Once more unto the book dear friends: 2024 reading challenge thread

[rich!]

69. The Saint of Bright Doors, Vajra Chandrasekera
70. The Adventures of Amina al-Sirafi, Shannon Chakraborty
Both of these were good, the Adventures was excellent

71. John Scalzi, Starter Villain. Several points of hysterical laugh out loud on a plane didn't make me popular with the other passengers

 

[BoatieBird]

1/52 - Liz Nugent - Strange Sally Diamond
2/52 - Zadie Smith - NW
3/52 - Val McDermid - Past Lying
4/52 - S.A. Cosby - Blacktop Wasteland
5/52 - Doris Lessing - Martha Quest
6/52 - Elly Griffiths - A Room Full of Bones
7/52 - Barbara Kingsolver - The Poisonwood Bible
8/52 - Jeanine Cummins - American Dirt (BC)
9/52 - Graham Norton - Holding
10/52 - Taylor Jenkins Reid - The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo
11/52 - Jeanette Winterson - Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit
12/52 - Ann Patchett - Tom Lake
13/52 - Elly Griffiths - A Dying Fall
14/52 - Iain Banks - Stonemouth (re-read)
15/52 - Doris Lessing - A Perfect Marriage (Martha Quest 2)
16/52 - Clare Chambers - In a Good Light
17/52 - Stephen King - Hearts in Atlantis (re-read)
18/52 - Doug Johnstone - A Dark Matter
19/52 - Stephen King - Insomnia
20/52 - Doug Johnstone - The Big Chill
21/52 - Margaret Atwood - The Robber Bride
22/52 - Peter James - Stop Them Dead
23/52 - Ruth Rendell - The Secret House of Death
24/52 - Ann Patchett - The Dutch House

25/52 - Richard Chizmar - The Long Way Home

 

[Signal 11]

3/10 - Beyond A Boundary - C. L. R. James

 

[PursuedByBears]

1. Karl Stock - Comic Book Punks: How a Generation of Brits Reinvented Pop Culture
2. John Wagner, Alan Grant - Judge Dredd: the Complete Case Files vol 07
3. Terry Pratchett - The Carpet People
4. Iain Banks - The Wasp Factory (reread)
5. Gordon Rennie, Emma Beeby - Survival Geeks
6. Paul Baker - Fabulousa!: the Story of Polari, Britain's Secret Gay Language
7. Rachel Joyce - The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry
8. Louisa May Alcott - Little Women
9. Neil Gaiman - Don't Panic: Douglas Adams and the Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy
10. Pat Mills, Gerry Finley-Day - Dan Dare: the 2000AD Years - vol 1
11. Douglas Adams - Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency
12. Ian Edginton, Leigh Gallagher - Kingmaker
13. Iain Banks - Walking on Glass
14. David Lodge - Changing Places
15. Gerry Finley-Day, Alan Davis - Harry 20 on the High Rock
16. CLR James, Nik Watts, Sakina Karimjee - Toussaint Louverture: the Story of the Only Successful Slave Revolt in History
17. David Lodge - Small World
18. David Lodge - Nice Work
19. Jah Wobble - Dark Luminosity: Memoirs of a Geezer, the expanded edition
20. Alan McKenzie, John Ridgway - The Journal of Luke Kirby
21. Patrick Ness - A Monster Calls
22. Helene Lee - The First Rasta: Leonard Howell and the Rise of Rastafarianism
23. Ryszard Kapuscinski - The Emperor: Downfall of an Autocrat [Haile Selassie I]
24. Alec Worsley, Ben Willsher - Durham Red: Born Bad
25. Edwin A Abbott - Flatland: a Romance of Many Dimensions
26. Gail Honeyman - Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine
27. Ian Mortimer - Medieval Horizons: Why the Middle Ages Matter
28. John Tomlinson, Simon Jacob - Armoured Gideon
29. Robin Hardy, Anthony Shaffer - The Wicker Man
30. Andy Burnham, Steve Rotheram - Head North: a Rallying Cry for a More Equal Britain
31. Taylor Jenkins Reid - Daisy Jones & the Six
32. Dan Abnett, Phil Winslade - Lawless: Breaking Badrock
33. Terry Pratchett - Jingo
34. Huey Morgan - Rebel Heroes: The Renegades of Music and Why We Still Need Them (audiobook)
35. Andrew White - Lancaster: a history
36. Ian Edgington, D'Israeli - Scarlet Traces vol 2
37. Mark Millar, Richard Eldon, Al Ewing, Chris Weston - The Best of Tharg's Terror Tales
38. Katja Hoyer - Beyond the Wall: East Germany 1949-1990
39. Randall Munro [xkcd comics] - What If? 2: Additional Serious Answers to Absurd Hypothetical Questions
40. Alan Grant, Emma Beeby, Maura McHugh - Anderson, Psi-Division: NWO
41. Guy Adams, Jimmy Broxton - Hope
42. Arthur Conan Doyle - A Study in Scarlet

43. Robert Morrison - The Regency Revolution: Jane Austen, Napoleon, Lord Byron and the Making of the Modern World

 

[marty21]

1/60 Silent Prey - John Sandford.
2/60 Sudden Prey - John Sandford
3/60 Easy Prey - John Sandford
4/60 Wolves of Winter - Dan Jones
5/60 Normandy '44 : D-Day And The Battle For France - James Holland
6/60 Bad Actors - Mick Herron
7/60 The Wings of Pegasus - The Story of The Glider Pilot Regiment - George Chatterton
8/60 This is Memorial Device - David Keenan
9/60 Sicily '43 : The First Assault on Fortress Europe - James Holland.
10/60 Salt Lane - William Shaw
11/60 Deadland - William Shaw
12/60 Under Occupation - Alan Furst
13/60 A Hero in France - Alan Furst
14/60 Grave's End - William Shaw
15/60 The Trawlerman - William Shaw

 

[PursuedByBears]

1. Karl Stock - Comic Book Punks: How a Generation of Brits Reinvented Pop Culture
2. John Wagner, Alan Grant - Judge Dredd: the Complete Case Files vol 07
3. Terry Pratchett - The Carpet People
4. Iain Banks - The Wasp Factory (reread)
5. Gordon Rennie, Emma Beeby - Survival Geeks
6. Paul Baker - Fabulousa!: the Story of Polari, Britain's Secret Gay Language
7. Rachel Joyce - The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry
8. Louisa May Alcott - Little Women
9. Neil Gaiman - Don't Panic: Douglas Adams and the Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy
10. Pat Mills, Gerry Finley-Day - Dan Dare: the 2000AD Years - vol 1
11. Douglas Adams - Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency
12. Ian Edginton, Leigh Gallagher - Kingmaker
13. Iain Banks - Walking on Glass
14. David Lodge - Changing Places
15. Gerry Finley-Day, Alan Davis - Harry 20 on the High Rock
16. CLR James, Nik Watts, Sakina Karimjee - Toussaint Louverture: the Story of the Only Successful Slave Revolt in History
17. David Lodge - Small World
18. David Lodge - Nice Work
19. Jah Wobble - Dark Luminosity: Memoirs of a Geezer, the expanded edition
20. Alan McKenzie, John Ridgway - The Journal of Luke Kirby
21. Patrick Ness - A Monster Calls
22. Helene Lee - The First Rasta: Leonard Howell and the Rise of Rastafarianism
23. Ryszard Kapuscinski - The Emperor: Downfall of an Autocrat [Haile Selassie I]
24. Alec Worsley, Ben Willsher - Durham Red: Born Bad
25. Edwin A Abbott - Flatland: a Romance of Many Dimensions
26. Gail Honeyman - Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine
27. Ian Mortimer - Medieval Horizons: Why the Middle Ages Matter
28. John Tomlinson, Simon Jacob - Armoured Gideon
29. Robin Hardy, Anthony Shaffer - The Wicker Man
30. Andy Burnham, Steve Rotheram - Head North: a Rallying Cry for a More Equal Britain
31. Taylor Jenkins Reid - Daisy Jones & the Six
32. Dan Abnett, Phil Winslade - Lawless: Breaking Badrock
33. Terry Pratchett - Jingo
34. Huey Morgan - Rebel Heroes: The Renegades of Music and Why We Still Need Them (audiobook)
35. Andrew White - Lancaster: a history
36. Ian Edgington, D'Israeli - Scarlet Traces vol 2
37. Mark Millar, Richard Eldon, Al Ewing, Chris Weston - The Best of Tharg's Terror Tales
38. Katja Hoyer - Beyond the Wall: East Germany 1949-1990
39. Randall Munro [xkcd comics] - What If? 2: Additional Serious Answers to Absurd Hypothetical Questions
40. Alan Grant, Emma Beeby, Maura McHugh - Anderson, Psi-Division: NWO
41. Guy Adams, Jimmy Broxton - Hope
42. Arthur Conan Doyle - A Study in Scarlet
43. Robert Morrison - The Regency Revolution: Jane Austen, Napoleon, Lord Byron and the Making of the Modern World

44. John Wagner, David Hine, Nick Percival - Dominion
45. David Mitchell - Unruly: a History of England's Kings and Queens [audiobook]

 

[rich!]

71. John Scalzi, Starter Villain. Several points of hysterical laugh out loud on a plane didn't make me popular with the other passengers

72. Deb Chachra, How Infrastructure Works. It's an engineering non fiction book that I would file under solarpunk. The point where it pivots from the technical to the social is magnificent.

 

[BoatieBird]

1/52 - Liz Nugent - Strange Sally Diamond
2/52 - Zadie Smith - NW
3/52 - Val McDermid - Past Lying
4/52 - S.A. Cosby - Blacktop Wasteland
5/52 - Doris Lessing - Martha Quest
6/52 - Elly Griffiths - A Room Full of Bones
7/52 - Barbara Kingsolver - The Poisonwood Bible
8/52 - Jeanine Cummins - American Dirt (BC)
9/52 - Graham Norton - Holding
10/52 - Taylor Jenkins Reid - The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo
11/52 - Jeanette Winterson - Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit
12/52 - Ann Patchett - Tom Lake
13/52 - Elly Griffiths - A Dying Fall
14/52 - Iain Banks - Stonemouth (re-read)
15/52 - Doris Lessing - A Perfect Marriage (Martha Quest 2)
16/52 - Clare Chambers - In a Good Light
17/52 - Stephen King - Hearts in Atlantis (re-read)
18/52 - Doug Johnstone - A Dark Matter
19/52 - Stephen King - Insomnia
20/52 - Doug Johnstone - The Big Chill
21/52 - Margaret Atwood - The Robber Bride
22/52 - Peter James - Stop Them Dead
23/52 - Ruth Rendell - The Secret House of Death
24/52 - Ann Patchett - The Dutch House
25/52 - Richard Chizmar - The Long Way Home

26/52 - Doug Johnstone - The Great Silence

 

[zedr]

3/10 - Beyond A Boundary - C. L. R. James

absolutely loved this book! have recommended it to some kids in my class who are into cricket and politics.

 

[zedr]

1/24 Radicalized - Cory Doctorow
2/24 The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine - Ilan Pappe (audio book)
3/24 Ray Bradbury - We'll Always Have Paris (audio book)
4/24 The Three Body Problem - Liu Cixin (reread, audio book)
5/24 Red Mars - Kim Stanley Robinson
6/24 Destination Unknown - Agatha Christie (audio book)
7/24 Dogs of War - Adrian Tchaikovsky (audiobook)
8/24 Less is More, How Degrowth Will Save the World - Jason Hickel
9/24 The Last Days of New Paris - China Miéville
10/24 Watchmen - Alan Moore/Dave Gibbons (reread)

11/24 - For Those Who Are About To - Joanna Russ
This is the second Russ book I've tried to read and I find her prose too complex for me to follow and enjoy. Didn't really enjoy the structure or banality of this one either, so will probably swerve her in the future.

12/24 - The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks
Love his SciFi so thought I'd give it a go. Creepy, gross and engaging. I love how he write characters and situates you in their heads.

 

[shifting gears]

12/24 - The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks
Love his SciFi so thought I'd give it a go. Creepy, gross and engaging. I love how he write characters and situates you in their heads.

I’m currently reading this as well! Can’t believe I’d never read it before. It’s also very darkly funny but definitely creepy, gross and engaging too

 

[PursuedByBears]

I’m currently reading this as well! Can’t believe I’d never read it before. It’s also very darkly funny but definitely creepy, gross and engaging too

I re-read it earlier this year and it was just as good as I remembered!

 

[frogwoman]

SR Masters - The Killer You Know

Brilliant stuff, 5 stars

 

[nogojones]

1/45 Connie Willis - The Best of...
2/45 Margaret Atwood - The Edible Woman
3/45 Tony Horwitz - Midnight Rising: John Brown and the Raid That Sparked the Civil War
4/45 Abbie Hoffman - Steal This Urine Test
5/45 Susanna Clarke - Piranesi
6/45 K.J. Parker - How to Rule an Empire and Get Away with It
7/45 Naomi Klein - Doppelganger
8/45 John Williams (Ed.) - Wales Half Welsh
9/45 Issac Asimov - Nightfall and Other Stories
10/45 Norman Wybron - The Chartists of Blaenau Gwent
11/45 Deborah Madison - Vegetable Literacy
12/45 Dashiell Hammett - The Maltese Falcon
13/45 Devon Price - Laziness Does Not Exist
14/45 Alice Walker - The Colour Purple
15/45 Emma Goldman - Anarchism and Other Essays
16/45 Octavia E. Butler - Parable of the Sower
17/45 Andy Greenberg - Sandworm
18/45 Octavia E. Butler - Parable of the Talents
19/45 Joanna Nadin - The Queen of Bloody Everything
20/45 Lucy Inglis - Milk of Paradise: A History of Opium
21/45 Frank Kitson - Low Intensity Operations
22/45 Douglas Adams - Mostly Harmless
23/45 Detlef Singer - Garden Birds of Britain & Europe
24/45 Charles C. Mann - 1491: New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus
25/45 Elizabeth Nelson - The British Counter-culture 1966-73: A Study of the Underground Press
26/45 Chester Himes - A Rage in Harlem
27/45 Fyodor Dostoevsky - Notes from the Underground
28/45 Ursula K. Le Guin - The Word for World Is Forest
29/45 Harsha Walia - Border and Rule

30/45 Elif Shafak - The Island of Missing Trees

 

[colbhoy]

1/9 - Ring Around the Bases: The Complete Baseball Stories of Ring Lardner by Ring Lardner
2/9 - The Fear Index by Robert Harris
3/9 - Where the Crawdads Sing by Delia Owens
4/9 - The 6:20 Man by David Baldacci
5/9 - Agent 6 by Tom Rob Smith

 

[CNT36]

1/19 Yanis Varoufakis - Technofeudalism: What killed capitalism?
2/19 Mary Shelley - Frankenstein
3/19 Gary Russell - Doctor Who: The Star Beast
4/19 Maz Evans - Oh Maya God's.
5/19 Storm Dunlop and Will Tirion - Night Sky Almanac: A stargazers guide to 2024
6/19 Thomas S Kuhn - The Structure of Scientific Revolutions.
7/19 Isaac Asimov - Foundation
8/19 Robert Dallek - Nixon and Kissinger
9/19 Tristan Gooley - How to read water.
10/19 Sybille Steinbacher - Auschwitz: A history
11/19 Hannah Arendt- Eichmann in Jerusalem: A report on the Banality of Evil
12/19 George Mann - Doctor Who: Engines of War. More bedtime reading with the daughter. She enjoyed it though I think she was a little sad at the ending. I was!

 

[QueenOfGoths]

1. "Wrong Place Wrong Time" - Gillian McAllister.
2. "The Scarlet Papers" - Matthew Richardson
3. "The Year of the Locust" - Terry Hayes
4. "Kill for Me: Kill for You" - Steve Cavanagh
5"The One" - John Marrs
6. "Her Last Move" - John Marrs
7. "Rock, Paper, Scissors" -Alice Fenney
8. "Anna O" - Matthew Blake
9. 'My Name Is Nobody" - Matthew Richardson
10. "The Drift" - CJ Tudor
11. "The Other People" - C.J. Tudor
12. "The Marriage Act" - John Marrs

13. "Strung" - Per Jacobson. First part of an apocalyptic horror trilogy. Good premise but rather short on plot.

 

[pseudonarcissus]

18/29 Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus – Mary Shelley

I’ve never read it before, and I’ve never seen a Frankenstein movie or Hammer house of horrors. It wasn’t what I was expecting. It was good. Victor Frankenstein must be the most useless fucking twat of a novel's hero ever.

17/29 100 Boyfriends - Brontez Purnell
16/29 Helena – Evelyn Waugh
15/29 Homo Deus – A Brief History of Tomorrow – Yuval Noah Harari
14/29 My Father and Myself – J. R. Ackerley
13/29 Family Meal – Bryan Washington
12/29 Mona of the Manor – Armistead Maupin
11/29 The Lonely Londoners – Sam Selvon (reread)
10/29 Hard Rain Falling – Don Carpenter
9/29 Possession – AS Byatt
8/29 User - Bruce Benderson
7/29 Crush – Richard Siken
6/29 And Then He Sang a Lullaby – Ani Kayode Somtochukwu
5/29 Iracema – José de Alencar
4/29 The Blind Assassin – Margaret Atwood
3/29 Where I Was From – Joan Didion
2/29 The Whale Tattoo – Jon Ransom
1/29 There Are More Things – Yara Rodrigues Fowler

 

[rich!]

72. Deb Chachra, How Infrastructure Works. It's an engineering non fiction book that I would file under solarpunk. The point where it pivots from the technical to the social is magnificent.

73, 74, 75 - Freya Marske's The Last Binding trilogy (A Marvellous Light, A Restless Truth, A Power Unbound) - romantasy series set in a late 19th century alternate world with magic, thinking back I believe all the actual villains are straight in a turn up for the books. Definitely enjoyed it, no idea how I'm voting on Best Series this year.
Next ones are novellas, which I'll count as full works for the purposes of this:
76. T. Kingfisher, Thornhedge - lovely version of the sleeping beauty myth.
77. Arkady Martine, Rose House - A house is an AI. Sort of police/detective thing, didn't quite work for me.
78. Malka Older, The Mimicking of Known Successes - humans left the Earth because of climate change and want to go back. Neat detective story.

 

[shifting gears]

1/30 - Philip K. Dick - Valis
2/30 - Robert Louis Stevenson - Dr. Jekyll & Mr. Hyde
3/30 - Franz Kafka - The Trial
4/30 - Dan Charnas - Dilla Time
The Life and Afterlife of the Hip-Hop Producer Who Reinvented Rhythm
5/30 - Douglas Adams - The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy
6/30 - Kim Stanley Robinson - Red Mars
7/30 - William S. Burroughs - Junky
8/30 - Louise Welsh - The Cutting Room
9/30 - J.D. Salinger - The Catcher in the Rye
10/30 - Ursula K. Le Guin - The Left Hand of Darkness

11/30 - Percival Everett - James
12/30 - Frank Herbert - Dune
13/30 - Iain Banks - The Wasp Factory

 

[May Kasahara]

1. Leon Uris - Armageddon.
2. Julia Armfield - Our wives under the sea.
3. Philip Oltermann - The Stasi poetry circle.
4. Kiersten White - Mister Magic.
5. Lindsay Galvin - My friend the octopus.
6. Claire Keegan - Antarctica.

7. Kim Newman - Anno Dracula.

 

[inva]

1/50 The State of Capitalism by Costas Lapavitsas and the EReNSEP Writing Collective
2/50 The Turn of the Screw by Henry James
3/50 The True Deceiver by Tove Jansson
4/50 Army of Lovers by K.M. Soehnlein
5/50 Cold Nights of Childhood by Tezer Özlü
6/50 Sanditon by Jane Austen
7/50 Delilah Green Doesn't Care by Ashley Herring Blake
8/50 Cold Hand in Mine by Robert Aickman
9/50 A Long Time Dead by Samara Berger
10/50 Asia’s Unknown Uprisings Volume 1: South Korean Social Movements in the 20th Century by George Katsiaficas
11/50 Maigret at Picratt’s by Georges Simenon
12/50 Matrix by Lauren Groff
13/50 Persuasion by Jane Austen
14/50 The Glass Pearls by Emeric Pressburger
15/50 Hôtel Splendid by Marie Redonnet
16/50 Dandelions by Yasunari Kawabata
17/50 The Slave Ship: A Human History by Marcus Rediker
18/50 Of Wars, and Memories, and Starlight by Aliette de Bodard
19/50 The Cracked Looking Glass by Katherine Anne Porter
20/50 Film Making in 1930s Britain by Rachael Low
21/50 Revenge by Yoko Ogawa
22/50 After the New Economy by Doug Henwood
23/50 The Teachers’ Room by Lydia Stryk
24/50 The Small Back Room by Nigel Balchin
A WW2 scientist/engineer is presented with the problem of a mysterious new German bomb amid the more serious business of inter-departmental rivalries. I was curious to read this as the film of it is great and now I know the film is definitely better than the book. It’s not very well paced everytime it seems to be going somewhere it fizzles out and never develops much momentum until right at the end. There's also a sprinkling of nasty racist and sexist expressions which might be realistic (I think they’re all in dialogue) but somehow I didn’t get the impression it wasn’t endorsed by the author.
25/50 Dragon Palace by Hiromi Kawakami
Not especially great collection of short stories. I wondered if they were based on Japanese folklore or something like that, if they were it was lost on me and mostly they just seemed aimlessly weird.
26/50 In the Long Run We Are All Dead by Geoff Mann
I’ve read some critiques of ‘Keynesianism’ at least in the general sense of post war capitalism but not really much about Keynes or his actual work itself so this was an interesting and very even-handed contextualisation of it as part of a continuity of liberal response to crisis from the French Revolution onwards.

 

[Me76]

hc - hard copy
dl - dens library
k - kindle
g - google

1/50 Face, Benjamin Zephaniah- hc
2/50 My Year of Rest and Relaxation, Otessa Moshfegh - dl
3/50 Tin Toys Trilogy, Ursula Holden - g
4/50 Famished, Meghan O'Flynn - g
5/50 Mystery Girl, Kenneth Rosenberg - k
6/50 The Last Single Girl, Bria Quinlan - k
7/50 White Fang, Jack London - dl
8/50 One Last Step, Sarah Sutton- k
9/50 The Housekeeper and the Professor, Yoko Ogawa
10/50 The Humans, Matt Haig - dl
11/50 Luckiest Girl Alive, Jessica Knoll- dl
12/50 See Jane Run, Joy Fielding - dl
13/50 Panic, Jeff Abbot - hc
14/50 Anatomy of a Soldier, Harry Parker - g
15/50 Serena, Ron Rash - dl
16/50 The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo, Taylor Jenkins Reid - dl
17/50 See Her Run, Rylie Dark - k
18/50 Brick Lane, Monica Ali - k
19/50 You Like It Darker, Stephen King - g
20/50 Damaged, Martina Cole - g

21/50 The Pull of the Stars, Emma Donoghue - g
this is beautiful. Set in a Dublin maternity ward in the first world War and the flu pandemic.

 

[Signal 11]

4/10 - Feminism, Interrupted - Lola Olufemi

 

[hitmouse]

1/3 Mario Tronti - Workers and Capital (First Hypotheses)
1/45 John Fowles - The Collector
2/3 Mario Tronti - Workers and Capital (Marx, Labour-Power, Working Class)
2/45 Claire Dederer - Monsters
3/3-3/45 Mario Tronti - Workers and Capital (Postscript and Appendix)
4/45 Josh Davidson and Eric King (eds) - Rattling the Cages: Oral Histories of North American Political Prisoners
5/45 Charlie Squire - Slouching: A Field Guide to Art and (Un-) Belonging in Europe
6/45 Alasdair Gray - 1982, Janine
7/45 Isaac Rose - The Rentier City
8/45 Gemma Fairclough - Bear Season
9/45 PG Wodehouse - Carry On, Jeeves
10/45 Barbara Kingsolver - Demon Copperhead
11/45 Willa Cather - My Antonia
12/45 Anne Boyer - Garments Against Women
13/45 Richard Wright - Native Son
14/45 Saul Bellow - Humboldt's Gift
15/45 John Berger and Jean Mohr - Another Way of Telling
16/45 Tao Lin - Leave Society

17/45 Miranda July - All Fours

Very very highly recommended. Has really made me think of how rare it is to encounter a work of fiction with a female protagonist past the age of 40 or so, and how many narratives I've seen about older men having ill-advised affairs with younger women rather than the other way around. I think when you do see it depicted it's always pretty much always from the younger man's perspective, like there's The Graduate but that is very much not the story of Mrs Robinson. Definitely makes me want to go back and re-read The First Bad Man. Gives 1982, Janine a real run in the "books where you learn a lot about the protagonist's wanking habits" stakes as well.

Now starting
18/45 Meg Mason - Sorrow and Bliss

Book about depression/non-specific fictional mental illness and that. It's alright, it is indeed pretty good, but I reckon reading pretty much anything after All Fours is going to struggle to live up to that standard.

 

[pseudonarcissus]

19/29 Leading Man – Justin Myers

18/29 Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus – Mary Shelley
17/29 100 Boyfriends - Brontez Purnell
16/29 Helena – Evelyn Waugh
15/29 Homo Deus – A Brief History of Tomorrow – Yuval Noah Harari
14/29 My Father and Myself – J. R. Ackerley
13/29 Family Meal – Bryan Washington
12/29 Mona of the Manor – Armistead Maupin
11/29 The Lonely Londoners – Sam Selvon (reread)
10/29 Hard Rain Falling – Don Carpenter
9/29 Possession – AS Byatt
8/29 User - Bruce Benderson
7/29 Crush – Richard Siken
6/29 And Then He Sang a Lullaby – Ani Kayode Somtochukwu
5/29 Iracema – José de Alencar
4/29 The Blind Assassin – Margaret Atwood
3/29 Where I Was From – Joan Didion
2/29 The Whale Tattoo – Jon Ransom
1/29 There Are More Things – Yara Rodrigues Fowler

 

[rubbershoes]

1/30 David Peace - The Damned Utd
2/30 I, Partridge We need to talk about Alan by Alan Partridge
3/30 No Way Down by Graham Bowley.
4/30 Kennedy 35 by Charles Cumming
5/30 Every second counts by Lance Armstrong
6/30 The Dead House by Harry Bingham
7/30 Underground Airline by Ben Winters
8/30 Who they was by Gabriel Krause
9/30 The Last - Hanna Jameson
10/30 The Night Visitors by Carol Goodman.
11/30 The Underground Railroad by Colson Whitehead
12/30 The Unfolding by AM Homes
13/30 Clothes, music, boys by Viv Albertine
14/30 Misery by Stephen King
15/30 The Bee Sting by Paul Murray
16/30 Nightcrawling by Leila Mottley
17/30 Down River by John Hart
18/30 Magic Seeds by VS Naipaul
19/30 In our mad and furious city by Guy Gunaratne

20/30 The Stepford Wives by Ira Levin I haven't seen any of the film versions and wanted to see what the origin of the phrase was. It's very much of it's time, but is a decent slice of 60s subtle horror.

 

[CNT36]

• Thursday at 10:22 PM

• 
  
• 
  
• Add bookmark
• #496

1/19 Yanis Varoufakis - Technofeudalism: What killed capitalism?
2/19 Mary Shelley - Frankenstein
3/19 Gary Russell - Doctor Who: The Star Beast
4/19 Maz Evans - Oh Maya God's.
5/19 Storm Dunlop and Will Tirion - Night Sky Almanac: A stargazers guide to 2024
6/19 Thomas S Kuhn - The Structure of Scientific Revolutions.
7/19 Isaac Asimov - Foundation
8/19 Robert Dallek - Nixon and Kissinger
9/19 Tristan Gooley - How to read water.
10/19 Sybille Steinbacher - Auschwitz: A history
11/19 Hannah Arendt- Eichmann in Jerusalem: A report on the Banality of Evil
12/19 George Mann - Doctor Who: Engines of War
13/19 David Graeber - Pirate Enlightenment, or the real Libertalia

 

[rubbershoes]

1/30 David Peace - The Damned Utd
2/30 I, Partridge We need to talk about Alan by Alan Partridge
3/30 No Way Down by Graham Bowley.
4/30 Kennedy 35 by Charles Cumming
5/30 Every second counts by Lance Armstrong
6/30 The Dead House by Harry Bingham
7/30 Underground Airline by Ben Winters
8/30 Who they was by Gabriel Krause
9/30 The Last - Hanna Jameson
10/30 The Night Visitors by Carol Goodman.
11/30 The Underground Railroad by Colson Whitehead
12/30 The Unfolding by AM Homes
13/30 Clothes, music, boys by Viv Albertine
14/30 Misery by Stephen King
15/30 The Bee Sting by Paul Murray
16/30 Nightcrawling by Leila Mottley
17/30 Down River by John Hart
18/30 Magic Seeds by VS Naipaul
19/30 In our mad and furious city by Guy Gunaratne
20/30 The Stepford Wives by Ira Levin

21/30 The Tragedy of Liberation: A History of the Chinese Revolution 1945–1957 by Frank Dikötter - That Chairman Mao was a bit of a wanker, wasn't he?

 

[rich!]

73, 74, 75 - Freya Marske's The Last Binding trilogy (A Marvellous Light, A Restless Truth, A Power Unbound) - romantasy series set in a late 19th century alternate world with magic, thinking back I believe all the actual villains are straight in a turn up for the books. Definitely enjoyed it, no idea how I'm voting on Best Series this year.
Next ones are novellas, which I'll count as full works for the purposes of this:
76. T. Kingfisher, Thornhedge - lovely version of the sleeping beauty myth.
77. Arkady Martine, Rose House - A house is an AI. Sort of police/detective thing, didn't quite work for me.
78. Malka Older, The Mimicking of Known Successes - humans left the Earth because of climate change and want to go back. Neat detective story.

79. Michael.J.Sullivan, The Crown Tower - slipped a random fantasy novel in, because someone at work suggested it. Starts a bit patchily but picks up later. Prequel to another series. Don't know if I'll work through them all.