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

[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

Some moments of insight, and the closing chapter on contemporary antifascism was quite interesting. Could've done with more consideration of the Proud Boys and even Pie & Mash imo.

14/30 Brad Logan & John Gentile - Architects of Self-Destruction: The Oral History of Leftover Crack

Everyone agrees that Leftover Crack are a top 50 band in history, right? Does a good job of capturing the full complexity of its subject, and is quite thoughtful on the question of how you relate to someone who consistently behaves in destructive ways. Also has one of the funniest selection of blurb quotes I've ever seen, including:

Fuck this band and anyone that supports them. - Anonymous Internet Commenter

If Crass inspired I don't know how many people to form bands, and some of them were good, and some were absolutely awful - that's fair enough. I don't mind. At least they're not sitting on their arses. - Penny Rimbaud

Leftover Crack fans can read? You learn something new every day. - Anonymous Internet Commenter

Next up, starting Emily Nagoski - Come As You Are. Shagging and that.

 

[Smokeandsteam]

1/75. The Story of England - Michael Wood .

I’ve been tempted to read this, it’s a fascinating approach to the history of the English working class. Would you recommend it?

 

[imposs1904]

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

Brilliant novel.

 

[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. If I hadn't already given up on one book this year I would have given up on this. Inadequately written, boring, thriller. Except it wasn't that thrilling!

 

[shifting gears]

Brilliant novel.

The Papers of Tony Veitch? Yeah I enjoyed it perhaps more than the first Laidlaw for the way it really got into his head, with some interesting sub-plots going on as well…

 

[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

 

[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

 

[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

 

[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

Courtesy of the wonderful archive.org a 1978 (ghosted?) autobiography of the fancy dan who could jump over a mini.

 

[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

 

[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

 

[Threshers_Flail]

1. David Graeber and David Wengrow - The Dawn of Everything
2. Peter Linebaugh and Marcus Rediker - The Many Headed Hydra
3. Cedric Robinson - Black Marxism: The Making of the Black Radical Tradition
4. Donna Tartt - The Little Friend

Slow start! I've read a lot this year but not finished many books, lots of articles, essays and dipping into mental health and self help books, plus way too much Twitter time.

 

[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

 

[Signal 11]

4/10 - Sons of Night - Antoine Gimenez's Memories of the War in Spain

 

[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

Emily Nagoski really likes metaphors. The brain is like a garden, except when it's like a car, and also like a flock of birds, etc etc. Did find her writing style a bit grating in places (answering her own rhetorical questions with "Spoiler: yes!", referring to feelings as Feels, and so on), but then as a deeply ambivalent person I suppose I struggle a bit with positivity in general. Some of the content was pretty interesting, though. Read it largely off the back of it being cited in Katherine Angel's Tomorrow Sex Will Be Good Again. Next up, starting Barney Farmer - Park by the River.

 

[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

 

[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

 

[Fozzie Bear]

7/29 BM Blob - Like a summer with a thousand Julys… and other seasons.

Reread this classic look at the 1981 riots. The writing has aged well but maybe not all the cultural references. Critical and hopeful.

8/29 Jake Arnott - He Kills Coppers

Everyone slagged this off, but I found a copy for £2, so…

It’s entertaining enough - 1960s bent coppers, tabloid hacks, crims in London. The bare minimum amount of research to make it almost credible. Wafer thin character development. Ends up in a riot of laughable Class War squatters, New Age travellers etc in the 80s.

I can see why people hate it, but it’s a page turner if you don’t treat it as historical literature.

 

[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.

Probably not wildly surprising for people who know Farmer's work. I don't say "elegaic" much, but I think it's probably a fair word for Farmer's books. Think this is maybe the first proper Lockdown Book I've read, it's interesting how far off 2020 seems now. Perhaps a little more wistful and less bitter than some of his other work. If you've ever wanted to learn more about parks in Preston, then this is the sort-of-novel for you. Would be better if he gave up on making it rhyme, though.
Next up, starting Nina Power - What Do Men Want? Not a book I am expecting to fully agree with. Am slightly tickled that the person who designed the spine decided to go with title first, author second there.

 

[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 if Grace McGill" - C. S. Robertson. Really enjoyed the writing in this, especially the characterisation. An interesting, kind of thriller.

 

[May Kasahara]

1. Glen Duncan - I, Lucifer
2. Bolu Babalola - Love In Colour
3. ed. Dan Coxon - Tales from the Shadow Booth vol.4.
4. Kerry Hadley-Pryce - The Black Country. 2/3 of this book is fantastic: creepy, unreliable, funny, compelling. Then it takes a nosedive at the end with a rubbish unlikely plot twist and pointlessly grim turn of events.

 

[Signal 11]

5/10 - First Light: Switching on Stars at the Dawn of Time - Emma Chapman

 

[pseudonarcissus]

12/12 The fake Up -Justin Myers

A gentle romcom. I think the next one will be a bit more substantial.

The main think is I’ve now read the number of books I thought I would. During the pandemic my mind was all over the place and I was struggling to concentrate. I seem to be recovering.

11/12 The Magician - Colm Toiban
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

 

[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

 

[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)

 

[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 Nina Power - What Do Men Want?

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.

Next up starting Jean-Paul Sartre - Intimacy. A re-read, or at least mostly a re-read, I thought I'd read the whole thing ages ago but on picking it up found I'd left a bookmark on page 154, so maybe I've never finished it, dunno. I suppose this collection of stories may well also have some things to say about men and their relationships with women, hopefully it'll be a bit more interesting than just "they need to read more Jordan Peterson"?

 

[Me76]

1/40 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
21/40 All Grown Up, Jami Attenberg
22/40 More Than This, Patrick Ness
23/40 The Deep Blue Alibi, Paul Levine
24/40 The Man by the Sea, Jack Benton

25/40 Should We Stay or Should We Go, Lionel Shriver
Very glad I got this on a special offer. It's a relatively enjoyable look at the various ways the future could be, but Shriver is a bit try hard in a lot of places.

 

[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
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

12/26 - Wendy Erskine - Dance Move

 

[nogojones]

perhaps an interesting thought experiment but I'm not sure how much it tells us about the actual state of things

This is generally my view of Nina Power.

 

[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

Enjoyable sci-fi. Good enough to want me to read the rest of the series.