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What is this? This is the annual TBB Reading Challenge. It's exactly what it says on the tin - goon readers challenge themselves to read a certain number of books throughout the year. Typically people post at the end of each month to say what they've read, and also talk a bit about - what they liked, what they didn't, would they recommend it etc. Is that it? Yes and no. There's nothing wrong with saying "I want to read a book a week" and cracking on, but it can also be interesting to set other goals that you think might diversify your reading - like trying to read more work in translation, or reading only non-fiction, or whatever. Choose your own adventure. The 2017 Booklord Challenge Or don't. This year I am the booklord and as is traditional this is my challenge to you, goons: 1) Read some books. Set a number and go hog wild. 2) Of the books you read this year, make sure at least 20% of them are written by women. 3) Of the books you read this year, make sure at least 20% of them are written by someone non-white. 4) Read at least one book by an LGBT author. 5) Read at least one TBB BoTM and post in the monthly thread about it. 6) Read a book someone else in the thread recommends (a wildcard!) 7) Read something that was recently published (anything from after 1st January 2016). 8) Read something which was published before you were born. 9) Read something in translation. 10) Read something from somewhere you want to travel. 11) Read something political. 12) Read something historical. 12a) Read something about the First World War. 13) Read something biographical. 14) Read some poetry. 15) Read a play. 16) Read a collection of short stories. 17) Read something long (500+ pages). 18) Read something which was banned or censored. 19) Read a satire. 20) Read something about honour. 21) Read something about fear. 22) Read something about one (or more!) of the seven sins. 23) Read something that you love. 24) Read something from a non-human perspective. For categories 2 and 3, feel free to combine them with other stuff - so if you read some poetry by an Asian woman, it counts against both categories and against 14 as well. For everything else, I encourage you to try and read separate books for each - the point of the challenge is to encourage diversity, so while it might give you a nice feeling of robotic efficiency to tick off 5 categories in one go, it's missing the point a bit. What do I get if I complete the challenge? A deep and overriding sense of satisfaction from completing an arbitrary list set by a stranger on the internet.
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Dec 26, 2016 21:35
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2017 Book Challengers Name: Number: Booklord's challenge: Name: AnonymousNarcotics Number: 40 Booklord's challenge: No Name: Aphra Bane Number: 20 Booklord: no Extra: at least 3 books by Indigenous Australian authors, and at least 10 books from my "bought years ago and haven't looked at since" pile Name: apophenium Number: 40 Booklord: Yes Name: Balaeniceps Number: 26 Booklord: I'll try Name: Bandiet Number: ??? Booklord's challenge: Yes Name: Ben Nevis Number: 60 Booklord's challenge: Yes Name: The Berzerker Number: 40 Booklord's challenge: Yes Name: Bilirubin Number: 30 Booklord's challenge: Yes Name: bowmore Number: 25 Booklord's challenge: Yes Name: bromplicated Number: 25 Booklord's challenge: Yes Name: Chamberk Number: Aiming for about 52. Booklord Challenge: Sure Name: Chekans 3 16 Number: 45 Booklord: Si. Name: clq Number: 35 Booklord's challenge: Yes Name: Corrode Number: 90 Booklord's challenge: Yes Name: Deathbot Number: 100. Booklord challenge: Not this time. Name: Dineren Number: 52 Booklord's challenge: Yes Name: Enfys Number: 50 Booklord's challenge: Yes Name: Fart of Darkness Number: 52 Booklord: Yes! Name: Franchescanado Number: 42 Booklord's challenge: Yes Name: Furious Lobster Number: 52 Booklord's challenge: Yes Name: Gertrude Perkins Number: 52 Booklord: Yes! Extra: At least 1/3 books by people of colour, at least 1/3 books by women. Name: Grizzled Patriarch Number: 40 Booklord: Hell Yeah Name: Groke Number: 40 Booklord's challenge: Yes Extra: At least 10 Norwegian books (translations don't count) At least 5 nonfiction books Read every BOTM (except optionally for ones I've read before) No more than 5 rereads (vs. the vanilla goal, I would count them against specific goals) Name: Guy A. Person Number: whatever Book Lord: Yes Name: Hantama Number: 30 Booklord's challenge: Yes Extra: 10 in Japanese, 5 in German Name: Kekekela Number: 10 Booklord: No Extra: At least 8 non-fiction Name: ltr Number: 52 Booklord's challenge: Yes Name: Lumius Number: 25 Booklord: Yes Name: mdemone Number: 100 Booklord's challenge: Yes Name: mollsmolyneux Number: 25 Booklord challenge: Yes Name: Mr. Squishy Number: 60 Booklord's challenge: Yes Name: nerdpony Number: 52 Booklord's challenge: Yes Extra: BookRiot 12 Nobel winners 6 BotMs At least 20 women, at least 20 PoCs, at least 5 in German, at least 10 in translation, at least 5 published in 2017 Review everything I read on Goodreads Name: Old Story Number: 52 Booklord's challenge: Yes Name: Pieholes Number: 20 Booklord's challenge: No Name: potatocubed Number: 26 Booklord's challenge: Yes Name: Radio! Number: 52 Booklord's challenge: Yes Name: Robot Mil Number: 40 Booklord: Yes Name: Safety Biscuits Number: 100 Booklord's challenge: Yes Name: Sandwolf Number: 30 Booklord's Challenge: Not really Name: screenwritersblues Number: 30 Booklord's challenge: No Name: Siminu Number: 40 Booklord: Hellsyeah Name: Stupid_Sexy_Flander Number: 80 Booklord's challenge: No Name: Talas Number: 75 Booklord's challenge: Yes Name: thatdarnedbob Number: 80 Booklord's challenge: Yes Name: tookie Number: 60 Booklord's challenge: Yes Name: ToxicFrog Number: 96 Booklord's challenge: Yes Extra: - ≥10% nonfictiction - ≤25% rereads More than 20% LGBT Name: TrixRabbo Number: 42 Booklord's challenge: No Name: ulvir Number: ??? Booklord's challenge: Yes Name: USMC_Karl Number: 30 Booklord's challenge: Yes Name: wezlar Number: 70 Booklord's challenge: Yes Living Image fucked around with this message at 14:27 on Aug 20, 2017 |
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Dec 26, 2016 21:35
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Help! I only read graphic novels about elf wizards! Many goons use the reading challenge as a way to branch out from exclusively reading genre fiction with pictures of barbarians and heavy-bosomed Aryan women on the covers. Poetry and plays are particularly difficult because many people don't know where to start. Some suggestions are below: Plays: Franchescanado posted:PLAYS TO TRY Poetry: --awaiting effortpost-- Living Image fucked around with this message at 21:50 on Dec 26, 2016 |
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Dec 26, 2016 21:35
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The 2017 reading challenge is available for sign-ups! Please declare how many books you're aiming for, and whether or not you're taking the booklord's challenge. If anyone wants to make an effortpost of poetry suggestions similar to Franchescanado's one about plays, feel free. If there's anything else you're looking at on the challenge list which you think you might struggle with, post and I'm sure someone will have good suggestions. Particularly good ones will be shamelessly stolen and included in the third post. In 2016 I'm up to 85 books with a couple more entries to straggle in, so in 2017 I'll aim to beat that with a nice round 90.
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Dec 26, 2016 21:55
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Enfys posted:This looks great! More challenging than this year, and I really enjoyed this year's challenge, and it got me reading again (and reading different types of books than genre) Revenge, Yoko Ogawa. Good luck everyone signing up, and it's encouraging to see so many attempting the challenge
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Dec 27, 2016 12:42
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Yes, 9 is 'read something in English which has been translated from another language.' Multilingual people, feel free to read something translated into any of the languages you speak.
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Dec 28, 2016 08:48
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Should have everyone up to here.
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Dec 28, 2016 20:18
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Should be caught up to here. Glad to see so many signing up and taking on the challenge, I look forward to finding out what you're all reading 
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Jan 1, 2017 19:51
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I'm most of the way through this beast, which I was finishing off at the end of 2016. My first book wholly in 2017 will be Kawabata's Snow Country.
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Jan 2, 2017 11:05
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I read Pride and Prejudice last year and had a good time with it. Enjoy!
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Jan 2, 2017 12:36
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Follow your heart.
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Jan 3, 2017 19:29
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ToxicFrog posted:For my part, this is going to be a really easy challenge, because I read a lot of SF/F and a lot of my favoured authors there are LGBTQ of some sort, C.J. Cherryh and Melissa Scott foremost among them. I could probably do "20% books by queer authors" without much trouble. Challenge made.
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Jan 3, 2017 22:33
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I added a bunch of you on Goodreads. Except Bandiet - says yours is set to private and there's no add button, at least on mobile.
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Jan 4, 2017 08:15
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ToxicFrog posted:Challenge accepted. Good stuff! Should have everyone up to here. I fly to Costa Rica for two weeks on Friday, so if I miss anyone between now and then, it's because I have better things to do. Normal service will resume end of Jan.
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Jan 4, 2017 22:48
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I'm back. Costa Rica is a beautiful land of strange creatures, I recommend everyone go there. Updated the 2nd post. Glad everyone's having good times and reading books, it's the best.
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Jan 23, 2017 12:16
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CestMoi posted:My goal for this year is to read some books by various authors. Thanks for letting us know.
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Jan 23, 2017 15:04
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mdemone posted:Aw crap, I'm doing well on non-white authors but falling behind on women authors. Luckily I have a few coming up in the pipeline, including three by Kathy Acker who I've always wanted to dig into. Human Acts by Han Kang. I read it recently and it's v. good.
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Jan 23, 2017 16:54
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Guy A. Person posted:I started this year by cycling through a bunch of the "Best American" series from 2015; specifically short stories, essays, science & nature, nonrequired and scifi/fantasy. I find them slightly better than hit and miss but I find the gems to be worth the cost and can always just start skimming if an entry is boring me. Yeah for stuff like this, just apply common sense. A collection with a significant proportion of female/black/whatever authors? Feel free to count it. Using a single short story in a collection to tick a box? Probably not. If you want to count as half or whatever that's fine too. This goes for everyone btw, I'm only quoting GAP because he brought it up and I wanted to reassure people I'm not gonna be conducting a full audit of their reading history. Be cool and read cool things and the challenge will mostly resolve itself.
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Jan 23, 2017 19:45
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A human heart posted:Sir Thomas Browne's Hydriotaphia, urn burial : with an account of some urns found at Brampton in Norfolk Feel free to ignore this guy and get an actual wildcard btw
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Feb 1, 2017 09:55
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A human heart posted:Is there a problem I just glanced at the title and assumed it was another 'read this thing that's out of print and costs $50' suggestion, if not then no bother.
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Feb 1, 2017 12:36
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A human heart posted:You don't know anything about books so I'm not sure why you're in charge of this thread. It was all rigged, five million illegals voted for me
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Feb 1, 2017 16:15
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Anyone interested in reading more women/non-white people, this might be cool: Heroism and Anti-heroism in Five New Novels by Arab Women
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Feb 3, 2017 13:57
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Should probably update ever! January - 10: 01. The Ottoman Centuries (Lord Kinross) 02. Snow Country (Yasunari Kawabata) 03. Signs Preceding the End of the World (Yuri Herrera) 04. Socialism: A Very Short Introduction (Michael Newman) 05. Human Acts (Han Kang) 06. As Meat Loves Salt (Maria McCann) 07. Buddhism: A Very Short Introduction (Damien Keown) 08. The Dog Who Dared to Dream (Sun-Mi Hwang) 09. Dirty Havana Trilogy (Pedro Juan Gutierrez) 10. Excession (Iain M. Banks) Signs Preceding the End of the World was very cool. It's about Makina, a girl in a very obvious analogue for Mexico who travels to the US to try and find her brother who left to claim some land they supposedly inherited. It's a story about borders and crossings and how they affect the lives of the people that make them, and the way they're transformed by their experiences. It's just over 100 pages and it whips along, helped by an excellent and thoughtful translation. I loved it. Human Acts is my second Han Kang after The Vegetarian last year. It's much more grounded in historical events than that novel, looking at the Gwangju Uprising in South Korea in the 80s and the fallout that resulted. Kang draws out the horror of it all excellently, and even though she's describing horrific events it never feels gratuitous. As Meat Loves Salt was pretty frustrating. It's about Jacob, a servant in a royalist house during the English Civil War. Plot happens, and he ends up fighting in the New Model Army before moving to London and joining a religious commune. It's incredibly well-researched, but there's a lot of time spent on showing that off which is unnecessary - my copy is 535 pages and it could easily shed 100 of those and lose absolutely nothing. There's long descriptions of pike drills, printing, cleaning silverware, just all kinds of stuff which was not interesting enough or enough of a focus to need the devotion it gets. The plot is also all over the place, and frequently drops things in short order when McCann loses interest in them. Finally there's The Voice, which I think is supposed to be either the devil talking to Jacob or schizophrenia, but which disappears for long stretches at a time. It feels like a lazy way for Jacob to make decisions against his own interests whenever it's plot-critical and otherwise gets forgotten about. McCann needs to get out of her own way and resist the urge to cram in every idea she has - there's a good book in here, but it's not the one she's written. Dirty Havana Trilogy was a wild ride. Written in Cuba during the famines in 1994-5, it's sort of a collection of short stories about Pedro Juan, who bears more than a passing resemblance to the author. Pedro Juan spends his time drinking, smoking, and loving, while scraping a living from odd jobs and scams. The stories are more or less the same over and over - he meets someone, tries to scam them or gently caress them, succeeds or fails, moves on to someone else. It's an interesting portrait of Cuba which looks at the country through a lens other than communist or anti-communist. Towards the end I was finding it a little wearing, but the character's voice is compelling (probably because the author was basically writing about himself) and there is some seriously funny stuff in here mixed in with all the grittiness. Excession I liked ok but is probably the Banks I least enjoyed. There's a lot of focus on the ship Minds, which are hard to invest in as characters. It had some cool ideas but I'm not rushing back to read it again. Booklords this month are 7, 8, 9, 11, 12, 17, 18, 24. To date - 10: Booklord: 7-9, 11-12, 17-18, 24 Women: 3/10, 30% Non-white: 4/10, 40% 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)
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Feb 11, 2017 12:31
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Franchescanado posted:How was this? It was cool. It's informative and gives a good overview of Buddhism, its origins and practices. It's not super in depth but it manahes to convey a lot in the space of 150 pages or so. It's a bit like reading a long-form Wiki article, except written by a subject matter expert and with proper editors. The whole 'Very Short Introductions' series is good imo. You wouldn't want to base your whole understanding of a subject on them, but as a baseline for 'what is thing' or for refreshing yourself on the basics they're very good.
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Feb 12, 2017 09:59
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I'm glad you liked Revenge! I love that book. I also enjoyed the Saxon Stories stuff, it's light but fun historical fiction, and Half of a Yellow Sun is a great book and every time I see Adichie's name I wonder why I haven't read more of her work. Good month.
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Feb 28, 2017 13:59
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Radio! posted:I'm almost done with Americanah right now and I'm so glad I finally picked it up because it's excellent. Nice. I nearly bought Americanah recently, it's a shame I didn't. One to pick up soon imo. February - 7: 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) 14. What is not yours is not yours (Helen Oyeyemi) 15. The Plague (Albert Camus) 16. The Tale of Aypi (Ak Welsapar) 17. Disgrace (J.M. Coetzee) They Who Do Not Grieve was cool. Figiel is Samoan and (apparently) the first Samoan woman to be published in English. This novel is a meditation on women and their place in independent Samoa, and its relationship with New Zealand, as well as Westerners and their image of what life on "the Islands" is like vs. the reality. Hard Boiled Wonderland was fine I guess. I think I'm done with Murakami for a while. I can never summon up much enthusiasm for any of his novels, so whatever. Five Rivers Met on a Wooded Plain was very very cool. I'm slightly biased - it's set in the area I grew up in, and tons of familiar places show up including my school. Norris does a great job of getting the feel of the place right. It's also a great novel - there's five sections each from the PoV of a different character. They're all fantastically characterised - the voices for each are unique, and the way their stories intersect and their lives slowly build up together is well done. The opening character is Rita, a flower-seller who deals drugs on the side. One night she gets caught; she's convinced she's ruined her life and the story escalates from there. I'm describing it quite clumsily but I liked this a whole lot and would definitely recommend it. What is not yours is not yours was also super cool. It's a collection of short stories, which circle around similar themes - keys, secrets and hidden things - and share some characters, typically by a secondary character in one story showing up in a later one. Some of the stories are a little obtuse, but the collection just about hangs together. The Plague was this month's BotM. Go check out the thread for it! I doubt I have much to say about it that hasn't been said a million times. The Tale of Aypi is a Turkmeni book which is banned in its home country (Ak Welsapar is a proscribed writer in Turkmenistan). As novels go it's pretty average - the story lurches from one set piece to the next, and the themes are stated baldly with very little left to subtext. The translation was weak in places, too. It was interesting to get a small insight into Turkmenistan though, since it's a country I know nearly nothing about. Disgrace was amazing. I didn't want to put it down. A communications professor in a Cape Town university has an affair with a student; poo poo goes south; he moves in temporarily with his daughter on her farm in the Eastern Cape. It pulls out themes about aging and the loss of desire (or desirability), and the changing of race relations in South Africa - particularly the change in social position of white men. Great month, really happy with what I read. In terms of booklord, I read the BotM (5), short stories (16), honour (20) and something I loved (23). I expected the last one would mostly cover re-reads and the like of books that people already loved, but I'm filling mine with Five Rivers because a big part of its appeal for me was the way it worked as a kind of love letter to the places and people I grew up with. Disgrace covers honour - one of its themes is the loss of honour which accompanies David when he loses his professorship, and the way in which later events further change that. To date - 17: Booklord: 5, 7-9, 11-12, 16-18, 20, 23- 24 Women: 5/17, 29% Non-white: 8/17, 47% 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
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Feb 28, 2017 21:36
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March - 6: 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) 22. Broken April (Ismail Kadare) 23. If this is a man/The Truce (Primo Levi) Costa Rica is a collection of short stories written by various authors from Costa Rica, split by the area they take place in. My wife bought it for me after our honeymoon there. It's a sweet idea and there's some cool stuff in here - like any collection of stories like this it's variable in quality, but overall it's decent and it's a nice way to look at the country. The Norman Conquest is a very comprehensive history of the Conquest, tracing through from the events which led up to it, the Battle of Hastings and then on to the death of William and the fallout which resulted. Morris has a great style - he's very thorough, and uses his sources critically to try and give a balanced picture of a period which doesn't have fantastic amounts of material to work from. He's also surprisingly funny. A very readable account of possibly the pivotal event in English history. It Can't Happen Here gained a new lease of life pro-Trump. It was cool, but I feel like Lewis did a better job of describing the build-up to the capture of power than he did the bit afterwards. Still good and relevant. Coin Locker Babies was loving nuts. Two babies are left in coin-lockers at railway stations by their mothers. They meet in their foster home and end up getting adopted together, which sets them on an absolutely batshit course through Toxitown (a polluted area of Tokyo occupied by prostitutes, druggies and kids with melted faces) and onwards. I loved it, definitely would recommend. Broken April is about the kanun, a customary legal code in northern Albania with a heavy focus on blood feuds between families. At the start of the book Gjorg avenges the murder of his brother, and the rest of the book revolves around his last month of freedom before he himself is eligible to be killed in vengeance. Also featuring a writer who's made his name romanticising the kanun, and his new wife, as they travel through the highlands for the first time. It's a slow book meditating on the nature of violence and revenge and the weight of the kanun on people's lives. If this is a man/The Truce is really two books but the copy I bought included both so I've only counted it once. If this is a man is an account of Primo Levi's time in Auschwitz, specifically in the Buna satellite camp. Levi was an Italian Jew and a partisan who was transported to the camp in 1944. It's a very sober account, in which Levi tries as hard as possible to bear witness in his description of his experiences, of the systematic brutality used for "the demolition of a man," and of the ways he and others found to survive. It's one of the most famous accounts of the camps and deservedly so (possibly better known in the US as Survival in Auschwitz which is such a second-rate title I can't believe it was used). The Truce is the sequel, released much later, which details Levi's journey home after liberation by the Soviets. Starting from Auschwitz, it's an odyssey of hundreds of miles and months of waiting and frustration, through Poland and the Soviet Union to a village near Minsk before finally ending in Turin via Romania, Bulgaria, Hungary, Austria, and Germany. What I wasn't prepared for after If this is a man was for how funny The Truce was going to be. It's a genuinely hilarious book, full of larger than life characters, improbable events and Levi's dry humour. He has a brilliant eye for observation and finding the absurd in any situation. Two books which need to be read and read together. Only one booklord this month, for Coin Locker Babies. I'm not exactly dying to go to the Japan it describes, but it's a country my wife and are both dying to visit and I think I've read as much if not more Japanese lit as I have anything else over the last few years. To date - 23: Booklord: 5, 7-12, 16-18, 20, 23- 24 Women: 6/23, 26% Non-white: 9/23, 39% 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)
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Apr 2, 2017 18:41
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April - 8 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) 29. A Cup of Rage (Raduan Nassar) 30. The Housekeeper and the Professor (Yoko Ogawa) 31. Moving Pictures (Terry Pratchett) The State of Africa covers the independence movements in Africa through to the present day (up to about 2005). It's great for breadth of understanding across the continent, but by its very nature lacks some depth even at 700+ pages - every country comes up at least once, but some of them are very lightly touched upon indeed especially when they don't fit the basic narrative of African dysfunction e.g. Botswana. If you have a cursory understanding of post-colonial Africa and want to get up to speed quickly it's excellent, but for a deeper understanding of a particular area you'll want to get something more specialist. The Circle of Karma is a Bhutanese book about a woman who travels from her home village, through India and Nepal, seeking out spiritual wisdom through the Buddha. It's a little bit workmanlike, but interesting enough. By Night the Mountain Burns was very cool. It's a semi-autobiographical novel about growing up on Annobon, an island which is part of Equatorial Guinea. It's written like an oral history - it repeats itself, and stories weave in and out of each other as the narrator builds up a picture of life on this Atlantic Ocean island. The Year of the Hare is a fun little picaresque about a Finnish journalist who accidentally runs over a hare. He finds it, nurses it back to health, and decides to run away from his unfulfilling life in Helsinki and travel around Finland. It's a fun series of stories of his encounters with people he meets. It gets a little weak at the end, diverting off through a couple of episodes which don't really fit in, but it recovers to finish strong. Goodfellas is a non-fiction book about Henry Hill, a long-time associate in the 60s-70s New York mob. It's weird to read, because a lot of it is Hill telling funny stories about being a gangster which are hilarious until you remember he's very bad news and a lot of what he's talking about is horrible, horrible poo poo. It's bloody interesting though. A Cup of Rage is a 45-page novella. Two lovers meet, sleep together, then the next day trade vicious insults. Each chapter is a single sentence. I don't really know what to make of it. The Housekeeper and the Professor is very sweet and very different to the other Ogawa I've read. Her stock in trade is weird gothic horror, but apart from the main conceit (the Professor is a brilliant mathematician who only has an 80-minute short term memory due to an accident) it's light on fantastic elements. Instead it's a nerdy, heartwarming story about the relationship between the Housekeeper and her son Root and the Professor, with a side of maths. Ogawa's style is elegant as ever. Moving Pictures is a Discworld which doesn't get a lot of love. It's a pretty bald satire on Hollywood and filmmaking, but whatever, it's fun. Picking up A Cup of Rage for seven sins (wroth and lust), Moving Pictures is a satire, and Goodfellas is biographical. To date - 31: Booklord: 5, 7-13, 16-20, 22-24 Women: 8/31, 26% Non-white: 12/31, 39% 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
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May 5, 2017 13:21
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May - 7: Animal: The Autobiography of a Female Body (Sara Pascoe) The Lost Heart of Asia (Colin Thubron) The Ticket that Exploded (William Burroughs) I Have a Dream: The Speeches that Changed History (Ferdie Addis) Flow My Tears, The Policeman Said (Philip K. Dick) Fever Dream (Samanta Schweblin) The Haunting of Hill House (Shirley Jackson) Animal was funny and also educational. Sara Pascoe is a British comedian, which gives the book a light tone, but what she's writing about is serious - women's bodies, and the way women's place in Western society has evolved and some of the reasons why. The content isn't revolutionary, but it's a cogent and readable introduction to the issues it raises. The Lost Heart of Asia was written in 1995ish, shortly after the break-up of the Soviet Union. Thubron is a travel writer with extensive experience in the Arabic and Soviet worlds, and in Lost Heart he travels through the new Central Asian republics, experiencing life there in the new post-Soviet world. Thubron's powers of observation are faultless and he's completely willing to subsume himself in the lives of the people he meets. There's tons of interesting stuff here, except for two things - one, by the end it starts to drag, and Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan end up being quite rushed compared to the long time he spent in Uzbekistan. There's a bit of a feeling like he ran out of time/money and rushed through the end of the journey and subsequently the book. Two, Thubron is an Eton-educated conservative white dude, and his tone occasionally veers from concerned to paternalistic. Overall though, an interesting look at a part of the world which rarely receives much attention. The Ticket that Exploded made absolutely no sense to me. The cut-up thing was too overwhelming. I Have a Dream was a short book of excerpts from speeches, with a quick blurb about the surrounding events and consequences. It's kind of light and silly, because it's Great Man Theory personified, but whatever. Flow My Tears was cool, I like P. Dick. In this one, Jason Taverner is a pop singer and TV presenter who wakes up after being attacked by an ex-girlfriend to find that he's living in a world that doesn't remember him. Unfortunately the America of the novel is a fascist state with obsessive ID checks and not being able to produce any kind of identification will see him in a concentration camp in short order. It has those familiar Dick themes of creeping surveillance and the crushing weight of technology plus not being able to trust your own sanity or anyone else's. He's certainly a guy who wrote a very similar story a lot of times, but he executes it well. Fever Dream had a big buzz about it recently and was nominated for the Booker International. It's told in first person as a conversation between Amanda, who's in hospital dying of an unspecified illness, and David, who is her friend's son. There's a gradual revelation of how they got to this point, which doesn't actually reveal much - it's told exactly in the kind of confused, feverish narrative the title suggests, and what happened and why is wide open to interpretation. A very interesting debut for Samanta Schweblin. The Haunting of Hill House continues the theme of the last two books. Eleanor Vance is a woman in her early 30s who's spent the last decade caring for her sick and demanding mother. The mother dies and shortly after Eleanor receives an invitation to visit Hill House as part of a study of the supernatural. She goes, stealing her sister's car and effectively running away from home, desperate for some kind of adventure to enter her life. It's a hugely famous ghost story, with an undercurrent of the characters questioning their own perceptions - a theme which is picked up more explicitly in the film, which I also watched. Jackson has a great style, and I ended up buying a short story collection of hers on the strength of reading this. Ticking stuff off the booklord this month we have LGBT author for Burroughs, and fear for Haunting of Hill House. Not many categories left! Need to read my wildcard, a play and some poetry and then round out the numbers game. To date - 38: Booklord: 4-5, 7-13, 16-24 Women: 11/38, 29% Non-white: 12/38, 32% 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
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Jun 3, 2017 18:42
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June - 7: The Queue (Basma Abdel Aziz) The Lottery and Other Stories (Shirley Jackson) Strange Weather in Tokyo (Hiromi Kawakami) Reaching for the Skies (Ivan Rendall) Purge (Sofi Oksanen) October (China Mieville) A Horse Walks Into a Bar (David Grossman) July - 5: The First Wife (Paulina Chiziane) Wilt (Tom Sharpe) Porterhouse Blue (Tom Sharpe) Flesh-coloured Dominoes (Zigmunds Skujins) Today We Die a Little: Emil Zatopek (Richard Askwith) Missed a couple of months of updates. The Lottery is a really good collection. The title story is very famous and lives up to its reputation, but everything else in here is solid as well - I particularly liked After You, My Dear Alphonse and Flower Garden. October is a cool narrative history of the Russian Revolution. I saw China give a talk on it, he's a nice man and battled manfully with dumb audience questions like "how much did the Communist Manifesto matter to the October Revolution?" Wilt is some fun sharp satire of provincial England. Porterhouse Blue was similar for Oxford University, but the early going is heavy because the post-grad character is so, so boring and gets a lot of attention. I was glad to see the back at him after his condom explosion. Today We Die a Little is a great biography of Emil Zatopek. A huge figure in early distance running, who set tons of records and established a lot of techniques which are fundamental to modern training. Later on he was involved in the Prague Spring. opposing the Czech regime, despite being a convinced Communist, and spent much of his later life in exile. An interesting character and a massive inspiration. TrixRabbi I'll throw you in to the OP. To date - 50: Booklord: 4-5, 7-13, 16-24 Women: 16/50, 32% Non-white: 15/50, 30% 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)
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Aug 20, 2017 14:25
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apophenium posted:Hello, I've been lax in posting updates, so here's a big one of everything I've read this year so far. And also a question. I read Beloved by Toni Morrison and was wondering if it fulfilled the "read a banned book" challenge. I saw that it had been challenged numerous, but never outright banned. Thanks! No ban, no point imo.
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Aug 22, 2017 06:20
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Ben Nevis posted:I'm curious what you thought about this one. Haven't been ignoring you on this sorry. The comedy set premise could have been meaningless but Grossman makes good use out of it, and the interplay between Dovaleh's story, Lazar's memories and what's happening "now" in the comedy club works well. He nails the oral-storytelling style too - lots of repetition and re-covering the same ground from different angles which suddenly reveals an extra key detail, a lot of the jokes are genuinely funny, etc. At its heart it's quite simple and it's basically plotless but the characterisation is great and drives things forward nicely. A Good Book imo.
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Aug 29, 2017 11:47
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August - 5: 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) September - 8: 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) Finished off my wildcard in September with Rubicon as recommended by Learnin Curve. Thanks! A really fun narrative history of the Roman Republic, from its founding up to the ascent of Augustus to the founding of the Empire. SPQR takes a longer view, continuing on through to the grant by Caracalla of citizenship to all freemen in the Empire. It's probably the more rigorous of the two, being written by an academic rather than an amateur historian, but they compliment each other nicely. Three Moments of an Explosion was an interesting collection of weird fiction shorts from Mieville. Some of it doesn't quite work, and one or two of the stories seemed to to be trying too hard to be clever (you can always tell which new word China's learned when writing a book - this time it was "misprision"), but there's some great stuff in here. Sacken was genuinely scary, and The Rope is the World has stuck with me. To date - 63: Booklord: 4-13, 16-24 Women: 20/63, 32% Non-white: 16/63, 24% 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)
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Oct 5, 2017 15:30
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October - 9: 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) Good month this month. The Way of the Runner explores ekiden racing in Japan, a series of long-distance relay races which are hugely popular. Finn's previous book was about Kenyan marathon runners and trying to understand why they're currently so dominant - this book looks at Japan, and in particular asks why it is that in one of the few countries in the world where running is a national sport with a serious following, and so many high-potential runners, so few world-class runners emerge. It was an interesting look at a completely different running culture. The Song of Achilles is told from the point of view of Patroclus, the companion of Achilles, and broadly follows the classical story. It makes some key changes which I disliked though - it focuses very tightly on the romantic relationship between Achilles and Patroclus, but in doing so it imports a lot of 21st century assumptions so that the whole thing ends up being a modern LGBT romance with some classical window dressing. Felt like a bit of a swing and a miss to me. The Drowned and the Saved is a sort of retrospective by Levi, on the time since his release from Auschwitz and the ways in which accounts of the Holocaust have been received in Europe, the responses to his books, and on the experiences of himself and other survivors in the camps. It ranges widely and is basically a series of short essays. I love Levi's work - I think he's the most lucid writer on the Holocaust I've read, and completely unafraid to confront and condemn those who seek to minimise what happened or deny its possibility. We Have Always Lived in the Castle is extremely famous and doesn't need me to advocate for it. I only started reading Shirley Jackson's work this year, and I have been missing out - she's fantastic. 18 left to reach 90. I still need to hit a couple of challenges, but mostly there. To date - 72: Booklord: 4-13, 16-24 Women: 22/72, 31% Non-white: 17/72, 24% 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)
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Nov 2, 2017 16:01
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Omne posted:Man, I gotta step up my game a bit. Wanted to read a dozen books this year, which I've done. The bulk of it was finally going through Harry Potter. I could definitely use some variety next year Sign up for the booklord's challenge! On which note, someone needs to step forward to run the 2018 thread.
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Nov 22, 2017 16:59
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Guy A. Person posted:I was gonna ask if anyone has volunteered yet. I would be interested. Sold.
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Nov 23, 2017 16:30
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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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