the strictly come reading 2023 reading challenge thread

[BoatieBird]

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
37/52 - Claire Keegan - Foster
38/52 - Ruth Rendell - The Fever Tree and other stories
39/52 - Truman Capote - In Cold Blood

40/52 - Clare Chambers - A Dry Spell

 

[hitmouse]

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
22/45 Huw Lemmey & Ben Miller - Bad Gays: A Homosexual History
23/45 Ralph Edney - The Adventures of Lazarus Lamb
24/45 Ralph Edney - Lazarus Lamb and the Riddle of the Sphincter
25/45 Anonymous - Total Liberation
26/45 adrienne maree brown - We Will Not Cancel Us: And Other Dreams of Transformative Justice
27/45 David Peace - Tokyo Year Zero

28/45 Jamie Stewart - Anything That Moves

Who would've expected that the Jamie Stewart sex book might be a bit uncomfortable in places? I think the description of encountering a tapeworm while rimming is probably one of the most shudder-worthy things I've ever read. Admirably unerotic for the most part, full of sentences like "she stared at my face like she was looking at a newborn mandrill - with pity, adoration, and queasy disgust" and "he came really fast and big and luckily took the cup off my head before he finished, or I probably would have burned up and his dick probably would have gotten burned up too". (The latter being in the context of describing sucking someone off while having a hot cup of tea resting atop his head, for some reason.) Just in case that all gets you too horny, the last chapter is about Stewart's dad killing himself. Recommended, at least for a certain audience, I think.

29/45 Pear Nuallak - Pearls From Their Mouth

Sharp as a fucking razor, this one. Mixture of non-fiction essays and short stories that I guess tend toward what you might call magical realism, guided by a fiercely anti-essentalist, anti-representational politics applied to the experience of being trans and of being part of the Thai diaspora, or being British Asian, or however you want to describe it. Goes nicely with the Bad Gays book in some ways, although if anything Nuallak is even more hostile to comforting myth-making. The "Ancestor, Trancestor" chapter is one of the best pieces of writing about Trans Stuff I've read in a while. There are some bits I feel a bit more conflicted about, but tbf it's not really a book that asks you to like it.

Now starting Emma Warren - Dance Your Way Home: A Journey Through The Dancefloor. Does what it says on the tin, pretty much, very joyous stuff.

 

[Biddlybee]

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
27/15 - Soul Tourists - Bernadine Evaristo
28/15 - Foster - Claire Keegan
29/15 - Buried - Alice Roberts
30/15 - Small Things Like These - Claire Keegan

 

[shifting gears]

1/30 - Russell Hoban - Riddley Walker
2/30 - Philip K. Dick - A Maze of Death
3/30 - William McIlvanney & Ian Rankin - The Dark Remains
4/30 - David Keenan - For the Good Times
5/30 - George Orwell - Animal Farm
6/30 - Michael Smith - The Giro Playboy
7/30 - Cosey Fanni Tutti - Re-Sisters
8/30 - Andrew Holleran - Dancer from the Dance
9/30 - Stanislaw Lem - Solaris
10/30 - Trevor Horn - Adventures in Modern Recording
11/30 - David Keenan - This is Memorial Device (audiobook)
12/30 - Ursula K. Le Guin - The Dispossessed
13/30 - Joseph Conrad - Heart of Darkness
14/30 - William Gibson - Neuromancer
15/30 - John Steinbeck - The Moon is Down
16/30 - James Joyce - Dubliners

17/30 - Ray Bradbury - Fahrenheit 451
18/30 - Michael Moorcock - Behold the Man

 

[iona]

1/5 Cixin Liu - Hold Up the Sky
2/5 N. K. Jemisin - The Killing Moon
3/5 Youngman: Selected Diaries of Lou Sullivan (ed. Ellis Martin & Zach Ozma)
4/5 Pat Cadigan - Synners
5/5 Joseph Jenkins - The Humanure Handbook

 

[surreybrowncap]

1/39 - All About Me! - Mel Brooks
2/39 - In The City: A Celebration of London Music - Paul Du Noyer
3/39 - Utopia Avenue - David Mitchell
4/39 - Room to Dream - David Lynch & Kristine McKenna
5/39 - Let's Do It - The Authorised Biography of Victoria Wood - Jasper Rees
6/39 - Faith, Hope and Carnage - Nick Cave & Sean O'Hagan
7/39 - Inside The Dream Palace: The Life and Times of New York's Legendary Hotel - Sherill Tippins
8/39 - Rip It Up and Start Again: Post Punk 1978 - 1984 - Simon Reynolds
9/39 - Mordew - Alex Pheby
10/39 - Angels with Dirty Faces: The Footballing History of Argentina - Jonathan Wilson
11/39 - Raymond Chandler: A Biography - Tom Hiney **
12/39 - Charles Bukowski - Locked in the Arms of a Crazy Life - Howard Sounes **
13/39 - The Captain Is Out To Lunch And The Sailors Have Taken Over The Ship - Charles Bukowski / Robert Crum **
14/39 - Hollywood - Charles Bukowski **
15/39 - Ham on Rye - Charles Bukowski **
16/39 - The Writer's Crusade: Kurt Vonnegut and the many lives of Slaughter House - Five - Tom Roston
17/39 - Mr Lear: A Life of Art and Nonsense - Jenny Uglow
18/39 - The Contender: The Story of Marlon Brando - William J. Mann
19/39 - Testament of Youth - Vera Brittain
20/39 - Song Noir : Tom Waits and the Spirit of Los Angeles - Alex Harvey
21/39 - A Life of my Own - Claire Tomalin
22/39 - George Best: Immortal - Duncan Hamilton

** Re- read

 

[BoatieBird]

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
37/52 - Claire Keegan - Foster
38/52 - Ruth Rendell - The Fever Tree and other stories
39/52 - Truman Capote - In Cold Blood
40/52 - Clare Chambers - A Dry Spell

41/52 - Dennis Lehane - Small Mercies

 

[colbhoy]

1/9 - The Outsider, A History of the Goalkeeper by Jonathan Wilson
2/9 - In the Middle of Middle America by David B Lyons
3/9 - The Promise by Robert Crais
4/9 - Down River by John Hart
5/9 - A Shilling for Candles by Josephine Tay
6/9 - Uniquely Celtic, the Soul and the Spirit by Frank Rafters
7/9 - The Wanted by Robert Crais
8/9 - Tripwire by Lee Child
9/9 - Dark Places by Gillian Flynn

 

[Signal 11]

13/10 - The Milky Way: An Autobiography of our Galaxy - Moiya McTier

 

[QueenOfGoths]

1. 'The Death of Mrs. Westaway" - Ruth Ware
2. "The Paris Apartment" - Lucy Foley
3. "Force of Nature" - Jane Harper
4. "Eight Ghosts: The English Herirage Book of New Ghost Stories"
5. "The Decagon House Murders" - Yukito Ayatsuji.
6. "The Four Legendary Kingdoms" - Matthew Reilly
7. "Girl A" - Abigail Dean
8. "What Lies Between Us" - John Marrs
9 "The Three Secret Cities" - Matthew Reilly
10. "Quantam Radio" - A.J. Riddle
11. "All That Lives" - James Oswald
12. "A Heart Full of Headstones" - Ian Rankin
13. "Keep It In The Family" - John Marrs
14. "The Last Passenger" - Will Dean
15. "Dark Matter" - Blake Crouch
16. "The Perfect Wife" - J.P. Delaney
17. "Cold People" - Tom Rob Smith
18. "Daggers Drawn" ed. by Maxim Jakubowski - compilation of short stories by various crime writers.
19. "A Litter of Bones" - JD Kirk

20. "Thicker than Water" JD Kirk. Second in the DCI Ligan series. A good solid read
21. "The Furies" - John Connolly. Excellent as always

 

[hitmouse]

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
22/45 Huw Lemmey & Ben Miller - Bad Gays: A Homosexual History
23/45 Ralph Edney - The Adventures of Lazarus Lamb
24/45 Ralph Edney - Lazarus Lamb and the Riddle of the Sphincter
25/45 Anonymous - Total Liberation
26/45 adrienne maree brown - We Will Not Cancel Us: And Other Dreams of Transformative Justice
27/45 David Peace - Tokyo Year Zero
28/45 Jamie Stewart - Anything That Moves
29/45 Pear Nuallak - Pearls From Their Mouth

30/45 Emma Warren - Dance Your Way Home: A Journey Through The Dancefloor

Fun book, if you feel like reading a book about dancing this is a good one.

31/45 Katherine Angel - Unmastered: A Book on Desire, Most Difficult to Tell

This one's a waste of paper. Not because it's not good, it might be one of the best books I've read this year, but cos it's got the most extravagant layout I've ever seen - I sometimes joke about poetry being a ripoff cos you're just paying for a bunch of line breaks, but this was on a whole other level, I reckon this 350-odd page book could probably make a reasonable length pamphlet if you strip all the white space out. Very good though, if you think a book about desire, sex, and related matters such as porn and abortion read through the lens of Woolf, Sontag and Foucault might have any appeal to you then this is probably worth a try. Full of nuance, ambivalence, uncertainty and all that hot stuff. Now starting Hao Ren, Zhongjin Li, and Eli Friedman (eds) - China on Strike. Probably not going to be quite so much shagging in this one, I reckon.

There was a while there when I thought my target of 45 was looking wildly ambitious, but now I'm two-thirds of the way through the year and two-thirds of the way there, so reckon I might well hit it, the combination of short texts about insurrectionism and transformative justice and reading a few comic books, and making some long coach journeys, has helped me catch up. Do have at least one very long book still on my to-read pile though, so that could well throw me off again.

 

[PursuedByBears]

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
36/45 J G Ballard - The Drowned World
37/45 Terry Pratchett - Feet of Clay
38/45 Larry McMurtry - Sin Killer
39/45 Ariel Anderssen - Playing to Lose: How A Jehovah's Witness Became a Submissive BDSM Model

40/45 Terry Pratchett - Maskerade

 

[imposs1904]

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

40/36 The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian by Sherman Alexie (Reread)

My son's first day of High School tomorrow, and it turns out he has to submit a Summer Break book report on his first day. Cue me rereading The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian at breakneck speed.

A lovely book, mind.

 

[May Kasahara]

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.
15. Tim Moore - Vuelta Skelter.

16. Christopher Priest - An American Story.

 

[inva]

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
28/35 Victorian Women Writers and the Woman Question edited by Nicola Diane Thompson
29/35 Some Recent Attacks: Essays Cultural & Political by James Kelman
30/35 Mem by Bethany C. Morrow
31/35 Russia Under Yeltsin and Putin by Boris Kagarlitsky
My knowledge of any era of Russian history is next to zero and the 90s would be up there with the least but it's about as timely reading this now as you're going to get for a book published 20 odd years ago, so this was an interesting read. It's really far more about Yeltsin, Putin barely features as it was written right near the beginning of his first presidency. Doesn't go into too much detail about the collapse of the USSR and the further collapse under the liberal regime, Kagarlitsky is more focused on the broader political dynamics of the crises and the factional struggles resulting out of it. He's pretty dismissive of Putin, sees him as a sort of faceless bureaucrat who's unlikely to last long but you do get a good picture of where he comes from and the developing national conservative backlash.
32/35 Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel
I think I waited too long to read this, heard so many good things about it and probably built it up too much because I couldn't help feeling disappointed by it. It's not bad, just okay. The structure didn't really work, each time I'd start to get into one of the strands of the story it would jump somewhere else. The characters in the post-apocalyptic sections are really poorly fleshed out never got a sense of personality from any of them and the setting itself is bland and under-described. It comes to life much more in the pre-apocalypse chapters and those from the perspective of Miranda a comic book artist and the first wife of sort of the pivotal character are by far the highlight of the novel though sadly there's too few of them. There's several from the point of view of a character named Jeevan that seem randomly bolted on to the plot could have cut the character entirely and lost nothing. You do get a good sense of futility about the disaster and I got through the book in a couple of days so it's pretty readable, just don't think I'd rush to read anything else by her.

 

[Spymaster]

I don’t know how you guys do 30, 40, 50 plus!

We’re on holiday at the moment and even with some pretty solid pool-time, I’ve only managed one book in the last 10 days.

At home I think I’m doing well if I crack 1 a month.

 

[nogojones]

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
35/45 Voltaire - Selected works of [Thinkers Library -1935]
36/45 Catherine Nixey - The Darkening Age: The Christian Destruction of the Classical World

37/45 John Fante - Ask the Dust

Jesus, I hated this book. The protagonist was just such an awful, whinging wanker. I should have been put off by the dust jacket praise from Bukowski, because I have no time for him either.

 

[QueenOfGoths]

1. 'The Death of Mrs. Westaway" - Ruth Ware
2. "The Paris Apartment" - Lucy Foley
3. "Force of Nature" - Jane Harper
4. "Eight Ghosts: The English Herirage Book of New Ghost Stories"
5. "The Decagon House Murders" - Yukito Ayatsuji.
6. "The Four Legendary Kingdoms" - Matthew Reilly
7. "Girl A" - Abigail Dean
8. "What Lies Between Us" - John Marrs
9 "The Three Secret Cities" - Matthew Reilly
10. "Quantam Radio" - A.J. Riddle
11. "All That Lives" - James Oswald
12. "A Heart Full of Headstones" - Ian Rankin
13. "Keep It In The Family" - John Marrs
14. "The Last Passenger" - Will Dean
15. "Dark Matter" - Blake Crouch
16. "The Perfect Wife" - J.P. Delaney
17. "Cold People" - Tom Rob Smith
18. "Daggers Drawn" ed. by Maxim Jakubowski - compilation of short stories by various crime writers.
19. "A Litter of Bones" - JD Kirk
20. "Thicker than Water" JD Kirk
21. "The Furies" - John Connolly

22. "Bloody January" - slightly bleak, noir-ish, Glasgow set crime thriller. Rather good

 

[imposs1904]

1. 'The Death of Mrs. Westaway" - Ruth Ware
2. "The Paris Apartment" - Lucy Foley
3. "Force of Nature" - Jane Harper
4. "Eight Ghosts: The English Herirage Book of New Ghost Stories"
5. "The Decagon House Murders" - Yukito Ayatsuji.
6. "The Four Legendary Kingdoms" - Matthew Reilly
7. "Girl A" - Abigail Dean
8. "What Lies Between Us" - John Marrs
9 "The Three Secret Cities" - Matthew Reilly
10. "Quantam Radio" - A.J. Riddle
11. "All That Lives" - James Oswald
12. "A Heart Full of Headstones" - Ian Rankin
13. "Keep It In The Family" - John Marrs
14. "The Last Passenger" - Will Dean
15. "Dark Matter" - Blake Crouch
16. "The Perfect Wife" - J.P. Delaney
17. "Cold People" - Tom Rob Smith
18. "Daggers Drawn" ed. by Maxim Jakubowski - compilation of short stories by various crime writers.
19. "A Litter of Bones" - JD Kirk
20. "Thicker than Water" JD Kirk
21. "The Furies" - John Connolly

22. "Bloody January" - slightly bleak, noir-ish, Glasgow set crime thriller. Rather good

Big fan of Alan Parks. Currently reading To Die in June.

 

[QueenOfGoths]

Big fan of Alan Parks. Currently reading To Die in June.

I'm definitely placing to read more

 

[Shippou-Sensei]

I don’t know how you guys do 30, 40, 50 plus!

For me having kindle on my phone helps.
Any downtime is filled with reading.

The only reason my reading count isn't higher is I'm not logging when I read manga or light novels.

 

[nogojones]

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
35/45 Voltaire - Selected works of [Thinkers Library -1935]
36/45 Catherine Nixey - The Darkening Age: The Christian Destruction of the Classical World
37/45 John Fante - Ask the Dust

38/45 K.J. Parker - Sixteen Ways to Defend a Walled City

I didn't really expect to enjoy this one much, as I'm not really a swords and castles person. But it was fun and I'll probably get round to reading the other two in the series.

 

[hitmouse]

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
22/45 Huw Lemmey & Ben Miller - Bad Gays: A Homosexual History
23/45 Ralph Edney - The Adventures of Lazarus Lamb
24/45 Ralph Edney - Lazarus Lamb and the Riddle of the Sphincter
25/45 Anonymous - Total Liberation
26/45 adrienne maree brown - We Will Not Cancel Us: And Other Dreams of Transformative Justice
27/45 David Peace - Tokyo Year Zero
28/45 Jamie Stewart - Anything That Moves
29/45 Pear Nuallak - Pearls From Their Mouth
30/45 Emma Warren - Dance Your Way Home: A Journey Through The Dancefloor
31/45 Katherine Angel - Unmastered: A Book on Desire, Most Difficult to Tell

32/45 Hao Ren, Zhongjin Li, and Eli Friedman (eds) - China on Strike

Claims it's a book about China on strike but all the stories are just from the Pearl River Delta, bloody ripoff. I had been thinking this one might be a bit heavy going, but even though it's a tougher read than the book about shagging that's all just blank space, and probably also more so than the one about dancing, it's not too heavy at all - no dense theory and not too much of that scene-setting stuff where people sometimes bore you to death with describing the general economic background, mostly just classic workers inquiry, nice short chapters so easy to get through, and some good tales of sabotage and similar. Not the most professionally made book in the world and there are a few footnotes where the editors of the English edition have just gone "not really clear what's happening here but that's how it was in the original", but that's fine. All the stories cover the period just after the 2008 crash, so you're out of luck if you want to know what's been going on in the last ten years or so, though.
Also cos I'm an idiot I put a bottle of rum in my bag without fully securing the cap so my copy's a bit rum-stained, but the book cover has a kind of watercolour painting effect, so having a bit of rum staining one corner actually doesn't look as bad as it might do, sort of looks like it might be part of the design. Would not recommend staining any of your books with rum, but if you absolutely have to, this one would be a decent choice.

Now starting Kai Cheng Thom - I Hope We Choose Love: A Trans Girl's Notes from the End of the World.

 

[marty21]

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
20/60 Nicholas Nickelby - Charles Dickens

 

[Me76]

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
20/50 What Happens in New York, Kristin Adams - k
21/50 Other Parents, Sarah Stovell - k
22/50 Giovanni's Room, James Baldwin - dl
23/50 Throne of Deceit, Richard Fierce and pdmac - k
24/50 Under the Dome, Stephen King - hc
25/50 The Water Dancer, Ta-Nehisi Coates - dl
26/50 Holly, Stephen King - g

 

[Winot]

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
15/29 The Passions and the Interests: Political Arguments for Capitalism before its Triumph - Albert O. Hirschman
16/29 Milkman - Anna Burns

17/29 The Ballard of Peckham Rye - Muriel Spark

Novella which came just before Miss Jean Brodie (the only other one of hers I have read). Loved this - reminded me of Brighton Rock. Very funny/arch and in control.

 

[imposs1904]

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
15/29 The Passions and the Interests: Political Arguments for Capitalism before its Triumph - Albert O. Hirschman
16/29 Milkman - Anna Burns

17/29 The Ballard of Peckham Rye - Muriel Spark

Novella which came just before Miss Jean Brodie (the only other one of hers I have read). Loved this - reminded me of Brighton Rock. Very funny/arch and in control.

I need to read more Muriel Spark.

 

[Fozzie Bear]

14/29 Aaron Cometbus - Cometbus #55 Pen Pals.

More great memoir from the former punk/personal fanzine writer. A touching story of his friendship with a fiery Ukrainian punk woman and his romanticisation of a previous generation of Berkeley writers and revolutionaries some of whom he manages to have an odd exchange of letters with. Some evocative insights into ageing too.

 

[inva]

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
28/35 Victorian Women Writers and the Woman Question edited by Nicola Diane Thompson
29/35 Some Recent Attacks: Essays Cultural & Political by James Kelman
30/35 Mem by Bethany C. Morrow
31/35 Russia Under Yeltsin and Putin by Boris Kagarlitsky
32/35 Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel
33/35 The History of the British Film 1918-1929 by Rachael Low
Bit of a pompous sneery tone at times but a very detailed and wide ranging assessment of filmmaking and the film industry in Britain through the twenties. It's only towards the very end of the period this book covers that I have any familiarity at all having seen a little by the likes of Asquith, Grierson and Dupont even so there's plenty of interest regardless. I hadn't realised how early on British films were subject to heavy censorship of a similar kind to the Hollywood Hays Code, I'd assumed the situation here broadly followed that of the US whereas it seems like there never really was a pre-code era. Got a couple of others by her from the same series I'll tackle at some point.

 

[hitmouse]

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
22/45 Huw Lemmey & Ben Miller - Bad Gays: A Homosexual History
23/45 Ralph Edney - The Adventures of Lazarus Lamb
24/45 Ralph Edney - Lazarus Lamb and the Riddle of the Sphincter
25/45 Anonymous - Total Liberation
26/45 adrienne maree brown - We Will Not Cancel Us: And Other Dreams of Transformative Justice
27/45 David Peace - Tokyo Year Zero
28/45 Jamie Stewart - Anything That Moves
29/45 Pear Nuallak - Pearls From Their Mouth
30/45 Emma Warren - Dance Your Way Home: A Journey Through The Dancefloor
31/45 Katherine Angel - Unmastered: A Book on Desire, Most Difficult to Tell
32/45 Hao Ren, Zhongjin Li, and Eli Friedman (eds) - China on Strike

33/45 Kai Cheng Thom - I Hope We Choose Love: A Trans Girl's Notes from the End of the World

As the title suggests, a bit hippyish in places, but good. Fits quite well with various other things I've been reading, especially the brown and Nuallak, although Thom feels a bit cuddlier and less sharp-edged than Nuallak when covering similar ground. Thoughtful and nuanced and all that anyway, interesting ideas about some fairly difficult and heavy topics. Now starting Richard Fariña - Been Down So Long It Looks Like Up to Me. From a first glance, I'm not sure how well this one will have aged, but will stick with it.