What did you read in 2017?

o i also did read the supahead bio

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Best book I read this year was "The Savage Detectives"

other books:

three men in a boat - jerome k jerome
back from the brink - paul mcgrath
breakfast of champions - kurt vonnegut
less than zero - bret easton ellis
kill all normies - angela nagle
against nature - husymans
how to watch football - ruud gullit
islam: a short history - karen armstrong
boys will be boys - jeff perlman
how music works - david byrne
capitalist realism - mark fisher
min kamp 1 - knausgaard
the problems of philosophy - bertrand russell

I'll probably manage to fit one more in before New year's Day, but here's the list as of today:

Man Without Qualities Vol. 2, Robert Musil (nb: I read Vol. 1 in Dec. 2016)
The Thirty Years War, C.V. Wedgewood
On Trails: An Exploration, Robert Moor
Martin Marten, Brian Doyle
The Blue Flower, Penelope Fitzgerald
The Count of Monte Cristo (abridged), Alexandre Dumas
The Big Burn, Timothy Egan
The Only Question, Muriel Spark
The Coming of the French Revolution, Georges Lefebvre
One of Ours, Willa Cather
The Secret Voyage of Sir Francis Drake, Samuel Bawlf
Malgudi Days, R. K. Narayan
Junky, William Burroughs
Sagas of Warrior Poets, (by many hands)
Cyropaedia, Xenophon (Loeb Library translation) (a re-read)
The Road to Little Dribbling, Bill Bryson
Deep South, Paul Theroux
Amulet, Roberto Bolano
The Post Office Girl, Stefan Zweig
Stamboul Train, Graham Greene
Angels on Toast, Dawn Powell
The Seven Storey Mountain, Thomas Merton (a re-read)
Trask, Don Berry
The Undoing Project, Michael Lewis
Three Tales, Gustave Flaubert
The Public Image, Muriel Spark
Human Voices, Penelope Fitzgerald
Seven Viking Romances, Translator: Palsson
Concluding, Henry Green
A Short Account of the Destruction of the Indies, Bartolome de Las Casas
The Custom of the Country, Edith Wharton
To Build a Ship, Don Berry
Cat's Foot, Brian Doyle
Fishcakes and Courtesans, James Davidson (about ancient Athens)
Dark Money, Jane Mayer
Brunelleschi's Dome, Ross King
Autobiography, Benvenuto Cellini (a re-read)
A Way of Life, Like Any Other, Darcy O'Brien
Ministry of Fear, Graham Greene
Three Bedrooms in Manhattan, Georges Simenon
Marco Polo: From Venice to Xanadu, Laurence Bergreen
Leave It to Psmith, P.G. Wodehouse
The Last Samurai, Helen DeWitt
The Greek Alexander Romance, translator: Richard Stoneman
Waiting for Aphrodite, Sue Hubbell (essays on invertebrate biology)
Voltaire in Love, Nancy Mitford

alfred doblin - berlin alexanderplatz
hugo ball - flight out of time: a dada diary
tristan tzara - 7 dada manifestos & lampisteries
marinetti - selected writings
wyndham lewis - blasting and bombardiering
wyndham lewis - journey into barbary
wyndham lewis - the complete wild body
wyndham lewis/naomi mitchison - beyond this limit
laura riding - anarchism is not enough
nathalie saurrate - age of suspicion
nathalie sarraute - portrait of a man unknown
ivy compton-burnett - a family and a fortune
ivy compton-burnett - elders and betters
denton welch - fragments of a life story
henry green - blindness
henry green - living
henry green - party going
henry green - loving
henry green - nothing
henry green - doting
cyril connolly - the rock pool
lawrence durrell - the black book
rayner heppenstall - saturnine
rayner heppenstall - four absentees
julian maclaren-ross - selected stories
edward dahlberg - the edward dahlberg reader
paul goodman - don juan: or, the continuum of the libido
felipe alfau - locos: a comedy of gestures
witold gombrowicz - ferdydurke
robert walser - jakob von gunten
alfred kubin - the other side
geza csath - the magician's garden
remy de gourmont - angels of perversity
octave mirbeau - the torture garden
blaise cendrars - moravagine
apollinaire - the poet assassinated
aragon - paris peasant
andre breton - nadja
rene crevel - babylon
ithell colquhoun - goose of hermogenes
leonora carrington - the debutante and other stories
leonora carrington - the house of fear: notes from down below
anna kavan - asylum piece
anna kavan - eagles nest
rex warner - the aerodrome
rex warner - the professor
jb priestley - blackout in gretley
wyndham lewis - the vulgar streak
wyndham lewis - the revenge for love
wyndham lewis - the apes of god
william gerhardie - futility
david garnett - lady into fox
david garnett - a man in the zoo
angus wilson - the old men at the zoo
doris lessing - briefing for a descent into hell
paul ableman - i hear voices
john clute - the disinheriting party
per wahloo - the lorry
stig dagerman - the snake
andrey platonov - soul & other stories
andrei biely - the silver dove
tf powys - mr weston's good wine
jc powys - wolf solent
jc powys - after my fashion
george meredith - the egoist
thomas love peacock - nightmare abbey
thomas love peacock - crotchet castle
thomas love peacock - headlong hall
thomas love peacock - the misfortunes of elphin
laurence sterne - life & opinions of tristram shandy, gentleman

To everybody who wants to check out Gerard Reve's The Evenings: tonight's the night to start, as the book covers the last ten days of the year, one day per chapter.

Wait John Clute wrote another book?

Oh. It’s an old book, I see

I like this cover.

https://littledutchbook.files.wordpress.com/2015/02/091021_251518_avonden.jpg

Yeah, that's a beauty.

interesting selection of wyndham lewis, nlt (and by 'interesting' i mean, certainly wouldn't be everyone's go to pieces). How did you find them? Apologies if you've already covered this on the ILB rolling threads, i must have missed it.

also, er, i can never remember what i've read. i'm going to follow Ward's example of using goodreads more assiduously. as much as anything the marking is interesting! (I too liked Dr Johnson and Mr Savagae by Richard Holmes -he's good).

The year's not over yet, but this is what I've read so far:

Fiction:
Alexandre Dumas, The Count of Montecristo (unabridged, beeyatch!)
Laura Ingalls Wilder, Little House in the Big Woods
Thomas Olde Heuvelt, HEX
Jesús Carrasco, Out in the Open
Haruki Murakami, Norwegian Wood
Aldous Huxley, Brave New World
Nikos Kazantzakis, The Last Temptation of Christ
Sarah Gailey, River of Teeth
Per Olov Enquist, The Royal Physician's Visit
Ernest Hemingway, The Sun Also Rises
Agatha Christie, Murder on the Orient Express
Daniel Cole, Ragdoll
Mohsin Hamid, Exit West
Tommy Wieringa, Joe Speedboat
Chris Brookmyre, Want You Gone
Philippe Claudel, Grey Souls
Stephen King, The Gunslinger
Stephen King, The Drawing of the Three
John le Carré, A Legacy of Spies
Geert Krimpen, The Cabbalist
Jennifer Egan, Manhattan Beach
Gerbrand Bakker, The Twin
Sayed Kashua, Second Person Singular
Magda Szabó, The Door
Sebastian Barry, Days Without End
Emmanuel Carrère, The Class Trip

Non-fiction:
Richard Restak, Think Smart
Dmitry Orlov, Shrinking the Technosphere
Larry Korn, One-Straw Revolutionary: The Philosophy and Work of Masanobu Fukuoka
Tim Ferriss, Tools of Titans
Brad Dukes, Reflections: An Oral History of Twin Peaks
Angela Duckworth, Grit: The Power of Passion and Perseverance
Leila Guerriero, A Simple Story: The Last Malambo
Josh Waitzkin, The Art of Learning: A Journey in the Pursuit of Excellence
Lesley M.M. Blume, Everybody Behaves Badly: The True Story Behind Hemingway's Masterpiece 'The Sun Also Rises'
Richard A. Clarke and R.P. Eddy, Warnings: Finding Cassandras to Stop Catastrophes
Tristan Gooley, How to Read Water
Lizzy Goodman, Meet Me in the Bathroom
Wil Derkse, The Rule of Benedict for Beginners
Bruce Springsteen, Born to Run: The Autobiography of Bruce Springsteen
Arnold Bennett, How to Live on 24 Hours a Day
Stefan Zweig, Montaigne

xposts: last time i read any w. lewis was in my early twenties (apes, revenge, vulgar streak are rereads) but keep picking up his books when i see them, so catching up with that. there are some quite powerful visual descriptions in journey which are easier to take than some of his, er, opinions in same (think this work ties into snooty baronet in some way?). wild bodies was interesting as a template for future endeavours (art/life dichotomy)... the mitchison collab is a short post-life fantasy full of mythical refs with, from what i understand, the prose at times responding to lewis's illustrations. i don't know, think i was more receptive to his prose/pose earlier in my life (though still have the latter parts of the human age to read at some point).

yep, ok. journey into barbary as you say is definitely a real mixture of his superb visual capabilities and his strained and strenuous moral vision. p certain journey and snooty baronet were from the same period (periods are important with lewis i think, as with those others from that period - pound and eliot - maybe 'period' is just a way of handling moral-aesthetic unease). i like wild bodies v much, and hadn't heard of the n mitchison collab at all, which surprised me. latter parts of the human age are v different from the childermass but i think are v worth reading (i really like monstre gai).

wrote a bit towards the end of this thing about Self-Condemned fwiw.

ingeborg bachmann / the book of franza *
ingeborg bachmann / elegy for fanny goldmann

I didn't know her unfinished works were published - will look into it. How did you find it, ows?

weird year of reading; got a data plan (boo) in february, quit my 1.5 hour-long commute job in may, started a phd september. all of which left me reading less and less. read more short stories, and left more novels half-finished, than ever. best discoveries were donald antrim, william hope hodgson, otessa moshfegh

ted chiang - story of your life
ottessa moshfegh - mcglue
ottessa moshfegh - eileen
ottessa moshfegh - homesick for another world
mary beard - spqr
patricia lockwood - priestdaddy
eric foner - a short history of reconstruction
paul beatty - sellout
william hope hodgson - house on the borderland
jeff vandermeer - annihilation
raymond carver - cathedral
george saunders - civlwarland in bad decline
george saunders - tenth of december
herman melville - moby dick (unfinished)
thomas pynchon - crying of lot 49
rick perlstein - before the storm

They're well worth reading, xyzzzz__, although they are somewhat fragmentary and as a result feel like preparatory studies for Malina, which Bachmann intended as an overture to the Ways of Dying novels, and which continues the fragments' focus on the continuities between fascism and the patriarchal structures of postwar Austrian life. Peter Filkins's translation seems serviceable, although I can't really evaluate his editorial choices without having gone over the drafts in the German editions.
xp

I read Hunger either this Year Or last. Now have the next Hamsun waiting.
Read Elijah Wald on delta blues and development of the style in escaping the delta.
Didn't get around to reading the version of Crime and Punishment I bought at the start of the year. So hope to get into it this year.
Hope tobget into Simon Schama on geopolitics.
reading several things on punk in the UK at the moment.
Not been keeping a list.
Need to finish Tin Drum which wasn't great for stopping and starting on buses. But I got about half way through.
will probably remember more later.

Read 20 or 30 books picked up quite s few more. Which just go on the to read pile and may be picked up over the next couple of years. May not.

Think I finally got into Goodbye to Berlin this yearafter getting it from FOPP a couple of years back. Need to read more isherwood.

got to work b through the backlog of things I picked up over the last few years.

Doesn't look like I read as much as I thought I did. In my defense, the Osterhammel was like 1000+ pages.

Wislawa Szymborska - Map
D.H. Lawrence - D.H. Lawrence and Italy
Mary Beard - SPQR
Renata Adler - Speedboat
Carlo Collodi - The Adventures of Pinocchio
Honore de Balzac - The Human Comedy: Selected Stories
Miguel de Unamuno - Tragic Sense of Life*
Max Scheler - Ressentiment
J.L. Carr - A Month in the Country
Robert Graves - Goodbye to All That
Steven Sherrill - The Minotaur Takes a Cigarette Break
Jurgen Osterhammel - The Transformation of the World
Dave Hickey - Air Guitar
J.G. Farrell - Troubles
J.D. Vance - Hillbilly Elegy
Thomas Berger - Little Big Man
Sarah Bakewell - At the Existentialist Cafe

*re-read

1. Jorge Luis Borges - Total Library* What and how is this so far??
2. Fizzles has another blog
3. Women of Wonder - edited by Pamela Sargent 4/5 Hi Ward, was this the same volume I read, The Contemporary Years? Great stuff, must get the previous.

Can't remember what I read in Jan-Feb, but March-Sept In Search of Lost Time, Penguin Deluxe. Lydia Davis's translation of Swann's Way is wonderful; ditto the whole series overall, but suspect would have been even better if cut by a third---I know I know, the increasingly eternally outsidery insider and vice-versa is learning to write,because everyone has a book of life inside---the best and worst of autofiction, and I mean to read much or all of it again.
Kelly Willis, Get In Trouble: not cyber, but plenty punk science fiction, speculative (expolatory, opinionated), from a certain woman's POV (prob a childhood fan of EAW Magazine). Short stories, Jack.
Rich Kienzle, Southwest Shuffle: Pioneers of Honky-Tonk, Western Swing, and Country Jazz They scuffled through the Depression, some went to war, some stayed on the radio (mostly live for quite a while), most eventually hit a wall in Nashville after the Hollywood harmonic convergence ran out of trend cred with the suits. Also could have used a copy editor along the way, but very readable and lots of twists, something like Four Lives In The Bebop Business, except three out of those four made it big later.
Ernest Hemingway, Collected Stories: some too slick and/or snide, but quite a few work in unusual ways, more about this another time maybe.
The aforementioned Women of Wonder: The Contemporary Years, Science Fiction by Women from the 1970s to the 1990s: "Bloodchild" does not eclipse most of the rest, which is saying a lot.
Currently Hound Dog: The Lieber and Stoller Autobiography(with David Ritz): two Jewish kids from tricky East Coast circumstances make it to Hollywood and the world before they're out of their teens, kick it back and forth here.

Meant to say, "Fizzles has another blog!" Enjoying it!

That should have been RAW Magazine, sorry.

Master & The Margarita, Bulgakov
Matilda, Dahl
The Penguin History Of Russia: From Tsarism To The Twenty First Century, Service
Ways Of Seeing, Berger
I Love Dick, Chris Krauss
Working, Studs Terkel
Forbbiden Lovers:Hollywood's Greatest Female Stars Who Loved Women, Axel Madsen
Sueurs Froides, Boileau-Narcejac
Rebecca, Daphne Du Maurier
Abraham's Valley, Augustina Bessa-Luís
Hrabal short story collection
My Europe, Maria Filomena Mónica
Jean De Florette, Marcel Pagnol
Professor Moriarty:The Hound Of The D'Ubervilles, Kim Newman
Papini short story collection
Sense Of An Ending, Julian Barnes
Osso, Rui Zink
Spooks: Science Tackles The Afterlife, Mary Roach
Manon des Sources, Marcel Pagnol
Artful, Ali Smith
That Ruy Belo Bossa Nova book
Teresa Veiga short story collection
The Buried Giant, He Who Shall Not Be Named
Greenmantle, John Buchan
Hunger Makes Me A Modern Girl. Carrie Brownstein
Diary Of A Provincial Lady, E.M. Delafield

Have a flight today so hoping to finish off some more before the year's over.

They're well worth reading, xyzzzz__, although they are somewhat fragmentary and as a result feel like preparatory studies for Malina, which Bachmann intended as an overture to the Ways of Dying novels, and which continues the fragments' focus on the continuities between fascism and the patriarchal structures of postwar Austrian life. Peter Filkins's translation seems serviceable, although I can't really evaluate his editorial choices without having gone over the drafts in the German editions.
xp

― one way street, Friday, 22 December 2017 23:32 (yesterday) Permalink

Thanks - I seem to remember you were critical of some of Peter Filkins' other translations of Bachmann but as you describe it this is very much my jam. I'll have a look at Three Radio Plays if I can as well.

1. Jorge Luis Borges - Total Library* What and how is this so far??

This collects all of Borges' non-fiction and I'd say that apart from Labyrinths this is the other one to get, but I only got through about a 1/3 before I put it down.

Thought this 'un was 2016!
It occasions a lively exchange:

The Collected Stories of Elizabeth Bowen starts with one about a bachelor boarder, who pays extra for home-style comforts, which incl. very close attention by females across the breakfast table; the simple male mind thinks they all want to marry him (well maybe not the venerable Aunt Willoughby, maybe) and senses as much as he is able--in the familiar, always edgey morning drills---the shifting within the pecking order, the political significance of their comments and questions for him, comments and ripostes for each other among them. Just a few pages---he has to eat fast, leave for work---but already, in her late teens or early 20s, she's killing it.
Maybe a little too imagery-happy in the one about the antsy young unmarried teacher who impulsively invites her wary hungry teen girl students to tea, but only at the beginning, which does crank things up for the spring fever spin.
These could be the beginnings of good novels, ditto the one about the vicar and his disconcertingly aspiring benefactor, while "The Confidante" and "Requiescat" could be satisfying endings (could also see all of these as plays). This last is the most complex so far, as a man receives a letter requesting help with "some papers" from the recently widowed wife of someone who was apparently more than a friend. He dreads and feels compelled, by duty and rivalry, to go see her; she apologizes for demoting him---"I tried to play the game." He leads and leaves her to this, then responds in several ways, changing masks and letting them slip a little.

― dow, Wednesday, January 11, 2017 6:44 PM (yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink"

Oddly enough I bought the collected stories a few years ago, read all the stories you described here but no more, then sort of forgot about it except for reading a story I saw a reference to somewhere recently. I must go back to them!

― .robin., Wednesday, January 11, 2017 8:02 PM (eleven months ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Believe Eudora Welty liked every one of the stories. I know the WWII stories are the most famous, such as the ones from Ivy Gripped The Steps

― The Magnificent Galileo Seven (James Redd and the Blecchs), Wednesday, January 11, 2017 8:31 PM (eleven months ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

There was a version of the Collected Stories which led with an introduction by Angus Wilson. One with a green, kind of boring cover. Current version in the US with the nice painting lists the Angus Wilson intro in the TOC but it has in fact gone missing.

― The Magnificent Galileo Seven (James Redd and the Blecchs), Wednesday, January 11, 2017 8:38 PM (eleven months ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Mine has an Angus Wilson introduction (boring cover but its navy blue). Were you looking for it? I'm sure I could take some photos and upload it somewhere, its only a few pages long.

― .robin., Thursday, January 12, 2017 5:12 AM (eleven months ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Thanks, but I read it recently in a library copy so no need right now. Not sure exactly why its absence irks me. Maybe I am missing the brick and mortar bookstore where I bought his Anglo-Saxon Attitudes.

Also just remembering that somewhere I have the intro she wrote herself to Ivy Gripped the Steps and Other Stories.

― The Magnificent Galileo Seven (James Redd and the Blecchs), Thursday, January 12, 2017 9:29 AM (eleven months ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I'm reading the navy blue doorstop edition with Angus Wilson's intro, but you're not missing much without that. Makes a few good points I guess but he's very hats-off to what he beholds as her robust country heiress grace, Conservative but fair-minded (also claims she's better than Woolf etc). But she seems to be full of mischief from the get-go, initially in a way maybe fairly familiar to yer more sophisticated sort of magazine readers, but increasingly pushing against and around gender norms, as female characters, especially (but not only) test power factors and divine secret codicils in their heritage---along with the money and status, always useful, and you can't get away from any of the expectations and possibilities; even if you don't have much yourself, you're downwind of Someone who does. Also, you might be a good little wife secretly lost, re-entering the clutches of the Helper (as she says her friends on the Continent call her), for instance.
Wonder what Woolf, Mansfield, Jane Bowles thought of her? Wonder what DH Lawrence thought, for that matter---prob mixed emotions: here's a "secret" sister, but an suavely uppity woman too.

― dow, Thursday, January 12, 2017 11:12 AM (eleven months ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

So far the stories are still pretty short, brief encounters, hit and run. See you soon.

― dow, Thursday, January 12, 2017

ust finished Gavid Grossman's A Horse Walks Into A Bar: it's only 194 pages, but so dense, so action-packed a monologue that I only read for an hour each night at bedtime this past week, with no loss of momentum. The old comic, the expert at long-game set-ups is leading his audience and himself off the trail of zingers, off the rails too, but toward the inside-out hobo jungle of psychodrama, revelation, confession, testimony, what maybe the final bit---meanwhile the audience, incl. the narrator, becomes known by quite the range of reactions, in a rowdy Israeli pitstop one frickin' night: "You wanna clear your head, and this guy gives us Yom Kippur!" Others are like, "No, he's still giving us jokes too," even counting them, a bit shell-shocked, others are drawn into the serious cobweb moonlight, at least for a while. And yet the monologist (who has to react to all this, of course) doesn't try to explain *every* fucking thing, the author doesn't try to spoonfeed us: revelation leads to room for speculation.
Even more interesting to read so soon after In Search of Lost Time.

― dow, Friday, September 22, 2017

Been thinking about reading that /vmic

From Rolling Science Fiction Fantasy Speculative Fiction etc.

In the aforementioned Best American Science Fiction and Fantasy 2016 (Karen Joy Fowler, editor/John Joseph Adams, series ed.), I was struck by what I mentioned somewhere else as the "initial snappy patter shifting to different tones and levels", very hard to do, and it's a cosmic-but-plausible story about cancer, by Adam Johnson---countered by S.L. Huang's cancer story, where there's no out-of-body-experience, no revelation, no transcendence, just adaptation, getting through it and going on with life. Huang says it's autobiographical---shifted into near-future treatments, and the character only has cancer once, so far, unlike the author (both are now cured, or in remission). Also unlike this author, Johnson doesn't provide a comment on his story, but his female narrator has a seemingly Johnson-like husband---I hope his story is not based on his actual wife's experience; it does seem more imagined than Huang's account---in a way that seems almost foolish right after first reading Huang, but no, they're just---two ways of looking at it, writing about it. I think. Anyway, can't recall coming across such a juxtaposition in an anthology before.

― dow, Friday, March 3, 2017 12:24 PM (nine months ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Not that Johnson's story is Inspirational, it's about moving between past, present, future, commuting.

― dow, Friday, March 3, 2017 12:28 PM

Leave us not forget to give it up for Richard Price, one more time:
]Mention of Greenmantle as thriller richly evocative/pungent re time place worldview, reminds me of this, from ILE's Crime Fiction S,D:
Thank yall for getting me to read Richard Price, finally! Lush Life is tremendous, the way he expertly steers us through the multi-dimensional convergence of class, race, age, gender, other, in Lower East Side Post-9/11 Giuliani York* (the Quality Of Life Squad greets us at the kick-off and reappears like a reverse ice cream truck: you better have what they want, cause they got quotas). The author dispenses a lot more acerbic compassion, a lot more justice, than his people are likely to find anywhere else.
(*Wiki:"The experiences of Bratton and New York Deputy Police Commissioner Jack Maple were used as the inspiration of the television series The District." Never saw that, but this isn't a cop show thread; we got one of those?)

― dow, Sunday, November 12, 2017 10:49 AM (two weeks ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Well, it's whatever justice can be dispensed via said convergence, rather than sermonizing or gratuitous manipulation.

― dow, Sunday, November 12, 2017 10:53 AM (two weeks ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

The cop show thread is just called "police procedurals what are your faves" iirc

I loved clockers, want to read more price at some point

― The Suite Life of Jack and Wendy (wins)

― dow, Monday, November 27, 2017

Add Naomi Alderman's The Power to my list. Finished it yesterday.

This year started brightly, I had four hours of commute each day and a job I could leave behind at the end of the day. That changed in May with (a) a new job and (b) Legend of Zelda, so I didn't read as much as I wanted to. Plus, I abandoned a lot of books which were too hard / too rich for my brain.

Read:
Thomas Pynchon - Against the Day. This was a re-read and it felt significantly less ragged than the first time around. I don't think I'll read this again, though it hung together better, I can't see the pickings being any better on the third go round.
JL Carr - A Month In The Country. Chosen for its brevity, it was a nice segue from Against the Day, made all the neater by "against the day" turning up as a phrase towards the end. Probably the best thing I read all year.
Yusunari Kawabata - Snow Country / A Thousand Cranes - Glad I read these together, they felt complementary.
Peter May - Lewis Man. Not good at all. This is the second Peter May book I have read. This one also features people falling silently to their deaths. The word "decaying" was used more than any other. The only positives were family connections: my brother in law's home village (Ludaig) got a mention, as did the SS Politician, which my Grandfather did salvage work on.
Sheila Fitzpatrick - The Russian Revolution 1917-1932. This was brisk and clear. It was a second hand copy. A previous owner had diligently underlined every occurrence of "All power to the soviets!"
Benedict Anderson - Imagined Communities. I enjoyed this and as usually happens, was persuaded by the arguments, which makes my ambitions for break up of the UK harder to hold on to. I'm moving onto Balkanisation along non-traditional nation-lines (People's Republic of my Back Garden etc).
Joy Williams - The Visiting Privilege. Excellent. Starts off with glimpses of human situations, deteriorates / develops into consideration of Great Unknowables and ends with a car crash which led me into
JG Balllard - Crash. The Ballard I have enjoyed the least, too fevered, not chilly enough. It teetered on the brink of knitting its themes / concepts together and then didn't (or maybe it did too subtly for me). I enjoyed JGB letting rip in the acid trip at the end. Also, I learned the word binnacle, which is something.
Dumas - The Count of Monte Cristo. Fat and slight. Lots of plot, loads of supposedly loving people giving each other histrionic ultimata, kind of wanted it all to come crashing down on Dantes at the end, tbh.

Abandoned (selected highlights):
Patricia Highsmith - The Blunderer.
Clarice Lispector - too intense for getting through without a break. I will finish this.
Adorno - Minima Moralia. Clearly some leagues beyond my mind horizon.
Adolfo Bioy Casares - The Invention of Morel. I will never finish this.

Dava Sobel - The Glass Universe
Zadie Smith - Changing My Mind: Occasional Essays
Zadie Smith - Swing Time
Zadie Smith - The Autograph Man
Ulysses S. Grant - Personal Memoirs of Ulysses S. Grant Volumes 1 & 2
Tana French - The Likeness
Dawn Powell - A Time To Be Born
Dawn Powell - Angels on Toast
Dawn Powell - Turn, Magic Wheel
Jan Willem vänder Wetterling - Hard Rain
Andrew Lownie - Stalin’s Englishman: Guy Burgess, the Cold War, and the Cambridge Spy Ring
Nathan Hill - The Nix
David Hepworth - Never A Dull Moment: 1971 The Year That Rock Exploded
Elena Ferrante - My Brilliant Friend
Elena Ferrante - The Story of A New Name
Elena Ferrante - Those Who Leave and Those Who Stay Behind
Elena Ferrante - The Story of the Lost Child
Norman Podhoretz - Making It
Michael Ruhlman - Grocery
Mary Gaitskill - The Mare
Mary Gaitskill - Somebody With A Little Hammer: Essays
Peter Mayle - A Year In Provence
Jeff Guinn - The Road To Jonestown: Jim Jones And Peoples Temple
Shiva Naipaul - Journey to Nowhere (reread)
Shiva Naipaul - Beyond The Dragon’s Mouth: Stories & Essays
Philip Roth - The Ghost Writer
Philip Roth - Zuckerman Unbound
Michael Connelly - Chasing The Dime
Michael Connelly - The Late Show
Michael Connelly - Two Kinds of Truth
Jo Nesbø - Nemesis
Jo Nesbø - The Devil’s Star
Jo Nesbø - The Thirst
Stefan Ahnhem - Victim Without A Face
John Williams - Stoner
J. Robert Lennon - Broken River
Don Winslow - The Force
Zeynep Tufecki - Twitter & Teargas
Richard Boch - The Mudd Club (twice)
Karin Fossum - The Drowned Boy
Karin Fossum - Hell Fire
Emma Clines - The Girls
John le Carre - The Night Manager
Hakan Ostlundh - The Intruder
Malin Persson Giolito - Quick Sand
Adam Gopnik - At The Strangers’ Gate: Arrivals In New York (HATEread)
Pauline Kael - I Lost It At The Movies
Arne Dahl - Misterioso
JD Vance - Hillbilly Elegy
Jussi Adler-Olsen - The Scarred Woman
Jennifer Egan - A Visit From The Goon Squad
Colson Whitehead - The Underground Railroad
Adam Sisman - John le Carre: The Biography
Johan Theorin - The Darkest Room

almost finished: Dawn Powell - The Diaries 1931-65
about to begin: Roberto Bolaño - The Savage Detectives

seasonal word-up y'all! cheers

Lots of comfort reading this year. Wonder why that was. Usually I breakup difficult stuff with easier reads, but this year was the other way around.

Many thanks to ILB for introducing me to Penelope Fitzgerald, my hot young find of 2017.

The Bookshop, Penelope Fitzgerald
The Ballad of Peckham Rye, Muriel Spark
A Month In The Country, JL Carr
Patience, Daniel Clowes
Goldfinger, Ian Fleming
The Love Affairs of Nathaniel P., Adelle Waldman
Judaism: A Very Short Introduction, Norman Solomon
The Crossing, Michael Connelly
The Beiderbecke Affair, Alan Plater
Thank You, Jeeves, PG Wodehouse
Crooked House, Agatha Christie
Killers of the Flower Moon, David Grann
Superman: Phantom Zone, Steve Gerber
Conclave, Robert Harris
A Little History Of The World, E.H. Gombrich
Live and Let Die, Ian Fleming
Swag, Elmore Leonard
We Have Always Lived in the Castle, Shirley Jackson
Ubik, Philip K. Dick
Funeral in Berlin, Len Deighton
In Therapy, Susie Orbach
Star Trek: New Frontier Books 1-4, Peter David
The Ghost Writer, Philip Roth
Angels Flight, Michael Connelly
Darkness Visible, William Styron
The Long Goodbye, Raymond Chandler
Holes, Louis Sachar
Human Voices, Penelope Fitzgerald
Things Fall Apart, Chinua Achebe
Counselling for Toads, Robert De Board
How to Write Groundhog Day, Danny Rubin
The Adversary, Emmanuel Carrere
Leave It to Psmith, PG Wodehouse
Lord Edgware Dies, Agatha Christie
The Sense of an Ending, Julian Barnes
Diamonds Are Forever, Ian Fleming
Northern Lights, Philip Pullman
The Subtle Knife, Philip Pullman
Smile, Raina Telgemeier
The Making of a Therapist, Louis Cozolino
James Bond: My Long And Etc., Len Deighton
Sisters, Raina Telgemeier
Feet of Clay, Terry Pratchett

The only books I quit this year were Middlemarch (which I loved but wasn't in the mood for) and the Brexit book All Out War, which was well-written, but I realised I'm still too angry to read about these dangerous arseholes in a book that portrays them as characterful eccentrics

my favorites have asterisks. no re-reads this year.

fiction
Voltaire - Candide
anonymous - Sir Gawain and the Green Knight
Jeff VanderMeer - Annihilation*
Jeff VanderMeer - Authority
Mark Frost - The Secret History of Twin Peaks (2016) -- boring writing
Sophie Kinsella - Finding Audrey (2016)
GRRM - A Game of Thrones
Denis Johnson - Jesus' Son
Strugatsky bros. - Roadside Picnic (audiobook)*
PKD - A Scanner Darkly (audiobook)*
Kim Thúy - Ru
Emma Cline - The Girls (2016)*
Gloria Ann Wesley - If This is Freedom

about 1/3rd of The Big Book of Science Fiction (eds. VanderMeers)
around half of Love in the Time of Cholera (decent but a slow read)
abandoned: Michael Robbins - Alien vs. Predator -- shit

uncollected shorts
Gilman - The Yellow Wallpaper
Bob Shaw - Light of Other Days
Chiang - The Merchant and the Alchemist's Gate
Coetzee - The Dog (2017)
Roupenian - Cat Person (2017)

non-fiction
Mario Livio - Brilliant Blunders
Beryl Markham - West with the Night (audiobook)
Patton Oswalt - Silver Screen Fiend (audiobook)
Kory Stamper - Word by Word (audiobook) (2017)*
Errol Morris - Believing is Seeing
Janet Maybee - Aftershock -- local interest, regarding Halifax Explosion

comics
Vaughan and Whedon - Runaways V1-V8
Vaughan - The Hood: Blood From Stones
Vaughan - We Stand on Guard
Tezuka - Black Jack V2
Atwood - Angel Catbird V1 -- 1/10, awful
Ditko et al. - Iron Man Masterworks V1
Kirby et al. - Thor Masterworks V1
Ellis - Transmetropolitan V1
Claremont - X-Men: God Loves, Man Kills
Starlin - Infinity Gauntlet #1-#6*
Starlin - Thanos Quest
Starlin - The Death of Captain Marvel
Jared Axelrod - The Battle of Blood & Ink
various - Iron Man: Demon in a Bottle

abandoned: Michael Robbins - Alien vs. Predator -- shit

yeah i fucking hate this guy. even the title of this book pisses me off.

Surprised by so much dislike for Robbins’s poetry. I thought he was fun to read. Kind of a sleazier millennial Ashbery.

What I read in 2017.

I aimed to read 52 and I don't think I finished a single book. I probably bought 100 though.

quick, unchallenging reads for the most part:

Harlan Ellison ® - Angry Candy
Jack Vance - Cugel's Saga
Stanislaw Lem - The Invincible
Stanislaw Lem - Memoirs Found in a Bathtub
Stanislaw Lem - The Futurological Congress
Samuel Delany - Tales of Neveryon
Ursula Le Guin - The Beginning Place
Penelope Lively - A Stitch In Time
Penelope Lively - The House in Norham Gardens
Penelope Lively - The Wild Hunt of Hagworthy
Joan Robinson - When Marnie Was There
Mary Downing Hahn - Mister Death's Blue-Eyed Girls
Ursula Dubosarsky - The Golden Day
Robert Marasco - Burnt Offerings
Fritz Leiber - Our Lady of Darkness
Fritz Leiber - The Green Millennium
Fritz Leiber - Night Monsters
Margaret St. Clair - The Best of Margaret St. Clair
Amanda Petrusich - Do Not Sell At Any Price

How was The Best of Margaret St. Clair? Always refreshingly different in old anthologies---when there were *maybe* six or seven female writers permitted to be semi-regulars in fantasy and science fiction mags---but I've never come across a whole book of hers. A Wiccan of the 50s, right? But attutude more subtle than such a tag implies.

xxp - I aimed to read 52 as well and managed to read 49.

Books I read in 2017 that I can remember upon returning to work after a week off with a brain that not work so good no more:
James Baldwin - Collected Essays (Library of America)
Susan Wise Bauer - The History of the Ancient World: : From the Earliest Accounts to the Fall of Rome
Taylor Branch - Parting the Waters: America in the King Years, 1954-63
Taylor Branch - Pillar of Fire: America in the King Years, 1963-65
Robert W. Chambers - The King in Yellow
Jack Handey - What I'd Say to the Martians: And Other Veiled Threats
William Hope Hodgson - The House on the Borderland
Sean Howe - Marvel Comics: The Untold Story
Stephen King - Revival
Steven Mithen - After the Ice: A Global Human History, 20,000-5000 BC
Rick Perlstein - Before the Storm: Barry Goldwater and the Unmaking of the American Consensus
John Semley - This is a Book About the Kids in the Hall
Reed Tucker - Slugfest: Inside the Epic, 50-year Battle Between Marvel and DC
Isabel Wilkerson - The Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America's Great Migration

Books I started reading in 2017 and am still reading in 2018:
Robert Bellah - Religion in Human Evolution: From the Paleolithic to the Axial Age
Wm. Theodore de Bary, Wing-tsit Chan - Sources of Chinese Tradition: From Earliest Times to 1600
Mircea Eliade - The History of Religious Ideas Vol. 1

Oh, I somehow missed that people were including comics in their lists. I'll just say that I also read approximately four times my body weight in comics and leave it at that.

only read 30 books last year, kinda slacked in the middle of the summer and never really hit a stride again. didn't have one big book like i did in 2016 (infinite jest), i'd like to do at least one this year but not sure which. have anna karenina sitting on my shelf but idk, haven't even read notes from the underground yet...

On Bowie — Rob Sheffield
Listen, Liberal: Or, What Ever Happened to the Party of the People? — Thomas Frank
The Master Plan: ISIS, al-Qaeda, and the Jihadi Strategy for Final Victory — Brian Fishman
Homesick for Another World — Ottessa Moshfegh
Universal Harvester — John Darnielle
Collected Poems & Stories — Mallory Whitten
The Broom of the System — David Foster Wallace
American Pastoral — Philip Roth
Firestarter — Stephen King
God Box — Mallory Whitten
Blitzed: Drugs in Nazi Germany — Norman Ohler
A Colony in a Nation — Chris Hayes
literally show me a healthy person — Darcie Wilder
It — Stephen King
How the Hell Did This Happen?: The Election of 2016 — P.J. O’Rourke
Shattered: Inside Hillary Clinton’s Doomed Campaign — Jonathan Allen & Amie Parnes
Cujo — Stephen King
The Handmaid’s Tale — Margaret Atwood
Meet Me in the Bathroom — Lizzy Goodman
Private Citizens — Tony Tulathimutte
Touch — Courtney Maum
The Sarah Book — Scott McClanahan
Eileen — Ottessa Moshfegh
Kill All Normies — Angela Nagle
Capitalist Realism: Is There No Alternative? — Mark Fisher
All the Dirty Parts — Daniel Handler
No Is Not Enough — Naomi Klein
Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? — Philip K. Dick
The Original Face — Guillaume Morissette
Sticky Fingers: The Life and Times of Jann Wenner and Rolling Stone Magazine — Joe Hagan
Hit So Hard — Patty Schemel

favorites were both books by Ottessa Moshfegh, It, Meet Me in the Bathroom, Universal Harvester, and Shattered.

lol sorry im mixing up my dour russians

oh American Pastoral was absolutely amazing but I read the majority of that on a trip in September 2016 but didn't finish until February

think i'll try to read 365 short stories this year.

gotta set yourself a microfiction rule

yeah i was thinking that reading stuff from flash fiction: very short stories would not satisfy.
my first rule is that anything in a collection of short stories not devoted to flash fiction counts.

Maybe a Chekhov a day? Wouldn't keep the doctor away, since he wss one, but prob good for what ails you (if nothing ails you, even better I say)

won't keep the typos away, nothing will.

ooh i should do that too

in a chaotic and confusing world, programmatic reading can remove the heavy burden of too much choice

Old Lunch, what is the Mircea Eliade like? I have enjoyed his fiction a lot.

Fairly dense but elucidating if (like me) you're relatively ignorant of where/how various religious ideas originated. Reading now about the variety of theological constructs from across Europe and India that sprang from the same proto-Indo-European origins. I had no idea.

Took me a little while to write this lot up but:

Fyodor Dostoevsky – Crime & Punishment
Muriel Spark – The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie
Kevin MacNeil – The Brilliant and Forever
Angela Carter – The Magic Toyshop
Ray Celestin – The Axeman’s Jazz
Paul Beatty – The Sellout
Yaa Gyasi - Homegoing
John Cheever – The Complete Stories
Joan Didion – Slouching Towards Bethlehem
John Dos Passos – USA
Michaelangelo Matos - The Underground Is Massive
Anita Brookner – Hotel du Lac
Gabriel Garcia Marquez – Love In The Time of Cholera
Elmore Leonard – Freaky Deaky
Eimear McBride – The Lesser Bohemians
Barney Norris – Five Rivers Met On A Wooded Plane
Sana Krasikov – The Patriots
Julian Barnes – The Noise of Time
Rob Duncan – Psychedelia and Other Colours
Alan Sillitoe – Saturday Night and Sunday Morning
George Saunders – Lincoln In The Bardo
John Darnielle – Universal Harvester
Naomi Aldermann – The Power
Zadie Smith – On Beauty
Don DeLillo – Mao II
John Le Carre – Smiley’s People
David Stubbs – Future Days
Mariana Enriquez – Things We Lost In The Fire
Stephen King – The Stand
Danilo Kis – Hourglass
Emile Zola – La Bete Humaine
Tom Wolfe - Bonfire of the Vanities

Good year!

Some of you people are machines. The poster 'one way street' reading 129 books in 2017 is both awesome and insane. I think one year I read 52 books (one a week), but I was unemployed for half of the year. Now I barely average two books a month.

A chunk of those 129 appear to be graphic novels, if that makes any difference.

i only read 30 books last year & i feel like i was slacking

reading the Michael Wolff book now, v good fan fic

No more than 40. That's counting honest books only. Would have been more but July was lost.

(This month looks to be unimpressive too.)

By participating these "What did you read" threads for the past five years or so, I now know I recently average about 45 books a year.

I read >cough< about 250 books, no way am I typing all those up

How much time do you read per day, James?

Maybe 3-4 hours if it's a work day (public transport, lunch break, insomnia)

I believe I read much slower than the average person, which is depressing. There's no chance I'm reading a whole book in one sitting, no matter how light or easy it is.

I fear I might be incapable of reading as fast as the people I hope to catch up with.

I will read no more for ever

There's no chance I'm reading a whole book in one sitting, no matter how light or easy it is.

I seldom finish a book in one sitting. Its fine, this is not a competition.

read Hard to be a God this week, the translation was iffy and the conversion to ebook was shoddy but it's a fine piece of work

put it in your 2018 list :)

haha wasn't even checking thread titles :)

how tf can you finish a book in one sitting unless it's like <150 pages
i read Universal Harvester in two sittings in one day
read Noah Cicero's new (excellent) poetry collection in two sittings over two days, but that's one I could've easily read in one sitting
Darcie Wilder's book last year, I think that was three sittings?
idk

what have y'all read in one sitting? genuinely curious. and impressed. my bum would go numb

This one, as orig. posted on an ILM Eagles thread, think it's A Good Day In Hell:

Also I picked up Felder's hefty Between Heaven and Hell in the library, and read the whole thing that afternoon, which never happens. Gist: his father comes off as a self-made, self-righteous, self-torturing workaholic and skinflint, and Don follows suit during his Eagles years, with infinitely more bucks and perks than blue collar Dad ever had, of course. Furthermore, Dr. Phil, he somewhat recreates his own defiant-dependent teen relationship with Dad, now played by Henley and Frey.
When he finally gets his ass fired, after having papers served in the studio, he actually calls back, all crying---"Try to seek some higher ground in this, Fingers," Frey counsels, and the ex-Mrs. Felder fervently seconds.
So he does, with this book of excellent anecdotes (also careful references to ongoing litigation), from early years in Florida---girlfriend accuses him of stepping out with blondes, who turn out to be pre-facial hair, though tressed-for-success Gregg and Duane)[;"Tommy" Petty is his guitar student; Stephen Stills is "the funniest kid I ever met," passing through town while running away from military school, back to his parents (though every kid I knew back then who was sent to military school, was sent for a good reason); Bernie Leadon is his local connection to the budding El Lay country rock scene.
Also lots of good stuff about "The Gods," as everybody who worked with and for the Eagles called Henley and Frey; supposedly many of these--even the Gods themselves, individually---called Felder up to trade the latest atrocity stories.
But I also get, in terms of more perhaps unintended reveals, that the Gods were trying to keep their associates' and their own assholes-with-money tendencies somewhat in line, at least for the sake of making even more money (by keeping up the musical standards, for instance). Nevertheless, Felder and I are somewhat respectful of, for instance, Joe Walsh's working out his frustrations on whole floors of hotels (and he lasted longer than any non-God in the line-up, I think, so maybe the mayhem helped).

When he finally gets his ass fired, after having papers served in the studio, he actually calls back, all crying That is, Felder had papers served on Frey (for the first time).