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

[furluxor]

Don't, it's been on my to-read list for two years and a friend cofirmed it's a quality read just yesterday. It's all in motion now and cannot be stopped.

 

[belboid]

Perhaps after Virginia Woolf you would enjoy a bit of a breather! I do like her but it's dense stuff.

I picked up The Tenant... and had a flick through. I'll definitely read it at some point next year, but it does look too much straight after Virginia.

Instead I have plumped for a modern sci-fi classic, no one has read it on this list this year, but otherwise it seems to be one at least one person reads each challenge. I find it hard to believe I haven't read it already.

 

[shifting gears]

Instead I have plumped for a modern sci-fi classic, no one has read it on this list this year, but otherwise it seems to be one at least one person reads each challenge. I find it hard to believe I haven't read it already.

This is teasery of the highest order, WE DEMAND THE TITLE

 

[belboid]

This is teasery of the highest order, WE DEMAND THE TITLE

you read it last year!

 

[shifting gears]

I reckon it’s parbly Riddley Walker then and sorry for the lack of plomercy in my previous post

 

[PTK]

I have just given up on a crime novel.​

I had been reading it fairly rapidly, and it was quite enjoyable.

I could accept the premise that there were some people who were
who had limited telepathic powers, including the detective who comes to London fromPortugal to investigate some murders at the Portuguese Embassy.​

I could accept that some people had telekinetic powers.

However, on page 139 of this book there is a huge plot hole that I could not accept. I read on for about another 50 pages, then gave up.

A woman who was seeking asylum in the Embassy is missing. Her ex-partner, who is not telepathic, flies to London from the USA, and approaches the Portuguese detective one morning outside the block of flats in which she is living while in London. She has information for the detective, and they go to a cafe, where she tells the detective what she knows.

1. How would the ex-partner know that the Portuguese detective had been working with the British police?

2 How would she have known where the detective was living?

She says that she is a journalist, and that she knows of the detective from a previous notorious case that was covered widely in the press. This does not explain how she knew what she knew.

In a plausible story, she would have been arrested and interrogated. There must be a leak in the Met, and she must have been working with the leaker. But not in the story.​

Plot is said to be the most important thing for crime novels. If the plot fails, then there are no other aspects to redeem it.

The book is called “Broken Oaths”, and its author is Patricia Marques. It is a shame that the plot failed like this.​

 

[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 - Clare 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)
44/52 - Elly Griffiths - The Ghost Fields
45/52 - James M Cain - The Embezzler
46/52 - Clare Chambers - Shy Creatures
47/52 - Stephen King - Everything's Eventual
48/52 - Doug Johnstone - Living is a Problem
49/52 - Irvine Welsh - Resolution
50/52 - Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie - That Thing Around Your Neck
51/52 - Margaret Atwood - Cat's Eye

52/52 - Roddy Doyle - The Woman Behind The Door

 

[shifting gears]

1/30 - Philip K. Dick - Valis
2/30 - Robert Louis Stevenson - Dr. Jekyll & Mr. Hyde
3/30 - Franz Kafka - The Trial
4/30 - Dan Charnas - Dilla Time
The Life and Afterlife of the Hip-Hop Producer Who Reinvented Rhythm
5/30 - Douglas Adams - The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy
6/30 - Kim Stanley Robinson - Red Mars
7/30 - William S. Burroughs - Junky
8/30 - Louise Welsh - The Cutting Room
9/30 - J.D. Salinger - The Catcher in the Rye
10/30 - Ursula K. Le Guin - The Left Hand of Darkness
11/30 - Percival Everett - James
12/30 - Frank Herbert - Dune
13/30 - Iain Banks - The Wasp Factory
14/30 - Frank Herbert - Dune Messiah
15/30 - William Gibson - Count Zero
16/30 - James Kelman - How Late It Was, How Late
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
23/30 - Arthur Conan Doyle - The Hound of the Baskervilles
24/30 - Toni Morrison - Jazz

25/30 - Ed Gillett - Party Lines: Dance Music and the Making of Modern Britain
26/30 - John Williams - Stoner
27/30 - Colette - Gigi

 

[rich!]

135. John le Carre, The Tailor of Panama. Spooks trying to prepare for the US leaving Panama in the dying years of the 20th century. Compelling reading as ever (basically read it in one go) but the characters are fascinating but unpleasant at some level. Has another one of those "just stops" endings that I am always puzzled by in his books.

(I've also read a few more Grimes books but I'll pop those in in a block)

136. Yume Kitasei, The Stardust Grail. Student goes on quest to find a lost intergalactic treasure, makes friends on the way and meets up with characters from their backstory. Entertaining and would probably read another book by them, but the "unreliable source of knowledge" character did start to bug me by the end.

137. Django Wexler, How to become the Dark Lord and Die Trying. Funny, footnotes, lead character is very bi/panspecies, massive trigger warnings for suicide. I enjoyed it a lot over a tough weekend. Earth person thrown into fantasy world as hero-to-be, gives up on the several-hundredth-attempt and goes Dark. Nicely done, I will be reading the sequel.

138. Charlie Jane Anders, Victories Greater Than Death (reread). Earth girl is actually intergalactic princess. Aliens rescue her from sure death, and she goes on to gather a team and travel the galaxy fighting an old and a recent evil, where the recent evil is her ex from a previous life... Great fun, vol 1 of 3

 

[belboid]

I reckon it’s parbly Riddley Walker then and sorry for the lack of plomercy in my previous post

never heard of him.

I'm half way through and I am still not sure i'm there is an actual story, but the world building is astounding.

 

[farmerbarleymow]

Just finished a book called 'gobsmacked - the British invasion of American English' by Ben Yagoda. Quite interesting to read about words and expressions that have entered us usage.

You might be interested in this petee

 

[marty21]

You are slacking on your target there Marty. Not like you.

I don't think I'm going to meet mine. On 39 of 50.

I know - I've let myself down

 

[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
25/60 Black Cherry Blues - James Lee Burke
26/50 Akenfield - Ronald Blythe

 

[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
32/45 RF Kuang - Babel
33/45 Jen Calleja - Goblinhood
34/45 Albert Meltzer - I Couldn't Paint Golden Angels
35/45 Nell Osborne - Thank You For Everything

36/45 Graeme Macrae Burnet - His Bloody Project

Bit of a weird one this, quite liked it. I think the easiest way to describe it is that it's a little bit like if Burial Rites by Hannah Kent was about a miserable 19th-century Scottish man doing a murder instead of a miserable 19th-century Icelandic woman? Not quite sure I got the point of it, but perhaps the point is just that things are complicated and messy and don't make for neat narratives?

 

[CNT36]

I have just given up on a crime novel.​

I had been reading it fairly rapidly, and it was quite enjoyable.

I could accept the premise that there were some people who were
who had limited telepathic powers, including the detective who comes to London fromPortugal to investigate some murders at the Portuguese Embassy.​

I could accept that some people had telekinetic powers.

However, on page 139 of this book there is a huge plot hole that I could not accept. I read on for about another 50 pages, then gave up.

A woman who was seeking asylum in the Embassy is missing. Her ex-partner, who is not telepathic, flies to London from the USA, and approaches the Portuguese detective one morning outside the block of flats in which she is living while in London. She has information for the detective, and they go to a cafe, where she tells the detective what she knows.

1. How would the ex-partner know that the Portuguese detective had been working with the British police?

2 How would she have known where the detective was living?

She says that she is a journalist, and that she knows of the detective from a previous notorious case that was covered widely in the press. This does not explain how she knew what she knew.

In a plausible story, she would have been arrested and interrogated. There must be a leak in the Met, and she must have been working with the leaker. But not in the story.​

Plot is said to be the most important thing for crime novels. If the plot fails, then there are no other aspects to redeem it.

The book is called “Broken Oaths”, and its author is Patricia Marques. It is a shame that the plot failed like this.​

Definitely a plot hole and not a clue?

 

[PTK]

Definitely a plot hole and not a clue?

It is definitely a plot hole.

 

[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
32/45 RF Kuang - Babel
33/45 Jen Calleja - Goblinhood
34/45 Albert Meltzer - I Couldn't Paint Golden Angels
35/45 Nell Osborne - Thank You For Everything
36/45 Graeme Macrae Burnet - His Bloody Project

37/45 Katherine Angel - Daddy Issues

Bumping up my numbers with another very short one here. Katherine Angel innit, feminism and psychoanalysis and that, always interesting. Uncomfortable reading in places, did make me quite glad I'm no-one's dad. Definitely worth a read, as I say it is very short.

Now starting Iris Murdoch - The Nice and the Good. Iris Murdoch doing what Murdoch does, really really enjoying it so far. According to the blurb, "In the foreground are black magic, blackmail, conspiracy, an unexplained death, a religious failure, a first love, and deep and urgent problems of truth and loyalty and forgiveness. Not all the characters are nice and none of them is good, but at least one knows how large the distance is between the two conditions."

Also features a classic Murdoch ridiculously large cast, I'm about 30 pages in and so far it's introduced Octavian Gray, Octavian's wife Kate, their daughter Barbara, Mary Clothier who lives with them, Mary Clothier's son Pierce, Octavian's brother Theodore, Theodore's brother Mingo, Paula Biranne who also lives with all of the above, Paula's twin children Edward and Henrietta, the housekeeper Mary Casie, the cat Montrose, Octavian's coworker John Ducane, and John's ex-girlfriend Jessica Bird. I'm hoping it's not going to carry on at this rate.

 

[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
26. "The Last Day" - Andrew Hunter Murray
27. "In the Blink of an Eye" - Jo Callaghan.l

28. "None of this Is True" - Lisa Jewell. Excellent, compelling psychological thriller

 

[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 - Clare 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)
44/52 - Elly Griffiths - The Ghost Fields
45/52 - James M Cain - The Embezzler
46/52 - Clare Chambers - Shy Creatures
47/52 - Stephen King - Everything's Eventual
48/52 - Doug Johnstone - Living is a Problem
49/52 - Irvine Welsh - Resolution
50/52 - Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie - That Thing Around Your Neck
51/52 - Margaret Atwood - Cat's Eye
52/52 - Roddy Doyle - The Woman Behind The Door

53/52 - Jo Walton - Farthing
54/52 - Maggie O'Farrell - I Am, I Am, I Am

A couple of fantastic books, thanks for the recommendations Me76 and May Kasahara

 

[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
25/30 - Aldous Huxley - Grey Eminence
26/30 - Werner Herzog - Every Man for Himself and God Against All
27/30 - Hunter S Thompson - Ancient Gonzo Wisdom, interviews with HST
28/30 - Jeffrey Lewis - Leonard Cohen
29/30 - Virginia Woolf - The Years

30/30 - Ursula K Le Guin - The Dispossessed

Well, that was rather good. On a bleak moon occupied by idealistic anarchists and long isolated from the rest of the universe, an individual decides they want to talk with the other worlds and share.....stuff. Will he destroy his own world by doing so, or kickstart the destruction of capitalism down below?

 

[shifting gears]

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
25/30 - Aldous Huxley - Grey Eminence
26/30 - Werner Herzog - Every Man for Himself and God Against All
27/30 - Hunter S Thompson - Ancient Gonzo Wisdom, interviews with HST
28/30 - Jeffrey Lewis - Leonard Cohen
29/30 - Virginia Woolf - The Years

30/30 - Ursula K Le Guin - The Dispossessed

Well, that was rather good. On a bleak moon occupied by idealistic anarchists and long isolated from the rest of the universe, an individual decides they want to talk with the other worlds and share.....stuff. Will he destroy his own world by doing so, or kickstart the destruction of capitalism down below?

belboid ohhhhh thaaaat one. A ruddy corker that is

 

[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
71. Dan Abnett, Richard Elson - Feral and Foe
72. Bill Bryson - A Short History of Nearly Everything [audiobook]
73. Terry Pratchett - The Fifth Elephant
74. Kelly Weinersmith, Zach Weinersmith - A City on Mars: Can We Settle Space, Should We Settle Space, and Have We Really Thought This Through?
75. Pat Mills - M.A.C.H.-1 vol 1
76. Natalie Whittle - Crunch: an Ode to Crisps
77. Samantha Harvey - Orbital [audiobook]
78. Mark Millar, Chris Weston - Canon Fodder

79. Mark Steel - The Mark Steel Lectures [audiobook]

 

[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
25/60 Black Cherry Blues - James Lee Burke
26/50 Akenfield - Ronald Blythe
27/50 The Lost Paths : A History of How We Walk from Here to There - Jack Cornish

 

[rich!]

136. Yume Kitasei, The Stardust Grail. Student goes on quest to find a lost intergalactic treasure, makes friends on the way and meets up with characters from their backstory. Entertaining and would probably read another book by them, but the "unreliable source of knowledge" character did start to bug me by the end.

137. Django Wexler, How to become the Dark Lord and Die Trying. Funny, footnotes, lead character is very bi/panspecies, massive trigger warnings for suicide. I enjoyed it a lot over a tough weekend. Earth person thrown into fantasy world as hero-to-be, gives up on the several-hundredth-attempt and goes Dark. Nicely done, I will be reading the sequel.

138. Charlie Jane Anders, Victories Greater Than Death (reread). Earth girl is actually intergalactic princess. Aliens rescue her from sure death, and she goes on to gather a team and travel the galaxy fighting an old and a recent evil, where the recent evil is her ex from a previous life... Great fun, vol 1 of 3

139,140. Charlie Jane Anders, Dreams Bigger Than Heartbreak (reread), Promises Stronger than Darkness. Volumes 2 and 3 resp. The space romp continues, more evil happens by genocidal maniacs who can't stand people being different, the found family becomes stronger despite tragedies, and everything wraps up to a satisfying conclusion.

 

[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
45/45 Christopher Ruocchio - Empire of Silence
46/45 Abdul Salam Zaeef - My Life with the Taliban
47/45 Joshua Dubler - Break Every Yoke
48/45 Gabrielle Zevin - Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow
49/45 Paul Lynch - Prophet Song

50/45 Peter Kropotkin - The Conquest of Bread

 

[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 - Clare 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)
44/52 - Elly Griffiths - The Ghost Fields
45/52 - James M Cain - The Embezzler
46/52 - Clare Chambers - Shy Creatures
47/52 - Stephen King - Everything's Eventual
48/52 - Doug Johnstone - Living is a Problem
49/52 - Irvine Welsh - Resolution
50/52 - Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie - That Thing Around Your Neck
51/52 - Margaret Atwood - Cat's Eye
52/52 - Roddy Doyle - The Woman Behind The Door
53/52 - Jo Walton - Farthing
54/52 - Maggie O'Farrell - I Am, I Am, I Am

55/52 - David Nicholls - Us

 

[frogwoman]

Assad or we burn the country by Sam Dagher. What a horrifying family

 

[inva]

1/50 The State of Capitalism by Costas Lapavitsas and the EReNSEP Writing Collective
2/50 The Turn of the Screw by Henry James
3/50 The True Deceiver by Tove Jansson
4/50 Army of Lovers by K.M. Soehnlein
5/50 Cold Nights of Childhood by Tezer Özlü
6/50 Sanditon by Jane Austen
7/50 Delilah Green Doesn't Care by Ashley Herring Blake
8/50 Cold Hand in Mine by Robert Aickman
9/50 A Long Time Dead by Samara Berger
10/50 Asia’s Unknown Uprisings Volume 1: South Korean Social Movements in the 20th Century by George Katsiaficas
11/50 Maigret at Picratt’s by Georges Simenon
12/50 Matrix by Lauren Groff
13/50 Persuasion by Jane Austen
14/50 The Glass Pearls by Emeric Pressburger
15/50 Hôtel Splendid by Marie Redonnet
16/50 Dandelions by Yasunari Kawabata
17/50 The Slave Ship: A Human History by Marcus Rediker
18/50 Of Wars, and Memories, and Starlight by Aliette de Bodard
19/50 The Cracked Looking Glass by Katherine Anne Porter
20/50 Film Making in 1930s Britain by Rachael Low
21/50 Revenge by Yoko Ogawa
22/50 After the New Economy by Doug Henwood
23/50 The Teachers’ Room by Lydia Stryk
24/50 The Small Back Room by Nigel Balchin
25/50 Dragon Palace by Hiromi Kawakami
26/50 In the Long Run We Are All Dead by Geoff Mann
27/50 Madame de by Louise de Vilmorin
28/50 Realizing Capital: Financial and Psychic Economies in Victorian Form by Anna Kornbluh
29/50 We Could Be So Good by Cat Sebastian
30/50 Falling Hour by Geoffrey D. Morrison
31/50 BFFs by Anahit Behrooz
32/50 My Darling Dreadful Thing by Johanna Van Veen
33/50 Go Back at Once by Robert Aickman
34/50 The Wall by Marlen Haushofer
35/50 The Late Americans by Brandon Taylor
36/50 All the Lovers in the Night by Mieko Kawakami
37/50 Chuǎng 1: Dead Generations by Chuǎng
38/50 Vampires of El Norte by Isabel Cañas
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
48/50 Britain in Revolution by Austin Woolrych
49/50 Cold Comfort Farm by Stella Gibbons
50/50 Company of Liars by Karen Maitland
51/50 Sense and Sensibility by Jane Austen
52/50 The World Beneath by Cate Kennedy
53/50 Second Chances in New Port Stephen by TJ Alexander
54/50 Stick Together by Sophie Hénaff
55/50 1649: The Crisis of the English Revolution by Brian Manning
56/50 Crypt of the Moon Spider by Nathan Ballingrud
Pulpy sci-fi horror where the moon is full of spiders for some reason and it's the 1920s, although this didn't seem to have much bearing on anything, and a woman is being experimented on in a lunar mental hospital. This was ok, it was probably not a bad thing that it didn't make much sense and nothing was really explained at least it's much better than when these type of novels over-explain. I did think Ballingrud way overdid it on the similes, and I generally enjoy descriptive writing but this wasn't the best example and didn't end up flowing well.

 

[Signal 11]

10/10 - Chess for Zebras - Jonathan Rowson

 

[zedr]

1/24 Radicalized - Cory Doctorow
2/24 The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine - Ilan Pappe (audio book)
3/24 Ray Bradbury - We'll Always Have Paris (audio book)
4/24 The Three Body Problem - Liu Cixin (reread, audio book)
5/24 Red Mars - Kim Stanley Robinson
6/24 Destination Unknown - Agatha Christie (audio book)
7/24 Dogs of War - Adrian Tchaikovsky (audiobook)
8/24 Less is More, How Degrowth Will Save the World - Jason Hickel
9/24 The Last Days of New Paris - China Miéville
10/24 Watchmen - Alan Moore/Dave Gibbons (reread)
11/24 For Those Who Are About To - Joanna Russ
12/24 The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks
13/24 Shadow of the Sun - Ryszard Kapuscinski
14/24 Ammonite - Nicola Griffith
15/24 Sea of Tranquility - Emily St John Mandel
16/24 The Lion Will Slaughter The Lamb - Margret Killjoy
17/24 Galatea - Madeline Miller
18/24 The Drowned World - JG Ballard
19/24 Babel - RF Kuang
20/24 Post Internet Far Right - Sam Moore & Alex Roberts

21/24 Agency - William Gibson
Creative speculative fiction about AI. I worry nothing I read of his will ever quite live up to the first read of Necromancer and whilst I enjoyed the setting and ideas behind this one, the pacing all felt very weird. The bits about Qamishli came at the same time as the Syrian uprising which was also a little jarring.

22/24 The Employees - Olga Ravn
Loved this. Lots of interviews with workers on a long distance space ship about their conditions. Slowly builds up the issues and tensions but doesn't give you too much. Nice and short to help me hit my target too!

E2a Neuromancer, obv