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

I expect to read this many books in 2022

  • Total voters
    54
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
6/39 - Jeremy Seabrook: What Went Wrong
7/39 - Raymond Williams: People of the Black Mountains
8/39 - Michael Lind - The New Class War: Saving Democracy from the Managerial Elite

Argues that the social and cultural hegemony of the professional middle class - and it’s break politically with the working class both threatens democracy and creates a vacuum for populists.
 
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

A good, serious book, recommended if you're interested in questions around how unions can build power. As Janes who write about union organising go, I think I may like Holgate more than McAlevey? Anyway, if "book that has a chapter comparing how the GMB, TGWU/Unite, Unison, USDAW, RMT, CWU and PCS have attempted to cope with the challenging environment of recent decades" sounds like something you'd be interested in, then I would certainly recommend this one; on the other hand, if you think that sounds incredibly dull, then that's fair enough, but you probably don't want to read Arise in that case.

Next up, starting (and got halfway through in a morning) a re-read of F. Scott Fitzgerald - The Great Gatsby. A lot of people would say this is a classic, but I have to say, if you measure books by how much insight they give you into the organising strategy of GMB London Region, then Fitzgerald scores pretty fucking poorly. Also breaking my streak of only reading books written (or edited in the case of the Duff) book by women, which was sort of intentional but also just the result of me going on a big Didion binge?
 
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 House of Ashes" - Stuart Neville. Beautifully written, evocative, moving thriller
 
Bit late but this year I'm going for about 28. Quite a bit lately iunfluenced by Richard E Grant's travel/literature series Write Around The World.
So far:

1/28 Jews Don't Count - David Baddiel
2/28 Dark Lies The Island - Kevin Barry
3/28 Perfume - Patrick Suskind
4/28 Bangkok Eight - John Burdett
5/28 Eat Pray Sleep - Elizabeth Gilbert
6/28 Shuggie Bain - Douglas Stuart

7/28 As I Walked Out One Midsummer Morning - Laurie Lee

Can't believe I've never read this before, absolutely brilliant.
 
1/29 Bright Travellers - Fiona Benson
2/29 The Emigrants - WG Sebald

3/29 Inside Story - Martin Amis

Long, semi-fictionalised account of his relationships over the years, with focus on Bellow, Larkin, Christopher Hitchens and Israel. Some luminous writing and some pretentious old-man wankery. I didn’t quite see the point of the semi-fictionalisation.
 
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?
 
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
 
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
5/26 - The Secret DJ - Book Two
6/26 - David Keenan - Xstabeth
7/26 - Wendy Erskine - Sweet Home
8/26 - Walter Greenwood - Love on the Dole
9/26 - Arthur C. Clarke - Rendezvous with Rama

10/26 - Edna O’Brien - Saints and Sinners

Wonderful collection of short stories - laments for lost love, the simplicity of rural life, family feuds etc. Very evocative.
 
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

Hmm. I was expecting to like this but it read like a 6th form misogynist wank fantasy. Very disappointing. Also the art was muddy and confusing.
 
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
An excellent, comprehensive study of Hollywood informants and the culture and practice of informing during the McCarthy/HUAC period. Wouldn't mind reading a more general book on the subject at some point.
 
1 The Winds of War Herman Wouk
2 Summer Lightning P. G. Wodehouse
3 Station Eleven Emily St. John Mandel
4 Afloat Danie Couchman
5 Dogs of War Adrian Tchaikovsky
6 Wolf in Shadow David Gemmell
7 The Sunbird Wilbur Smith
8 Americanah Ngozi Adichie
9 The Heart of the Matter Graham Greene
10 Wolf Hall Hilary Mantel
11 Kindred Rebecca Wragg Sykes
12 A Death in Kitchawank T. C. Boyle
13 A Way in the World V. S. Naipaul
14 Miguel Street V. S. Naipaul
15 London Blues Anthony Frewin
16 The Lighthouse Keeper’s Daughter Hazel Gaynor
17 Monsoon Wilbur Smith
18 Blood Knot Sam Llewellyn
19 Crashed Timothy Hallinan
20 Old Man Sailing John Passmore
21 Jerusalem Alan Moore
 
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

A good read and addresses the allegations against Joss Whedon and tensions between the cast. The author is a little too fond of putting himself into the book though, I could do without that.
 
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1/29 J.M. Barrie and The Lost Boys - Andrew Birkin
2/29 Windswept & Interesting - Billy Connolly
3/29 Substance - Inside New Order - Peter Hook
4/29 The History Of England Volume 1 - Peter Ackroyd **
5/29 Ulysses - A Reader's Odyssey - Daniel Mulhall
6/29 High Noon - The Hollywood Blacklist and the Making of An American Classic - Glen Frankel
7/29 The Moon's A Balloon - David Niven **
8/29 Bring On The Empty Horses - David Niven **
9/29 Jack London - An American Life - Earle Labor

** Re-reads
 
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)

Turns out F. Scott Fitzgerald is a pretty decent writer, I reckon he could get to be big one of these days. Also, I'm so glad I never had to read Fitzgerald for my English GCSEs, cos I reckon that would've taken a lot of the fun out of reading him. Next up, starting 12 Rules for What/Sam Moore and Alex Roberts - Post-Internet Far Right. Reasonably interesting read so far, but I already find myself thinking it'd be improved if someone confiscated their thesaurus.
 
1. Glen Duncan - I, Lucifer
2. Bolu Babalola - Love In Colour

3. ed. Dan Coxon - Tales from the Shadow Booth vol.4. Another excellent anthology of weird fiction. They seem to have stopped publishing now, which is a shame as I've found so many brilliant writers/stories through these collections.
 
/40 Just Like You, Nick Hornby - dl
2/40 A Place Called Winter, Patrick Gale
3/40 Blood Men, Paul Cleave,
4/40 The Middlesteins, Jami Attenberg- dl
5/40 the Midnight Library, Matt Haig
6/40 Born Lippy, Jo Brand
7/40 All the Light We Cannot See, Anthony Doerr- dl
8/40 The Secretary, Zoe Lea
9/40 The Flatshare, Beth O'Leary
10/40 Americanah, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
11/40 Gwendy's Button Box, Stephen King and Richard Chizmar
12/40 Gwendy's Magic Feather, Richard Chizmar
13/40 Gwendy's Final Task, Stephen King and Richard Chizmar
14/40, Find the Girl, Nic Roberts
15/40, Queenie, Candice Carty Williams
16/40 The Madness of Grief, Panayotis, Cacoyannis
17/40 The Advocate's Labyrinth, Tessa Burell
18/40 Solomon Vs Lord, Paul Levine
19/40 Tuesday's Child, Anya Mora
20/40 Sleep Donation, Karen Russell

I seem to be flying this year.
 
11/12 The Magician - Colm Toiban

A fictionalised, I imagine, life of Thomas Mann. It’s ok, somehow didn’t have Mann’s voice.

10/12 The Sorrows of Young Werther - Goethe
9/12 The Sea, The Sea – Iris Murdoch
8/12 Harsh Times - Mario Vargas Llosa
7/12 Talking at the Gates, a Life of James Baldwin - James Campbell
6/12 Slouching Towards Bethlehem - Joan Didion
5/12 A Dutiful Boy: A memoir of secrets, lies and family love - Mohsin Zaidi
4/12 To the End of the World: Travels with Oscar Wilde - Rupert Everett
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
 
1/29 Bright Travellers - Fiona Benson
2/29 The Emigrants - WG Sebald
3/29 Inside Story - Martin Amis

4/29 Raise High the Roof Beam, Carpenters; Seymour - an Introduction - JD Salinger (reread)

Read everything by Salinger as a teen (there's not very much) and have been rereading a few of them. The first novella is funner than I remember and beautifully written. The second is a bit irritating - too discursive with multiple parenthetical asides though ultimately fits with the other tales of the Glass family into a satisfying whole.
 
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

The historical sections here I think were the better, especially on the justifications for taking "unproductive" lands from native Americans and how that ideology was driven by the needs of capital. The end of the book though and how American imperialism is a new form probably holds up less well from when it was written.

11/45 Bernard Schweizer - Hating God: The Untold Story of Misotheism

A random charity shop find. I'm not sure what I was expecting, but I was expecting more... erm... fun. I like the concept of folks believing in god, yet hating on him for his consistently shitty behaviour, but this was written by only looking at examples in literature, which felt a bit limiting.

Turns out he's professor of literature somewhere or other, so I guess that's his thing.
 
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
 
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
 
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
5. The Secret Barrister: Stories of the law and how its broken - The Secret Barrister
6. The Nanny State Made Me : The Story of Britain & How to Save it. - Stuart Maconie
7. Conquistadors - Michael Wood.
8/75 Shadows Reel - CJ Box
9/75 Hope & Glory - Stuart Maconie
10/75 Killing Floor - Lee Child
 
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
 
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
 
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
Probably my least favourite novel by her, but still very good.
 
petee said:
1/9 Draper, Roots of American Communism. 500+ pages, the level of detail is stunning, I don't know how much of it I'm going to retain and it's not like the prose alone is making it worthwhile. But it seems still to be the basic (though not only) text on that era.
Click to expand...

2/9 Finchelstein, A Brief History of Fascist Lies. i judged this book by its cover and so was primed to like it, but it was pretty much unreadable, a relic from the last generation of abstraction and polysyllaby. it's not useless, but.
 
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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
6/39 - Jeremy Seabrook: What Went Wrong
7/39 - Raymond Williams: People of the Black Mountains
8/39 - Michael Lind - The New Class War: Saving Democracy from the Managerial Elite
9/39 - McKenzie Wark - Capital is Dead: Is this something worse?

Traces the rise of those who own the production of information and the new economic primacy of commodified information and data. An important part of the book is her attack on left digital utopians and their idiocies.
 
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
 
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
5/26 - The Secret DJ - Book Two
6/26 - David Keenan - Xstabeth
7/26 - Wendy Erskine - Sweet Home
8/26 - Walter Greenwood - Love on the Dole
9/26 - Arthur C. Clarke - Rendezvous with Rama
10/26 - Edna O’Brien - Saints and Sinners

11/26 - William McIlvanney - The Papers of Tony Veitch
 
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