2023 Reading Challenge

Book #26!!! Started yesterday and will probably finish tonight or tomorrow morning.
Ian Bourland - Massive Attack's Blue Lines (33.3 series)

Very excited to hit my goal for the year so early. I really chalk it up to switching over to reading on the Kobo, with distractions eliminated.

This is not an essential from the 33.3 series but so far it is interesting. While I am fan of Massive Attack I am not that familiar with their background. Sadly many involved in the early days of the band were not interested in being interviewed by Bourland and those that did really have spotty memories.
 
Book 17
The Final Revival of Opal & Nev by Dawnie Walton
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So I actually started this one a few months back but then I boneheadedly left it at the most seldomly used satellite building of the company I used to work for. For extra hilarity, said building is not too far from my home, but was the only one of our buildings that only senior management had keys for, so I couldn't just pop in and pick it up. Anyhoo, it finally made its way back to me just before we left for Manitoba. I didn't get the reading time I'd expected on our trip, but I've spent the last few days just absolutely glued to this whenever I could steal a few minutes to read more. It's stunning to think this is Walton's debut novel, as her use of polyphony to tell the tale of the titular proto-afropunk duo is absolutely masterful. An enjoyable read, through and through, with a few good twists along the way - one of which left me absolutely slackjawed! I'd recommend this to damn near anybody, but especially to everybody in this thread being that we're a bunch of nerds who love music and books and this falls right into the sweet spot of both.
 
Phaneronic said:
UH Not going to bother writing out long descriptions right now, but I will if asked. Have read so far this year:

  • Sandman Vol II by Neil Gaiman {The recent anthologizing that breaks it into 4 parts rather than 10, picked it up from a used bookstore, which is why it's just Vol II right now. Definitely want to pick up the rest though.}
  • Maus by Art Spiegelman
  • The Treasure Train by Bob Young {Former Mayor of my city. This one's kinda weird, charming but also I can't work out if or how much it's problematic.}
  • Charlie and the Chocolate Factory by Roald Dahl
  • Currently re-reading In Cold Blood by Truman Capote
I'd like to pick up the pace but I feel like I have a million things in the air right now so I'm just going to try keeping along.
Click to expand...

Since this:

  • Re-read Mrs. Dalloway and yeah pls read this. Wish I had more to say but there's nothing besides IT GOOD.
  • JOB: A Comedy of Justice - had like three people happen to recommend Heinlein in the span of a couple weeks and this is the one that happened to be knocking around our house. Started strong, could've ended worse, middle was really meandering. But I understand this isn't one of his best. Took me a while to read but I've been busy/hung up on other things too.
  • Started rereading Don Quixote, officially putting me in 'two books at once' territory. Still as good as I remember. Reading the Edith Grossman translation this time - I don't quite think it's better than the Ormsby but it's also probably not worse and it reads really, really well.
  • Circe by Madeline Miller - This is one I've had on my 'to read list' for a while off the back of a recommendation from one of the writers of Welcome to Night Vale. She seized on a relatively minor figure from The Odyssey and the book is her internal experience of Greek Mythology happening around her. It's really, really good, and reads well.
 
Phaneronic said:
Since this:

  • Re-read Mrs. Dalloway and yeah pls read this. Wish I had more to say but there's nothing besides IT GOOD.
  • JOB: A Comedy of Justice - had like three people happen to recommend Heinlein in the span of a couple weeks and this is the one that happened to be knocking around our house. Started strong, could've ended worse, middle was really meandering. But I understand this isn't one of his best. Took me a while to read but I've been busy/hung up on other things too.
  • Started rereading Don Quixote, officially putting me in 'two books at once' territory. Still as good as I remember. Reading the Edith Grossman translation this time - I don't quite think it's better than the Ormsby but it's also probably not worse and it reads really, really well.
  • Circe by Madeline Miller - This is one I've had on my 'to read list' for a while off the back of a recommendation from one of the writers of Welcome to Night Vale. She seized on a relatively minor figure from The Odyssey and the book is her internal experience of Greek Mythology happening around her. It's really, really good, and reads well.
Click to expand...
I read a ton of Heinlein as a teen but never felt the desire to go back, though I keep meaning to read The Moon is a Harsh Mistress as I think that is being made into a movie soon.

Doing my ordering for work, there are several new books coming out that are billed as modern retelling of various myths (Orpheus and Eurydice etc) but for the life of me I cannot remember any of the titles.
 
jamieanderson1968 said:
I read a ton of Heinlein as a teen but never felt the desire to go back, though I keep meaning to read The Moon is a Harsh Mistress as I think that is being made into a movie soon.

Doing my ordering for work, there are several new books coming out that are billed as modern retelling of various myths (Orpheus and Eurydice etc) but for the life of me I cannot remember any of the titles.
Click to expand...

The Silence of the Girls: From the Booker prize-winning author of Regeneration : Barker, Pat: Amazon.com.au: Books

The Silence of the Girls: From the Booker prize-winning author of Regeneration : Barker, Pat: Amazon.com.au: Books
www.amazon.com.au

Is this one of them?
 
Book 18: A Month in Siena by Hisham Matar (Viking, 2019)
Book 19: We Jazz Magazine Issue 08 - "Shadow Shapes" (We Jazz Helsinki, 2023)

Just got back from Italy where I managed to read a couple of books (flights mainly). First one was "A Month In Siena" which held extra weight as we visited Siena on the trip. Truthfully, it was a bit of a disappointment as it mainly focuses on artwork that happened to be in Siena at one time or another. Still, a decent read that gave me a few interesting facts prior to walking around the city. The latest We Jazz Magazine was a fantastic read as always, with lots of cool articles.

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A little catch-up on what I've read since the last post in February....

This year I've been hopping between The Expanse and the Connelly-verse of Bosch and Lincoln Lawyer. Been thoroughly enjoying the light but engrossing reading. I read a lot of technical and legalese stuff with work so I welcome the escapism of these. The Expanse books have been absolutely brilliant. Going through the short story collection before tackling the last book. After delving deep into noir/detective novels, I've come to realize that Connelly is about as good as it gets when it comes to spinning a good believable detective yarn with writing that flows.

Books #6-19:

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July 2023

Book 29: The Stand - Stephen King
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Wow! What a book. I've been working my way through King's bibliography and this is my fourth so far. While I've enjoyed his previous three outings, none can hold a candle to this. It felt infinitely better penned, more akin to a work of literary fiction than a genre piece. Stunning, memorable characters fight their way through a global tragedy that seems all too believable under recent circumstances. I'd been putting it off slightly due to the sheer volume but I ended up sailing through it in a couple of weeks. I fear I may have reached a pinnacle very early on in a very long reading list!

Book 30: Manhattan Beach - Jennifer Egan
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Once I realised (and it happened quite quickly), that I was in for a completely different reading experience to Goon Squad, I allowed myself to be drawn into this smoky, atmospheric wartime drama that captured some really well developed characters and clever plotlines. A woman overcoming an absent father, the loss of a disabled sister and a mother who has returned to her birthplace, struggles on in NYC where she strives to become a navy diver during the war effort and gets involved with a mobster who may be responsible for her father's untimely demise. Excellent crafting of a very readable novel.

Book 31: Shame - Salman Rushdie
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I'm no Rushdie expert but I can say that I typically enjoy his books, with the caveat that he can be a real wordy bastard at times! When you're having to check the meaning of certain words more than once a page you're left feeling like you're a bit of a dummy or he's just a bloody show-off. I do always feel at least, like I learn something from his novels, (nearly 50 and just learning that Pakistan is an acronym). The story in this one isn't his best for sure, but the importance of shame as a cultural identifier of Pakistani Muslims, he gets across in spades and it's told with his typically smart humour and just a whiff of magic.

Book 32: The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes from The Penguin Complete Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
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The third book from this huge anthology and the first to be comprised of short stories featuring the titular detective. I think I prefer the short story form over the previous two novel length outings. They're quick, to the point, I have to say, fairly obvious in most instances as to where the solution to the mystery lay. Enjoyable filler really, nothing essential but good fun.
 
Mr Moore said:
July 2023

Book 29: The Stand - Stephen King
View attachment 178976
Wow! What a book. I've been working my way through King's bibliography and this is my fourth so far. While I've enjoyed his previous three outings, none can hold a candle to this. It felt infinitely better penned, more akin to a work of literary fiction than a genre piece. Stunning, memorable characters fight their way through a global tragedy that seems all too believable under recent circumstances. I'd been putting it off slightly due to the sheer volume but I ended up sailing through it in a couple of weeks. I fear I may have reached a pinnacle very early on in a very long reading list!

Book 30: Manhattan Beach - Jennifer Egan
View attachment 178977
Once I realised (and it happened quite quickly), that I was in for a completely different reading experience to Goon Squad, I allowed myself to be drawn into this smoky, atmospheric wartime drama that captured some really well developed characters and clever plotlines. A woman overcoming an absent father, the loss of a disabled sister and a mother who has returned to her birthplace, struggles on in NYC where she strives to become a navy diver during the war effort and gets involved with a mobster who may be responsible for her father's untimely demise. Excellent crafting of a very readable novel.

Book 31: Shame - Salman Rushdie
View attachment 178978
I'm no Rushdie expert but I can say that I typically enjoy his books, with the caveat that he can be a real wordy bastard at times! When you're having to check the meaning of certain words more than once a page you're left feeling like you're a bit of a dummy or he's just a bloody show-off. I do always feel at least, like I learn something from his novels, (nearly 50 and just learning that Pakistan is an acronym). The story in this one isn't his best for sure, but the importance of shame as a cultural identifier of Pakistani Muslims, he gets across in spades and it's told with his typically smart humour and just a whiff of magic.

Book 32: The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes from The Penguin Complete Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
View attachment 178979
The third book from this huge anthology and the first to be comprised of short stories featuring the titular detective. I think I prefer the short story form over the previous two novel length outings. They're quick, to the point, I have to say, fairly obvious in most instances as to where the solution to the mystery lay. Enjoyable filler really, nothing essential but good fun.
Click to expand...

The Stand is something special for sure. And reads waaaay shorter than its page count would presume. Been a couple of decades since I've read it myself, back during the days where I would read any and all King I could get my hands on and it is definitely his ultimate standout to me. He has a bunch of other great and very good books, but this one is something special. Might prioritize a re-read next year, in fact.
 
Book 19
Map to the Stars by Adrian Matejka
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This was a random pick-up from my library because it showed up when I searched Sun Ra, who gets a solid handful of direct and indirect references throughout. Some pretty great stuff in here, covering Matejka's youth growing up poor and mixed race, then eventually moving to the very white suburbs when his mother remarried.


Book 20
Above Ground: Poems by Clint Smith
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God. DAMN! I've been a fan of Clint Smith's work for a while so I figured I was going to enjoy this book, but I wasn't ready to love and devour it as thoroughly as I did. My favourite book of poetry I've read in quite awhile. While I can't relate to the specific experiences of being a black father in America, many of the fatherhood poems really resonated quite strongly with me in this collection. I'll definitely be purchasing myself a copy of this one before the year's up.
 
Book 20: Dead Or Alive by Tom Clancy & Grant Blackwood (Michael Joseph Publishing, 2010)

Earlier in the year I picked up my first Tom Clancy book and found it to be an enjoyable read, so I picked up a second. I really like how easy they are to read and seeing as I do most of my reading on my commute to work, it's exactly what I need. This one was written over a decade ago now and there are some parts that are quite funny down to the technology not being as advanced as it is now -at one point the idea of a memory stick is explained. Overall though, a decent storyline and I will definitely read another soon.

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Book 21

Histoire de Melody Nelson by Darran Anderson
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There are plenty of other 33 1/3 books I would have imagined myself reading before I picked this one up on a whim from the library. I like the album well enough but have only really started exploring it over the past year or so, in no small part due to @Turbo passing a copy along to me when I was out his way last summer. There are plenty of albums in the series that I know far more than this one. Anderson did an excellent job of exploring the album through the lenses of biography, history, and sociology. Most of all, though, I just really enjoyed his writing! It took me 2 weeks to read this due to life circumstances but would have been a single evening, maybe two if time and wakefulness had been more in my favour.
 
Book 21: The Rum Diary by Hunter S Thompson (Bloomsbury, 2011)
Book 22: Safe as Houses: Private Greed, Political Negligence and Housing Policy After Grenfell (Manchester University Press, 2019)

2 very different but really great books. I've read The Rum Diary 8 times now (maybe more) and will never get tired of it. Safe As Houses is really heavy but an important read and I'm glad I spent the time going through it.

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