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

[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
29/52 - Patricia Highsmith - The Tremor of Forgery
30/52 - Gabriel Garcia Marquez - Chronicle of a Death Foretold
31/52 - Doug Johnstone - Black Hearts
32/52 - Zadie Smith - The Fraud
33/52 - Claire Keegan - So Late in the Day

34/52 - Bonnie Garmus - Lessons in Chemistry

 

[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
15. "No One Saw A Thing" - Andrea Marr
16. "Before the Fall" - Noah Hawley
17. "Extinction" - Douglas Preston

18. "A Lesson in Cruelty" ' Harriet Tyce. An okay thriller, Blood Orange by the same author is much better

 

[Fozzie Bear]

12/24 Jon Wozencroft - The Graphic Language of Neville Brody

Turns out you can get this coffee table book for less than a fiver all-in on ebay. Brody designed the covers of some of my favourite records by Cabaret Voltaire and 23 Skidoo but I guess he is best know for the early issues of The Face, which I never read. This is mainly graphics and they are pretty damn fine - often with illuminating commentary. There is a fair bit of text by Wozencroft too - he was one of the main people behind the Touch label who also had banging design. A lot of the words are quite interesting - biographical quotes and context about the pressures around the work. But there are a few deviations too far about the intricacies of fonts and spacing for us mere mortals. The illustrations are the real 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
31/45 Rosa Luxemburg - Reform or Revolution
32/45 Lauren Berlant - On the Inconvenience of Other People
33/45 Kingsley Amis - Lucky Jim
34/45 Viktor Haynes & Olga Semyonova Ed. - Workers Against the Gulag
35/45 Umberto Eco - The Name of the Rose

36/45 Rachel Pollack - Unquenchable Fire

Nah. Didn't do anything for me. Just glad to have finished it finally.

 

[rich!]

94. The Restoration of Land, Anthony David Bradshaw, Michael J. Chadwick. Wanted to read a modern textbook on this but they all cost £50-100 so I got this on eBay for £3. Pragmatic ecology manual, has at least filled out knowledge acquired from reading signs in random parks and fields...

95. HG Parry. A Radical Act of Free Magic. Sequel to Declaration of the Rights of Magicians, it's got Pitt the Younger, Napoleon, William Wilberforce, Toussaint l'ouverture and dragons. Enjoyed it at least as much as the first one.

 

[rich!]

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
31/45 Rosa Luxemburg - Reform or Revolution
32/45 Lauren Berlant - On the Inconvenience of Other People
33/45 Kingsley Amis - Lucky Jim
34/45 Viktor Haynes & Olga Semyonova Ed. - Workers Against the Gulag
35/45 Umberto Eco - The Name of the Rose

36/45 Rachel Pollack - Unquenchable Fire

Nah. Didn't do anything for me. Just glad to have finished it finally.

I've enjoyed some of her stuff, I read that a long time ago and still have a copy. Wonder if I can manage to read it again...

 

[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
14/30 - Frank Herbert - Dune Messiah
15/30 - William Gibson - Count Zero

16/30 - James Kelman - How Late It Was, How Late

 

[Kevbad the Bad]

1/19 Paul Murray - Skippy Dies
2/19 Charlie Allison - No Harmless Power
3/19 Andrew Kurkov - Grey Bees
4/19 Gail Honeyman - Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine
5/19 Antonia Bolingbroke-Kent - A Short Ride in the Jungle
6/19 David Graeber - Pirate Enlightenment, or the real Libertalia
7/19 Rain - Barney Campbell

 

[Me76]

34/52 - Bonnie Garmus - Lessons in Chemistry

What did you think of this? It's been on my list for a while.

 

[BoatieBird]

What did you think of this? It's been on my list for a while.

Loved it. My book club read it a while ago, but I was on holiday for the meet up so didn't bother.
It went down well with the others too, hardly surprising considering some of them are female chemists

 

[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
50. Arthur Wyatt, Jake Lynch - Judge Dredd: The Red Queen Saga
51. Tom Tully, Vanyo - The Mind of Wolfie Smith

52. Maurice LeBlanc - The Extraordinary Adventures of Arsène Lupin, Gentleman-Burglar

 

[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
13/19 David Graeber - Pirate Enlightenment, or the real Libertalia
14/19 Dale Smith - Doctor Who: The Many Hands

An adventure featuring the Tenth Doctor and Martha Jones set in Edinburgh primarily in 1759. I read it with my daughter and we enjoyed it especially as we had visited Edinburgh last year so could picture many of the locations. The story itself was ok though oddly paced. We enjoyed rereading the first chapter when we had finished the book as it was actually set a little after the main story and made a lot more sense the second time. It was fun watching my daughter piece together what it meant.

 

[frogwoman]

In the last few weeks:

Newcomer by Keigo Higashino - 4/5 intriguing 'puzzle' murder set in 1990s Tokyo
The Marriage Act by John Marrs 4-4.5/5 - Terrifying and all too plausible dystopia. Compulsively readable.
Ancilla by Sera Maddox Drake - 5/5 - fantastic BDSM erotica. Not my usual read and a 'wannabe classic' needing very close attention paid but even if you skip all the sex scenes you'll learn something due to its literary content. Definitely one of the best books I've read this year.
Vanishing Act by EM Davis - 4.5/5 - original psychological thriller set in Bath with infuriating but sympathetic characters.
Or I'll Dress You In Mourning by Larry Collins and Dominique Lapierre -1/5 one sided hagiography of a matador. Possibly the worst book I've read in my life tbh, even worse than 50 Shades etc. Dnf @35%

Currently reading

Those People by Louise Candlish - Psychological thriller with horrible middle class NIMBYs in an 'award winning' South London street vs a used car dealer, brilliant stuff

 

[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
16/60 To War With The Walkers : One Family's Extraordinary Story of the Second World War - Annabel Venning
17/60 The Wild Swimmers - William Shaw
18/60 Beyond the Wall : East Germany 1949-1990 - Katia Hoyer

 

[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
13/19 David Graeber - Pirate Enlightenment, or the real Libertalia
14/19 Dale Smith - Doctor Who: The Many Hands
15/19 Chris van Tulleken - Ultra Processsed People: Why do we all eat stuff that isn't food... and why can't we stop?

Interesting and simple book about ultra processed foods. Mainly focuses on health but has some il bits about environmental impacts and ither externalities. Something to think about. Talks as well about the food industries influence on government, research and public health bodies as well as it's use of branding and advertising treats it in places as an extension of the processing. I could have made better use of the time watching Operation Ouch though.

 

[Fozzie Bear]

13/24 Jon Wozencroft - The Graphic Language of Neville Brody 2

Also can be got cheap on eBay. Not nearly as interesting as 1. Looks nice, but a salutary reminder of how in love with Apple Macs and the idea of VR and the internet some people were in 1994. Brody’s clients were less interesting to me in this period too - more corporations and charities and fewer industrial music outfits. Apparently number 3 is just out but I suspect I will not bother with that.

 

[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
12/24 - The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks

13/24 Shadow of the Sun - Ryszard Kapuscinski
One of partner zedr's favourite books so I've been meaning to read it for a while! Lots of short vignettes of life in various African nations whilst they wrench themselves away from European colonialism. He has a beautiful and playfully exaggerated way of describing scenarios and events. Also instructive to read a westerner in the 50's pointing out the sheer bigotry, idiocy and cruelty of Europe towards Africa.

 

[Signal 11]

5/10 - Blue Machine: How the Ocean Shapes Our World - Helen Czerski

 

[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
16/60 To War With The Walkers : One Family's Extraordinary Story of the Second World War - Annabel Venning
17/60 The Wild Swimmers - William Shaw
18/60 Beyond the Wall :East Germany 1949-1990 - Katia Hoyer
19/60 Empireworld - Sathnam Sanghera[/QUOTE]

 

[rich!]

95. HG Parry. A Radical Act of Free Magic. Sequel to Declaration of the Rights of Magicians, it's got Pitt the Younger, Napoleon, William Wilberforce, Toussaint l'ouverture and dragons. Enjoyed it at least as much as the first one.

bit of a burst, apologies for the block update
96. N.K. Jemisin, The City We Became. Another post-Lovecraft cosmic horror (the Ada Hoffman one earlier) this time with a hot mess of New York in it. Really nice set of ideas, well played with. Recommendation from my work reading protege
97 Cadwell Turnbull, No Gods, No Monsters. This came well recommended but I found it a bit bitty - the rotation through a cast of characters meant I never really engaged. Shelved it for most of the year and finished it one evening.
98. Ron Friedman, Decoding Greatness - how to reverse engineer business and other strategies for good effect, including some useful material on how to measure what you're trying to achieve. I have a new work spreadsheet now. Good if you do self-optimisation books.
99. John Scalzi, Kaiju Preservation Society. Read the first few chapters on last year's Hugo shortlist voter pack, enjoyed them. Read the rest. It's fluff but not the worse for that. Lots of "team banter" that works, a really nice explanation for why nuclear power is a Bad Idea, and some great Monsters.

No idea what I'm going to finish first for the coveted 100 slot!!

 

[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
50. Arthur Wyatt, Jake Lynch - Judge Dredd: The Red Queen Saga
51. Tom Tully, Vanyo - The Mind of Wolfie Smith
52. Maurice LeBlanc - The Extraordinary Adventures of Arsène Lupin, Gentleman-Burglar

53. Everett True - Hey Ho Let's Go: The Story of the Ramones

 

[YouSir]

Way behind at this point, you're all literary beasts but...

1/25 Resisting AI: An Anti-fascist Approach to Artificial Intelligence - Dan McQuillan
2/25 Use of Weapons - Iain M Banks
3/25 Some Desperate Glory - Emily Tesh
4/25 Algorithms of Resistance: The Everyday Fight against Platform Power - Tiziano Bonini & Emiliano Trere
5/25 Turned On: Science, Sex and Robots - Kate Devlin
6/25 Blood in the Machine - Brian Merchant

 

[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
6/9 - The Broker by John Grisham
7/9 - Worst Case by James Patterson and Michael Ledwidge
8/9 - Copycat by Alex Lake

 

[hitmouse]

What did you think of this? It's been on my list for a while.

Fwiw, I'd count it as one of the worst books I've read in a very long while, the sort of thing where the kindest thing I can say about it is that reading it certainly made me think quite a bit about what makes a book good or bad. But then it takes all sorts to make a world, I know a lot of people really liked it so sometimes I wonder if I was too harsh on it. Then I remember the magic talking dog who disapproves of smoking and I'm pretty sure I wasn't.

 

[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
20/45 Jane Bowles - Two Serious Ladies
21/45 Jane Huffman - Public Abstract
22/45 Alexander Billet - Shake the City
23/45 Patricia Lockwood - Motherland Fatherland Homelandsexuals

24/45 George Katsiaficas - The Subversion of Politics

Took me a while to get through this one, for one reason and another. Katsiaficas is definitely a bit of a hippy, but that's not entirely a bad thing. It can be a bit of a bad thing though. The chapter on Italy was mostly stuff I vaguely knew about but is always fun to hear about again, the main portion of the book, about 80s-90s Germany, was useful for in-depth learning about stuff that I only really knew as vague myths. Did read a little bit of the book sat under a bridge waiting for a DIY outdoor gig run by some squatters to get going, which felt very appropriate.
Appreciated the stress on the importance and diversity of second-wave feminism, which is one of those things that often gets a bit caricatured in retrospect. The last two chapters, which were less analysis and more heavy theory, were a bit of a slog to get through. I've still not properly read Negri, but having now read Katsiaficas' critique of Negri I'm not sure I'm any less keen on him than I was before, I certainly wouldn't have thought of putting too much stress on workers and power as being something to fault Negri for?
After this, probably going to give the bear book a quick re-read but not gonna count the same book twice in a year cos that'd be silly, probably going to go for Torrey Peters - Detransition, Baby as my next actual new read.

 

[frogwoman]

John Marrs The Stranger in her House

Great idea but badly executed. A disappointment as I loved the marriage act 3/5

 

[frogwoman]

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
15. "No One Saw A Thing" - Andrea Marr
16. "Before the Fall" - Noah Hawley
17. "Extinction" - Douglas Preston

18. "A Lesson in Cruelty" ' Harriet Tyce. An okay thriller, Blood Orange by the same author is much better

Marriage Act is fantastic, the one I just read by him (Stranger in her house) is not so

 

[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.
9. Mick Herron - The Catch.

10. Mick Herron - Why we die.

 

[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
28/50 Realizing Capital: Financial and Psychic Economies in Victorian Form by Anna Kornbluh
29/50 We Could Be So Good by Cat Sebastian
30/50 Falling Hour by Geoffrey D. Morrison
31/50 BFFs by Anahit Behrooz
32/50 My Darling Dreadful Thing by Johanna Van Veen
33/50 Go Back at Once by Robert Aickman
34/50 The Wall by Marlen Haushofer
35/50 The Late Americans by Brandon Taylor
36/50 All the Lovers in the Night by Mieko Kawakami
37/50 Chuǎng 1: Dead Generations by Chuǎng
38/50 Vampires of El Norte by Isabel Cañas
Horror/romance set during the Mexican-American war. I was expecting this to be more like Silvia Moreno-Garcia’s Mexican Gothic except hopefully better because I didn’t rate that very highly but actually it wasn’t that similar. It starts well with some lovely descriptive writing, unfortunately didn’t really continue in that way. In an author’s note at the end Cañas says she was worried the supernatural element would feel shoehorned in which to be honest is exactly how it feels. This was another novel with an anti-colonial theme, in this one unlike Moreno-Garcia's book it also offers some mild criticism of the Mexican ruling class and the hacienda system, however the conflict between the two positions was left unexplored to an extent I found quite jarring. Bit disappointing overall, I’d heard good things about this.
39/50 The World Turned Upside Down by Christopher Hill
Outstanding history of the 17th century social revolt that broke out in the window of opportunity provided by the civil war.

 

[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
50. Arthur Wyatt, Jake Lynch - Judge Dredd: The Red Queen Saga
51. Tom Tully, Vanyo - The Mind of Wolfie Smith
52. Maurice LeBlanc - The Extraordinary Adventures of Arsène Lupin, Gentleman-Burglar
53. Everett True - Hey Ho Let's Go: The Story of the Ramones

54. Stuart Maconie - The Full English: a Journey in Search of a Country and its People [audiobook]

Stuart Maconie recreating JB Priestley's 1934 book English Journey in the wake of lockdown. Five stars.