the wonderful world of reading 2020 reading challenge thread

[seventh bullet]

1.The Third World in the Global 1960s - edited by Samantha Christiansen & Zachary A. Scarlett

2.The Long Twentieth Century - Giovanni Arrighi

3.In Defence of the Terror: Liberty Or Death in the French Revolution - Sophie Wahnich

4.The Intellectual Origins of the English Revolution - Christopher Hill

Next up is Hill's Reformation to Industrial Revolution

 

[Me76]

L - library
Ld - my sister's library

1/50 The Gallows Pole, Benjamin Myers - Ld
2/50 You, Caroline Kepnes - Ld
3/50 Women Within, Anne Leigh Parrish
4/50 Life After Life, Kate Atkinson - Ld
5/50 Creed, Celina Grace - indie writer, standard crime fic, not bad
6/50 The Dilemma, B A Paris, read it in a day, interesting family drama

 

[PursuedByBears]

1/50 Hilary Hinds - A Cultural History of Twin Beds
2/50 Alan Garner - Boneland
3/50 James Herriot - All Things Bright and Beautiful
4/50 Philip Pullman - The Secret Commonwealth
5/50 Edgar Allan Poe - Tales of Mystery and Terror

6/50 - China Mieville - Kraken

 

[Biddlybee]

Ooh, another that's been on my list a while. I've never read Mieville. Good place to start?

 

[PursuedByBears]

It's not my favourite, I'd start with Perdido Street Station. Kraken seems a bit like China Mieville doing China Mieville, PSS was an earlier/better one. The City and the City is good too.

 

[Biddlybee]

Thanks, will add PSS to my list.

 

[D'wards]

1/36 - Stories of Your Life and Others by Ted Chiang
2/36 - Watchmen by Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons (reread)
3/36 - The Ten Thousand Doors of January by Alix E. Harrow

 

[DaveCinzano]

2/36 - Watchmen by Alan Moore, Dave Gibbons and John Higgins

CFY

 

[D'wards]

CFY

Point taken (although tbf my copy has only the first two gadges named on the cover)

 

[PursuedByBears]

1/50 Hilary Hinds - A Cultural History of Twin Beds
2/50 Alan Garner - Boneland
3/50 James Herriot - All Things Bright and Beautiful
4/50 Philip Pullman - The Secret Commonwealth
5/50 Edgar Allan Poe - Tales of Mystery and Terror
6/50 - China Mieville - Kraken

7/50 - Terry Pratchett - Pyramids

 

[D'wards]

1/30 - Now in November - Josephine Johnson
2/30 - The Wanderers - Richard Price
3/30 - The Caves of Steel - Isaac Asimov
4/30 - The Naked Sun - Isaac Asimov

Did you like The Wanderers?

 

[Puddy_Tat]

living close to the county town of royal berkshire, this thread title is confusing. i'm not used to seeing 'wonderful' and 'reading' in the same sentence

 

[Ptolemy]

1/30. Royal Babylon: The Alarming History of European Royalty. - Karl Shaw.
2/30. Hrafnkel's Saga and Other Stories - Unknown (translated by Hermann Palsson).
3/30. Born 1900 - Hunter Davies.
4/30. The Pearl - John Steinbeck.
5/30. A Journal of the Plague Year - Daniel Defoe.
6/30. Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? - Philip K. Dick.
7/30. A Room of One's Own - Virginia Woolf.
8/30. First Love - Ivan Turgenev.
9/30. The Color Purple - Alice Walker.
10/30. The Catcher in the Rye - J.D. Salinger (re-read).
11/30. The Last Man - Mary Shelley.
12/30. A Very Easy Death - Simone de Beauvoir.
13/30. Wide Sargasso Sea - Jean Rhys.
14/30. Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen.
15/30. Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen (re-read).
16/30. The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe - C. S. Lewis.
17/30. Lord of the Flies - William Golding.
18/30. A Study in Scarlet - Arthur Conan Doyle.
19/30. Mansfield Park - Jane Austen.

 

[BoatieBird]

1/70 - Shirley Jackson - The Bird's Nest
2/70 - Annie Proulx - Accordion Crimes (re-read)
3/70 - Liz Nugent - Unravelling Oliver
4/70 - Elizabeth Strout - Anything is Possible
5/70 - Alice Sebold - The Lovely Bones
6/70 - Ruth Rendell - Make Death Love Me (re-read)

7/70 - Michael Farris Smith - Rivers

 

[billy_bob]

1/40 Wilkie Collins - The Woman in White*
2/40 Nathaniel Hawthorne - The Scarlet Letter
3/40 Hans Rosling - Factfulness
4/40 Alastair Bonnett - Off the Map
5/40 Anna Burns - The Milkman
6/40 Charles Fernyhough - Pieces of Light: The New Science of Memory

7/40 Julia Leigh - The Hunter
8/40 John Higgs - William Blake Now: Why He Matters More Than Ever


* my target this year is to read more long books. * = 500+ pages

 

[imposs1904]

1/26 Smart Moves by Stuart M. Kaminsky
2/26 Think Fast, Mr. Peters by Stuart M. Kaminsky
3/26 Buried Caesars by Stuart M. Kaminsky
4/26 Hunting Grounds: A Scottish Football Safari by Gary Sutherland

5/26 Poor Butterfly by Stuart M. Kaminsky

 

[braindancer]

Did you like The Wanderers?

I did! I devoured it! I think it may have been a recommendation from you that put me on to it. I've not read anything by Richard Price before - have you read any others? Any tips?

 

[D'wards]

I did! I devoured it! I think it may have been a recommendation from you that put me on to it. I've not read anything by Richard Price before - have you read any others? Any tips?

It's one of my favourites. It's got a real heart to it.
The last chapter is really thought provoking I thought- the reactions of his girlfriend and his mum after the rape.

I must admit I haven't read any others, but they all seem to be more hard bitten crime novels rather than coming of age dramas.

He wrote some of the Wire iirc

 

[PursuedByBears]

1/50 Hilary Hinds - A Cultural History of Twin Beds
2/50 Alan Garner - Boneland
3/50 James Herriot - All Things Bright and Beautiful
4/50 Philip Pullman - The Secret Commonwealth
5/50 Edgar Allan Poe - Tales of Mystery and Terror
6/50 China Mieville - Kraken
7/50 Terry Pratchett - Pyramids

8/50 Terry Pratchett - Guards! Guards! - that's the best Discworld book yet

 

[nogojones]

1/50 Paul Lafargue - The Evolution of Property
2/50 Michio Kaku - Physics of the Impossible
3/50 Issac Asimov - Foundation
4/50 Ted Chiang - Stories of Your Life and Others
5/50 Philip K. Dick - Martian Time-Slip

6/50 Margret Atwood - The Penelopiad
7/50 Emma Goldman - Living My Life Vol.2

 

[PursuedByBears]

1/50 Hilary Hinds - A Cultural History of Twin Beds
2/50 Alan Garner - Boneland
3/50 James Herriot - All Things Bright and Beautiful
4/50 Philip Pullman - The Secret Commonwealth
5/50 Edgar Allan Poe - Tales of Mystery and Terror
6/50 China Mieville - Kraken
7/50 Terry Pratchett - Pyramids
8/50 Terry Pratchett - Guards! Guards!

9/50 Adam Kay - This is Going to Hurt: Secret Diaries of a Junior Doctor

 

[pennimania]

1/30. Royal Babylon: The Alarming History of European Royalty. - Karl Shaw.
2/30. Hrafnkel's Saga and Other Stories - Unknown (translated by Hermann Palsson).
3/30. Born 1900 - Hunter Davies.
4/30. The Pearl - John Steinbeck.
5/30. A Journal of the Plague Year - Daniel Defoe.
6/30. Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? - Philip K. Dick.
7/30. A Room of One's Own - Virginia Woolf.
8/30. First Love - Ivan Turgenev.
9/30. The Color Purple - Alice Walker.
10/30. The Catcher in the Rye - J.D. Salinger (re-read).
11/30. The Last Man - Mary Shelley.
12/30. A Very Easy Death - Simone de Beauvoir.
13/30. Wide Sargasso Sea - Jean Rhys.
14/30. Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen.
15/30. Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen (re-read).
16/30. The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe - C. S. Lewis.
17/30. Lord of the Flies - William Golding.
18/30. A Study in Scarlet - Arthur Conan Doyle.

I honestly hadn't expected to read much by this time - this huge amount of reading is due to the fact that my circumstances have changed radically this month and as a result, I have much more time flat on my back with little to do... I'll likely up my target total and maybe add a "biggie" sub-target.

Love A Study in Scarlet! First read it when I was 10!

 

[DotCommunist]

1/? Ninefox Gambit by Yoon Ha Lee

 

[chilango]

1/100: We Have Never Been Middle Class: How Social Mobility Misleads Us - Hadas Weiss
2/100: Derrida on Deconstruction - Barry Stocker
3/100: Derrida - Julian Wolfreys
4/100: Event - Slavoj Zizek
5/100: The Social Photo - Nathan Jorgensen
6/100: The Emancipated Spectator - Jacques Ranciere
7/100: Deleuze and Guattari, Politics and Education - Matthew Carlin & Jason Wallin (ed.)
8/100: Free Exchange - Pierre Bourdieu & Hans Haacke
9/100: Is Equality Fair? - (Edited by) Tom Hampson & Jemima Olchawski
10/100: We are the crisis of capital - John Holloway.
11/100: For a critique of the political economy of the sign - Jean Baudrillard.

12/100:A Bear Grylls Adventure 5: The River Challenge - Bear Grylls,
I have read this, out loud, a few pages at a time every night for what feels likes ages to my daughter (who is perfectly capable of reading more substantial books by herself but takes some kind of perverse pleasure in making me do this!)

13/100: Thomas Picketty's Capital in the Twenty-First Century: An Introduction - Stephan Kaufmann & Ingo Stutzle.
A brief critical overview that has saved me from wasting my time reading the actual book.

 

[nogojones]

13/100: Thomas Picketty's Capital in the Twenty-First Century: An Introduction - Stephan Kaufmann & Ingo Stutzle.
A brief critical overview that has saved me from wasting my time reading the actual book.

But what did your daughter make of it?

 

[chilango]

But what did your daughter make of it?

She read the back cover and based her comments on that...

 

[pennimania]

1. The Generous Earth – Philip Oyler
2. Excitements at the Chalet School
3.The New Mistress at the Chalet School
4. Betty: the story of Betty MacDonald - Anne Wellman
5. The Coming of Age of the Chalet School - Elinor Brent Dyer
6. The Chalet School and Richenda - “ “ “
7. Trials for the Chalet School - “ “ “
8. We Took to the Woods – Louise Rich Dickinson
and
9. Theodora and the Chalet School - Elinor Brent Dyer
10. Camera Lucida - Roland Barthes (reread)

 

[Ptolemy]

Love A Study in Scarlet! First read it when I was 10!

It was good! I found The Sign of Four at the same time, so I have that ready for a few books down the line...

1/50. Royal Babylon: The Alarming History of European Royalty. - Karl Shaw.
2/50. Hrafnkel's Saga and Other Stories - Unknown (translated by Hermann Palsson).
3/50. Born 1900 - Hunter Davies.
4/50. The Pearl - John Steinbeck.
5/50. A Journal of the Plague Year - Daniel Defoe.
6/50. Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? - Philip K. Dick.
7/50. A Room of One's Own - Virginia Woolf.
8/50. First Love - Ivan Turgenev.
9/50. The Color Purple - Alice Walker.
10/50. The Catcher in the Rye - J.D. Salinger (re-read).
11/50. The Last Man - Mary Shelley.
12/50. A Very Easy Death - Simone de Beauvoir.
13/50. Wide Sargasso Sea - Jean Rhys.
14/50. Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen.
15/50. Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen (re-read).
16/50. The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe - C. S. Lewis.
17/50. Lord of the Flies - William Golding.
18/50. A Study in Scarlet - Arthur Conan Doyle.
19/50. Mansfield Park - Jane Austen.
20/50. The Castle of Otranto - Horace Walpole.

Since recent events have left it fairly difficult for me to move around (with little to do for the next couple of months but read more!), I've decided to set a new target of 50 books. I'm also hoping that at least 5 of these will be more than 500 pages long, encouraging me to grapple with the doorstops on my shelf.

 

[Shirl]

1/40 50 Ways to Wear a Scarf - Lauren Friedman. Yes I know, but it's a hard back book and I read it cover to cover.
2/40 The house on the Strand - Daphne Du Maurier
3/40 Afternoon of a Good Woman - Nina Bawden
4/40 Familia Passions - Nina Bawden
5/40 Spiderweb - Penelope Lively (5 books in 10 days is a lot for me but I've spent an awful lot of time hanging around in hospitals + nothing much on the telly.
6/40 A Little Love, A Little Learning - Nina Bawden
7/40 The Day That Never Comes - Caimh McDonnell
8/40 In Search of the Rainbow's End: Inside the White House Farm Murders - Colin Caffell
9/40 A Woman of My Age - Nina Bawden
10/40 Let's Kill Uncle - Rohan O'Grady
11/40 The Wych Elm - Tana French

 

[braindancer]

1/30 - Now in November - Josephine Johnson
2/30 - The Wanderers - Richard Price
3/30 - The Caves of Steel - Isaac Asimov
4/30 - The Naked Sun - Isaac Asimov
5/30 - Robots of Dawn - Isaac Asimov