdom of Crowds
19/45 Laurie Lee - Cider with Rosie
20/45 Laurie Lee - As I Walked Out One Midsummer Morning
21/45 Laurie Lee - A Moment of War
22/45 Laurie Lee - A Rose for Winter
23/45 Mark Lawrence - Prince of Thorns
24/45 Mark Lawrence - King of Thorns

25/45 T C Eglington & Simon Davis - Thistlebone

 

[krtek a houby]

1/19 Dead Man's Time - Peter James

2/19 2Stoned - Andrew Loog Oldham

3/19 Small Island - Andrea Levy

4/19 The Magic Labyrinth - Philip Jose Farmer

5/19 The Witch Elm - Tana French

6/19 Consider Phlebas - Iain M Banks

7/19 The Player of Games - Iain M Banks

8/19 I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings - Maya Angelou

9/19 The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay - Michael Chabon

10/19 The Black Echo - Michael Connelly

11/19 Who Do You Serve, Who Do You Protect? Police violence and resistance in the United States - various authors



12/19 5 Ho Chi Minh Trails - Dang Phong. Often fascinating (if a wee bit dry and academic - lots and lots names and numbers) read about the conflict and great victory from a North Vietnamese perspective.

 

[imposs1904]

1/52 In and Out by Mat Coward
2/52 And Away . . . by Bob Mortimer
3/52 In the Thick of It: The Private Diaries of a Minister by Alan Duncan
4/52 Black Teeth and a Brilliant Smile by Adelle Stripe
5/52 My Ears Are Bent by Joseph Mitchell
6/52 One Step Ahead by Duncan McKenzie
7/52 May God Forgive by Alan Parks
8/52 1982 Brazil: The Glorious Failure by Stuart Horsfield

9/52 Tracy Flick Can't Win by Tom Perrotta

 

[QueenOfGoths]

1. "The Thursday Murder Club" - Richard Osman.
2. "The Woman in the Window" - A. J. Finn.
3. "Snow" by John Banville
4. "The Lies You Told" - Harriet Tyce
5. "A Gift for the Dying" - MJ Arlidge
6. "One by One" - Ruth Ware
7. "The Platform Edge: Uncanny Tales of the Railways" - a British Library publication edited by Mike Ashley.
8. "The House of Ashes" - Stuart Neville
9. "Lies" - TM Logan.
10. "The Undiscovered Deaths of Grace McGill" - C. S. Robertson.
11. "I See You" - Clare Mackintosh
12. "The Seance" - John Harwood
13. "The Couple Next Door" - Shari Lapena
14. "American Dirt" -Jeanine Cummins

15. "Their Little Secret" - Mark Billingham. Solid, readable thriller

 

[hitmouse]

if anyone ever asks me who is the most prolific writer you've never heard of, I suspect I would answer Lee Child. I may have to put one on my list

There's a little part of my brain that always reads him as Leee Black Childers as well.

1/30 Taylor Jenkins Reid - The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo
2/30 Joan Didion - The White Album (re-read)
3/30 Saidiya Hartman - Wayward Lives, Beautiful Experiments
4/30 Joan Didion - After Henry (another re-read, first published in UK as Sentimental Journeys)
5/30 Flannery O'Connor - The Violent Bear It Away
6/30 Joan Didion - Play It As It Lays (re-read)
7/30 Iris Murdoch - Under the Net (re-read)
8/30 Joan Didion - South and West
9/30 Yaa Gyasi - Homegoing
10/30 Koshka Duff (ed) - Abolishing the Police
11/30 Jane Holgate - Arise
12/30 F. Scott Fitzgerald - The Great Gatsby (re-read)
13/30 12 Rules for What/Sam Moore and Alex Roberts - Post-Internet Far Right
14/30 Brad Logan & John Gentile - Architects of Self-Destruction: The Oral History of Leftover Crack
15/30 Emily Nagoski - Come As You Are
16/30 Barney Farmer - Park by the River
17/30 Nina Power - What Do Men Want?
18/30 Jean-Paul Sartre - Intimacy (re-read)
19/30 Agustín Guillamón - Insurrection: The Bloody Events of May 1937
20/30 Shirley Jackson - The Bird's Nest
21/30 James Baldwin - Giovanni's Room
22/30 Raymond Carver - What We Talk About When We Talk About Love
23/30 HP Lovecraft - The Call of Cthulu and Other Weird Stories (re-read)

24/30 Chris Whitaker - Tall Oaks

Decent pageturner, some of the characters were a bit ludicrously cliche but fun enough overall. Next up, starting
Jen Calleja - I'm Afraid That's All We've Got Time For

 

[pseudonarcissus]

2/30 Joan Didion - The White Album (re-read)
6/30 Joan Didion - Play It As It Lays (re-read)
7/30 Iris Murdoch - Under the Net (re-read)
12/30 F. Scott Fitzgerald - The Great Gatsby (re-read)
18/30 Jean-Paul Sartre - Intimacy (re-read)
23/30 HP Lovecraft - The Call of Cthulu and Other Weird Stories (re-read)

The re-reads…are they intentional…or like mine, where you get half way through and think it’s familiar?

 

[hitmouse]

The re-reads…are they intentional…or like mine, where you get half way through and think it’s familiar?

Oh yeah, they've been intentional. Although I'm still not totally clear on whether the Sartre was a total re-read or a 75% re-read, 25% new read, I thought I'd already read the whole thing but found a bookmark stuck in it that was definitely not at the end so who knows?

 

[BoatieBird]

1/52 - Sarah Waters - Fingersmith
2/52 - Claire Keegan - Small Things Like These
3/52 - Richard Osman - The Man Who Died Twice
4/52 - Truman Capote - Breakfast at Tiffany's
5/52 - Matt Haig - The Midnight Library
6/52 - Patricia Highsmith - A Dog's Ransom
7/52 - Claire Douglas - The Couple at No. 9
8/52 - Daniel Mason - The Piano Tuner
9/52 - Zadie Smith - On Beauty
10/52 - Stephen King & Richard Chizmar - Gwendy's Button Box (reread)
11/52 - Minette Walters - The Cellar
12/52 - Barbara Vine - The Chimney Sweeper's Boy (reread)
13/52 - Margaret Atwood - The Edible Woman
14/52 - Peter Swanson - Rules for Perfect Murders
15/52 - Patricia Lockwood - No One is Talking About This
16/52 - Sally Rooney - Beautiful World, Where Are You?
17/52 - Toni Morrison - Beloved
18/52 - Denise Mina - The Less Dead
19/52 - Richard Chizmar - Gwendy's Magic Feather
20/52 - Sarah Waters - The Night Watch
21/52 - Chibundu Onuzo - Sankofa
22/52 - Stephen King and Richard Chizmar - Gwendy's Final Task
23/52 - A A Milne - The Red House Mystery
24/52 - A M Homes - May We Be Forgiven
25/52 - Andrew Michael Hurley - Devil's Day
26/52 - Anne Tyler - Breathing Lessons
27/52 - Stephen King - Skeleton Crew

28/52 - Ruth Rendell - Portobello
29/52 - Willy Valutin - The Night Always Comes

 

[marty21]

1/75. The Story of England - Michael Wood .
2/75 Broken Rails : How Privitisation Wrecked Britain's Railways - Christian Wolmar .
3/75 Black and British : A Forgotten History - David Olusoga.
4/75 Shackleton: A Biography - Ranulph Fiennes
5/75 The Secret Barrister: Stories of the law and how its broken - The Secret Barrister
6/75 The Nanny State Made Me : The Story of Britain & How to Save it. - Stuart Maconie
7/75 Conquistadors - Michael Wood.
8/75 Shadows Reel - CJ Box
9/75 Hope & Glory - Stuart Maconie
10/75 Killing Floor - Lee Child
11/75 Die Trying - Lee Child
12/75 Tripwire - Lee Child
13/75 The Visitor - Lee Child
14/75 Echo Burning - Lee Child
15/75 Without Fail - Lee Child
16/75 Persuader - Lee Child
17/75 The Enemy - Lee Child
18/75 One Shot - Lee Child
19/75 The Hard Way - Lee Child
20/75 Sing Backwards and Weep - Mark Lanegan
21/75 Bad Luck and Trouble - Lee Child
22/75 Nothing to Lose - Lee Child
23/75 Gone Tomorrow - Lee Child
24/75 61 Hours - Lee Child
25/75 Worth Dying For - Lee Child
26/75 The Affair - Lee Child
27/75 The Plantagenets : The Kings Who Made England - Dan Jones

 

[nogojones]

1/45 Maya Angelou - Singin' and Swingin' and Gettin' Merry Like Christmas
2/45 Donna Tartt - The Goldfinch
3/45 Julia Buxton - The Political Economy of Narcotics
4/45 Sally Rooney - Beautiful World, Where Are You
5/45 Becky Chambers - Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet
6/45 Cindy Milstein - Taking Sides
7/45 Phillip K. Dick - The Transmigration of Timothy Archer
8/45 Jim Thompson - Recoil
9/45 Joseph Conrad - The Secret Agent
10/45 Ellen Meisksins Wood - Empire of Capital
11/45 Bernard Schweizer - Hating God: The Untold Story of Misotheism
12/45 Donna Tartt - The Little Friend
13/45 Arkady Martine - A Memory Called Empire
14/45 Joan Didion - Slouching Towards Bethlehem
15/45 Tayyib Salih - Season of Migration to the North
16/45 Arkady Martine - A Desolation Called Peace
17/45 Stacey M. Floyd (Ed.) - Liberation Theologies in the United States
18/45 Hew Lemmey - Red Tory: My Corbyn Chemsex Hell

19/45 Roldolfo Walsh - Operation Massacre

Investigative journalism about the botched execution of a bunch of innocent civilians during the Argentinian dictatorship. I don't know that much about this period of Argentinian history beyond the crimes against humanity commited by Andrew Lloyd- Webber, so it filled a few gaps.

 

[BoatieBird]

1/52 - Sarah Waters - Fingersmith
2/52 - Claire Keegan - Small Things Like These
3/52 - Richard Osman - The Man Who Died Twice
4/52 - Truman Capote - Breakfast at Tiffany's
5/52 - Matt Haig - The Midnight Library
6/52 - Patricia Highsmith - A Dog's Ransom
7/52 - Claire Douglas - The Couple at No. 9
8/52 - Daniel Mason - The Piano Tuner
9/52 - Zadie Smith - On Beauty
10/52 - Stephen King & Richard Chizmar - Gwendy's Button Box (reread)
11/52 - Minette Walters - The Cellar
12/52 - Barbara Vine - The Chimney Sweeper's Boy (reread)
13/52 - Margaret Atwood - The Edible Woman
14/52 - Peter Swanson - Rules for Perfect Murders
15/52 - Patricia Lockwood - No One is Talking About This
16/52 - Sally Rooney - Beautiful World, Where Are You?
17/52 - Toni Morrison - Beloved
18/52 - Denise Mina - The Less Dead
19/52 - Richard Chizmar - Gwendy's Magic Feather
20/52 - Sarah Waters - The Night Watch
21/52 - Chibundu Onuzo - Sankofa
22/52 - Stephen King and Richard Chizmar - Gwendy's Final Task
23/52 - A A Milne - The Red House Mystery
24/52 - A M Homes - May We Be Forgiven
25/52 - Andrew Michael Hurley - Devil's Day
26/52 - Anne Tyler - Breathing Lessons
27/52 - Stephen King - Skeleton Crew
28/52 - Ruth Rendell - Portobello
29/52 - Willy Valutin - The Night Always Comes

30/52 - Stephen King - The Langoliers

 

[colbhoy]

1/9 - Phantom by Jo Nesbo
2/9 - Shuggie Bain by Douglas Stuart
3/9 - Cold Killing by Luke Delaney

 

[inva]

1/20 Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë
2/20 Gentleman Overboard by Herbert Clyde Lewis
3/20 The Colonel's Wife by Rosa Liksom
4/20 Lolly Willowes by Sylvia Townsend Warner
5/20 Socialism and the Intelligentsia 1880-1914 edited by Carl Levy
6/20 Northanger Abbey by Jane Austen
7/20 Rizzio by Denise Mina
8/20 Naming Names by Victor S. Navasky
9/20 Marx on Money by Suzanne de Brunhoff
10/20 Real World by Natsuo Kirino
11/20 For Another Europe: A Class Analysis of European Economic Integration by Guglielmo Carchedi
12/20 The Attempt by Magdaléna Platzová
13/20 Theories of Surplus Value Part 1 by Karl Marx (reread)
I read this back in 2016 and then never started part 2, hopefully this time round I'll have more success. I always enjoy how much Marx hated Jean-Baptiste Say.

 

[imposs1904]

1/52 In and Out by Mat Coward
2/52 And Away . . . by Bob Mortimer
3/52 In the Thick of It: The Private Diaries of a Minister by Alan Duncan
4/52 Black Teeth and a Brilliant Smile by Adelle Stripe
5/52 My Ears Are Bent by Joseph Mitchell
6/52 One Step Ahead by Duncan McKenzie
7/52 May God Forgive by Alan Parks
8/52 1982 Brazil: The Glorious Failure by Stuart Horsfield
9/52 Tracy Flick Can't Win by Tom Perrotta

10/52 Scully by Alan Bleasdale (Reread)

First read this book over 35 years ago. Still one of the funniest (and saddest) books I've ever read.

 

[nogojones]

1/45 Maya Angelou - Singin' and Swingin' and Gettin' Merry Like Christmas
2/45 Donna Tartt - The Goldfinch
3/45 Julia Buxton - The Political Economy of Narcotics
4/45 Sally Rooney - Beautiful World, Where Are You
5/45 Becky Chambers - Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet
6/45 Cindy Milstein - Taking Sides
7/45 Phillip K. Dick - The Transmigration of Timothy Archer
8/45 Jim Thompson - Recoil
9/45 Joseph Conrad - The Secret Agent
10/45 Ellen Meisksins Wood - Empire of Capital
11/45 Bernard Schweizer - Hating God: The Untold Story of Misotheism
12/45 Donna Tartt - The Little Friend
13/45 Arkady Martine - A Memory Called Empire
14/45 Joan Didion - Slouching Towards Bethlehem
15/45 Tayyib Salih - Season of Migration to the North
16/45 Arkady Martine - A Desolation Called Peace
17/45 Stacey M. Floyd (Ed.) - Liberation Theologies in the United States
18/45 Hew Lemmey - Red Tory: My Corbyn Chemsex Hell
19/45 Roldolfo Walsh - Operation Massacre

20/45 Joan Didion - The White Album

I can only think of one friend who I believe is more cynical than me, but I think I'm going to have to take a break from Joan as she's in a whole other league.

21/45 Brian Manning - Aristocrats, Plebeians and Revolution in England 1640-1660

Reasonable look at the English revolution and the role of the "middling sorts"

 

[imposs1904]

1/52 In and Out by Mat Coward
2/52 And Away . . . by Bob Mortimer
3/52 In the Thick of It: The Private Diaries of a Minister by Alan Duncan
4/52 Black Teeth and a Brilliant Smile by Adelle Stripe
5/52 My Ears Are Bent by Joseph Mitchell
6/52 One Step Ahead by Duncan McKenzie
7/52 May God Forgive by Alan Parks
8/52 1982 Brazil: The Glorious Failure by Stuart Horsfield
9/52 Tracy Flick Can't Win by Tom Perrotta
10/52 Scully by Alan Bleasdale (ReRead)

11/52 Fierce Genius: Cruyff’s Year at Feyenoord by Andy Bollen

 

[marty21]

1/75. The Story of England - Michael Wood .
2/75 Broken Rails : How Privitisation Wrecked Britain's Railways - Christian Wolmar .
3/75 Black and British : A Forgotten History - David Olusoga.
4/75 Shackleton: A Biography - Ranulph Fiennes
5/75 The Secret Barrister: Stories of the law and how its broken - The Secret Barrister
6/75 The Nanny State Made Me : The Story of Britain & How to Save it. - Stuart Maconie
7/75 Conquistadors - Michael Wood.
8/75 Shadows Reel - CJ Box
9/75 Hope & Glory - Stuart Maconie
10/75 Killing Floor - Lee Child
11/75 Die Trying - Lee Child
12/75 Tripwire - Lee Child
13/75 The Visitor - Lee Child
14/75 Echo Burning - Lee Child
15/75 Without Fail - Lee Child
16/75 Persuader - Lee Child
17/75 The Enemy - Lee Child
18/75 One Shot - Lee Child
19/75 The Hard Way - Lee Child
20/75 Sing Backwards and Weep - Mark Lanegan
21/75 Bad Luck and Trouble - Lee Child
22/75 Nothing to Lose - Lee Child
23/75 Gone Tomorrow - Lee Child
24/75 61 Hours - Lee Child
25/75 Worth Dying For - Lee Child
26/75 The Affair - Lee Child
27/75 The Plantagenets : The Kings Who Made England - Dan Jones
28/75 A Wanted Man - Lee Child

 

[Biddlybee]

1/24 - Hope Not Fear - Hassan Akkad
2/24 - Revenge - Yoko Ogawa
3/24 - Men Who Hate Women - Laura Bates
4/24 - The Mad Women's Ball - Victoria Mas
5/24 - Open Water - Caleb Azumah Nelson
6/24 - The Shortest History of Germany - James Hawes

 

[nogojones]

1/45 Maya Angelou - Singin' and Swingin' and Gettin' Merry Like Christmas
2/45 Donna Tartt - The Goldfinch
3/45 Julia Buxton - The Political Economy of Narcotics
4/45 Sally Rooney - Beautiful World, Where Are You
5/45 Becky Chambers - Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet
6/45 Cindy Milstein - Taking Sides
7/45 Phillip K. Dick - The Transmigration of Timothy Archer
8/45 Jim Thompson - Recoil
9/45 Joseph Conrad - The Secret Agent
10/45 Ellen Meisksins Wood - Empire of Capital
11/45 Bernard Schweizer - Hating God: The Untold Story of Misotheism
12/45 Donna Tartt - The Little Friend
13/45 Arkady Martine - A Memory Called Empire
14/45 Joan Didion - Slouching Towards Bethlehem
15/45 Tayyib Salih - Season of Migration to the North
16/45 Arkady Martine - A Desolation Called Peace
17/45 Stacey M. Floyd (Ed.) - Liberation Theologies in the United States
18/45 Hew Lemmey - Red Tory: My Corbyn Chemsex Hell
19/45 Roldolfo Walsh - Operation Massacre
20/45 Joan Didion - The White Album
21/45 Brian Manning - Aristocrats, Plebeians and Revolution in England 1640-1660

22/45 Noel Ignatiev - Acceptable Men

Life in the steel mill seems pretty much the same everywhere. Lots of boredom and small acts of resistance and bloody mindedness.

 

[imposs1904]

1/52 In and Out by Mat Coward
2/52 And Away . . . by Bob Mortimer
3/52 In the Thick of It: The Private Diaries of a Minister by Alan Duncan
4/52 Black Teeth and a Brilliant Smile by Adelle Stripe
5/52 My Ears Are Bent by Joseph Mitchell
6/52 One Step Ahead by Duncan McKenzie
7/52 May God Forgive by Alan Parks
8/52 1982 Brazil: The Glorious Failure by Stuart Horsfield
9/52 Tracy Flick Can't Win by Tom Perrotta
10/52 Scully by Alan Bleasdale (ReRead)
11/52 Fierce Genius: Cruyff’s Year at Feyenoord by Andy Bollen

12/52 The Pressures of Life: Four Television Plays edited by Michael Marland

(From 1977. Playwrights include Barry Hines and Jeremy Seabrook. Another wee gem from the wonders of Archive.org )

 

[yield]

1/10 The Name of the Wind by Patrick Rothfuss.
2/10. The God is Not Willing (Witness, #1) by Steven Erikson
3/10. The Song of Achilles by Madeline Miller
4/10. Klara and the Sun by Kazuo Ishiguro.

5/10. Strumpet City by James Plunkett. Historical novel set around the time of the 1913 Dublin lock-out. Rightly compared to Joyce, Dickens and Tolstoy. My mate John gave me this a decade ago, one of the best I've ever read.

 

[marty21]

1/75. The Story of England - Michael Wood .
2/75 Broken Rails : How Privitisation Wrecked Britain's Railways - Christian Wolmar .
3/75 Black and British : A Forgotten History - David Olusoga.
4/75 Shackleton: A Biography - Ranulph Fiennes
5/75 The Secret Barrister: Stories of the law and how its broken - The Secret Barrister
6/75 The Nanny State Made Me : The Story of Britain & How to Save it. - Stuart Maconie
7/75 Conquistadors - Michael Wood.
8/75 Shadows Reel - CJ Box
9/75 Hope & Glory - Stuart Maconie
10/75 Killing Floor - Lee Child
11/75 Die Trying - Lee Child
12/75 Tripwire - Lee Child
13/75 The Visitor - Lee Child
14/75 Echo Burning - Lee Child
15/75 Without Fail - Lee Child
16/75 Persuader - Lee Child
17/75 The Enemy - Lee Child
18/75 One Shot - Lee Child
19/75 The Hard Way - Lee Child
20/75 Sing Backwards and Weep - Mark Lanegan
21/75 Bad Luck and Trouble - Lee Child
22/75 Nothing to Lose - Lee Child
23/75 Gone Tomorrow - Lee Child
24/75 61 Hours - Lee Child
25/75 Worth Dying For - Lee Child
26/75 The Affair - Lee Child
27/75 The Plantagenets : The Kings Who Made England - Dan Jones
28/75 A Wanted Man - Lee Child
29/75 Never Go Back - Lee Child

 

[BoatieBird]

1/52 - Sarah Waters - Fingersmith
2/52 - Claire Keegan - Small Things Like These
3/52 - Richard Osman - The Man Who Died Twice
4/52 - Truman Capote - Breakfast at Tiffany's
5/52 - Matt Haig - The Midnight Library
6/52 - Patricia Highsmith - A Dog's Ransom
7/52 - Claire Douglas - The Couple at No. 9
8/52 - Daniel Mason - The Piano Tuner
9/52 - Zadie Smith - On Beauty
10/52 - Stephen King & Richard Chizmar - Gwendy's Button Box (reread)
11/52 - Minette Walters - The Cellar
12/52 - Barbara Vine - The Chimney Sweeper's Boy (reread)
13/52 - Margaret Atwood - The Edible Woman
14/52 - Peter Swanson - Rules for Perfect Murders
15/52 - Patricia Lockwood - No One is Talking About This
16/52 - Sally Rooney - Beautiful World, Where Are You?
17/52 - Toni Morrison - Beloved
18/52 - Denise Mina - The Less Dead
19/52 - Richard Chizmar - Gwendy's Magic Feather
20/52 - Sarah Waters - The Night Watch
21/52 - Chibundu Onuzo - Sankofa
22/52 - Stephen King and Richard Chizmar - Gwendy's Final Task
23/52 - A A Milne - The Red House Mystery
24/52 - A M Homes - May We Be Forgiven
25/52 - Andrew Michael Hurley - Devil's Day
26/52 - Anne Tyler - Breathing Lessons
27/52 - Stephen King - Skeleton Crew
28/52 - Ruth Rendell - Portobello (reread)
29/52 - Willy Valutin - The Night Always Comes
30/52 - Stephen King - The Langoliers

31/52 - Elly Griffiths - The Crossing Places

 

[petee]

3/9, Maximov Bolshevism: Promises and Reality. a pamphlet, the beginning and end are a blaze of rhetoric, but the middle, where Maximov quotes Lenin against himself on the matter of bureaucracy,, is quite good.

4/9 Berkman, The Bolshevik Myth. starts slow, then becomes for the most part riveting. there's some hackneyed language and no little bit of ethnic stereotyping. but his detailed descriptions of checkist abuse of everybody and the appalling treatment (by all sides) of jews in particular presents a train wreck. the innumerable details of life in different places are fascinating. the language used about the petrograd strikers (e2a by bolshevik functionaries, not by berkman) is exactly that used by rightwingers today, and the tactics and propaganda against them is the stuff of capitalist dreams. the last two chapters are a thorough condemnation.

i liked this sentence: "The Tchekist cursed and swore in a manner that surpassed anything I had ever before heard in Russia, the variegated complexity of his oaths defying even approximate rendering into English."

 

[ska invita]

There's a little part of my brain that always reads him as Leee Black Childers as well.

1/30 Taylor Jenkins Reid - The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo
2/30 Joan Didion - The White Album (re-read)
3/30 Saidiya Hartman - Wayward Lives, Beautiful Experiments
4/30 Joan Didion - After Henry (another re-read, first published in UK as Sentimental Journeys)
5/30 Flannery O'Connor - The Violent Bear It Away
6/30 Joan Didion - Play It As It Lays (re-read)
7/30 Iris Murdoch - Under the Net (re-read)
8/30 Joan Didion - South and West
9/30 Yaa Gyasi - Homegoing
10/30 Koshka Duff (ed) - Abolishing the Police
11/30 Jane Holgate - Arise
12/30 F. Scott Fitzgerald - The Great Gatsby (re-read)
13/30 12 Rules for What/Sam Moore and Alex Roberts - Post-Internet Far Right
14/30 Brad Logan & John Gentile - Architects of Self-Destruction: The Oral History of Leftover Crack
15/30 Emily Nagoski - Come As You Are
16/30 Barney Farmer - Park by the River
17/30 Nina Power - What Do Men Want?
18/30 Jean-Paul Sartre - Intimacy (re-read)
19/30 Agustín Guillamón - Insurrection: The Bloody Events of May 1937
20/30 Shirley Jackson - The Bird's Nest
21/30 James Baldwin - Giovanni's Room
22/30 Raymond Carver - What We Talk About When We Talk About Love
23/30 HP Lovecraft - The Call of Cthulu and Other Weird Stories (re-read)

24/30 Chris Whitaker - Tall Oaks

Decent pageturner, some of the characters were a bit ludicrously cliche but fun enough overall. Next up, starting
Jen Calleja - I'm Afraid That's All We've Got Time For

What did you make of the Nina Power book?

 

[hitmouse]

22/45 Noel Ignatiev - Acceptable Men

Life in the steel mill seems pretty much the same everywhere. Lots of boredom and small acts of resistance and bloody mindedness.

Glad you managed to find a copy in the end!

What did you make of the Nina Power book?

Not a fan, really. Tried writing a wee mini-review of it upthread here:

I tried my best to approach this one in a spirit of reparative rather than paranoid reading (still never actually read Sedgwick though, in a paranoid way or otherwise). Dunno how successful I was though. It definitely stuck in my craw quite a bit that Power's discussions of incels, pick-up artists and the manosphere were framed through sympathetic documentaries and their own words, but any discussion of trans people was framed through Kathleen Stock and and Quillette articles about JK Rowling. Power takes a pretty upbeat and positive view overall, which is charming and refreshing in some places, and grating, or feels like you're reading a book by a small child, in others. Writing a book about relationships between men and women that treats misogyny as being basically not a big deal (as the index puts it: "misogyny, 4, 150; as unusual and extreme position, 6, 115-16") is perhaps an interesting thought experiment but I'm not sure how much it tells us about the actual state of things, I think that men as a group are perhaps less nice and more complex and interesting than Power makes them sound. She comes fairly close to suggesting that men don't really have any problems that can't be solved by Jordan Peterson telling them to tidy their rooms.

I feel like there was perhaps quite a bit of ambiguous stuff in it that could be read in a more generous or less generous way, and I tried to approach it in a positive spirit, but it's a bit hard trying to get her the benefit of the doubt nowadays. It's probably not a book that would read very well in light of recent news from the US, but then again it's probably hard to find a week when you wouldn't get a news story of some kind reminding you that misogyny still exists.

 

[RedRedRose]

1. David Graeber and David Wengrow - The Dawn of Everything

Any good?

 

[hitmouse]

1/30 Taylor Jenkins Reid - The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo
2/30 Joan Didion - The White Album (re-read)
3/30 Saidiya Hartman - Wayward Lives, Beautiful Experiments
4/30 Joan Didion - After Henry (another re-read, first published in UK as Sentimental Journeys)
5/30 Flannery O'Connor - The Violent Bear It Away
6/30 Joan Didion - Play It As It Lays (re-read)
7/30 Iris Murdoch - Under the Net (re-read)
8/30 Joan Didion - South and West
9/30 Yaa Gyasi - Homegoing
10/30 Koshka Duff (ed) - Abolishing the Police
11/30 Jane Holgate - Arise
12/30 F. Scott Fitzgerald - The Great Gatsby (re-read)
13/30 12 Rules for What/Sam Moore and Alex Roberts - Post-Internet Far Right
14/30 Brad Logan & John Gentile - Architects of Self-Destruction: The Oral History of Leftover Crack
15/30 Emily Nagoski - Come As You Are
16/30 Barney Farmer - Park by the River
17/30 Nina Power - What Do Men Want?
18/30 Jean-Paul Sartre - Intimacy (re-read)
19/30 Agustín Guillamón - Insurrection: The Bloody Events of May 1937
20/30 Shirley Jackson - The Bird's Nest
21/30 James Baldwin - Giovanni's Room
22/30 Raymond Carver - What We Talk About When We Talk About Love
23/30 HP Lovecraft - The Call of Cthulu and Other Weird Stories (re-read)
24/30 Chris Whitaker - Tall Oaks

25/30 Jen Calleja - I'm Afraid That's All We've Got Time For

Interesting book, I can't honestly say I loved it, perhaps a bit too clever for me in parts, but it definitely gives you a sense of glimpsing a unique mind at work. Includes some short stories that first appeared, at least in part, as (post-?)punk songs. There's a bit of very deliberate nodding to influences - one story has a ship called the Miranda July, another opens with the protagonist mentioning Leonora Carrington - which some people might find grating but I didn't mind. Now starting on:

Hanif Abdurraqib - They Can't Kill Us Until They Kill Us

Mostly writings about pop culture, mostly music, but the sort of writing that's equally about life, death, being Black in the age of Trump and Black Lives Matter. A lot of the music covered is stuff that I either have no strong feelings about (Chance the Rapper, Carly Rae Jepsen), or find incredibly dull and annoying (Fall Out Boy, My Chemical Romance, Bruce Springsteen), but the writing's good enough that it doesn't matter. Recommended if you don't mind a bit of sincerity.