the strictly come reading 2023 reading challenge thread

[pseudonarcissus]

23/27 Tiepolo Blue – James Cahill

I enjoyed that, although it felt like the last couple of chapters were a bit rushed...maybe a deadline was coming up.

22/27 The Story of the Night – Colm Tóibin
21/27 A Problem in Greek Ethics - John Addington Symonds
20/27 The Double – Fyodor Dostoyevsky
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

 

[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
39/45 Howard Zinn - A People's History of the United States
40/45 Margaret Atwood - The Testaments
41/45 Joan Didion - Blue Nights

42/45 Tom O'Neill - Chaos: Charles Manson, the CIA, and the Secret History of the Sixties
Halfway through the book I'm like this


Manages to circumstantially link the Manson murders, to Cointelpro, MK Ultra and even the JFK assassination.

 

[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
21/60 Get Carter - Ted Lewis
22/60 Essex Dogs - Dan Jones
23/60 The Full English - Stuart Maconie
24/60 The Secret - Lee Child & Andrew Child

 

[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
42/52 - Sarah Waters - The Paying Guests
43/52 - Celeste Ng - Our Missing Hearts
44/52 - Sebastian Barry - Old God's Time
45/52 - Agatha Christie - The ABC Murders
46/52 - Margaret Atwood - My Evil Mother
47/52 - Barbara Vine - No Night is Too Long (re-read)
48/52 - Bob Mortimer - The Satsuma Complex
49/52 - Stephen King - Holly

50/52 - Tim Spector - The Diet Myth

 

[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
19/30 - Kurt Vonnegut - Timequake
20/30 - Louise Kennedy - Trespasses
21/30 - Lewis Carroll - Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland
22/30 - William Gibson - Virtual Light

23/30 - Michael Bracewell - Unfinished Business

 

[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
31/15 - The Dance Tree - Kiran Millwood Hargrave
32/15 - Critical - Matt Morgan
33/15 - Space Dogs - Martin Parr
34/15 - 1989 - Val McDermid
35/15 - The Diary of a Young Girl - Anne Frank

 

[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
21/60 Get Carter - Ted Lewis
22/60 Essex Dogs - Dan Jones
23/60 The Full English - Stuart Maconie
24/60 The Secret - Lee Child & Andrew Child
25/60 On The Rocks - Kerry J Donovan

 

[pseudonarcissus]

24/27 The Harness Room – L. P. Hartley

23/27 Tiepolo Blue – James Cahill
22/27 The Story of the Night – Colm Tóibin
21/27 A Problem in Greek Ethics - John Addington Symonds
20/27 The Double – Fyodor Dostoyevsky
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

 

[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
6/5 Rosamund Young - The Secret Life of Cows

 

[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.

17. John Connelly - Every Dead Thing.

 

[Fozzie Bear]

16/29 - Cristicuffs - On Ukraine, Russia & the West: Three Critiques of Patriotism

Well-written ultra Marxist articles from the gang that did that Kittens newsletter. No photos of kittens in this one (or indeed of anything) though. A free small book from the anarchist bookfair. Good.

 

[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
34/45 Richard Fariña - Been Down So Long It Looks Like Up to Me
35/45 Neal Shirley and Saralee Stafford - Dixie Be Damned: 300 Years of Insurrection in the American South
36/45 Amor Towles - Rules of Civility (re-read)
37/45 Rosa Luxemburg - The Mass Strike, the Political Party and the Trade Unions
38/45 Milan Kundera - Life is Elswhere (re-read)

39/45 Colson Whitehead - Sag Harbor

Very very good. Teenagers on their summer holidays novel that manages to be quite bittersweet, mournful, elegaic (probably) and so on. Also an interesting look at the particular challenges of being black and a bit posh in a culture where black is automatically associated with being "street". Also read a little poetry/art pamphlet by Kate Ireland called Self-Regulating Behaviours, that was good too but it's not a book so doesn't make it into the proper list. Think it had a tiny print run so good luck trying to find a copy if you want to read it.
Now starting Claudio Lonmitz - The Return of Comrade Ricardo Flores Magon. Absolutely giant tome, makes The Idea look relatively brief as books about anarchist history go. The author has quite an interestingly odd approach too, the lengthy introduction has a fair bit about whether Magon & co resembled Odysseus or Don Quixote, that sort of thing.

 

[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)
41/36 To Die in June by Alan Parks
42/36 Wire’s Pink Flag by Wilson Neate
43/36 Bloody January by Alan Parks (Audiobook)
44/36 Alan Partridge: Alpha Papa: Script (and Scrapped) by Steve Coogan, Rob Gibbons, Neil Gibbons, Armando Iannucci, Peter Baynham
45/36 The Diary of a Bookseller by Shaun Bythell (Audiobook)

46/36 Confessions of a Bookseller by Shaun Bythell (Audiobook)

 

[pseudonarcissus]

25/27 Filthy Animals – Brandon Taylor

He's a very good writer. These are short stories.

24/27 The Harness Room – L. P. Hartley
23/27 Tiepolo Blue – James Cahill
22/27 The Story of the Night – Colm Tóibin
21/27 A Problem in Greek Ethics - John Addington Symonds
20/27 The Double – Fyodor Dostoyevsky
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

 

[pseudonarcissus]

I'm very very bored working offshore at the moment. I was in the same situation last year and I provided a quick summary....

I have counted 595 books that we have collectively read, so far this year. I have a few more pages to go though and I will try to do that in the next few days. Feel free to update your reading lists.

Our most popular books are:
3 readers:



Most popular authors:

9 books


6 books

5 books


I think it's fair to say there is pretty much zero correlation between our reading habits and any best-sellers list

 

[pseudonarcissus]

My meeting was cancelled this afternoon, so here we go for the interim results for this year's strictly challenge. Please note: there is still time for books to be break-out successes...come on Nadine Dories!

660 books (754 in 2022)
30 people contributed to the thread

by author



The authors that also appeared on the 2022 were
Joan Didion (8)
Steven King (7)
Donald E Westlake (5)

by book

 

[belboid]

why aren't Graeber & Hoban in the author list?

Are there 9 different Conan Doyle's being read, or are there 9 different people reading ACD?

 

[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
42/52 - Sarah Waters - The Paying Guests
43/52 - Celeste Ng - Our Missing Hearts
44/52 - Sebastian Barry - Old God's Time
45/52 - Agatha Christie - The ABC Murders
46/52 - Margaret Atwood - My Evil Mother
47/52 - Barbara Vine - No Night is Too Long (re-read)
48/52 - Bob Mortimer - The Satsuma Complex
49/52 - Stephen King - Holly
50/52 - Tim Spector - The Diet Myth

51/52 - Minette Walters - The Swift and the Harrier

 

[pseudonarcissus]

why aren't Graeber & Hoban in the author list?

Are there 9 different Conan Doyle's being read, or are there 9 different people reading ACD?

I didn't include authors with only one or two books having been read. I quite arbitrarily included books with several authors separately. This was perhaps a little unfair on Mr Graeber. Maybe I missed his collaboration with Mr. Hoban.

Or perhaps you mean Mr. Hoban's "Ridley Walker"? In which case, although this book was enormously popular with 3 readers, he appears not to have published any sequels and only has the one book on the list.

There were nine different ACD books read, as it happens, by the same person. I felt it would be indelicate to ask if these were all contained in a Sherlock Holmes compendium edition.

 

[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
41/45 J B Priestley - An Inspector Calls
42/45 Frances Hodgson Burnett - A Little Princess
43/45 P G Wodehouse - Psmith in the City
44/45 Carlie Sorosiak - My Life as a Cat
45/45 Neil Carter - Cycling and the British: a Modern History

46/45 Paterson Joseph - The Secret Diaries of Charles Ignatius Sancho

 

[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
21/60 Get Carter - Ted Lewis
22/60 Essex Dogs - Dan Jones
23/60 The Full English - Stuart Maconie
24/60 The Secret - Lee Child & Andrew Child
25/60 On The Rocks - Kerry J Donovan
26/60 Welcome to New London : Journeys and Encounters in the Post Olympic City - John Rogers

 

[hitmouse]

I didn't include authors with only one or two books having been read. I quite arbitrarily included books with several authors separately. This was perhaps a little unfair on Mr Graeber. Maybe I missed his collaboration with Mr. Hoban.

Or perhaps you mean Mr. Hoban's "Ridley Walker"? In which case, although this book was enormously popular with 3 readers, he appears not to have published any sequels and only has the one book on the list.

There were nine different ACD books read, as it happens, by the same person. I felt it would be indelicate to ask if these were all contained in a Sherlock Holmes compendium edition.

View attachment 399495
View attachment 399496

As it happens, I've started making my own spreadsheet cos I got curious about what the actual gender balance of books I read is, and then broke it down further cos I wondered whether there was a notable difference for fiction vs nonfiction. Have now ended up with six columns (non-fiction F, non-fiction M, fiction F, fiction M, books by either anonymous authors or mixed-gender collective authorship, books by nonbinary people - those last two sections aren't really numerous enough to be worth breaking down into fiction and nonfiction). I suppose it might be a bit overambitious to do that for all 660 books on your list, but feel free to give it a go if you get bored enough?

 

[pseudonarcissus]

As it happens, I've started making my own spreadsheet cos I got curious about what the actual gender balance of books I read is, and then broke it down further cos I wondered whether there was a notable difference for fiction vs nonfiction. Have now ended up with six columns (non-fiction F, non-fiction M, fiction F, fiction M, books by either anonymous authors or mixed-gender collective authorship, books by nonbinary people - those last two sections aren't really numerous enough to be worth breaking down into fiction and nonfiction). I suppose it might be a bit overambitious to do that for all 660 books on your list, but feel free to give it a go if you get bored enough?

that really does sound ambitious...thanks for the suggestion, but I should be going home on Monday and, although it might update the lists for the last few weeks of the year, I'm not sure I'm going not get chance to break it down by genre etc...I can share my spreadsheet if that would be helpful.

 

[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
42/52 - Sarah Waters - The Paying Guests
43/52 - Celeste Ng - Our Missing Hearts
44/52 - Sebastian Barry - Old God's Time
45/52 - Agatha Christie - The ABC Murders
46/52 - Margaret Atwood - My Evil Mother
47/52 - Barbara Vine - No Night is Too Long (re-read)
48/52 - Bob Mortimer - The Satsuma Complex
49/52 - Stephen King - Holly
50/52 - Tim Spector - The Diet Myth
51/52 - Minette Walters - The Swift and the Harrier

52/52 - Patricia Highsmith - The Cry of The Owl

 

[pseudonarcissus]

Additional author data provided for hitmouse 's convenience

Only 4/27 books by 3 female writers. I must do better next year. I have a Maya Angelou and a Joan Didion waiting on the Kindle already. Suggestions welcome.
12/27 books by living writers.
19/27 books by white writers.

26/27 The Slum (O Cortiço) - Aluísio Azevedo. (Fiction, Male, Dead, White)

OK, I’m only 75% through, but I’m going to finish today. It’s a very good book set in Brazil, written in 1890. I prefer this to Machado de Assis, it’s much more bawdy. Among other things it describes the police as looking for any excuse to invade and smash up the slum...nothing has changed.

25/27 Filthy Animals – Brandon Taylor (Fiction, Male, Living, Person of Colour)
24/27 The Harness Room – L. P. Hartley (Fiction, Male, Dead, White)
23/27 Tiepolo Blue – James Cahill (F, M, L, W)
22/27 The Story of the Night – Colm Tóibin (F, M, L, W)
21/27 A Problem in Greek Ethics - John Addington Symonds (Non-Fiction, M, D, W)
20/27 The Double – Fyodor Dostoyevsky (F, M, D, W)
19/27 In Youth is Pleasure – Denton Welch (F, M, D, W)
18/27 Candide – Voltaire (F, M, D, W)
17/27 The New Life – Tom Crewe (F, M, L, W)
16/27 The Buddha of Suburbia - Hanif Kureishi (re-read) (F, M, L, PoC)
15/27 Wide Sargasso Sea - Jean Rhys (F, Female, D, W)
14/27 Jane Ayre - Charlotte Bronte (F, F, D, W)
13/27 The Tiergarten Tales - Paolo G Grossi (F, M, L, W)
12/27 My Ear to his Heart - Hanif Kureisi (F, M, L, PoC)
11/27 Voyage in the Dark - Jean Rhys (F, F, D, W)
10/27 God's Children Are Little Broken Things - Arinze Ifeakandu (F, M, L, PoC)
9/27 Cox's Navy: Salvaging the German High Seas Fleet at Scapa Flow 1924-1931 - Tony Booth (NF, M, D, W)
8/27 The Go Between - L. P. Hartley (F, M, D, W)
7/27 Sucking Feijoas - Jeffrey Buchanan (F, M, L, W)
6/27 Singin' and Swingin' & Getting Merry like Christmas - Maya Angelou (NF, F, D, PoC)
5/27 The Rings of Saturn - W G Sebald (F, M, D, W)
4/27 Maurice - E M Forster (re-read) (F, M, D, W)
3/27 The Last Word - Hanif Kureishi (F, M, L, PoC)
2/27 Alec - William di Canzio (F, M, L, W)
1/27 Quichotte - Salman Rushdie (F, M, L, PoC)

 

[hitmouse]

Additional author data provided for hitmouse 's convenience

Only 4/27 books by 3 female writers. I must do better next year. I have a Maya Angelou and a Joan Didion waiting on the Kindle already. Suggestions welcome.

Well, the data suggests Agatha Christie and Margaret Atwood are crowdpleasers?

 

[pseudonarcissus]

Well, the data suggests Agatha Christie and Margaret Atwood are crowdpleasers?

I read some Agatha Christie when I was a teenager; I don't feel a pressing need to revisit her as a writer.

I know nothing about Margaret Atwood, although she's won the Booker. Wikipedia tells me she's a Canadian writer of historical novels (among many other accomplishments).

Prime Minister Mackenzie King famously said that Canada “has too much geography and not enough history.” Maybe I will try one..The Blind Assassin?

 

[hitmouse]

I read some Agatha Christie when I was a teenager; I don't feel a pressing need to revisit her as a writer.

I know nothing about Margaret Atwood, although she's won the Booker. Wikipedia tells me she's a Canadian writer of historical novels (among many other accomplishments).

Prime Minister Mackenzie King famously said that Canada “has too much geography and not enough history.” Maybe I will try one..The Blind Assassin?

Historical novels, contemporary novels and futuristic novels, take your pick. Yeah, I really liked the Blind Assassin, that seems as good a starting point as any.

 

[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
39/45 Howard Zinn - A People's History of the United States
40/45 Margaret Atwood - The Testaments
41/45 Joan Didion - Blue Nights
42/45 Tom O'Neill - Chaos: Charles Manson, the CIA, and the Secret History of the Sixties

43/45 Gywn A. Williams - When was Wales

Only goes up to '83 and a bit heavy on medieval Welsh history, but still a classic none the less.

44/45 Maureen F. McHugh - China Mountain Zhang

Enjoyed the journey, but I'd have employed the editor for a few extra days personally.

 

[belboid]

1 - Noviolet Bulawayo - Glory
2 - Alan Garner - Treacle Walker
3 - Joe Thomas - White Riot (Book 1 of the United Kingdom trilogy)
4 - Robert Edric - My Own Worst Enemy
5 - Cynthia Cruz - The Melancholia of Class: A Manifesto for the Working Class
6 - David Graeber & David Wengrow - The Dawn of Everything: A New History of Humanity
7 - Joe Thomas - Bent
8 - Harry Harrison - Dreaming in Yellow the story of the DiY sound system
9 - Michael Chabon - The Yiddish Policeman's Union
10 - Bob Dylan - The Philosophy of Modern Song
11 - Gary Younge - Who Are We? How identity politics took over the world.
12 Susanna Clarke - Piranesi
13 Virginia Woolf - A Rooms of One's Own
14 - Iain Reid - We Spread
15 - Pat Nevin - Football and How to Survive It
16 - Peter Frankopan - The Silk Roads: a New History of the World
17 - Agatha Christie - The Murder of Roger Ackroyd
18 - Hamid Ismailov - The Devil's Dance
19 - Karin Smirnoff - The Girl in the Eagle’s Talon
20 - Gary Younge - Dispatches from the Diaspora: From Nelson Mandela to Black Lives Matter
21 - Christopher Marlowe - Tamburlaine the Great, parts I & II
22 - Muriel Spark - The Public Image
23 - James Morrison - The Left Behind
24 - Virginia Woolf - Death of the Moth & other essays
25 - Gary Shteyngart - Absurdistan

26/30 - Nick Cave - Stranger Than Kindness

A coffee table book with some great photos an interesting essay and a neat glimpse into the development of some of Cave’s lyrics and obsessions.

27/30 - Yara Rodrigues Fowler - There Are More Things

Superb novel regarding family, sisterhood, queerness and radical politics in London and Brazil. Deffo one of my books of the year (even if it came out last year).