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

[rich!]

1. Glass and Gardens. A Solarpunk Anthology.
2. Made to Order - Robots and Revolution.
3. Frames of Mind - Howard Gardner.
4.The Social Brain - Camilleri, Rockey, Dunbar
5. Mercedes Lackey - The Serpent's Shadow
6. T.J. Klune - The House in the Cerulean Sea
7. Melissa Yi - The Italian School for Assassins
8. Matthew Hughes - The Other
9. KJ Parker - Sixteen Ways to Defend a Walled City

10. Ian McDonald - Hopeland - this is quite amazing, I'm going to call it hopepunk/dynastic climate lit and yeah. Amazing

 

[kalmatthew]

4/60 The Ethos Effect LE Moddesit Jr.

5/60 the hand maidens tale - Margaret Attwood

 

[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

4/45 Susanna Clarke - Piranesi

For a short book it took a while to get going and wasn't all that. Surprised by all the rave reviews.

 

[pseudonarcissus]

5/29 Iracema – José de Alencar.

A Brazilian Hiawatha, I suppose. I didn't find it very engaging to be honest.

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

 

[imposs1904]

1/19 Yanis Varoufakis - Technofeudalism: What killed capitalism?
Varoufakis argues that rather than capitalism being replaced by socialism it has instead been replaced by a type of Technofeudalism that extracts rents in various forms turning people into cloud serfs and cloud proles. People working for free to create content for some platforms (Instagram, YouTube etc) while on others the market is consigned to the dustbin of history (Amazon). I'm not sure it holds together completely but worth some thought and maybe useful as a tool for analysis. Instead of writing as if to his daughter this time he's writing to his dead father.

Reviewed in this month's Socialist Standard.

 

[imposs1904]

1/36 Diaries 1980–1988: Halfway to Hollywood – The Film Years by Michael Palin

 

[QueenOfGoths]

1. "Wrong Place Wrong Time" - Gillian McAllister.

2. "The Scarlet Papers" - Matthew Richardson. Very readable spy thriller with plenty of twists. His habit of ending each chapter on a kind of cliffhanger became a little tedious but not enough to take away from the enjoyment of the book

 

[kalmatthew]

5/60 the hand maidens tale - Margaret Attwood

6/60 Fairhaven Rising - LE Moddesit Jr.

Lots going on at the moment but as much as I wanted to read the sequel to The Handmaidens tale, I needed something more uplifting and escapist. Now my only problem is what to read before the latest book in The Saga of Recluse comes out on Tuesday.

 

[belboid]

1/30 - Tomb for an Eagle by Lexie Conyngham

First of a quadrilogy that I started immediately after finishing my 30th book last year. "This will be a quick, light, read" I thought. And it is light, but obviously hasn't ben that quick. Perfectly decent Viking Orkney set murder mystery, but nowt thrilling.

But its done, so now I can start on The Pile.

 

[PursuedByBears]

1/45 Karl Stock - Comic Book Punks: How a Generation of Brits Reinvented Pop Culture
2/45 John Wagner, Alan Grant - Judge Dredd: the Complete Case Files vol 07
3/45 Terry Pratchett - The Carpet People
4/45 Iain Banks - The Wasp Factory (reread)
5/45 Gordon Rennie, Emma Beeby - Survival Geeks

6/45 Paul Baker - Fabulousa!: the Story of Polari, Britain's Secret Gay Language

Written by a Professor in one of my departments; I don't know him very well but have worked with his husband on many research proposals over the years. Very interesting and informative and the anthesis of a typical academic publication. Recommended.

 

[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

 

[pseudonarcissus]

6/29 And Then He Sang a Lullaby – Ani Kayode Somtochukwu

A very powerful book.

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

 

[hitmouse]

1/3 Mario Tronti - Workers and Capital (First Hypotheses)
1/45 John Fowles - The Collector

2/3 Mario Tronti - Workers and Capital (Marx, Labour-Power, Working Class)

I've now worked my way through all of the original 1966 edition, just got the 1971 postscript and 2007 appendix to go now, which should be a piece of piss in comparison. Some interesting stuff, a lot that's heavy going, I definitely think I'm more interested in what other people have done with Tronti as a starting point than his actual original work.

Now starting

2/45 Claire Dederer - Monsters

Which looks great, and considerably more readable. Also read Levelling the Score issue 1, which feels like it could be a short book but they say it's a fanzine so I'm not counting it.

 

[PursuedByBears]

1/45 Karl Stock - Comic Book Punks: How a Generation of Brits Reinvented Pop Culture
2/45 John Wagner, Alan Grant - Judge Dredd: the Complete Case Files vol 07
3/45 Terry Pratchett - The Carpet People
4/45 Iain Banks - The Wasp Factory (reread)
5/45 Gordon Rennie, Emma Beeby - Survival Geeks
6/45 Paul Baker - Fabulousa!: the Story of Polari, Britain's Secret Gay Language

7/45 Rachel Joyce - The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry

 

[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

 

[nottsgirl]

hc - hard copy
dl - dens library
k - kindle
g - google

1/50 Face, Benjamin Zephaniah- hc
2/50 My Year of Rest and Relaxation, Otessa Moshfegh - dl

Didn't know what to make of this really. Need to find someone else who read it so I can talk about it.

I have read it, I absolutely loved it.

 

[rich!]

1. Glass and Gardens. A Solarpunk Anthology.
2. Made to Order - Robots and Revolution.
3. Frames of Mind - Howard Gardner.
4.The Social Brain - Camilleri, Rockey, Dunbar
5. Mercedes Lackey - The Serpent's Shadow
6. T.J. Klune - The House in the Cerulean Sea
7. Melissa Yi - The Italian School for Assassins
8. Matthew Hughes - The Other
9. KJ Parker - Sixteen Ways to Defend a Walled City
10. Ian McDonald - Hopeland

11. Michael Moorcock - The Citadel of Forgotten Myths (new Elric novel) - found it a bit hard going, some of the Elric's have been.

 

[zedr]

1/24 Radicalized - Cory Doctorow

Interesting set of novellas. Some fun set ups for plotlines but could be a bit too on the nose with the politics, like the Superman (sorry... American Eagle) story where he tried to act the peacemaker in the BLM uprisings in the US. The one about prepping nicely mirrors the discourse around Covid and mutual aid despite being written a year before.

Enjoyed lurking on this thread last year. Hopefully two books a month is an achievable target.

 

[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
Very wintery novel and a great read, really strongly captures a sense of place. It reminded me of Georges Simenon, in a different way but the same ability to so simply and completely sketch the characters and the world they live in. Looking forward to reading more by Jansson.
4/50 Army of Lovers by K.M. Soehnlein
I really enjoyed this one too, it's about the life and activism of a young gay man around the Act Up group during the Aids crisis through the 80s/90s. A very moving story of love, anger, care and grief.

 

[kalmatthew]

6/60 Fairhaven Rising - LE Moddesit Jr.

Lots going on at the moment but as much as I wanted to read the sequel to The Handmaidens tale, I needed something more uplifting and escapist. Now my only problem is what to read before the latest book in The Saga of Recluse comes out on Tuesday.

7/60 The Soprano Sorceress - LE Moddesit Jr

 

[surreybrowncap]

1/30 - Tomb for an Eagle by Lexie Conyngham

First of a quadrilogy that I started immediately after finishing my 30th book last year. "This will be a quick, light, read" I thought. And it is light, but obviously hasn't ben that quick. Perfectly decent Viking Orkney set murder mystery, but nowt thrilling.

But its done, so now I can start on The Pile.

View attachment 408942

Just started the Herzog book this morning....
My one - not yours!

 

[kalmatthew]

7/60 The Soprano Sorceress - LE Moddesit Jr

8/60 The Spellsong war - LE Moddesit Jr

 

[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

 

[rich!]

1. Glass and Gardens. A Solarpunk Anthology.
2. Made to Order - Robots and Revolution.
3. Frames of Mind - Howard Gardner.
4.The Social Brain - Camilleri, Rockey, Dunbar
5. Mercedes Lackey - The Serpent's Shadow
6. T.J. Klune - The House in the Cerulean Sea
7. Melissa Yi - The Italian School for Assassins
8. Matthew Hughes - The Other
9. KJ Parker - Sixteen Ways to Defend a Walled City
10. Ian McDonald - Hopeland
11. Michael Moorcock - The Citadel of Forgotten Myths

12. Genevieve Cogman - Scarlet - retelling of Scarlet Pimpernel stories from the pov of a servant, with vampires. Entertained.

 

[rubbershoes]

4/52 - S.A. Cosby - Blacktop Wasteland

One of my favourites from last year

 

[kalmatthew]

12. Genevieve Cogman - Scarlet - retelling of Scarlet Pimpernel stories from the pov of a servant, with vampires. Entertained.

I enjoyed her invisible libary series a lot so this is on the to read list

 

[belboid]

1/30 - Lexie Conyngham - Tomb for an Eagle
2/30 - Michael Eaton - B*llocks -A Word on Trial

Expanded version of a radio play ME wrote concerning that trial in his hometown of Nottingham, when the filth tried to say the Sex Pistols album was obscene. Absurd and very entertaining. You can still hear the Radio 4 version of it at Turning Point - Never Mind the Ballocks - BBC Sounds

3/30 - Paul Simpson - Revolutionary Spirit

The autobiography of grossly under appreciated post-punk star, Paul Simpson, founder member of the Teardrop Explodes and author of the Wild Swans. It is hilarious and heart wrenching and even more absurd than that Nottingham trial. In a fine irony, by the late 2010's, he discovers that he is, not unlike one of those other early Liverpool postpunkers, really fucking Big in Japan the Philippines. It's no insult to say that this is the second best book written about the Liverpool post punk scene '79-'81, it even says so on the back. I have stayed up far too late each night reading it, but I have had a ginormous grin on my face at almost every moment of it, so what the hell.

I've got the second part of (Echo & the Bunnymen member) Will Sergeant's auto to read too, it covers almost exactly the same period as the PS and a certain JC's Head On. Should I read it next or leave it a few other books? Dilemmas, dilemmas.

 

[zedr]

1/24 Radicalized - Cory Doctorow
2/24 The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine - Ilan Pappe (audio book)

I can't give a better summary than Gramsci has given on the politics boards but it's a detailed and harrowing account of 1947/8 in Palestine. Actually got the meet and chat with him when I was at uni but this is the first of his books I've made till the end.

 

[CNT36]

1/19 Yanis Varoufakis - Technofeudalism: What killed capitalism?
2/19 Mary Shelley - Frankenstein
First book towards my read more fiction resolution. Good story. Famously very different to the popular conception of the story and the monster in particular. I found it an interesting insight into the views and attitudes of the times albeit a relatively progressive section of the elite.

 

[rich!]

I enjoyed her invisible libary series a lot so this is on the to read list

It definitely appealed in a lot of the same ways.