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the strictly come reading 2023 reading challenge thread

i expect to read this many books in 2023


  • Total voters
    48
1. Beyond the burn line - Paul McAuley
2. Project hail Mary - Andy Weir
2.1 Randomize - Andy Weir
3. Artemis - Andy Weir
4.The Greek World - Robert Garland (The Great Courses) audio book lectures
5. I Robot - Isaac Asimov
6. The mystery of the blue train (Poirot 6)- Agatha Christie
7. Food: A cultural culinary history - Ken Alaba (The Great Courses) audio book lectures
8. Black Coffee (Poirot 7)-Agatha Christie
9. Ancient Civilisations of North America - Edwin Barnheart (The Great Courses) audio book lectures
10. Ancient Mesopotamia - Professor Amanda H Podany (The Great Courses) audio book lectures
11. Luka and the fire of life - Salman Rushdie
12. Life on Earth - David Attenborough (audio book)
13. the long way to a small angry planet - Becky Chambers (reread)
14. A closed and common orbit - Becky Chambers (reread)
15. All systems red (Murderbot 1) - Martha Wells (reread)
16. Artificial condition (Murderbot 2) - Martha Wells (reread)
17. Rouge protocol (Murderbot 3) - Martha Wells (reread)
18. The Iliad of Homer - Elizabeth Vandiver (The Great Courses) audio book lectures (Relisten)
19. Jack Four - Neal Asher (Polity)
20. The Odyssey of Homer - Elizabeth Vandiver (The Great Courses) audio book lectures
21. Witch King - Martha Wells
22. Ancient writing and the history of the alphabet - John McWhorter (The Great Courses) audio book lectures
23. Early Humans: Ice, Stone, and Survival - Suzanne Pilaar Birch (The Great Courses) audio book lectures
24. 1066: The Year That Changed Everything - Jennifer Paxton (The Great Courses) audio book lectures
25. Charlemagne: Father of Europe - Philip Daileader (The Great Courses) audio book lectures
26. Exit strategy (Murderbot 4) - Martha Wells (reread)
27. Network Effect (Murderbot 5) - Martha Wells (reread)
28. Fugitive Telemetry (Murderbot 6) - Martha Wells (reread)

Fun and fast paced compared to the longer and slightly more tense last book. This one is a fun take on a murder mystery.
 
1/52 - Ruth Rendell - Tigerlilly's Orchids (re-read)
2/52 - Shehan Karunatilaka - The Seven Moons of Maali Almeida
3/52 - Val McDermid - 1989
4/52 - Anthony Doerr - Cloud Cuckoo Land
5/52 - Ann Patchett - Commonwealth
6/52 - Peter James - Picture You Dead
7/52 - Donal Ryan - From a Low and Quiet Sea
8/52 - Patricia Highsmith - Deep Water
9/52 - Ian McEwan - Lessons
10/52 - Robert Galbraith - The Ink Back Heart
11/52 - Kent Haruf - The Tie That Binds (re-read)
12/52 - Ann Cleeves - The Sleeping and The Dead
13/52 - Clare Chambers - Small Pleasures
14/52 - Liu Cixin - The Three-Body Problem
15/52 - Lionel Shriver - We Need to Talk About Kevin
16/52 - Delia Owens - Where the Crawdads Sing
17/52 - Paula Hawkins - Into the Water
18/52 - William Boyd - The Romantic
19/52 - Doris Lessing - The Fifth Child
20/52 - Katy Hays - The Cloisters
21/52 - Doris Lessing - The Good Terrorist
22/52 - Stephen King - Dolores Claiborne (re-read)
23/52 - Kenneth Grahame - The Wind in the Willows
24/52 - Barbara Vine - King Solomon's Carpet
25/52 - Kate Atkinson - Shrines of Gaiety
26/52 - Denise Mina - Rizzio
27/52 - Margaret Atwood - The Blind Assassin
28/52 - Elly Griffiths - The House at Sea's End
29/52 - Stephen King - Nightmares and Dreamscapes
30/52 - Kurt Vonnegut - Slaughterhouse Five
31/52 - Clare Chambers - Learning to Swim
32/52 - Cormac McCarthy - All The Pretty Horses
33/52 - Candice Carty-Williams - People Person
34/52 - Donal Ryan - The Queen of Dirt Island

35/52 - Ann Patchett - Bel Canto
 
15/27 Wide Sargasso Sea - Jean Rhys
A great book. I’m glad I preceded it with Jayne Ayre.

14/27 Jane Ayre - Charlotte Bronte
13/27 The Tiergarten Tales - Paolo G Grossi
12/27 My Ear to his Heart - Hanif Kureisi
11/27 Voyage in the Dark - Jean Rhys
10/27 God's Children Are Little Broken Things - Arinze Ifeakandu
9/27 Cox's Navy: Salvaging the German High Seas Fleet at Scapa Flow 1924-1931 - Tony Booth
8/27 The Go Between - L. P Hartley
7/27 Sucking Feijoas - Jeffrey Buchanan
6/27 Singin' and Swingin' & Getting Merry like Christmas - Maya Angelou
5/27 The Rings of Saturn - W G Sebald
4/27 Maurice - E M Forster (re-read)
3/27 The Last Word - Hanif Kureishi
2/27 Alec - William di Canzio
1/27 Quichotte - Saman Rushdie
 
16/27 The Buddha of Suburbia - Hanif Kureishi (re-read)

I’m glad I read that again. Hanif has moved to a hospital in London and seems to be having a bad time :(

15/27 Wide Sargasso Sea - Jean Rhys

14/27 Jane Ayre - Charlotte Bronte
13/27 The Tiergarten Tales - Paolo G Grossi
12/27 My Ear to his Heart - Hanif Kureisi
11/27 Voyage in the Dark - Jean Rhys
10/27 God's Children Are Little Broken Things - Arinze Ifeakandu
9/27 Cox's Navy: Salvaging the German High Seas Fleet at Scapa Flow 1924-1931 - Tony Booth
8/27 The Go Between - L. P Hartley
7/27 Sucking Feijoas - Jeffrey Buchanan
6/27 Singin' and Swingin' & Getting Merry like Christmas - Maya Angelou
5/27 The Rings of Saturn - W G Sebald
4/27 Maurice - E M Forster (re-read)
3/27 The Last Word - Hanif Kureishi
2/27 Alec - William di Canzio
1/27 Quichotte - Saman Rushdie
 
1/29 The London Problem - Jack Brown
2/29 Ephemeron - Fiona Benson
3/29 NW - Zadie Smith
4/29 Spring - Ali Smith
5/29 A History of the Bible - John Barton
6/29 Falconer - John Cheever
7/29 Diary of an MP’s Wife - Sasha Swire
8/29 Riddley Walker - Russell Hoban (reread)
9/29 Purity and Danger - Mary Douglas
10/29 Einstein’s Monsters - Martin Amis
11/29 Greenvoe - George Mackay Brown

12/29 Material World - Ed Conway

Detailed account of 6 materials (sand; steel; salt; oil; copper; lithium) that dominate the modern world or will do so (in the case of lithium). Covers mining, politics and economics. The author is Sky’s economics correspondent and writes very clearly.
 
1/59 The Rooster Bar - John Grisham
2/59 The White Album - Joan Didion
3/59 Storm Watch - CJ Box
4/59 Oath of Loyalty - Kyle Mills
5/59 SAS : Rogue Heroes - Ben Macintyre
6/59 The Odin Mission - James Holland
7/59 Darkest Hour - James Holland
8/59 Blood of Honour - James Holland
9/59 Hellfire - James Holland
10/59 English Journey - J.B. Priestley
11/59 Outbreak - Frank Gardner
12/59 Desert Star - Michael Connelly
13/59 On The Run - Kerry J Donovan
14/59 Righteous Prey - John Sandford
15/59 Extreme Prey - John Sandford
16/59 Field of Prey - John Sandford
17/59 Invisible Prey- John Sandford
 
1/36 Down by the River Where the Dead Men Go by George P. Pelecanos
2/36 Substance: Inside New Order by Peter Hook
3/36 How To Rob An Armored Car by Iain Levison (ReRead)
4/36 The Hacienda: How Not to Run a Club by Peter Hook
5/36 The Arsenal Stadium Mystery by Leonard Gribble
6/36 No. 17 by Joseph Jefferson Farjeon
7/36 My Rock 'n' Roll Friend by Tracey Thorn
8/36 The Man Who Came Uptown by George P. Pelecanos
9/36 Good Behavior by Donald E. Westlake
10/36 The Hot Rock by Donald E. Westlake
11/36 Drowned Hopes by Donald E. Westlake
12/36 Quick Change by Jay Cronley
13/36 The Greatest Show on Earth: The Inside Story of the Legendary 1970 World Cup by Andrew Downie
14/36 Prick Up Your Ears: The Biography of Joe Orton by John Lahr
15/36 Thatcher Stole My Trousers by Alexei Sayle
16/36 Fletch by Gregory McDonald
17/36 Fletch Won by Gregory McDonald
18/36 120, rue de la Gare by Léo Malet
19/36 Bellies and Bullseyes: The Outrageous True Story of Darts by Sid Waddell (ReRead)
20/36 Alright, Alright, Alright: The Oral History of Richard Linklater's Dazed and Confused by Melissa Maerz
21/36 For the Love of Willie by Agnes Owens
22/36 Who Killed Palomino Molero? by Mario Vargas Llosa (Reread)
23/36 Cannery Row by John Steinbeck
24/36 Reach for the Stars: 1996–2006: Fame, Fallout and Pop’s Final Party by Michael Cragg
25/36 Death in the Andes by Mario Vargas Llosa
26/36 Maigret Sets a Trap by Georges Simenon
27/36 One Corpse Too Many by Ellis Peters
28/36 Can't Stand Up For Falling Down: Rock'n'Roll War Stories by Allan Jones
29/36 A Prefect's Uncle by P. G. Wodehouse
30/36 Raymond Carver : an oral biography by Sam Halpert
31/36 Never Stop: How Ange Postecoglou Brought the Fire Back to Celtic by Hamish Carton
32/36 Psychocandy by Paula Mejia
33/36 Will You Please Be Quiet, Please? by Raymond Carver
34/36 Unhappy-Go-Lucky by Ian Pattison
35/36 The Shoe by Gordon Legge (Reread)
36/36 The Storytellers One by Roger Mansfield
37/36 Norwood by Charles Portis
38/36 Born to struggle by May Hobbs

39/36 Brian Eno’s Another Green World by Geeta Dayal

Part of the 33 1/3 Bloomsbury series. So that's where the title St Elmo's Fire comes from? I had no idea.
 
1/29 The London Problem - Jack Brown
2/29 Ephemeron - Fiona Benson
3/29 NW - Zadie Smith
4/29 Spring - Ali Smith
5/29 A History of the Bible - John Barton
6/29 Falconer - John Cheever
7/29 Diary of an MP’s Wife - Sasha Swire
8/29 Riddley Walker - Russell Hoban (reread)
9/29 Purity and Danger - Mary Douglas
10/29 Einstein’s Monsters - Martin Amis
11/29 Greenvoe - George Mackay Brown
12/29 Material World - Ed Conway

13/29 Journey by Moonlight - Antal Szerb

Lightly ironic novel from 1936 recounting travels round Italy of well-off Hungarian having various existential crises.
 
1/45 - Katherine Angel - Tomorrow Sex Will Be Good Again (re-read)
2/45 - Martin Lux - Anti-Fascist (re-read)
3/45 - Hannah Kent - Burial Rites
4/45 - Margaret Atwood - The Robber Bride (re-read)
5/45 EP Thompson - The Making of the English Working Class
6/45 Henry James - The Princess Casamassima
7/45 Nigel Flanagan - Our Trade Unions: What comes next after the summer of 2022?
8/45 Katy Hays - The Cloisters
9/45 John Darnielle - Devil House
10/45 JoAnn Wypijewski - What We Don't Talk About: Sex and the Mess of Life
11/45 Jen Calleja - Vehicle
12/45 Cedric Robinson - Black Marxism
13/45 John Darnielle - Universal Harvester (re-read)
14/45 Simon Reynolds - Rip It Up and Start Again (re-read)
15/45 Anonymous - Appel/Call plus a critique
16/45 Emily St. John Mandel - Sea of Tranquility
17/45 DD Johnston - Disnaeland
18/45 Milan Kundera - Laughable Loves (re-read)
19/45 WEB DuBois - Darkwater
20/45 George Saunders - Liberation Day

21/45 Sheila Rowbotham - Promise of a Dream: Remembering the Sixties

As with her book about the seventies that I read last year, really enjoyed this, I just find her a tremendously fun and likeable writer, and probably one of my personal role models to some extent? Good mix of the personal with the broader picture of the decade, huge cast of characters from the various movements of the decade. Unfortunately this one doesn't have an index, which did make keeping track of various people tricky at times. Probably going to start Huw Lemmey & Ben Miller - Bad Gays: A Homosexual History next.
 
1/45 Joe Abercrombie - Half a King
2/45 Joe Abercrombie - Half the World
3/45 - George Orwell - Down and Out in Paris and London
4/45 Jack London - The Call of the Wild
5/45 Joe Abercrombie - Half a War
6/45 Oscar Wilde - The Picture of Dorian Gray
7/45 Mark Cooper - Later... with Jools Holland: 30 years of music, magic and mayhem
8/45 Michael Molcher - I Am the Law: how Judge Dredd predicted our future
9/45 Sarah J Maas - A Court of Thorns and Roses
10/45 David Graeber - The Utopia of Rules: On Technology, Stupidity and the Secret Joys of Bureaucracy
11/45 Lewis Carroll - Through the Looking Glass and What Alice Found There
12/45 Agatha Christie - The Mysterious Affair at Styles (Poirot #1)
13/45 Mark Galeotti - A Short History of Russia: how the world's largest country invented itself, from the pagans to Putin
14/45 Anne Applebaum - Twilight of Democracy: the seductive lure of authoritarianism
15/45 Kenneth Grahame - The Wind in the Willows
16/45 Daniel Gordis - Israel: a concise history of a nation reborn
17/45 Alan Garner - The Stone Book Quartet
18/45 E M Forster - Where Angels Fear to Tread
19/45 Kate DiCamillo - The Miraculous Journey of Edward Tulane
20/45 Terry Pratchett - Interesting Times
21/45 A A Milne - Winnie-the-Pooh
22/45 Marcus Baram - Gil Scott-Heron: Pieces of a Man
23/45 F Scott Fitzgerald - The Great Gatsby
24/45 Gil Scott-Heron - The Vulture
25/45 Adrian Tchaikovsky - Dogs of War
26/45 Andy Beckett - When the Lights Went Out: Britain in the Seventies
27/45 J G Ballard - High-Rise
28/45 Randall Munroe (xkcd comics) - What If? Serious Scientific Answers to Absurd Hypothetical Questions
29/45 Antoine de Saint-Exupery - The Little Prince
30/45 H C McNeile ("Sapper") - Bulldog Drummond
31/45 - Miki Berenyi - Fingers Crossed: How Music Saved Me From Success
32/45 Karen Lloyd - The Gathering Tide: a Journey Around the Edgelands of Morecambe Bay

33/45 Malcolm Bradbury - The History Man

1975 comic novel set in a British plate-glass university and centered on a fairly despicable Marxist sociology lecturer. Genuinely funny, especially the chapter on the departmental meeting and although it has some dubious sexual politics the points made about manufactured outrage and cancel culture still seem very contemporary and relevant. Five stars.
 
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17/27 The New Life – Tom Crewe


That was a very good book about repressed Victorian sexuality.



16/27 The Buddha of Suburbia - Hanif Kureishi (re-read)

15/27 Wide Sargasso Sea - Jean Rhys

14/27 Jane Ayre - Charlotte Bronte
13/27 The Tiergarten Tales - Paolo G Grossi
12/27 My Ear to his Heart - Hanif Kureisi
11/27 Voyage in the Dark - Jean Rhys
10/27 God's Children Are Little Broken Things - Arinze Ifeakandu
9/27 Cox's Navy: Salvaging the German High Seas Fleet at Scapa Flow 1924-1931 - Tony Booth
8/27 The Go Between - L. P Hartley
7/27 Sucking Feijoas - Jeffrey Buchanan
6/27 Singin' and Swingin' & Getting Merry like Christmas - Maya Angelou
5/27 The Rings of Saturn - W G Sebald
4/27 Maurice - E M Forster (re-read)
3/27 The Last Word - Hanif Kureishi
2/27 Alec - William di Canzio
1/27 Quichotte - Saman Rushdie
 
1/19 The Danger Tree... Olivia Manning
2/19 The Battle Lost and Won... Olivia Manning
3/19 The Sum of Things... Olivia Manning
4/19 Darth Plagueis... James Luceno
5/19 Slaine Warrior's Dawn... Pat Mills
6/19 Slaine Time Killer... Pat Mills
7/19 Slaine The King... Pat Mills
8/19 Slaine The Horned God... Pat Mills
9/19 Slaine Demon Killer... Pat Mills
10/19 Slaine Lord of Misrule... Pat Mills
11/19 Cyclops... Clive Cussler
12/19 Dune... Frank Herbert
13/19 The Valparaiso Voyage... Dermot Bolger
14/19 Slaine The Treasures of Britain... Pat Mills
15/19 Diamonds Are Forever... Ian Fleming
16/19 Dune Messiah... Frank Herbert
17/19 Killers of the Flower Moon... David Grann
 
1/59 The Rooster Bar - John Grisham
2/59 The White Album - Joan Didion
3/59 Storm Watch - CJ Box
4/59 Oath of Loyalty - Kyle Mills
5/59 SAS : Rogue Heroes - Ben Macintyre
6/59 The Odin Mission - James Holland
7/59 Darkest Hour - James Holland
8/59 Blood of Honour - James Holland
9/59 Hellfire - James Holland
10/59 English Journey - J.B. Priestley
11/59 Outbreak - Frank Gardner
12/59 Desert Star - Michael Connelly
13/59 On The Run - Kerry J Donovan
14/59 Righteous Prey - John Sandford
15/59 Extreme Prey - John Sandford
16/59 Field of Prey - John Sandford
17/59 Invisible Prey- John Sandford
18/59 The Devil's Pact - James Holland
 
1/45 Ken MacLeod - The Human Front
2/45 Edward Bunker - Death Row Breakout
3/45 Ian Bone - Bash the Rich
4/45 Joan Didion - The Year of Magical Thinking
5/45 Julia Nicholls - Revolutionary Thought After the Paris Commune, 1871-1885
6/45 Sarah Jaffe - Work Won't Love You Back
7/45 Ann Leckie - Ancillary Sword
8/45 David Graeber & David Wengrow - The Dawn of Everything
9/45 Ellen Meiksins Wood - Peasant-Citizen and Slave: The Foundations of Athenian Democracy
10/45 Hunter S. Thompson - The Rum Diary
11/45 Ann Leckie - Ancillary Mercy
12/45 David Graeber - Debt: The First 5,000 Years
13/45 Russell Hoban -Riddley Walker
14/45 The Invisible Committee - The Coming Insurrection
15/45 Assata Shakur - Assata: An Autobiography
16/45 Dan Evans - A Nation of Shopkeepers
17/45 Mary Shelley - Frankenstein
18/45 Nicola Griffith - Ammonite
19/45 Kim Stanley Robinson - New York 2140
20/45 Ali Smith - Autumn
21/45 David Harvey - A Brief History of Neoliberalism
22/45 Homer (Trans E.V. Rieu) - The Odyssey
23/45 Maxim Gorky - Creatures That Once Were Men
24/45 Jasmin Herstov - Paramilitarism and Neoliberalism
25/45 Kazuo Ishiguro - Klara and the Sun
26/45 Guy Debord - Society of the Spectacle
27/45 Anne Fine - Diary of a Killer Cat
28/45 Margaret Atwood - Alias Grace
29/45 A. M. Gittlitz - I Want to Believe: Posadism, UFOs and Apocalypse Communism
30/45 Sheila Rowbotham & Jeffrey Weeks - Socialism and the New Life: The Personal and Sexual Politics of Edward Carpenter and Havelock Ellis
31/45 Ann Leckie - Provenance
32/45 Vicky Osterweil - In Defense of Looting: A Riotous History of Uncivil Action

33/45 Joan Didion - Let Me Tell You What I Mean

Not one of her better collections. I'd read one of the essays elsewhere and I find authors banging on about how they write and the pains of writing pretty boring.
 
1/59 The Rooster Bar - John Grisham
2/59 The White Album - Joan Didion
3/59 Storm Watch - CJ Box
4/59 Oath of Loyalty - Kyle Mills
5/59 SAS : Rogue Heroes - Ben Macintyre
6/59 The Odin Mission - James Holland
7/59 Darkest Hour - James Holland
8/59 Blood of Honour - James Holland
9/59 Hellfire - James Holland
10/59 English Journey - J.B. Priestley
11/59 Outbreak - Frank Gardner
12/59 Desert Star - Michael Connelly
13/59 On The Run - Kerry J Donovan
14/59 Righteous Prey - John Sandford
15/59 Extreme Prey - John Sandford
16/59 Field of Prey - John Sandford
17/59 Invisible Prey- John Sandford
18/59 The Devil's Pact - James Holland
19/59 Slow Horses - Mich Herron
 
1/52 - Ruth Rendell - Tigerlilly's Orchids (re-read)
2/52 - Shehan Karunatilaka - The Seven Moons of Maali Almeida
3/52 - Val McDermid - 1989
4/52 - Anthony Doerr - Cloud Cuckoo Land
5/52 - Ann Patchett - Commonwealth
6/52 - Peter James - Picture You Dead
7/52 - Donal Ryan - From a Low and Quiet Sea
8/52 - Patricia Highsmith - Deep Water
9/52 - Ian McEwan - Lessons
10/52 - Robert Galbraith - The Ink Back Heart
11/52 - Kent Haruf - The Tie That Binds (re-read)
12/52 - Ann Cleeves - The Sleeping and The Dead
13/52 - Clare Chambers - Small Pleasures
14/52 - Liu Cixin - The Three-Body Problem
15/52 - Lionel Shriver - We Need to Talk About Kevin
16/52 - Delia Owens - Where the Crawdads Sing
17/52 - Paula Hawkins - Into the Water
18/52 - William Boyd - The Romantic
19/52 - Doris Lessing - The Fifth Child
20/52 - Katy Hays - The Cloisters
21/52 - Doris Lessing - The Good Terrorist
22/52 - Stephen King - Dolores Claiborne (re-read)
23/52 - Kenneth Grahame - The Wind in the Willows
24/52 - Barbara Vine - King Solomon's Carpet
25/52 - Kate Atkinson - Shrines of Gaiety
26/52 - Denise Mina - Rizzio
27/52 - Margaret Atwood - The Blind Assassin
28/52 - Elly Griffiths - The House at Sea's End
29/52 - Stephen King - Nightmares and Dreamscapes
30/52 - Kurt Vonnegut - Slaughterhouse Five
31/52 - Clare Chambers - Learning to Swim
32/52 - Cormac McCarthy - All The Pretty Horses
33/52 - Candice Carty-Williams - People Person
34/52 - Donal Ryan - The Queen of Dirt Island
35/52 - Ann Patchett - Bel Canto

36/52 - Ann Cleeves - The Heron's Cry
 
1/15 - We Have Always Lived in the Castle - Shirley Jackson
2/15 - The Housekeeper and the Professor - Yōko Ogawa
3/15 - Slug - Hollie McNish
4/15 - Someday, Maybe - Onyi Nwabineli
5/15 - Tyger - SF Said
6/15 - Priestdaddy - Patricia Lockwood
7/15 - The Things I Would Tell You - ed. Sabrina Mahfouz
8/15 - The World's Wife - Carol Ann Duffy
9/15 - A Night Divided - Jennifer A Nielsen
10/15 - Shuggie Bain - Douglas Stuart
11/15 - Lyrics Alley - Leila Aboulela
12/15 - Strange Flowers - Donal Ryan
13/15 - Guards! Guards! - Terry Pratchett
14/15 - The Truce - Primo Levi
15/15 - Small Pleasures - Clare Chambers
16/15 - River Spirit - Leila Abulela
17/15 - Strong Female Character - Fern Brady
18/15 - Kindred - Octavia Butler
19/15 - The Lost Girls of Ireland - Susanne O'Leary
20/15 - The Guilty Feminist - Deborah Frances-White
21/15 - Factfulness - Hans Rosling
22/15 - 1979 - Val McDermid
23/15 - The Furthest Station - Ben Aaronovitch
24/15 - The Three-Body Problem - Liu Cixin
25/15 - The Island of Missing Trees - Elif Shafak
26/15 - Lessons in Chemistry - Bonnie Garmus
 
1/45 Joe Abercrombie - Half a King
2/45 Joe Abercrombie - Half the World
3/45 - George Orwell - Down and Out in Paris and London
4/45 Jack London - The Call of the Wild
5/45 Joe Abercrombie - Half a War
6/45 Oscar Wilde - The Picture of Dorian Gray
7/45 Mark Cooper - Later... with Jools Holland: 30 years of music, magic and mayhem
8/45 Michael Molcher - I Am the Law: how Judge Dredd predicted our future
9/45 Sarah J Maas - A Court of Thorns and Roses
10/45 David Graeber - The Utopia of Rules: On Technology, Stupidity and the Secret Joys of Bureaucracy
11/45 Lewis Carroll - Through the Looking Glass and What Alice Found There
12/45 Agatha Christie - The Mysterious Affair at Styles (Poirot #1)
13/45 Mark Galeotti - A Short History of Russia: how the world's largest country invented itself, from the pagans to Putin
14/45 Anne Applebaum - Twilight of Democracy: the seductive lure of authoritarianism
15/45 Kenneth Grahame - The Wind in the Willows
16/45 Daniel Gordis - Israel: a concise history of a nation reborn
17/45 Alan Garner - The Stone Book Quartet
18/45 E M Forster - Where Angels Fear to Tread
19/45 Kate DiCamillo - The Miraculous Journey of Edward Tulane
20/45 Terry Pratchett - Interesting Times
21/45 A A Milne - Winnie-the-Pooh
22/45 Marcus Baram - Gil Scott-Heron: Pieces of a Man
23/45 F Scott Fitzgerald - The Great Gatsby
24/45 Gil Scott-Heron - The Vulture
25/45 Adrian Tchaikovsky - Dogs of War
26/45 Andy Beckett - When the Lights Went Out: Britain in the Seventies
27/45 J G Ballard - High-Rise
28/45 Randall Munroe (xkcd comics) - What If? Serious Scientific Answers to Absurd Hypothetical Questions
29/45 Antoine de Saint-Exupery - The Little Prince
30/45 H C McNeile ("Sapper") - Bulldog Drummond
31/45 - Miki Berenyi - Fingers Crossed: How Music Saved Me From Success
32/45 Karen Lloyd - The Gathering Tide: a Journey Around the Edgelands of Morecambe Bay
33/45 Malcolm Bradbury - The History Man

34/45 Alex Garland - The Beach
 
1/35 Middlemarch by George Eliot
2/35 Capitalism in the Twenty-First Century: Through the Prism of Value by Guglielmo Carchedi and Michael Roberts
3/35 The Temple House Vanishing by Rachel Donohue
4/35 The Book of Tokyo: A City in Short Fiction edited by Michael Emmerich, Jim Hinks & Masashi Matsuie
5/35 Clipped Coins, Abused Words, and Civil Government: John Locke's Philosophy of Money by George Caffentzis
6/35 Crashed: How a Decade of Financial Crises Changed the World by Adam Tooze
7/35 Mexican Gothic by Silvia Moreno-Garcia
8/35 Civilizing Money: Hume, his Monetary Project and the Scottish Enlightenment by George Caffentzis
9/35 An Untouched House by Willem Frederik Hermans
10/35 Life Ceremony by Sayaka Murata
11/35 Act of Oblivion by Robert Harris
12/35 Fireheart Tiger by Aliette de Bodard
13/35 Exiles from European Revolutions: Refugees in Mid-Victorian England edited by Sabina Freitag
14/35 The Apprenticeship of Big Toe P by Rieko Matsuura
15/35 A Civil War: A History of the Italian Resistance by Claudio Pavone
16/35 Mrs Caliban by Rachel Ingalls
17/35 Dracula by Bram Stoker
18/35 The Silent Dead by Tetsuya Honda
19/35 Lady Susan by Jane Austen
20/35 Adam Smith in Beijing: Lineages of the Twenty-First Century by Giovanni Arrighi
21/35 This Should be Written in the Present Tense by Helle Helle
22/35 The Citadel of Weeping Pearls by Aliette de Bodard
23/35 The Invention of Art: A Cultural History by Larry Shiner
24/35 Sister, Maiden, Monster by Lucy A. Snyder
25/35 The Mismeasure of Man by Stephen Jay Gould
26/35 Ninety-Three by Victor Hugo
Novel about the revolution and counter-revolution in France. Hadn't read anything by Hugo before, this is one of those classics that regularly interrupts itself with incredibly long rambling discussions and there was some threads of the narrative that didn't seem to go anywhere. In some cases I just needed to get used to the style, in other cases it would've been better edited out. Parts of it were really good it just doesn't quite come together as well as it could have.
 
1/45 Ken MacLeod - The Human Front
2/45 Edward Bunker - Death Row Breakout
3/45 Ian Bone - Bash the Rich
4/45 Joan Didion - The Year of Magical Thinking
5/45 Julia Nicholls - Revolutionary Thought After the Paris Commune, 1871-1885
6/45 Sarah Jaffe - Work Won't Love You Back
7/45 Ann Leckie - Ancillary Sword
8/45 David Graeber & David Wengrow - The Dawn of Everything
9/45 Ellen Meiksins Wood - Peasant-Citizen and Slave: The Foundations of Athenian Democracy
10/45 Hunter S. Thompson - The Rum Diary
11/45 Ann Leckie - Ancillary Mercy
12/45 David Graeber - Debt: The First 5,000 Years
13/45 Russell Hoban -Riddley Walker
14/45 The Invisible Committee - The Coming Insurrection
15/45 Assata Shakur - Assata: An Autobiography
16/45 Dan Evans - A Nation of Shopkeepers
17/45 Mary Shelley - Frankenstein
18/45 Nicola Griffith - Ammonite
19/45 Kim Stanley Robinson - New York 2140
20/45 Ali Smith - Autumn
21/45 David Harvey - A Brief History of Neoliberalism
22/45 Homer (Trans E.V. Rieu) - The Odyssey
23/45 Maxim Gorky - Creatures That Once Were Men
24/45 Jasmin Herstov - Paramilitarism and Neoliberalism
25/45 Kazuo Ishiguro - Klara and the Sun
26/45 Guy Debord - Society of the Spectacle
27/45 Anne Fine - Diary of a Killer Cat
28/45 Margaret Atwood - Alias Grace
29/45 A. M. Gittlitz - I Want to Believe: Posadism, UFOs and Apocalypse Communism
30/45 Sheila Rowbotham & Jeffrey Weeks - Socialism and the New Life: The Personal and Sexual Politics of Edward Carpenter and Havelock Ellis
31/45 Ann Leckie - Provenance
32/45 Vicky Osterweil - In Defense of Looting: A Riotous History of Uncivil Action
33/45 Joan Didion - Let Me Tell You What I Mean

34/45 Rachel Ingalls - Mrs Caliban

Short, fun, but not all that really.
 
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hc - hard copy
dl - dens library
k - kindle
g - google

1/50 Saturday, Ian McEwan - hc
2/50 East of Eden, John Steinbeck - dl
3/50 Sweet Sorrow, David Nicholls - k
4/50 Game of Thrones, George RR Martin - k
5/50 The Black Kids, Christina Hammonds Reed - k
6/50 A Clash of Kings, George RR Martin - g
7/50 My Wife's Secrets, Wendy Owens - k
8/50 Wahala, Nikki May - k
9/50 A Storm of Swords part 1, George RR Martin - k
10/50 Girl in Trouble, Stacey Claflin - k
11/50 Brave New World, Aldous Huxley
12/50 A Storm of Swords part 2, George RR Martin - k
13/50 This Book Belongs To, Nick Levy - k
14/50 Conversations With Friends, Sally Rooney - dl
15/50 Valentine, Elizabeth Wetmore - dl
16/50 Alone, Robert J Crane - k
17/50 To Speak for the , Paul Levine - k
18/50 Good Girl Bad, S A McEwan- k


19/50 In Every Mirror She's Black, Lola Alinmade Akerstrom - k
This was amazing powerful. Bleak and doesn't paint Sweden in a very good light at all, but brilliant.
 
1/29 The London Problem - Jack Brown
2/29 Ephemeron - Fiona Benson
3/29 NW - Zadie Smith
4/29 Spring - Ali Smith
5/29 A History of the Bible - John Barton
6/29 Falconer - John Cheever
7/29 Diary of an MP’s Wife - Sasha Swire
8/29 Riddley Walker - Russell Hoban (reread)
9/29 Purity and Danger - Mary Douglas
10/29 Einstein’s Monsters - Martin Amis
11/29 Greenvoe - George Mackay Brown
12/29 Material World - Ed Conway
13/29 Journey by Moonlight - Antal Szerb

14/29 Reginald McKenna: Statesman among Financiers, 1916-1943 - Martin Farr (proof copy)

Second volume of academic biography of Liberal politician who became Chairman of Midland Bank after leaving Parliament. Written by a mate.
 
31 Burmese Days : George Orwell
32 Nico songs they never play : James Young
33 Into the Silence : Wade Davis
34 Down and Out in Paris and London : G Orwell
35 Prima belladonna : J G Ballard
36 The Accidental Spy : Sean O'Driscoll
37 Charles Bukowski: Howard Sounes
38 Substance:Inside New Order: Peter Hook
39 For Whom the Bell Tolls: Ernest Hemingway
40 Skagboys: Irvine Welsh
41 The Blade Artist : Irvine Welsh
42 The Devil and the Dark Water : Stuart Turton
43 Dead Men's Trousers : Irvine Welsh
44 Trejo : My Life of...: Danny Trejo
 
1. Melissa Harrison - All Among The Barley.
2. Armand Marie Leroi - Mutants.
3. Karen Joy Fowler - We are all completely beside ourselves.
4. Jing-Jing Lee - How We Disappeared.
5. Kate Atkinson - Shrines of Gaiety.
6. Anita Shreve - A Wedding in December.
7. Sophie Anderson - The Thief who Sang Storms.
8. Ann Patchett - The Dutch House.
9. My Pen is the Wing of a Bird: New fiction from Afghan women.
10. Sarah Allen - What stars are made of.
11. Sarah Sands - The interior silence.
12. Steve Silberman - Neurotribes.
13. Joe R Lansdale - Rusty Puppy.

14. Silvia Moreno-Garcia - Velvet was the Night.
 
19/27 In Youth is Pleasure – Denton Welch



18/27 Candide -Voltaire




17/27 The New Life – Tom Crewe

16/27 The Buddha of Suburbia - Hanif Kureishi (re-read)

15/27 Wide Sargasso Sea - Jean Rhys

14/27 Jane Ayre - Charlotte Bronte
13/27 The Tiergarten Tales - Paolo G Grossi
12/27 My Ear to his Heart - Hanif Kureisi
11/27 Voyage in the Dark - Jean Rhys
10/27 God's Children Are Little Broken Things - Arinze Ifeakandu
9/27 Cox's Navy: Salvaging the German High Seas Fleet at Scapa Flow 1924-1931 - Tony Booth
8/27 The Go Between - L. P Hartley
7/27 Sucking Feijoas - Jeffrey Buchanan
6/27 Singin' and Swingin' & Getting Merry like Christmas - Maya Angelou
5/27 The Rings of Saturn - W G Sebald
4/27 Maurice - E M Forster (re-read)
3/27 The Last Word - Hanif Kureishi
2/27 Alec - William di Canzio
1/27 Quichotte - Salman Rushdie
 
1/45 Joe Abercrombie - Half a King
2/45 Joe Abercrombie - Half the World
3/45 - George Orwell - Down and Out in Paris and London
4/45 Jack London - The Call of the Wild
5/45 Joe Abercrombie - Half a War
6/45 Oscar Wilde - The Picture of Dorian Gray
7/45 Mark Cooper - Later... with Jools Holland: 30 years of music, magic and mayhem
8/45 Michael Molcher - I Am the Law: how Judge Dredd predicted our future
9/45 Sarah J Maas - A Court of Thorns and Roses
10/45 David Graeber - The Utopia of Rules: On Technology, Stupidity and the Secret Joys of Bureaucracy
11/45 Lewis Carroll - Through the Looking Glass and What Alice Found There
12/45 Agatha Christie - The Mysterious Affair at Styles (Poirot #1)
13/45 Mark Galeotti - A Short History of Russia: how the world's largest country invented itself, from the pagans to Putin
14/45 Anne Applebaum - Twilight of Democracy: the seductive lure of authoritarianism
15/45 Kenneth Grahame - The Wind in the Willows
16/45 Daniel Gordis - Israel: a concise history of a nation reborn
17/45 Alan Garner - The Stone Book Quartet
18/45 E M Forster - Where Angels Fear to Tread
19/45 Kate DiCamillo - The Miraculous Journey of Edward Tulane
20/45 Terry Pratchett - Interesting Times
21/45 A A Milne - Winnie-the-Pooh
22/45 Marcus Baram - Gil Scott-Heron: Pieces of a Man
23/45 F Scott Fitzgerald - The Great Gatsby
24/45 Gil Scott-Heron - The Vulture
25/45 Adrian Tchaikovsky - Dogs of War
26/45 Andy Beckett - When the Lights Went Out: Britain in the Seventies
27/45 J G Ballard - High-Rise
28/45 Randall Munroe (xkcd comics) - What If? Serious Scientific Answers to Absurd Hypothetical Questions
29/45 Antoine de Saint-Exupery - The Little Prince
30/45 H C McNeile ("Sapper") - Bulldog Drummond
31/45 - Miki Berenyi - Fingers Crossed: How Music Saved Me From Success
32/45 Karen Lloyd - The Gathering Tide: a Journey Around the Edgelands of Morecambe Bay
33/45 Malcolm Bradbury - The History Man
34/45 Alex Garland - The Beach

35/45 Sarah Tolmie - All the Horses of Iceland
 
1/35 Middlemarch by George Eliot
2/35 Capitalism in the Twenty-First Century: Through the Prism of Value by Guglielmo Carchedi and Michael Roberts
3/35 The Temple House Vanishing by Rachel Donohue
4/35 The Book of Tokyo: A City in Short Fiction edited by Michael Emmerich, Jim Hinks & Masashi Matsuie
5/35 Clipped Coins, Abused Words, and Civil Government: John Locke's Philosophy of Money by George Caffentzis
6/35 Crashed: How a Decade of Financial Crises Changed the World by Adam Tooze
7/35 Mexican Gothic by Silvia Moreno-Garcia
8/35 Civilizing Money: Hume, his Monetary Project and the Scottish Enlightenment by George Caffentzis
9/35 An Untouched House by Willem Frederik Hermans
10/35 Life Ceremony by Sayaka Murata
11/35 Act of Oblivion by Robert Harris
12/35 Fireheart Tiger by Aliette de Bodard
13/35 Exiles from European Revolutions: Refugees in Mid-Victorian England edited by Sabina Freitag
14/35 The Apprenticeship of Big Toe P by Rieko Matsuura
15/35 A Civil War: A History of the Italian Resistance by Claudio Pavone
16/35 Mrs Caliban by Rachel Ingalls
17/35 Dracula by Bram Stoker
18/35 The Silent Dead by Tetsuya Honda
19/35 Lady Susan by Jane Austen
20/35 Adam Smith in Beijing: Lineages of the Twenty-First Century by Giovanni Arrighi
21/35 This Should be Written in the Present Tense by Helle Helle
22/35 The Citadel of Weeping Pearls by Aliette de Bodard
23/35 The Invention of Art: A Cultural History by Larry Shiner
24/35 Sister, Maiden, Monster by Lucy A. Snyder
25/35 The Mismeasure of Man by Stephen Jay Gould
26/35 Ninety-Three by Victor Hugo
27/35 Carol by Patricia Highsmith
Based on absolutely nothing and without reading a word she'd written I'd decided ages ago I wouldn't like Highsmith's novels and stuck to that principle for years but I really liked the film of Carol from a little while back and when I saw this for cheap second hand I thought maybe I should give it a go, and turns out I do like at least one of her novels. This was excellent, I suppose the themes of the surveillance thriller come naturally to the reality of a lesbian relationship in the 1950s and Highsmith makes very effective use of it. The ending is perfectly judged, and the whole novel never really hits a wrong note, a nice surprise that shouldn't have been surprising.
 
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