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

[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]

46. David Hine, Nick Percival - The Dark Judges: Deliverance

 

[Biddlybee]

1/30 - 10 Minutes 38 Seconds in This Strange World - Elif Shafak
2/30 - Leonard and Hungry Paul - Rónán Hession
3/30 - The Goldfinch - Donna Tartt
4/30 - Americanah - Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
5/30 - A Kind of Spark - Ellie McNicoll
6/30 - Little Fires Everywhere - Celeste Ng
7/30 - Slow Horses - Mick Herron
8/30 - Lily - Rose Tremain

A struggle to get through for quite a short book. Felt the need to finish it, but the book I was reading to my 6 yr old was more gripping.

 

[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]
46. David Hine, Nick Percival - The Dark Judges: Deliverance

47. Terry Pratchett - The Last Continent

Not really his best work.

 

[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

18/45 Meg Mason - Sorrow and Bliss

Yeah, this definitely suffers from being read straight after All Fours, there's enough shared concerns there that it's hard not to compare them and it's not up to the very high standard of the July. Only realised it right at the end but it is really quite a lot like Fleabag The Book. Also the non-specific nature of the protagonist's condition really didn't work for me - the bit where she gets a diagnosis is clearly meant to be a pretty big turning point but because it doesn't tell you what it is you can't really go "ah yeah this book portrays -- really well" or "I thought this book was really misleading and inaccurate about --", and the decision to just go -- rather than officially giving the character Madeup Fictional Fucky Brain Disease makes it hard not to read it as somehow being a real diagnosis? Not a terrible book, it has its moments, but ultimately everyone in this book is posh so fuck 'em. Might be worth a read if you fancy Fleabag The Novel, though?

Next up, going to start

19/45 Hilary White - Holes

Exciting that this is actually the third book this year by someone I know. Excited for this one. Not that young adult novel from the late 90s, this is something different.

 

[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 Mail Rob Smith
6/9 - The Broker by John Grisham

 

[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

22/30 The Devil's Playground by Stav Sherez - A disappointing novel about an Amsterdam police investigation. It starts well enough with characters that seem to be interesting and worthy of development but the author seems to run out of ideas, so the police inspector is forced to strap on his skis and head for the sharkarium

 

[belboid]

1/30 - Lexie Conyngham - Tomb for an Eagle
2/30 - Michael Eaton - B*llocks -A Word on Trial
3/30 - Paul Simpson - Revolutionary Spirit
4/30 - Joe Thomas - Red Menace
5/30 - Daniel Clowes - Monica
6/30 - Will Sergeant - Echoes
7/30 - Wu Ming - 54
8/30 - Kathleen Hanna - Rebel Girl, my life as a feminist punk
9/30 - Aldous Huxley - The Devils of Loudon
10/30 - Volodomyr Ishchenko - Towards the Abyss: Ukraine from Maidan to War
11/30 - Dan Kavanagh - Duffy
12/30 - Samantha Schweblin - Little Eyes

13/30 Tabitha Stanmore - Cunning Folk: Life in the Age of Practical Magic

A highly readable look at the day to day lives of cunning folk, practising sympathetic 'magic', often taken from trial records of the time. Usually showing a large degree of sympathy for the practitione. And the importance of spoons.

14/30 Nathalie Olah - Bad Taste

How culture wars & matters of taste are still the class war, just played out with elegance and a hint of earthy bullshit.

15/30 - Luke Haines - Freaks Out! Weirdos, Misfits & Deviants - The Rise and Fall of Righteous Rock 'n' Roll

Comrade Haines guides us through some of his favourite music and musicians, with big chunks of more of his life story thrown in for good measure. As ever, LH can write grippingly with a wit and verve that just leaves a big smile on your face.

 

[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
22/50 Chocolat, Joanne Harris - hc

23/50 The Silence Project, Carole Hailey - dl
I liked this a lot. Lots to consider about a movement that builds up feom someone who doesn't talk, and so how can you know what the motivations were.

 

[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

27/52 - Maggie Shipstead - Great Circle

 

[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
25/50 Dragon Palace by Hiromi Kawakami
26/50 In the Long Run We Are All Dead by Geoff Mann
27/50 Madame de by Louise de Vilmorin
The cold and detached style and something in the way it's structured gave the feel of a sort of mechanism unwinding. Wouldn't have worked for a longer novel but it did for this.
28/50 Realizing Capital: Financial and Psychic Economies in Victorian Form by Anna Kornbluh
The premise of this sounded fascinating - how the financialisation of Victorian capitalism and its attendant crises played out in the explanatory shift from the concept of fictitious capital to that of the psychic economy, and how this was reflected in and reflected on by Victorian realist novels. It was a really difficult read though (she loves terms like ‘metalepsis’ and ‘parabasis’...) and used close reading techniques that I am not used to at all and was definitely left not wholly convinced by the results both in terms of whether they were justified by the texts and for what they amounted to in the analysis. That being said there was still a lot worthwhile in this, and it's got me interested in reading more about the era.

 

[frogwoman]

Ruth Ware - The It Girl

Loved it most of the way through until the ending

 

[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

14. "Conviction" - Jack Jordan. Engaging but slightly contrived courtroom thriller. I enjoyed it!

 

[rich!]

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.

Lost track of a couple of ebooks.

80. Emily Tesh, Some Desperate Glory. Spartans in space from the pov of the non-male characters. As long as you accept the Deus ex machina its great.

 

[Fozzie Bear]

9/24 Franklin Rosemont & Charles Radcliffe (eds) - Dancin' In The Streets! Anarchists, IWWs, Surrealists, Situationists & Provos in the 1960s. As recorded in the pages of The Rebel Worker and Heatwave

Nice anthology of two key sixties radical publications. In Chicago the defunct IWW branch is revitalised by a group of young people who are into surrealism, jazz, comics etc just as much as the working class anarcho- trade union activism of the Wobblies. In England Charles Radcliffe is becoming disenchanted with the Committee of 100 and is very into the blues, dope, etc. Radcliffe gets very excited by the Chicago IWW's The Rebel Worker and sends them articles. Franklin and Penny Rosemont visit him in London and put out an issue of Rebel Worker during their stay as well as connecting with the Situationist International in Paris and Marcel Duchamp the surviving surrealists there. Radcliffe then produces two issues of Heatwave which combine on the spot reporting of Provos riots in Amsterdam with Situationist translations as well as great articles on youth culture. He then is briefly a member of the Situationist International and then (kind of) King Mob. The books includes a load of articles from both publications as well as some lengthy and exciting recollections of the times by both Rosemont and Radcliffe. Cracking.

Both Heatwave and Rebel Worker can be seen on Libcom but the book is well worth for the intros, reflections, unpublished bits etc.

 

[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
22/30 The Devil's Playground by Stav Sherez

23/30 The Ticket Collector from Belarus by Mike Anderson & Neil Hanson - An account of the UK's only war crimes trial arsing from WW2 and the events that led to it. The person on trial lived in Poland when the Germans invaded, joined the paramilitary force they set up, and enthusiastically killed Jews, including people he'd grown up with. He didn't face trial until 1999. The book is very detailed about the lengthy trial. Due to rules of evidence and the adversarial nature of British justice, the trial almost went the other way

 

[krtek a houby]

Slow progress this year, for various reasons and too many books with small print. However...

1/19 The Dream of the Celt - Mario Vargas Llosa
2/19 The War of the Worlds - HG Wells
3/19 Celtic Gold, A Voyage Around Ireland - Peter Marshall
4/19 The Great Game (Nikolai Dante) - Robbie Morrison
5/19 Snow - Orhan Pamuk


6/19 Blaming the Victims - Said & Hitchens
7/19 The Mystery of Edwin Drood - Charles Dickens
8/19 God Emperor of Dune - Frank Herbert

Don't get the dislike for God Emperor... it's wild and once again turns the Dune set up on its head. Maybe that's why some don't care for it...

 

[hitmouse]

9/24 Franklin Rosemont & Charles Radcliffe (eds) - Dancin' In The Streets! Anarchists, IWWs, Surrealists, Situationists & Provos in the 1960s. As recorded in the pages of The Rebel Worker and Heatwave

Nice anthology of two key sixties radical publications. In Chicago the defunct IWW branch is revitalised by a group of young people who are into surrealism, jazz, comics etc just as much as the working class anarcho- trade union activism of the Wobblies. In England Charles Radcliffe is becoming disenchanted with the Committee of 100 and is very into the blues, dope, etc. Radcliffe gets very excited by the Chicago IWW's The Rebel Worker and sends them articles. Franklin and Penny Rosemont visit him in London and put out an issue of Rebel Worker during their stay as well as connecting with the Situationist International in Paris and Marcel Duchamp the surviving surrealists there. Radcliffe then produces two issues of Heatwave which combine on the spot reporting of Provos riots in Amsterdam with Situationist translations as well as great articles on youth culture. He then is briefly a member of the Situationist International and then (kind of) King Mob. The books includes a load of articles from both publications as well as some lengthy and exciting recollections of the times by both Rosemont and Radcliffe. Cracking.

Both Heatwave and Rebel Worker can be seen on Libcom but the book is well worth for the intros, reflections, unpublished bits etc.

I nearly re-read that a few months ago! Was going on holiday to Chicago and packed it so as to have holiday-relevant reading, but then ended up just reading Richard Wright and Saul Bellow instead. And getting sidetracked into reading Anne Boyer and stuff thanks to Chicago's excellent selection of bookshops.

 

[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
18/45 Meg Mason - Sorrow and Bliss

19/45 Hilary White - Holes

Had to deliberately take my time a little bit with this one so as not to rush through it all. A friend of mine who's read it said she was sucked in by it, and I don't even think it was an intentional pun. Fairly unique sort of a book, mostly a novella I suppose but just with chunks of art criticism and information about black holes thrown in. It's all good though, White has a really unique voice - I want to say arch, maybe, and perhaps even prim or is it sexist to describe a female writer as prim? Definitely pretty funny in a dry, understated way. And it does mention the popular YA novel of the same name, but in conjunction with Valerie Solanas and the SCUM Manifesto, which can't be a connection many people would've thought to make.
As with All Fours, I reckon this is a book I can definitely see myself recommending/lending to people/buying people copies of. Just full of lines like "Metaphysically speaking, a hole is almost there. Better than nothing, at times, I have thought." and "At the centre of this story there is nothing, or a hole where something real should be. It is not easy to see something which is invisible, but I have tricks.", if that sounds like a sort of book you would want to read.

Think I'm gonna read Jane Bowles - Two Serious Ladies next. Which is a book I decided I wanted to read, made a note of it, and then completely couldn't remember why I wanted to read it by the time I acquired a copy. Maybe I read a LRB review that made it sound exciting?

 

[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.

8. Maggie O'Farrell - I Am I Am I Am. Book of the year so far for me.

 

[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
22/30 The Devil's Playground by Stav Sherez
23/30 The Ticket Collector from Belarus by Mike Anderson & Neil Hanson

24/30 Countdown City by Ben Winters - I don't normally read soft sci fi but this was entertaining enough.

 

[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]
46. David Hine, Nick Percival - The Dark Judges: Deliverance
47. Terry Pratchett - The Last Continent

48. Bernard Cornwell - The Winter King

Non-magical retelling of the King Arthur myth with 6th century Britons fighting a losing war with the Saxon invaders and each other. Not bad.

 

[pseudonarcissus]

1/30 - 10 Minutes 38 Seconds in This Strange World - Elif Shafak
2/30 - Leonard and Hungry Paul - Rónán Hession
3/30 - The Goldfinch - Donna Tartt
4/30 - Americanah - Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
5/30 - A Kind of Spark - Ellie McNicoll
6/30 - Little Fires Everywhere - Celeste Ng
7/30 - Slow Horses - Mick Herron
8/30 - Lily - Rose Tremain

A struggle to get through for quite a short book. Felt the need to finish it, but the book I was reading to my 6 yr old was more gripping.

Come on, you can’t read a book the a 6-year old and not add it to the list. One us old folks would recognise?. Peter Rabbit?

 

[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
27/52 - Maggie Shipstead - Great Circle

28/52 - Ann Cleeves - The Raging Storm

 

[pseudonarcissus]

20/29 All God's Children Need Traveling Shoes – Maya Angelou

The 5th book of her autobiography…the years she was in Ghana. She's just about to go back to the States to work for Malcolm X. What an amazing life.

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

 

[Biddlybee]

Come on, you can’t read a book the a 6-year old and not add it to the list. One us old folks would recognise?. Peter Rabbit?

I only read the odd chapter at bedtime, they read the rest to themselves (The Case of the Chaos Monster - Patrice Lawrence).

 

[pseudonarcissus]

I only read the odd chapter at bedtime, they read the rest to themselves (The Case of the Chaos Monster - Patrice Lawrence).

“
Marisee and Robert - the Elemental Detectives - are back to solve another mystery on the streets of eighteenth century London. An orchestra explodes in Vauxhall Pleasure Gardens and suddenly the music of London disappears... and a terrifying monster stirs off the Greenwich peninsular, threatening to trample London underfoot.

The detectives must track down the thief behind the music's disappearance - via the Whispering Gallery of St Paul's Cathedral, a Windmill-with-teeth on the Isle of Dogs and the dark streets of Soho... where a shadowy villain and his mechanical animal spies live.”
Sounds better then Enid Blyton!

 

[rich!]

Lost track of a couple of ebooks.

80. Emily Tesh, Some Desperate Glory. Spartans in space from the pov of the non-male characters. As long as you accept the Deus ex machina its great.

81. Ken MacLeod, Beyond The Light Horizon, finishes the trilogy and yes it's a great MacLeod trilogy. With an excellent example of AI done right

 

[rich!]

81. Ken MacLeod, Beyond The Light Horizon, finishes the trilogy and yes it's a great MacLeod trilogy. With an excellent example of AI done right

82. Vaclav Smil, How The World Really Works. God this guy really hates vegans. Did someone ruin a family dinner? Anyway, interesting macro analysis of energy flows, but feels quite reactionary

 

[belboid]

82. Vaclav Smil, How The World Really Works. God this guy really hates vegans. Did someone ruin a family dinner? Anyway, interesting macro analysis of energy flows, but feels quite reactionary

Did you just read that in the last two and a half hours?

 

[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]
46. David Hine, Nick Percival - The Dark Judges: Deliverance
47. Terry Pratchett - The Last Continent
48. Bernard Cornwell - The Winter King

49. Pat Mills, Patrick Goddard - Savage: The Marze Murderer