the wonderful world of reading 2020 reading challenge thread

[bookaddict]

I am trying for about 10 but I never seem to have 1 out of my hands - sometimes I have 2 or 3 on the go at any one time! Currently reading The Belle Fields by Lora Adams and will do its sequel Ashes of Roses - both will be for second time. Enjoyed these first time round and enjoying again. Anyone in romantic fiction these are a must - happy reading everyone

 

[Ptolemy]

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.
21/50. The Passion of New Eve - Angela Carter.
22/50. The Sign of Four - Arthur Conan Doyle.
23/50. The State and Revolution - V. I. Lenin.
24/50. Decline and Fall - Evelyn Waugh.
25/50. The Mysteries of Udolpho - Ann Radcliffe*.

* = more than 500 pages - I am hoping to read at least 5 of these in 2020.

Hideously boring Gothic novel - read mainly because I am going to read Northanger Abbey next and thought my appreciation of it might be increased by reading the notorious source material.

 

[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
6/50 The Dilemma, B A Paris
7/50 Drive, James Sallis - L
8/50 Waking Lions, Ayelet Gundar-Goshen - Ld - excellent book this. Would like to credit the translator too.

 

[Ptolemy]

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.
21/50. The Passion of New Eve - Angela Carter.
22/50. The Sign of Four - Arthur Conan Doyle.
23/50. The State and Revolution - V. I. Lenin.
24/50. Decline and Fall - Evelyn Waugh.
25/50. The Mysteries of Udolpho - Ann Radcliffe*.
26/50. Northanger Abbey - Jane Austen.

* = more than 500 pages.

 

[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

10/50 Alastair Reynolds - Revenger

 

[colbhoy]

1/10 - Die Trying by Lee Child
2/10 - The Three Kings: Busby, Shankley, Stein by Leo Moynihan

 

[Ptolemy]

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.
21/50. The Passion of New Eve - Angela Carter.
22/50. The Sign of Four - Arthur Conan Doyle.
23/50. The State and Revolution - V. I. Lenin.
24/50. Decline and Fall - Evelyn Waugh.
25/50. The Mysteries of Udolpho - Ann Radcliffe*.
26/50. Northanger Abbey - Jane Austen.
27/30. A Clockwork Orange - Anthony Burgess (re-read).

* = more than 500 pages.

 

[marty21]

1/75 The Girl Who Lived Twice - David Lagercrantz
2/75 Sweet Sorrow - David Nicholls
3/75 Mortal Prey - John Sandford
4/75 The Night Fire - Michael Connelly
5/75 Borderlands - L J Ross
6/75 Three Weeks to say goodbye - C J Box
7/75 Blue Heaven - C J Box
8/75 Hard Shot - J B Turner
9/75 Surviving The Evacuation: There We Stood - Frank Tayell

 

[neonwilderness]

1/24 The Amber Spyglass - Philip Pullman
2/24 Excalibur - Bernard Cornwell
3/24 Dead Mountain: The Untold True Story of the Dyatlov Pass Incident - Donnie Eichar
4/24 Rivers of London - Ben Aaronovitch
5/24 The Metamorphosis - Franz Kafka

 

[QueenOfGoths]

1."Tombland" - C. J. Sansom
2. Exit Wounds" - compilation

3. "Murder in the Crooked House" - Soji Shimada. A Japanese locked room mystery. I've never really read anything like it. I'm not sure if it's the style of writing or the translation but I felt distanced from characters, possibly because the story and the clues are more important in this genre than characterisation. I didn't dislike it but it felt a bit dry and wasn't always a compelling read.

 

[Manter]

So far, 15. But cheating really as I am on gardening leave

 

[Ptolemy]

So far, 15. But cheating really as I am on gardening leave

I can relate - I am off work with a back injury which will take a couple of months to heal. The only saving grace is that I have a big pile of books to tackle, hence my embarrassingly high number of books in a month and a half. But I am enjoying it all the same.

Some interesting reads you have there!

 

[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
9. Theodora and the Chalet School - Elinor Brent Dyer
and
10. Camera Lucida - Roland Barthes (reread)
11. Joey and Co in Tyrol – Elinor Brent Dyer
12. Ruey Richardson at the Chalet School – Elinor Brent Dyer
13. Oil Paint and Greece – Peter Hemming
14. The Hellbound Heart – Clive Barker
15. The Chalet School Reunion – Elinor Brent Dyer

 

[SpookyFrank]

1/52 Philip Pullman - La Belle Sauvage
2/52 Norman Doidge - The Brain That Changes Itself
3/52 Vladimir Nabokov - Bend Sinister
4/52 Mackenzie Wark - Capital is Dead
5/52 Peter Kinderman - A Manifesto for Mental Health
6/52 China Mieville - The Last Days of New Paris

7/52 Fred Pearce - The New Wild
8/52 Andy Wood - Abandoned and Vanished Canals of England

 

[Smokeandsteam]

1/40: Ben Pimblott - Harold Wilson
2/40: Raymond Williams - Border Country
3/40 : Neil Campbell - Lanyards
4/40: Steve Wright - Storming Heaven
5/40: David Wilkinson - Post-Punk, Politics and Pleasure in Britain
6/40: Martin Upham - Tempered not Quenched: The History of the Iron and Steel Confederation
7/40: Guy Standing - Work after Globalization: Building Occupational Citizenship
8/40: Richard Sennett: The Craftsman

 

[Biddlybee]

1/20 - The Good Immigrant - ed Nikesh Shukla
2/20 - The Secret Commonwealth - Philip Pullman
3/20 - Exit West - Mohsin Hamid
4/20 - The Boy, the Mole, the Fox and the Horse - Charlie Mackesy
5/20 - Grief is the Thing with Feathers - Max Porter
6/20 - The Salt Path - Raynor Winn
7/20 - All That Remains - Sue Black

 

[ringo]

1/30 The Subtle Art Of Not Giving A Fuck - Mark Manson
2/30 Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy
3/30 Coketown - Barney Farmer
4/30 Before The Coffee Gets Cold - Toshikazu Kawaguchi

 

[PursuedByBears]

1/20 - The Good Immigrant - ed Nikesh Shukla
2/20 - The Secret Commonwealth - Philip Pullman
3/20 - Exit West - Mohsin Hamid
4/20 - The Boy, the Mole, the Fox and the Horse - Charlie Mackesy
5/20 - Grief is the Thing with Feathers - Max Porter
6/20 - The Salt Path - Raynor Winn
7/20 - All That Remains - Sue Black

She's great, isn't she? She's a senior prof at Lancaster now, I've been in loads of meetings with her. I need to read her book.

 

[Biddlybee]

She really is.

 

[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
12/40 An English Murder - Cyril Hare
13/40 Transcription - Kate Atkinson
14/40 Christine Falls - Benjamin Black
15/4 The Silver Swan - Benjamin Black

 

[gawkrodger]

8/40: Richard Sennett: The Craftsman

Co-incidentally I'm currently 50 pages into Building and Dwelling which is fairly enjoyable so far. In theory, The Craftsman (which I haven't read) is part of a trilogy, Building and Dwelling the last in the three

 

[Smokeandsteam]

Co-incidentally I'm currently 50 pages into Building and Dwelling which is fairly enjoyable so far. In theory, The Craftsman (which I haven't read) is part of a trilogy, Building and Dwelling the last in the three

I like Sennett’s writing and observational approach. I also agree with him about the way work provides a sense of identity.

His argument, that the shift from industrial society (and the New Deal/post-war ‘consensus’ that accompanied it) to post-industrial society has changed meanings of work, is also important. Where I have a problem with it is his view that shared repertoires/basic shop floor solidarity has been erased under neoliberalism. It’s not my experience although I accept the tools needed to do something with it - strong unions, collective bargaining and a more benign set of employment laws - make things much harder

 

[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
10/50 Alastair Reynolds - Revenger

11/50 Brett Anderson - Afternoons With the Blinds Drawn

 

[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
8/50 Jeremy Varon - Bringing the War Home: The Weather Underground, The Red Army Faction and Revolutionary Violence in the 60's and 70s
9/50 Lina Dencik, Oliver Leistert (Eds.) - Critical Perspectives on Social Media and Protest: Between Control and Emancipation

10/50 Chester Himes - Blind Man With a Pistol
11/50 Takashi Hiraide - The Guest Cat

 

[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

6/26 The Melting Clock by Stuart M. Kaminsky

 

[marty21]

1/75 The Girl Who Lived Twice - David Lagercrantz
2/75 Sweet Sorrow - David Nicholls
3/75 Mortal Prey - John Sandford
4/75 The Night Fire - Michael Connelly
5/75 Borderlands - L J Ross
6/75 Three Weeks to say goodbye - C J Box
7/75 Blue Heaven - C J Box
8/75 Hard Shot - J B Turner
9/75 Surviving The Evacuation: There We Stood - Frank Tayell
10/75 Back of Beyond - C J Box

 

[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
6/50 The Dilemma, B A Paris
7/50 Drive, James Sallis - L
8/50 Waking Lions, Ayelet Gundar-Goshen - Ld
9/50 The Surrogate, Louise Jensen - this is a typical psychological thriller and I totally though I knew the way it was going for ages and then the last third shifted it all.

 

[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
8/70 - Malcolm Pryce - Last Tango in Aberystwyth
9/70 - Stephen King - Elevation
10/70 - Liz Nugent - Lying in Wait

11/70 - Donald Ray Pollock - Knockemstiff

 

[QueenOfGoths]

1."Tombland" - C. J. Sansom
2. Exit Wounds" - compilation
3. "Murder in the Crooked House" - Soji Shimada

4. "Into the Woods" - Tana French. Really brilliant thriller. I loved it.

 

[Poot]

1/23 The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro
2/23 The Magus - John Fowles
3/23 Shakespeare - Bill Bryson
4/23 No and Me - Delphine De Vigan