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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
    66
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
41/50 Orbital by Samantha Harvey
42/50 The Scandalous Letters of V and J by Felicia Davin
43/50 Child of Fortune by Yūko Tsushima
44/50 Bruges-la-Morte by Georges Rodenbach
45/50 The Tell Tale by Clare Ashton
46/50 My Mortal Enemy by Willa Cather
47/50 The Red Scholar’s Wake by Aliette de Bodard
Very silly and probably the most space opera-ish of hers I’ve read, I must have been in just the right mood for this because I enjoyed it a lot.
48/50 Britain in Revolution by Austin Woolrych
History of the overthrow of Charles I, the wars in England, Scotland and Ireland and the establishment and fall of the Commonwealth. This was the type of history basically condensed into the interpersonal disputes of a small number of men within the government and army and everything else is treated only superficially, and Woolrych has a really annoying habit of making pointless swipes at other historians without actually engaging with their arguments at all. Far from the best history book I've read. That being said, the main thing I wanted from it was a general narrative of the period after reading Hill’s The World Turned Upside Down and realising how little I know about it, and for that purpose it was fine and quite detailed.
 
16/24 Christopher Jones - Poor Fiery Blocks: Four bent perspectives of the Elephant & Castle

Beautifully written pamphlet that touches on radical history, gentrifcation, personal recollections and some wry asides. A great thing for a Sunday afternoon and a cup of tea.
 
15/24 - Silvia Federici - Revolution At Point Zero: Housework, reproduction and feminist struggle

A useful anthology of Federici's writing on housework, social reproduction, and women’s struggles. She says in the preface that she wasn't sure that it was a good idea to single out this aspect of her work at the expense of other things she has addressed, but it does flow quite nicely from the initial chapters on wages for housework through to the later ones about globalisation. I read this disjointedly as an e-book on my phone on various tube journeys, which isn't really ideal but it produced a lot more useful thinking that doom scrolling.
You know how sometimes you just have strangely vivid memories of reading a book in a particular place and time? In summer 2015 someone I was dating lent me her copy of Revolution at Point Zero and then I was going to a wedding reception where the wedding party were a bit late setting off from the actual wedding venue, so I was just sat in the sunshine in a pub garden reading Federici with a pint of cider and waiting for the bride and groom to eventually arrive at their own reception. For some reason that's stuck in my head all that time. Not sure I could tell you what else I got out of reading it, but I remember it went nicely with some cider in the sunshine.
 
1/36 Diaries 1980–1988: Halfway to Hollywood – The Film Years by Michael Palin
2/36 The Bingo Hall Detectives by Jonathan Whitelaw
3/36 Uncommon People: The Rise and Fall of the Rock Stars by David Hepworth (Audiobook)
4/36 Heart of Dart-ness: Bullseyes, Boozers and Modern Britain by Ned Boulting
5/36 Pulp’s This is Hardcore by Jane Savidge
6/36 Help Wanted by Adelle Waldman
7/36 Keeffe Plays: 1: Gimme Shelter (Gem, Gotcha, Getaway), Barbarians (Killing Time, Abide with Me, in the City) by Barrie Keefe
8/36 Steak . . . Diana Ross: Diary of a Football Nobody by David McVay (ReRead)
9/36 Murder on the Darts Board by Justin Irwin
10/36 Savage Season by Joe R. Lansdale
11/36 Mucho Mojo by Joe R. Lansdale
12/36 A Summer in the Park: A Journal of Speakers’ Corner by Tony Allen
13/36 The Two-Bear Mambo by Joe R. Lansdale

14/36 Bad Chili by Joe R. Lansdale
 
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
37/45 Andy Greenberg - Tracers in the Dark
38/45 Pyotr Kropotkin - The State: It's Historic Role
39/45 Barbara Kingsolver - Demon Copperhead
40/45 Lorraine Harrison - Latin for Gardeners

41/45 Molly Caldwell Crosby - Asleep: The Forgotten Epidemic
42/45 Iain Banks - Complicity
 
The Railway Viaduct was kind of entertaining. I read The Replacement by Melanie Golding too which was mostly brilliant. I'll at some point make a list of all the books I've read this year but I'm hopelessly unorganised :oops:
Currently reading The Mayor of Casterbridge by Thomas Hardy. I like the rural 19th century slang and sardonic humour
 
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
27/45 James Ellroy - Perfidia
28/45 Don DeLillo - White Noise

29/45 Colson Whitehead - Zone One

Excellent book, a nice follow-up to the DeLillo in some ways in that they're both sort of apocalyptic novels. Dunno how many really great zombie novels there are but this is definitely one of them. Very sad, being a book about most of the world's population dying. Impressive how Whitehead manages to retain a distinct personality across a lot of really very different novels, since the last one I read was about some boys going on a summer holiday in the 80s.
Also has a nice running joke about Whitehead/his protagonist really fucking hating Connecticut, for some reason:
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etc etc

Now starting Dickhead Bidge - Bakunin Brand Vodka: Anarchism in Early Punk, 1976-1980. One that sits right on the very edge of the zine/book border, it calls itself a zine but it's properly bound and has an ISBN number so I reckon it counts as a book. 60-odd pages, about A6 size, so long for a zine but short for a book. Also definitely one for the "books that quote recognisable urbs" list.
 
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
58. Terry Pratchett - Carpe Jugulum
59. T C Eglington, Simon Davis - Thistlebone
60. David Katz - Solid Foundation: an Oral History of Reggae
61. Torsten Bell - Great Britain? How We Get Our Future Back [audiobook]
62. Michael Morpurgo - War Horse
63. P G Wodehouse - School Stories

64. Michael Fleisher, Steve Dillon - The New Harlem Heroes vol 1
 
Almost finished Mayor of Casterbridge by Thomas Hardy and have really enjoyed it. It has turned from funny to horrifying though
 
Almost finished Mayor of Casterbridge by Thomas Hardy and have really enjoyed it. It has turned from funny to horrifying though
We did that for O level. Despite that I really liked it too, so rich. Which is kinda odd as I normally don't like pre-twentieth century fiction. I can admire them and enjoy them occasionally, but its just too rich a meal, I couldn't be doing with it all the time.

I'm just reading Nikolai Gogol's Dead Souls (since I've helped fund a movie based on it) and, despite it being very different, satirical and caustic, they both have that almost over-written style, describing everything in precise detail. I can imagine Raymond Chandler getting the whole story done in thirty pages.
 
We did that for O level. Despite that I really liked it too, so rich. Which is kinda odd as I normally don't like pre-twentieth century fiction. I can admire them and enjoy them occasionally, but its just too rich a meal, I couldn't be doing with it all the time.

I'm just reading Nikolai Gogol's Dead Souls (since I've helped fund a movie based on it) and, despite it being very different, satirical and caustic, they both have that almost over-written style, describing everything in precise detail. I can imagine Raymond Chandler getting the whole story done in thirty pages.
I was surprised how much I enjoyed it as I usually hate classics. It's very gripping and easy to read. I'd like to read his other books now. The goodreads reviewer whose daily updates on it I was following only gave it 3 stars in the end.
 
I was surprised how much I enjoyed it as I usually hate classics. It's very gripping and easy to read. I'd like to read his other books now. The goodreads reviewer whose daily updates on it I was following only gave it 3 stars in the end.
A friend of mine was recommending Tess of the d'Urbervilles recently, think that one is also pretty grim though.
 
1/31 Consider Phlebas - Iain M. Banks
2/31 Ten Myths About Israel - Ilan Pappé
3/31 Buying Time - Wolfgang Streeck
4/31 Too Late to Awaken - Slavoj Zizek
5/31 Use of Weapons - Iain M. Banks
6/31 2023 A Trilogy - The Justified Ancients of Mu Mu
7/31 The Lonely Londoners - Sam Selvon
8/31 The Long '68 - Richard Vinen
9/31 The State of the Art - Iain M. Banks
10/31 Goldmund and Narcisuss - Herman Hesse
11/31 N.W. - Zadie Smith
12/31 The Phantom Tollbooth - Nortorn Juster
13/31 The Communist Manifesto - Marx/Engels
14/31 On Beauty - Zadie Smith
15/31 A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole

16/31 Excession Iain M. Banks - in progress

Miki Berenyi's book and a book about Gorbachev on the shelf ready to be read. Have abandoned Mario Vargas in Spanish for now. Unlikely to hit 31 by the end of the year now. 21 more likely.
 
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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
37/45 Andy Greenberg - Tracers in the Dark
38/45 Pyotr Kropotkin - The State: It's Historic Role
39/45 Barbara Kingsolver - Demon Copperhead
40/45 Lorraine Harrison - Latin for Gardeners
41/45 Molly Caldwell Crosby - Asleep: The Forgotten Epidemic
42/45 Iain Banks - Complicity

43/45 Robin Wall Kimmerer - Braiding Sweetgrass

Some interesting insights and lovely bits of writing, however it was just far too meandering.
 
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?
16/19 Paul Cornell - Doctor Who: Goth Opera
17/19 Jon Shonk - Introducing Meterology: A guide to weather
18/19 M Testa - Militant Anti-Facism: A hundred years of resistance.
19/19 Isaac Asimov - Foundation and Empire
20/19 Serhii Plokhy - Chernobyl Roulette: A War Story

The story of the Russian occupation of the Chernobyl plant and exclusion zone in 2022. Takes a few detours to nearby towns and other nuclear sites. Interesting claim that towns nearby got a relatively easy run of it and saw the Russians off due to nuclear threats, albeit empty ones, from Chernobyl workers.
 
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
27/45 James Ellroy - Perfidia
28/45 Don DeLillo - White Noise
29/45 Colson Whitehead - Zone One
30/45 Dickhead Bidge - Bakunin Brand Vodka: Anarchism in Early Punk, 1976-1980

Fun little read, does what it says on the subheading. Now starting Thomas M Disch - Camp Concentration. Interesting little dystopian novel, apparently Philip K Dick grassed him up to the FBI cos he reckoned this book had secret messages in it.
 
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
9/30 - Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow - Gabrielle Zevin
10/30 - The Bee Sting - Paul Murray

Should pick shorter books. October and I'm ⅓ of the way to my target :oops:
 
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
17/30 - Laurie Gunst - Born Fi’ Dead
18/30 - John Niven - O Brother
19/30 - Mel Cheren - My Life and the Paradise Garage
20/30 - William S. Burroughs - Queer
21/30 - Edna O’Brien - Lantern Slides

22/30 - Kurt Vonnegut - Breakfast of Champions
 
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
9/30 - Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow - Gabrielle Zevin
10/30 - The Bee Sting - Paul Murray

Should pick shorter books
. October and I'm ⅓ of the way to my target :oops:

Georges Simenon and Muriel Spark could help you out.
 
26/29 Boys Alive - Pier Paolo Pasolini
An interesting book, not much happened, but you can really feel the dirt and poverty of post-war Rome.

25/29 Stubborn Archivist – Yara Rodrigues Fowler
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
 
Just finished Deadly Connections by Colin Wade
Twisty thriller by local self pubbed author. Some parts I had to suspend disbelief but it was probably the best of his I've read so far. 4.5/5
Now reading Butter by Asako Yuzuki. I like a long book. This is slightly Roald Dahl esque with more progressive politics (fatphobia is a big theme) and lots of descriptions of food. I'm enjoying
 
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
29/50 10 Minutes, 38 Seconds in This Strange World, Elif Shafak - g
30/50 Stag Party, Ben Rehder - k
31/50 Water, John Boyne - g
32/50 Untouched, Robert J Crane - k
33/50 Duma Key, Stephen King - hc
34/50 Learned by Heart, Emma Donahue - g
35/50 Soulless, Robert J Crane - k
36/50 The Silent Boy, Cheryl Bradshaw - g
37/50


All the Broken Places, John Boyne - g
This is excellent. A sequel to The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas.
 
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
58. Terry Pratchett - Carpe Jugulum
59. T C Eglington, Simon Davis - Thistlebone
60. David Katz - Solid Foundation: an Oral History of Reggae
61. Torsten Bell - Great Britain? How We Get Our Future Back [audiobook]
62. Michael Morpurgo - War Horse
63. P G Wodehouse - School Stories
64. Michael Fleisher, Steve Dillon - The New Harlem Heroes vol 1

65. David Barnett - Withered Hill

Nicely creepy folk horror
 
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
14/15 - The Official DVSA Theory Test for Car Drivers by DVSA
15/15 - The Official Highway Code by DVSA

A little dry at times but highly quotable.

16/15 - Autumn Chills by Agatha Christie

Felt like a cash grab by the publishers/AC estate. Random stories, most with a tenuous or no autumnal connection, and one seems like an unfinished draft. I'm glad I read this but wouldn't repeat the experience as Agatha Christie has much better writings.

I was surprised how much I enjoyed it as I usually hate classics. It's very gripping and easy to read. I'd like to read his other books now. The goodreads reviewer whose daily updates on it I was following only gave it 3 stars in the end.

Ha, that could be me (tho not on Goodreads). Hardy always rubbed me the wrong way, the only book of his that I enjoyed was this copy of Far From The Madding Crowd I found in a charity shop (opened to a random page I swear, the whole thing is that way):

far-from-the-madding-crowd.jpg
 
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
14/15 - The Official DVSA Theory Test for Car Drivers by DVSA
15/15 - The Official Highway Code by DVSA

A little dry at times but highly quotable.

16/15 - Autumn Chills by Agatha Christie

Felt like a cash grab by the publishers/AC estate. Random stories, most with a tenuous or no autumnal connection, and one seems like an unfinished draft. I'm glad I read this but wouldn't repeat the experience as Agatha Christie has much better writings.



Ha, that could be me (tho not on Goodreads). Hardy always rubbed me the wrong way, the only book of his that I enjoyed was this copy of Far From The Madding Crowd I found in a charity shop (opened to a random page I swear, the whole thing is that way):

View attachment 445761
I'm not sure I understand where the sword thingy comes in :D
 
I'm not sure I understand where the sword thingy comes in :D

Sorry, that's bottom of the page that's out of the picture. Troy pulls out a sword, which is "like a living thing" and practices "thrusts and cuts". Other student notes to the sides of the page ("personification" and "sexual innuendo?") also refer to that scene.
 
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