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the wonderful world of reading 2020 reading challenge thread

How many books do you intend to read in 2020?


  • Total voters
    83
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
13/100: Thomas Picketty's Capital in the Twenty-First Century: An Introduction - Stephan Kaufmann & Ingo Stutzle.
14/100: Comments on the Society of the Spectacle - Guy Debord
15/100: The State Nobility - Pierre Bourdieu
16/100: Language & Symbolic Power - Pierre Bourdieu
17/100: Weight of the World - Pierre Bourdieu
18/100: Class Choreographies - Kenway
19/100: Marketing Schools, Marketing Cities - Cucchiara
20/100: The Misinterpellated Subject - JR Martel
21/100: School Choice - JR Garcia
22/100: A brief history of neoliberalism - David Harvey
23/100: the new spirit of capitalism - Luc boltanski
24/100- Station 11 - Emily St. John Mandel.
25/100: Randomize - Andy Weir
26/100: Fragments - Jean Baudrillard
27/100: Reproduction in Education, Society and Culture - Pierre Bourdieu
28/100: The Field of Cultural Production - Pierre Bourdieu
29/100: The Consumer Society - Jean Baudrillard
30/100: Distinctions in the Flesh, Social Class and the Embodiment of Inequality - Dieter Vanderbroeck
31/100: Miseducation. inequality, Education and the Working Class - Dianne Reay
32/100: Farenheit 451 - Ray Bradbury
33/100: Distinction - Pierre Bourdieu
34/100: Introducing Fascism. A Graphic Guide - Stuart Hood
35/ 100: Image Music Text - Roland Barthes
36/100: This means this, this means that - Sean Hall

The best book on Semiotics I've read.
 
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
9/52 Benedict Anderson - Imagined Communities
10/52 Paul Farley and Michael Symmons Roberts - Edgelands
11/52 William Gibson - The Peripheral

12/52 Vera Caspary - Laura
13/52 Mary Roach - Packing for Mars
14/52 Boris Pasternak - Doctor Zhivago
 
1/50 Bloody Brilliant Women - Cathy Newman
2/50 A Perfectly Good Man - Patrick Gale
3/50 All the Light We Cannot See - Anthony Doerr
4/50 I Invited her in - Adele Parks
5/50 Wakenhyrst - Michelle Pave
6/50 NW - Zadie Smith
7/50 Conversations with friends - Sally Rooney
8/50 Digging to America - Anne Tyler
9/50 Priestdaddy - Patricia Lockwood

10/50 The Bloody Chamber - Angela Carter
 
1. ed. Dan Coxon - Tales from the Shadow Booth vol.3.
2. The Lonely Crowd issue 9
3. Ted Chiang - Stories of Your Lives and Others
4. Tade Thompson - The Rosewater Insurrection
5. Tade Thompson - The Rosewater Redemption

6. Tim Moore - Frost On My Moustache (reread). A bit of comfort reading, still as hilarious and enjoyable as it ever was :)
 
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
13/100: Thomas Picketty's Capital in the Twenty-First Century: An Introduction - Stephan Kaufmann & Ingo Stutzle.
14/100: Comments on the Society of the Spectacle - Guy Debord
15/100: The State Nobility - Pierre Bourdieu
16/100: Language & Symbolic Power - Pierre Bourdieu
17/100: Weight of the World - Pierre Bourdieu
18/100: Class Choreographies - Kenway
19/100: Marketing Schools, Marketing Cities - Cucchiara
20/100: The Misinterpellated Subject - JR Martel
21/100: School Choice - JR Garcia
22/100: A brief history of neoliberalism - David Harvey
23/100: the new spirit of capitalism - Luc boltanski
24/100- Station 11 - Emily St. John Mandel.
25/100: Randomize - Andy Weir
26/100: Fragments - Jean Baudrillard
27/100: Reproduction in Education, Society and Culture - Pierre Bourdieu
28/100: The Field of Cultural Production - Pierre Bourdieu
29/100: The Consumer Society - Jean Baudrillard
30/100: Distinctions in the Flesh, Social Class and the Embodiment of Inequality - Dieter Vanderbroeck
31/100: Miseducation. inequality, Education and the Working Class - Dianne Reay
32/100: Farenheit 451 - Ray Bradbury
33/100: Distinction - Pierre Bourdieu
34/100: Introducing Fascism. A Graphic Guide - Stuart Hood
35/ 100: Image Music Text - Roland Barthes
36/100: This means this, this means that - Sean Hall
37/100: Of cigarettes, high heels and other interesting things - Marcel Danesi
 
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
13/100: Thomas Picketty's Capital in the Twenty-First Century: An Introduction - Stephan Kaufmann & Ingo Stutzle.
14/100: Comments on the Society of the Spectacle - Guy Debord
15/100: The State Nobility - Pierre Bourdieu
16/100: Language & Symbolic Power - Pierre Bourdieu
17/100: Weight of the World - Pierre Bourdieu
18/100: Class Choreographies - Kenway
19/100: Marketing Schools, Marketing Cities - Cucchiara
20/100: The Misinterpellated Subject - JR Martel
21/100: School Choice - JR Garcia
22/100: A brief history of neoliberalism - David Harvey
23/100: the new spirit of capitalism - Luc boltanski
24/100- Station 11 - Emily St. John Mandel.
25/100: Randomize - Andy Weir
26/100: Fragments - Jean Baudrillard
27/100: Reproduction in Education, Society and Culture - Pierre Bourdieu
28/100: The Field of Cultural Production - Pierre Bourdieu
29/100: The Consumer Society - Jean Baudrillard
30/100: Distinctions in the Flesh, Social Class and the Embodiment of Inequality - Dieter Vanderbroeck
31/100: Miseducation. inequality, Education and the Working Class - Dianne Reay
32/100: Farenheit 451 - Ray Bradbury
33/100: Distinction - Pierre Bourdieu
34/100: Introducing Fascism. A Graphic Guide - Stuart Hood
35/ 100: Image Music Text - Roland Barthes
36/100: This means this, this means that - Sean Hall
37/100: Of cigarettes, high heels and other interesting things - Marcel Danesi
38/100: Messages, Signs and Meanings - Marcel Danedi

Overlong and containing much the same material as 37 without its merit of brevity. Still an ok introduction to semiotics though.
 
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
12/50 Alice Goffman - On the Run: Fugitive Life in an American City
13/50 Neal Stephenson - Zodiac
14/50 Will Self - My Idea of Fun
15/50 Yottam Ottolenghi - Plenty More
16/50 Jon Ronson - Them: Adventures With Extremists

17/50 Tom Robbins - Still Life with Woodpecker - Awful, just made me cringe all the way through
18/50 Nick Bostrom - Superintelligence: Paths, Dangers, Strategies - Thinks our best chance of surviving a AI superintelligence explosion will be the blossoming of international collaboration, mature democracies and institutions like the EU. Written in 2014. What are our chances like now Nick?
 
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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
12/70 - John Irving - Avenue of Mysteries
13/70 - Liz Nugent - Skin Deep
14/70 - Annie Proulx - The Shipping News (re-read)
15/70 - Val McDermid - How The Dead Speak
16/70 - Patricia Highsmith - The Talented Mr Ripley
17/70 - Sally Rooney - Conversations With Friends
18/70 - John Green - An Abundance of Katherines
19/70 - Minette Walters - The Shape of Snakes
20/70 - Kazuo Ishiguro - Nocturnes
21/70 - Stephen King - Under The Dome (re-read)
22/70 - Denise Mina - Conviction

23/70 - William Boyd - Sweet Caress: The Many Lives of Amory Clay
 
1."Tombland" - C. J. Sansom
2. Exit Wounds" - compilation
3. "Murder in the Crooked House" - Soji Shimada
4."Into the Woods" - Tana French
5. "The Chalk Man" - CJ Tudor

6. "The Institute" - Stephen King. Excellent
 
1. Suttree - Cormac Mccarthy
2. The Order of Time - Carlo Rovelli
3. The Long Way to a Small Angry Planet - Becky Chambers
4. Exhalation - Ted Chiang
5. The Secret Commonwealth - Philip Pullman
6. Birds Without Wings - Louis de Berniere
7. The Peripheral - William Gibson
8. Proxima Rising - Brandon Q. Morris
9. She Came to Slay: the Life and Times of Harriet Tubman - Erica Armstrong Dunbar
10. Radicalized - Corey Doctorow
11. American Dirt - Janine Cummins
12. Energy and Civilisation--a History - Vaclav Smil
13. Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead - Olga Tokarczuk
15. The Assassination of Margaret Thatcher - Hilary Mantel
16. Lampedusa - Steven Price
17. I am Legend - Richard Matheson
18. Lovecraft Country - Matt Ruff
19. Station Eleven - Emily St. John Mandel
 
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
5/30 The Taxidermist’s Daughter - Kate Mosse
6/30 The Crying Of Lot 49 - Thomas Pynchon
7/30 The Bird Man And The Lap Dancer: Close Encounters With Strangers - Eric Hansen
8/30 The Man In The High Castle - Philip K Dick
 
17/50 Tom Robbins - Still Life with Woodpecker - Awful, just made me cringe all the way through

I tried to read the same book years ago because my wife loved his books when I first met her. I'm glad I'm not the only one who felt that way about that book.


(And, no, I didn't finish it.)
 
I tried to read the same book years ago because my wife loved his books when I first met her. I'm glad I'm not the only one who felt that way about that book.


(And, no, I didn't finish it.)
A hippy acquaintance told me how it was the best book he'd ever read, so I thought I'd give it a try. I ain't got much time for Malcolm McLaren, but he was right on one thing
 
42/100: Pandemic! - Slavoj Zizek

Clearly rushed out this benefits (or suffers depending on your tastes) from a brevity and superficiality that is not present in his more considered work.

It's a quick read, and in true Zizek style is a pretty roundabout way of saying not much really but in an engaging way.

I enjoyed it.
 
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
12/70 - John Irving - Avenue of Mysteries
13/70 - Liz Nugent - Skin Deep
14/70 - Annie Proulx - The Shipping News (re-read)
15/70 - Val McDermid - How The Dead Speak
16/70 - Patricia Highsmith - The Talented Mr Ripley
17/70 - Sally Rooney - Conversations With Friends
18/70 - John Green - An Abundance of Katherines
19/70 - Minette Walters - The Shape of Snakes
20/70 - Kazuo Ishiguro - Nocturnes
21/70 - Stephen King - Under The Dome (re-read)
22/70 - Denise Mina - Conviction
23/70 - William Boyd - Sweet Caress: The Many Lives of Amory Clay

24/70 - Richard Bachman (aka Stephen King) - The Long Walk (re-read)
 
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
12/70 - John Irving - Avenue of Mysteries
13/70 - Liz Nugent - Skin Deep
14/70 - Annie Proulx - The Shipping News (re-read)
15/70 - Val McDermid - How The Dead Speak
16/70 - Patricia Highsmith - The Talented Mr Ripley
17/70 - Sally Rooney - Conversations With Friends
18/70 - John Green - An Abundance of Katherines
19/70 - Minette Walters - The Shape of Snakes
20/70 - Kazuo Ishiguro - Nocturnes
21/70 - Stephen King - Under The Dome (re-read)
22/70 - Denise Mina - Conviction
23/70 - William Boyd - Sweet Caress: The Many Lives of Amory Clay

24/70 - Richard Bachman (aka Stephen King) - The Long Walk (re-read)
That is one of my all time favourites of his. I may well reread that once I've finished what I'm on.
 
1/50 Bloody Brilliant Women - Cathy Newman
2/50 A Perfectly Good Man - Patrick Gale
3/50 All the Light We Cannot See - Anthony Doerr
4/50 I Invited her in - Adele Parks
5/50 Wakenhyrst - Michelle Pave
6/50 NW - Zadie Smith
7/50 Conversations with friends - Sally Rooney
8/50 Digging to America - Anne Tyler
9/50 Priestdaddy - Patricia Lockwood
10/50 The Bloody Chamber - Angela Carter
11/50 Moon over Soho Ben Aaronovitch
 
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
5/30 The Taxidermist’s Daughter - Kate Mosse
6/30 The Crying Of Lot 49 - Thomas Pynchon
7/30 The Bird Man And The Lap Dancer: Close Encounters With Strangers - Eric Hansen
8/30 The Man In The High Castle - Philip K Dick
9/30 What You Want is in the Limo: On the road with Led Zeppelin, Alice Cooper, and The Who in 1973. the year the sixties died and the modern rock star was born - Michael Walker
 
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
12/70 - John Irving - Avenue of Mysteries
13/70 - Liz Nugent - Skin Deep
14/70 - Annie Proulx - The Shipping News (re-read)
15/70 - Val McDermid - How The Dead Speak
16/70 - Patricia Highsmith - The Talented Mr Ripley
17/70 - Sally Rooney - Conversations With Friends
18/70 - John Green - An Abundance of Katherines
19/70 - Minette Walters - The Shape of Snakes
20/70 - Kazuo Ishiguro - Nocturnes
21/70 - Stephen King - Under The Dome (re-read)
22/70 - Denise Mina - Conviction
23/70 - William Boyd - Sweet Caress: The Many Lives of Amory Clay
24/70 - Richard Bachman (aka Stephen King) - The Long Walk (re-read)

25/70 - Michael Morpurgo - Born to Run
 
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

Have completely forgotten to update this. Anyway:

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
9/40: Immanuel Wallerstein: Historical Capitalism
10/40: David Keenan: For the Good Times
11/40: Leo Panitch & Colin Leys: Searching for Socialism
12/40: Marisa McGlinchey: Unfinished Business: The Politics of 'Dissident' Irish Republicanism
13/40: Raphael Samuel: Island Stories: Theatres of Memory, Volume 2
14/40: Ralph Miliband: Parliamentary Socialism: A Study in the Politics of Labour
 
1/19 Normal People - Sally Rooney
2/19 Prospero's America: John Winthrop, Jr., Alchemy, and the Creation of New England Culture, 1606-1676 - Walter Woodward
3/19 Colonial America (A Very Short Introduction) - Alan Taylor
4/19 Conversations with Friends - Sally Rooney
5/19 The Reformation (The Penguin History of the Church 3) - Owen Chadwick
6/19 The Countenance Divine - Michael Hughes
7/19 A Culture of Fact: England, 1550-1720 - Barbara J. Shapiro
 
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
4/36 - Me by Elton John
5/36 - Angels and Demons by Dan Brown
6/36 - Rivers of London by Ben Aaronovitch
7/36 - Amazon Adventure by Willard Price
8/36 - Shutter Island by Dennis Lehane
9/36 - Gotta get Theroux This: My Life and Strange Times in Television by Louis Theroux
10/36 - South Sea Adventure by Willard Price (reread)
11/36 - Atomised by Michel Houellebecq
12/36 - Chernobyl: History of a Tragedy by Serhii Plokhy
13/36 - When the Green Woods Laugh by H.E. Bates
14/36 - The Exorcist by William Peter Blatty
 
1."Tombland" - C. J. Sansom
2. Exit Wounds" - compilation
3. "Murder in the Crooked House" - Soji Shimada
4."Into the Woods" - Tana French
5. "The Chalk Man" - CJ Tudor
6. "The Institute"

7. "The White Road" - Sarah Lotz. Interesting, creepy, psychological horror/thriller with well drawn characters
 
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