2022 Reading Challenge

avecigrec said:
I typically have a book of poetry, a non-fiction music-related book, another non-fiction book, a book of essays and/or a book of short stories on the go at any given time. With occasional novels and graphic novels sprinkled in. And sometimes I double up on the music and/or poetry books.

[edit: and once in a while for sheer masochism I throw in a rather academic book about poetry or literature!]
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That's impressive! I think in university I burned out from reading so many things at once, so when I didn't have to read anymore, I try to keep it simpler. I guess since most of my reads come from the library these days, too, I've got to work through them quicker.
 
BjorgenFjorgen said:
That's impressive! I think in university I burned out from reading so many things at once, so when I didn't have to read anymore, I try to keep it simpler. I guess since most of my reads come from the library these days, too, I've got to work through them quicker.
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Yeah, library reads need that extra focus for sure. Been about two years since I've taken anything out from the library, and even then it was usually five-to-one graphic novels. I think the reading so many things at once bit was one of my many long-ignored signs of ADHD! ;) It also lets me pick something up based on mood/environment which for a long stretch really racked my page counts way up.
 
LeSamourai said:
So, who's a multiple-books-at-a-time reader? I usually have 6-10 ongoing at any time, if I count audiobooks as well. Maybe it just means I have bad impulse control...

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Me!

I currently have 3 going I think, but I just randomly found myself at the bookstore yesterday and picked up a few things I'm eager to start so that number might increase...
 
I finished 100 Years of Solitude this morning.

So, I have a hard time writing about literature; discussions are easier for me to share thoughts about a book, especially a work like this.
I'll just say I've never read anything like it. I was riveted from beginning to end, no exaggeration - all the way to the last sentence.

I need to change it up and go with something very different, I'll probably start this tomorrow
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Not sure about setting a goal, I haven't read too much since COVID for some reason but am finally on a kick and my goal is just to keep it up. Recently have been inspired to try to read a bunch of "important works" that I never read, or in some cases, own but never finished reading. I don't know if that will contribute to killing my momentum sooner or not.

So far this year I have read:

Kitchen Confidential
Devil in the White City
Mother Night

Currently reading Crime and Punishment and almost finished.

Have thoroughly enjoyed all of them.

Oh also have been reading chapter books aloud to my boys at night this year. Part of why I've been inspired to keep reading more is to set a better example for them that reading is great.

So far we read:

Charlie and the Chocolate Factory
The BFG

And just started The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, which I've never read.
 
dhodo said:
Not sure about setting a goal, I haven't read too much since COVID for some reason but am finally on a kick and my goal is just to keep it up. Recently have been inspired to try to read a bunch of "important works" that I never read, or in some cases, own but never finished reading. I don't know if that will contribute to killing my momentum sooner or not.

So far this year I have read:

Kitchen Confidential
Devil in the White City
Mother Night

Currently reading Crime and Punishment and almost finished.

Have thoroughly enjoyed all of them.

Oh also have been reading chapter books aloud to my boys at night this year. Part of why I've been inspired to keep reading more is to set a better example for them that reading is great.

So far we read:

Charlie and the Chocolate Factory
The BFG

And just started The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, which I've never read.
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Kitchen Confidential is a book I read every year, it's so well written and really is captivating.
 
Selaws said:
Kitchen Confidential is a book I read every year, it's so well written and really is captivating.
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It was an excellent book. I don't know why I never got around to reading it until my wife gave it to me for Xmas.

I had never read it before and had watched a lot of Bourdain's shows. Impossible not to hear his voice when reading the book. It was sad reading all his optimism in the afterword in light of his death.
 
dhodo said:
It was an excellent book. I don't know why I never got around to reading it until my wife gave it to me for Xmas.

I had never read it before and had watched a lot of Bourdain's shows. Impossible not to hear his voice when reading the book. It was sad reading all his optimism in the afterword in light of his death.
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Yeah I know what you mean, especially considering that a lot of the book is about dealing with tough situations and pushing through.
 
Indymisanthrope said:
Woof. I naively thought I was going to knock out Han Kang's The Vegetarian in a day or two, at just 200 pages.

But this thing is unrelentingly disturbing in some ways I wasn't prepared for. I'm only able to withstand about 15 pages a night before I need to play a game or something to lighten the mood before bed. I actually snagged this from my wife's to-read stack before she had a chance to get to it, and last night I told her I think she should skip this one. I only have about 25% of it left, and I have no idea where it's going, but I'm not sure I care.
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I read The Vegetarian a few years ago and yeah it took me a lot longer than I expected to read it. I knew going in it was classified as "horror" and I am not usually a big horror fan but I was intrigued enough to give it a try. I'm still not totally sure how I feel about it, but I do love Han Kang's writing. Last year, I read Human Acts which was also disturbing (for different reasons) and connected with that one a lot more.
 
Book #4

Finished this one over the weekend and finally getting around to posting here.

George Pelecanos "A Firing Offense" (1992 Back Bay Books, 2011 edition)

Impressions: Will keep this one brief. Pelecanos is a treasure. If you want to get into modern noir, from a good writer and storyteller, that knows how to build a gritty world to the point where you can feel and smell the city, read Pelecanos. You already know his work if you watched The Wire, Treme and The Deuce. "A Firing Offense" is his first novel. It doesn't disappoint.

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Next up, a danish noir:

Sara Blaedel "The Midnight Witness"

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Book 10 : The Secret History - Donna Tartt

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Another good one. What began feeling like it was going to be an episode of 'How to Get Away With Murder' as the opening lines reveal that there has been a killing of a student in an elite campus, quickly transpired to be a detailed psychological profile of a core group of characters involved in the crime.
Tartt uses the classics as a tool to guide her characters through a year of their studies leading up to an ancient ritual that sees a total stranger lose their life and the consequences within the tight knit group that follows including internal blackmail and eventually murder.
There's definitely elements of Dostoevsky here as the characters struggle with their inner turmoil following the events and we witness some dealing with this with a confidence and casualness whilst alcohol and drugs lend a rather unhelpful crutch along the way to others.
Were I to look for criticism, it would be that none of the lead characters are particularly likeable, in fact the elitist group who have even shut themselves off from the majority of the rest of the school, are downright unlikeable for the majority of time which makes it quite difficult to empathise with them and/or root for them. There's some hope that the lead narrator and one of his cohort may develop their relationship into a partnership but Tartt even steals that away from us.
This aside, I enjoyed it for it's well written prose and confident style, especially for a debut. Despite the characters being flawed, they were fully developed and I never felt like they were behaving out of character. I look forward to reading more from Donna Tartt including The Goldfinch which I'm told is excellent.
 
Mr Moore said:
Book 10 : The Secret History - Donna Tartt

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Another good one. What began feeling like it was going to be an episode of 'How to Get Away With Murder' as the opening lines reveal that there has been a killing of a student in an elite campus, quickly transpired to be a detailed psychological profile of a core group of characters involved in the crime.
Tartt uses the classics as a tool to guide her characters through a year of their studies leading up to an ancient ritual that sees a total stranger lose their life and the consequences within the tight knit group that follows including internal blackmail and eventually murder.
There's definitely elements of Dostoevsky here as the characters struggle with their inner turmoil following the events and we witness some dealing with this with a confidence and casualness whilst alcohol and drugs lend a rather unhelpful crutch along the way to others.
Were I to look for criticism, it would be that none of the lead characters are particularly likeable, in fact the elitist group who have even shut themselves off from the majority of the rest of the school, are downright unlikeable for the majority of time which makes it quite difficult to empathise with them and/or root for them. There's some hope that the lead narrator and one of his cohort may develop their relationship into a partnership but Tartt even steals that away from us.
This aside, I enjoyed it for it's well written prose and confident style, especially for a debut. Despite the characters being flawed, they were fully developed and I never felt like they were behaving out of character. I look forward to reading more from Donna Tartt including The Goldfinch which I'm told is excellent.
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Was planning on starting this next!
 
So instead of reading one of the 3 books I currently have ongoing... I picked this one up at the bookstore last week and started it right away. If you can't tell, I have a weakness for books with pretty covers.

Book #9: People From My Neighborhood - Hiromi Kawakami
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This is a book of very short stories (I think they would technically be considered flash fiction) that are vignettes of the goings on in this neighborhood in Japan. I really liked the progression of the stories as it starts off as kind of quirky slice of life stuff and by the end it's really fun fabulist/magical realism wackiness.

I enjoyed this one very much and would recommend it to people that like magical realism and are okay with short stories that don't have much plot.
 
Book 11: Bright Lights, Big City - Jay McInerney

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I honestly struggled a bit to really enjoy this one. It was much shorter than I'd realised, (Kindles are buggers for not really appreciating the size of a book) and it frequently felt like the characters and the story needed a little more 'filling out' for my tastes. Couple that with the second person narration which I didn't like at all and it has been my least favourite read of the year so far.
It's a shame, the story of a young man making his way in the big city which he isn't native to and the good and bad times associated with that really ought to have spoken to me a little more but alas, it fell a bit flat on me.
 
Book 7:

Killing Commendatore by Haruki Murakami (Harvill Secker, 2018)

The second Murakami book of the year and it took a good few weeks for me to read it, but thats not a reflection of my interest its just one hell of a thick book. What I really like about his writing is that it leaves and incredibly comfortable, warm feeling which slow burns to a more out-there fantasy element. He builds an incredibly detailed world effortlessly and its amazingly captivating as a result. I found myself thinking about where the story was going to go even when I wasn't reading it. With this particular book its very straight forward apart from one or 2 minor fantasy elements, until the last 100 pages when it really does go far-out. I do feel like there were a few unanswered questions when it comes to this particular story
such as the unexplored "Bluebeard" room that supposed to be in Menshiki's house.
and I also feel like it finished abruptly. There's 704 pages here and its really only the last chapter (perhaps 8 pages) where everything is tied up in a much faster pace than the rest of the book. Still, I really enjoyed this and will definitely be looking out for more of his books when I am out an about. On a side note, I bought this copy from a charity shop so im not sure if this is the standard release or a special edition, but its pretty stunning graphically. The dust jacket is a really nice design with holes cut out across the front which lines up with different coloured blobs on the actual hardcover. When the dust jacket is removed there is an additional design that lays out a series of coloured, numbered circles (the main character is an artist so it ties in). Inside the book the opening and closing pages have sketches of key elements to the story (which only becomes evident as the story unravels). Really nice stuff.

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Selaws said:
Book 7:

Killing Commendatore by Haruki Murakami (Harvill Secker, 2018)

The second Murakami book of the year and it took a good few weeks for me to read it, but thats not a reflection of my interest its just one hell of a thick book. What I really like about his writing is that it leaves and incredibly comfortable, warm feeling which slow burns to a more out-there fantasy element. He builds an incredibly detailed world effortlessly and its amazingly captivating as a result. I found myself thinking about where the story was going to go even when I wasn't reading it. With this particular book its very straight forward apart from one or 2 minor fantasy elements, until the last 100 pages when it really does go far-out. I do feel like there were a few unanswered questions when it comes to this particular story
such as the unexplored "Bluebeard" room that supposed to be in Menshiki's house.
and I also feel like it finished abruptly. There's 704 pages here and its really only the last chapter (perhaps 8 pages) where everything is tied up in a much faster pace than the rest of the book. Still, I really enjoyed this and will definitely be looking out for more of his books when I am out an about. On a side note, I bought this copy from a charity shop so im not sure if this is the standard release or a special edition, but its pretty stunning graphically. The dust jacket is a really nice design with holes cut out across the front which lines up with different coloured blobs on the actual hardcover. When the dust jacket is removed there is an additional design that lays out a series of coloured, numbered circles (the main character is an artist so it ties in). Inside the book the opening and closing pages have sketches of key elements to the story (which only becomes evident as the story unravels). Really nice stuff.

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Murakami does vibes like no one else. I don't remember a ton of the story from reading this one, but i do remember being enthralled by the mood.
 
Novel 5 Christopher Isherwood „Goodbye to Berlin“ from 1939

I've listened to this and the novel below on audio. This novel that was released by British- American writer Christopher Isherwood in 1939, gives impressions of the life in Berlin and places like the Baltic Sea Island Rügen in the early 30s. The lyrical I is a British English teacher that lives as a guest in various households, so we get acquainted with various characters. Among them are people working in a bar, working as prostitutes, but also people from upper society. As both the writer and the narrator are gay, we also get some glimpse into gay relationships at that time, for instance the one between Otto, a young guy, and the significantly older Peter, who the narrator lives with while being on vacation in Rügen. At the same time, nearly told in half sentences besides, we get introduced to the worrying developments in Germany at that time and the increasing influence of the Nazi Movement.

The sound of the novel is very light, and some might think it's a bit shallow at first sight, but Isherwood manages to really draw the reader into the plot. Looking at how all those fictional people used to live, knowing what will be happening to them in future years when the horrors of war and persecution kick in, gives us goosebumps.



Novel 6 Ivan Turgenev „Fathers and Sons“ from 1862

I've also listened to this novel. I've actually read it before, but it's over 20 years ago. The novel depicts ideas and movements of that time. As the title already indicates, it's a generational novel that contrasts ideas of the young generation to the ones of the older generation. The main character is a young student of medicine called Bazarov, who considers himself a nihilist. He despises Romanticism, poetry and the culture of the older generations, is opposed to any authorities, rejects the old order and wants to become a famous man. His friend Arkadi adores him, but seems to naive and dependent. When they visit Arkadi's Father, a liberal noble man who has a kid with a female servant, the gap between them gets obvious. When Bazarov finally falls in love with a woman, who ultimately rejects him, his downfall starts.

Reading the novel was an interesting journey into another time, and I can see how parts of this famous novel must have inspired people like Thomas Mann, Gustave Flaubert and Friedrich Nietzsche.​
 
Mr Moore said:
Book 10 : The Secret History - Donna Tartt


I look forward to reading more from Donna Tartt including The Goldfinch which I'm told is excellent.
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I've read "The Goldfinch" last summer and have enjoyed it a lot indeed. The prose is very easy to read, so despite the lenght I've just needed a couple of days to finish it. Great characters, and the whole book feels like a vacation to other places.
 
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