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

[frogwoman]

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.

I enjoyed Mayor of Casterbridge although its main character was extremely unlikeable.

 

[rubbershoes]

1/30 The Damned Utd by David Peace
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
35/30 Dr Zhivago by Boris Pasternak
36/30 Exit by Belinda Bauer
37/30 I, Partridge: We need to talk about Alan by Alan Partridge (again). I read the book and/or listen to the audiobook a couple of times a year
38/30 History of Wolves by Emily Fridlund
39/30 Jeeves and the feudal spirit by PG Wodehouse

40/30 On The Road Bike: The Search For A Nation’s Cycling Soul by Ned Boulting - Light, anecdotal book where Ned investigates why bike racing in the UK developed differently to continental Europe and meets some Brits from the 1950s onwards who left these shores to try their luck in Europe. One for the road bike obsessives only

 

[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
19. "All Her Fault" - Andrea Marr
20. "The Kaiju Preservation Society" - John Scalzi
21. "Three Assassins" - Kotato Isaka
22. "The Chamber" - Will Dean
23. The Hiding Place - Simon Lelic
24. "The Fury" - Alex Michaelides

25. "VOX" - Christina Dalcher. Found this really compelling until the end when it sort of petered out

 

[imposs1904]

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 Boult
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

15/36 The Ballad of Boaby Souness: A Twitter Odyssey curated by David F. Ross

A short comic novella set in and around Shettleston, which was originally created on Twitter via a series of daily tweets over the course of 31 days. As cute an idea as that is, I'm actually a wee bit gutted that Ross didn't just take the original idea of the story - Shettleston in the 1970s is crime ridden and needs its very own private investigator - and just knock out a normal novel. Shettleston needs that novel. Shettleston needed that private investigator.

 

[Fozzie Bear]

Not to mention Dickhead Bidge.

I've just worked out that this is a pun on cultural studies guru Dick Hebdige. Niche!

 

[Fozzie Bear]

17/24 Sophie Lewis - Abolish The Family: A manifesto for care and liberation

I really like the way Sophie Lewis writes - she is incisive but also very funny. There's a joyful optimism to this book, which is maybe at variance with a lot of people's reaction to the title. Which is where she starts: explaining that this isn't a wind up and yes she does mean abolition rather than making the family better. The rest is mainly an overview of other thinkers and conditions in which family abolition has been explored - black people under slavery, queer communities during the AIDs epidemic, Marx/Engles, Charlies Fourier, Alexander Kollontai in the Russian revolution, feminsts like Shulamith Firestone, etc. There's a lot to think about here and it is fun thinking about it. A short book too, if people are desperate to up their numbers in 2024!

 

[imposs1904]

I've just worked out that this is a pun on cultural studies guru Dick Hebdige. Niche!

Thank you for explaining the joke.

I actually googled 'Dickhead Bidge', 'cos I thought 'I've read fuck all this year. I need to read some short books before the end of the year to pad out my reading total.'

I just thought it was the pen-name of some 'zany' anarchist writer.

 

[hitmouse]

I've just worked out that this is a pun on cultural studies guru Dick Hebdige. Niche!

Oh, well deciphered, that one went right over my head. There is another Active pamphlet on Class War & Crimethinc that looks interesting (to me at least) but is out of print, credited to "Sheena P. Rocker and Rudolf Ramon", I suspect that there may be some crossover of authorship there. Sheena Rocker is pretty good though.

Thank you for explaining the joke.

I actually googled 'Dickhead Bidge', 'cos I thought 'I've read fuck all this year. I need to read some short books before the end of the year to pad out my reading total.'

I just thought it was the pen-name of some 'zany' anarchist writer.

Also on the very short books tip, not read it yet but just picked up Daddy Issues by Katherine Angel (which is her real name as far as I know, what is a "real" name anyway etc), that one's about 120 pages, not much larger than A6 size. And her book Unmastered looks like it's the size of a normal book but then about 80% of it is blank space, the parts of it that are actual writing are really good though.

 

[hitmouse]

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

31/45 Thomas M Disch - Camp Concentration

Interesting book, I don't think I fell wildly in love with it but certainly worth a read. And a nice kind of thematic link with White Noise and Zone One in that they're all sort of books about infection and apocalypse. Big M Night Shymalan twist at the end which I 100% did not see coming, would be interesting to re-read with that knowledge. Thought it was a bit homophobic in parts but then looking him up Disch was actually gay so it's a book where the writer made a conscious decision to have a homophobic protagonist rather than just an author putting his own prejudices in the text iyswim. Not sure how I feel about some of the racial stuff in the book though. Following on the name punning stuff from above, the protagonist is called Sacchetti which I thought was a deliberate play on Sacco & Vanzetti, but that might just be me thinking about anarchist history too much, it might be just be an Italian-sounding name.

Now starting RF Kuang - Babel. There's some interesting ideas in here about language and magic, but I'm already finding the author's voice a bit grating, she keeps putting footnotes in the text, some of which are actually helpful and informative but the overall effect is pretty patronising, like she doesn't trust the reader to be able to make up their own mind about colonialism if there's not a note at the bottom of the page saying "this is bad btw". Also the actual plot structure is quite similar to Harry Potter and I can't work out how far that's consciously intentional. I think this might end up as a "this could've been a really good book if someone else had written it" book.

 

[rubbershoes]

1/30 The Damned Utd by David Peace
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
35/30 Dr Zhivago by Boris Pasternak
36/30 Exit by Belinda Bauer
37/30 I, Partridge: We need to talk about Alan by Alan Partridge (again). I read the book and/or listen to the audiobook a couple of times a year
38/30 History of Wolves by Emily Fridlund
39/30 Jeeves and the feudal spirit by PG Wodehouse
40/30 On The Road Bike: The Search For A Nation’s Cycling Soul by Ned Boulting

41/30 The Crow Road by Iain Banks. A book with a huge swerve towards the end but as It's by Iain Banks, it's a joy to read.

 

[rich!]

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.

Got a bit sidetracked and now I have a small pile of books to update.
109-111. S. Usher Evans, The Weary Dragon Inn books 1-3. Very much twee cosy fantasy, if you enjoyed Legends and Lattes you'll likely enjoy these. Some interesting "back story lurking" that gradually plays out over the three I read. I also enjoyed the gradual expansion of the people and the world, and could easily see myself buying the next three before a long journey.
112-114. Melissa Caruso, the Tethered Mage (reread), the Defiant Heir, the Unbound Empire. I'd read the first one ages ago, noticed the second one was out and picked it up. Got round to the re-read and realised I'd completely forgotten everything about the book and it wasn't the book I thought it was. Some elements of romantasy, a nice recasting of Venice and its politics, quite good villains and evil magicians, and a bunch of strong female characters who are aided and abetted by the male ones, mostly.
115. Emma Mieko Candon, The Archive Undying. This should have been a breeze - mechas, weird relationships, complicated back story, deep history of AIs going rogue, betrayals, that sort of thing. But somehow I kept getting stuck and it was a lot harder than it should have been. No idea why.
116. Charlie Stross, The Labyrinth Index. Laundry Files book I hadn't read - and now I realise there may be another one I missed for some reason. If you enjoyed any of the Laundry Files you'll probably enjoy this vampire/spook/aviation history/computational magick mix. Nice to see Bob as a minor character, too
117. Michael Moorcock, The Coming of the Terraphiles. I said to the second hand bookshop person "I had no idea Moorcock did a Dr Who book". He looked at me blankly. It's a romp. The Eternal Champion, a variation on cricket, mockery of the English upper classes and their habits, pirates on the moonbeam roads, and Dr Who. So about what you'd expect.
118. John Le Carre, Our Game. I have been gradually working through Le Carre as I stumble across them, and every single one of them has been a straight read through in as close to one go as humanly possible. This doesn't disappoint -right up to the ending when it just ... stops ... Sometimes he does that with a "and then the doors are kicked in by <insert evil western government>" but on this occasion it felt like a "huh, what??"
119-121. Anne McCaffrey and Elizabeth Moon and Jody Lynn Nye, the Planet Pirates trilogy. Interesting milSF (Lead character joins the fleet...) for books 1 and 3, book 2 has another person rattling around in the same universe. Moon co-wrote 1 and 3, Nye co-wrote 2. Works pretty well gradually bringing in a lot of alien species, interesting use of "FTL is starting to be available", great use of cold sleep as a "normal" thing people use. Slightly unconvinced by the overarching plot about corruption in the government, but I was enjoying most of it too much to feel wronged by that.
122. Ursula Vernon as T Kingfisher, The Seventh Bride. A young girl is to be married to a sorcerer. We learn why swans are to be feared. A hedgehog is surprisingly helpful. Villainy is foiled. Very enjoyable if you like that sort of thing, which I do.

 

[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
9/9 - The Payback by Simon Kernick
10/9 - The Beach House by James Patterson and Peter De Jonge
11/9 - The Black Ice by Michael Connelly

 

[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]
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

66. John Wagner, Alan Grant, Carlos Ezquerra - Strontium Dog: the Starlord Years

 

[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 (audio book)
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
20/60 Anything For Her - Jack Jordan
21/60 One Man's Window - Denis Barnham (audio book)
22/60 Dixie City Jam - James Lee Burke
23/60 Heaven's Prisoners - James Lee Burke
24/60 Word of Honour - Nelson Demille

Nelson sure writes long books - bought it as he had just died and I'd never read anything by him, enjoyed this - it's sort of a Vietnam War novel, but way after the events of the war.

 

[frogwoman]

A Furious Sky - history of hurricanes in the US. So far it's very focused (unsurprisingly I guess) on how they impacted early American colonists rather than anyone else.

 

[pseudonarcissus]

27/29 The Housing Lark – Sam Selvon

A little darker than Lonely Londoners, in a way, but an optimistic end. Worth reading.

Now to Demon Copperhead, which I suspect is a hefty book, judging by my % progress on the Kindle. I wouldn't have read it without noting the popularity here, then it's been talked about in reference to the NC hurricane.

26/29 Boys Alive - Pier Paolo Pasolini
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

 

[rich!]

Got a bit sidetracked and now I have a small pile of books to update.
109-111. S. Usher Evans, The Weary Dragon Inn books 1-3. Very much twee cosy fantasy, if you enjoyed Legends and Lattes you'll likely enjoy these. Some interesting "back story lurking" that gradually plays out over the three I read. I also enjoyed the gradual expansion of the people and the world, and could easily see myself buying the next three before a long journey.
112-114. Melissa Caruso, the Tethered Mage (reread), the Defiant Heir, the Unbound Empire. I'd read the first one ages ago, noticed the second one was out and picked it up. Got round to the re-read and realised I'd completely forgotten everything about the book and it wasn't the book I thought it was. Some elements of romantasy, a nice recasting of Venice and its politics, quite good villains and evil magicians, and a bunch of strong female characters who are aided and abetted by the male ones, mostly.
115. Emma Mieko Candon, The Archive Undying. This should have been a breeze - mechas, weird relationships, complicated back story, deep history of AIs going rogue, betrayals, that sort of thing. But somehow I kept getting stuck and it was a lot harder than it should have been. No idea why.
116. Charlie Stross, The Labyrinth Index. Laundry Files book I hadn't read - and now I realise there may be another one I missed for some reason. If you enjoyed any of the Laundry Files you'll probably enjoy this vampire/spook/aviation history/computational magick mix. Nice to see Bob as a minor character, too
117. Michael Moorcock, The Coming of the Terraphiles. I said to the second hand bookshop person "I had no idea Moorcock did a Dr Who book". He looked at me blankly. It's a romp. The Eternal Champion, a variation on cricket, mockery of the English upper classes and their habits, pirates on the moonbeam roads, and Dr Who. So about what you'd expect.
118. John Le Carre, Our Game. I have been gradually working through Le Carre as I stumble across them, and every single one of them has been a straight read through in as close to one go as humanly possible. This doesn't disappoint -right up to the ending when it just ... stops ... Sometimes he does that with a "and then the doors are kicked in by <insert evil western government>" but on this occasion it felt like a "huh, what??"
119-121. Anne McCaffrey and Elizabeth Moon and Jody Lynn Nye, the Planet Pirates trilogy. Interesting milSF (Lead character joins the fleet...) for books 1 and 3, book 2 has another person rattling around in the same universe. Moon co-wrote 1 and 3, Nye co-wrote 2. Works pretty well gradually bringing in a lot of alien species, interesting use of "FTL is starting to be available", great use of cold sleep as a "normal" thing people use. Slightly unconvinced by the overarching plot about corruption in the government, but I was enjoying most of it too much to feel wronged by that.
122. Ursula Vernon as T Kingfisher, The Seventh Bride. A young girl is to be married to a sorcerer. We learn why swans are to be feared. A hedgehog is surprisingly helpful. Villainy is foiled. Very enjoyable if you like that sort of thing, which I do.

123. Hannah Ritchie, Not The End Of The World. Environment scientist does a thorough job of mapping the trends that are going in the right direction and which ones aren't, giving good ideas about where to put our efforts. Some very unexpected data points in here about things like food, lighting, recycling and conservation.

124. Ada Hoffmann, The Fallen. Sequel to The Outside. Much more about the dynamics of a working group of neuro divergent revolutionaries. Build up very nicely to a satisfying step change in what's happening in her universe. We find out more about the back story of the Angels and the various Gods and how the histories of the universe are told to the people who live under the Gods. Really looking forward to book 3

125. Tim Brown, Barry Katz, Change By Design. A very IDEO book - it has a mind map of the book inside the front cover - but quite interesting all the same. Lots of explanation of how to use design thinking (as opposed to design) in an industrial and a wider context. Because it's from 2009 it's interesting to see how some of the examples seem dated and others are overly well known, but it gave me plenty to think about.

 

[rubbershoes]

1/30 The Damned Utd by David Peace
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
35/30 Dr Zhivago by Boris Pasternak
36/30 Exit by Belinda Bauer
37/30 I, Partridge: We need to talk about Alan by Alan Partridge (again). I read the book and/or listen to the audiobook a couple of times a year
38/30 History of Wolves by Emily Fridlund
39/30 Jeeves and the feudal spirit by PG Wodehouse
40/30 On The Road Bike: The Search For A Nation’s Cycling Soul by Ned Boulting
41/30 The Crow Road by Iain Banks

42/30 The Sandcastle by Iris Murdoch. Are all Iris Murdoch books about doomed love affairs?

 

[Biddlybee]

1/30 - 10 Minutes 38 Seconds in This Strange World - Elif Shafak
2/30 - Leonard and Hungry Paul - Rónán Hession
3/30 - The Goldfinch - Donna Tartt
4/30 - Americanah - Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
5/30 - A Kind of Spark - Ellie McNicoll
6/30 - Little Fires Everywhere - Celeste Ng
7/30 - Slow Horses - Mick Herron
8/30 - Lily - Rose Tremain
9/30 - Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow - Gabrielle Zevin
10/30 - The Bee Sting - Paul Murray
11/30 - In Memoriam - Alice Winn
12/30 - So Late in the Day - Claire Keegan

Forgot to say, The Bee Sting is a bit shit, don't waste precious time on it. In Memoriam is beautifully written though.

 

[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
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

44/45 Rachel Sussman - The Oldest Living Things in the Planet

Spends 10 years traipsing across the world to take pics of old plants, fungi and lichen. Like proper old. If it hasn't had it's 2,000th birthday, it ain't getting in.

ETA. Forgot... Pickman's model might like this one as Grytviken is featured. I just hope the future residents don't spoil the ancient moss in their search for food

​

 

[Chilli.s]

37 The Jimi Hendrix Experience : Jerry Hopkins
38 Walking the Nile : Levison Wood
39 Sinbad : Kurt Vonnegut
40 If This Isn't Nice, What Is? : Kurt Vonnegut
41 Under Milk Wood : Dylan Thomas (reread)
42 One More Last Time : Eric Ugland
43 Riddley Walker : Russell Hoban
44 Lost! : Thomas Thompson
45 Death Roll : Sam Llewellyn
46 Stoner : John Williams
47 The Importance of Not Being Ernest :M Kurlansky
48 A Race Too Far : Chris Eakin
49 London Match : Len Deighton (reread)
50 Spero : Ursula Westmacott
51 Disgrace : J M Coetzee
52 Gringos : Charles Portis
53 A Boy and His Dog : Harlan Ellison
54 Neuromancer : William Gibson (reread)
55 Vaster than Empires and More Slow : Ursula Le Guin
56 Buffalo Gals Won’t You Come Out Tonight : Ursula Le Guin
57 The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo : Taylor Jenkins Reid

 

[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]
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
66. John Wagner, Alan Grant, Carlos Ezquerra - Strontium Dog: the Starlord Years

67. Stuart Maconie - The Pie at Night: In Search of the North at Play

 

[hitmouse]

42/30 The Sandcastle by Iris Murdoch. Are all Iris Murdoch books about doomed love affairs?

I mean, it helps, but I don't think they all are, I'd think of the essential Murdoch ingredients as being more 500 characters, a fast-moving convoluted plot, and philosophical musings. But she does also like her doomed love affairs to be sure.

 

[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
35/52 - John Irving - The Last Chairlift
36/52 - Doug Johnstone - The Opposite of Lonely
37/52 - Claire Chambers - The Editor's Wife
38/52 - Barbara Kingsolver - Prodigal Summer
39/52 - Peter James - They Thought I Was Dead
40/52 - Jacqueline O'Mahony - Sing, Wild Bird, Sing (BC)
41/52 - Elly Griffiths - The Outcast Dead

42/52 - Charles Dickens - David Copperfield (BC)

My book club is reading Demon Copperhead this month but I've already read it so I decided to read this instead.
It was a bit of a slog at times tbh, but I'm glad I read it - the comparison was interesting

 

[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 Barney Campbell - Rain
8/19 Sandra Newman - Julia
9/19 Ian Black - Enemies and Neighbours. Arabs and Jews in Palestine and Israel 1917-2017

 

[belboid]

1/30 - Lexie Conyngham - Tomb for an Eagle
2/30 - Michael Eaton - B*llocks -A Word on Trial
3/30 - Paul Simpson - Revolutionary Spirit
4/30 - Joe Thomas - Red Menace
5/30 - Daniel Clowes - Monica
6/30 - Will Sergeant - Echoes
7/30 - Wu Ming - 54
8/30 - Kathleen Hanna - Rebel Girl, my life as a feminist punk
9/30 - Aldous Huxley - The Devils of Loudon
10/30 - Volodomyr Ishchenko - Towards the Abyss: Ukraine from Maidan to War
11/30 - Dan Kavanagh - Duffy
12/30 - Samantha Schweblin - Little Eyes
13/30 - Tabitha Stanmore - Cunning Folk: Life in the Age of Practical Magic
14/30 - Nathalie Olah - Bad Taste
15/30 - Luke Haines - Freaks Out! Weirdos, Misfits & Deviants - The Rise and Fall of Righteous Rock 'n' Roll
16/30 - Willy Vlautin - The Horse
17/30 - Silvia Moreno-Garcia - Silver Nitrate
18/30 - Geoff Nicholson - The Surburbanist
19/30 - Jacqueline Pearce - From Byfleet to the Bush
20/30 - Sharon Bennett Connolly - Women of the Anarchy
21/30 - Mark E Smith & Graham Duff - The Otherwise
22/30 - Benjamin Myers - Rare Singles
23/30 - Marilyn Robinson - Gilead

24/30 - Nikolai Gogol - Dead Souls
I thought I'd read it before my film came out. Very funny satire (?) about the buying up of serfs and the stupidity and corruptness of landowners and Russian hypocrisy in general. Marvellously drawn grotesques and absurdities. Dont bother with the extracts from Book 2 that usually come printed with it, they are far too incomplete and are just frustrating.

25/30 - Aldous Huxley - Grey Eminence
The story of Father Joseph, leading mystic, Capuchin monk and close friend of Richelieu. A bit of a bastard really, despite the fact he did everything for God. Made Machiavelli look like a rank amateur and prolonged the Thirty Years War by twenty years, absolute minimum. Fascinating character. Great book.

 

[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]
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
66. John Wagner, Alan Grant, Carlos Ezquerra - Strontium Dog: the Starlord Years
67. Stuart Maconie - The Pie at Night: In Search of the North at Play

68. Michael Fleischer, Ron Smith - Rogue Trooper: Friday vol 1
69. HP Lovecraft - At the Mountains of Madness
70. Varaidzo - Manny and the Baby

 

[Signal 11]

7/10 - Intimate Direct Democracy: Fort Mose, The Great Dismal Swamp, and the Human Quest for Freedom - Modibo Kadalie

 

[frogwoman]

Just finished the Crisis of Zionism by Peter Beinart. It was written in 2012 when he was still a (liberal) zionist and has a lot of history I didn't know regarding Obama's relationship with Netanyahu - the 'crisis' is the contradiction between zionism and liberal democracy which he argues would lead to one or the other (or both) losing support in the American Jewish community. I don't know if I agree with the conclusion but it's well worth the read.

 

[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
35/52 - John Irving - The Last Chairlift
36/52 - Doug Johnstone - The Opposite of Lonely
37/52 - Claire Chambers - The Editor's Wife
38/52 - Barbara Kingsolver - Prodigal Summer
39/52 - Peter James - They Thought I Was Dead
40/52 - Jacqueline O'Mahony - Sing, Wild Bird, Sing (BC)
41/52 - Elly Griffiths - The Outcast Dead
42/52 - Charles Dickens - David Copperfield (BC)

43/52 - Iain Banks - The Steep Approach to Garbadale (re-read)