What did you read in 2019?

Abe, The Woman in the Dunes
Ackroyd, Hawksmoor
Agnew, The Age of Dimes and Pulps
Benshoff, Dark Shadows
Benson, Space Odyssey
Berkeley, The Poisoned Chocolates Case
Bloch, Psycho
Boddy, Boxing: A Cultural History
Cardin (ed.), Horror Literature through History
Cardin, To Rouse Leviathan
Carlyle, The French Revolution
Carr, 16 Dr. Fell, Merrivale, and stand-alone mystery novels
Chesterton, The Innocence of Father Brown
Chesterton, The Man Who Was Thursday
Child, Past Tense
Christie, At Betram’s Hotel
Conrad, The Secret Sharer
Davidson, The Rose of Tibet
De Quincey, On Murder
Flusser, Writings
Gardner, 8 Perry Mason novels
Gessen, The Future is History
Girard, Battling to the End
Goethe, Faust Part 1 (Luke tr.)
Green, John Dickson Carr: The Man Who Explained Miracles
Haggard, King Solomon’s Mines
Hale, Lords of the Sea
Hammett, The Dain Curse
Heaney (tr.), Beowulf
Hendrix, Paperbacks from Hell
Hentoff, At the Jazz Band Ball
Hilmes, Only Connect: A Cultural History of Broadcasting in the U.S. (3rd ed.)
Howard, Conan the Conqueror (The Hour of the Dragon)
Hughes, Erle Stanley Gardner: The Case of the Real Perry Mason
Hughes, Ride the Pink Horse
James, The Europeans
Joshi, John Dickson Carr: A Critical Study
Kessler (tr./ed.), Demons of the Night
Knight, Slimer
Laing, The Cadaver of Gideon Wyck
Le Carré, A Legacy of Spies
Le Fanu, In a Glass Darkly
Leech, Seasons They Change
Leonard, Bandits
Leroux, The Phantom of the Opera
Lurie, Begin the Begin: R.E.M.’s Early Years
Manchette, The Mad and the Bad
McDowell, Blackwater
McDowell, The Amulet
Merritt, The Face in the Abyss
Merritt, The Metal Monster
Merritt, The Ship of Ishtar
Monteleone, Night Train
Moskowitz (ed.), Under the Moons of Mars
Mundy, Om, The Secret of Ahbor Valley
Mundy, The Devil’s Guard
Polly, American Shaolin
Polly, Bruce Lee: A Biography
Price, Colonel Butler’s Wolf
Price, The Labyrinth Makers
Simenon, 7 Maigret novels
Sterling & Kittross, Stay Tuned: A History of American Broadcasting
Stevens (Bennett), Claimed
Stevens (Bennett), Collected Stories
Stevens (Bennett), Serapion
Stevens (Bennett), The Citadel of Fear
Swift, Itosu Anko
Tanizaki, Seven Japanese Tales
Taves, Talbot Mundy, Philosopher of Adventure
Thompson, Savage Night
Thompson, The Television Horrors of Dan Curtis
Wilson, The Keep

Do u all stop to occasionally sleep, perhaps enjoy a meal here and there

Brad C - Did you shell out the money for that Cardin horror history? How was his own story collection and the Abraham Merritt books?

I borrowed the Cardin history. Some of it is entertaining, but the overall quality of the articles is not up to the level of my old favorite, The Penguin Encyclopedia of Horror and the Supernatural.

Cardin's collection is full of creatively twisted theological ideas, but his characters are flat and, unlike Ligotti, his style isn't compelling enough to lure the reader past that. I admire what he is attempting anyway -- a few of the stories are truly strange.

I've enjoyed all the Merritt I've read and can't quite understand why he's so obscure compared to his less readable pulp peers Burroughs and Howard; in some ways he's as original as Lovecraft. I recommend Roy Glashan's free ebook editions: http://freeread.com.au/@RGLibrary/AbrahamMerritt/AbrahamMerritt.html

Copied from my reading spreadsheet; so this is listed from most recent to oldest reads. I read more books this year than I ever have before. The things that helped were:

- Finally being OK with abandoning books I wasn't enjoying (abandoned 9 of these without fully completing them: marked these with an asterisk)
- I'd normally watch about 150 movies a year; this year I watched 1
- The self-discovery that I routinely feel shitty after watching movies, TV, or spending too much time on the internet, and I never feel shitty after reading books was the biggest help. A year full of so much dread and hatred and anxiety in the world, and reading was truly my only real sanctuary.

118 The Age of Surveillance Capitalism: The Fight for a Human Future at the New Frontier of Power Shoshana Zuboff
117 The Nickel Boys Colson Whitehead
116 Private Citizens Tony Tulathimutte
115 Nada Jean-Patrick Manchette
114 The Gentrification of the Mind: Witness to a Lost Imagination Sarah Schulman
113 The Topeka School Ben Lerner
112 An Untouched House Willem Frederik Hermans
111 Nothing But The Night John Williams
110 Selected Essays Samuel Johnson
109 Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead Olga Tokarczuk
108 Notes on the Death of Culture: Essays on Spectacle and Society Mario Vargas Llosa
107 The Art of Loving Erich Fromm
106 The Death of Ivan Ilyich & The Devil Leo Tolstoy
105 The Life of I: The New Culture of Narcissism Anne Manne*
104 Bouvard and Pecuchet Gustave Flaubert
103 Your Duck is My Duck Deborah Eisenberg
102 Grand Union Zadie Smith
101 How to Do Nothing Jenny Odell
100 SPQR Mary Beard*
99 The Little Virtues Natalia Ginzburg
98 Serotonin Michel Houellebecq
97 Coventry Rachel Cusk
96 Flights Olga Tokarczuk
95 Desperate Characters Paula Fox
94 Being Mortal: Medicine and What Matters in the End Atul Gawande
93 We Are the Weather: Saving the Planet Beings at Breakfast Jonathan Safran Foer
92 Natural Causes: Life, Death and the Illusion of Control Barbara Ehrenreich
91 Cider with Rosie Laurie Lee
90 Raised in Captivity: Fictional Non-Fiction Chuck Klosterman
89 Stranded: Rock and Roll for a Desert Island Greil Marcus*
88 The Idiot Elif Batuman
87 T Singer Dag Solstad
86 Sleepless Nights Elizabeth Hardwick
85 Mrs Palfrey at the Claremont Elizabeth Taylor
84 Satin Island Tom McCarthy
83 Shake It Up: Great American Writing on Rock and Pop from Elvis to Jay-Z Jonathan Lethem et al
82 The Essays: A Selection Michel de Montaigne
81 When You Are Engulfed In Flames David Sedaris
80 Wonder Boys Michael Chabon
79 Calypso David Sedaris
78 In Praise of Idleness Bertrand Russell
77 I, Partridge: We Need to Talk About Alan Alan Partridge
76 The Harpole Report J.L. Carr
75 The Songlines Bruce Chatwin*
74 Journey Into the Past Stefan Zweig
73 The Slaves of Solitude Patrick Hamilton
72 A Terrible Country Keith Gessen
71 Why We Sleep Matthew Walker
70 The Lonely City: Adventures in the Art of Being Alone Olivia Laing
69 They Can’t Kill Us Until They Kill Us Hanif Adurraqib
68 How Steeple Sinderby Wanderers Won the FA Cup J.L. Carr
67 The Shadow of the Sun Ryszard Kapuscinski
66 Sydney Delia Falconer
65 Yoga For People Who Can’t Be Bothered To Do It Geoff Dyer
64 Auto Da Fè Elias Canetti*
63 Six Memos for the Next Millennium Italo Calvino
62 All Quiet on the Western Front Erich Maria Remarque
61 The Cost of Living: A Working Autobiography Deborah Levy
60 Bleeding Edge Thomas Pynchon
59 There but for the Ali Smith
58 Cannery Row John Steinbeck
57 The Plague Albert Camus
56 Never Mind Edward St. Aubyn
55 The Only Story Julian Barnes
54 Nausea Jean-Paul Sartre
53 The Book of Laughter and Forgetting Milan Kundera
52 The Noise of Time Julian Barnes
51 A Guide to the Good Life: The Ancient Art of Stoic Joy William B. Irvine
50 Pan Knut Hamsun
49 Keep the Aspidistra Flying George Orwell
48 The Geography of Bliss Eric Weiner
47 As I Walked Out One Midsummer Morning Laurie Lee
46 Into the Wild Jon Krakauer
45 The Fall Albert Camus
44 Ways of Seeing John Berger
43 K-punk: The Collected and Unpublished Writings of Mark Fisher (2004-2016) Mark Fisher*
42 Selected Stories of Anton Chekhov Anton Chekhov
41 Normal People Sally Rooney
40 The Years Annie Ernaux
39 Whatever Michel Houellebecq
38 Rameau’s Nephew Denis Diderot
37 Priestdaddy Patricia Lockwood
36 Suicide Edouard Levè
35 The Long and Winding Way To The Top: Fifty (or so) Songs That Made Australia Andrew P. Street*
34 Nightwood Djuna Barnes*
33 White Fragility: Why It’s So Hard To Talk To White People About Racism Robin DiAngelo
32 The Bell Jar Sylvia Plath
31 Autoportrait Edouard Levè
30 12 Rules for Life: An Antidote to Chaos Jordan Peterson*
29 Short Letter, Long Farewell Peter Handke
28 Quarterly Essay: Net Loss The Inner Life in the Digital Age Sebastian Smee
27 Things Fall Apart Chinua Achebe
26 Heart of Darkness Joseph Conrad
25 Fathers and Sons Ivan Turgenev
24 The Wisdom of Insecurity: A Message for An Age of Anxiety Alan Watts
23 Forty Stories Donald Barthelme
22 Candide, or Optimism Voltaire
21 Less Than Zero Bret Easton Ellis
20 A Hero of Our Time Mikhail Lermontov
19 Convenience Store Woman Sayaka Murata
18 Motherhood Sheila Heti
17 Against Nature (A Rebours) Joris-Karl Huysmans
16 Autobiography of Red Anne Carson
15 Poems: Selected by Martin Amis Philip Larkin
14 Four Arguments for the Elimination of Television Jerry Mander
13 The Life To Come Michelle de Krester
12 The Lebs Michael Mohammed Ahmad
11 Wide Sargasso Sea Jean Rhys
10 Satantango László Krasznahorkai
9 Black Rock White City A.S Patric
8 Vertigo W.G. Sebald
7 The Town Shaun Prescott
6 The Prophet Kahlil Gibran
5 Why Buddhism is True: The Science and Philosophy of Meditation and Enlightenment Robert Wright
4 Hunger Knut Hamsun
3 Between Friends Amos Oz
2 Out of the Wreckage: A New Politics for an Age of Crisis George Monbiot
1 Some Rain Must Fall (My Struggle, #5) Karl Ove Knausgård

That's a lovely bunch of books you've listed. Some I've already read. Some I've just read about, usually on ILB. Others are new titles to me and sound intriguing. It makes me wish you'd sketched out a few more remarks for us about them as you went.

I know someone else who has been reading like crazy (300 books a year) out of political despair for the past few years.

Bravo triggercut! I was a 50 book/year reader until I got an iPhone/iPad in 2015. I’ve considerably wrecked my eyea since and am coming back to books. Here’s what had me back this year:

Homesick for Another World, Eileen, and My Year of Rest and Relaxation - Ottessa Moshfegh
Up in the Old Hotel - Joseph Mitchell
Sleeveless Natasha Stagg
Sideswipe - Charles Willeford
Serotonin - Michel Houellebecq
Spring Snow and Sun & Steel - Yukio Mishima
The Egoist - George Meredith
These Truths - Jill Lepore
Bad Gateway - Simon Hanselmann
Trip - Tao Lin

elif batuman - the idiot
joyce carol oates - what i lived for
joyce carol oates - female of the species (stories)
joyce carol oates - journal 73-82
joyce carol oates - angel of light
joyce carol oates - where is here (stories)
joyce carol oates - all the good people ive left behind (stories)
franz lidz - ghosty men: the strange but true story of the collyer bros
patrick dewitt - french exit
joshua cohen - 4 new messages
joshua cohen - attention: dispatches from a land of distraction
calvin trillin - about alice
matthew weiner - heather, the totality
frank gilroy - woke up screening
rowan ricardo phillips - the circuit: a tennis odyssey
dean young - elegy for the last male nothern white rhino
colette - break of day
casey cep - furious hours
phil roth - letting go
ionesco - rhinoceros
marty martin - gertrude stein gertrude stein gertrude stein
woody allen - don't drink the water
helen s garson - truman capote

Think I read quire a bit but probably less than before I started listening to podcasts on my phone. Used to read on buses etc but now have that going on.

So may be down to 20s instead of 30s or something.
Know I read
Henry cow by Benjamin Piekut
Hunger makes me a modern girl by Carrie Brownston
and a load of other things which will come back to me later.

triggercut what was the 1 movie you watched this year

I averaged a little more than 2 books per month this year, a pretty good pace for me.

Walter Kempowski - All for Nothing
Carol Dweck - Mindset
The Iliad - trans. by Robert Fagles
Maeve Brennan - The Long-Winded Lady
Porochista Khakpour - Sick
Elena Ferrante - My Brilliant Friend
Lionel Shriver - Big Brother
Aldo Schiavone - Spartacus
Jean Rhys - Voyage in the Dark
Dorothy Hughes - In a Lonely Place
Joseph O'Neill - Netherland
James Salter - All That Is
Christopher Bayly and Tim Harper - Forgotten Armies: The Fall of British Asia 1941-1945
Jim Holt - Why Does the World Exist
John Knowles - A Separate Peace
Dorothy Macardle - The Unforeseen
Svetlana Alexievich - Last Witnesses: An Oral History of the Children of WWII
Orhan Pamuk - Snow
Sujatha Gidla - Ants Among Elephants
Philip Roth - Sabbath's Theater
Rick Perlstein - Nixonland
Stefan Zweig - Journey into the Past
Nicole Krauss - Forest Dark
Jonathan Coe - Middle England
Elisabeth Kubler-Ross - On Death and Dying
Iris Owens - After Claude
Barack Obama - Dreams from my Father (assuming I finish it by year-end)

triggercut what was the 1 movie you watched this year

After Hours.

My reading skewed toward shorter books this year, mainly under 300 pages, allowing me to finish a few more than I usually do. I also re-read more books than usual, falling back on the familiar when I felt I needed a reliable companion.

The books I read in 2019 (in the order that I finished them):

The Bar By the Seine, Georges Simenon
The Exploits and Adventures of Brigadier Gerard, Arthur Conan Doyle
Why Not Catch-21?, Gary Dexter
Lives of the Saints, translator J.F. Webb (Penguin Classics)
The Killer Inside Me, Jim Thompson
The Mauritius Command, Patrick O'Brien (re-reading)
The Face of Battle, John Keegan
The Life of Cromwell, C.V. Wedgewood
Offshore, Penelope Fitzgerald
The Order of the Day, Eric Vuillard
The Word for World is Forest, Ursula K. Le Guin
Stalingrad, Antony Beevor
Mrs. Palfrey at the Claremont, Elizabeth Taylor
Washington, D.C. , Gore Vidal
The Train, Georges Simenon
Homeric Hymns, translator Jules Cashford
Funeral Games, Mary Renault (re-reading)
Why Buddhism Is True, Robert Wright
In My Own Way, Alan Watts (re-reading)
The Friend of Madame Maigret, Georges Simenon
The Finishing School, Muriel Spark
Before the Storm, Rick Perlstein (Goldwater era history)
My Friend Maigret, Georges Simenon
The Dispossessed, Ursula K. Le Guin
The Day of the Owl, Leonardo Sciascia
The Saga of Grettir the Strong, translator Bernard Scudder
The Siege of Krishnapur, J. G. Farrell
Ubik, Phillip K. Dick
The Poem of the Cid, translator Rita Hamilton
Aeneid, Virgil, translator Robert Fitzgerald
The Transposed Heads: A Legend of India, Thomas Mann
Not To Disturb, Muriel Spark
Maigret Has Scruples, Georges Simenon
A Basque History of the World, Mark Kurlansky
Aunts Aren't Gentlemen, P.G. Wodehouse
The Garden Party, Katherine Mansfield (short stories)
Girl in Landscape, Jonathan Lethem
The Mueller Report, Office of the Special Counsel
That Awful Mess on the Via Merulana, Carlo Emilio Gadda
The Beginning of Spring, Penelope Fitzgerald
To Each His Own, Leonardo Sciascia
Jane and Penelope, Barbara Pym
Roderick Hudson, Henry James
Eichmann in Jerusalem, Hannah Arendt
Theatatus, Plato (with accompanying critical essay)
Swami and Friends, R. K. Narayan
Doting, Henry Green
100 Poems from the Chinese, Kenneth Rexroth (re-reading)
At Freddie's, Penelope Fitzgerald
History of the First Madison Administration 1809-1813, Henry Adams
History of the Second Madison Administration 1813-1817, Henry Adams
Judgment on Deltchev, Eric Ambler
The Dog of the South, Charles Portis
A Book of Common Prayer, Joan Didion

Some minor reading I particularly enjoyed:

Several essays of Elizabeth Hardwick
Some of Virgil's Eclogues

Notable Fails / Rejections:

Sometimes a Great Notion, Ken Kesey
Vertigo, W.G. Sebald
Thinking, Fast and Slow, Daniel Kahneman
Divine Comedy, Dante

Just started s book on Normality (?). Verhaeghe. Very good. (I’m drunk but it’s still a very good book. )

this thread more geared toward a year-end retrospective than the what are you reading right now thread.

* = reread. favorites and least favorites scored.

fiction
Moriarty - Horowitz
The Long Walk - King
The Seven Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle - Turton
*Frankenstein - Shelley
Fahrenheit 451 - Bradbury
Exhalation - Chiang (2019)
Comet in Moominland - Jansson
Roseanna - Sjöwall and Wahlöö
The Cabin at the End of the World - Tremblay (2019)
*The Great Gatsby - Fitzgerald

non-fiction
Crimes, Trials, Duels, Accidents - Clyde Macdonald, a local author
Cosmos: A Personal Voyage - Sagan
The Big Picture - Fritz
QED - Feynman 8/10 (first two lectures/chapters are both 10/10, then the other two aren't as good)
Just Mercy - Stevenson
Astounding - Nevala-Lee 9/10
The Death of WCW - Reynolds and Alvarez
Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals - Kant 2/10
Everything You Love Will Burn - Tenold
The Anatomy of Fascism - Paxton 7/10
Canada - Mike Myers
The Unwomanly Face of War - Alexievich
Alt-America - Neiwert
The Lives of a Cell - Thomas 7/10
The Caped Crusade - Weldon
Daring Greatly - Brown
The Order of Time - Rovelli 1/10
The Order of the Day - Vuillard 7/10
Between the World and Me - Coates
The Youngest Science - Thomas
Tao Te Ching - Laozi 2/10
Zombie Spaceship Wasteland - Oswalt

comics of some length with endings
Chiggers - Larsen
Sabrina - Drnaso
Anya's Ghost - Brosgol
Nimona - Stevenson
Eessex County Trilogy - Lemire
On a Sunbeam - Walden
Spinning - Walden 7/10
Alone - Chabouté
Pantheon - Steele

incomplete but continuing
The Best and the Brightest - Halberstam - half read
The Power Broker - Caro - around 40% read
The Door - Szabo - currently reading

What I read in 2019, chronologically (48, which I'm happy with)

Benjamin Myers - The Gallows Pole (4/5)
Will Storr - Selfie (2/5)
RJ Palacio - Wonder (5/5 - 2 stars are from my daughter)
Roberto Saviano - Gomorrah (3/5)
Jane Gardam - A Long Way from Verona (4/5)
Jennifer Clement - Widow Basquiat (4/5)
Andrew Hankinson - You Could Do Something Amazing With Your Life (You are Raoul Moat) (3/5)
Richard Ford - The Lay of the Land (4/5)
Bernd Henirich - The Mind of the Raven (3/5)
George Orwell - Homage to Catalonia (5/5)
Colm Toibin - Homage to Barcelona (4/5)
Javier Maria - A Heart So White (5/5)
Kurt Vonnegut - Fates Worse Than Death (3/5)
Javier Marias - Written Lives (4/5)
Michael Wood - Literature and the Taste of Knowledge (4/5)
Helen deWitt - Lightning Rods (2/5)
Tom Drury - Hunts in Dreams (4/5)
Richard Lloyd Parry - Ghosts of the Tsunami (5/5)
Jane Gardam - Old Filth (5/5)
Bruce Chatwin - Utz (3/5)
Claire Dederer - Love and Trouble (4/5)
Peter Matthiessen - The Snow Leopard (5/5)
John Banville - The Untouchable (2/5)
Irvin D Yalom - The Schopenhaeur Cure (3/5)
John Dickie - Cosa Nostra (3/5)
Marilynne Robinson - Gilead (5/5)
John Higgs - Watling Street (2/5)
Russell Hoban - Riddley Walker (4/5)
Robert Macfarlane - Landmarks (5/5)
Richard King - The Lark Ascending (3/5)
Robin Ince - I Am A Joke (3/5)
Caryl Lewis - Martha, Jack and Shanco (2/5)
Keiron Pim - Jumpin' Jack Flash (4/5)
Alan Moore - V for Vendetta (4/5)
Matt Pinkett - Boys Don't Try (3/5)
John Jeremiah Sullivan - Pulphead (4/5)
Ali Smith - Autumn (4/5)
Lawrence Gowing - Lucian Freud (3/5)
Andy Beckett - When The Lights Went Out (4/5)
Wallace Shawn - Essays (2/5)
Martin Gayford - Man With A Blue Scarf: On Sitting for a Portrait with Lucian Freud (5/5)
Penelope Fitzgerald - The Blue Flower (3/5)
F. Scott Fitzgerald - The Great Gatsby (5/5)
Robert Richardson - Emerson: The Mind on Fire (5/5)
Darian Leader - The New Black: Mourning, Melancholia and Depression (4/5)

for self:
Marlon James - Black Leopard, Red Wolf (this year's list is short b/c this thing took me three solid months to plough through)
Tana French – Witch Elm
Alan Garner – Red Shift
Alan Garner – Owl Service
Howard Rodman – Great Northern
Esi Edugyan – Washington Black
Haruki Murakami – Killing Commendatore
N.K. Jemisin - The Fifth Season
N.K. Jemisin - The Obelisk Gate
N.K. Jemisin - The Stone Sky
Francisco Cantú – The Line Becomes a River
Ted Chiang – Exhalation

for work:
Ursula K. Le Guin – The Wizard of Earthsea
Ursula K. Le Guin – The Tombs of Atuan
Angie Thomas – The Hate U Give
Tehlor Kay Mejia – We Set the Dark on Fire
Elizabeth Acevado – The Poet X
Eliabeth Acevado – With the Fire on High
Rainbow Rowell / Faith Erin Hicks – Pumpkinheads
George Takei - They Called us Enemy
Jerry Craft – The New Kid
Gary D. Schmidt – Pay Attention, Carter Jones
Jarrett J. Krosoczka – Hey, Kiddo
Angie Thomas – On the Come Up
Philip Pullman – The Secret Commonwealth
Rachel Hartman – Serafina
Rachel Hartman – Shadow Scale
Rachel Hartman – Tess of the Road
Dylan Meconis – Queen of the Sea
Paul Ortiz – An African and Latinx History of the United States
Roxanne Dunbar–Ortiz – An Indigenous Peoples' History of the United States
Ibram X. Kendi – How to be Anti-Racist
Ijeoma Oluo – So You Want to Talk About Race
Robin DiAngelo – White Fragility
Reni Eddo-Lodge – Why I'm No Longer Talking to White People About Race

also, lots of poetry (mostly Gwendolyn Brooks, ee Cummings)

abanana - I would say that both the Sjowall/Wahloo and Jansson series improve as they go on - I don't think I ever actually got through Roseanna but The Laughing Policeman and several others are great.

Roughly chronologically:

Daphne Du Maurier - Rebecca
Dorothy Hughes - In a Lonely Place
John Darnielle - Master of Reality
Andy Miller - Village Green Preservation Society
JG Ballard - Empire of the Sun
Rivka Galchen - Little Labors
Denis Johnson - Tree of Smoke
Richard Stark - Comeback
Richard Stark - The Mourner
W.G. Sebald - The Emigrants
Patrick Modiano - Young Once
Andy Miller - The Year of Reading Dangerously
Barbara Comyns - Who Was Changed and Who Was Dead
William Maxwell - So Long, See You Tomorrow
Carl Wilson - Let's Talk About Love
Penelope Fitzgerald - Human Voices
Gilbert Adair - The Death of the Author
Jonathan Lethem - The Feral Detective
Susan Orlean - The Library Book
Oakley Hall - So Many Doors
Gerald Murnane - The Plains (also read some stories in Stream System that were very impressive but there's only so much I can take of his style at once)
Willem Frederik Hermans - An Untouched House
Peter Guralnick - Last Train to Memphis
Peter Guralnick - Lost Highway
Sarah Moss - Ghost Wall
Andrew Elias Colarusso - The Sovereign
Bruce Chatwin - Utz
Muriel Spark - Loitering With Intent
George Simenon - Dirty Snow
Muriel Spark - Memento Mori
Edouard Louis - Who Killed My Father
Barbara Comyns - The Vet's Daughter
Ismail Kadare - The Traitor's Niche
Robert Stone - Dog Soldiers
Stevie Smith - Novel on Yellow Paper
Cosey Fanni Tutti - Art Sex Music
Philip Pullman - The Book of Dust
Patrick Dewitt - The Sisters Brothers
Robert Walser - Jakob Von Gunten
Jonathan Lethem - The Ecstasy of Influence (skipped some stuff in this tbh)
Jon Ronson - The Psychopath Test
Kurt Tucholsky - Castle Gripsholm
Jon Ronson - Them
Penelope Fitzgerald - The Beginning of Spring
Daniel Pinkwater - Yobgorgle: Mystery Monster of Lake Ontario

May possibly finish All or Nothing by Kempowski before the year ends.

Yeah, I didn't like Roseanna, it had a ton of padding. Might try the one you suggest, thanks.

For the first time in my life I kept a list of what I read this year. The dividing lines are months. I also read “imaginary Letters” by Mary Butts many times over this year but that is another matter.

Bacacay by Witold Gombrowicz
Love by Hanne Ørstavik.
Wild Milk by Sabrina Orah Mark
Dan by Joanna Ruocco
Normal People by Sally Rooney
Dusty Answer by Rosamund Lehman
The Living Are Few, The Dead Many by Hans Henny Jahnn
Let's Talk about Love by Carl Wilson
—

Europe in Sepia by Dubravka Ugresic
Emigrants by W G Sebald
This Wounded Island vol 2: Another England by J W Böhm
Why Art by Eleanor Davis
Punishments of Hell by Robert Desnos
The Return of the Soldier by Rebecca West
Under The Net by Iris Murdoch
Tentacle by Rita Indiana
Who Cooked Adam Smith’s Dinner” by Karina Marçal
—
The future, un-imagine by Angela Gardner & Caren Florance
Tokyo Ueno Station by Yu Mira
We Are Made of Diamond Stuff by Isabel Waidner
overlove by Geraldine Snell
Over In and Under by Emma Bolland
A Voice Through A Cloud by Denton Welch
My Year of Rest and Relaxation by Otessa Mosfegh
Who Killed My Father by Édouard Louis
Rotting Hill by Wyndham Lewis
—
The Drawer and A Pile of Bricks by David Berridge
Spring by Ali Smith
A Close Watch on the Trains by Bohumil Hrabal
Chaos and Night by Henri de Motherlant
Yonnondio: From The Thirties by Tillie Olsen
Kitch, a fictional biography of a calypso legend by Anthony Joseph
Eileen by Otessa Mosfegh
—-
Built on Sand by Paul Scraton
The Owl Service by Alan Garner
Berg by Ann Quin
(abandoned Ma’am Darling by Craig Brown)
The Mussel Feast by Birgitta Vanderbeke
Fräulein Else by Arthur Schnitzler
Tell Them Of Battles, Kings and Elephants by Mathias Enard
Moonstone - the boy who never was by Sjòn
—
(Abandoned Grand Hotel by Vicki Baum)
All Among The Barley by Melissa Harrison
The 392 by Ashley Hickson-Lovence
Thursbitch by Alan Garner
—
Plastic Emotions by Shiromi Pinto
Undercliff by Mark Brend
My Name is Aram by William Saroyan
Tram 83 by Fiston Mwanza Mujila
The Cemetery In Barnes by Gabriel Josipovici
__
Echoes of the City by Lars Saabye Christensen
The Legend of the Holy Drinker by Joseph Roth
Not One Day by Anne Garréta
To Leave With The Reindeer by Olivia Rosenthal
Natura Morta Josef Winkler
An Amorous Discourse In The Suburbs If Hell by Deborah Levy
Fires by Marguerite Yourcenar
__
Architecture of the Off Modern by Svetlana Boym
Other Men’s Daughters by Richard Stern
A Long Way From Verona by Jane Gardam
After The Divorce by Grazia Deledda
-
Alphabetical Africa by Walter Abish
The Plains by Gerard Murnane
On The Edge of Reason by Miroslav Krieža
-
The Holy Well by Valentin Kataev
Sweetwater by Knut Faldbakken
Night Moves by Jessica Hopper
God on the Rocks by Jane Gardam
After the Reign of the Queen of Persia by Joan Chase
-
Sam Dunn Is Dead by Bruno Corra
The Skin Chairs by Barbara Comyns
The Shooting Gallery by Yūko Tsushima
Return To My Native Land by Aimé Césaire
Exposure by Olivia Sudjic

Crossed the 30-book threshold for a change this year so don't feel too bad to post here:

Beastie Boys Book – Michael Diamond, Adam Horovitz
Billion Dollar Whale: The Man Who Fooled Wall Street, Hollywood, and the World – Tom Wright
The Reactionary Mind: Conservatism from Edmund Burke to Donald Trump – Corey Robin
The Changeling – Joy Williams
Clothes, Clothes, Clothes. Music, Music, Music. Boys, Boys, Boys – Viv Albertine
Men We Reaped – Jesmyn Ward
Go Ahead in the Rain: Notes to a Tribe Called Quest – Hanif Abdurraqib
The Sopranos Sessions – Matt Zoller Seitz, Alan Sepinwall
The Brothers: John Foster Dulles, Allen Dulles & Their Secret World War – Stephen Kinzer
Airships – Barry Hannah
Just Mercy: A Story of Justice and Redemption – Bryan Stevenson
Olive Kitteridge – Elizabeth Strout
The Getaway – Jim Thompson
Say Nothing: A True Story of Murder and Memory in Northern Ireland – Patrick Radden Keefe
Robert Mitchum: “Baby, I Don’t Care” – Lee Server
The Idiot – Elif Batuman
The Right Stuff – Tom Wolfe
A Peace to End All Peace: The Fall of the Ottoman Empire and The Creation of the Modern Middle East – David Fromkin
Jazz – Toni Morrison
The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie – Muriel Spark
Chaos: Charles Manson, the CIA, and the Secret History of the Sixties – Tom O’Neill
Fever Dream – Samantha Schweblin
City of Quartz: Excavating the Future in Los Angeles – Mike Davis
Milkman – Anna Burns
Orange World and Other Stories – Karen Russell
Nightmare Alley – William Lindsay Gresham
Actual Air – David Berman
There There – Tommy Orange
Capitalist Realism: Is There No Alternative? – Mark Fisher
It Came from Memphis – Robert Gordon

Norse Mythology - Neil Gaiman
Artemis - Andy Weir
Elysium Fire - Alastair Reynolds
Lathe of Heaven - Ursula K Le Guin
I Partridge - Alan Partridge
I’m A Joke (And So Are You) - Robin Ince
Animal - Sara Pascoe
Eleanor Oliphant - Gail Honeyman
*The State Of The Art (1991) - Iain M Banks
He Who Hesitates - Ed McBain
Medea (3 versions) - Euripides
1860: A Message From The Sea - Charles Dickens et al
1865: Doctor Marigold’s Prescriptions - Charles Dickens et al
1861: Tom Tiddler’s Ground - Charles Dickens et al
Count Of Monte Cristo - Dumas
The Tempest - Shakespeare
Hag-Seed - Margaret Attwood
Bush Studies - Barbara Baynton
The Hunt - Stanislav Lem
The Ruins Of Earth - Thomas Disch (Editor)
Kraken Awakes - John Wyndham
Camp Concentration - Thomas Disch
Ironclads - Adrian Tchaikovsky
A Laodicean: A Story of To-day (1881) - Thomas Hardy
The Sisters Brothers - Patrick DeWitt
1859: The Haunted House - Charles Dickens et al
1862: Somebody’s Luggage - Charles Dickens et al
1866: Mugby Junction - Charles Dickens et al
1867: No Thoroughfare - Charles Dickens et al
1854: Seven Poor Travellers - Charles Dickens et al
The Three-Body Problem - Cixin Liu
Children Of Time - Adrian Tchaikovsky
*Revelation Space - Alastair Reynolds
The Power - Naomi Alderman
Hello World - Hannah Fry
The Beginner's Goodbye - Anne Tyler
All That Remains - Sue Black
The Lottery (and others) - Shirley Jackson
Widow Basquiat - Jennifer Clement
Circe - Madeline Miller
Yellow Wallpaper - Charlotte Perkins Gilman
1851: What Christmas Is As We Grow Older - Charles Dickens et al
1852: A Round Of Stories By The Christmas Fire - Charles Dickens et al
1853: Another Round Of Stories By The Christmas Fire - Charles Dickens et al
1855: The Holly-Tree Inn - Charles Dickens et al

45, not including graphic novels. two re-reads.

(the things starting with dates are the christmas editions of household words / all the year round that dickens was editing at the time. the most famous of these being probably Mugby Junction which includes The Signalman)

favourites probably Monte Cristo, Circe, Kraken Awakes.

Any book resolutions for 2020? I need to read more in translation; I feel more parochial year by sodding year.

I need to catch up with several books I started after wanting to read them for years but just wound up in a pile on the floor. Looking at Crime & Punishment in a recent translation I picked up a couple of years ago in particular.
Had to pick up a couple of piles when trying to organise my bedroom a few weeks ago.
Plus have of course added several more this trip.

Any book resolutions for 2020? I need to read more in translation

Great question! I started a separate thread for Book-related New Year Resolutions.

Gary Shteyngart - Lake Success
Mark Sinker & Friends - A Hidden Landscape Once A Week
Rachel Kushner - Telex From Cuba
Lynne Tillman - American Genius, A Comedy
Sally Rooney - Conversations With Friends
Marcel Proust - In The Shadow Of Young Girls In Flower
Stuart Turton - The Seven Deaths Of Evelyn Hardcastle
Anthony Marra - The Tsar Of Love And Techno
R.O. Kwon - The Incendiaries
Anna Burns - Milkman
Joy Williams - The Quick & The Dead
Mazin Saleem - The Prick
Rachel Cusk - Outline
Mary Gaitskill - The Mare
Bill Beverley - Dodgers
Dorothea Tanning - Chasm
Samuel Selvon - The Lonely Londoners
Lloyd Bradley - Sounds Like London
Colson Whitehead - The Underground Railroad
Peter O'Donnell - Modesty Blaise
Elmore Leonard - Bandits

Definitely feels like a quiet/distracted year.

didn’t keep track of what i read but the worst thing i read was Sally Rooney

best thing i read might be Lydia Davis essays one

Before Christmas I had read 49 and a bit books - I'd made a start on Berg by Ann Quin. I took a break for a week or so, when I tried to pick it up again I found myself completely unable to get back into it. Didn't manage to start anything else either :(

Bad Behaviour, Mary Gaitskill
Priestdaddy, Patricia Lockwood
The Handmaid's Tale, Margaret Atwood
All among the Barley, Melissa Harrison
The Golden House, Salman Rushdie
The Green Road, Anne Enright
The Flamethrowers, Rachel Kushner
The Fat Years, Chan Koonchung
David Copperfield, Charles Dickens
Why I'm No Longer Talking to White People about Race, Reni Eddo-Lodge
The Book You Wish Your Parents Had Read, Phillipa Perry
The Undoing of Arlo Knott, Heather Child
The Psychology of Time Travel, Kate Mascarenhas
Natural History, Justina Robson
New Suns, Various
Song of Solomon, Toni Morrison
Semicolon, Cecilia Watson
Do You Dream of Terra Two?, Temi Oh
The Raven Tower, Ann Leckie
Sarah Canary, Karen Joy Fowler
The Ship who Sang, Anne McCaffrey
Lincoln in the Bardo, George Saunders
The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch, Philip K Dick
Grass, Sherri S Tepper
Transit, Rachel Cusk
I Am, I Am, I Am, Maggie O'Farrell
Ice, Anna Kavan
The Bell Jar, Sylvia Plath
The Undefeated, Una McCormack
Pachinko, Min Jin Lee
The Japanese Lover, Isabelle Allende
His Master's Voice, Stanislaw Lem
Convenience Store Woman, Sayaka Murata
Mrs Osmond, John Banville
Accelerando, Charles Stross
The Life to Come, Michelle de Kretser
Dhalgren, Samuel Delany
At the Existentialist Cafe, Sarah Bakewell
Mammoth book of sf stories by women, various
Normal People, Sally Rooney
Ways of Seeing, John Berger
Woman on the Edge of Time, Marge Piercy
Slow River, Nicola Griffith
Pennterra, Judith Moffett
Lagoon, Nnedi Okorafor
The Seven Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle, Stuart Turton
Galactic Derelict, Andre Norton
Hellspark, Janet Kagan
Pinion, Elizabeth Bear

any recommendations out of that lot?

I read these! I recommend these!

Oyinkan Braithwaite, My Sister the Serial Kiler
Isak Dinesen, Anecdotes of Destiny
Han Kang, The Vegetarian
André Gide, Notes on Chopin
Richard Brautigan, Trout Fishing in America
Ford Madox Ford, The Brown Owl
Anne Heller, Hannah Arendt: A Life in Dark Times
Joe Hill, The Cape
Joe Hill, The Cape 1969
Lewis Carroll, Alice's Adventures in Wonderland
Stephen King, Everything's Eventual
Marek Hłasko, Killing the 2nd Dog
Siri Hustvedt, Memories of the Future
Stephen King, Song of Susannah
Stephen King, The Dark Tower
Stephen King, The Wind Through The Keyhole
Stephen King, Insomnia
Stephen King, Hearts in Atlantis
Joanna Walsh, break.up
Daisy Johnson, Fen
Daisy Johnson, Everything Under
Owen Hatherley, The Ministry of Nostalgia
Amparo Dávila, The Houseguest
Mark Twain, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer
Mark Twain, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
Mark Twain, Tom Sawyer Abroad
Mark Twain, Tom Sawyer, Detective
Robert Coover, Huck Out West
Carlo Collodi, Pinocchio
Thomas Mann, Death in Venice
Robert Coover, Pinocchio in Venice
Nathalie Saurraute, Tropisms
Patrick DeWitt, The Sisters Brothers
Mike Davis, City of Quartz
Reni Eddo-Lodge, Why I'm No Longer Talking to White People About Race
Shirley Jackson, The Lottery
Naoyuki Ii, The Shadow of a Blue Cat
Don Winslow, The Force
Sarah Bakewell, At the Existentialist Cafe
Andrea Lawlor, Paul Takes the Form of a Mortal Girl
Stefan Zweig, Impatience of the Heart
Elmore Leonard, Unknown Man #89
José Rodrigues Miguéis, Happy Easter
Muriel Spark, The Abbess of Crewe
Marguerite Duras, The Lover
John le Carré, Call for the Dead
John le Carré, A Murder of Quality
John le Carré, The Spy Who Came in from the Cold
Stephen King, The Institute
Stanislav Lem, Solaris
Anne Carson, If not, winter: Fragments of Sappho
Elizabeth Bishop, The Complete Poems 1927-1979
Amelia Gentleman, The Windrush Betrayal
Stephen King, Danse Macabre
Ali Smith, How to be Both
Hitomi Kanehara, Snakes and Earrings
Kurt Vonnegut, Suckers Portfolio
Ania Ahlborn, Seed
John Waters, Make Trouble
Leonard Michaels, The Men's Club
Ian Penman, It Gets Me Home, This Curving Track
Shirley Jackson, We Have Always Lived in the Castle
Stephen King, On Writing
Italo Calvino, The Path to the Spiders' Nests
my brother-in-law's unpublished fantasy novel

had out of the library for three months without reading a single page
Robert Burton, The Anatomy of Melancholy

had out of the library but couldn't read cause it kept crashing the app
Olga Tolkarczuk, Flights

any recommendations out of that lot?

Lockwood, Atwood, Harrison, Koonchung, Dickens, Cusk, Plath, Lem, Berger, Piercy. If you're minded to try the Koonchung, its real value is as a primer on recent Chinese politics and history, the SF wrapping is pretty thin.

Also, SF-wise, Grass, Penterra, and Lagoon were all fine with minor reservations.

Duffy, Eamon - The Voices of Morebath: Reformation and Rebellion in an English Village
Woolf, Virginia - A Room of One's Own
Wrightson, Keith - Ralph Tailor's Summer: A Scrivener, His City and the Plague
Wilson, N.G. - From Byzantium to Italy: Greek Studies in the Italian Renaissance
From Byzantium to Italy: Greek Studies in the Italian Renaissance
Ginzburg, Carlo - The Cheese and the Worms: The Cosmos of a Sixteenth-Century Miller
Bataille, Georges - Erotism: Death and Sensuality
Eisenstein, Elizabeth L. - The Printing Press as an Agent of Change
Baxandall, Michael - Painting and Experience in Fifteenth-Century Italy: A Primer in the Social History of Pictorial Style
Lowry, Martin - The World of Aldus Manutius: Business and Scholarship in Renaissance Venice
Greenblatt, Stephen - Renaissance Self-Fashioning: From More to Shakespeare
Castiglione, Baldassare - The Book of the Courtier
Panofsky, Erwin - Renaissance and Renascences in Western Art
Burckhardt, Jacob - The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy
White, Gilbert - The Natural History of Selborne
O'Brien, Flann - At Swim-Two-Birds
Thomas, Keith - Man and the Natural World: Changing Attitudes in England 1500-1800
Man and the Natural World: Changing Attitudes in England 1500-1800
Graves, Robert - The White Goddess: A Historical Grammar of Poetic Myth
Flaubert, Gustave - Sentimental Education
Cairns, David - Berlioz, Vol. 2: Servitude and Greatness, 1832-1869
Berlioz, Vol. 2: Servitude and Greatness, 1832-1869
Lin Yutang - Famous Chinese Short Stories
Greene, Brian - The Elegant Universe: Superstrings, Hidden Dimensions, and the Quest for the Ultimate Theory
Smollett, Tobias - The Expedition of Humphry Clinker
The Expedition of Humphry Clinker
Smollett, Tobias
Epictetus - Discourses and Selected Writings
Montaigne: Essays
Williams, Raymond - Keywords: A Vocabulary of Culture and Society
Colonna, Francesco - Hypnerotomachia Poliphili: The Strife of Love in a Dream
The Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson
Rackham, Oliver - Trees & Woodland in the British Landscape: The Complete History of Britain's Trees, Woods & Hedgerows
The Penguin Book of English Verse
Keegan, Paul - The Penguin Book of English Verse
Cohen, Richard - Chasing the Sun: The Epic Story of the Star That Gives Us Life
Theories of Race and Racism: A Reader
Knights, L.C. - Drama And Society In The Age Of Jonson
Hulse, Michael - The New Poetry
Marlowe, Christopher - The Complete Plays
Jonso, Ben - Five Plays
Clucas, Stephen - Laus Platonici Philosophi: Marsilio Ficino and His Influence
The Complete Woodcuts of Albrecht Dürer
The Complete Woodcuts of Albrecht Dürer
Wolf, Norbert - Albrecht Durer
Procacci, Giuliano - History of the Italian People
Greene, Thomas M. - Light in Troy: Imitation and Discovery in Renaissance Poetry
Petrarch: The Canzoniere, or Rerum Vulgarium Fragmenta
Petrarch: The Canzoniere, or Rerum Vulgarium Fragmenta (Mark Musa trans)
Pettegree, Andrew - The Book in the Renaissance
Chartier, Roger - The Order of Books: Readers, Authors, and Libraries in Europe Between the 14th and 18th Centuries
Friedrichs, Christopher R. - The Early Modern City, 1450-1750
Newman, Karen - Cultural Capitals: Early Modern London and Paris
Bossy, John - Christianity in the West, 1400-1700
Rabelais, François - Gargantua and Pantagruel, MA Screech trans
The Portable Renaissance Reader
Bakhtin, Mikhail - Rabelais and His World
Feminism and Renaissance Studies
Hutson, Lorna - Feminism and Renaissance Studies
Lautréamont, Comte de - Maldoror and Poems
Winder, Robert - Bloody Foreigners
Welch. Evelyn – Shopping in the Renaissance
Levin, Harry – The Myth of the Golden Age in the Renaissance

Richardson, Brian - Printing, Writers and Readers in Renaissance Italy
Rublack, Ulinka - Reformation Europe

that'll do, pig

fuck my editing skills are for shite

Had a baby, got ill, and read zilch this year. Couldn't even manage to finish a Christie at Christmas. Good year tho

Can add 1/2 of Defying Gravity the Jordan Story and 3/4 of 5 Years Ahead of My Time since New Year has happened and I haven't finished them.
I think about 1/4 of Finton O'toole's book on Brexit too.
Probably need to add actually finishing books to reading resolutions if I didn’t already.

Lol every year I forget something itt - I finished Bodies of Summer by Martín Felipe Castagnet just the other day and still managed to omit it

My resolution is to read more - I started strong in 2019 but the year quickly went to shit and I was too busy and/or exhausted and/or drink to read much for a few months there - and to read longer books. Was given cancer ward for Xmas so will start there.

lol i started reading cancer ward a couple of years back and spent half the time thinking "what's this whiny goon actually making such a fuss about?"

then i got distracted by some nonsense i guess and misplaced it

All my time outside work until July was used almost entirely for catching up on sleep, and I forgot to start recording what I read until March, but here is my small list:

Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen
Brideshead Revisited - Evelyn Waugh
The Restraint of Beasts - Magnus Mills
The List - Moira Duff
The Picture of Dorian Gray - Oscar Wilde
The Hearing Trumpet - Leonora Carrington
Seeing Red - Lina Meruane
Is Everyone Hanging Out Without Me? - Mindy Kaling
How to Change Your Mind: The New Science of Psychedelics - Michael Pollan
The Governesses - Anne Serre
Your Duck is My Duck - Deborah Eisenberg
The Red Parts - Maggie Nelson
Second Thoughts - Wilfred Bion
Vile Bodies - Evelyn Waugh
Crimson - Niviaq Korneliussen
The Maintenance of Headway - Magnus Mills
Supper Club - Lara Williams
Jimmy Corrigan: The Smartest Kid On Earth - Chris Ware
Sleepless Nights - Elizabeth Hardwick
Whipping Girl - Julia Serano
Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich - Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
Conversations with Friends - Sally Rooney

Carrington, Maggie Nelson and Waugh leading the way out of that lot as favourites.

I didn't finish very much. Hoping next year will be more conducive to reading.

Alexandre Dumas – The Count of Monte-Cristo II
Marcel Proust – Sodom and Gomorrha
Fyodor Dostoevsky – The Karamazov Brothers
J. D. Salinger – The Catcher in the Rye
J. D. Salinger – Franny and Zooey
P. G. Wodehouse – Very Good, Jeeves
Henry James – Washington Square
Richard Adams – Watership Down
J. R. R. Tolkien – The Lord of the Rings
Marcel Proust – The Prisoner
Fyodor Dostoyevsky – Demons
Germaine Bree – Marcel Proust and Deliverance From Time
Alfred Lansing – Endurance
Larry McMurtry - Lonesome Dove

here you go. i'm reading more these days.

O'BRIEN at swim-two-birds [b]9.5 [so many glorious set-pieces but the bit where he goes for a bathroom break my god]
WILLIAMS stoner 7.5 [things that are boring but good amirite]
SPARK the prime of miss jean brodie 9 [she's a vicious one ffs, and all without hardly raising a finger]
GARNER the owl service 8 [the OG ancient-forces YA sensation]
BOLTON low country: brexit on the essex coast [was enjoying this but have left unfinished so no score assigned]
STANTON you're a bad man, mr gum 7.5 [kids' books are good books too!]
CARRINGTON the hearing trumpet 9.5 [seriously, you write ONE GODDAMN NOVEL and it's this good, what the hell leonora, you lived to like 94 and wrote one novel and it was this good, the cauldron scene fucking hell, also why hasn't this been made into a film yet, maybe the reprint will bring that about]
BOLANO 'the part about the critics' from 2666 [i give it 8 and promise to read 1 part a year henceforth]
MILLS the maintenance of headway 8.5 [BUS TIMETABLES THE NOVEL, the guy has the best punchlines in the business]
MILLS a cruel bird came to the nest and looked in 9.5 [might be his masterpiece, alongside restraint of beasts - a perfectly-imagined little comic realm with nothing extraneous and the most satisfyingly perplexing resolution]
SPARK four short stories compilation 7 [she's awesome innit, need to read more SPARK]
GUARESCHI don camillo's dilemma 8 [just the loveliest depictions of rural italian (dis)harmony; the devout traditionalists and godless commies as symbiotic frenemies; look it's hardly reinventing the wheel and at times a trifle retrograde but it's always wryly optimistic and i like that]
HARRISON all among the barley 9 [something from the contemporary bestseller shelves that, far from making me cringe at the superficial writing style, draws me in, weaves a gloriously stilted evocation of the lies that bind this country, and pulls the rug completely at the end - truly at the anti-pastoral vanguard of the pastoral explosion. only gets 9[/b] because i think she can do something even more ambitious]
COOPER the marbled swarm 8.5 [while gay s&m murder is the meat-stripped skeleton of this video nasty, there's something magical going on between the lines. not so much an unreliable narrator as one who's desperately trying to tell us what his truth really is, beyond all the transgression and the gore]
JACOB a late lark singing 9 [more of this below]
DARLING/BANERJEE weird maths 7 [a fine attempt to explain complex mathematics to laypeople and i love the tutor-with-student authorship, but a couple of things: it isn't for laypeople (i was able to understand most but certainly not all of it) and there's obviously more to say about all of its topics. a nice gateway]
ROBINSON housekeeping [in progress; no score assigned. v good so far though - really picks up after the first couple of chapters once the main dynamic is established, although the preamble serves a clear purpose]

despite the three 9.5s bringing that sweet timeless surreal brilliance, gonna award book of the year to NAOMI JACOB, whose A LATE LARK SINGING is the sort of wondrous discovery you can only make at a railway station's pick'n'mix bookshelf (see also: the SPARK compilation and the COOPER). JACOB was a born in yorkshire in 1884, grew up under victorian cultural duress, lived as a relatively open lesbian and wrote 70 books, of which this is a late work. it is little-known, but it does a few things i don't think i've seen before; it's in the lineage of dickens insofar as it's a morality tale about the hardships of a young victorian woman with a cruel husband and what appears to be a gallant wealthy admirer, but published in 1952 by someone who knew the dialect and culture intimately. it's able therefore to be quite daring, occasionally horrifying and brutally confrontational in its depiction of poverty & cruelty and its undisguised embrace of socialism & social justice. plus it's excellently-written, consistently exciting, and builds to an almighty moral quandary that threatens to devastate its protagonist right up until she is saved from having to make a decision by an unfortunate final-chapter cop-out that prevents me from assigning a yet higher score. and there's a (male) character who's obviously (but completely unspokenly) gay, which is nice & not really something many victorians not named oscar were keen to allude to. obviously utterly out of print but she is definitely the kind of semi-forgotten author i'd recommend hunting for

Bruno Schulz - The Street of Crocodiles
H. M. Hoover - Another Heaven, Another Earth
Leigh Brackett - Sea-Kings of Mars
Leigh Brackett - Queen of the Martian Catacombs
Doris Piserchia - Earthchild
Doris Piserchia - Spaceling
Doris Piserchia - Earth in Twilight
Doris Piserchia - Doomtime
Doris Piserchia - I, Zombie
Doris Piserchia - Blood County
William Sleator - House of Stairs
William Sleator - Singularity
Barry Hughart - Bridge of Birds
Ben Myers - The Gallows Pole
Daisy Ashford - The Young Visiters
Alan Dean Foster - Midworld
Alan Dean Foster - Nor Crystal Tears
Carsten Jensen - We, The Drowned
Barbara Newhall Follett - The House Without Windows
Robert Seethaler - A Whole Life
Horace Kephart - Our Southern Highlanders

Joshi, John Dickson Carr: A Critical Study
Knight, Slimer
Laing, The Cadaver of Gideon Wyck
Le Fanu, In a Glass Darkly
McDowell, Blackwater
McDowell, The Amulet
Accelerando, Charles Stross
Mammoth book of sf stories by women, various
Slow River, Nicola Griffith
Galactic Derelict, Andre Norton
Hellspark, Janet Kagan
Pinion, Elizabeth Bear
Leigh Brackett - Sea-Kings of Mars
Leigh Brackett - Queen of the Martian Catacombs
Doris Piserchia - Earthchild
Doris Piserchia - Spaceling
Doris Piserchia - Earth in Twilight
Doris Piserchia - Doomtime
Doris Piserchia - I, Zombie
Doris Piserchia - Blood County
Barry Hughart - Bridge of Birds
Alan Dean Foster - Midworld

Opinions? I want to read some of these someday.

Joshi, John Dickson Carr: A Critical Study -- worth reading if you are already a fan of Carr, but I'd recommend Greene's biography more highly

Knight, Slimer -- fun trashy paperback-original horror, historically interesting for its introduction of genetic engineering tropes that have since been endlessly recycled; a novelized screenplay

Laing, The Cadaver of Gideon Wyck -- 1930s pulp horror written in Golden Age mystery style; it has a few unusually gruesome elements, but I didn't find it memorable

Le Fanu, In a Glass Darkly -- an untouchable classic; Le Fanu is well-known but imo underrated; at his best, more frightening than M.R. James, and a far more innovative influence on subsequent horror

McDowell, Blackwater -- an essential six-book horror soap opera, refreshing as Southern Gothic that never fakes the Southern details; extra points for powerful feminist/queer vibes; a few terrifying scenes, but overall more weird than scary

McDowell, The Amulet -- ultra-black horror comedy that's mainly a succession of imaginative kills; good stuff, but if you want to read one volume of McDowell, a better choice is The Elementals, which is more frightening and closer to Blackwater in its queer/matriarchal themes

I was curious about the Carr study because Joshi can make baffling statements sometimes.

Gideon Wyck used to have a higher reputation but several recent readers have been disappointed, so I'm lowering its priority.

I love Le Fanu, he seems less formulaic and a better prose artist than James, but some say he has a higher percentage of dull stories. I'll see someday.

I wanted to start with McDowell's Elementals but somebody was championing Blackwater above all else recently.

Muriel Spark - The Driver's Seat
Muriel Spark - The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie
Muriel Spark - The Girls of Slender Means
Albert Camus - L'Étranger
Charlotte Bronté - Jane Eyre
Anita Brookner - Hotel du Lac
Dan Hancox - Inner City Pressure: The Story of Grime

My favourites were Jane Eyre and The Girls of Slender Means.

Tao Te Ching - Laozi 2/10

I love this rating.

my goodreads review was "i don't get it."

reminded taht I read the Jorma Kaukonen memoir Been So Long which I think must have been last year.
Would like to read similar from the other members, think I've read at least one of Grace's already.

Augusto Boal Theatre of the Oppressed too.

Enormously late but:
The Sailor Who Fell From Grace With the Sea - Yuki Mishima
Ulrich Haarburste's Novel of Roy Orbison Wrapped in Clingfilm - Ulrich Haarburste
Oranges Are Not The Only Fruit - Jeanette Winterson
Murmur - Will Eaves
The Spy and the Traior - Ben MacIntyre
White Jazz - James Ellroy
The Little Disturbances of Man - Grace Paley
Cromwell - CV Wedgwood
The Night Manager - John le Carré
The Bachelors - Muirel Spark
Mouthful of Birds - Samanta Schweblin
The Thirty Years War - CV Wedgwood
And the Wind Sees All - Gudmundur Andri Thorsson
I Think Therefore I Play - Andrea Pirlo
Maybe This Time - Alois Hotsching
The Tunnel - Ernesto Sabato
Chess - Stefan Zweig
The Continental Op - Dashiell Hammett
SPQR - Mary Beard
Reservoir 13 - Jon McGregor
The Line Becomes a River - Francisco Cantu