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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
    65
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
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.
 
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