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December! 129. All Our Wrong Todays - Elan Mastai 130. Before the Fall - Noah Hawley 131. The Song of Achilles - Madeline Miller 132. American War - Omar El Akkad 133. Beach Music - Pat Conroy 134. The Sparrow - Mary Doria Russell I ended the year on a fairly good note; almost everything I read this month was good (with the exception of the Pat Conroy - read Prince of Tides and stop there, is my advice). Standouts include The Sparrow, an ingenious first contact story that tackles the subject of religion in meeting with a new sentient species; The Song of Achilles, a love story set during the Trojan War (spoiler: the love is between Achilles and Patroclus); American War, a speculative take on a post-climate-change America at war with itself; and Before the Fall, which is by Fargo/Legion creator Noah Hawley and is a pretty gripping mystery read. On to new books in 2018! 1) Read some books. Set a number and go hog wild. (134/100) 2) Of the books you read this year, make sure at least 20% of them are written by women: Miller, Doria Russell OVERALL: 30% female - 41 written by women 3) Of the books you read this year, make sure at least 20% of them are written by someone non-white. - El Akkad OVERALL: 15% - failed this one pretty badly. 20 books written by POC. 4) 5) 6) 7) Read something that was recently published (anything from after 1st January 2016). - American War, All Our Wrong Todays 8) 9) 10) 11) 12) 12a) 13) 14) 15) 16) 17) Read something long (500+ pages) - Beach Music 18) 19) 20) 21) 22) 23) 24)
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# ? Jan 7, 2018 21:17 |
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# ? May 16, 2024 17:23 |
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November - 9: 73. Finance: The Basics (Erik Banks) 74. African Psycho (Alain Mabanckou) 75. Ariel (Sylvia Plath) 76. The Thing on the Doorstep and Other Weird Stories (H.P. Lovecraft) 77. Into the War (Italo Calvino) 78. Allah is not Obliged (Ahmadou Korouma) 79. Humanism: A Very Short Introduction (Stephen Law) 80. The Pants of Perspective (Anna McNuff) 81. Reaper Man (Terry Pratchett) December - 4: 82. The Mystics of Mile End (Sigal Samuel) 83. Storm of Steel (Ernst Junger) 84. Witches Abroad (Terry Pratchett) 85. A Midsummer Night's Dream (William Shakespeare) I end the year at 85, which means I didn't quite hit goal of 90. Whatever, I had an absolute ton of professional exams this year (literally 8/12 months had some amount of studying in on top of a full time job) and whether or not I read 5 more books is completely irrelevant. I hit all the other parts of the challenge, so I'm happy with that. Allah is Not Obliged to be fair about all the things he does here on earth. I was not expecting this to be so loving hilarious given that it's a book about child soldiers fighting in Liberia, but it was. The protagonist is an Ivorian kid who goes off to Liberia to live with his aunt, and it's basically a picaresque of him joining and leaving whichever faction is most likely to feed him and least likely to get him killed. It loses steam a bit in the final third, where it takes a long digression which reads more like a history of the Liberian Civil War than anything involving the characters. The Pants of Perspective is about Anna McNuff's solo run along the length of New Zealand on the Te Araroa trail. She has the kind of personality I suspect I'd hate to spend time in a room with, but she's a good storyteller and she meets a ton of cool and interesting people along the way. It did have the obvious signs of self-publication - there's phrases she leans on heavily and some of the transitions can be a bit jarring when she jumps from one thing to the next - but overall worthwhile if you're interested in running and people setting themselves mad challenges just to say they did it. That about wraps up the 2017 thread I reckon. Well done to everyone who participated, and to the people who used the challenge as a way to broaden what they were reading. I'll leave the thread up for another week, to allow anyone else like me who hasn't gotten a post up to do so, then close it on the 14th. To date - 85: Booklord: 2-24 Women: 25/85, 29% Non-white: 19/85, 22% 01. The Ottoman Centuries (Lord Kinross) 12 02. Snow Country (Yasunari Kawabata) 8 03. Signs Preceding the End of the World (Yuri Herrera) 9 04. Socialism: A Very Short Introduction (Michael Newman) 11 05. Human Acts (Han Kang) 7 06. As Meat Loves Salt (Maria McCann) 17 07. Buddhism: A Very Short Introduction (Damien Keown) 08. The Dog Who Dared to Dream (Sun-Mi Hwang) 24 09. Dirty Havana Trilogy (Pedro Juan Gutierrez) 18 10. Excession (Iain M. Banks) 11. They Who Do Not Grieve (Sia Figiel) 12. Hard Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World (Haruki Murakami) 13. Five Rivers Met on a Wooded Plain (Barney Norris) 23 14. What is not yours is not yours (Helen Oyeyemi) 16 15. The Plague (Albert Camus) 5 16. The Tale of Aypi (Ak Welsapar) 17. Disgrace (J.M. Coetzee) 20 18. Costa Rica: A Traveller's Literary Companion (Barbara Ras) 19. The Norman Conquest (Marc Morris) 20. It Can't Happen Here (Sinclair Lewis) 21. Coin Locker Babies (Ryu Murakami) 10 22. Broken April (Ismail Kadare) 23. If this is a man/The Truce (Primo Levi) 24. The State of Africa: A History of the Continent Since Independence (Martin Meredith) 25. The Circle of Karma (Kunzang Choden) 26. By Night the Mountain Burns (Juan Tomas Avila Laurel) 27. The Year of the Hare (Arto Paasilinna) 28. Goodfellas (Nicholas Pileggi) 13 29. A Cup of Rage (Raduan Nassar) 22 30. The Housekeeper and the Professor (Yoko Ogawa) 31. Moving Pictures (Terry Pratchett) 19 32. Animal: The Autobiography of a Female Body (Sara Pascoe) 33. The Lost Heart of Asia (Colin Thubron) 34. The Ticket that Exploded (William Burroughs) 4 35. I Have a Dream: The Speeches that Changed History (Ferdie Addis) 36. Flow My Tears, The Policeman Said (Philip K. Dick) 37. Fever Dream (Samanta Schweblin) 38. The Haunting of Hill House (Shirley Jackson) 21 39. The Queue (Basma Abdel Aziz) 40. The Lottery and Other Stories (Shirley Jackson) 41. Strange Weather in Tokyo (Hiromi Kawakami) 42. Reaching for the Skies (Ivan Rendall) 43. Purge (Sofi Oksanen) 44. October (China Mieville) 45. A Horse Walks Into a Bar (David Grossman) 46. The First Wife (Paulina Chiziane) 47. Wilt (Tom Sharpe) 48. Porterhouse Blue (Tom Sharpe) 49. Flesh-coloured Dominoes (Zigmunds Skujins) 50. Today We Die a Little: Emil Zatopek (Richard Askwith) 51. The Throwback (Tom Sharpe) 52. Siddharta (Herman Hesse) 53. Norse Mythology (Neil Gaiman) 54. A Tale for the Time Being (Ruth Ozeki) 55. Men Explain Things To Me (Rebecca Solnit) 56. Eat & Run (Scott Jurek) 57. The Marathon Monks of Mount Hiei (John Stevens) 58. Rubicon (Tom Holland) 59. The Last Days of New Paris (China Mieville) 60. SPQR: A History of Ancient Rome (Mary Beard) 61. The Man in the High Castle (Philip K. Dick) 62. The Invisible Circus (Jennifer Egan) 63. Three Moments of an Explosion (China Mieville) 64. The Way of the Runner (Adharanand Finn) 65. The Song of Achilles (Madeline Miller) 66. Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? (Philip K. Dick) 67. Bruce Lee and Me: A Martial Arts Adventure (Brian Preston) 68. A Scanner Darkly (Philip K. Dick) 69. The Drowned and the Saved (Primo Levi) 70. Go Tell It on the Mountain (James Baldwin) 71. We Have Always Lived in the Castle (Shirley Jackson) 72. Kingdom Come (JG Ballard) 73. Finance: The Basics (Erik Banks) 74. African Psycho (Alain Mabanckou) 75. Ariel (Sylvia Plath) 14 76. The Thing on the Doorstep and Other Weird Stories (H.P. Lovecraft) 77. Into the War (Italo Calvino) 78. Allah is not Obliged (Ahmadou Korouma) 79. Humanism: A Very Short Introduction (Stephen Law) 80. The Pants of Perspective (Anna McNuff) 81. Reaper Man (Terry Pratchett) 82. The Mystics of Mile End (Sigal Samuel) 83. Storm of Steel (Ernst Junger) 12a 84. Witches Abroad (Terry Pratchett) 85. A Midsummer Night's Dream (William Shakespeare) 15
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# ? Jan 8, 2018 13:04 |
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Mr. Squishy posted:1 The Letters of Samuel Beckett 1929-40 edited by Martha Dow Fehsenfeld and Lois More Overbeck. This covers the first decade of his literary life, starting off with an essay on Proust and ending with Murphy. In between he flees from Ireland before feeling compelled, where he stays for as long as he can before escaping again. Mostly Paris and London, though he does spend some time in Nazi Germany, which I didn't know. He even toyed with going to Capetown, where he really would have been out of place! Like all book of letters there are a lot of mean ones to publishers, some crawling ones to the deans of reading rooms, and a lot of just social letters, none of which are ever particularly interesting, but the most every letter has some digression, normally on art rather than literature, which I figure he decided to keep for his work. Also, he was a terrible speller! Lord, let's see what I remember 23The Razor's Edge by W. Somerset Maughm This is what stopped me updating as I realize I had forgotten it and could not be hosed writing down my responses to it. Maughm leaves me cold in general 24Bloody Old Britain by Kitty Hauser One of those fun biographies about a guy I'd never even thought about not hearing about. Man who was instrumental whipping the Ordinance Survey thing into shape, and devolved into general crankery 25Street of Crocodiles by Bruno Schulz I feel bad for Schulz because I mostly want to read his stuff because of the Quay brothers and Wojciech Jerzy. But it's very obvious what they responded to in their work, a sort of fun febrility in everything. 26The Confidence Man by Herman Melville I reread an ebook of this because I'd leant my physical copy, with plentiful notes, away. Very different reading experience, obviously, both because it's much more fluid, but also because I had forgotten about various dogmatic schisms, or what that stool in the end is. 27Nixonland by Rick Perlstein I asked this forum for a good book on Nixon and was told this and Crooked, which I've not read, but this was a good steer. Sometimes the author's a bit too proud of his sentences, and sometimes he rushes off w/out carrying me with him, but you gotta love how he captures the finagling. 28Before the Storm by Rick Perlstein Did you know the guy has done a sort of Nixon trilogy? Well, I read the shorter one. Good background for understanding the southern strategy. 29Annihilation by Jeff Vandermeer Yes yes I know, scifi thriller but this was sold to me as a sorta Wittgensteiny thing and it sorta is. Writing can be pretty careless at times but that's a thriller for you. 30Aquarium by David Vann Truly baffling how many people think this is good. I like how every time it looked at a fish the author came round to my house and explained that this is a metaphor, and what metaphors are. First person voice was pretty careless too. 31Lincoln in the Bardo by George Saunders The duelling epigram form was a lot of fun until it became just a gimmicky way of formatting a play. Conclusions about war, racism, and america seemed pretty pat and unconvincing but if I had stronger attatchment to Lincoln I might feel differently 32Between the Acts by Virginia Woolf Picked this one up because I'm interested in artifice and so on, but it didn't really do much for me. 33Closely Watched Trains by Bohumil Hrabal Honestly reading a very ropey translation, but yeah, a lot of fun 34Demolished Man by Alfred Bester A friend really recommended this, I don't really know why. 35Epitaph for a Deadbeat by David Markson One of his books before he found his thing. Casts doubts on his claims to be able to write normal novels. 36Father of the Blob by Jack H. Harris Old horror producer's self-aggrandizing biography. Entertaining. 37The Last Novel by David Markson Oh yeah, that's the stuff 38Man Descending by Guy Vanderheigh For some reason I was talking to a Canadian and apparently this is about the limit for Canadian fiction. Perfectly fine short stories. 39A Master on the Periphery of Capitalism by Roberto Schwarz It's hard to find criticism of Assis in English. I didn't quite grasp its central thesis but it had some good biographical info, and his place in slave-owning Brazil 40New Tales of the Cthulhu Mythos edited by Ramsey Campbell God bless Stephen King, trying his best. Also a lot of people feel a good way to handle the subtextual racism is making it textual as well but otherwise not commenting on it 41The Public Burning by Robert Coover More Nixon! This one was a lot of fun 42Reader's Block by David Markson I can't remember if it's this one or the other one where he falsely claims to throw a cat out a window. Seems weird to build your books effect on the reader beign aware of Markson's bad reviews. Basically the only review I know is DFW saying he's the greatest. 43Roadside Picnic by the Stugatsky brothers Oh now I get Stalker 44The Stories of JF Power I was feeling like re-reading Mort D'Urban but had lent away my copy. The father Burner trilogy is very good. 45A Strange Manuscript Found in a Copper Cylinder by James DeMille I was charmed by the first few pages I read and felt compelled to finish it. I'd say unfairly forgotten, less for its virtues and more for the vices of the things we remember 46The Third Policeman by Flann O'Brien I'm going to classify this as scifi, no one can stop me 47Too Loud a Solitude by Bohumil Hrabal Now this is a high concept book. I should read more Hrabal, or read the Hrabal I have read more carefully 48We Have Always Lived in the Castle by Shriley Jackson I liked the Lottery so much I decided to go for the famous one. It's alright. 49The Thing on the Doorstep and other Weird Tales by HP Lovecraft I did actually read this after New Tales of the Cthulhu Mythos. I've got it out of my system now 50Uncle Vanya by Anton Checkov I read this because I wanted to see if the production I saw had textual support for a lesbian kiss. Turns out they did but the disgruntled blowjob was pure fabrication. 51A Shropshire Lad by AE Housman I wouldn't rate my knowledge or appreciation of poetry but I did like these. 52Mawrdew Czgowchwz by James McCourt This was like the one reference I didn't know in the Marksons I followed up on. 53Wittgenstein's Mistress by David Markson It struck me that I did re-read this first. 54Feet of Clay by Terry Pratchett I don't know why I had the urge to reread this. I'm pretty sure it's based on the business coup but that might just be the podcast i heard about the business coup before reading this again speaking. I read a lot of trash this year, in that I read much of anything.
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# ? Jan 8, 2018 14:28 |
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My basically-the-entirety-of-the-year post, not including reviews because that would be a little nuts. 16. 10 PRINT CHR?(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10, by various authors 17. Conversations with Terrorists: Middle East Leaders on Politics, Violence, and Empire, by Reese Erlich 18. Information and the Modern Corporation, by James W. Cortada 19. The Eichmann Trial, by Deborah E. Lipstadt 20. Envy, by Joseph Epstein 21. Anger, by Robert A. F. Thurman 22. Hate Spin: The Manufacture of Religious Offense and Its Threat to Democracy, by Cherian George 23. Terrorism and the Economy: How the War on Terror is Bankrupting the World, by Loretta Napoleoni 24. Uncertainty in Games, by Greg Costikyan 25. Computing: A Concise History, by Paul Ceruzzi 26. Greed, by Phyllis A. Tickle 27. Sloth, by Wendy Wasserstein 28. Lust, by Simon Blackburn 29. Pride, by Michael Eric Dyson 30. Geek Sublime: The Beauty of Code, the Code of Beauty, by Vikram Chandra 31. Content, by Cory Doctorow 32. Context, by Cory Doctorow 33. The Economics of Food: How Feeding and Fueling the Planet Affects Food Prices, by Patrick Westhoff 34. Illegal Procedure: A Sports Agent Comes Clean on the Dirty Business of College Football, by Josh Luchs and James Dale 35. The Squared Circle: Life, Death, and Professional Wrestling, by David Shoemaker 36. The Cambridge Companion to Brecht, edited by Peter Thomson and Glendyr Sacks. 37. Mother Courage and her Children, by Bertolt Brecht, translated by Tony Kushner 38. The Threepenny Opera, by Bertolt Brecht, translated by Ralph Manheim and John Willet 39. The Caucasian Chalk Circle, by Bertolt Brecht, translated by James and Tania Stern with W. H. Auden 40. Sister Outsider, by Audre Lorde 41. How Do You Kill 11 Million People? by Andy Andrews 42. More Than A Score, edited by Jesse Hagopian 43. Syrian Dust, by Francesca Borri 44. Cockroaches, by Scholastique Mukasonga 45. Pastoralia, by George Saunders 46. Who Do You Serve, Who Do You Protect? edited by Joe Macaré, Maya Schenwar and Alana Yu-lan Price 47. Curry: A Tale of Cooks and Conquerors, by Lizzie Collingham 48. Class War: The Privatization of Childhood, by Megan Erickson 49. The Plague, by Albert Camus 50. Your Orisons May Be Recorded, by Laurie Penny 51. The Princeton Field Guide to Prehistoric Mammals, by Donald Prothero 52. Brecht Sourcebook, edited by Carol Martin and Henry Bial 53. The Faith Healers, by James Randi 54. The Golden Compass, by Philip Pullman 55. The Subtle Knife, by Philip Pullman 56. The Amber Spyglass, by Philip Pullman 57. Three Parts Dead, by Max Gladstone 58. Two Serpents Rise, by Max Gladstone 59. Full Fathom Five, by Max Gladstone 60. Last First Snow, by Max Gladstone 61. Four Roads Cross, by Max Gladstone 62. Brave New Ballot, by Aviel D. Rubin 63. Walkaway, by Cory Doctorow 64. A Burglar’s Guide to the City, by Geoff Manaugh 65. Unwarranted: Policing Without Permission, by Barry E. Friedman 66. Sweetness and Power: The Place of Sugar in Modern History, by Sidney Mintz 67. Jagannath, by Karin Tidbeck 68. I Contain Multitudes: The Microbes Within Us and a Grander View of Life, by Ed Yong 69. Trans: A Memoir, by Juliet Jacques 70. Attack of the 50 Foot Blockchain, by David Gerard 71. Necropolis: London and its Dead, by Catharine Arnold 72. Africa’s World War, by Gerard Prunier 73. Hunger: A Memoir of (My) Body, by Roxane Gay 74. The Great Siege: Malta 1565, by Ernle Bradford 75. Longitude, by Dava Sobel 76. The Conspiracy Against the Human Race, by Thomas Ligotti 77. The Hindus: An Alternative History, by Wendy Doniger 78. To the End of June: The Intimate Life of American Foster Care, by Cris Beam 79. Shrill: Notes from a Loud Woman, by Lindy West 80. Her Body and Other Parties: Stories, by Carmen Maria Machado 81. My Life On the Road, by Gloria Steinem 82. Motherland, Fatherland, Homelandsexuals, by Patricia Lockwood 83. Drawn to the Dark: Explorations in Scare Tourism, by Chris Kullstroem 84. The Arab of the Future, by Riad Sattouf 85. The Global Pigeon, by Colin Jerolmack 86. What I Talk About When I Talk About Running, by Haruki Murakami 87. The Princess Diarist, by Carrie Fisher 88. Milk and Honey, by Rupi Kaur 89. Marijuana: A Short HIstory, by John Hudak 90. The Disaster Artist, by Greg Sestero and Tom Bissell 91. Lab Girl, by Hope Jahren 92. The Truth Matters, by Bruce Bartlett 93. The Sun and Her Flowers, by Rupi Kaur 94. The Job, by Steve Osborne 95. But What if We’re Wrong? by Chuck Klosterman 96. The Cost of Living, by Arundhati Roy 97. Power Politics, by Arundhati Roy 98. War Talk, by Arundhati Roy 99. Public Power in the Age of Empire, by Arundhati Roy 100. An Ordinary Person’s Guide to Empire, by Arundhati Roy 101. No Is Not Enough, by Naomi Klein 102. Girl Walks into a Bar… by Rachel Dratch 103. Sex Object, by Jessica Valenti 104. American Born Chinese, by Gene Luen Yang 105. Trust Me, I’m Lying, by Ryan Holiday 106. Wishful Drinking, by Carrie Fisher 107. Tell Me How It Ends, by Valeria Luiselli 108. As You Wish, by Cary Elwes 109. The Berlin-Baghdad Express, by Sean McMeekin 110. Homegoing, by Yaa Gyasi 111. The Rohingyas: Inside Myanmar’s Hidden Genocide, by Azeem Ibrahim 112. Habibi, by Craig Thompson 113. …Isms: Understanding Art, by Stephen Little 114. Yes, Please, by Amy Poehler 115. The Hate U Give, by Angie Thomas For each entry I'm just posting the best 1) Read some books: 115/80 2) 20% women: 37% Pretty good there... 3) 20% non-white: 21% But I just barely eek that one out 4) Read at least one book by an LGBT author. Sister Outsider 5) Read at least one TBB BoTM and post in the monthly thread about it. Mother Night 6) Read a book someone else in the thread recommends (a wildcard!) The Global Pigeon 7) Read something that was recently published (anything from after 1st January 2016). Homegoing 8) Read something which was published before you were born. The Great Siege: Malta 1565 9) Read something in translation. Cockroaches 10) Read something from somewhere you want to travel. The Hindus: An Alternate History 11) Read something political. Who Do You Serve, Who Do You Protect? 12) Read something historical. The Arab of the Future 12a) Read something about the First World War. The Berlin-Baghdad Express 13) Read something biographical. Sex Object 14) Read some poetry. Walking Home 15) Read a play. Mary Page Marlowe 16) Read a collection of short stories. Her Body and Other Parties 17) Read something long (500+ pages). Africa's World War 18) Read something which was banned or censored. The Hate U Give 19) Read a satire. Three Parts Dead 20) Read something about honor. What I Talk About When I Talk About Running 21) Read something about fear. Drawn to the Dark 22) Read something about one (or more!) of the seven sins. Sloth, Envy, Pride, Lust, Anger, Greed... my library didn't have Gluttony from this series, unfortunately 23) Read something that you love. The Skin of Our Teeth Glad to have prevailed this year. Next time my challenge will include posting...
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# ? Jan 9, 2018 05:25 |
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I read about 35 books in total (out of a target of 100) so that was a disaster numbers wise. I also failed the booklord challenge, in particular not posting in any of the threads for the three or so books I read. vv
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# ? Jan 11, 2018 16:57 |
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# ? May 16, 2024 17:23 |
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I failed spectacularly last year (and yeah, two of the titles below are graphic novels). I thought I might have had more time to read while I was travelling but betwixt the actual wandering around looking at things, meeting people, language learning and planning ahead; reading books largely got squeezed out of my life. I read 17 out of my target of 26 books: 1) The Gilded Rage by Alexander Zaitchik 10 2) Emperor of Thorns by Mark Lawrence 3) Reel History by Alex von Tunzelmann 4) The Return of Martin Guerre by Natalie Zemon Davis 8 5) The Stranger in the Woods by Michael Finkel 6) 1787 by Nick Brodie 12 7) Wolf in White Van by John Darnielle 8) Blackass by A. Igoni Barrett (PoC) 9) Blankets by Craig Thompson 10) I, Claudius by Robert Graves 13 11) American Born Chinese by Gene Luen Yang 12) The Raqqa Diaries by Samer 7 13) Introducing Hinduism by Vinay Lal 14) The Long Way to a Small Angry Planet by Becky Chambers 4 15) Fictions by Jorge Luis Borges 9, 16 16) Running Free by Richard Askwith 17) On Tyranny by Timothy Snyder 11 17% of those authors are women and 17% of them are not white.
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# ? Jan 11, 2018 21:35 |