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

[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

 

[ginger_syn]

5/9
A Memory of Light, book 14 of The Wheel of Time, Robert Jordan and Brandon Sanderson.
Its been very satisfying to read the set over the last three months after the first time round took decades

 

[marty21]

1. The Story of England - Michael Wood .
2. Broken Rails : How Privitisation Wrecked Britain's Railways - Christian Wolmar .
3. Black and British : A Forgotten History - David Olusoga.

 

[Saffy]

3/20 The Sleeping and the Dead - Ann Cleeves.

 

[Me76]

1/40 Nick Hornby, Just Like You
2/40 Patrick Gale, A Place Called Winter
3/40 Paul Cleave, Blood Men - 99p thriller. Pretty good for that genre.
4/40 Jami Attenberg, The Middlesteins - nice Jewish American family drama
5/40 Matt Haig, the Midnight Library - Very good. Totally predictable and not really original at all, but very good.

 

[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
Draws you in with familiarity and then takes a totally unexpected and brilliant turn without for a second feeling contrived. One of the best novels I've read in a long time.

 

[belboid]

4/20 Lolly Willowes by Sylvia Townsend Warner
Draws you in with familiarity and then takes a totally unexpected and brilliant turn without for a second feeling contrived. One of the best novels I've read in a long time.

I absolutely loved that when I read it a couple of years back. The first chapter is just quite charming, right up until the moment it makes you go 'whaaaaaaaaat?!' Magnifico.

 

[inva]

I absolutely loved that when I read it a couple of years back. The first chapter is just quite charming, right up until the moment it makes you go 'whaaaaaaaaat?!' Magnifico.

Yes I'm pretty sure I would have enjoyed it if it'd just stayed like the opening suggests and then where it goes takes it to totally another level.
Have you read any others by her? I sort of want to read everything right away now but will have to resist.

 

[pseudonarcissus]

4/12 To the End of the World: Travels with Oscar Wilde - Rupert Everett

He’s a good writer..I suppose in need to find a way to watch the film now (The Happy Prince)

3/12 White on Black on White - Coleman Dowell
2/12 The Charterhouse of Parma - Stendhal
1/12 The Shortest History of Germany - James Hawes

 

[belboid]

Yes I'm pretty sure I would have enjoyed it if it'd just stayed like the opening suggests and then where it goes takes it to totally another level.
Have you read any others by her? I sort of want to read everything right away now but will have to resist.

I haven’t, but mrsb recomends Kingdom of Elfin and the short story collection The Cats Cradle.

 

[inva]

I haven’t, but mrsb recomends Kingdom of Elfin and the short story collection The Cats Cradle.

Thanks, I'll add them to my list

 

[imposs1904]

1/52 In and Out by Mat Coward

 

[shifting gears]

1/26 - Michael Moorcock - The Whispering Swarm
2/26 - Albert Camus - The Outsider
3/26 - Douglas Stuart - Shuggie Bain

4/26 - Edna O’Brien - Girl

Vivid and gut-wrenching imagining of a schoolgirl’s capture by Boko Haram.

 

[nogojones]

1/45 Maya Angelou - Singin' and Swingin' and Gettin' Merry Like Christmas

2/45 Donna Tartt - The Goldfinch

Great book, really knows how to tell a good tale.

 

[QueenOfGoths]

1. "The Thursday Murder Club" - Richard Osman.
2. "The Woman in the Window" - A. J. Finn.

3. "Snow" by John Banville. Beautifully written, like a cold, sharp knife. Took me a while to read but probably because I often read too fast and I couldn't with this.

 

[Biddlybee]

1/24 - Hope Not Fear - Hassan Akkad

 

[marty21]

1. The Story of England - Michael Wood .
2. Broken Rails : How Privitisation Wrecked Britain's Railways - Christian Wolmar .
3. Black and British : A Forgotten History - David Olusoga.
4. Shackleton: A Biography - Ranulph Fiennes

 

[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

 

[imposs1904]

1/52 In and Out by Mat Coward

2/52 And Away . . . by Bob Mortimer

I've never been the biggest fan of Reeves and Mortimer, but this was lovely.

 

[krtek a houby]

1/19 Dead Man's Time - Peter James

Aspirational cops in Brighton, Irish gangsters from NYC. Entertaining rubbish from a seemingly posh conservative type.

2/19 2Stoned - Andrew Loog Oldham

An awful struggle for the first 70 or 80 pages. But eventually got dragged into it. ALO cracks on about the Stones, addiction, bla bla bla. Other heads and folk from the times make an appearance, and there's some well dodgy anecdotes and allegations, not to mention a sprinkling of casual misogyny and bigotry. Ends on a strangely uplifiting note with the Super Furry Animals, of all people.

3/ Small Island - Andrea Levy

Magnificent WW2 and Windrush tale of several intertwined lives set in Jamaica and England. Moving, funny, ugly and would recommend.

 

[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

 

[Saffy]

What did you think of The Midnight Library BoatieBird?

 

[BoatieBird]

What did you think of The Midnight Library BoatieBird?

I enjoyed it, as Me76 said, it was fairly predictable, but it was a nice gentle read.
Made me think about the decisions I'd made in the life and how things might have been different.

 

[smmudge]

3/9 Pride & Prejudice

 

[Smokeandsteam]

1/39 - Mark Andrews: Paint My Name in Black and Gold
2/39 - Allan Glenn: Stuart Adamson: Through a Big Country
3/39 - Len McCluskey: Why You Should be a Trade Unionist
4/39 - Dick Hebidge: Subculture: The meaning of style
5/39 - Walter Benjamin: Illuminations

Odd collection of essays but immersive on time, space, the shock of the urban/industrial and culture

 

[hitmouse]

1/26 - Michael Moorcock - The Whispering Swarm
2/26 - Albert Camus - The Outsider
3/26 - Douglas Stuart - Shuggie Bain

4/26 - Edna O’Brien - Girl

Vivid and gut-wrenching imagining of a schoolgirl’s capture by Boko Haram.

Wow, I did not know she was still writing.

 

[May Kasahara]

1. Glen Duncan - I, Lucifer. Hallucinogenic, hilarious brilliance.

 

[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. Excellent, very readable thriller

 

[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

Absolutely brilliant. Really made me think about the essential challenges of writing history from below, how (if?) it's possible to give a voice to those who've been excluded from traditional historical narratives/archives without just co-opting them into the historian's favoured story. Very fresh approach to writing history, and some wonderful bits of prose. Covers all the most important themes: shagging, love, riots and dancing. Highly recommended, if the previous few sentences haven't made that clear. Starting Joan Didion - After Henry (another re-read) next.

 

[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

I read this on the strength of a good review in the Guardian and really enjoyed it. An account of a fairly bloodless slave revolt in what's now Guyana in 1823, the brutal massacre of the slaves by the white militia and the trial of the ringleaders plus a sympathetic white missionary who became a martyr for emancipation. I knew nothing about any of these events, which is one of the themes of the book.