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

How many books do you anticipate reading in 2024?


  • Total voters
    64
Pure evil by Lynda Laplante

There are a few issues with this book and it does dwell a bit too much on domestic details (pages about how the cops wife cooks chicken? Really?) But I'm enjoying it lol
 
24/29 Ten Bridges I've Burnt: A Memoir in Verse – Brontez Purnell

23/29 The Festival of Insignificance – Milan Kundera
22/29 Ways of Sunlight – Sam Selvon
21/29 Blessings - Chukwuebuka Ibeh
20/29 All God's Children Need Traveling Shoes – Maya Angelou
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
 
There's some odd fatphobia in the book I'm reading which I don't think I'd have picked up on except for the fact that it's on every single page and every other character seems to be not just thinking but commenting on people's weight. I'm prepared to believe that Police stations aren't the most PC of workplaces but would someone really describe a colleague in forensics as 'that little fat woman'? Really? I mean they might...but every couple of pages? :hmm:
 
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
25/45 Torrey Peters - Detransition, Baby

26/45 Joan Didion - Let Me Tell You What I Mean

Wee little collection of essays from the 60s-early 2000s. Suppose it's like the equivalent of a b-sides and rarities collection cos most of her really great stuff has been in books already so this is definitely the stuff she didn't bother including in Bethlehem or similar, but still has its moments. Talks about writing, Hemingway, Mapplethorpe, Martha Stewart pre-share fraud case.

Now starting James Ellroy - Perfidia. Which is not a wee little book by anyone's standards, the bastard thing's 800 pages long so should keep me going for a while.
 
Just finished Pure Evil by Lynda Laplante. It was pretty rubbish tbh, not awful enough for me to properly hate but very annoying to read and with unlikeable characters. I really like Lynda Laplante so I'm a bit disappointed. :(
 
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
39/50 The World Turned Upside Down by Christopher Hill
40/50 The Covert Captain by Jeanelle M. Ferreria
Slightly cheesy plot maybe but treated sincerely. Felt well researched (post Napoleonic war England) without it weighing too heavily.
41/50 Orbital by Samantha Harvey
Beautifully written, poetic novel about some astronauts orbiting the Earth in a space station. Has a bit of an environmentalist theme with reflections on nature and climate change but there’s not much of a plot, instead it just kind of luxuriates in descriptive writing and is one of the best examples of that I’ve read. Loved this.
42/50 The Scandalous Letters of V and J by Felicia Davin
Epistolary transgender supernatural fantasy set in I think post post-revolutionary France. Reminded me of A Marvellous Light by Freya Marske which I read last year and didn’t like that much, I did quite like this though. The letter and diary entry format worked well with the semi-clandestine trans/gay aspect, although one consequence of it is I think it’s easy to lose some of the sense of the setting which does feel under-explored here. A bit different and overall pretty good.
 
1/15 - The Psychopath Test: A Journey Through the Madness Industry by Jon Ronson
2/15 - Uprooted by Naomi Novik
3/15 - The Road by Cormac McCarthy
4/15 - Circe by Madeline Miller
5/15 - The Lost World by Arthur Conan Doyle (reread)
6/15 - The Hidden Life of Trees: What They Feel, How They Communicate by Peter Wohlleben
7/15 - The Complete Maus by Art Spiegelman
8/15 - Complete Land Law: Text, Cases, and Materials by Roger Sexton, Barbara Bogusz
9/15 - The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams
10/15 - Dombey and Son by Charles Dickens
11/15 - Piranesi by Susanna Clarke
12/15 - Vilnius. Wilno. Vilna. Three Short Stories by Kristina Sabaliauskaitė

The stinker so far: McCarthy's The Road.
Favourite so far: the last one, Sabaliauskaite's short stories
 
Joseph's Rib by Vincentzen - experimental self pubbed horror about doppelgangers. One of those books that could end up being 5 stars or 1 star.
 
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

24/50 The Cows, Dawn O'Porter - g

25/50 Blood Relatives, Stevan, Alcock - g

26/50 The Innocents, Francesca Segal - g

27/50 Once Upon a Crime, Nolon King - k

28/50 The Escape Room, L D Smithson - g
 
forgot this one so the numbering is wrong :)

103. Alastair Reynolds, On The Steel Breeze. Several hundred years in the future, our heroine splits themselves into three people. One goes off on a generation ship to colonise a star with alien life signs on it. Another goes on a quest. The third stays on Earth. Lots of nice space opera ideas, uplifted races, AIs up to shenanigans, weird alien things and a plot that kept me reading fast.
104. Paul McAuley, Beyond the Burn Line. In the future a scholar (who turns out to be an uplifted raccoon) searches for the answer to a mystery his late boss left behind. Nice presentation of the society and how it worked. Spoiler: halfway through it jumps forward a generation because this is a deep mystery). I would hope for another set in the same world
 
14/24 Jill Drower - The Exploding Galaxy: Performance Art, LSD and Bent Coppers in the Sixties Counterculture

A very balanced view of hippy London in which the grooviness is dolloped out in equal measure to the downsides. The author got involved with the Exploding Galaxy commune based at 99 Ball Pond Road whilst still at school and participated in their wild street performances and indoor happenings at the UFO club and Alexandra Palace's 14 Hour Technicolor Dream. What I liked especially was the continued enthusiasm for the creativity and wildness being tempered by a wry maturity about some of it being absolute nonsense. There is a refreshing honesty about LSD opening minds but also ruining some people's lives. The author is very good on sexism in the sixities (including a description of her hoovering around a bunch of blokes pontificating about marxism, for example). She is also surprisingly good on the class dimension to 99 Balls Pond Road - where the posher you were, the higher in the house you slept, apparently. The end of the sixties is described at length with the house raided by cops who planted drugs and attacked by locals. There is a healthy cynicism about the trajectory of some partipants into eastern religions or Maosim, but this is countered with a a genuine affection for most of the people and what they were attempting to do in difficult circumstances.
 
Finished Joseph's Rib this morning by Vincentzen. Existential horror novel about a guy who starts an affair with his wife's doppelganger. It's one of those books that could either be 5 stars or 1 star, I thought it was pretty good though. Definitely a lot to think about.
 
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.
11. Katerina Diamond - Woman in the water.

12. Rachel Grosvenor - The finery.
 
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
35/52 - John Irving - The Last Chairlift
36/52 - Doug Johnstone - The Opposite of Lonely

37/52 - Claire Chamber - The Editor's Wife
 
104. Paul McAuley, Beyond the Burn Line. In the future a scholar (who turns out to be an uplifted raccoon) searches for the answer to a mystery his late boss left behind. Nice presentation of the society and how it worked. Spoiler: halfway through it jumps forward a generation because this is a deep mystery). I would hope for another set in the same world
105. Kirill Yeskov, The Last Ringbearer. Retelling of that Middle Earth book from a different perspective with a different outcome. Absolutely fascinating. I particularly liked the spook touches with a variety of secret services running around, and the court politics was also excellent.
 
105. Kirill Yeskov, The Last Ringbearer. Retelling of that Middle Earth book from a different perspective with a different outcome. Absolutely fascinating. I particularly liked the spook touches with a variety of secret services running around, and the court politics was also excellent.
106. Jo Walton, Among Others. Rec from a WorldCon panel, this has fairies/ghosts, welsh landscape, boarding school, weird parents, and discovering science fiction and fantasy novels for the first time. It was lovely and there may have been dust in my eye at the end.
 




25/29 Stubborn Archivist – Yara Rodrigues Fowler


A great anglo-brasilian book, following on from belboid 's recommendation from the end of last year for There are More Things

24/29 Ten Bridges I've Burnt: A Memoir in Verse – Brontez Purnell
23/29 The Festival of Insignificance – Milan Kundera
22/29 Ways of Sunlight – Sam Selvon
21/29 Blessings - Chukwuebuka Ibeh
20/29 All God's Children Need Traveling Shoes – Maya Angelou
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
 
106. Jo Walton, Among Others. Rec from a WorldCon panel, this has fairies/ghosts, welsh landscape, boarding school, weird parents, and discovering science fiction and fantasy novels for the first time. It was lovely and there may have been dust in my eye at the end.
107. Christopher Brookmyer, One Find Day in the Middle of the Night. Much better "high school reunion" than I was expecting. Got the recommendation from a Scottish SF author and laughed somewhere on page 1. Definitely a farce, well plated, will probably keep an eye out for other books of his now I've read one.
 
Read a bit more of my grandma's Jew Suss book. Parts are interesting but hoo boy does it have some problematic bits. Namely the casual antisemitism from literally every character and the need for the author to mention that the main character is a jew on literally every page. It's depressing that it was so commonplace back then. There's a bit in which a Prince just met a rabbi and randomly demands that he read his palms, the guy hesitates and the Prince goes 'you think I can't handle hearing a prophecy of doom from an old Jew' or something. :eek:

Also lots of mentions of 'the dusky slave' who doesn't appear to have a name :facepalm: :(

On page 66 or so now.
 
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107. Christopher Brookmyer, One Find Day in the Middle of the Night. Much better "high school reunion" than I was expecting. Got the recommendation from a Scottish SF author and laughed somewhere on page 1. Definitely a farce, well plated, will probably keep an eye out for other books of his now I've read one.
108. Various, The Empire Strikes Back: From A Certain Point Of View. Anthology of "alternate shots" on the second Star Wars film, with a lot of backstory filling from later works in the series by the looks of things. Sort of interesting, I didn't find it too hard to make it to the end, but hasn't fired me with enthusiasm to read more in the extended universe.
 
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
19. "All Her Fault" - Andrea Marr
20. "The Kaiju Preservation Society" - John Scalzi

21. "Three Assassins" - Kotato Isaka. Compelling Japenese kind of thriller. Really enjoyed it
 
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]
55. Chris Lowder, Gerry Finley Day, Dave Gibbons - Dan Dare: The 2000AD Years - vol 2

56. H G Wells - The Island of Doctor Moreau
 
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
25/30 The Seventh Victim by Michael Wood
26/30 A death in Belmont by Sebastian Junger
27/30 Vacant Possession by Hilary Mantel
28/30 Spies by Michael Frayn.
29/30 All quiet on the Western front by Erich Maria Remarque
30/30 When the Emperor Was Divine by Julie Otsuka
31/30 The Loneliness of the Long-Distance Runner (and other stories) by Alan Sillitoe
32/30 Alone on the Ice by David Robert
33/30 The only story by Julian Barnes

34/30 An experiment in love by Hilary Mantel. Sort of coming-of-age book following a couple of friends from primary school through to university in the 1960s. I really enjoyed this. Hilary Mantel can be a brilliant writer.
 
Just finished my grandma's Jew Suss copy, not terribly enthusiastic about it and gave it a 3 star rating. The story was interesting (although very convoluted) and there is some interesting stuff about 17th century Judaism but it was very badly written imo.
 
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]
55. Chris Lowder, Gerry Finley Day, Dave Gibbons - Dan Dare: The 2000AD Years - vol 2
56. H G Wells - The Island of Doctor Moreau

57. Dan Abnett, Mark Harrison - The Out

2000AD is in a really creative phase atm and The Out is probably one of their best ever series to date. Highly recommended.
 
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
9/9 - The Payback by Simon Kernick
 
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
19. "All Her Fault" - Andrea Marr
20. "The Kaiju Preservation Society" - John Scalzi
21. "Three Assassins" - Kotato Isaka

22. "The Chamber" - Will Dean. Claustrophobic thriller set in a hyperbaric chamber. Interesting concept and plot.
 
1/15 - The Psychopath Test: A Journey Through the Madness Industry by Jon Ronson
2/15 - Uprooted by Naomi Novik
3/15 - The Road by Cormac McCarthy
4/15 - Circe by Madeline Miller
5/15 - The Lost World by Arthur Conan Doyle (reread)
6/15 - The Hidden Life of Trees: What They Feel, How They Communicate by Peter Wohlleben
7/15 - The Complete Maus by Art Spiegelman
8/15 - Complete Land Law: Text, Cases, and Materials by Roger Sexton, Barbara Bogusz
9/15 - The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams
10/15 - Dombey and Son by Charles Dickens
11/15 - Piranesi by Susanna Clarke
12/15 - Vilnius. Wilno. Vilna. Three Short Stories by Kristina Sabaliauskaitė
13/15 - Nomad Century: How to Survive the Climate Upheaval by Gaia Vince

I have some criticisms (e.g. when talking about mass immigration she pretends to address the change of culture/values issue but doesn't) but found it informative overall. It busts some migration myths and the science is quite exciting (never heard of cloud seeding before).

56. H G Wells - The Island of Doctor Moreau

The stuff of nightmares! I read it as a kid and it was terrifying.
 
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