the wonderful world of reading 2020 reading challenge thread

[chilango]

49/100: The Panopticon Writings - Jeremy Bentham

Which led me down the scary rabbit hole to the so-called "nudge unit" and COVID-19 response.

 

[bellaozzydog]

1/59 Mortal causes, Ian Rankin a Rebus novel
2/59 Let it bleed Ian Rankin a Rebus novel
3/59 I know why the caged bird sings, Maya Angelou
4/59 Adolph Hitler, My part in his downfall. Spike Milligan
5/59 Rommel, Gunner who? Spike Milligan
6/59 Mussolini, his part in my downfall. Spike Milligan
7/59 Where have all the bullets gone? Spike Milligan
8/59 Diary of a nobody. George & Weedon Grosssmith
9/59 Black and blue, Ian Rankin a Rebus novel
10/59 The Hanging Garden Ian Rankin
11/59 dead souls Ian Rankin a Rebus novel
12/59 set in darkness Ian Rankin a Rebus novel
13/59 The falls Ian Rankin a Rebus novel
14/59 resurrection men Ian Rankin a Rebus novel
15/59 Sex power money, Sara Pascoe
16/59 three men in a boat, Jerome K Jerome
17/59 A bit of a stretch. The diaries of a prisoner, Chris Atkins
18/59 defending the guilty, Alex McBride
19/59 My sister the serial killer, Oyinkan Braithwaite

1/59 Mortal causes, Ian Rankin a Rebus novel
2/59 Let it bleed Ian Rankin a Rebus novel
3/59 I know why the caged bird sings, Maya Angelou
4/59 Adolph Hitler, My part in his downfall. Spike Milligan
5/59 Rommel, Gunner who? Spike Milligan
6/59 Mussolini, his part in my downfall. Spike Milligan
7/59 Where have all the bullets gone? Spike Milligan
8/59 Diary of a nobody. George & Weedon Grosssmith
9/59 Black and blue, Ian Rankin a Rebus novel
10/59 The Hanging Garden Ian Rankin
11/59 dead souls Ian Rankin a Rebus novel
12/59 set in darkness Ian Rankin a Rebus novel
13/59 The falls Ian Rankin a Rebus novel
14/59 resurrection men Ian Rankin a Rebus novel
15/59 Sex power money, Sara Pascoe
16/59 three men in a boat, Jerome K Jerome
17/59 A bit of a stretch. The diaries of a prisoner, Chris Atkins
18/59 defending the guilty, Alex McBride
19/59 My sister the serial killer, Oyinkan Braithwaite
20/59 strip jack Ian rankin
21//59 in the house of lies Ian Rankin
22/59 Rather be the devil Ian Rankin
23/59 saints of the shadow bible Ian Rankin
24/59 A question of blood Ian Rankin
25/59 hide and seek Ian Rankin
26/59 naming the dead Ian Rankin
27/59 Exit music Ian Rankin
28/59 Flesh market close Ian Rankin
29/59 Nudge Improving Decisions About Health, Wealth and Happiness RICHARD H. THALER
AND CASS R. SUNSTEIN
30/59 A tale of two cities, Charles Dickens
31/59 stolen, Grace Blakeley
32/59 Hells Angels, Hunter S Thompson
33/59 Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, Hunter S Thompson
34/59 A walk on the wild side Nelson Algren
34/59 Psmith PG Wodehouse multiple
35/59 Jeeves and Wooster PG Wodehouse Multiple
36/59 Das Kapital, Marx ongoing and going and going

JUST KEPT READING RANKIN IN THE HOPE REBUS WOULD HURRY UP AND DIE

Spoiler: Spoiler brutal terrible death

he doesn’t die ever

 

[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
11/75 The Secret War : Spies,Codes & Guerrillas 1939-45 . Max Hastings
12/75 Sunset Express - Robert Crais
13/75 Requiem - J B Turner
14/75 Reckoning - J B Turner

*******

15/75 Zone One - Colson Whitehead

 

[chilango]

50/100: Nudge - Thaler and Sunstein

Yuk. Also skimmed through a couple of others on the topic. Dreadful book yet frighteningly illuminating on where the current Government gets its so-called "ideas" from.

 

[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
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
26/70 - Richard Bachman (aka Stephen King) - Roadwork
27/70 - William Boyd - The Vanishing Game

28/70 - Anthony Doerr - All The Light we Cannot See

 

[butchersapron]

14 - The Occult Underground - James Webb
15 - INLA: Deadly Divisions - Henry McDonald and Jack Holland
16 - The Occult Establishment - James Webb
17 - The Ideology of Fascism and The Far Right in Britain - Mark Hayes
18 - Northern Ireland's Lost Opportunity: The Frustrated Promise of Political Loyalism - Tony Novosel
19 - Liberalism: A Counter-History - Domenico Losurdo (great work this. Recommended to those working through Ellen Meiksin Wood's various eviscerations of classical liberalism and it's pretensions. Liberalism = "A series of embarrassing questions". He also agrees with EMW on the nonsense of Bourgeois Revolutions but from a diff angle).
20 - UVF: The Endgame Paperback – Jim Cusack and Henry McDonald
21 - Tartan Gangs and Paramilitaries: The Loyalist Backlash Paperback - Gareth Mulvenna
22 - Sinn Féin and the Politics of Left Republicanism - Eoin Ó Broin (Yep, him)
23 - The Politics Of Illusion: Republicanism And Socialism In Modern Ireland - Henry Patterson
24 - Race and the Genetic Revolution: Science, Myth, and Culture - Edited by Sheldon Krimsky and Kathleen Sloan
25 - Revolutionaries to Race Leaders: Black Power and the Making of African American Politics - Cedric Johnson
26 - Class Power on Zero-Hours - Angry Workers Of The World
27 - Radicals and the Republic: Socialist Republicanism in the Irish Free State, 1925-1937 – Richard English

 

[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
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

10/30 Night Boat To Tangier - Kevin Barry
Fantastic book - great writing, funny and sad and exciting.

 

[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
9/40 Ammon Shea - Bad English: A History of Linguistic Aggravation
10/40 Donald D. Cohen - Depression Folk: Grassroots Music and Left-Wing Politics in 1930s America
*11/40 Daniel Rachel - Walls Come Tumbling Down: The Music and Politics of Rock Against Racism, 2 Tone and Red Wedge
12/40 Shalom Auslander - Hope: A Tragedy
13/40 Reinhard Kleist - Nick Cave: Mercy on Me
* 14/40 James Joyce - Ulysses
15/40 Shirley Jackson - Dark Tales
16/40 Charles Fernyhough, ed. - Others
17/40 Sally Rooney - Conversations with Friends
18/40 Hannah Fry - Hello World: How to Be Human in the Age of the Machine
19/40 Sally Rooney - Conversations with Friends
20/40 Holly Muller - My Own Dear Brother

21/40 Sarah Perry - Melmoth
22/40 Samanta Schwebelin - Mouthful of Birds
23/40 Denis Johnson - The Largesse of the Sea Maiden

 

[billy_bob]

10/30 Night Boat To Tangier - Kevin Barry
Fantastic book - great writing, funny and sad and exciting.

His short stories are among the best I've read in years.

 

[ringo]

His short stories are among the best I've read in years.

Planning on getting all his stuff after this

 

[redsquirrel]

19 - Liberalism: A Counter-History - Domenico Losurdo (great work this. Recommended to those working through Ellen Meiksin Wood's various eviscerations of classical liberalism and it's pretensions. Liberalism = "A series of embarrassing questions". He also agrees with EMW on the nonsense of Bourgeois Revolutions but from a diff angle).

Thanks for the heads up sounds good.

1. Liz Fekete - Europe’s Fault Lines
2. Teaching for Quality Learning at University - John Biggs and Catherine Tang
3. The Retreat from Class: A New “True” Socialism - Ellen Meiksins Wood
4. The Origin of Capitalism: A Longer View - Ellen Meiksins Wood
5. Citizens to Lords - Ellen Meiksins Wood
6. Liberty & Property - Ellen Meiksins Wood
7. Basic Income: And How We Can Make It Happen - Guy Standing
8. Plunder of the Commons - Guy Standing
9. Gladys Mitchell - Tom Brown’s Body
10. Gladys Mitchell - The Longer Bodies
11. Gladys Mitchell - Death at the Opera

 

[chilango]

51/100: Black. The Brilliance of a Non-colour - Alain Badiou

A proper surprise this one. I really enjoyed this

 

[chilango]

52/100: To Live and Think Like Pigs. The Incitement of Envy and Boredom in Market Democracies - Gilles Chatelet.

Great title. Shame the book itself was impenetrable and flimsy.

 

[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
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
18/50 Nick Bostrom - Superintelligence: Paths, Dangers, Strategies
19/50 Margret Atwood - Cat's Eye
20/50 Olga Tokarczuk - Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead

21/50 Christopher Hitchens - The Trial of Henry Kissenger
22/50 Voltaire, Ed. S.G. Tallentyre - Voltaire in His Letters

 

[PursuedByBears]

Still can't concentrate on reading books. Thanks COVID-19! It's been weeks now

 

[DaveCinzano]

Still can't concentrate on reading books. Thanks COVID-19! It's been weeks now

Aye, mulched my mojo too

 

[Threshers_Flail]

1. The Brothers Karamazov - Fyodor Dostoyevsky (reread)
2. The Unwomanly Face of War - Svetlana Alexievich
3. The Troubles - Tim Pat Coogan
4. Conversations with Friends - Stella Rooney
5. The Government of No One - Ruth Kinna
6. Tomorrow in the Battle Think on Me - Javier Marias
7. All That Remains - Sue Black
8. Leaving the Atocha Station - Ben Lerner
9. The Heart of a Dog - Mikhail Bulgakov
10. The Plague - Albert Camus (re-read)
11. Weather - Jenny Offill
12. Palace Walk - Naguib Mahfouz
13. The Existentialist Cafe - Sarah Blackwell
14. Growth of the Soil - Knut Hamsun

 

[QueenOfGoths]

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
7. "The White Road" - Sarah Lotz
8. "Black Widow" - Christopher Brookmyre

9. "No One Home" - Tim Weaver. Like the premise and some of the writing but felt it lost its way a bit

 

[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
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
15/40: Tim Strangleman: Voices of Guinness
16/40: EP Thompson: Customs in Common
17/40: EP Thompson: The Poverty of Theory
18/40: Asad Haider: Mistaken Identity: Race and Class in the Age of Trump

 

[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.
27/50. A Clockwork Orange - Anthony Burgess (re-read).
28/50. One on One: 101 True Encounters - Craig Brown.
29/50. Don Quixote - Miguel de Cervantes*.
30/50. Fathers and Sons - Ivan Turgenev.
31/50. The Day of the Triffids - John Wyndham.
32/50. Lady Susan, The Watsons, and Sanditon - Jane Austen.
33/50. Slaughterhouse-Five - Kurt Vonnegut (re-read).
34/50. Akira - Katsuhiro Otomo*.

* = more than 500 pages.

 

[Fozzie Bear]

13/30 Michael “Bommi” Baumann - How It All Began: The Personal Account of a West German Urban Guerilla

Quite entertaining as these things go.

 

[Winot]

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
8/19 Semicolon - Cecelia Watson

9/19 Paradise - A.L. Kennedy

 

[chilango]

13/30 Michael “Bommi” Baumann - How It All Began: The Personal Account of a West German Urban Guerilla

Quite entertaining as these things go.

View attachment 213328

I finally read that last year.

 

[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
5/23 Orphan Boys - Phil Mews
6/23 The Man who Mistook his Wife for a Hat - Oliver Sacks
7/23 The Girl on the Train - Paula Hawkins
8/23 Them: Adventures with Extremists - Jon Ronson
9/23 The Doll Factory - Elizabeth MacNeal
10/23 The Neighbour - Fiona Cummins
11/23 A Classless Society: Britain in the 1990s - Alwyn W Turner

 

[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
7/26 The Devil Met a Lady by Stuart M. Kaminsky
8/26 Winter at the Bookshop: Politics and Poverty, St Anns in the 1960s by Sylvia Riley
9/26 The Quiet Assassin: The Davie Hay Story by Davie Hay with Alex Gordon

10/26 Roseanna by Maj Sjöwall and Per Wahlöö (ReRead)

 

[chilango]

53/100: The Politics of Aesthetics - Jacques Ranciere.

Er, yeah, makes Zizek look like Tom Clancy. Not a book to read if you don't have to read it.

 

[billy_bob]

53/100: The Politics of Aesthetics - Jacques Ranciere.

Er, yeah, makes Zizek look like Tom Clancy. Not a book to read if you don't have to read it.

I've read enough books that discuss Ranciere to know as much as I feel I need to know about him - including the fact that I don't ever want to have to read one of his own books.

 

[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
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
26/70 - Richard Bachman (aka Stephen King) - Roadwork
27/70 - William Boyd - The Vanishing Game
28/70 - Anthony Doerr - All The Light we Cannot See

29/70 - Stephen King - If It Bleeds

 

[chilango]

I've read enough books that discuss Ranciere to know as much as I feel I need to know about him - including the fact that I don't ever want to have to read one of his own books.

Yeah. I've got through 2 or 3 out of the half dozen or so on my list. It's dull stuff.

 

[chilango]

54/100: Interrogating the Real - Slavoj Zizek

Classic Zizek. Waffles on about Jews and stiffies for 400odd pages to make half a point about Lacan.