What did you read in 2021?

john le carre - tinker tailor soldier spy
john le carre - the honourable schoolboy
john le carre - smiley's people
eric ambler - epitaph for a spy
eric ambler - cause for alarm
nigel balchin - a sort of traitors
manning coles - drink to yesterday
john buchan - the power-house
john buchan - john macnab
john buchan - the dancing floor
john buchan - the gap the the curtain
john buchan - sick heart river
arthur conan doyle - a study in scarlet
arthur conan doyle - the sign of four
arthur conan doyle - the hound of the baskervilles
arthur conan doyle - the valley of fear
simenon - maigret meets a milord
simenon - maigret at the crossroads
simenon - maigret mystified
simenon - my friend maigret
simenon - maigret in court
simenon - to any lengths
simenon - the hatter's ghosts
sjöwall/wahlöö - roseanna
sjöwall/wahlöö - the man who went up in smoke
sjöwall/wahlöö - the fire engine that disappeared
sjöwall/wahlöö - the locked room
fassbinder - plays
arrabal - plays vol 3
jarry - selected works
roger shattuck - the banquet years
carl e. schorske - fin-de-siecle vienna
olof lagercrantz - strindberg
strindberg - a madman's defence
strindberg - by the open sea
strindberg - inferno/from an occult diary
swedenborg - the four doctrines
balzac - seraphita
gerard de nerval - selected writings
proust - jean santeuil
rilke - notebook of malte laurids brigge
denton welch - journals
denton welch - fragments of a life story
elizabeth taylor - complete short stories
christina stead - letty fox: her luck
christina stead - miss herbert (the suburban wife)
malcolm lowry - hear us o lord from heaven thy dwelling place
malcolm lowry - dark as the grave wherein my friend is laid
g.b. edwards - the book of ebenezer le page
dorothy carrington - granite island
d.h. lawrence - sea and sardinia
norman douglas - old calabria
norman douglas - south wind
compton mackenzie - sinister street
ford madox ford - the good soldier
henry james - the turn of the screw and other stories
charles dickens - the mystery of edwin dr00d

roger shattuck - the banquet years

I almost bought a copy of that today.

it was certainly worth the dollar i paid for it & provides a good survey of the period radiating out from the principle subjects but i remember there was something that bugged me about it, what that might have been i'm no longer quite sure (some of his critical opinions maybe?)

* = personal favorite

Jon Ronson - So You've Been Publicly Shamed
Jonathan Abrams - All the Pieces Matter: The Inside Story of The Wire
David Gerard - Attack of the 50 Foot Blockchain
Tressie McMillan Cottom - Thick and other essays
Grady Hendrix - Paperbacks from Hell
* Vincent Bevins - The Jakarta Method
John Berger - The Red Tenda of Bologna
* Lilian Faderman - The Gay Revolution
Dan Davies - Lying for Money
Bart D. Ehrman - Misquoting Jesus
* Robert Caro - The Power Broker
Frederick Crews - Freud: The Making of an Illusion (currently reading)

* Charles Portis - Masters of Atlantis
Jean Rhys - Wide Sargasso Sea
Magda Szabó - Abigail
Octavia E. Butler - Kindred
Martha Wells - All Systems Red
Jeff VanderMeer - Hummingbird Salamander (2021)
Jason Shiga - Demon
Harry Kemelman - Friday the Rabbi Slept Late
Paul Halter - The Seventh Hypothesis
Masako Togawa - The Master Key
Stefan Zweig - Chess
Daryl Gregory - The Album of Dr. Moreau (2021)
Mat Johnson - Pym
Nnedi Okorafor - Binti
Patricia Lockwood - No One Is Talking About This (2021)

I had a resolution to do 50 this year but I only made it to 27. No biggie.
goodreads page: https://www.goodreads.com/user/year_in_books/2021/5253329

Have been adding books I bought to goodreads as Currently Reading since I actually possess them with that intention in mind. Not total long finger like Want To Read or some such.
So may be able to work out which is what for a change.
Though maybe do need to swap to a non Amazon related equivalent.

no lime tangier's list is the only one posted so far that i've EVER read anything from.

and is curious because of the runs of similar authors. i've never tried that (although already have plans for a reread of the bridge trilogy early in new year)

JUst bought Kindred yesterday cos it was cheap in the local bookseller. Got Parable of teh Sower a coupll eof weeks ago. & read Dawn the first part of her Xenogenesis trilogy earlier this year. Have it asanomnibus of the trilogy. Foun dit really good.
So not sure why I didn't get further into the book. Got a load of Toni Morrison this year too but didn't finish anything

& had read teh Jon Ronson though don't think it was last year.

I highly recommend going on runs of the same author. I like getting into their world a bit.

Closing in at 140 books.

yeah I binged on Natalia Ginzburg in the spring, my discovery of the year.

If I find an author I really like I prefer to stretch out over years the pleasure of discovering all their works.

Halfway through my 77th of the year, if I find some short ones I might make 80.

I usually like to have some recovery time from an author after 1 or 2 books.

I'll probably hit 57, plus a dozen or so graphic novels. I might have gotten to 60, but foolishly picked up a thousand-page Robert Jordan book to end the year.

I'm on 57 too - with hopefully a couple more before the year is out. One consequence of getting the rona was more time to read.

I used to read exclusively one author when I was a nipper but can't even countenance the idea these days. For better or worse, I much prefer to read sporadically and diffusely.

Is higher than like 40 or so at the expense of other media or do you speed read and still get the full enjoyment etc.

I love it all.

I'm also a bachelor and fancy free.

I've never been able to fathom reading 50 books in a year, one a month is my minimum to feel good about my life, so this was a good reading year for me (after a slow start).

I read pretty widely and diffusely, too, but I think that with poetry— especially more innovative or experimental work— there's more of a reason to stay with a writer for a string of books. With a novel or book of short stories, a reader can usually get a reasonable idea of a writer's style, preoccupations, etc. With many poets, one book doesn't get the reader as far. But maybe that's just my experience.

with poetry I don't even count the volumes among the books I've read; I often read a dozen or so before deciding to continue.

I should say, too, that one of the reasons why my numbers are so high is that there are entries that are chapbooks— 10-20 page little things. I include them because sometimes, those little books add up to more than much longer books, in terms of impact and time spent reading.

Two small kids don't leave much time in the evening for any media but I read for on average maybe 45 minutes every night almost every night. I used to sometimes take a break between books, this is the first year I've pretty much read non stop.

I don't speed read but I am a quick reader. I might have sped read a couple of books that were rubbish but I to find out how they ended.

i often wake up to find i managed only a page and a half the night before.

mornings are more useful for me, and those 2-3am between sleeps times.

Mornings are my best, too— I can often read 30-50 pages of a novel during my breakfast and coffee time.

Poetry depends on the poems, really.

I should say, too, that one of the reasons why my numbers are so high is that there are entries that are chapbooks— 10-20 page little things. I include them because sometimes, those little books add up to more than much longer books, in terms of impact and time spent reading.

Most of my reading this year was rereads, which I don’t include in my total. Also read a lot of short stories (not included) and so basically my actual list of new reads is pretty short at this point, but I hope to read more next year.

The Blue Ticket - Sophie Mackintosh
There Are Little Kingdoms - Kevin Barry
Tomie- Junji Ito
Abandon The Old In Tokyo - Yoshihiro Tastsumi
Tokyo Girls Bravo - Kyoko Okazaki
The Water Cure - Sophie Mackintosh
Vox - Christina Dalcher
Normal Sheeple - Ross O’Carroll-Kelly (this run of reads and rereads inspired by this essay, which was one of the best things I read this year)
Operation Trumpsformation - Ross O’Carroll-Kelly
Braywatch - Ross O’Carroll-Kelly
Schmidt Happens - Ross O’Carroll-Kelly
The Midwich Cuckoos - John Wyndham
The Silent Woman - Janet Malcolm

I thought chapbooks were 25-75 pages. All the ones I've seen were.

Christine, they can be quite long, or quite short.

gyac, I don't really care what you think.

Seeing as how a 30 page chapbook could take my three days to get through and a whole novel could take me an afternoon, and with the same amount of time spent reading, idea that my list is "cheating" is bollocks.

Sorry, not clear in that post, but whatever.

Yes, your post offended me, because it's wrong.

another year of retirement, another ridiculous assortment

3 Nicholas Blake novels
6 Andrea Camilleri novels
4 John Dickson Carr novels
4 Donna Leon novels
18 Ross Macdonald novels (a reread of the Lew Archer series)
2 Giorgio Scerbanenco novels
3 Simenon novels (completing a reread of the Maigret series)
3 Manuel Vázquez Montalbán novels
2 Seishi Yokomizo novels

Bosco, Death Going Down
Boucher, Rocket to the Morgue
Bude, Death Makes a Prophet
Burton, The Secret of High Eldersham
Clarke, Childhood’s End
Crispin, The Moving Toyshop
Goethe (tr. Luke), Faust Part 2
Green, The Circular Study
Hendrix, The Southern Book Club’s Guide to Slaying Vampires
Jodorowsky & Moebius, The Incal
Joshi (ed.), American Supernatural Tales
King, Firestarter
Le Guin, The Lathe of Heaven
Lodwick, Brother Death
Matsumoto, A Quiet Place
Metcalfe, The Feasting Dead
Meyrink, The Golem
Millar, Fire Will Freeze
Millar, The Devil Loves Me
Priestley, Salt Is Leaving
Priestley, Saturn Over the Water
Shimada, Murder in the Crooked House
Stevens (Bennett), The Heads of Cerberus

Alter & Cosman, A Lion for Love: A Critical Biography of Stendhal
Barthes, Mythologies
Benshoff (ed.), A Companion to the Horror Film
Brotherstone & Lawrence, Scarred for Life: Volume One, The 1970s
Cohen, Pathways of Karate Development
Garth, Tolkien and the Great War
Green & Svith (eds.), Martial Arts in the Modern World
Hanegraaff (ed.), Dictionary of Gnosis & Western Esotericism
Hutton, The Pagan Religions of the Ancient British Isles
Hutton, The Triumph of the Moon
Joshi, Unutterable Horror: A History of Supernatural Fiction, vols. 1 and 2
Marcuse, One-Dimensional Man
Mol, Classical Fighting Arts of Japan
Nakasone & Mabuni, An Introduction to Karate-do
Popoff, Who Invented Heavy Metal?
Rée & Urmson (eds.), The Concise Encyclopedia of Western Philosophy, 3rd ed.
Said, Orientalism
Stendhal, Love
Stendhal, Memoirs of Egotism
Stendhal, Rome, Naples and Florence
Sullivan, Elegant Nightmares: The English Ghost Story from Le Fanu to Blackwood
Young & Schmidt, All Gates Open: The Story of Can

no lime Tangier - I love those books by Strindberg. Very underrated writer of prose.

I can't believe Table cheated with his list. Stand in the corner and think about what you've done.

Fwiw, I wish I *could* be less dissolute and more systematic in my reading (and listening) but I ping and bounce all over the bloody place and that seems to be that.

I'm currently at 30 or 31, but will wait until year-end to post my list. I'm hoping I can read maybe one more.

Arlie Russell Hochschild - Strangers In Their Own Land
Mark Yarm - Everbody Loves Our Town: An Oral History of Grunge
James Ellroy - The Big Nowhere
Yanis Varoufakis - Another Now
Mohsin Hamid - The Reluctant Fundamentalist
Roisin Kiberd - The Disconnect: A Personal Journey Through The Internet
Garth Ennis - Preacher: Book 5
Mark Harris - Pictures At A Revolution:Five Movies and The Birth of New Hollywood
Thomas Ligotti - My Work Is Not Yet Done
Anne Rice - The Vampire Lestat

Patrick Wyman - The Verge: Reformation, Renaissance and Forty Years That Shook The World 1490-1530

Lolly Willowes (O052) - Sylvia Townsend Warner
Pattern Recognition - William Gibson (R)
The Card - Arnold Bennett
Shift - Hugh Howey
The Owl Service - Alan Garner
Dark Entries - Robert Aickman (+)
Seeds Of Time - John Wyndham
Slade House - David Mitchell (+)
The Last Day of a Condemned Man - Victor Hugo
The Man Who Was Thursday - G K Chesterton
Autumn - Ali Smith
Bleak House - Charles Dickens (R)
Ramble Book - Adam Buxton
XX - Ryan Hughes
The Old Man And The Sea - Earnest Hemingway (+)
The Sea, The Sea - Iris Murdoch
The Sea Wolf - Jack London
Inverted World - Christopher Priest
The Story Of Your Life and Others - Ted Chiang
One Thousand Ships - Natalie Haynes
Amber Fury - Natalie Haynes
Alcestis - Euripides
Agamemnon - Aeschylus
Death’s End - Cixin Liu
Children Of Ruin - Adrian Tchaikovsky
Ella Minnow Pea - Mark Dunn
Driftglass - Sam Delany
The Road - Cormac McCarthy
Things Fall Apart - Chinua Achebe
24 Jigsaw - Ed McBain
The Monarch Of The Glen - Neil Gaiman
Black Dog - Neil Gaiman
Body In The Library - Agatha Christie
An Event In Autumn - Mankell
Under the Greenwood Tree (1872) - Thomas Hardy (+)
The Castle Of Otranto - Horace Walpole
O009 Nightmare Abbey - Thomas Love Peacock
1848 Mary Barton - Elizabeth Gaskell
Small Island - Andrea Levy
Accidental Tourist - Anne Tyler (R) (+)
The Honjin Murders - Seishi Yokomizo
Anna Of The Five Towns - Arnold Bennett (+)
Slaughterhouse V - Kurt Vonnegut (R)
Sketches By Boz - Charles Dickens

(R) = reread
(+) = favourites, probably

<3 thomas love peacock, though i seem to recall he doesn't come out particularly well from the portrait meredith painted of him in the egoist.

xposts: the strindbergs are a revisit in light of reading the very good lagercrantz biography. i should really read more of his plays than i have done, but it is his fiction/quasi-fiction that i find myself most drawn towards.

re the runs of similar authors mentioned above: i guess that's always been my method? whether genre, epoch, theme, whathaveyou... never really given it much consideration ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

like the Otranto i had nightmare abbey down as early horror and like the Otranto it was nothing of the sort so was mostly disappointed.

i do notice i had a few duplicate authors myself including 2 where i read them back to back.

ha, yeah: apart from some of his settings there is very little gothic/horror about tlp!

Remain in Love by Chris Frantz

The Lying Life of Adults by Elena Ferrante

Alright, Alright, Alright: The Oral History of Dazed and Confused by Melissa Maerz

A History of Bones by John Lurie

Please tell us about these!

Also, koogs meant to post about ed mcbain on here---my local library shop suddenly has a ton of him; how is he?

he pretty much invented the ensemble cast police thing like homicide and NYPD blue and each book reads like an episode of one of those (and i would love to see the TV adaptations they did in the 50s). they are of their time though, so sexist and racist language ahoy. I've been reading them mostly in order and this was about the 20th and i don't plan on stopping. nice quick reads too.

(the Martin Beck books that were posted, Roseanne etc, are the cool Swedish cousin of these)

Books:

Fatal Subtraction: How Hollywood Really Does Business - Pierce O'Donnell & Dennis McDougal 2/5
The Master and Margarita - Mikhail Bulgakov (Pevear & Volokhonsky translation) 4/5
The Wine Dark Sea - Robert Aickman 4/5
The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes.- Arthur Conan Doyle 4/5
The Forever War - Joe Haldeman 4/5
Thirteen - Steve Cavanagh 2/5
The Big Sleep - Raymond Chandler 4/5
Nicholas Ray: The Glorious Failure of an American Director - Patrick McGilligan 3/5
Cotters' England - Christina Stead 3/5
A Man Lay Dead - Ngaio Marsh 2/5
The Very Best of Fantasy & Science Fiction: Sixtieth Anniversary Anthology - Gordon Van Gelder (editor) 4/5
The Woman in the Window - A J Finn 1/5
The Big Goodbye: Chinatown and the Last Years of Hollywood - Sam Wasson 3/5
Catch 22 - Joseph Heller 4/5
Guardians of Time - Poul Anderson 3/5
Fair Warning - Michael Connelly 2/5
More Than Human - Theodore Sturgeon 3/5
England's Hidden Reverse - David Keenan 4/5
Elric - Michael Moorcock (Fantasy Masterpieces collection) 4/5
Red Harvest - Dashiel Hammett 4/5
Chaos: Charles Manson, the CIA and the Secret History of the Sixties - Tom O'Neill 4/5
Rosemary's Baby - Michael Newton (BFI Film Classics) 3/5
Rosemary's Baby - Ira Levin 4/5
Groovy Bob: The Life and Times of Robert Fraser - Harriet Vyner 4/5
At the Mountains of Madness and Other Novels of Terror - H P Lovecraft 3/5
Fall: The Mystery of Robert Maxwell - John Preston 3/5
The Law of Innocence - Michael Connelly 3/5
The Unlimited Dream Company - J G Ballard 4/5
The Hollow Man - John Dickson Carr 3/5
An English Murder - Cyril Hare 4/5

Graphic Novels:

Izngoud the Relentless - Goscinny & Tabary 3/5
izngoud Rockets to Stardom - Goscinny & Tabary 3/5
Essential Avengers 8 - Shooter, Byrne, Perez et al 3/5
Age of Ultron - Bendis & Hitch 3/5
Amazing Spider-Man: Election Day - Guggenheim, Romita Jr et al 2/5
Captain America: Reborn - Brubaker et al 3/5
Captain America Vol 2 - Brubaker & Davis 3/5
Iznogoud and the Jigsaw Turk - Goscinny & Tabary 3/5
Izngoud's Fairy Tale - Goscinny & Tabary 3/5
Iznogoud's Nightmares - Goscinny & Tabary 3/5
Iznogoud I Want to be Caliph Instead of the Caliph - Goscinny & Tabary 1/5
Daredevil: The Devil, Inside and Out - Brubaker & Lark 4/5
Fantastic Four: Unstable Molecules - Sturm, Davis & Sikoryak 3/5
The Invaders: The Eve of Destruction -Stern, Manley et al 2/5
The Invincible Iron Man: The Five Nightmares - Fraction & Larocca 2/5
Ultimate Spider-man 14: Warriors - Bendis & Bagley 3/5
The Rise and Fall of the Trigan Empire 1 - Butterworth and Lawrence 4/5
Catwoman: Trail of the Catwoman - Brubaker & Cooke 4/5
Catwoman: Relentless - Brubaker, Stewart & Pulido 3/5
Morbius Epic Collection 1: The Living Vampire - Gerber, McGregor, Thomas, Conway, Kane et al 3/5
Ultimate X-Men 7: Blockbuster - Bendis & Finch 3/5
Ultimate x-Men 8: New Mutants - Bendis & Finch 3/5
Ultimate Spider-man 20: And His Amazing Friends - Bendis & Immonen 3/5
Ultimate Spider-man: Ultimatum - Bendis & Immonen 3/5
The Rise and Fall of the Trigan Empire 2 - Butterworth, Lawrence & Embleton 4/5
Ultimate Spider-man: Death of Spider-man - Bendis & Bagley 3/5
Ultimate Spider-man: United We Stand, Divided We Fall - Bendis, Marquez, Larraz 3/5
Spider-Men - Bendis & Pichelli 3/5
Uncanny X-Men: The Extremists - Brubaker, Larocca, Keith 2/5
Pulp - Brubaker & Phillips 3/5
Immortal Hulk 1: Or is he Both? - Ewing, Bennett et al 4/5 (UK collection)
Manhunter Deluxe Edition - Goodwin & Simonson 4/5

The Old Man And The Sea - Earnest Hemingway (+)
The Sea, The Sea - Iris Murdoch
The Sea Wolf - Jack London

You should've added The Sea by John Banville in the middle here.

(xp to koogs)

ha, yeah, i said as much at the time. but a) it was too expensive and too unknown to do that for the small amount of lols and b) i tend do blocks of a month and the 3 filled the month as it was, the middle one being an especially slow read.

ira Levin has a good hit rate i think. his trick of putting the twist ending in the middle has served him well, it lets him write about the fallout of that for another 100 pages. i remember being amazed by the twist in A Kiss Before Dying.

the thing i remember of Rosemary's Baby is all the potential names they keep using for the unborn baby - andyordebbie

I read Michael Newton's new BFI monograph on Rosemary's Baby (slightly disappointing after his brilliant entry on Kind Hearts and Coronets) and then went back to the film, and then read the novel for the first time. The film really is one of the most faithful adaptations of a book, ever - nothing is added, and almost nothing taken away (just a tiny amount of non-essential backstory, really). The masterstroke of Rosemary's Baby the novel (and by extension the film) is the modern-day, even 'modish' setting, and the way that the Satanists are old and uncool - and lethal.

Agree that Levin's hit rate is pretty astonishing, and that the big twist in A Kiss Before Dying is all-time, although I can't find a good word to be said for his very late sequel to Rosemary's Baby.

key:
*= re-read
†= chapbook

Already finishe danothe rcouple of books, or did i say that and starteda few more.
HIt town yesterday and picked up a few more interlibrary loans
notably
Anita Loos Gentlemwen Prefer blondes/ Buit marry Brunettes
really hoping to read a load of her. I think i just missed something in a charity shop cos I didn't fully know the name.
& her introduction to this reads really well so I think I will be looking for her much later memoirs

Nell Irvin painter
The History of teh White People
Who I need to consciously take on board is a black female writer called Nell not a white patriarchal guy called Neil but maybe that's the state of my head last night and i will be more aware of. So far been reading about Greek takes on the Scythians

There ain't No Black IN the Union Jack Paul gilroy

Light Years - James Salter
As I Lay Dying - William Faulkner
Upgrade Soul - Ezra Claytan Daniels
Cider with Rosie - Laurie Lee
The Black Spider - Jeremias Gotthelf
Lake Success - Gary Shteyngart
Europe in Winter - Dave Hutchinson
The Stories of Breece D'J Pancake - Breece D'J Pancake
Winter Mythologies and Abbots - Pierre Michon
Invisible Man - Ralph Ellison
All Among The Barley - Melissa Harrison
The Lost City of Z: A Tale of Deadly Obsession in the Amazon - David Grann
The Flower Beneath the Foot: Being a Record of the Early Life of St. Laura de Nazianzi - Ronald Firbank
Into Thin Air: A Personal Account of the Mt. Everest Disaster - Jon Krakauer
*The Ballad of Peckham Rye - Muriel Spark
Groupie - Jenny Fabian
Pietr the Latvian (Maigret #1) - Georges Simenon
Close to the Knives: A Memoir of Disintegration - David Wojnarowicz
The Post-Office Girl - Stefan Zweig
The Professor's House - Willa Cather
7 Gothic Tales - Isak Dinesen
The Story of a New Name (The Neapolitan Novels #2) - Elena Ferrante
Eeeee Eee Eeee - Tao Lin
Ghachar Ghochar - Vivek Shanbhag
Bring Up the Bodies - Hilary Mantel
Mood Indigo - Boris Vian
The Unseen - Roy Jacobsen
Black Swan Green - David Mitchell
The Hypocrisy of Disco - Clane Hayward
Low Life: Lures and Snares of Old New York - Luc Sante
Great Granny Webster - Caroline Blackwood
Chronicles: Volume One - Bob Dylan
I Capture the Castle - Dodie Smith
The Invention of Morel - Adolfo Bioy Casares
Among the Thugs - Bill Buford
The Towers of Trebizond - Rose Macaulay
The Night of Wenceslas - Lionel Davidson
True Blue: The Oxford Boat Race Mutiny - Daniel Topolski
Regeneration - Pat Barker
The Assistant - Robert Walser
Be Not Content: A Subterranean Journal - William J. Craddock
The Driver's Seat - Muriel Spark
Pnin - Vladimir Nabokov
Enter Naomi: SST, L.A. and All That... - Joe Carducci
The Hearing Trumpet - Leonora Carrington
The Street - Mordecai Richler
The Doorman - Reinaldo Arenas
Take a Girl Like You - Kingsley Amis
Madness Has a Moment and Then Vanishes Before Returning Again - Benjamin DeVos
Peanuts Dell Archive - Charles M. Schulz
What Hetty Did - J.L. Carr
Post Office - Charles Bukowski
Bruno, Chief of Police (Bruno, Chief of Police, #1) - Martin Walker
Wind, Sand and Stars (Harbrace Modern Classics 18) - Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
Clemmie - John D. MacDonald
Alone in Berlin - Hans Fallada
Yellow Negroes and Other Imaginary Creatures - Yvan Alagbé
Joy Division's Unknown Pleasures (33 1/3 Book 9) - Chris Ott
The Overstory - Richard Powers
King, Queen, Knave - Vladimir Nabokov
The Atrocity Exhibition - J.G. Ballard
The Left Hand of Darkness (Hainish Cycle, #4) - Ursula K. Le Guin
Just Kids - Patti Smith
A Chelsea Concerto - Frances Faviell
Jacket Weather - Mike DeCapite
Jernigan - David Gates
*Living - Henry Green
Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov
Like Punk Never Happened: Culture Club and the New Pop - Dave Rimmer
Sexing the Cherry - Jeanette Winterson
West Coast Blues - Jacques Tardi and Jean-Patrick Manchette
The Mad and the Bad - Jean-Patrick Manchette
Peter and the Wolves - Adele Bertei
Le Grand Meaulnes - Alain-Fournier
Dancer From The Dance - Andrew Holleran
*By Night in Chile - Roberto Bolaño
Heads and Straights: The Circle Line - Lucy Wadham
Clandestine In Chile: The Adventures Of Miguel Littin - Asa Zatz
The Road into the Open - Arthur Schnitzler
England, Their England - A.G. Macdonell

Good, pandemic-assisted year. Try to have at least one "monument" (last year: Gravity's Rainbow) but didn't happen this year. Currently: Nan Shepherd's The Living Mountain and Jacobs' The Death and Life of Great American Cities.

After not reading much at all in 2020, I made up for it a bit in 2021 with a lot of escapism

Finished:

Natalie Zina Walschots - Hench
Erin Hunter - Warriors: Fire and Ice
Jenny Odell - How to Do Nothing
Gabor Mate - Scattered
Erin Hunter - Warriors: Forest of Secrets
Erin Hunter - Warriors: Rising Storm
Tiffany Pitts - Parallax
Martha Wells - All Systems Red
Martha Wells - Artificial Condition
Martha Wells - Rogue Protocol
Martha Wells - Exit Strategy
Martha Wells - Network Effect
Violet McNeal - Four White Horses and a Brass Band
Philip Pullman - The Secret Commonwealth
Michaelangelo Matos - Can't Slow Down
Jonathan Meiburg - A Most Remarkable Creature
Nancy Mace - The 36-hour Day
Rose Szabo - What Big Teeth
Oliver James - Contented Dementia
David Hill - The Vapors
Kevin Wilson - The Family Fang
Martha Wells - Fugitive Telemetry
Elissa Altman - Motherland
Russell Barkley - When an Adult You Love Has ADHD
Anita Robertson - ADHD & Us
Connie Willis - Take a Look At the Five and Ten
John Steinbeck - Cannery Row*
John Steinbeck - Sweet Thursday*
Jen Gunter - The Menopause Manifesto
Haven Kimmel - She Got Up Off the Couch
Edward Hallowell - Driven to Distraction
Arielle Schwartz - A Practical Guide to Complex PTSD
KC Davis - How to Keep House While Drowning
Russell Barkley - Taking Charge of Adult ADHD
Haven Kimmel - The Used World
Naomi Kritzer - Catfishing on CatNet
Naomi Kritzer - Chaos on CatNet
Amanda Montell - Wordslut
K.J. Parker - Sixteen Ways to Defend a Walled City
Francine Shapiro - Getting Past Your Past
Adam Chandler - Drive-Thru Dreams
Melissa Orlov - The ADHD Effect on Marriage
Steven Petrow - Stupid Things I Won't Do When I Get Old
Grady Hendrix - The Southern Book Club's Guide to Slaying Vampires
Rachel Miller - The Art of Showing Up
Grady Hendrix - My Best Friend's Exorcism
Jackson Galaxy - Total Cat Mojo
Harriet Lerner - Why Won't You Apologize
Shankar Vedantam - The Hidden Brain
Naomi Kritzer - Little Free Library
Grady Hendrix - The Final Girl Support Group
Carmen Maria Machado - In the Dream House
Jackson Galaxy - Cat Daddy
Nick Harkaway - The Gone-Away World
Amaryllis Fox - Life Undercover
Grady Hendrix - Horrorstor
Amanda Montell - Cultish
Jimmy Carter - The Virtues of Aging
Laura Parnell - Tapping In
Mary Roach - Fuzz
Grady Hendrix - Paperbacks from Hell
Deborah Copaken - Ladyparts
Stephen Porges - The Pocket Guide to Polyvagal Theory
Calvin Kasulke - Several People Are Typing
K Eason - How Rory Thorne Destroyed the Multiverse
Crystal Fleming - How to Be Less Stupid about Race
Grady Hendrix - We Sold Our Souls
Nedra Tawwab - Set Boundaries, Find Peace
Alan Floyd - Vagus Nerve and Polyvagal Theory
Candace Gorham - On Death, Dying, and Disbelief
Catherynne Valente - Comfort Me with Apples
Richard Powers - The Overstory
Tove Jansson - The True Deceiver
J B MacKinnon - The Day the World Stops Shopping
Louise Fitzhugh - Harriet the Spy

Stalled:

Gary Taubes - The Case for Keto
Alison Weir - Mistress of the Monarchy
Kevin Roose - Futureproof
Becky Chambers - The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet
China Mieville - Three Moments of Explosion
Naomi Kritzer - Cat Pictures Please and other stories
Tara Branch - Radical Compassion
Faith Harper - Unfuck Your Brain
Ken Wilbur - The Spectrum of Consciousness

Bailed:

Linda Abbit - The Conscious Caregiver
Arielle Schwartz - The Post-Traumatic Growth Guidebook
Clayton Christensen - How Will You Measure Your Life
Russ Harris - The Confidence Gap

*reread

"The Road into the Open - Arthur Schnitzler"

Didn't know this was a novel - how was it?

I thought it was a great read, capturing Viennese twilight culture, antisemitism and debates within the Jewish community with nuance. Really effective at creating a tone for the period. The dilettante aristocrat composer protagonist is unsympathetic, but well drawn.

Thanks.

JANUARY

Ali Smith – Winter
Robert V. Remini – Andrew Jackson and the Course of American Freedom
Graham Greene – The Comedians
Sylvia Plath – The Bell Jar
John Le Carré – A Legacy of Spies
Shakespeare – Cymbeline
Garth Greenwell – Cleanness
Colin Tóibin – All a Novelist Needs
David S. Reynolds – Abe: Abraham Lincoln in His Times
Natalia Ginzburg – Happiness, As Such
Natalia Ginzburg – Valentine and Sagittarius
Daniel Mendelsohn – An Odyssey: A Father, a Son, and an Epic

FEBRUARY

Muriel Spark – The Bachelors
Hilary Holladay – The Power of Adrienne Rich: A Biography
Ali Smith – Spring
Wallace Shawn – The Designated Mourner
Karl Ove Knausgaard – My Struggle: Book Four
Lewis L. Gould – The First Modern Clash over Federal Power: Wilson versus Hughes in the Presidential Election of 1916
Naguib Mahfouz – The Thief and the Dogs
Scott Eyman – Cary Grant: A Brilliant Disguise
Melissa Maerz – Alright, Alright, Alright: The Oral History of Richard Linklater’s Dazed and Confused
Elizabeth Bowen – Friends and Relations
Craig Fehrman – Author in Chief: The Untold Story of Our Presidents and the Books They Wrote

MARCH

Walter Kempowski – Marrow and Bone
Jean Stafford – The Collected Stories of Jean Stafford
Virginia Woolf – The Voyage Out
Ursula K. Le Guin – The Lathe of Heaven
Curzio Malaparte – The Skin
Tom Paulin – Minotaur
David Michaelis – Eleanor
William Gass – On Being Blue: A Philosophical Inquiry
Beverly Cleary – Dear Mr. Henshaw…
* Jean Stafford – The Mountain Lion

APRIL

Robert Elder – John Calhoun
* Percy Bysshe Shelley – The Cenci
John Banville – Snow
Octavia Butler – Kindred
Grahame Greene – The Ministry of Fear
Mark Harris – Mike Nichols: A Life
Michel Foucault – The Uses of Pleasure
Damon Galgut – Arctic Summer
Roberto Bolaño – Distant Star

MAY

Edward White – The Twelve Lives of Alfred Hitchcock
Anthony Trollope – The Warden
Liva Baker – The Justice from Beacon Hill: The Life and Times of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.
Susan Howe – My Emily Dickinson
* E.M. Forster – Maurice
Thomas Bernhardt – The Loser
Annie Zaleski – Rio
* F. Scott Fitzgerald – The Great Gatsby
Octavia Butler – Fledgling
Graham Greene – The Honorary Consul
* Shakespeare – Macbeth
Natalia Ginzberg – The Heat of the City
Joel Silbey – Party over Section: The Rough and Ready Presidential Election of 1848
Thomas Mann – Reflections of a Nonpolitical Man

JUNE

Teju Cole – Open City
Elizabeth Taylor – A Wreath of Roses
John Le Carré – A Most Wanted Man
Edith Wharton – The Touchstone
Michael Holt – By One Vote: The Disputed Presidential Election of 1876
Richard Greene – The Unquiet Englishman: A Life of Graham Green
Vladimir Nabokov – The Real Life of Sebastian Knight
James Lacey – The Washington War: FDR’s Inner Circle and the Politics of Power That Won World War II
Shakespeare – Henry IV, Part Two
Ralph Ellison – Juneteenth
Iris Murdoch – The Black Prince
Charles Mann – 1491: New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus

JULY

Bill Goldstein – The World Broke in Two
Damon Galgut – The Promise
Lauren Berlant – Cruel Optimism
* Edith Wharton – The Custom of the Country
Jane Bowles – Two Serious Ladies
Sue Roe – The Private Lives of the Impressionists
Neil McCormick (editor) – U2 by U2
Paul Bowles – The Spider’s House
Serhii Plokhy – Nuclear Folly: A New History of the Cuban Missile Crisis
Jeremy D. Popkin – A New World Begins: The History of the French Revolution
Karin Roffman – The Songs We Know Best: John Ashbery’s Early Life
Ronald Firbank – Valmouth
J.C. Ackerley – We Think the World of You

AUGUST

Ruth Harris – Dreyfus: Politics, Emotion, and the Scandal of the Century
Émile Zola – Thérèse Raquin
Jonathan M. Metzl – Death by Whiteness: How the Politics of Racial Resentment Is Killing America’s Heartland
Leonard Gardner – Fat City
Colm Tóibín – The Heather Blazing
V.S. Pritchett – The Gentle Barbarian: The Life and Work of Turgenev
Elena Ferrante – The Lost Daughter
Donald A. Richie – Electing FDR: The New Deal Campaign of 1932
Stephen Kinzer – Overthrow: America’s Century of Regime Change
Sally Keane – Good Behaviour
Jon Savage – Teenage

SEPTEMBER

William Faulkner – Go Down, Moses (1942)
Elizabeth Taylor – Mrs. Palfrey at the Claremont (1971)
A.J. Baime – The Accidental President (2008)
Paul Mariani – The Broken Tower: The Life of Hart Crane (1999)
Yuko Mishima – Confessions of a Mask (1949)
Diane Middlebrook – Her Husband: Hughes and Plath – A Marriage (2004)
Gail Crowther: Three-Martini Afternoons at the Ritz: The Rebellion of Sylvia Plath & Anne Sexton (2021)
* Saul Bellow – Herzog (1964)
Dorothy B. Hughes – In a Lonely Place (1947)
Charles Portis – True Grit (1971)
William di Canzio – Alec (2021)
Robert S. Levine – The Failed Promise: Reconstruction, Frederick Douglass, and the Impeachment of Andrew Johnson (2021)

OCTOBER

Gordon Merrick – One for the Gods
Jay Wright – The Presentable Act of Reading Absence
Joy Williams – The Quick and the Dead
Joy Williams – Escapes
Colm Tóibín – The Magician
Janet Malcolm – Forty-one False Starts: Essays on Artists and Writers
Ingeborg Bachmann – Malina
Clinton Heylin – Despite the System: Orson Welles Versus the Hollywood Studios
Jefferson Cowie – Stayin’ Alive: The 1970s and the Last Days of the Working Class
Robert Walser – The Tanners
Adam Winkler – We the Corporations

NOVEMBER

Jefferson Cowie – The Great Exception: The New Deal and the Limits of American Politics
Rachel Kushner – The Strange Case of Rachel K
Rachel Kushner – The Flamethrowers
John Hollander – Reflections on Espionage
* Toni Morrison – Beloved
Elena Ferrante – The Lying Lives of Adults
Christina Stead – Miss Herbert (The Suburban Wife)
Allen C. Guelzo – Robert E. Lee: A Life
Rebecca West – Henry James
Geoffrey O’Brien – Sonata for Jukebox
Dwight MacDonald – Against the American Grain
J.D. Salinger – Franny and Zooey
Robert H. Jackson – That Man: An Insider’s Portrait of Franklin D. Roosevelt

DECEMBER

Gabriel Garcia Marquez – Clandestine in Chile
Shirley Hazzard – The Evening of the Holiday
Tony Judt – Ill Fares the Land
Shirley Hazzard – The Transit of Venus
Susan Butler – Roosevelt and Stalin: Portrait of a Partnership
Anna Kavan – Ice
Rebecca West – Black Lamb and Grey Falcon
Ada Ferrer – Cuba: An American Story
Adolfo Bioy Casares – The Invention of Morel
bell hooks – Here We Stand
Eve Babitz – Slow Days, Fast Company
* Ernest Hemingway – The Garden of Eden
Marc Morris – The Anglo-Saxons

What did you think of Franny and Zooey, Alfred?

Me:

Mort
Piranesi
Sometimes therapy is Awkward
Bee quest
The Year of Reading Dangerously
Me - Elton John
Big Sky
Why Therapy Works
Transcription
Miss Pym Disposes (gave up)
Ascension - Oliver Harris
How to change everything - Naomi Klein
A Wizard of Earthsea
Life the universe and everything
The Pigeon Tunnel
Tombs of Atuan
First love - Riley
Harriet the Sspy
Thursday Night murder club
The shadow of the torturer
Beautiful world where are you
The Long Secret
Weirdstone of Brisingamen
The High Window
The Man Who Died Twice

Read less this year because of being a stay-at-home dad with a toddler, migraines, and doing the 2nd year of an MSc (the essays, the essays)

Highlights:
- Probably the Elton John biog and the Harriet the Spy books
- Being impressed by Kate Atkinson and Gwendolyn Riley and excited to read more of their work - I wasn't expecting much from either
- Finally reading and loving Le Guin
- Regretting to inform you that Richard Osman's books are quite entertaining

What did you think of Franny and Zooey, Alfred?

― dow, Sunday, January 2, 2022 6:07 PM

A genuine surprise.

these 100+ lists are both impressive and scary.

A genuine surprise.

Ah! How so? (C'mon, spill.)

I've often seen Alfred's impressive cranium on WDYLL threads, so his lengthy list merely serves as an unnecessary confirmation of the self-evident. I shudder to think what breathtaking marvels would be revealed if James Morrison were to post to WDYLL!

I also have a pretty large head, fwiw.

Jorgenrique Adoum - Prepoems in PostSpanish
Rabih Alameddine - Koolaids
Sinan Antoon - The Baghdad Eucharist
Amiri Baraka - The System of Dante's Hell
Dodie Bellamy - Bee Reaved
Hassan Blasim - The Corpse Exhibition
Anne Boyer - My Common Heart
Molly Brodak - Bandit: A Daughter's Memoir
Julie Carr - 100 Notes on Violence
Selected Poems and Prose of Paul Celan
Mary Crow - Borders
Peter Culley - The Age of Briggs & Stratton
Peter Culley - Hammertown
Kevin Davies - The Golden Age of Paraphernalia
Samuel Delany - Dhalgren (reread)
Jim Dicksinson - I'm Just Dead, I'm Not Gone
Ge Fei - The Invisibility Cloak
Sesshu Foster - City of the Future (reread)
Sesshu Foster - Atomik Aztex
Federico Garcia Lorca - Selected Poems 
Andre Gide - Urien's Voyage
Johannes Göransson - Poetry Against All
Judy Grahn - love belongs to those who do the feeling
Linda Gregg - The Sacraments of Desire
Dorothea Grossman - Museum of Rain
Peter Handke - Three by Handke
Jim Harrison - Song of Unreason
Jim Harrison - The Essential Poems
Fanny Howe - The Quietist
Fanny Howe - Radical Love: 5 Novels
The Selected Poetry of Vicente Huidobro
Zora Neale Hurston - Their Eyes Were Watching God
Kazuo Ishiguro - Klara and the Sun
Denis Johnson - The Name of the World
Denis Johnson - Train Dreams
Ronald Johnson - The Book of the Green Man
Hettie Jones - Drive
John Keene - Annotations
William Kennedy - Ironweed
John Koethe - rotc kills
Eugene Lim - Search History
Eugene Lim - Dear Cyborgs
Kelly Link - Get in Trouble: Stories
Bernadette Mayer - Sonnets
Joyelle McSweeney - Flet
Semezdin Mehmedinovic - My Heart
Dunya Mikhail - The War Works Hard
Sayaka Murata - Earthlings
Eileen Myles - Not Me
Alice Notley - Negativity's Kiss
Michael Ondaatje - The Collected Works of Billy the Kid
Celia Paul - Self Portrait
Marge Piercy - Woman on the Edge of Time
Sam Riviere - Safe Mode
Camille Roy - Honey Mine
Frederick Seidel - Going Fast
Danzy Senna - Where Did You Sleep Last Night?
Choi Seungja - Phone Bells Keep Ringing for Me
Gary Snyder - Earth House Hold
Magda Szabo - The Door
Jean Valentine - Door in the Mountain: New and Collected Poems, 1965-2003
Ocean Vuong - On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous
Nikki Wallschlaeger - Waterbaby
Nikki Wallschlaeger - Pizza and Warfare
Simone White - Dear Angel of Death
John Edgar Wideman - The Homewood Trilogy

(inclusion not necessarily an endorsement, of course)

Have already finished 3 or 4 books since teh start of teh year and started 4 or 5.
Will see if that goes anywhere.
But some great stuff anyway, more bell hooks, Anita Loos who I hadn't read before and think I missed a book by recently which now grates, George Schuyler who is amazingly against the tide and stuff.

No One Is Talking About This, Patricia Lockwood
War, So Much War, Merce Rodoreda
True Believer: The Rise and Fall of Stan Lee, Abraham Riesman
How Much of Thee Hills Is Gold, C. Pam Zhang
The Seven Veils of Seth, Ibrahim al-Koni
Conversations in Sicily, Elio Vittorini
Fever Dream, Samantha Schweblin
Eleven Sooty Dreams, Manuela Draeger
Compass, Mathias Énard
A House and Its Head, Ivy Compton-Burnett
The Invisibility Cloak, Ge Fei
Kin, Miljenko Jergovic
In Memory of Memory, Maria Stepanova
Gold, Frankincense, and Myrrh, Slobodan Novak
A Girl's Story, Annie Ernaux
A Castle in Romagna, Igor Stiks
Götz and Meyer, David Albahari
Hammers on Bone, Cassandra Khaw
A Private Venus, Giorgio Scerbananco
The Cyclist Conspiracy, Svetislav Basara
Croatian War Nocturnal, Spomenka Stimek
Where There's Love, There's Hate, Adolfo Bioy Casares & Silvina Ocampo
EEG, Dasa Drndic
Voices in the Evening, Natalila Ginsburg
L'Amante Anglaise, Marguerite Duras
Nothing But Blackened Teeth, Cassandra Khaw
Between Life and Death, Yoram Kaniuk
The Left Hand of Darkness, Ursula K. LeGuin
I Belong to Vienna, Anna Goldenberg
A Woman's Story, Annie Ernaux
Fires on the Plain, Shohei Ooka
Nazi Literature in the Americas, Roberto Bolaño
My Heart, Semezdin Mehmedinovic
Phone Bells Keep Ringing for Me, Choi Seunga
A Heritage and Its History, Ivy Compton-Burnett
Vanish in an Instant, Margaret Millar

Don't know most of those authors, but!---Ivy Compton-Burnett (twice), Adolfo Bioy Casares & Silvina Ocampo, Ursula K. LeGuin (and one of her stone cold classics at that), Roberto Bolaño, and Margaret Millar to boot (even Patricia Lockwood, whom I don't think I've ever read, but whose name somehow attached itself to a startling woman of authoritah in a recent dream)---that's my kind of list already---better check the other items on it---

I need to read more Duras too.

I almost bought the Ocampo last week! NYRB rock.

dow, I strongly recommend Annie Ernaux. She's a memoirist. I avoid memoirs! But she is genuinely special -- there is something unrelenting in her self-examination. And addictive. I expect to read a bunch more of hers.

Intriguing---will def. check her out, thanks.

The Jakarta Method - Vincent Bevins
The Sense of an Ending - Julian Barnes
Nimona - Noelle Stevenson
1974 - David Peace
The Pear Field - Nana Ekvtimishvili
No One Is Talking About This - Patricia Lockwood
Lying For Money - Dan Davies
Nordic Fauna - Andrea Lundgren
Shuggie Bain - Douglas Stewart
Summer Lightning - PG Wodehouse
The Bloody Chamber - Angela Carter
Age of Anger - Pankaj Mishra
Yesterday - Juan Emar
Sea of Ink - Richard Weihe
Love's Work - Gillian Rose
Darryl - Jackie Ess
The Hothouse by the East River - Muriel Spark
Tyll - Daniel Kehlmann
Novels in Three Lines - Félix Fénéon

Of this the best were No One Is Talking About This, Darryl and the Jakarta Method. The worst by some distance was Shuggie Bain, a however many hundred page book about a boy who loves his mammy where we learn nothing about the boy other than that he loves his mammy.

I don’t know how I manage to do this every year but I was weighing out some brewer’s yeast & suddenly remembered that last year I read & forgot to log:

Merlin Sheldrake - Entangled Life

& my brain would not let me let this go uncorrected

A week into 22 and I have not read a page so far, hopefully I get some sweet covid isolation time at some point

i didn't think shuggie bain was *that* bad but it wasn't great

I love both Marguerite Duras and Paul Celan! Joan Crawford Loves Chachi that's an impressive list with many writers I've been meaning to read, especially In Memory of Memory, Maria Stepanova.

calumerio, nice to see someone else read Rose. Glad you liked Jackie's book and the Jakarta Method, too.

The Mabinogion (tr. Sioned Davies)
Arthur Machen - The Great God Pan
Clark Ashton Smith - Zothique
Clark Ashton Smith - Poseidonis
Arkady and Boris Strugatsky - Roadside Picnic
Kir Bulychev - Alice: The Girl From Earth
Kir Bulychev - Half a Life and Other Stories
Kir Bulychev - Gusliar Wonders
Yevgeny Zamyatin - We
George Orwell - Nineteen Eighty-Four
Aldous Huxley - Brave New World
Kobo Abe - Inter Ice Age 4
Kate Wilhelm - Where Late the Sweet Birds Sang
Ruth Park - Playing Beatie Bow
Ruth Park - The Harp in the South
Ruth Park - Poor Man's Orange
Bertrand Russell - What I Believe
Bertrand Russell - Why I Am Not a Christian
Joe Hill & Gabriel Rodríguez - Locke & Key: Keys to the Kingdom
Joe Hill & Gabriel Rodríguez - Locke & Key: Clockworks
Joe Hill & Gabriel Rodríguez - Locke & Key: Alpha & Omega
Benjamin Myers - Under the Rock (put down halfway through, will finish at some point)

I remember L&J being really solid and wishing there were more good, long, discrete contained stories like that (ignoring the rubbish spin offs)

Locke and key I mean.

I watched teh tv series last month, has been a while since I ead the comics which I enjoyed at teh time and was one reason I watched teh tv show. Think I continued cos I started. Don't think I enjoyed as much as the comic anyway. Might give tehm another look if I can find the fiels sinced i read it on cbr.

Love's Work was good, but demanded more of me than I was able to give, intellectually and emotionally. I will go back to it.

Shuggie Bain was super bad, a relentless honking airhorn of "we were poor... but dammit we were unhappy too", in sore need of two more drafts and an editor. I did do an actual lol at a very minor character being called "Kier Weir", though, a welcome absurdity.

I don't think I have ever actually *liked* a protagonist in a book as much as I liked Darryl.

Anyway, I will continue lurking here, pinching ideas from youse all, though this year's resolution is read the books that I bought in 2021, rather than buy any new ones.

this year's resolution is read the books that I bought in 2021, rather than buy any new ones.

I tried that a couple of years ago and, of course, failed. It was helpful, though. It did encourage me to cut back on purchases and clear some of the backlog of unread books, so on the whole I'm glad I made the resolution and consider it a success.

unregistered- how are the Kir Bulychev books?

unregistered- how are the Kir Bulychev books?

great! I'm not too well-versed in Soviet SFF, but I'd recommend all three of those Bulychev collections. the biggest highlight for me was the title story of Half a Life. at heart it's a narrative of a woman's acts of self-sacrifice as she comes to empathize with the weird sentient beings who are imprisoned with her on an alien research vessel. a little mawkish, maybe, but there's a compelling interplay between the sentimental and the cynical as a group of emotionally stunted astronauts struggle to make sense of the woman's story and the now abandoned vessel

I also really like the cycle of short stories that makes up the second half of Gusliar Wonders, in which a Russian village becomes an unlikely point of first contact with various aliens and wizards and time travelers. it's similar in premise to Simak's Way Station, only funnier and with less faith in human nature. overall Bulychev seems fixated on the way unimaginative egotists react when confronted with the alien or the supernatural, and he has an acute ear for irony

Alice's Travels (the first novel in that Alice collection) is a fun children's interplanetary mystery, concluding with a slightly hokey, Scooby Doo-ish confrontation with space pirates. the cartoon adaptation is apparently regarded as a classic, and Bulychev is best known in Russia for his Alice books/films. afaik few of his other works have been translated into English aside from the post-apocalyptic novel Those Who Survive and the novella "Another's Memory" (collected in Earth and Elsewhere. Half a Life and Gusliar Wonders are both available at the Open Library

I'm kinda tempted to start working my way through the non-Strugatsky entries in Ted Sturgeon's Best of Soviet Science Fiction series:

https://i.imgur.com/O5HLz7d.jpg

(full list here)