2022 Reading Challenge

[Hhabelt]

I'll be catching up on some James Rollins to begin the year. In the works are The Seventh Plague, The Demon Crown, Crucible and The Last Odyssey. Nothing too heavy.

For anyone looking for an app to organize their reading and keep track of stuff, I like Reading List. It's super basic and for your eyes only - no pressure to rate, review or follow.

Wrapped up The Demon Crown this morning. I went from a plague in book one to murder wasps in book two. I think this guy knows something we don't

Anyway, did you know there's a salt mine in Poland, the Wieliczka Salt Mines, that reaches a depth of over 300 meters and expands horizontally for over 250 meters? There are lakes and chapels. Horses were used in the mining process - some spent 20+ years without seeing the light of day.

Now, a lot of this book took place in Hawaii and the surrounding waters. It reminded me that we should take a moment to really consider if our dream Hawaiian vacation is absolutely necessary. Native Hawaiians are facing issues of overcrowding, environmental damage and a higher cost of living. Oh, and there's a pandemic - I can't imagine tourism is alleviating any of that pressure.

Crucible is up next. Looks like it's gonna be witches and artificial intelligence. Spooky.

||

 

[Mr Moore]

Book 5: The Moviegoer - Walker Percy


Another good one. Considering this was a first novel, the writing is confident, intelligent and full of wit and detail.
The main character is somewhat dated now in his life outlook and I can definitely see that modern readers might find very little sympathy for a white straight cis male from an upper class American southern family who is struggling to find himself amongst his frequent trips to the movies and adding notches to his bedpost with his secretaries. That being said, I kinda liked him and felt that his time and hinted at lack of success as a soldier in the Korean War along with losing his father and siblings led to a lot of his failings and his recurring ‘malaise’.
The writing is the real winner here though and Percy fills his pages with philosophical ponderings that really get their hooks in.
Good stuff.

 

[Selaws]

Book 5:

Music Inside by Ian Carr (Northway Productions, 2020 Revised Edition)

This is a book that has been on my wantlist for ages and I knew I would rinse through it once I started. It's an incredibly charming look at the contemporary jazz scene around the 1970's and earlier. There are very few books written about the UK jazz scene, especially during its formative years, and this one is definitely a really great insight. It helps that it was written by a musician and the closing chapter (excluding the postscript) focuses on his group Nucleus, which had released their first albums by this point. It adds another great element to Carr's story as this wasn't really included in his biography. Fantastic stuff.

 

[Bull Shannon]

Book 3: The Sparrow by Mary Doria Russell

This one's been floating around my kindle for a bit since buying it on a sale (90% of my kindle books are things I bought on sale and only read by random whim after finishing my previous book half-asleep at bedtime, as is the case here). This is one I've seen mentioned online pretty frequently, and while I like this one, I'm learning the hyperbole of a reddit book recommendation is a guarantee for a letdown.

The premise is that a Jesuit expedition embarks to make contact a far-off planet after hearing music broadcast to the Arecibo SETI antenna (RIP). Something terrible happens there, and the only survivor of the contact returns ruined, as a figure of controversy. The book then jumps between 2019 (25 years or so in the future at time of publishing) when the contact is made and 2060, after Father Sandoz returns from his failed mission shaken in his faith.

This structure is probably the toughest part of the book for me, in the sense that the 2060 passages slowly unfurl what happened a lot more quickly than the 2016 sections, which takes some of the wind out of the sails, narrative-wise; the reveals in 2060 are vague and incomplete, but paint enough of a picture that you feel less urgency to reveal the truth. Rather, the story focuses on Sandoz's internal life, emotionally and spiritually. This manifests itself mainly in a lot of ambivalence over celibacy, as a lot of time is spent on his emotional yearning for a colleague (who also happens to be an object of lust for nearly every other male character, and a lot of time is spent in the heads of characters who want her, and less in her own head).

I'm not sure the philosophical bent of the novel did the trick for me; I'd be curious to speak with anyone who's read The Sparrow and got more depth out of it, but it felt like the Big Questions being asked were "how do you keep faith in the face of tragedy?", "how can a loving god allow suffering?", and "how do priests manage celibacy?", which are all questions we didn't need to leave Earth to ask. I'm not even sure much thought went into "if there's other life in the universe, how does that change our understanding of God?", or really examining how one's faith/ego might be shaken or reinforced by the discovery of life on other planets. Heck, there are undercurrents of the story mirroring the Jesuit exploration/indoctrination of native cultures in the Americas, but instead of dealing in the moral grays of that history, the author makes the expedition's members uniformly goodhearted in a way that makes the events on the planet feel more like "some bad shit that went down" than any sort of complicated reverberation of ill-acted-or-received good intent.

Certainly not a bad book, but one that left me feeling frustrated and grumpy at my inability to connect with it.

 

[Turbo]

Book #3

Third book of 2022 completed. Going a lot faster than anticipated so far.

Jussi Adler-Older "The Keeper Of Lost Causes" (2011 Dutton, 2016 paperback edition)

Impressions: I devoured this one and yet I'm not sure what to think overall. I'm a bit ambivalent with Nordic noirs in general. My first Nordic noir reads were Jo Nesbø and those were disappointing, mainly because too many coincidences were driving the narrative. But then I read two superb examples of the genre in "Cruel Is The Night" by Karo Hämäläinen and "Faceless Killers" by Henning Mankell. The first is a darkly humorous subversion of the dinner party murder mystery and the second is a tight and realistic detective procedural set in Sweden with middle eastern immigration into the country as an underlying theme.

"The Keeper Of Lost Causes" falls short of these but remains well above those first few Nordic noirs I read. I suppose part of the issue with Nordic novels is I read the translated version and the writing can feel a little awkward at times, but it flows nicely here. The story revolves around a cold case being reviewed by a newly created department. The investigation in the novel is tight and the twists are earned. The main characters, particularly the mysterious assistant Assad, are engaging. However, the villain's plan has the feel of a convoluted Bond villain revenge plot, and it's not really clear to me why the villain was so angry that he had to concoct his plan. I guess I could rate this "entertaining and fun". Definitely a page turner.




Turning to one of the best modern noir writers for my next read: George Pelecanos.

 

[ranbalam]

I haven't read all week...not that 100 Years isn't compelling, just the opposite actually. I want to make sure I give it the attention it needs. I have a cold winter weekend with no plans on tap here, so I plan to dive in deep.

And, that book and Cholera were in a Jeopardy clue last night!

 

[LeSamourai]

Here we goooooooo

 

[Phaneronic]

Here we goooooooo


View attachment 127652

If a cover design was ever enough to make one read a book on it's merits alone…

BUT WE'RE NOT SUPPOSED TO DO THAT.

 

[Selaws]

Book 6:

Jack Reacher: Better Off Dead by Lee & Andrew Child (Bantam Press, 2021)

I like to disperse Jack Reacher books into my yearly reading. They are incredibly fun and pretty light reading as well. I have all the books (read almost all of them) and have never paid more than £3 for them from local charity shops. This is the latest in the series and sees Lee writing in collaboration with his younger brother, Andrew. Lee was close to killing off Reacher so that he could retire but a chance conversation in the car led to the idea that Andrew could take over. An interview at the end of the book states that they aim to write 4-5 books together before Lee will back away and retire for good.

 

[Phaneronic]

Oh yeah, I’ve got no qualms about it personally, I’ve just been impressed by some of the very challenging books people are bringing to the table in here.

I had an elementary school librarian as a kid who would call my parents occasionally to tell them that I was checking out too many books about dragons and other imaginary stuff from the school library each week, and she was concerned about me because I never read any “normal” boy stuff about football or whatever (again, I’m between the ages of, say, 7-10).

I had the good fortune of being in the next room when my mom received one of those calls after school one day and heard her side of the conversation, which went something like, “So he likes reading? Uh-huh. And he does it a lot? Right. And what he’s reading are books that you put in the school for him to pick from? Interesting. And he returns them on time? THEN WHY DON’T YOU MIND YOUR OWN BUSINESS,” and then she hung up on her.

Any reading is good reading IMO. Moby Dick and Jude the Obscure will still be on my shelf waiting for my headspace and attention span to get on their wavelength again someday. For now I’m here, and that’s fine.

In re: Kilgore Trout, I’m probably being a bit unfair to Dave Duncan. He’s not a fantasy superstar on the level of George Martin or Robert Jordan, but he had some moderately well-known successes earlier in his career that I plan to read someday. I think the Blades concept is one of his lesser works, it just so happens that it served as my introduction to him and is the series that I started as a teen and had never finished until now.

Wow, I like your mom's take. Doubt I could bring myself to be quite so eloquent though.

Fair, I guess I didn't take the time to consider that that might not've been the nicest thing to say about an author. They do sound like fun books.

Have you read it before?

I tried to read Bleak House when it was assigned during my last semester in college, but just ran out of time and didn’t finish. I tried again a few years later and hit a wall about 40% of the way through. There were so many characters to keep track of that I kept a running list of the page numbers where each character was introduced (and the chapters where they were described in detail) and folded it up and used it as my bookmark (a trick I picked up when reading Crime and Punishment in high school). But, the problem was, I filled up the page, and also filled up the backside of the page. And I think the dilemma of trying to figure out what to do at that point became a roadblock. The issue with this novel is that a lot of the characters seem so minor that they’re not worth keeping track of, but then they’ll resurface ten or twenty chapters later and you’ll have completely forgotten who they are and what you’re supposed to remember about them, lol.

My copy of the book has been sitting on top of a pile of papers on my desk at home basically as a paperweight, with my cheat sheet folded up and tucked inside at the end of Chapter 27. But maybe I can finally cross it off my list this year. I really loved everything I read and would enjoy seeing how it’s all tied together and resolved.

Spoiler: Might be a spoiler

View attachment 126318View attachment 126319

Heh, nah, I only read my first Dickens - A Tale of Two Cities - sometime last year. I liked it, but I don't know if that was enough to make me really want to read more ASAP. Then I somehow came across the Jarndyce v Jarndyce plot device and was immediately intrigued, enough to give it a go.

Huh, I guess I have a habit of just powering through when I can't remember who's who exactly but that's an interesting technique, may have to try it myself. Also, when Twin Peaks: The Return was airing we would get fun out of trying to remember who was doing what when a situation was re-introduced weeks and sometimes months later. Not saying that this is I'm excited to be lost, but I'm just going to see how it goes.

 

[WhiteDahlias]

I haven't had much time to read the last few days, it doesn't help that I've started 3 different books at once. Hopefully I'll get through one of them this week!

My favorite of the three so far is Swing Time by Zadie Smith. This is my first of her books so if I like it I will probably pick up White Teeth at some point too.

 

[sarcasticfairyprincess]

Book 5: Apple Skin to the Core by Eric Gansworth

Yet another book for class. I think this is a book that many of you would really enjoy. It's a free verse autobiography about a Native American man who grew up on a reservation near Buffalo. His grandparents were survivors of the Indian boarding schools, and his mother's side is enrolled in a different tribe than his father's side. He lives on the reservation of his father's tribe, and the novel explores this identity struggle. Music is a huge theme, too. There's an entire chapter that uses Beatles songs as poem titles. It was really cool and pretty eye opening.

 

[Ericj32]

I haven't had much time to read the last few days, it doesn't help that I've started 3 different books at once. Hopefully I'll get through one of them this week!

My favorite of the three so far is Swing Time by Zadie Smith. This is my first of her books so if I like it I will probably pick up White Teeth at some point too.

White Teeth was really fun! She narrates with confidence and a hilariously dry sense of humor, and the characters were really engaging. That was actually also assigned in the same college course in which Bleak House was assigned reading, and I also didn't quite finish that one until years later, either, haha. It jumps around a little bit in time, so it was easy to kind of forget where I was or how I got there (while I was in college and reading too many different things simultaneously), but it's not like a "challenging" read.

I actually have a paperback copy of Swing Time that I bought a few years ago and still need to read, so thanks for the reminder!

 

[Phaneronic]

Book 3: The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down by Anne Fadiman

Wow, I only read this in two weeks? Uh, I can't recommend this enough. I can't remember the last time I read a book where every sentence added something to the situation. Near the beginning of the book is an anecdote about a Hmong student in college being asked to give a 5-minute lecture on a recipe. The student picks fish soup, simple enough, but he proceeds to talk as well about Hmong fishing and farming practices, home life and tradition - eventually sprawling into a 45-minute lecture, the idea that the Hmong “talk of many things.” This was apparently the form Fadiman was going for when she was writing the book, which is not to say it's absurdly long. Being about the cultural differences between the Hmong and the American medical community as they come up against each other over the treatment of a young epileptic girl, rather than just give background on the Hmong and then lay out the case history - not to say there would have been lacking in that - instead finds through-lines between moments, switching between multiple perspectives in moments and between the case history and recent Hmong history on a chapter-by-chapter basis, fluidly and coherently to trace out the odd angles of the interactions themselves. This is a book Fadiman clearly had to live in to make. It'd be remiss not to caution that a little after the middle point of the book has some absolutely harrowing imagery in it - of lesser-known parts of the Vietnam War, of medical catastrophies, and the description of rituals involving animal sacrifice. But this isn't heavy and grim and humorless and devoid of light, like Heart of Darkness or whatever. These are incredibly sympathetic depictions of people going through life, which, as all lives do, contain some horrible things in it. About the only thing negative I can think to say about it is I think the first chapter is kinda stilted. I'd advise at least looking up the preface since that's readily found on Amazon, and if it seems like your kind of thing then… Add it to the pile, we all know how things go.

Man sometimes things just poke me in the right way and it all comes flowing out.

NEXT UP: BLEAK HOUSE BY CHARLES DICKENS and maybe RED FAMINE by Anne Applebaum if I feel like trying to do two longue books at once. My friend picked it up a couple years ago and it seemed like something I'd want to read and finally borrowed it off him.

 

[Bluecloud777]

Novel 3/ 2022

Nana Rademacher „Wir waren hier“ (We were here) (about 220 pages) from 2016

This is rather a youth novel as from its style you can see that its target audience are teenagers. It's also a dystopian novel. I've read it in between. The plot is set in a dark and sinister future, past the year 2040. Worldwide wars and natural disasters have changed the order of the world. Germany is run by a military government, which got no problem killing civilians to turn down riots or to put kids into camps to indoctrinate them. In the past there seems to have been a civil war as well. Cities are in debris and flowers can be seen only once in a while. We look at this bleak world through the eyes of Anna, who is around 16 years old. She falls in love with a boy named Ben, who works for the resistance. The novel depicts their journey together and apart through various scenaries. It showed me how wonderful (despite all obstacles) the world is that we can enjoy nowadays including all the music, while all music the people in that future do have is the one you can create yourself (with a flute in that case). As far as I can see the book hasn't been translated yet.


Novel 4/ 2022

Alexander Rahr „2054. Putin decodiert“ (2054. Putin decoded), 400 pages, 2018

I've read this novel parallell to the one above. Alexander Rahr is a German expert on Russia and Eastern Europe. This book is a novel and it mixes the genres of political thriller, mystery and history. Especially in the lights of the current situation regarding Putin and the threatened attack on Ukraine it was a very interesting and fascinating reading, especially since the writer explains parts of the Russian perspective.

The book focusses on the prophecies written down by Nostradamus around 1558, and especially on his letter to King Henry II, which unlike his famous quatrains that are in no chronological order gives the alleged development of the world in mostly chronological order, though still in unclear words. I had looked at this topic before and it's indeed fascinating how much truth Nostradamus seems to have known ( for instance he correctly names the year 1666 as the year of the great fire in London, the year 1792 as a time of great change and antireligious movements (French Revolution), names both Napoleon and Hitler (Hister) in his quatrains, he indicates the exact length of the Sowiet Union (73 years and 7 months, as he says, and it lasted from November 1917 till summer 1991 when first free elections had been allowed in Russia), he names the fascist countries before WW2 correctly (Spain, Italy, and Germany), and also that Germany will loose the big war. He even mentions the word „Holocaust“ in that letter and says that New Babylon (which must've been the Sowiet Union) will be augmented by the „first Holocaust“ which seems to refer to the situation after WW2 when the Soviet Union was enabled to stretch.).

As usually with Nostradamus it's not too hard to see he correctly has predicted events in the past (by whatever means he was able to do that, whether revelation by some God, time travelers, aliens, whatever, but he has known too much for it to be coincidence, in my opion), but it's hard to interpret events that are still ahead of us. So the novel plays among secret orders and secret agents of various governments who try to figure out what he has predicted to be able to be a step ahead. It was a very exciting reading and I've read that book within a few days. It doesn't seem to be available in English yet.



​

 

[avecigrec]

Book 2

A Listener's Guide to Free Improvisation by John Corbett


This one has been sitting beside my computer for a few weeks but they've been an incredibly busy few weeks. Today felt like my first truly proper bit of time off in a long while - I woke up with the house fully to myself put on some music and finally cracked into this. It's been a minute since I've read a non-poetry book in a single day and it felt really nice to do so today. I enjoyed this little tome immensely. Corbett's writing is breezy and easy to read - particularly nice when diving into something as complex and esoteric as musical improvisation. Very accessible with a liberal sprinkle of good humour and solid recommendations for further reading and listening. I would recommend this to anybody with anything more than a passing interest in improvised music or free jazz. I have a bunch of other John Corbett books on my want-to-read list and am even more excited to get to them after reading this one.

 

[Selaws]

Book 2

A Listener's Guide to Free Improvisation by John Corbett
View attachment 128449

This one has been sitting beside my computer for a few weeks but they've been an incredibly busy few weeks. Today felt like my first truly proper bit of time off in a long while - I woke up with the house fully to myself put on some music and finally cracked into this. It's been a minute since I've read a non-poetry book in a single day and it felt really nice to do so today. I enjoyed this little tome immensely. Corbett's writing is breezy and easy to read - particularly nice when diving into something as complex and esoteric as musical improvisation. Very accessible with a liberal sprinkle of good humour and solid recommendations for further reading and listening. I would recommend this to anybody with anything more than a passing interest in improvised music or free jazz. I have a bunch of other John Corbett books on my want-to-read list and am even more excited to get to them after reading this one.

Ah this is great, thanks for sharing.

I have mentioned before that I have Corbett's "Vinyl Freak: Love Letters to a Dying Medium" which collates all of his articles written for Downbeat. The articles were essentially deep dives into his collection which highlighted the rarest out of print records he had (many of which are free jazz/avant garde). Personally, I found the chapter at the end to be the best read which was a lengthy story of how he came to acquire a ton of Sun Ra's personal records, outfits, literature, paraphernalia etc from the house of his manager after he passed away. I think that sounds like your jam too so might be a good one to get eventually? My copy came with an orange flexi disc of a rare Sun Ra single as well.

I will have to hunt down a copy of they book you have now as well!

 

[avecigrec]

I think that sounds like your jam too so might be a good one to get eventually?

Yeah, this is high on my want list for sure! Thanks to a combination of your previously having mentioned it and, shortly after, having read an excerpt of the Sun Ra chapter. I'm trying to hold out and track down a copy of the first run of this one, as subsequent copies don't come with the flexi disc and I quite want a copy that does!

 

[Mr Moore]

Book 6: Ducks, Newburyport - Lucy Ellmann


I’ve spent the best part of a fortnight reading this, the last few days laying in bed isolating with Covid put the last 30% away quicker than expected.
It’s one hell of a novel and unlike anything I’ve read before so I find it hard to review and do it justice.
There are definitely moments where the writing is sublime. Definitely moments where I felt completely linked with the narrator, a 40 year old American housewife, mother of 4 in her second marriage. There were probably more moments where she left me feeling completely alienated from her as she drifts seamlessly from thought to thought, word to word.
For those unaware, the book is effectively a 1000 page long sentence with no actual dialogue, although some is considered within the continuous internal monologue that our narrator puts forth. It’s riveting at times but like anyone’s thoughts, it’s rather dull at times too.
The only breaks in the main stream are to allow a second narrative, told in a much more traditional manner, of a mountain lion, herself becoming a mother and her quest to find her lost cubs. These interludes last only a couple of pages at a time and crop up around 10 times throughout the whole book. This second narrative does enter the main narrative near the end.
I remember seeing a comedian on a UK panel show describe her experience with ADHD and there are certainly times within the main story where our narrator’s thought progressions and digressions made me wonder whether she too has ADHD although it isn’t specified within.
I’d previously read some reviews and it seems the most popular criticism is the length of the book, that the effect could be achieved in a fraction of the pages. It’s difficult to disagree with that: the actual linear narrative told probably consumes about only 50 of the 1000 pages were it told in a more traditional manner. But, it’s those other 950 pages where Ellmann’s magic takes place. She allows a real human being to take form as we learn of her unresolved issues with her parents, especially ‘Mommy’, her anxiety around a Trump presidency, her fear of weapons, why there are so many weapons, why men just have to carry them around in open carry states, school shootings past and more recent, racial injustice, police brutality, police apathy, making ends meet by baking pies, why the local store hasn’t paid her for the past 20 pies she made for them, her past health issues, Tommy Lee Jones and Harrison Ford’s relationship shift in The Fugitive, did she devote too much time to her second husband and in doing so, neglect her eldest child etc., etc.
The juxtaposition of the two concurrent storylines is so clever: at the heart these are two mothers who have the same purpose - to love, to feed and to protect their children. Ellmann makes sure we get a bare bones, purely animal take on the mountain lion’s experience compared to a complex, personal, unique take on the human condition.
Could the book have been shorter and stayed effective? Possibly, yes. But, the lion at least is given a name, our lead narrator isn’t so one could argue Ellmann could have even squeezed a few more words in there!

 

[BjorgenFjorgen]

Book 6: Ducks, Newburyport - Lucy Ellmann

View attachment 128491
I’ve spent the best part of a fortnight reading this, the last few days laying in bed isolating with Covid put the last 30% away quicker than expected.
It’s one hell of a novel and unlike anything I’ve read before so I find it hard to review and do it justice.
There are definitely moments where the writing is sublime. Definitely moments where I felt completely linked with the narrator, a 40 year old American housewife, mother of 4 in her second marriage. There were probably more moments where she left me feeling completely alienated from her as she drifts seamlessly from thought to thought, word to word.
For those unaware, the book is effectively a 1000 page long sentence with no actual dialogue, although some is considered within the continuous internal monologue that our narrator puts forth. It’s riveting at times but like anyone’s thoughts, it’s rather dull at times too.
The only breaks in the main stream are to allow a second narrative, told in a much more traditional manner, of a mountain lion, herself becoming a mother and her quest to find her lost cubs. These interludes last only a couple of pages at a time and crop up around 10 times throughout the whole book. This second narrative does enter the main narrative near the end.
I remember seeing a comedian on a UK panel show describe her experience with ADHD and there are certainly times within the main story where our narrator’s thought progressions and digressions made me wonder whether she too had ADHD although it isn’t specified within.
I’d previously read some reviews and it seems the most popular criticism is the length of the book, that the the effect could be achieved in a fraction of the pages. It’s difficult to disagree with that: the actual linear narrative told probably consumes about only 50 of the 1000 pages were it told in a more traditional manner. But, it’s those other 950 pages where Ellmann’s magic takes place. She allows a real human being to take form as we learn of her unresolved issues with her parents, especially ‘Mommy’, her anxiety around a Trump presidency, her fear of weapons, why there are so many weapons, why men just have to carry them around in open carry states, school shootings past and more recent, racial injustice, police brutality, police apathy, making ends meet by baking pies, why the local store hasn’t paid her for the past 20 pies she made for them, her past health issues, Tommy Lee Jones and Harrison Ford’s relationship shift in The Fugitive, did she devote too much time to her second husband and in doing so, neglect her eldest child etc., etc.
The juxtaposition of the two concurrent storylines is so clever: at the heart these are two mothers who have the same purpose - to love, to feed and to protect their children. Ellmann makes sure we get a bare bones, purely animal take on the mountain lion’s experience compared to a complex, personal, unique take on the human condition.
Could the book have been shorter and stayed effective? Possibly, yes. But, the lion at least is given a name, our lead narrator isn’t so one could argue Ellmann could have even squeezed a few more words in there!

Thanks for this interesting write-up! The book is definitely intriguing. I haven't had a chance to leaf through it at a bookstore or anything, but one thing I've been wondering is without any punctuation or sentence breaks, how do you find a place to pause for the day?