Author Topic: 50 Books in 2018!  (Read 115492 times)

FireHiker

  • Handlebar Stache
  • *****
  • Posts: 1141
  • Location: So Cal
Re: 50 Books in 2018!
« Reply #550 on: July 26, 2018, 09:31:01 AM »
1. Ready Player One by Ernest Cline
2. The Gentle Art of Swedish Death Cleaning by Margareta Magnusson
3. The Wind in the Willows by Kenneth Grahame
4. The Adventures of Tom Sawyer by Mark Twain
5. The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain
6. The Secret History by Donna Tartt
7. The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald (re-read in one night since it's been 20 years and my son was reading it in school)
8. The Glass Castle by Jeannette Walls
9. Life of Pi by Yann Martel
10. I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou
11. Catch-22 by Joseph Heller
12. David Copperfield by Charles Dickens
13. All's Well That Ends Well by William Shakespeare (I WILL get through his complete works...eventually)
14. As You Like It by William Shakespeare
15. The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger
16. Here in Berlin by Cristina Garcia
17. The Shadow of the Wind by Carlos Ruiz Zafon
18. Death Comes for the Archbishop by Willa Cather
19. Meet the Frugalwoods by Elizabeth Willard Thames
20. The Angel's Game by Carlos Ruiz Zafon
21. A Wrinkle In Time by Madeleine L'Engle
22. The Prisoner of Heaven by Carlos Ruiz Zafon
23. Girl, Interrupted by Susanna Kaysen
24. The Mayor of Casterbridge by Thomas Hardy
25. Shattered Air by Bob Madgic
26. The Mill on the Floss by George Elliot
27. Cold Mountain by Charles Frazier
28. Born to Run by Christopher McDougall
29. The Comedy of Errors by Willliam Shakespeare
30. The War of the Worlds by H.G. Wells
31. Eat & Run by Scott Jurek
32. Cymbeline by William Shakespeare
33. Hillbilly Elegy by J.D. Vance
34. North by Scott and Jenny Jurek
35. The Bonfire of the Vanities by Tom Wolfe
36. Charlie and the Chocolate Factory by Roald Dahl
37. Notes From a Small Island by Bill Bryson
38. The Awakening by Kate Chopin
39. Educated by Tara Westover
40. A Walk in the Woods by Bill Bryson

41. White Noise by Don DeLillo
42. A Room With A View by E.M. Forster

bucketsofrain

  • Pencil Stache
  • ****
  • Posts: 510
  • Age: 34
  • Location: Boston
Re: 50 Books in 2018!
« Reply #551 on: July 26, 2018, 05:21:35 PM »
1.) Gorilla and the Bird by Zack McDermott 4/5
2.) The Underground Railroad by Colson Whitehead 3/5
3.) Iza's Ballad by Magda Szabo 5/5
4.) The Sympathizer by Viet Thanh Nguyen 3/5
5.) You Don't Have to Say You Love Me by Sherman Alexie 5/5
6.) The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian by Sherman Alexie 3/5
7.) A Room of One's Own by Virginia Woolf 4/5
8.) My Favorite Thing is Monsters by Emil Ferris 5/5
9.) Salt Houses by Hala Alyan 5/5
10.) Universal Harvester by John Darnielle 2/5
11.) We Should All Be Feminists by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie 5/5
12.) Red Winter by Anneli Furmark 4/5
13.) Pachinko by Min Jin Lee 5/5
14.) Piecing Me Together by Renee Watson 4/5
15.) We Are Never Meeting in Real Life by Samantha Irby 3/5
16.) What is Not Yours is Not Yours by Helen Oyeyemi 4/5
17.) Little Fires Everywhere by Celeste Ng 4/5
18.) This is How You Lose Her by Junot Diaz 4/5
19.) This is the Story of a Happy Marriage by Ann Patchett 4/5
20.) A Little Life by Hanya Yanagihara 5/5
21.) The Vegetarian by Han Kang 3/5
22.) The Book of Unknown Americans by Christina Henriquez 4/5
23.) Then We Came to the End by Joshua Ferris 4/5
24.) What It Means When a Man Falls From the Sky by Lesley Nneka Arimah 4/5
25.) The Language of Food by Dan Jurafsky 4/5
26.) The Cooking Gene by Michael W. Twitty 4/5
27.) A Field Guide to Getting Lost by Rebecca Solnit 5/5
28.) Seven Gothic Tales by Isak Dinesen 4/5
29.) Men Explain Things to Me by Rebecca Solnit 5/5
30.) Women in Clothes by Sheila Heti 5/5
31.) The Essential Dykes to Watch Out For by Alison Bechdel 4/5
32.) The Twelve Lives of Samuel Hawley by Hannah Tinti 4/5
33.) I'll be Gone in the Dark by Michelle McNamara 4/5
34.) Encyclopedia of Trouble and Spaciousness by Rebecca Solnit 5/5
35.) How Should a Person Be? by Sheila Heti 4/5
36.) Sunshine State by Sarah Gerard 4/5
37.) All Over the Place by Geraldine DeRuiter 3/5
38.) Heartburn by Nora Ephron 3/5
39.) Coming to My Senses by Alice Waters 3/5
40.) Sick by Porochista Khakpour 3/5
41.) Motherhood by Sheila Heti 4/5
42.) Her Body and Other Parties by Carmen Maria Machado 4/5
43.) Frankenstein in Baghdad by Ahmed Saadawi 4/5
44.) Not That Bad: Dispatches from Rape Culture ed. by Roxane Gay 4/5
45.) Fun Home by Alison Bechdel 5/5
46.) The Happiness Project by Gretchen Rubin 3/5
47.) Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston 4/5
48.) Upright Beasts by Lincoln Michel 4/5
49.) A Place for Us by Fatima Farheen Mirza 5/5
50.) Asymmetry by Lisa Halliday 4/5
51.) All the Names They Used for God by Anjali Sachdeva 4/5
52.) Sing, Unburied, Sing by Jesmyn Ward 5/5

I'm just going to keep going! I'm really enjoying reading so much.

Raenia

  • Magnum Stache
  • ******
  • Posts: 2631
Re: 50 Books in 2018!
« Reply #552 on: July 28, 2018, 03:35:33 PM »
1. The Small-Scale Poultry Flock - Harvey Ussery (1/9/2018)
2. Oathbringer - Brandon Sanderson (1/19/2018)
3. The 4-hour Work Week - Timothy Ferriss (1/21/2018)
4. Smilla's Sense of Snow - Peter Hoeg (1/23/2018)
5. Home Cheese Making - Ricki Carroll (1/25/2018)
6. A Darker Shade of Magic - V.E. Schwab (1/26/2018)
7. Dead of Winter - Matt Lake, Susan Fair, Laurie Hull, H.W. Lawson, Brian Goodman (1/27/2018)
8. Coraline - Neil Gaiman (1/30/2018)
9. The Not So Big House - Sarah Susanka (2/5/2018)
10. Le Petit Prince - Antoine de Saint-Exupery (2/21/2018)
11. Purity - Jonathan Franzen (2/22/2018)
12.  Democracy in America - Alexis de Tocqueville (2/27/2018)
13. In Cold Blood - Truman Capote (3/4/2018)
14. Running & Being: The Total Experience - George Sheehan (3/7/2018)
15. Leviathan Wakes - James S.A. Corey (3/10/2018)
16. Plato's Republic - trans. C. D. C. Reeve (3/17/2018)
17. The Six Pillars of Self-Esteem - Nathaniel Branden (3/21/2018)
18. Caliban's War - James S.A. Corey (3/23/2018)
19. The Book of Dust: La Belle Sauvage - Philip Pullman (3/24/2018)
20. Mistborn - Brandon Sanderson (3/30/3018) - REREAD
21.  Abaddon's Gate - James S.A. Corey (4/4/2018)
22. A Long Fatal Love Chase - Louisa May Alcott (4/9/2018)
23. The Vanishing Middle Class: Prejudice and Power in a Dual Economy - Peter Temin (4/13/2018)
24. The History of Bees - Maja Lunde (4/15/2018)
25. Cibola Burn - James S.A. Corey (4/18/2018)
26. Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep - Philip K. Dick
27. Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom - Cory Doctorow
28. Discourses on Livy - Niccolo Machiavelli (trans Bondanella)
29. The Invisible Library - Genevieve Cogman
30. Tomorrow's Eve - Villiers de l'Isle-Adam (trans Robert Martin Adams)
31. Last Speakers - K. David Harrison
32. Of Dogs and Walls - Yuko Tsushima (4/28/2018)
33. Middlesex - Jeffrey Eugenides (5/3/2018)
34. Nemesis Games - James S.A. Corey (5/15/2018)
35. Why I am Not Going to Buy a Computer - Wendell Berry (5/15/2018)
36. The Invention of Wings - Sue Monk Kidd (5/18/2018)
37. Simply Clean: The Proven Method for Keeping Your Home Organized, Clean, and Beautiful in Just 10 Minutes a Day - Becky Rapinchuk (5/19/2018)
38. The Masked CIty - Genevieve Cogman (5/20/2018)
39. Beauty and the Werewolf - Mercedes Lackey (5/24/2018) - REREAD
40. The Burning Page - Genevieve Cogman (5/26/2018)
41. Home Comforts: The Art and Science of Keeping House - Cheryl Mendelson (5/28/2018)
42. Anna and the King of Siam - Margaret Landon (6/1/2018)
43. The Lost Plot - Genevieve Cogman (6/2/2018)
44. Night - Elie Wiesel (6/2/2018)
45. Babylon's Ashes - James S.A. Corey (6/9/2018)
46. Primary Inversion - Catherine Asaro (6/14/2018)
47. Blue: The LAPD and the Battle to Redeem American Policing - Joe Domanick (6/16/2018)
48. The Master's Tools Will Never Dismantle the Master's House - Audre Lorde (6/17/2018)
49. The Last Dragonslayer - Jasper Fforde (6/17/2018)
50. Persepolis Rising - James S.A. Corey (6/22/2018)
51. The Great Cat Massacre and Other Episodes in French Cultural History - Robert Darnton (7/1/2018)
52. The Three Electro-Knights - Stanislaw Lem (7/2/2018)
53. A Gathering of Shadows - V.E. Schwab (7/3/2018)
54. Why Does the World Exist? - Jim Holt (7/6/2018)
55. The Skeleton's Holiday - Leonora Carrington (7/6/2018)
56. Lavinia - Ursula K. Le Guin (7/10/2018)
57. The Ten Thousand Things - Maria Dermout (7/15/2018)
58. A Conjuring of Light - V.E. Schwab (7/20/2018)
59. The Song of the Quarkbeast - Jasper Fforde (7/20/2018)
60. The Eye of Zoltar - Jasper Fforde (7/21/2018)

61. Slowing Down to the Speed of Life - Richard Carlson & Joseph Bailey (7/28/2018)

Melisande

  • Bristles
  • ***
  • Posts: 284
Re: 50 Books in 2018!
« Reply #553 on: July 29, 2018, 08:15:05 AM »
1. The World As I Found It by Bruce Duffy
2. The Girl with a Pearl Earing by Tracy Chevalier
3. The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Society by Mary Ann Shaffer and Annie Barrows
4. & 5.  Mémoires d’Hadrian by Marguerite Yourcenar
6. In the Land of the White Death by Valerian Albanov
7. The Hours by Michael Cunningham
8., 9. & 10. Churchill: A Biography by Roy Jenkins
11. 1177 B.C.: The Year Civilization Collapsed by Eric H. Cline.
12. The Road by Cormac McCarthy.
13. Conquistador Voices: Volume 1 — Christopher Columbus; Hernán Cortés, by Kevin H. Siepel.
14. Conquistador Voices: Volume 2 — Francisco Pizarro and his brothers; Álvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca; Hernando de Soto by Kevin H. Siepel
15. A Gentleman in Moscow by Amor Towles .
15. & 16. La carte et le territoire by Michel Houellebecq.
17. Among Penguins: A Bird Man in Antarctica by Noah Stryker.
18. Henry David Thoreau: A Life, by Laura Dassow Walls
19. The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck: A Counterintuitive Approah to the Good Life, by Mark Manson
20. Ten Arguments for Deleting your Social Media Account’s Right Now, by Jason Lanier
21. Who Owns the Future?, by Jason Lanier
22. The Tempest, by William Shakespeare
23. Into a Dark, Dark Wood, by Ruth Ware. Gripping & well-written. Definitely recommended.
24. The Great Alone by Kristin Hannah

tnrunner

  • Bristles
  • ***
  • Posts: 274
Re: 50 Books in 2018!
« Reply #554 on: July 29, 2018, 03:03:51 PM »
1. Two for the Dough by Janet Evanovich
2. Three to get deadly by Janet Evanovich
3. Four to Score by Janet Evanovich
4. Seamless by Angie Smith
5. High Five by Janet Evanovich
6. Hot six by Janet Evanovich
7. Seven up by Janet Evanovich
8. hard eight by janet evanovich
9. Daring to Hope by Katie Davis Majors
10. To the nines by Janet Evanovich
11. Ten Big Ones by Janet Evanovich
12. Eleven on Top by Janet Evanovich
13. The Lazarus Vendetta by Patrick Larkin
14. Twelve Sharp by Janet Evanovich
15. Fool Me Once by Harlan Coben
16. Lean Mean Thirteen by Janet Evanovich
17. The Maze by Catherine Coulter
18. The Silenced by Heather Graham
19. Body Double by Tess Gerritsen
20. The Silent Girl by Tess Gerritsen
21. Radiant Angel by Nelson DeMille
22. Die Again by Tess Gerritsen
23. Fearless Fourteen by Janet Evanovich
24. The Neighbor by Lisa Gardner
25. Find Her by Lisa Gardner
26. Sizzling Sixteen by Janet Evanovich
27. The Partner by John Grisham
28. Nineteen eighty-four by George Orwell
29. Finger Lickin' Fifteen by Janet Evanovich
30. Top Secret Twenty-one by Janet Evanovich
31. Takedown Twenty by Janet Evanovich
32. The Maze Runner by James Dashner
33. Digital Fortress by Dan Brown

34. The Scorch Trials by James Dashner

Raenia

  • Magnum Stache
  • ******
  • Posts: 2631
Re: 50 Books in 2018!
« Reply #555 on: July 30, 2018, 04:36:08 AM »
1. The Small-Scale Poultry Flock - Harvey Ussery (1/9/2018)
2. Oathbringer - Brandon Sanderson (1/19/2018)
3. The 4-hour Work Week - Timothy Ferriss (1/21/2018)
4. Smilla's Sense of Snow - Peter Hoeg (1/23/2018)
5. Home Cheese Making - Ricki Carroll (1/25/2018)
6. A Darker Shade of Magic - V.E. Schwab (1/26/2018)
7. Dead of Winter - Matt Lake, Susan Fair, Laurie Hull, H.W. Lawson, Brian Goodman (1/27/2018)
8. Coraline - Neil Gaiman (1/30/2018)
9. The Not So Big House - Sarah Susanka (2/5/2018)
10. Le Petit Prince - Antoine de Saint-Exupery (2/21/2018)
11. Purity - Jonathan Franzen (2/22/2018)
12.  Democracy in America - Alexis de Tocqueville (2/27/2018)
13. In Cold Blood - Truman Capote (3/4/2018)
14. Running & Being: The Total Experience - George Sheehan (3/7/2018)
15. Leviathan Wakes - James S.A. Corey (3/10/2018)
16. Plato's Republic - trans. C. D. C. Reeve (3/17/2018)
17. The Six Pillars of Self-Esteem - Nathaniel Branden (3/21/2018)
18. Caliban's War - James S.A. Corey (3/23/2018)
19. The Book of Dust: La Belle Sauvage - Philip Pullman (3/24/2018)
20. Mistborn - Brandon Sanderson (3/30/3018) - REREAD
21.  Abaddon's Gate - James S.A. Corey (4/4/2018)
22. A Long Fatal Love Chase - Louisa May Alcott (4/9/2018)
23. The Vanishing Middle Class: Prejudice and Power in a Dual Economy - Peter Temin (4/13/2018)
24. The History of Bees - Maja Lunde (4/15/2018)
25. Cibola Burn - James S.A. Corey (4/18/2018)
26. Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep - Philip K. Dick
27. Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom - Cory Doctorow
28. Discourses on Livy - Niccolo Machiavelli (trans Bondanella)
29. The Invisible Library - Genevieve Cogman
30. Tomorrow's Eve - Villiers de l'Isle-Adam (trans Robert Martin Adams)
31. Last Speakers - K. David Harrison
32. Of Dogs and Walls - Yuko Tsushima (4/28/2018)
33. Middlesex - Jeffrey Eugenides (5/3/2018)
34. Nemesis Games - James S.A. Corey (5/15/2018)
35. Why I am Not Going to Buy a Computer - Wendell Berry (5/15/2018)
36. The Invention of Wings - Sue Monk Kidd (5/18/2018)
37. Simply Clean: The Proven Method for Keeping Your Home Organized, Clean, and Beautiful in Just 10 Minutes a Day - Becky Rapinchuk (5/19/2018)
38. The Masked CIty - Genevieve Cogman (5/20/2018)
39. Beauty and the Werewolf - Mercedes Lackey (5/24/2018) - REREAD
40. The Burning Page - Genevieve Cogman (5/26/2018)
41. Home Comforts: The Art and Science of Keeping House - Cheryl Mendelson (5/28/2018)
42. Anna and the King of Siam - Margaret Landon (6/1/2018)
43. The Lost Plot - Genevieve Cogman (6/2/2018)
44. Night - Elie Wiesel (6/2/2018)
45. Babylon's Ashes - James S.A. Corey (6/9/2018)
46. Primary Inversion - Catherine Asaro (6/14/2018)
47. Blue: The LAPD and the Battle to Redeem American Policing - Joe Domanick (6/16/2018)
48. The Master's Tools Will Never Dismantle the Master's House - Audre Lorde (6/17/2018)
49. The Last Dragonslayer - Jasper Fforde (6/17/2018)
50. Persepolis Rising - James S.A. Corey (6/22/2018)
51. The Great Cat Massacre and Other Episodes in French Cultural History - Robert Darnton (7/1/2018)
52. The Three Electro-Knights - Stanislaw Lem (7/2/2018)
53. A Gathering of Shadows - V.E. Schwab (7/3/2018)
54. Why Does the World Exist? - Jim Holt (7/6/2018)
55. The Skeleton's Holiday - Leonora Carrington (7/6/2018)
56. Lavinia - Ursula K. Le Guin (7/10/2018)
57. The Ten Thousand Things - Maria Dermout (7/15/2018)
58. A Conjuring of Light - V.E. Schwab (7/20/2018)
59. The Song of the Quarkbeast - Jasper Fforde (7/20/2018)
60. The Eye of Zoltar - Jasper Fforde (7/21/2018)
61. Slowing Down to the Speed of Life - Richard Carlson & Joseph Bailey (7/28/2018)

62. Capital in the Twenty-First Century - Thomas Piketty (7/29/2018)

jeninco

  • Magnum Stache
  • ******
  • Posts: 3996
  • Location: .... duh?
Re: 50 Books in 2018!
« Reply #556 on: July 30, 2018, 11:00:54 AM »

1. An Anthropologist on Mars, Oliver Sachs
2. Song of the Quarkbeast, Fford
3. David and Goliath, Gladwell
4. Why Buddhism is True, Wright
5. A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court, Mark Twain
6. B is for Burglar, Sue Grafton
7. Siddhartha, Hesse
8. Sapiens, A Brief History of Humankind, Harari
9. The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Nighttime,  Haddon. Talked about this with a high school student on my way out of tutoring last week, and grabbed it to (re-) read so I can ask him about it more next week. Love it!
10. Glass Houses (librarian recommendation when I asked for something lightweight)
11. Lavinia, Le Guin
12. Speaker for the Dead, Orson Scott Card (Yuck)
13. Debt Free U (I liked it! Lots of good ideas and perspective in here.)
14. Fledgling, Octavia Butler (loved it!)
15. How to Tame a Fox, Dugakin (also very good, especially in tandem with #14)
16. Lab Girl, Jahren (BJ, I loved it, although I see how various parts could slow one down...)
17. Grocery, Ruhlman LOVED IT! How did our food system get this crazy way! What can be done?
18. Hard Truth, Nevada Barr: HATED IT! I do not need to know that much about (how you imagine) the inside of the mind of a sadistic psychopath. To be fair, I've enjoyed some of her earlier books.
19. Where you go is not who you'll Be, Bruni
20. Artemis, Weir: Meh. The writing is pretty bad, and the main character sounds just like Mark Whitney, i.e. what Andy Weir probably wishes he sounds like.
21. The Leftovers, Perrotta. Saw it at the library next to something I was looking for, thought "why not." Meh.
22. When Breath Becomes Air,  Kalanithi. So well written!
23. The Essex Serpent, Perry. Meh, not what I thought it would be about.
24. Fantasyland: Recommended by a guy on a plane. Highly depressing, if you want to live in a reality-based world.
25. Between the World and Me. I had to be in the right mood, but it was awesome.
26. The Bad Ass Librarians of Timbuktu. Very cool read, especially since I had an expert in central/north African politics available to talk with after.
27. The Shepherd's Crown, Terry Pratchett
28. Going Postal, Terry Pratchett
29. The Truth, Terry Pratchett (yes, I went on a bit of a bender)
30. All the Weyrs of Pern, Ann McCaffrey
31. Assume the Worst, Carl Hiaison. Short.

32. How To Change Your Mind, Michael Pollan
33. Hillbilly Elegy, JD Vance
34. A Hat Full of Sky, Terry Pratchett

About halfway through Bonk, by Mary Roach. Loving the footnotes...

haypug16

  • Handlebar Stache
  • *****
  • Posts: 1332
  • Age: 45
  • Location: Boston, MA
Re: 50 Books in 2018!
« Reply #557 on: July 30, 2018, 11:56:17 AM »
1. Alias Grace by Margaret Atwood - Finished 1/14/18
2. How to Make Your Money Last by Jane Bryant Quinn - Finished 1/16/18
3. Animal Farm by George Orwell - Finished 1/20/18
4. The Awakening by Kate Chopin - Finished 2/7/18
5. J is for Judgement by Sue Grafton - Finished 2/9/18
6. The Girl on the Train by Paula Hawkins - Finished 2/20/18
7. Ready Player One by Ernest Cline - Finished 3/3/18 (re-read)
8. Cress by Marissa Meyer - Finished 3/8/18 (re-read)
9. K is for Killer by Sue Grafton - Finished 3/17/18
10. The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne - Finished 3/21/18
11. L is for Lawless by Sue Grafton - Finished 3/30/18
12. Candide by Voltaire - Finished 4/6/18
13. M is for Malice by Sue Grafton - Finished 5/2/2018
14. Wild by Cheryl Strayed - Finished 5/3/2018
15. Winter by Marissa Meyer - (re-read) Finished 6/9/2018
16. N is for Noose by Sue Grafton - Finished 6/14/2018
17. Heartless by Marissa Meyer - Finished 6/27/2018
18. The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath - Finished 7/9/2018

19. Devil in the White City by Erik Larson - Currently Reading
20. Renegades by Marissa Meyer - Currently Reading



18/50 Read

eliza

  • Bristles
  • ***
  • Posts: 377
Re: 50 Books in 2018!
« Reply #558 on: July 30, 2018, 02:21:08 PM »
2018 Focus: Russia - Goal is 50 Books About Russia, Written by Russians, or Novels Set in Russia
1. The Duel - Anton Chekhov
2. The Bear and the Nightingale - Katherine Arden
3. The Unwomanly Face of War - Svetlana Alexievich
4. Lost and Found in Russia: Lives in the Post-Soviet Landscape - Susan Richards
5. Dressed Up for a Riot: Misadventures in Putin's Moscow - Michael Idov
6. The Girl in the Tower - Katherine Arden
7. Russia: A Short History - Abraham Ascher
8. Hadji Murad - Leo Tolstoy
9. Russia - The Story of War - Gregory Carleton
10. The Cossacks - Leo Tolstoy
11. Red Notice - Bill Browder
12. The Invention of Russia - Arkady Ostrovsky
13. Nothing is True and Everything Is Possible - Peter Pomerantsev
14. Father Sergius and Other Stories - Leo Tolstoy
15. Secondhand Time - Svetlana Alexievich
16. The Man Without a Face - Masha Gessen
17. The Girl from the Metropol Hotel - Ludmilla Petrushevskaya
18. Where the Jews Aren't - Masha Gessen
19. A Hero of Our Time - Mikhail Lermontov
20. The Romanovs: The Final Chapter - Robert K. Massie
21. Master and Margarita - Mikhail Bulgakov
22. The Long Hangover - Shaun Walker
23. Tolstoy, Rasputin, Others, and Me - Teffi
24. Chernobyl: History of a Nuclear Catastrophe - Serhii Plokhy
25. Putinomics - Chris Miller
26. The Death of Ivan Ilyich - Leo Tolstoy
27. The Sword and the Shield - Christopher Andrew


diapasoun

  • Magnum Stache
  • ******
  • Posts: 4426
  • Location: California
Re: 50 Books in 2018!
« Reply #559 on: July 30, 2018, 02:48:00 PM »
1. Your Money or Your Life, Vicki Robin (library)
2. A Room of One's Own, Virginia Woolf (library)
3. The Blue Sword, Robin McKinley (library)
4. The Bad-ass Librarians of Timbuktu, Joshua Hammer (mine)
5. The Sagas of Ragnar Lodbrok, trans. Ben Waggoner (mine)
6. Practical Sigil Magic, Frater U.:D.: (pdf)
7. The Refrigerator Monologues, Catherynne Valente (library)
8. What It Means When A Man Falls From The Sky, Lesley Nneka Arimah (library)
9. Loitering with Intent, Muriel Spark (library)
10. Everfair, Nisi Shawl (library)
11. Bobbed Hair and Bath-tub Gin, Marion Meade (library)
12. Ghost Talkers, Mary Robinette Kowal  (mine)
13. Debt: The First 5,000 Years, David Graeber (mine)
14. Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone, J.K. Rowling with Stephen Fry (borrowed)
15. Northanger Abbey, Jane Austen with Juliet Stevenson (mine)
16. Earth Power, Scott Cunningham (mine)
17. Rebecca, Daphne du Maurier (library)
18. Voyage of the Basilisk, Marie Brennan (mine)
19. Herland, Charlotte Perkins Gilman (mine)
20. Beneath a Sugar Sky, Seanan McGuire (mine)
21. Down Among the Sticks and Bones, Seanan McGuire (mine)
22. The Sky is Yours, Chandler Klang-Smith (mine)
23. North and South, Elizabeth Gaskell (library)
24. An Unkindness of Ghosts, Rivers Solomon (library)
25. Storey's Guide to Raising Dairy Goats, Jerry Belanger (library)
26. Goblin Market and Other Poems, Christina Rossetti (mine)
27. The Lamb Will Slaughter The Lion, Margaret Killjoy (library)
28. Women and Power: A Manifesto, Mary Beard (mine)

29. The Barrow Will Send What It May, Margaret Killjoy (library). A followup to the previous Killjoy book, and similarly strange and enjoyable.
30. People of the North, Matthew Goodall (mine). A Pathfinder player companion guide -- very useful for a campaign we're starting this week! Intensely short but trying to keep track of these when I read them (and I figure this helps make up for all the short stories and fanfiction I read as well...).
31. The Devourers, Indra Das (mine). Visceral, pungent, beautiful writing with a highly original shapeshifter element.
32. Reign of Winter Player's Guide, Adam Diagle (mine). Another useful Pathfinder guide.
33. Rise of the Runelords Player's Guide, Wesley Schneider (mine). Again, a useful Pathfinder guide.

Currently reading:

The Winged Histories, Sofia Samatar (mine)
Bullshit Jobs, David Graeber (library), back after the recall. :)
Hidden Figures, Margot Lee Shetterly (mine)

16 library books; 18 books of my own; one borrowed book. Not too shabby a combo.

Melisande

  • Bristles
  • ***
  • Posts: 284
Re: 50 Books in 2018!
« Reply #560 on: July 31, 2018, 02:44:41 PM »
1. The World As I Found It by Bruce Duffy
2. The Girl with a Pearl Earing by Tracy Chevalier
3. The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Society by Mary Ann Shaffer and Annie Barrows
4. & 5.  Mémoires d’Hadrian by Marguerite Yourcenar
6. In the Land of the White Death by Valerian Albanov
7. The Hours by Michael Cunningham
8., 9. & 10. Churchill: A Biography by Roy Jenkins
11. 1177 B.C.: The Year Civilization Collapsed by Eric H. Cline.
12. The Road by Cormac McCarthy.
13. Conquistador Voices: Volume 1 — Christopher Columbus; Hernán Cortés, by Kevin H. Siepel.
14. Conquistador Voices: Volume 2 — Francisco Pizarro and his brothers; Álvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca; Hernando de Soto by Kevin H. Siepel
15. A Gentleman in Moscow by Amor Towles .
15. & 16. La carte et le territoire by Michel Houellebecq.
17. Among Penguins: A Bird Man in Antarctica by Noah Stryker.
18. Henry David Thoreau: A Life, by Laura Dassow Walls
19. The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck: A Counterintuitive Approah to the Good Life, by Mark Manson
20. Ten Arguments for Deleting your Social Media Account’s Right Now, by Jason Lanier
21. Who Owns the Future?, by Jason Lanier
22. The Tempest, by William Shakespeare
23. Into a Dark, Dark Wood, by Ruth Ware.
24. The Great Alone by Kristin Hannah
25. Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine by Gail Honeyman

FireHiker

  • Handlebar Stache
  • *****
  • Posts: 1141
  • Location: So Cal
Re: 50 Books in 2018!
« Reply #561 on: August 01, 2018, 12:09:25 PM »
1. Ready Player One by Ernest Cline
2. The Gentle Art of Swedish Death Cleaning by Margareta Magnusson
3. The Wind in the Willows by Kenneth Grahame
4. The Adventures of Tom Sawyer by Mark Twain
5. The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain
6. The Secret History by Donna Tartt
7. The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald (re-read in one night since it's been 20 years and my son was reading it in school)
8. The Glass Castle by Jeannette Walls
9. Life of Pi by Yann Martel
10. I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou
11. Catch-22 by Joseph Heller
12. David Copperfield by Charles Dickens
13. All's Well That Ends Well by William Shakespeare (I WILL get through his complete works...eventually)
14. As You Like It by William Shakespeare
15. The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger
16. Here in Berlin by Cristina Garcia
17. The Shadow of the Wind by Carlos Ruiz Zafon
18. Death Comes for the Archbishop by Willa Cather
19. Meet the Frugalwoods by Elizabeth Willard Thames
20. The Angel's Game by Carlos Ruiz Zafon
21. A Wrinkle In Time by Madeleine L'Engle
22. The Prisoner of Heaven by Carlos Ruiz Zafon
23. Girl, Interrupted by Susanna Kaysen
24. The Mayor of Casterbridge by Thomas Hardy
25. Shattered Air by Bob Madgic
26. The Mill on the Floss by George Elliot
27. Cold Mountain by Charles Frazier
28. Born to Run by Christopher McDougall
29. The Comedy of Errors by Willliam Shakespeare
30. The War of the Worlds by H.G. Wells
31. Eat & Run by Scott Jurek
32. Cymbeline by William Shakespeare
33. Hillbilly Elegy by J.D. Vance
34. North by Scott and Jenny Jurek
35. The Bonfire of the Vanities by Tom Wolfe
36. Charlie and the Chocolate Factory by Roald Dahl
37. Notes From a Small Island by Bill Bryson
38. The Awakening by Kate Chopin
39. Educated by Tara Westover
40. A Walk in the Woods by Bill Bryson
41. White Noise by Don DeLillo
42. A Room With A View by E.M. Forster

43. Ethan Frome by Edith Wharton

eliza

  • Bristles
  • ***
  • Posts: 377
Re: 50 Books in 2018!
« Reply #562 on: August 02, 2018, 09:02:19 AM »
2018 Focus: Russia - Goal is 50 Books About Russia, Written by Russians, or Novels Set in Russia
1. The Duel - Anton Chekhov
2. The Bear and the Nightingale - Katherine Arden
3. The Unwomanly Face of War - Svetlana Alexievich
4. Lost and Found in Russia: Lives in the Post-Soviet Landscape - Susan Richards
5. Dressed Up for a Riot: Misadventures in Putin's Moscow - Michael Idov
6. The Girl in the Tower - Katherine Arden
7. Russia: A Short History - Abraham Ascher
8. Hadji Murad - Leo Tolstoy
9. Russia - The Story of War - Gregory Carleton
10. The Cossacks - Leo Tolstoy
11. Red Notice - Bill Browder
12. The Invention of Russia - Arkady Ostrovsky
13. Nothing is True and Everything Is Possible - Peter Pomerantsev
14. Father Sergius and Other Stories - Leo Tolstoy
15. Secondhand Time - Svetlana Alexievich
16. The Man Without a Face - Masha Gessen
17. The Girl from the Metropol Hotel - Ludmilla Petrushevskaya
18. Where the Jews Aren't - Masha Gessen
19. A Hero of Our Time - Mikhail Lermontov
20. The Romanovs: The Final Chapter - Robert K. Massie
21. Master and Margarita - Mikhail Bulgakov
22. The Long Hangover - Shaun Walker
23. Tolstoy, Rasputin, Others, and Me - Teffi
24. Chernobyl: History of a Nuclear Catastrophe - Serhii Plokhy
25. Putinomics - Chris Miller
26. The Death of Ivan Ilyich - Leo Tolstoy
27. The Sword and the Shield - Christopher Andrew
28. Evgenii Onegin - Alexander Pushkin

Bracken_Joy

  • Walrus Stache
  • *******
  • Posts: 8927
  • Location: Oregon
Re: 50 Books in 2018!
« Reply #563 on: August 02, 2018, 09:16:50 AM »
1. A Torch Against The Night- Sabaa Tahir- 1/8/18
--I cannot wait until the next one. Excellent books.
2. Hounded - Kevin Hearne - 1/17/18
3. Hexed - Kevin Hearne- 1/23/18
--fun short reads. Doritos for the brain. Not quite as good as Dresden, but still entertaining.
4. Hammered- Kevin Hearne- 2/9/18
--this one wasn't quite as good at the first two, but it was readable. Hope the next is better again.
5. Lab Girl- Hope Jahren- 2/24/18
--God this took me forever. It just was not compelling for me. Got better at the half way point, but just not my cup of tea. My book club all loved it, though, so maybe I'm alone on this one! I think it would be way more interesting to people who haven't worked in research before, because it'd be 'exploring an unknown life' style.
6. Tricked- Kevin Hearne- 3/2/18
7. World War Z- Max Brooks - 3/5/18
--As always (it was a reread for book club), an excellent book.
8. Trapped- Kevin Hearne - 3/12/18
9. Hunted- Kevin Hearne - 3/23/18
10. Shattered- Kevin Hearne - 4/2/18
11. Staked - Kevin Hearne - 4/11/18
12. Beseiged- Kevin Hearne- 4/17/18
13. Scourged- Kevin Hearne- 4/25/18
14. The Maze Runner- James Dashner- 5/6/18 -- This was another re-read for book club. Still a good read. I'll probably not bother to read the whole series again- the first one really is the best one.
15. A Court of Thorns and Roses- Sarah J Maas- 5/11/18 -- It was a compelling read, but not necessarily a good read. Ended up way more romance than action bend. Supposedly the second is better though, so I'll keep going.
16. A Court of Mist and Fury- Sarah J Maas - 5/19/18-- Definitely was better than the previous one. Not going to make it on a top YA series list for me, but good enough I'll finish out the series.
17. A Court of Wings and Ruin - Sarah J Maas - 5/21/18 -- The best of the 3 so far I think. Less romance, more bloody fields of war. I can get behind that. =P
18. Meet the Frugalwoods - Elizabeth Willard Thames - 5/30/18 -- Good read if you're interested in them as people. Autobio, not a how-to. Fills in some timeline gaps from their blog on their life stories.
19. Uglies - Scott Westerfeld - 6/3/18 -- Read for book club. It was pretty good! Definitely more on the children's lit than the YA side for most of it, but a compelling read. Easy to predict though. Still, finding myself looking forward to getting past the book group meeting so I can read the next in the series.
20. An Abundance of Katherines - John Green - 6/10/18 --Never read a John Green novel, got this for free from Buy Nothing. It was okay, not stellar. In no rush to read any of his other books. Seems like it would be great for teens feeling disconnected from their peers.
21. A Court of Frost and Starlight - Sarah J Maas - 6/19/18 - MEH. I should have stopped after the one before this.
22. Chronicle of a Death Foretold - Garbiel Garcia Marquez - 6/26/18 - Not as good as I remember it. Not that my Spanish is anywhere near the level anymore I could read it untranslated =(
23. Pretties- Scott Westerfeld- 7/4/18 - Still a fun series! Read for book club.
24. Alanna: The First Adventure - Tamora Pierce - 7/9/18
25. In The Hand of the Goddess - Tamora Pierce - 7/13/18
26. The life-changing magic of tidying up - Marie Kondo - abandoned 50% through on 7/19/18
27. The Woman Who Rides Like a Man - Tamora Pierce - 7/16/18
28. Lioness Rampant - Tamora Pierce - 7/21/18

29. Early Retirement Extreme - Jacob Fiskar - ~25% through. Very dense.
30. Wild Magic - Tamora Pierce - 7/28/18
31. Wolf Speaker -Tamora Pierce - 8/1/18
32. Emperor Mage - Tamora Pierce
33. A Brief History of Time - Stephen Hawking

Melisande

  • Bristles
  • ***
  • Posts: 284
Re: 50 Books in 2018!
« Reply #564 on: August 04, 2018, 04:43:59 AM »
1. The World As I Found It by Bruce Duffy
2. The Girl with a Pearl Earing by Tracy Chevalier
3. The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Society by Mary Ann Shaffer and Annie Barrows
4. & 5.  Mémoires d’Hadrian by Marguerite Yourcenar
6. In the Land of the White Death by Valerian Albanov
7. The Hours by Michael Cunningham
8., 9. & 10. Churchill: A Biography by Roy Jenkins
11. 1177 B.C.: The Year Civilization Collapsed by Eric H. Cline.
12. The Road by Cormac McCarthy.
13. Conquistador Voices: Volume 1 — Christopher Columbus; Hernán Cortés, by Kevin H. Siepel.
14. Conquistador Voices: Volume 2 — Francisco Pizarro and his brothers; Álvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca; Hernando de Soto by Kevin H. Siepel
15. A Gentleman in Moscow by Amor Towles .
15. & 16. La carte et le territoire by Michel Houellebecq.
17. Among Penguins: A Bird Man in Antarctica by Noah Stryker.
18. Henry David Thoreau: A Life, by Laura Dassow Walls
19. The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck: A Counterintuitive Approah to the Good Life, by Mark Manson
20. Ten Arguments for Deleting your Social Media Account’s Right Now, by Jason Lanier
21. Who Owns the Future?, by Jason Lanier
22. The Tempest, by William Shakespeare
23. Into a Dark, Dark Wood, by Ruth Ware.
24. The Great Alone by Kristin Hannah
25. Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine by Gail Honeyman
26. Undertow: My Escape from the Fundamentalism and Cult Control of The Way International by Charlene Edge.

Raenia

  • Magnum Stache
  • ******
  • Posts: 2631
Re: 50 Books in 2018!
« Reply #565 on: August 04, 2018, 05:11:35 AM »
1. The Small-Scale Poultry Flock - Harvey Ussery (1/9/2018)
2. Oathbringer - Brandon Sanderson (1/19/2018)
3. The 4-hour Work Week - Timothy Ferriss (1/21/2018)
4. Smilla's Sense of Snow - Peter Hoeg (1/23/2018)
5. Home Cheese Making - Ricki Carroll (1/25/2018)
6. A Darker Shade of Magic - V.E. Schwab (1/26/2018)
7. Dead of Winter - Matt Lake, Susan Fair, Laurie Hull, H.W. Lawson, Brian Goodman (1/27/2018)
8. Coraline - Neil Gaiman (1/30/2018)
9. The Not So Big House - Sarah Susanka (2/5/2018)
10. Le Petit Prince - Antoine de Saint-Exupery (2/21/2018)
11. Purity - Jonathan Franzen (2/22/2018)
12.  Democracy in America - Alexis de Tocqueville (2/27/2018)
13. In Cold Blood - Truman Capote (3/4/2018)
14. Running & Being: The Total Experience - George Sheehan (3/7/2018)
15. Leviathan Wakes - James S.A. Corey (3/10/2018)
16. Plato's Republic - trans. C. D. C. Reeve (3/17/2018)
17. The Six Pillars of Self-Esteem - Nathaniel Branden (3/21/2018)
18. Caliban's War - James S.A. Corey (3/23/2018)
19. The Book of Dust: La Belle Sauvage - Philip Pullman (3/24/2018)
20. Mistborn - Brandon Sanderson (3/30/3018) - REREAD
21.  Abaddon's Gate - James S.A. Corey (4/4/2018)
22. A Long Fatal Love Chase - Louisa May Alcott (4/9/2018)
23. The Vanishing Middle Class: Prejudice and Power in a Dual Economy - Peter Temin (4/13/2018)
24. The History of Bees - Maja Lunde (4/15/2018)
25. Cibola Burn - James S.A. Corey (4/18/2018)
26. Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep - Philip K. Dick
27. Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom - Cory Doctorow
28. Discourses on Livy - Niccolo Machiavelli (trans Bondanella)
29. The Invisible Library - Genevieve Cogman
30. Tomorrow's Eve - Villiers de l'Isle-Adam (trans Robert Martin Adams)
31. Last Speakers - K. David Harrison
32. Of Dogs and Walls - Yuko Tsushima (4/28/2018)
33. Middlesex - Jeffrey Eugenides (5/3/2018)
34. Nemesis Games - James S.A. Corey (5/15/2018)
35. Why I am Not Going to Buy a Computer - Wendell Berry (5/15/2018)
36. The Invention of Wings - Sue Monk Kidd (5/18/2018)
37. Simply Clean: The Proven Method for Keeping Your Home Organized, Clean, and Beautiful in Just 10 Minutes a Day - Becky Rapinchuk (5/19/2018)
38. The Masked CIty - Genevieve Cogman (5/20/2018)
39. Beauty and the Werewolf - Mercedes Lackey (5/24/2018) - REREAD
40. The Burning Page - Genevieve Cogman (5/26/2018)
41. Home Comforts: The Art and Science of Keeping House - Cheryl Mendelson (5/28/2018)
42. Anna and the King of Siam - Margaret Landon (6/1/2018)
43. The Lost Plot - Genevieve Cogman (6/2/2018)
44. Night - Elie Wiesel (6/2/2018)
45. Babylon's Ashes - James S.A. Corey (6/9/2018)
46. Primary Inversion - Catherine Asaro (6/14/2018)
47. Blue: The LAPD and the Battle to Redeem American Policing - Joe Domanick (6/16/2018)
48. The Master's Tools Will Never Dismantle the Master's House - Audre Lorde (6/17/2018)
49. The Last Dragonslayer - Jasper Fforde (6/17/2018)
50. Persepolis Rising - James S.A. Corey (6/22/2018)
51. The Great Cat Massacre and Other Episodes in French Cultural History - Robert Darnton (7/1/2018)
52. The Three Electro-Knights - Stanislaw Lem (7/2/2018)
53. A Gathering of Shadows - V.E. Schwab (7/3/2018)
54. Why Does the World Exist? - Jim Holt (7/6/2018)
55. The Skeleton's Holiday - Leonora Carrington (7/6/2018)
56. Lavinia - Ursula K. Le Guin (7/10/2018)
57. The Ten Thousand Things - Maria Dermout (7/15/2018)
58. A Conjuring of Light - V.E. Schwab (7/20/2018)
59. The Song of the Quarkbeast - Jasper Fforde (7/20/2018)
60. The Eye of Zoltar - Jasper Fforde (7/21/2018)
61. Slowing Down to the Speed of Life - Richard Carlson & Joseph Bailey (7/28/2018)
62. Capital in the Twenty-First Century - Thomas Piketty (7/29/2018)

63. Valor - Isabelle Melancon & Megan Lavey-Heaton (8/3/2018)
64. All Tomorrow's Parties - William Gibson (8/3/2018)
65. Steelheart - Brandon Sanderson (8/5/2018) - REREAD
66. Firefight - Brandon Sanderson (8/5/2018) - REREAD
67. Calamity - Brandon Sanderson (8/5/2018)
« Last Edit: August 05, 2018, 06:19:08 PM by Raenia »

Serendip

  • Handlebar Stache
  • *****
  • Posts: 2210
Re: 50 Books in 2018!
« Reply #566 on: August 05, 2018, 09:47:27 AM »
1. Why Buddhism Is True: The Science and Philosophy of Meditation and Enlightenment (Robert Wright) *IMO very good!
2. Plastic Free : How I Kicked the Plastic Habit and How You Can Too (Beth Terry)
3. Taking the Leap : Freeing Ourselves from Old Habits and Fears (Pema Chodron)
4. Sapiens : A Brief History of Humankind (Yuval Noah Hurari)
5. Move Your DNA: Restore Your Health Through Natural Movement (Katy Bowman)
6. The Gentle Art of Swedish Death Cleaning (Margareta Magnusson)
7. The Year of Less  (Cait Flanders)
8. The Psychobiotic Revolution: Mood, Food, and the New Science of the Gut-Brain Connection (Scott C. Anderson) *quite liked this, neuroscience and food
9. Why Isn't My Brain Working: Brain decline and effective strategies to recover your brain's health ( Datis Kharrazian)
10. The Back of the Turtle (Thomas King)
11. The War of Art  (Steven Pressfield)
12. Millionaire Teacher: The Nine Rules of Wealth You Should Have Learned in School (Andrew Hallam)
13. Homo Deus : A Brief History of Tomorrow (Yuval Noah Harari)
14. Lost Connections: Uncovering the Real Causes of Depression--and the Unexpected Solutions (Johann Hari)
15. Spark : The Revolutionary New Science of Exercise and the Brain  (John J. Ratey)
16. Tonglen: The Path of Transformation (Pema Chodron)--a more advanced meditation style than I am currently at
17. The Hate U Give (Angie Thomas)
18. When: The Scientific Secrets of Perfect Timing (Daniel. H. Pink)
19. What Doesn't Kill Us: How Freezing Water, Extreme Altitude, and Environmental Conditioning Will Renew Our Lost Evolutionary Strength (Scott Carney)
20. Every Word Is A Bird We Teach To Sing : Encounters with the Mysteries and Meanings of Language (Daniel Tammet)
21. The Transformation Power of Fasting (Stephen Harrod Buhner)
22. Radical Acceptance: Embracing Your Life With the Heart of a Buddha (Tara Brach)
23. Lands of Lost Borders: Out of Bounds on the Silk Road (Kate Harris) **beautifully written, intelligent adventure story
24. Fifteen Dogs (Andre Alexis)
25. Microadventures: Local Discoveries, Great Escapes (Alastair Humphries)
26. The Art of Stillness: Adventures in Going Nowhere (Pico Iyer)-lovely book
27. The Boreal Herbal: Wild Food and Medicine Plants of the North (Beverly Gray)
28. The Little Book of Hygge: Danish Secrets to Happy Living (Meik Wiking)
29. What It Means When a Man Falls From the Sky (Lesley Nneka Arimah)
30. Men Explain Things to Me (Rebecca Solnit)
31. A Monks Guide to a Clean House and Mind (Shoukei Matsumoto)
32. A Mind at Home with Itself (Byron Katie & Stephen Mitchell)
33. Abandon: A Romance (Pico Iyer)
34. The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up (Marie Kondo)
35. The Heart of Zen (Junpo Denis Kelly Roshi & Keith Martin-Smith) *didn't quite finish
36. Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge and the Teachings of Plants (Robin Wall Kimmerer)
37. Solitude: A Singular Life in a Crowded World ( Michael Harris)
38. Bee Time: Lessons from the Hive (Mark. L Winston)
39. Devotion (Patti Smith)
40. The Order of Time (Carlo Rovelli)
41. Let My People Go Surfing: The Education of a Reluctant Businessman (Yvon Choinard)
42. The Power (Naomi Alderman)
43. End of the Rope: Mountains, Marriage and Motherhood (Jan Redford)

44. Northland: A 4,000-Mile Journey Along America's Forgotten Border (Porter Fox)
45. The Brain's Way of Healing: Remarkable Discoveries and Recoveries on the Frontiers of Neuroplasticity (Norman Doidge)
46. Pachinko (Min Jin Lee)
47. The Fruitful Darkness: A Journey Through Buddhist Practice and Tribal Wisdom (Joan Halifax)
« Last Edit: August 05, 2018, 11:09:59 AM by Serendip »

woopwoop

  • Bristles
  • ***
  • Posts: 346
Re: 50 Books in 2018!
« Reply #567 on: August 05, 2018, 03:42:36 PM »
1. Cane River - this was for a book club, which is the only reason I finished it. Five hundred pages of depressing slavery historical fiction, ranging from super depressing slave rape and torture to slightly-less-depressing institutional racism by the end of the saga. Would not recommend.
2. The Road Less Traveled - this is a psychology cult classic from the 70s that's fun to read. In one chapter he mentions in a footnote that "the only healthy marriage is an open marriage." Lol, the seventies were awesome.
3. Down Among the Sticks and Bones - a well-written and darkly funny YA fantasy novella. Think CS Lewis with vampires.
4. The Hating Game - this was just a bubble gum contemporary romcom about a love-hate-love relationship. Super fast and sexy read, recommended as a nice beach read if you like romance.
5. The Gentleman's Guide to Vice and Virtue - How did I end up reading so much YA at the beginning of this year? I don't even particularly like YA, these were all recommended to me. This was a fun romp of pirates and highwaymen and gay interracial relationships in the 1800s, but it was very very YA. I can't even put my finger on what "Very YA" means, but whatever it was, this book was that. My next read is YA, too, then I think I'm done for a while. I think it's the quirkiness that gets me. Everyone is so goddamn quirky in YA books.
6. Jane Unlimited - ugh, another YA, this one with a quirky main character who makes artsy umbrellas. Four mentions of Doctor Who in the first half of the book, how weird and nerdy lolol!!! I'm so done with YA.
7. Dead Wake - okay, this one is historical fiction about the Lusitania. I don't know history so this is always good for me. Plus Erik Larsen is the tits, this was a guaranteed Good Book after my latest string of failures. This book is not quite as good as his epicly awesome Devil in the White City that I love love loved, but it's still good and suspenseful.
8.The Duke and I - Regency romance, definitely more erotic than Jane Austen. Fun and light but not particularly great. Recommended all over the place as one of the best contemporary-written regency romances, which probably means I just don't really like this genre. I love Jane Austen, though, oh well.
9.Paris To the Moon - Another French travelogue about an American moving his family to Paris. Funny, well-written, but not epically hilarious like my favorite of this genre, Toujours Provence.
10. Drop the Ball - nonfiction, about how women need to stop trying to do it all. Kind of a companion book to Lean In, which I also didn't like. This book just feels repetitive. It did get my husband and I to make a spreadsheet for our grocery lists, though.
11. A Man Called Ove - another book club read, I guess it was a movie? Anyway, it made me ugly cry at the end although the opening chapters were hard for me to get into. Old grumpy man inspirational lit, I would classify it.
12. The Artist's Way - I am not in the right spot to get into this kind of book, in that I have a toddler and would love to do "morning pages" but it's clear from the way this author writes that she cannot imagine not having alone time every day. Well, bully for her. I'll pick this back up in a few years.
13. Designs for Living and Learning - really great book about childhood learning environments. Gave me a bunch to think about as I create living spaces for my young toddler.
14. Voyage  -a play by Tom Stoppard that's a witty sendup of every Russian play from the greats. Lots of philosophizing and wordplay, but not nearly as entertaining as Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead, which everyone should read (and watch the movie version!) if they have ever read Hamlet. For you Game of Thrones fans out there, Jorah is Hamlet, and that should seal the deal. He also wrote Shakespeare in Love which was a fun screenplay.
15. Chrysalis - nonfiction, an account of female naturalist Maria Meriam. The book I'm writing is going to have a main character named after her, so I thought I'd do some research. Really interesting so far, she was a gifted artist and scientist back when science was stuck more in naming and classifying rather than experimenting. Makes me excited to write my book!
16. The Kingmaker's Daughter - historical fiction by the same woman who wrote The Other Boleyn Girl which I loved. This was a great book, made even greater by the fact that I don't know any history at all. What will happen to Anne and Richard? I don't know, it's a mystery! Makes reading historical fiction all the better, imo.
16b. The Shadow of the Wind - I... really didn't like this. I didn't even finish it, so that's why it's going on the list as 16b. Just awful, pretentious writing. Maybe it's the translation? I had high hopes and a lot of people recommended it, but I found it utterly lacking.
17. The Refrigerator Monologues - On recommendation by this thread. I didn't really care for this one, maybe because I don't know an awful lot about comics. Most of the characters had the same voice, there weren't any great new perspectives. I dunno, I might have been in the wrong frame of mind for this.
18. The Whole-Brain Child - Some really good suggestions for how to handle parenting decisions, based on brain science of developing children. Some of it was for older kids so not quite as useful, but a lot of excellent practical advice for toddler meltdowns, etc. We have been lucky so far with our kid (not quite 2!) but I'm sure she'll be testing our patience soon enough so I want to be prepared.
19. Transatlantic - Another historical fiction about Ireland, transatlantic flight, Frederick Douglass, and some other things that are not really interesting to me. Also the author uses way too many. Sentence fragments. For dramatic effect. And I'm sick of it.
20. Brain on Fire - Nonfiction account of a NY Post journalist who went crazy due to a rare form of encephalitis. Super interesting, like reading a House episode. Ending kind of dragged on weakly but otherwise very engaging.
21. The Philosophical Baby - An overview of studies on the cognitive and emotional capabilities of developing babies. I liked it, but not a lot of good parenting takeaways other than "don't neglect your baby".
22. The Importance of Being Earnest   -Reread this one for funsies. It was fun, like all Wilde is fun.
23. Lady Windemere's Fan - Oh, so fun!
24. The Thirteenth Tale - Solid meh. Gothic mystery type book, very debut-novel in that there's lots of meta-commentary on books and reading and literature. I did the same thing in my debut novel, and I cringe whenever I read it somewhere else. Too long for not enough payoff and I guessed the ending.
25. The Wizard of Earthsea -Thanks to whoever recommended this one in this thread. Leguin is amazing but I've only read The Left Hand Side of Darkness by her and I need to read more. I didn't realize it was YA but I just ran through it super fast.
26. All Our Wrong Todays - GREAT time travel romance book, really really fun. If Chuck Palahniuk wrote The Time Traveller's Wife, this is what it would have turned out as.
27.The Girl Who Drew Butterflies - another biography of Maria Merian as research, YA stuff so very light. My toddler liked looking at all the pictures of butterflies, haha.
28.Superintelligence - Holy moly, this is a fascinating book. Regardless of when you think the singularity will come, there are risks associated with AI and this book does a great job of giving an overview of possible pitfalls where our world will be turned into a ball of paperclips... or something. Really interesting if you're at all into artificial intelligence.
29.Parenting in the Digital Age - pretty much a memoir of an advertising/TV guy with some little parenting stuff thrown in with plenty of unsourced speculative assertions. Fun to read, but just about useless when it comes to making evidence based decisions.
30.How to Raise a Child with a High EQ - that's an "emotional quotient", and it's pretty straightforward stuff, lots of repetition I'd already read in books about positive parenting and emotional discipline. Also not super useful until my kid gets a bit older. 
31.Evening Star - Oh, my freaking god, this book is amazing. Larry McMurty is the guy who wrote Lonesome Dove and Terms of Endearment, and this book was actually a sequel to the latter but it didn't read like a sequel at all. It was amazing, poignant, and made me ugly cry at the end, and then again at midnight when I woke up and thought about the book, and probably a couple more times in the future if I'm being honest here. Great writing, characters, interesting take on how relationships work. BEST BOOK SO FAR ON MY LIST.
32. How to Create a Mind - by Ray Kurzweil, of singularity fame. Really interesting look at how artificial intelligence has come so far and the path it has to go. Highly recommend to anyone interested in AI.
33. The Parent's Tao Te Ching - Eh, I liked The Tao of Pooh better. This just seems like a weird adaptation of the TTC so that someone could dole out parenting advice. And as a depressed person, advice like "Be happy and your children will be happy" just makes me feel more depressed that I'm fucking up this whole parenting thing.
34. The Master Algorithm - Not as interesting as the Kurzweil AI book, kind of a summary of different styles of machine learning which is interesting in parts but gets somewhat dry. I guess I'm not as into ML as I thought I was.
35. Swamplandia! - What a weird book. I liked it, kind of reminded me of Geek Love (which, if you need a great book that's like magical realism about a wacky circus family, that is the book for you). Had a lot of weird characters and good writing, but it turned into a weird rape thing at the end which I dunno, felt off from the rest of the book and just didn't work well in the plot imo.
36. The Hotel Du Lac - really strange literary book. Kind of felt like a short story in that every sentence seemed to mean more than surface level. The protagonist felt weirdly relatable, being a trashy romance author who doesn't like trashy romance and hates being around people and is emotionally numb, haha kill me now.
37. In One Person - a fun John Irving read, if you like Irving you'll like it and that's about all I can say! If you haven't read Irving, start with Garp or Prayer for Owen Meany.
38. The Lies of Locke Lamora SO MUCH FUN! A crime caper in a fantasy world, so fast paced it flew by at 700 pages. This is going to be my go-to for recommending people try out fantasy if they want something more serious than Discworld.

jeninco

  • Magnum Stache
  • ******
  • Posts: 3996
  • Location: .... duh?
Re: 50 Books in 2018!
« Reply #568 on: August 06, 2018, 12:01:38 PM »
1. An Anthropologist on Mars, Oliver Sachs
2. Song of the Quarkbeast, Fford
3. David and Goliath, Gladwell
4. Why Buddhism is True, Wright
5. A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court, Mark Twain
6. B is for Burglar, Sue Grafton
7. Siddhartha, Hesse
8. Sapiens, A Brief History of Humankind, Harari
9. The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Nighttime,  Haddon. Talked about this with a high school student on my way out of tutoring last week, and grabbed it to (re-) read so I can ask him about it more next week. Love it!
10. Glass Houses (librarian recommendation when I asked for something lightweight)
11. Lavinia, Le Guin
12. Speaker for the Dead, Orson Scott Card (Yuck)
13. Debt Free U (I liked it! Lots of good ideas and perspective in here.)
14. Fledgling, Octavia Butler (loved it!)
15. How to Tame a Fox, Dugakin (also very good, especially in tandem with #14)
16. Lab Girl, Jahren (BJ, I loved it, although I see how various parts could slow one down...)
17. Grocery, Ruhlman LOVED IT! How did our food system get this crazy way! What can be done?
18. Hard Truth, Nevada Barr: HATED IT! I do not need to know that much about (how you imagine) the inside of the mind of a sadistic psychopath. To be fair, I've enjoyed some of her earlier books.
19. Where you go is not who you'll Be, Bruni
20. Artemis, Weir: Meh. The writing is pretty bad, and the main character sounds just like Mark Whitney, i.e. what Andy Weir probably wishes he sounds like.
21. The Leftovers, Perrotta. Saw it at the library next to something I was looking for, thought "why not." Meh.
22. When Breath Becomes Air,  Kalanithi. So well written!
23. The Essex Serpent, Perry. Meh, not what I thought it would be about.
24. Fantasyland: Recommended by a guy on a plane. Highly depressing, if you want to live in a reality-based world.
25. Between the World and Me. I had to be in the right mood, but it was awesome.
26. The Bad Ass Librarians of Timbuktu. Very cool read, especially since I had an expert in central/north African politics available to talk with after.
27. The Shepherd's Crown, Terry Pratchett
28. Going Postal, Terry Pratchett
29. The Truth, Terry Pratchett (yes, I went on a bit of a bender)
30. All the Weyrs of Pern, Ann McCaffrey
31. Assume the Worst, Carl Hiaison. Short.
32. How To Change Your Mind, Michael Pollan
33. Hillbilly Elegy, JD Vance
34. A Hat Full of Sky, Terry Pratchett
35. Bonk, Mary Roach
36. The Rosie Project, Graeme Samson
37. Making Money, Terry Pratchett

FireHiker

  • Handlebar Stache
  • *****
  • Posts: 1141
  • Location: So Cal
Re: 50 Books in 2018!
« Reply #569 on: August 06, 2018, 01:48:16 PM »
1. Ready Player One by Ernest Cline
2. The Gentle Art of Swedish Death Cleaning by Margareta Magnusson
3. The Wind in the Willows by Kenneth Grahame
4. The Adventures of Tom Sawyer by Mark Twain
5. The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain
6. The Secret History by Donna Tartt
7. The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald (re-read in one night since it's been 20 years and my son was reading it in school)
8. The Glass Castle by Jeannette Walls
9. Life of Pi by Yann Martel
10. I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou
11. Catch-22 by Joseph Heller
12. David Copperfield by Charles Dickens
13. All's Well That Ends Well by William Shakespeare (I WILL get through his complete works...eventually)
14. As You Like It by William Shakespeare
15. The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger
16. Here in Berlin by Cristina Garcia
17. The Shadow of the Wind by Carlos Ruiz Zafon
18. Death Comes for the Archbishop by Willa Cather
19. Meet the Frugalwoods by Elizabeth Willard Thames
20. The Angel's Game by Carlos Ruiz Zafon
21. A Wrinkle In Time by Madeleine L'Engle
22. The Prisoner of Heaven by Carlos Ruiz Zafon
23. Girl, Interrupted by Susanna Kaysen
24. The Mayor of Casterbridge by Thomas Hardy
25. Shattered Air by Bob Madgic
26. The Mill on the Floss by George Elliot
27. Cold Mountain by Charles Frazier
28. Born to Run by Christopher McDougall
29. The Comedy of Errors by Willliam Shakespeare
30. The War of the Worlds by H.G. Wells
31. Eat & Run by Scott Jurek
32. Cymbeline by William Shakespeare
33. Hillbilly Elegy by J.D. Vance
34. North by Scott and Jenny Jurek
35. The Bonfire of the Vanities by Tom Wolfe
36. Charlie and the Chocolate Factory by Roald Dahl
37. Notes From a Small Island by Bill Bryson
38. The Awakening by Kate Chopin
39. Educated by Tara Westover
40. A Walk in the Woods by Bill Bryson
41. White Noise by Don DeLillo
42. A Room With A View by E.M. Forster
43. Ethan Frome by Edith Wharton

44. The Lady of the Rivers by Philippa Gregory

diapasoun

  • Magnum Stache
  • ******
  • Posts: 4426
  • Location: California
Re: 50 Books in 2018!
« Reply #570 on: August 06, 2018, 02:46:05 PM »
1. Your Money or Your Life, Vicki Robin (library)
2. A Room of One's Own, Virginia Woolf (library)
3. The Blue Sword, Robin McKinley (library)
4. The Bad-ass Librarians of Timbuktu, Joshua Hammer (mine)
5. The Sagas of Ragnar Lodbrok, trans. Ben Waggoner (mine)
6. Practical Sigil Magic, Frater U.:D.: (pdf)
7. The Refrigerator Monologues, Catherynne Valente (library)
8. What It Means When A Man Falls From The Sky, Lesley Nneka Arimah (library)
9. Loitering with Intent, Muriel Spark (library)
10. Everfair, Nisi Shawl (library)
11. Bobbed Hair and Bath-tub Gin, Marion Meade (library)
12. Ghost Talkers, Mary Robinette Kowal  (mine)
13. Debt: The First 5,000 Years, David Graeber (mine)
14. Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone, J.K. Rowling with Stephen Fry (borrowed)
15. Northanger Abbey, Jane Austen with Juliet Stevenson (mine)
16. Earth Power, Scott Cunningham (mine)
17. Rebecca, Daphne du Maurier (library)
18. Voyage of the Basilisk, Marie Brennan (mine)
19. Herland, Charlotte Perkins Gilman (mine)
20. Beneath a Sugar Sky, Seanan McGuire (mine)
21. Down Among the Sticks and Bones, Seanan McGuire (mine)
22. The Sky is Yours, Chandler Klang-Smith (mine)
23. North and South, Elizabeth Gaskell (library)
24. An Unkindness of Ghosts, Rivers Solomon (library)
25. Storey's Guide to Raising Dairy Goats, Jerry Belanger (library)
26. Goblin Market and Other Poems, Christina Rossetti (mine)
27. The Lamb Will Slaughter The Lion, Margaret Killjoy (library)
28. Women and Power: A Manifesto, Mary Beard (mine)
29. The Barrow Will Send What It May, Margaret Killjoy (library)
30. People of the North, Matthew Goodall (mine)
31. The Devourers, Indra Das (mine)
32. Reign of Winter Player's Guide, Adam Diagle (mine)
33. Rise of the Runelords Player's Guide, Wesley Schneider (mine)

34. The Winged Histories, Sofia Samatar (mine). One story told from four viewpoints in a well-integrated way, with four genuinely different and interesting voices. No dragons (I was told there would be dragons?!) but still an inventive and beautiful fantasy story.
35.Bullshit Jobs, David Graeber (library). Finally finished it! I enjoyed it, but am unsure if I'd recommend it; it was too polemical for my tastes, and needed a lot more rigorous research imo. (Too bad, because I really loved Debt.)

Currently reading:

Meditations, Marcus Aurelius (mine)
On Tyranny, Timothy Snyder (library)
Hidden Figures, Margot Lee Shetterly (mine)

tnrunner

  • Bristles
  • ***
  • Posts: 274
Re: 50 Books in 2018!
« Reply #571 on: August 08, 2018, 05:40:24 AM »
1. Two for the Dough by Janet Evanovich
2. Three to get deadly by Janet Evanovich
3. Four to Score by Janet Evanovich
4. Seamless by Angie Smith
5. High Five by Janet Evanovich
6. Hot six by Janet Evanovich
7. Seven up by Janet Evanovich
8. hard eight by janet evanovich
9. Daring to Hope by Katie Davis Majors
10. To the nines by Janet Evanovich
11. Ten Big Ones by Janet Evanovich
12. Eleven on Top by Janet Evanovich
13. The Lazarus Vendetta by Patrick Larkin
14. Twelve Sharp by Janet Evanovich
15. Fool Me Once by Harlan Coben
16. Lean Mean Thirteen by Janet Evanovich
17. The Maze by Catherine Coulter
18. The Silenced by Heather Graham
19. Body Double by Tess Gerritsen
20. The Silent Girl by Tess Gerritsen
21. Radiant Angel by Nelson DeMille
22. Die Again by Tess Gerritsen
23. Fearless Fourteen by Janet Evanovich
24. The Neighbor by Lisa Gardner
25. Find Her by Lisa Gardner
26. Sizzling Sixteen by Janet Evanovich
27. The Partner by John Grisham
28. Nineteen eighty-four by George Orwell
29. Finger Lickin' Fifteen by Janet Evanovich
30. Top Secret Twenty-one by Janet Evanovich
31. Takedown Twenty by Janet Evanovich
32. The Maze Runner by James Dashner
33. Digital Fortress by Dan Brown
34. The Scorch Trials by James Dashner

35. Death Cure by James Dashner

Melisande

  • Bristles
  • ***
  • Posts: 284
Re: 50 Books in 2018!
« Reply #572 on: August 08, 2018, 08:06:09 AM »
1. The World As I Found It by Bruce Duffy
2. The Girl with a Pearl Earing by Tracy Chevalier
3. The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Society by Mary Ann Shaffer and Annie Barrows
4. & 5.  Mémoires d’Hadrian by Marguerite Yourcenar
6. In the Land of the White Death by Valerian Albanov
7. The Hours by Michael Cunningham
8., 9. & 10. Churchill: A Biography by Roy Jenkins
11. 1177 B.C.: The Year Civilization Collapsed by Eric H. Cline.
12. The Road by Cormac McCarthy.
13. Conquistador Voices: Volume 1 — Christopher Columbus; Hernán Cortés, by Kevin H. Siepel.
14. Conquistador Voices: Volume 2 — Francisco Pizarro and his brothers; Álvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca; Hernando de Soto by Kevin H. Siepel
15. A Gentleman in Moscow by Amor Towles .
15. & 16. La carte et le territoire by Michel Houellebecq.
17. Among Penguins: A Bird Man in Antarctica by Noah Stryker.
18. Henry David Thoreau: A Life, by Laura Dassow Walls
19. The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck: A Counterintuitive Approah to the Good Life, by Mark Manson
20. Ten Arguments for Deleting your Social Media Account’s Right Now, by Jason Lanier
21. Who Owns the Future?, by Jason Lanier
22. The Tempest, by William Shakespeare
23. Into a Dark, Dark Wood, by Ruth Ware.
24. The Great Alone by Kristin Hannah
25. Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine by Gail Honeyman
26. Undertow: My Escape from the Fundamentalism and Cult Control of The Way International by Charlene Edge’s
27. The Age of Innocence by Edith Wharton.

Tick-Tock

  • Stubble
  • **
  • Posts: 167
Re: 50 Books in 2018!
« Reply #573 on: August 08, 2018, 08:40:31 PM »
66.  Theodora Goss, European Travel for the Monstrous Gentlewoman
67.  Juliet Blackwell, Letters from Paris
68.  Nora Roberts, Command Performance

Plus two novellas and a short story:

Ronald Tierney, The Blue Dragon
Ronald Tierney, The Black Tortoise
Charles Finch, Gone Before Christmas

bucketsofrain

  • Pencil Stache
  • ****
  • Posts: 510
  • Age: 34
  • Location: Boston
Re: 50 Books in 2018!
« Reply #574 on: August 09, 2018, 05:07:31 AM »
1.) Gorilla and the Bird by Zack McDermott 4/5
2.) The Underground Railroad by Colson Whitehead 3/5
3.) Iza's Ballad by Magda Szabo 5/5
4.) The Sympathizer by Viet Thanh Nguyen 3/5
5.) You Don't Have to Say You Love Me by Sherman Alexie 5/5
6.) The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian by Sherman Alexie 3/5
7.) A Room of One's Own by Virginia Woolf 4/5
8.) My Favorite Thing is Monsters by Emil Ferris 5/5
9.) Salt Houses by Hala Alyan 5/5
10.) Universal Harvester by John Darnielle 2/5
11.) We Should All Be Feminists by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie 5/5
12.) Red Winter by Anneli Furmark 4/5
13.) Pachinko by Min Jin Lee 5/5
14.) Piecing Me Together by Renee Watson 4/5
15.) We Are Never Meeting in Real Life by Samantha Irby 3/5
16.) What is Not Yours is Not Yours by Helen Oyeyemi 4/5
17.) Little Fires Everywhere by Celeste Ng 4/5
18.) This is How You Lose Her by Junot Diaz 4/5
19.) This is the Story of a Happy Marriage by Ann Patchett 4/5
20.) A Little Life by Hanya Yanagihara 5/5
21.) The Vegetarian by Han Kang 3/5
22.) The Book of Unknown Americans by Christina Henriquez 4/5
23.) Then We Came to the End by Joshua Ferris 4/5
24.) What It Means When a Man Falls From the Sky by Lesley Nneka Arimah 4/5
25.) The Language of Food by Dan Jurafsky 4/5
26.) The Cooking Gene by Michael W. Twitty 4/5
27.) A Field Guide to Getting Lost by Rebecca Solnit 5/5
28.) Seven Gothic Tales by Isak Dinesen 4/5
29.) Men Explain Things to Me by Rebecca Solnit 5/5
30.) Women in Clothes by Sheila Heti 5/5
31.) The Essential Dykes to Watch Out For by Alison Bechdel 4/5
32.) The Twelve Lives of Samuel Hawley by Hannah Tinti 4/5
33.) I'll be Gone in the Dark by Michelle McNamara 4/5
34.) Encyclopedia of Trouble and Spaciousness by Rebecca Solnit 5/5
35.) How Should a Person Be? by Sheila Heti 4/5
36.) Sunshine State by Sarah Gerard 4/5
37.) All Over the Place by Geraldine DeRuiter 3/5
38.) Heartburn by Nora Ephron 3/5
39.) Coming to My Senses by Alice Waters 3/5
40.) Sick by Porochista Khakpour 3/5
41.) Motherhood by Sheila Heti 4/5
42.) Her Body and Other Parties by Carmen Maria Machado 4/5
43.) Frankenstein in Baghdad by Ahmed Saadawi 4/5
44.) Not That Bad: Dispatches from Rape Culture ed. by Roxane Gay 4/5
45.) Fun Home by Alison Bechdel 5/5
46.) The Happiness Project by Gretchen Rubin 3/5
47.) Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston 4/5
48.) Upright Beasts by Lincoln Michel 4/5
49.) A Place for Us by Fatima Farheen Mirza 5/5
50.) Asymmetry by Lisa Halliday 4/5
51.) All the Names They Used for God by Anjali Sachdeva 4/5
52.) Sing, Unburied, Sing by Jesmyn Ward 5/5
53.) No Ashes in the Fire by Darnell L. Moore 3/5
54.) The Essex Serpent by Sarah Perry 4/5
55.) Gottland by Mariusz Szczygieł 5/5

Travis

  • Magnum Stache
  • ******
  • Posts: 4219
  • Location: California
Re: 50 Books in 2018!
« Reply #575 on: August 09, 2018, 08:55:53 PM »
21. National Geographic History - March 2018
22. National Geographic History - April 2018
23. A Bright Shining Lie - Neil Sheehan
^^^
No more 1000 page books if I'm going to have a chance here. Whew!

24. National Geographic History - May 2018

25. On Armor - Bruce Gudmundsson
26. Supply in War - Martin Van Creveld

Raenia

  • Magnum Stache
  • ******
  • Posts: 2631
Re: 50 Books in 2018!
« Reply #576 on: August 10, 2018, 02:21:59 PM »
1. The Small-Scale Poultry Flock - Harvey Ussery (1/9/2018)
2. Oathbringer - Brandon Sanderson (1/19/2018)
3. The 4-hour Work Week - Timothy Ferriss (1/21/2018)
4. Smilla's Sense of Snow - Peter Hoeg (1/23/2018)
5. Home Cheese Making - Ricki Carroll (1/25/2018)
6. A Darker Shade of Magic - V.E. Schwab (1/26/2018)
7. Dead of Winter - Matt Lake, Susan Fair, Laurie Hull, H.W. Lawson, Brian Goodman (1/27/2018)
8. Coraline - Neil Gaiman (1/30/2018)
9. The Not So Big House - Sarah Susanka (2/5/2018)
10. Le Petit Prince - Antoine de Saint-Exupery (2/21/2018)
11. Purity - Jonathan Franzen (2/22/2018)
12.  Democracy in America - Alexis de Tocqueville (2/27/2018)
13. In Cold Blood - Truman Capote (3/4/2018)
14. Running & Being: The Total Experience - George Sheehan (3/7/2018)
15. Leviathan Wakes - James S.A. Corey (3/10/2018)
16. Plato's Republic - trans. C. D. C. Reeve (3/17/2018)
17. The Six Pillars of Self-Esteem - Nathaniel Branden (3/21/2018)
18. Caliban's War - James S.A. Corey (3/23/2018)
19. The Book of Dust: La Belle Sauvage - Philip Pullman (3/24/2018)
20. Mistborn - Brandon Sanderson (3/30/3018) - REREAD
21.  Abaddon's Gate - James S.A. Corey (4/4/2018)
22. A Long Fatal Love Chase - Louisa May Alcott (4/9/2018)
23. The Vanishing Middle Class: Prejudice and Power in a Dual Economy - Peter Temin (4/13/2018)
24. The History of Bees - Maja Lunde (4/15/2018)
25. Cibola Burn - James S.A. Corey (4/18/2018)
26. Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep - Philip K. Dick
27. Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom - Cory Doctorow
28. Discourses on Livy - Niccolo Machiavelli (trans Bondanella)
29. The Invisible Library - Genevieve Cogman
30. Tomorrow's Eve - Villiers de l'Isle-Adam (trans Robert Martin Adams)
31. Last Speakers - K. David Harrison
32. Of Dogs and Walls - Yuko Tsushima (4/28/2018)
33. Middlesex - Jeffrey Eugenides (5/3/2018)
34. Nemesis Games - James S.A. Corey (5/15/2018)
35. Why I am Not Going to Buy a Computer - Wendell Berry (5/15/2018)
36. The Invention of Wings - Sue Monk Kidd (5/18/2018)
37. Simply Clean: The Proven Method for Keeping Your Home Organized, Clean, and Beautiful in Just 10 Minutes a Day - Becky Rapinchuk (5/19/2018)
38. The Masked CIty - Genevieve Cogman (5/20/2018)
39. Beauty and the Werewolf - Mercedes Lackey (5/24/2018) - REREAD
40. The Burning Page - Genevieve Cogman (5/26/2018)
41. Home Comforts: The Art and Science of Keeping House - Cheryl Mendelson (5/28/2018)
42. Anna and the King of Siam - Margaret Landon (6/1/2018)
43. The Lost Plot - Genevieve Cogman (6/2/2018)
44. Night - Elie Wiesel (6/2/2018)
45. Babylon's Ashes - James S.A. Corey (6/9/2018)
46. Primary Inversion - Catherine Asaro (6/14/2018)
47. Blue: The LAPD and the Battle to Redeem American Policing - Joe Domanick (6/16/2018)
48. The Master's Tools Will Never Dismantle the Master's House - Audre Lorde (6/17/2018)
49. The Last Dragonslayer - Jasper Fforde (6/17/2018)
50. Persepolis Rising - James S.A. Corey (6/22/2018)
51. The Great Cat Massacre and Other Episodes in French Cultural History - Robert Darnton (7/1/2018)
52. The Three Electro-Knights - Stanislaw Lem (7/2/2018)
53. A Gathering of Shadows - V.E. Schwab (7/3/2018)
54. Why Does the World Exist? - Jim Holt (7/6/2018)
55. The Skeleton's Holiday - Leonora Carrington (7/6/2018)
56. Lavinia - Ursula K. Le Guin (7/10/2018)
57. The Ten Thousand Things - Maria Dermout (7/15/2018)
58. A Conjuring of Light - V.E. Schwab (7/20/2018)
59. The Song of the Quarkbeast - Jasper Fforde (7/20/2018)
60. The Eye of Zoltar - Jasper Fforde (7/21/2018)
61. Slowing Down to the Speed of Life - Richard Carlson & Joseph Bailey (7/28/2018)
62. Capital in the Twenty-First Century - Thomas Piketty (7/29/2018)
63. Valor - Isabelle Melancon & Megan Lavey-Heaton (8/3/2018)
64. All Tomorrow's Parties - William Gibson (8/3/2018)
65. Steelheart - Brandon Sanderson (8/5/2018) - REREAD
66. Firefight - Brandon Sanderson (8/5/2018) - REREAD
67. Calamity - Brandon Sanderson (8/5/2018)

68. Rain: A Natural and Cultural History - Cynthia Barnett (8/10/2018)
69. The Demolished Man - Alfred Bester (8/10/2018)
70. Halloween: From Pagan Ritual to Party Night - Nicholas Rogers (8/12/2018)
71. Valor: Wands - Isabelle Melancon & Megan Lavey-Heaton (8/12/2018)
« Last Edit: August 12, 2018, 10:13:39 AM by Raenia »

Bracken_Joy

  • Walrus Stache
  • *******
  • Posts: 8927
  • Location: Oregon
Re: 50 Books in 2018!
« Reply #577 on: August 10, 2018, 06:41:43 PM »
1. A Torch Against The Night- Sabaa Tahir- 1/8/18
--I cannot wait until the next one. Excellent books.
2. Hounded - Kevin Hearne - 1/17/18
3. Hexed - Kevin Hearne- 1/23/18
--fun short reads. Doritos for the brain. Not quite as good as Dresden, but still entertaining.
4. Hammered- Kevin Hearne- 2/9/18
--this one wasn't quite as good at the first two, but it was readable. Hope the next is better again.
5. Lab Girl- Hope Jahren- 2/24/18
--God this took me forever. It just was not compelling for me. Got better at the half way point, but just not my cup of tea. My book club all loved it, though, so maybe I'm alone on this one! I think it would be way more interesting to people who haven't worked in research before, because it'd be 'exploring an unknown life' style.
6. Tricked- Kevin Hearne- 3/2/18
7. World War Z- Max Brooks - 3/5/18
--As always (it was a reread for book club), an excellent book.
8. Trapped- Kevin Hearne - 3/12/18
9. Hunted- Kevin Hearne - 3/23/18
10. Shattered- Kevin Hearne - 4/2/18
11. Staked - Kevin Hearne - 4/11/18
12. Beseiged- Kevin Hearne- 4/17/18
13. Scourged- Kevin Hearne- 4/25/18
14. The Maze Runner- James Dashner- 5/6/18 -- This was another re-read for book club. Still a good read. I'll probably not bother to read the whole series again- the first one really is the best one.
15. A Court of Thorns and Roses- Sarah J Maas- 5/11/18 -- It was a compelling read, but not necessarily a good read. Ended up way more romance than action bend. Supposedly the second is better though, so I'll keep going.
16. A Court of Mist and Fury- Sarah J Maas - 5/19/18-- Definitely was better than the previous one. Not going to make it on a top YA series list for me, but good enough I'll finish out the series.
17. A Court of Wings and Ruin - Sarah J Maas - 5/21/18 -- The best of the 3 so far I think. Less romance, more bloody fields of war. I can get behind that. =P
18. Meet the Frugalwoods - Elizabeth Willard Thames - 5/30/18 -- Good read if you're interested in them as people. Autobio, not a how-to. Fills in some timeline gaps from their blog on their life stories.
19. Uglies - Scott Westerfeld - 6/3/18 -- Read for book club. It was pretty good! Definitely more on the children's lit than the YA side for most of it, but a compelling read. Easy to predict though. Still, finding myself looking forward to getting past the book group meeting so I can read the next in the series.
20. An Abundance of Katherines - John Green - 6/10/18 --Never read a John Green novel, got this for free from Buy Nothing. It was okay, not stellar. In no rush to read any of his other books. Seems like it would be great for teens feeling disconnected from their peers.
21. A Court of Frost and Starlight - Sarah J Maas - 6/19/18 - MEH. I should have stopped after the one before this.
22. Chronicle of a Death Foretold - Garbiel Garcia Marquez - 6/26/18 - Not as good as I remember it. Not that my Spanish is anywhere near the level anymore I could read it untranslated =(
23. Pretties- Scott Westerfeld- 7/4/18 - Still a fun series! Read for book club.
24. Alanna: The First Adventure - Tamora Pierce - 7/9/18
25. In The Hand of the Goddess - Tamora Pierce - 7/13/18
26. The life-changing magic of tidying up - Marie Kondo - abandoned 50% through on 7/19/18
27. The Woman Who Rides Like a Man - Tamora Pierce - 7/16/18
28. Lioness Rampant - Tamora Pierce - 7/21/18
30. Wild Magic - Tamora Pierce - 7/28/18
31. Wolf Speaker -Tamora Pierce - 8/1/18

29. Early Retirement Extreme - Jacob Fiskar - ~40% through. Very dense.
32. Emperor Mage - Tamora Pierce - 8/5/18
33. A Brief History of Time - Stephen Hawking - 0%, need to read this for book club next week... whoops!
34. In The Realm of the Gods - Tamora Pierce - 8/10/18

ahptex

  • Stubble
  • **
  • Posts: 209
Re: 50 Books in 2018!
« Reply #578 on: August 12, 2018, 11:45:24 AM »
(1) Into the Water by Paula Hawkins
(2) A Rule Against Murder by Louise Penny
(3) The Water Will Come by Jeff Goodell
(4) Wildwood by Colin Meloy
(5) Better than Before by Gretchen Rubin
(6) Little Soldiers: An American Boy, a Chinese School, and the Global Race to Achieve by Lenora Chu
(7) Family Matters:Why Homeschooling Makes Sense by David Guterson
(8) Street of Eternal Happiness:  Big City Dreams Along a Shanghai Road by Rob Schmitz
(9) Little Fires Everywhere by Celeste Ng
(10) The Brutal Telling by Louise Penny
(11) Taking the Leap: Freeing Ourselves from Old Habits by Pema Chodron
(12) The Four Tendencies by Gretchen Rubin
(13) The Year of Less by Cait Flanders
(14) Number the Stars by Lois Lowry
(15) The Hate U Give by Angie Thomas
(16) The End of Alzheimer's by Dale Bredesen
(17) Christodora by Tim Murphy
(18) How Democracies Die: What History Reveals about our Future by Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt
(19) Bury Your Dead by Louise Penny
(20) Trumpocracy by David Frum
(21) The More of Less by Joshua Becker
(22) The Little Book of Hygge by Meik Wiking
(23) The Knowledge by Martha Grimes
(24) Cheap by Ellen Ruppel Shell
(25) Move your DNA by Katy Bowman
(26) Midnight's Children by Salman Rushdie
(27) Better than College by Blake Boles
(28) The Looming Tower by Lawrence Wright
(29) Killers of the Flower Moon: The Osage Murders and the Birth of the FBI by David Grann
(30) Quakeland by Kathryn Miles
(31) A Trick of the Light by Louise Penny
(32) The Gentle Art of Swedish Death Cleaning by Margareta Magnusson
(33) Educated by Tara Westover
(34) Fascism: A Warning by Madeleine Albright
(35) A Village with My Name: A Family History of China's Opening to the World by Scott Tong
(36) The Beautiful Mystery by Louise Penny
(37) How the Light Gets In by Louise Penny
(38) River Town: Two Years on the Yangtze by Peter Hessler
(39) Norse Mythology by Neil Gaiman
(40) 30 Views of Mount Fuji by Cathy Davidson
(41) How to be an American Housewife by Margaret Dilloway
(42) The Long Way Home by Louise Penny
(43) On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century by Timothy Snyder

(44) The Nature of the Beast by Louise Penny
(45) A Great Reckoning by Louise Penny
(46) Glass Houses by Louise Penny

ringer707

  • Bristles
  • ***
  • Posts: 311
Re: 50 Books in 2018!
« Reply #579 on: August 12, 2018, 03:19:46 PM »
1. The Glass Castle by Jeannette Walls
2. The Kite Runner by Khalid Hosseini
3. The Hate U Give by Angie Thomas
4. How to Be an American Housewife by Margaret Dilloway
5. The Underground Railroad by Colson Whitehead
6. Between the World and Me by Ta Nahisi Coates
7. Americanah by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
8. Song of Solomon by Toni Morrison
9. The Twelve Tribes of Hattie by Ayana Mathis
10. Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban (Illustrated) by J.K. Rowling
11. The Good Earth by Pearl S. Buck
12. Empress Orchid by Anchee Min
13. Pachinko by Min Jin Lee
14. Beloved by Toni Morrison
15. What Alice Forgot by Liane Moriarty
16. Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix
17. The Mists of Avalon by Marion Zimmer Bradley
18. Simon vs. The Homo Sapiens Agenda by Becky Albertalli
19. The Book Thief by Markus Zusak
20. The House on Mango Street by Sandra Cisneros
21. In Order to Live by Yeonmi Park
22. Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire by JK Rowling
23. I Am Not Your Perfect Mexican Daughter by Erika Sanchez
24. Monster by Walter Dean Myers
25. Hillbilly Elegy by JD Vance
26. Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury
27. The Red Tent by Anita Diamant
28. Call Me By Your Name by Andre Aciman
29. Three Wishes by Liane Moriarty
30. Educated by Tara Westover
31. The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison
32. Sharp Objects by Gillian Flynn
33. Roots by Alex Haley
34. Truly Madly Guilty by Liane Moriarty
35. Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince by J.K. Rowling
36. Dark Places by Gillian Flynn

haypug16

  • Handlebar Stache
  • *****
  • Posts: 1332
  • Age: 45
  • Location: Boston, MA
Re: 50 Books in 2018!
« Reply #580 on: August 13, 2018, 07:12:40 AM »

1. Alias Grace by Margaret Atwood - Finished 1/14/18
2. How to Make Your Money Last by Jane Bryant Quinn - Finished 1/16/18
3. Animal Farm by George Orwell - Finished 1/20/18
4. The Awakening by Kate Chopin - Finished 2/7/18
5. J is for Judgement by Sue Grafton - Finished 2/9/18
6. The Girl on the Train by Paula Hawkins - Finished 2/20/18
7. Ready Player One by Ernest Cline - Finished 3/3/18 (re-read)
8. Cress by Marissa Meyer - Finished 3/8/18 (re-read)
9. K is for Killer by Sue Grafton - Finished 3/17/18
10. The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne - Finished 3/21/18
11. L is for Lawless by Sue Grafton - Finished 3/30/18
12. Candide by Voltaire - Finished 4/6/18
13. M is for Malice by Sue Grafton - Finished 5/2/2018
14. Wild by Cheryl Strayed - Finished 5/3/2018
15. Winter by Marissa Meyer - (re-read) Finished 6/9/2018
16. N is for Noose by Sue Grafton - Finished 6/14/2018
17. Heartless by Marissa Meyer - Finished 6/27/2018
18. The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath - Finished 7/9/2018
19. Renegades by Marissa Meyer - Finished 8/12/2018

20. Devil in the White City by Erik Larson - Currently Reading




19/50 Read

Melisande

  • Bristles
  • ***
  • Posts: 284
Re: 50 Books in 2018!
« Reply #581 on: August 14, 2018, 01:12:28 PM »

1. The World As I Found It by Bruce Duffy
2. The Girl with a Pearl Earing by Tracy Chevalier
3. The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Society by Mary Ann Shaffer and Annie Barrows
4. & 5.  Mémoires d’Hadrian by Marguerite Yourcenar
6. In the Land of the White Death by Valerian Albanov
7. The Hours by Michael Cunningham
8., 9. & 10. Churchill: A Biography by Roy Jenkins
11. 1177 B.C.: The Year Civilization Collapsed by Eric H. Cline.
12. The Road by Cormac McCarthy.
13. Conquistador Voices: Volume 1 — Christopher Columbus; Hernán Cortés, by Kevin H. Siepel.
14. Conquistador Voices: Volume 2 — Francisco Pizarro and his brothers; Álvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca; Hernando de Soto by Kevin H. Siepel
15. A Gentleman in Moscow by Amor Towles .
15. & 16. La carte et le territoire by Michel Houellebecq.
17. Among Penguins: A Bird Man in Antarctica by Noah Stryker.
18. Henry David Thoreau: A Life, by Laura Dassow Walls
19. The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck: A Counterintuitive Approah to the Good Life, by Mark Manson
20. Ten Arguments for Deleting your Social Media Account’s Right Now, by Jason Lanier
21. Who Owns the Future?, by Jason Lanier
22. The Tempest, by William Shakespeare
23. Into a Dark, Dark Wood, by Ruth Ware.
24. The Great Alone by Kristin Hannah
25. Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine by Gail Honeyman
26. Undertow: My Escape from the Fundamentalism and Cult Control of The Way International by Charlene Edge’s
27. The Age of Innocence by Edith Wharton.
28. The Bonfire of the Vanities by Tom Wolfe.

FireHiker

  • Handlebar Stache
  • *****
  • Posts: 1141
  • Location: So Cal
Re: 50 Books in 2018!
« Reply #582 on: August 14, 2018, 02:34:20 PM »
1. Ready Player One by Ernest Cline
2. The Gentle Art of Swedish Death Cleaning by Margareta Magnusson
3. The Wind in the Willows by Kenneth Grahame
4. The Adventures of Tom Sawyer by Mark Twain
5. The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain
6. The Secret History by Donna Tartt
7. The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald (re-read in one night since it's been 20 years and my son was reading it in school)
8. The Glass Castle by Jeannette Walls
9. Life of Pi by Yann Martel
10. I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou
11. Catch-22 by Joseph Heller
12. David Copperfield by Charles Dickens
13. All's Well That Ends Well by William Shakespeare (I WILL get through his complete works...eventually)
14. As You Like It by William Shakespeare
15. The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger
16. Here in Berlin by Cristina Garcia
17. The Shadow of the Wind by Carlos Ruiz Zafon
18. Death Comes for the Archbishop by Willa Cather
19. Meet the Frugalwoods by Elizabeth Willard Thames
20. The Angel's Game by Carlos Ruiz Zafon
21. A Wrinkle In Time by Madeleine L'Engle
22. The Prisoner of Heaven by Carlos Ruiz Zafon
23. Girl, Interrupted by Susanna Kaysen
24. The Mayor of Casterbridge by Thomas Hardy
25. Shattered Air by Bob Madgic
26. The Mill on the Floss by George Elliot
27. Cold Mountain by Charles Frazier
28. Born to Run by Christopher McDougall
29. The Comedy of Errors by Willliam Shakespeare
30. The War of the Worlds by H.G. Wells
31. Eat & Run by Scott Jurek
32. Cymbeline by William Shakespeare
33. Hillbilly Elegy by J.D. Vance
34. North by Scott and Jenny Jurek
35. The Bonfire of the Vanities by Tom Wolfe
36. Charlie and the Chocolate Factory by Roald Dahl
37. Notes From a Small Island by Bill Bryson
38. The Awakening by Kate Chopin
39. Educated by Tara Westover
40. A Walk in the Woods by Bill Bryson
41. White Noise by Don DeLillo
42. A Room With A View by E.M. Forster
43. Ethan Frome by Edith Wharton
44. The Lady of the Rivers by Philippa Gregory

45. It Can't Happen Here by Sinclair Lewis

woopwoop

  • Bristles
  • ***
  • Posts: 346
Re: 50 Books in 2018!
« Reply #583 on: August 14, 2018, 02:45:31 PM »
1. Cane River - this was for a book club, which is the only reason I finished it. Five hundred pages of depressing slavery historical fiction, ranging from super depressing slave rape and torture to slightly-less-depressing institutional racism by the end of the saga. Would not recommend.
2. The Road Less Traveled - this is a psychology cult classic from the 70s that's fun to read. In one chapter he mentions in a footnote that "the only healthy marriage is an open marriage." Lol, the seventies were awesome.
3. Down Among the Sticks and Bones - a well-written and darkly funny YA fantasy novella. Think CS Lewis with vampires.
4. The Hating Game - this was just a bubble gum contemporary romcom about a love-hate-love relationship. Super fast and sexy read, recommended as a nice beach read if you like romance.
5. The Gentleman's Guide to Vice and Virtue - How did I end up reading so much YA at the beginning of this year? I don't even particularly like YA, these were all recommended to me. This was a fun romp of pirates and highwaymen and gay interracial relationships in the 1800s, but it was very very YA. I can't even put my finger on what "Very YA" means, but whatever it was, this book was that. My next read is YA, too, then I think I'm done for a while. I think it's the quirkiness that gets me. Everyone is so goddamn quirky in YA books.
6. Jane Unlimited - ugh, another YA, this one with a quirky main character who makes artsy umbrellas. Four mentions of Doctor Who in the first half of the book, how weird and nerdy lolol!!! I'm so done with YA.
7. Dead Wake - okay, this one is historical fiction about the Lusitania. I don't know history so this is always good for me. Plus Erik Larsen is the tits, this was a guaranteed Good Book after my latest string of failures. This book is not quite as good as his epicly awesome Devil in the White City that I love love loved, but it's still good and suspenseful.
8.The Duke and I - Regency romance, definitely more erotic than Jane Austen. Fun and light but not particularly great. Recommended all over the place as one of the best contemporary-written regency romances, which probably means I just don't really like this genre. I love Jane Austen, though, oh well.
9.Paris To the Moon - Another French travelogue about an American moving his family to Paris. Funny, well-written, but not epically hilarious like my favorite of this genre, Toujours Provence.
10. Drop the Ball - nonfiction, about how women need to stop trying to do it all. Kind of a companion book to Lean In, which I also didn't like. This book just feels repetitive. It did get my husband and I to make a spreadsheet for our grocery lists, though.
11. A Man Called Ove - another book club read, I guess it was a movie? Anyway, it made me ugly cry at the end although the opening chapters were hard for me to get into. Old grumpy man inspirational lit, I would classify it.
12. The Artist's Way - I am not in the right spot to get into this kind of book, in that I have a toddler and would love to do "morning pages" but it's clear from the way this author writes that she cannot imagine not having alone time every day. Well, bully for her. I'll pick this back up in a few years.
13. Designs for Living and Learning - really great book about childhood learning environments. Gave me a bunch to think about as I create living spaces for my young toddler.
14. Voyage  -a play by Tom Stoppard that's a witty sendup of every Russian play from the greats. Lots of philosophizing and wordplay, but not nearly as entertaining as Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead, which everyone should read (and watch the movie version!) if they have ever read Hamlet. For you Game of Thrones fans out there, Jorah is Hamlet, and that should seal the deal. He also wrote Shakespeare in Love which was a fun screenplay.
15. Chrysalis - nonfiction, an account of female naturalist Maria Meriam. The book I'm writing is going to have a main character named after her, so I thought I'd do some research. Really interesting so far, she was a gifted artist and scientist back when science was stuck more in naming and classifying rather than experimenting. Makes me excited to write my book!
16. The Kingmaker's Daughter - historical fiction by the same woman who wrote The Other Boleyn Girl which I loved. This was a great book, made even greater by the fact that I don't know any history at all. What will happen to Anne and Richard? I don't know, it's a mystery! Makes reading historical fiction all the better, imo.
16b. The Shadow of the Wind - I... really didn't like this. I didn't even finish it, so that's why it's going on the list as 16b. Just awful, pretentious writing. Maybe it's the translation? I had high hopes and a lot of people recommended it, but I found it utterly lacking.
17. The Refrigerator Monologues - On recommendation by this thread. I didn't really care for this one, maybe because I don't know an awful lot about comics. Most of the characters had the same voice, there weren't any great new perspectives. I dunno, I might have been in the wrong frame of mind for this.
18. The Whole-Brain Child - Some really good suggestions for how to handle parenting decisions, based on brain science of developing children. Some of it was for older kids so not quite as useful, but a lot of excellent practical advice for toddler meltdowns, etc. We have been lucky so far with our kid (not quite 2!) but I'm sure she'll be testing our patience soon enough so I want to be prepared.
19. Transatlantic - Another historical fiction about Ireland, transatlantic flight, Frederick Douglass, and some other things that are not really interesting to me. Also the author uses way too many. Sentence fragments. For dramatic effect. And I'm sick of it.
20. Brain on Fire - Nonfiction account of a NY Post journalist who went crazy due to a rare form of encephalitis. Super interesting, like reading a House episode. Ending kind of dragged on weakly but otherwise very engaging.
21. The Philosophical Baby - An overview of studies on the cognitive and emotional capabilities of developing babies. I liked it, but not a lot of good parenting takeaways other than "don't neglect your baby".
22. The Importance of Being Earnest   -Reread this one for funsies. It was fun, like all Wilde is fun.
23. Lady Windemere's Fan - Oh, so fun!
24. The Thirteenth Tale - Solid meh. Gothic mystery type book, very debut-novel in that there's lots of meta-commentary on books and reading and literature. I did the same thing in my debut novel, and I cringe whenever I read it somewhere else. Too long for not enough payoff and I guessed the ending.
25. The Wizard of Earthsea -Thanks to whoever recommended this one in this thread. Leguin is amazing but I've only read The Left Hand Side of Darkness by her and I need to read more. I didn't realize it was YA but I just ran through it super fast.
26. All Our Wrong Todays - GREAT time travel romance book, really really fun. If Chuck Palahniuk wrote The Time Traveller's Wife, this is what it would have turned out as.
27.The Girl Who Drew Butterflies - another biography of Maria Merian as research, YA stuff so very light. My toddler liked looking at all the pictures of butterflies, haha.
28.Superintelligence - Holy moly, this is a fascinating book. Regardless of when you think the singularity will come, there are risks associated with AI and this book does a great job of giving an overview of possible pitfalls where our world will be turned into a ball of paperclips... or something. Really interesting if you're at all into artificial intelligence.
29.Parenting in the Digital Age - pretty much a memoir of an advertising/TV guy with some little parenting stuff thrown in with plenty of unsourced speculative assertions. Fun to read, but just about useless when it comes to making evidence based decisions.
30.How to Raise a Child with a High EQ - that's an "emotional quotient", and it's pretty straightforward stuff, lots of repetition I'd already read in books about positive parenting and emotional discipline. Also not super useful until my kid gets a bit older. 
31.Evening Star - Oh, my freaking god, this book is amazing. Larry McMurty is the guy who wrote Lonesome Dove and Terms of Endearment, and this book was actually a sequel to the latter but it didn't read like a sequel at all. It was amazing, poignant, and made me ugly cry at the end, and then again at midnight when I woke up and thought about the book, and probably a couple more times in the future if I'm being honest here. Great writing, characters, interesting take on how relationships work. BEST BOOK SO FAR ON MY LIST.
32. How to Create a Mind - by Ray Kurzweil, of singularity fame. Really interesting look at how artificial intelligence has come so far and the path it has to go. Highly recommend to anyone interested in AI.
33. The Parent's Tao Te Ching - Eh, I liked The Tao of Pooh better. This just seems like a weird adaptation of the TTC so that someone could dole out parenting advice. And as a depressed person, advice like "Be happy and your children will be happy" just makes me feel more depressed that I'm fucking up this whole parenting thing.
34. The Master Algorithm - Not as interesting as the Kurzweil AI book, kind of a summary of different styles of machine learning which is interesting in parts but gets somewhat dry. I guess I'm not as into ML as I thought I was.
35. Swamplandia! - What a weird book. I liked it, kind of reminded me of Geek Love (which, if you need a great book that's like magical realism about a wacky circus family, that is the book for you). Had a lot of weird characters and good writing, but it turned into a weird rape thing at the end which I dunno, felt off from the rest of the book and just didn't work well in the plot imo.
36. The Hotel Du Lac - really strange literary book. Kind of felt like a short story in that every sentence seemed to mean more than surface level. The protagonist felt weirdly relatable, being a trashy romance author who doesn't like trashy romance and hates being around people and is emotionally numb, haha kill me now.
37. In One Person - a fun John Irving read, if you like Irving you'll like it and that's about all I can say! If you haven't read Irving, start with Garp or Prayer for Owen Meany.
38. The Lies of Locke Lamora SO MUCH FUN! A crime caper in a fantasy world, so fast paced it flew by at 700 pages. This is going to be my go-to for recommending people try out fantasy if they want something more serious than Discworld.
39. Oh Crap! Potty Training I'll let you know if this book is good after we implement it.

Currently reading: The Signature of All Things

ahptex

  • Stubble
  • **
  • Posts: 209
Re: 50 Books in 2018!
« Reply #584 on: August 15, 2018, 10:09:16 PM »
(1) Into the Water by Paula Hawkins
(2) A Rule Against Murder by Louise Penny
(3) The Water Will Come by Jeff Goodell
(4) Wildwood by Colin Meloy
(5) Better than Before by Gretchen Rubin
(6) Little Soldiers: An American Boy, a Chinese School, and the Global Race to Achieve by Lenora Chu
(7) Family Matters:Why Homeschooling Makes Sense by David Guterson
(8) Street of Eternal Happiness:  Big City Dreams Along a Shanghai Road by Rob Schmitz
(9) Little Fires Everywhere by Celeste Ng
(10) The Brutal Telling by Louise Penny
(11) Taking the Leap: Freeing Ourselves from Old Habits by Pema Chodron
(12) The Four Tendencies by Gretchen Rubin
(13) The Year of Less by Cait Flanders
(14) Number the Stars by Lois Lowry
(15) The Hate U Give by Angie Thomas
(16) The End of Alzheimer's by Dale Bredesen
(17) Christodora by Tim Murphy
(18) How Democracies Die: What History Reveals about our Future by Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt
(19) Bury Your Dead by Louise Penny
(20) Trumpocracy by David Frum
(21) The More of Less by Joshua Becker
(22) The Little Book of Hygge by Meik Wiking
(23) The Knowledge by Martha Grimes
(24) Cheap by Ellen Ruppel Shell
(25) Move your DNA by Katy Bowman
(26) Midnight's Children by Salman Rushdie
(27) Better than College by Blake Boles
(28) The Looming Tower by Lawrence Wright
(29) Killers of the Flower Moon: The Osage Murders and the Birth of the FBI by David Grann
(30) Quakeland by Kathryn Miles
(31) A Trick of the Light by Louise Penny
(32) The Gentle Art of Swedish Death Cleaning by Margareta Magnusson
(33) Educated by Tara Westover
(34) Fascism: A Warning by Madeleine Albright
(35) A Village with My Name: A Family History of China's Opening to the World by Scott Tong
(36) The Beautiful Mystery by Louise Penny
(37) How the Light Gets In by Louise Penny
(38) River Town: Two Years on the Yangtze by Peter Hessler
(39) Norse Mythology by Neil Gaiman
(40) 30 Views of Mount Fuji by Cathy Davidson
(41) How to be an American Housewife by Margaret Dilloway
(42) The Long Way Home by Louise Penny
(43) On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century by Timothy Snyder
(44) The Nature of the Beast by Louise Penny
(45) A Great Reckoning by Louise Penny
(46) Glass Houses by Louise Penny

(47) Pachinko by Min Jin Lee

haypug16

  • Handlebar Stache
  • *****
  • Posts: 1332
  • Age: 45
  • Location: Boston, MA
Re: 50 Books in 2018!
« Reply #585 on: August 16, 2018, 07:52:05 AM »
1. Alias Grace by Margaret Atwood - Finished 1/14/18
2. How to Make Your Money Last by Jane Bryant Quinn - Finished 1/16/18
3. Animal Farm by George Orwell - Finished 1/20/18
4. The Awakening by Kate Chopin - Finished 2/7/18
5. J is for Judgement by Sue Grafton - Finished 2/9/18
6. The Girl on the Train by Paula Hawkins - Finished 2/20/18
7. Ready Player One by Ernest Cline - Finished 3/3/18 (re-read)
8. Cress by Marissa Meyer - Finished 3/8/18 (re-read)
9. K is for Killer by Sue Grafton - Finished 3/17/18
10. The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne - Finished 3/21/18
11. L is for Lawless by Sue Grafton - Finished 3/30/18
12. Candide by Voltaire - Finished 4/6/18
13. M is for Malice by Sue Grafton - Finished 5/2/2018
14. Wild by Cheryl Strayed - Finished 5/3/2018
15. Winter by Marissa Meyer - (re-read) Finished 6/9/2018
16. N is for Noose by Sue Grafton - Finished 6/14/2018
17. Heartless by Marissa Meyer - Finished 6/27/2018
18. The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath - Finished 7/9/2018
19. Renegades by Marissa Meyer - Finished 8/12/2018

20. The Radium Girls by Kate Moore - Currently Reading
21. Devil in the White City by Erik Larson - Currently Reading




19/50 Read

diapasoun

  • Magnum Stache
  • ******
  • Posts: 4426
  • Location: California
Re: 50 Books in 2018!
« Reply #586 on: August 16, 2018, 10:27:53 AM »
1. Your Money or Your Life, Vicki Robin (library)
2. A Room of One's Own, Virginia Woolf (library)
3. The Blue Sword, Robin McKinley (library)
4. The Bad-ass Librarians of Timbuktu, Joshua Hammer (mine)
5. The Sagas of Ragnar Lodbrok, trans. Ben Waggoner (mine)
6. Practical Sigil Magic, Frater U.:D.: (pdf)
7. The Refrigerator Monologues, Catherynne Valente (library)
8. What It Means When A Man Falls From The Sky, Lesley Nneka Arimah (library)
9. Loitering with Intent, Muriel Spark (library)
10. Everfair, Nisi Shawl (library)
11. Bobbed Hair and Bath-tub Gin, Marion Meade (library)
12. Ghost Talkers, Mary Robinette Kowal  (mine)
13. Debt: The First 5,000 Years, David Graeber (mine)
14. Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone, J.K. Rowling with Stephen Fry (borrowed)
15. Northanger Abbey, Jane Austen with Juliet Stevenson (mine)
16. Earth Power, Scott Cunningham (mine)
17. Rebecca, Daphne du Maurier (library)
18. Voyage of the Basilisk, Marie Brennan (mine)
19. Herland, Charlotte Perkins Gilman (mine)
20. Beneath a Sugar Sky, Seanan McGuire (mine)
21. Down Among the Sticks and Bones, Seanan McGuire (mine)
22. The Sky is Yours, Chandler Klang-Smith (mine)
23. North and South, Elizabeth Gaskell (library)
24. An Unkindness of Ghosts, Rivers Solomon (library)
25. Storey's Guide to Raising Dairy Goats, Jerry Belanger (library)
26. Goblin Market and Other Poems, Christina Rossetti (mine)
27. The Lamb Will Slaughter The Lion, Margaret Killjoy (library)
28. Women and Power: A Manifesto, Mary Beard (mine)
29. The Barrow Will Send What It May, Margaret Killjoy (library)
30. People of the North, Matthew Goodall (mine)
31. The Devourers, Indra Das (mine)
32. Reign of Winter Player's Guide, Adam Diagle (mine)
33. Rise of the Runelords Player's Guide, Wesley Schneider (mine)
34. The Winged Histories, Sofia Samatar (mine)
35. Bullshit Jobs, David Graeber (library)

36. Unraveled Sleeve, Monica Ferris (library). Cozy mystery. It was... okay. There was some weird low-key lesbophobia and gay stereotyping (which made the whole thing seem oddly queer-baity?), and some of the characters fell SUPER flat for me by the end. However, there was also some truly beautiful descriptive language, and I really do love reading about people obsessing over needlework. This reminded me I wanted to get into cross-stitching....

Currently reading:

On Tyranny, Timothy Snyder (library)
Hidden Figures, Margot Lee Shetterly (mine)
The Oxford Book of American Essays (mine)

Abandoned my copy of Meditations because it was SO poorly translated; I'll wait until I can get a readable copy of this one. (Don't go for the Project Gutenberg version, y'all.)

tnrunner

  • Bristles
  • ***
  • Posts: 274
Re: 50 Books in 2018!
« Reply #587 on: August 16, 2018, 06:10:46 PM »
1. Two for the Dough by Janet Evanovich
2. Three to get deadly by Janet Evanovich
3. Four to Score by Janet Evanovich
4. Seamless by Angie Smith
5. High Five by Janet Evanovich
6. Hot six by Janet Evanovich
7. Seven up by Janet Evanovich
8. hard eight by janet evanovich
9. Daring to Hope by Katie Davis Majors
10. To the nines by Janet Evanovich
11. Ten Big Ones by Janet Evanovich
12. Eleven on Top by Janet Evanovich
13. The Lazarus Vendetta by Patrick Larkin
14. Twelve Sharp by Janet Evanovich
15. Fool Me Once by Harlan Coben
16. Lean Mean Thirteen by Janet Evanovich
17. The Maze by Catherine Coulter
18. The Silenced by Heather Graham
19. Body Double by Tess Gerritsen
20. The Silent Girl by Tess Gerritsen
21. Radiant Angel by Nelson DeMille
22. Die Again by Tess Gerritsen
23. Fearless Fourteen by Janet Evanovich
24. The Neighbor by Lisa Gardner
25. Find Her by Lisa Gardner
26. Sizzling Sixteen by Janet Evanovich
27. The Partner by John Grisham
28. Nineteen eighty-four by George Orwell
29. Finger Lickin' Fifteen by Janet Evanovich
30. Top Secret Twenty-one by Janet Evanovich
31. Takedown Twenty by Janet Evanovich
32. The Maze Runner by James Dashner
33. Digital Fortress by Dan Brown
34. The Scorch Trials by James Dashner
35. Death Cure by James Dashner

36. The Butterfly Garden by Dot Hutchison

Raenia

  • Magnum Stache
  • ******
  • Posts: 2631
Re: 50 Books in 2018!
« Reply #588 on: August 18, 2018, 07:11:08 AM »
1. The Small-Scale Poultry Flock - Harvey Ussery (1/9/2018)
2. Oathbringer - Brandon Sanderson (1/19/2018)
3. The 4-hour Work Week - Timothy Ferriss (1/21/2018)
4. Smilla's Sense of Snow - Peter Hoeg (1/23/2018)
5. Home Cheese Making - Ricki Carroll (1/25/2018)
6. A Darker Shade of Magic - V.E. Schwab (1/26/2018)
7. Dead of Winter - Matt Lake, Susan Fair, Laurie Hull, H.W. Lawson, Brian Goodman (1/27/2018)
8. Coraline - Neil Gaiman (1/30/2018)
9. The Not So Big House - Sarah Susanka (2/5/2018)
10. Le Petit Prince - Antoine de Saint-Exupery (2/21/2018)
11. Purity - Jonathan Franzen (2/22/2018)
12.  Democracy in America - Alexis de Tocqueville (2/27/2018)
13. In Cold Blood - Truman Capote (3/4/2018)
14. Running & Being: The Total Experience - George Sheehan (3/7/2018)
15. Leviathan Wakes - James S.A. Corey (3/10/2018)
16. Plato's Republic - trans. C. D. C. Reeve (3/17/2018)
17. The Six Pillars of Self-Esteem - Nathaniel Branden (3/21/2018)
18. Caliban's War - James S.A. Corey (3/23/2018)
19. The Book of Dust: La Belle Sauvage - Philip Pullman (3/24/2018)
20. Mistborn - Brandon Sanderson (3/30/3018) - REREAD
21.  Abaddon's Gate - James S.A. Corey (4/4/2018)
22. A Long Fatal Love Chase - Louisa May Alcott (4/9/2018)
23. The Vanishing Middle Class: Prejudice and Power in a Dual Economy - Peter Temin (4/13/2018)
24. The History of Bees - Maja Lunde (4/15/2018)
25. Cibola Burn - James S.A. Corey (4/18/2018)
26. Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep - Philip K. Dick
27. Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom - Cory Doctorow
28. Discourses on Livy - Niccolo Machiavelli (trans Bondanella)
29. The Invisible Library - Genevieve Cogman
30. Tomorrow's Eve - Villiers de l'Isle-Adam (trans Robert Martin Adams)
31. Last Speakers - K. David Harrison
32. Of Dogs and Walls - Yuko Tsushima (4/28/2018)
33. Middlesex - Jeffrey Eugenides (5/3/2018)
34. Nemesis Games - James S.A. Corey (5/15/2018)
35. Why I am Not Going to Buy a Computer - Wendell Berry (5/15/2018)
36. The Invention of Wings - Sue Monk Kidd (5/18/2018)
37. Simply Clean: The Proven Method for Keeping Your Home Organized, Clean, and Beautiful in Just 10 Minutes a Day - Becky Rapinchuk (5/19/2018)
38. The Masked CIty - Genevieve Cogman (5/20/2018)
39. Beauty and the Werewolf - Mercedes Lackey (5/24/2018) - REREAD
40. The Burning Page - Genevieve Cogman (5/26/2018)
41. Home Comforts: The Art and Science of Keeping House - Cheryl Mendelson (5/28/2018)
42. Anna and the King of Siam - Margaret Landon (6/1/2018)
43. The Lost Plot - Genevieve Cogman (6/2/2018)
44. Night - Elie Wiesel (6/2/2018)
45. Babylon's Ashes - James S.A. Corey (6/9/2018)
46. Primary Inversion - Catherine Asaro (6/14/2018)
47. Blue: The LAPD and the Battle to Redeem American Policing - Joe Domanick (6/16/2018)
48. The Master's Tools Will Never Dismantle the Master's House - Audre Lorde (6/17/2018)
49. The Last Dragonslayer - Jasper Fforde (6/17/2018)
50. Persepolis Rising - James S.A. Corey (6/22/2018)
51. The Great Cat Massacre and Other Episodes in French Cultural History - Robert Darnton (7/1/2018)
52. The Three Electro-Knights - Stanislaw Lem (7/2/2018)
53. A Gathering of Shadows - V.E. Schwab (7/3/2018)
54. Why Does the World Exist? - Jim Holt (7/6/2018)
55. The Skeleton's Holiday - Leonora Carrington (7/6/2018)
56. Lavinia - Ursula K. Le Guin (7/10/2018)
57. The Ten Thousand Things - Maria Dermout (7/15/2018)
58. A Conjuring of Light - V.E. Schwab (7/20/2018)
59. The Song of the Quarkbeast - Jasper Fforde (7/20/2018)
60. The Eye of Zoltar - Jasper Fforde (7/21/2018)
61. Slowing Down to the Speed of Life - Richard Carlson & Joseph Bailey (7/28/2018)
62. Capital in the Twenty-First Century - Thomas Piketty (7/29/2018)
63. Valor - Isabelle Melancon & Megan Lavey-Heaton (8/3/2018)
64. All Tomorrow's Parties - William Gibson (8/3/2018)
65. Steelheart - Brandon Sanderson (8/5/2018) - REREAD
66. Firefight - Brandon Sanderson (8/5/2018) - REREAD
67. Calamity - Brandon Sanderson (8/5/2018)
68. Rain: A Natural and Cultural History - Cynthia Barnett (8/10/2018)
69. The Demolished Man - Alfred Bester (8/10/2018)
70. Halloween: From Pagan Ritual to Party Night - Nicholas Rogers (8/12/2018)
71. Valor: Wands - Isabelle Melancon & Megan Lavey-Heaton (8/12/2018)

72. A Wizard of Earthsea - Ursula K. Le Guin (8/13/2018)
73. Games Creatures Play - Charlaine Harris and Toni L.P. Kelner (8/17/2018)
74. Grief is the Thing with Feathers - Max Porter (8/18/2018)

woopwoop

  • Bristles
  • ***
  • Posts: 346
Re: 50 Books in 2018!
« Reply #589 on: August 19, 2018, 01:13:32 PM »
1. Cane River - this was for a book club, which is the only reason I finished it. Five hundred pages of depressing slavery historical fiction, ranging from super depressing slave rape and torture to slightly-less-depressing institutional racism by the end of the saga. Would not recommend.
2. The Road Less Traveled - this is a psychology cult classic from the 70s that's fun to read. In one chapter he mentions in a footnote that "the only healthy marriage is an open marriage." Lol, the seventies were awesome.
3. Down Among the Sticks and Bones - a well-written and darkly funny YA fantasy novella. Think CS Lewis with vampires.
4. The Hating Game - this was just a bubble gum contemporary romcom about a love-hate-love relationship. Super fast and sexy read, recommended as a nice beach read if you like romance.
5. The Gentleman's Guide to Vice and Virtue - How did I end up reading so much YA at the beginning of this year? I don't even particularly like YA, these were all recommended to me. This was a fun romp of pirates and highwaymen and gay interracial relationships in the 1800s, but it was very very YA. I can't even put my finger on what "Very YA" means, but whatever it was, this book was that. My next read is YA, too, then I think I'm done for a while. I think it's the quirkiness that gets me. Everyone is so goddamn quirky in YA books.
6. Jane Unlimited - ugh, another YA, this one with a quirky main character who makes artsy umbrellas. Four mentions of Doctor Who in the first half of the book, how weird and nerdy lolol!!! I'm so done with YA.
7. Dead Wake - okay, this one is historical fiction about the Lusitania. I don't know history so this is always good for me. Plus Erik Larsen is the tits, this was a guaranteed Good Book after my latest string of failures. This book is not quite as good as his epicly awesome Devil in the White City that I love love loved, but it's still good and suspenseful.
8.The Duke and I - Regency romance, definitely more erotic than Jane Austen. Fun and light but not particularly great. Recommended all over the place as one of the best contemporary-written regency romances, which probably means I just don't really like this genre. I love Jane Austen, though, oh well.
9.Paris To the Moon - Another French travelogue about an American moving his family to Paris. Funny, well-written, but not epically hilarious like my favorite of this genre, Toujours Provence.
10. Drop the Ball - nonfiction, about how women need to stop trying to do it all. Kind of a companion book to Lean In, which I also didn't like. This book just feels repetitive. It did get my husband and I to make a spreadsheet for our grocery lists, though.
11. A Man Called Ove - another book club read, I guess it was a movie? Anyway, it made me ugly cry at the end although the opening chapters were hard for me to get into. Old grumpy man inspirational lit, I would classify it.
12. The Artist's Way - I am not in the right spot to get into this kind of book, in that I have a toddler and would love to do "morning pages" but it's clear from the way this author writes that she cannot imagine not having alone time every day. Well, bully for her. I'll pick this back up in a few years.
13. Designs for Living and Learning - really great book about childhood learning environments. Gave me a bunch to think about as I create living spaces for my young toddler.
14. Voyage  -a play by Tom Stoppard that's a witty sendup of every Russian play from the greats. Lots of philosophizing and wordplay, but not nearly as entertaining as Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead, which everyone should read (and watch the movie version!) if they have ever read Hamlet. For you Game of Thrones fans out there, Jorah is Hamlet, and that should seal the deal. He also wrote Shakespeare in Love which was a fun screenplay.
15. Chrysalis - nonfiction, an account of female naturalist Maria Meriam. The book I'm writing is going to have a main character named after her, so I thought I'd do some research. Really interesting so far, she was a gifted artist and scientist back when science was stuck more in naming and classifying rather than experimenting. Makes me excited to write my book!
16. The Kingmaker's Daughter - historical fiction by the same woman who wrote The Other Boleyn Girl which I loved. This was a great book, made even greater by the fact that I don't know any history at all. What will happen to Anne and Richard? I don't know, it's a mystery! Makes reading historical fiction all the better, imo.
16b. The Shadow of the Wind - I... really didn't like this. I didn't even finish it, so that's why it's going on the list as 16b. Just awful, pretentious writing. Maybe it's the translation? I had high hopes and a lot of people recommended it, but I found it utterly lacking.
17. The Refrigerator Monologues - On recommendation by this thread. I didn't really care for this one, maybe because I don't know an awful lot about comics. Most of the characters had the same voice, there weren't any great new perspectives. I dunno, I might have been in the wrong frame of mind for this.
18. The Whole-Brain Child - Some really good suggestions for how to handle parenting decisions, based on brain science of developing children. Some of it was for older kids so not quite as useful, but a lot of excellent practical advice for toddler meltdowns, etc. We have been lucky so far with our kid (not quite 2!) but I'm sure she'll be testing our patience soon enough so I want to be prepared.
19. Transatlantic - Another historical fiction about Ireland, transatlantic flight, Frederick Douglass, and some other things that are not really interesting to me. Also the author uses way too many. Sentence fragments. For dramatic effect. And I'm sick of it.
20. Brain on Fire - Nonfiction account of a NY Post journalist who went crazy due to a rare form of encephalitis. Super interesting, like reading a House episode. Ending kind of dragged on weakly but otherwise very engaging.
21. The Philosophical Baby - An overview of studies on the cognitive and emotional capabilities of developing babies. I liked it, but not a lot of good parenting takeaways other than "don't neglect your baby".
22. The Importance of Being Earnest   -Reread this one for funsies. It was fun, like all Wilde is fun.
23. Lady Windemere's Fan - Oh, so fun!
24. The Thirteenth Tale - Solid meh. Gothic mystery type book, very debut-novel in that there's lots of meta-commentary on books and reading and literature. I did the same thing in my debut novel, and I cringe whenever I read it somewhere else. Too long for not enough payoff and I guessed the ending.
25. The Wizard of Earthsea -Thanks to whoever recommended this one in this thread. Leguin is amazing but I've only read The Left Hand Side of Darkness by her and I need to read more. I didn't realize it was YA but I just ran through it super fast.
26. All Our Wrong Todays - GREAT time travel romance book, really really fun. If Chuck Palahniuk wrote The Time Traveller's Wife, this is what it would have turned out as.
27.The Girl Who Drew Butterflies - another biography of Maria Merian as research, YA stuff so very light. My toddler liked looking at all the pictures of butterflies, haha.
28.Superintelligence - Holy moly, this is a fascinating book. Regardless of when you think the singularity will come, there are risks associated with AI and this book does a great job of giving an overview of possible pitfalls where our world will be turned into a ball of paperclips... or something. Really interesting if you're at all into artificial intelligence.
29.Parenting in the Digital Age - pretty much a memoir of an advertising/TV guy with some little parenting stuff thrown in with plenty of unsourced speculative assertions. Fun to read, but just about useless when it comes to making evidence based decisions.
30.How to Raise a Child with a High EQ - that's an "emotional quotient", and it's pretty straightforward stuff, lots of repetition I'd already read in books about positive parenting and emotional discipline. Also not super useful until my kid gets a bit older. 
31.Evening Star - Oh, my freaking god, this book is amazing. Larry McMurty is the guy who wrote Lonesome Dove and Terms of Endearment, and this book was actually a sequel to the latter but it didn't read like a sequel at all. It was amazing, poignant, and made me ugly cry at the end, and then again at midnight when I woke up and thought about the book, and probably a couple more times in the future if I'm being honest here. Great writing, characters, interesting take on how relationships work. BEST BOOK SO FAR ON MY LIST.
32. How to Create a Mind - by Ray Kurzweil, of singularity fame. Really interesting look at how artificial intelligence has come so far and the path it has to go. Highly recommend to anyone interested in AI.
33. The Parent's Tao Te Ching - Eh, I liked The Tao of Pooh better. This just seems like a weird adaptation of the TTC so that someone could dole out parenting advice. And as a depressed person, advice like "Be happy and your children will be happy" just makes me feel more depressed that I'm fucking up this whole parenting thing.
34. The Master Algorithm - Not as interesting as the Kurzweil AI book, kind of a summary of different styles of machine learning which is interesting in parts but gets somewhat dry. I guess I'm not as into ML as I thought I was.
35. Swamplandia! - What a weird book. I liked it, kind of reminded me of Geek Love (which, if you need a great book that's like magical realism about a wacky circus family, that is the book for you). Had a lot of weird characters and good writing, but it turned into a weird rape thing at the end which I dunno, felt off from the rest of the book and just didn't work well in the plot imo.
36. The Hotel Du Lac - really strange literary book. Kind of felt like a short story in that every sentence seemed to mean more than surface level. The protagonist felt weirdly relatable, being a trashy romance author who doesn't like trashy romance and hates being around people and is emotionally numb, haha kill me now.
37. In One Person - a fun John Irving read, if you like Irving you'll like it and that's about all I can say! If you haven't read Irving, start with Garp or Prayer for Owen Meany.
38. The Lies of Locke Lamora SO MUCH FUN! A crime caper in a fantasy world, so fast paced it flew by at 700 pages. This is going to be my go-to for recommending people try out fantasy if they want something more serious than Discworld.
39. Oh Crap! Potty Training I'll let you know if this book is good after we implement it.
40. The Signature of All Things - The first half of this book was amazing. In the second half of the book, the heroine has an orgasm just by holding hands with this guy, and then they read each other's minds, and then he refuses to have sex with her so she sends him to Tahiti and then he dies, and she finds paintings of his gay Tahitian lover and so she goes to find him and then sucks the Tahitian guy's cock and describes it as "an almsgiving" when he comes in her mouth, and it's just like holy fuck what is this book. It's like the author dropped acid halfway through writing it.

What I'm currently reading: I'm still recovering from that last book, thank you very much.

Bracken_Joy

  • Walrus Stache
  • *******
  • Posts: 8927
  • Location: Oregon
Re: 50 Books in 2018!
« Reply #590 on: August 19, 2018, 03:15:28 PM »
40. The Signature of All Things - The first half of this book was amazing. In the second half of the book, the heroine has an orgasm just by holding hands with this guy, and then they read each other's minds, and then he refuses to have sex with her so she sends him to Tahiti and then he dies, and she finds paintings of his gay Tahitian lover and so she goes to find him and then sucks the Tahitian guy's cock and describes it as "an almsgiving" when he comes in her mouth, and it's just like holy fuck what is this book. It's like the author dropped acid halfway through writing it.

What I'm currently reading: I'm still recovering from that last book, thank you very much.

I laughed out loud reading this description. Not something I'll be putting on my reading list any time soon =P

jeninco

  • Magnum Stache
  • ******
  • Posts: 3996
  • Location: .... duh?
Re: 50 Books in 2018!
« Reply #591 on: August 20, 2018, 03:40:44 PM »

25. The Wizard of Earthsea -Thanks to whoever recommended this one in this thread. Leguin is amazing but I've only read The Left Hand Side of Darkness by her and I need to read more. I didn't realize it was YA but I just ran through it super fast.
 
You know there are five more books in this series, right? (one's a book of short stories that takes place in Earthsea.) And they're all amazing, especially the very last one, The Other Wind, sections of which will be read at my memorial service.

38. The Lies of Locke Lamora SO MUCH FUN! A crime caper in a fantasy world, so fast paced it flew by at 700 pages. This is going to be my go-to for recommending people try out fantasy if they want something more serious than Discworld.
Thanks! I've been reading Discworld books as spacers between heavy non-fiction books and when I feel I'm falling off-pace.  I'll add this to my list, even though it's 700 pages.

40. The Signature of All Things - The first half of this book was amazing. In the second half of the book, the heroine has an orgasm just by holding hands with this guy, and then they read each other's minds, and then he refuses to have sex with her so she sends him to Tahiti and then he dies, and she finds paintings of his gay Tahitian lover and so she goes to find him and then sucks the Tahitian guy's cock and describes it as "an almsgiving" when he comes in her mouth, and it's just like holy fuck what is this book. It's like the author dropped acid halfway through writing it.


I'm with BJ -- this is a hilarious description. Not going on my list, in the biggest way.

Serendip

  • Handlebar Stache
  • *****
  • Posts: 2210
Re: 50 Books in 2018!
« Reply #592 on: August 20, 2018, 03:57:37 PM »
40. The Signature of All Things - The first half of this book was amazing. In the second half of the book, the heroine has an orgasm just by holding hands with this guy, and then they read each other's minds, and then he refuses to have sex with her so she sends him to Tahiti and then he dies, and she finds paintings of his gay Tahitian lover and so she goes to find him and then sucks the Tahitian guy's cock and describes it as "an almsgiving" when he comes in her mouth, and it's just like holy fuck what is this book. It's like the author dropped acid halfway through writing it.

What I'm currently reading: I'm still recovering from that last book, thank you very much.

I laughed out loud reading this description. Not something I'll be putting on my reading list any time soon =P

Yes, thanks for saving the rest of us! :)

Serendip

  • Handlebar Stache
  • *****
  • Posts: 2210
Re: 50 Books in 2018!
« Reply #593 on: August 20, 2018, 04:02:30 PM »
1. Why Buddhism Is True: The Science and Philosophy of Meditation and Enlightenment (Robert Wright) *IMO very good!
2. Plastic Free : How I Kicked the Plastic Habit and How You Can Too (Beth Terry)
3. Taking the Leap : Freeing Ourselves from Old Habits and Fears (Pema Chodron)
4. Sapiens : A Brief History of Humankind (Yuval Noah Hurari)
5. Move Your DNA: Restore Your Health Through Natural Movement (Katy Bowman)
6. The Gentle Art of Swedish Death Cleaning (Margareta Magnusson)
7. The Year of Less  (Cait Flanders)
8. The Psychobiotic Revolution: Mood, Food, and the New Science of the Gut-Brain Connection (Scott C. Anderson) *quite liked this, neuroscience and food
9. Why Isn't My Brain Working: Brain decline and effective strategies to recover your brain's health ( Datis Kharrazian)
10. The Back of the Turtle (Thomas King)
11. The War of Art  (Steven Pressfield)
12. Millionaire Teacher: The Nine Rules of Wealth You Should Have Learned in School (Andrew Hallam)
13. Homo Deus : A Brief History of Tomorrow (Yuval Noah Harari)
14. Lost Connections: Uncovering the Real Causes of Depression--and the Unexpected Solutions (Johann Hari)
15. Spark : The Revolutionary New Science of Exercise and the Brain  (John J. Ratey)
16. Tonglen: The Path of Transformation (Pema Chodron)--a more advanced meditation style than I am currently at
17. The Hate U Give (Angie Thomas)
18. When: The Scientific Secrets of Perfect Timing (Daniel. H. Pink)
19. What Doesn't Kill Us: How Freezing Water, Extreme Altitude, and Environmental Conditioning Will Renew Our Lost Evolutionary Strength (Scott Carney)
20. Every Word Is A Bird We Teach To Sing : Encounters with the Mysteries and Meanings of Language (Daniel Tammet)
21. The Transformation Power of Fasting (Stephen Harrod Buhner)
22. Radical Acceptance: Embracing Your Life With the Heart of a Buddha (Tara Brach)
23. Lands of Lost Borders: Out of Bounds on the Silk Road (Kate Harris) **beautifully written, intelligent adventure story
24. Fifteen Dogs (Andre Alexis)
25. Microadventures: Local Discoveries, Great Escapes (Alastair Humphries)
26. The Art of Stillness: Adventures in Going Nowhere (Pico Iyer)-lovely book
27. The Boreal Herbal: Wild Food and Medicine Plants of the North (Beverly Gray)
28. The Little Book of Hygge: Danish Secrets to Happy Living (Meik Wiking)
29. What It Means When a Man Falls From the Sky (Lesley Nneka Arimah)
30. Men Explain Things to Me (Rebecca Solnit)
31. A Monks Guide to a Clean House and Mind (Shoukei Matsumoto)
32. A Mind at Home with Itself (Byron Katie & Stephen Mitchell)
33. Abandon: A Romance (Pico Iyer)
34. The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up (Marie Kondo)
35. The Heart of Zen (Junpo Denis Kelly Roshi & Keith Martin-Smith) *didn't quite finish
36. Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge and the Teachings of Plants (Robin Wall Kimmerer)
37. Solitude: A Singular Life in a Crowded World ( Michael Harris)
38. Bee Time: Lessons from the Hive (Mark. L Winston)
39. Devotion (Patti Smith)
40. The Order of Time (Carlo Rovelli)
41. Let My People Go Surfing: The Education of a Reluctant Businessman (Yvon Choinard)
42. The Power (Naomi Alderman)
43. End of the Rope: Mountains, Marriage and Motherhood (Jan Redford)
44. Northland: A 4,000-Mile Journey Along America's Forgotten Border (Porter Fox)
45. Pachinko (Min Jin Lee)
46. The Marrow Thieves (Cherie Dimaline)**amazing read, YA.  Post-apocolyptic tale, young First Nations protagonist

working on..
47. The Fruitful Darkness: A Journey Through Buddhist Practice and Tribal Wisdom (Joan Halifax)
48. Real Happiness: The Power of Meditation (Sharon Salzberg)
49. The Brain's Way of Healing: Remarkable Discoveries and Recoveries on the Frontiers of Neuroplasticity (Norman Doidge)
50. Son Of A Trickster (Eden Robinson)
51. Tools of Titans (Tim Ferris)
« Last Edit: August 20, 2018, 04:14:04 PM by Serendip »

tnrunner

  • Bristles
  • ***
  • Posts: 274
Re: 50 Books in 2018!
« Reply #594 on: August 20, 2018, 05:05:58 PM »
1. Two for the Dough by Janet Evanovich
2. Three to get deadly by Janet Evanovich
3. Four to Score by Janet Evanovich
4. Seamless by Angie Smith
5. High Five by Janet Evanovich
6. Hot six by Janet Evanovich
7. Seven up by Janet Evanovich
8. hard eight by janet evanovich
9. Daring to Hope by Katie Davis Majors
10. To the nines by Janet Evanovich
11. Ten Big Ones by Janet Evanovich
12. Eleven on Top by Janet Evanovich
13. The Lazarus Vendetta by Patrick Larkin
14. Twelve Sharp by Janet Evanovich
15. Fool Me Once by Harlan Coben
16. Lean Mean Thirteen by Janet Evanovich
17. The Maze by Catherine Coulter
18. The Silenced by Heather Graham
19. Body Double by Tess Gerritsen
20. The Silent Girl by Tess Gerritsen
21. Radiant Angel by Nelson DeMille
22. Die Again by Tess Gerritsen
23. Fearless Fourteen by Janet Evanovich
24. The Neighbor by Lisa Gardner
25. Find Her by Lisa Gardner
26. Sizzling Sixteen by Janet Evanovich
27. The Partner by John Grisham
28. Nineteen eighty-four by George Orwell
29. Finger Lickin' Fifteen by Janet Evanovich
30. Top Secret Twenty-one by Janet Evanovich
31. Takedown Twenty by Janet Evanovich
32. The Maze Runner by James Dashner
33. Digital Fortress by Dan Brown
34. The Scorch Trials by James Dashner
35. Death Cure by James Dashner
36. The Butterfly Garden by Dot Hutchison

37. Manhunting by Jennifer Cruise

longtry

  • 5 O'Clock Shadow
  • *
  • Posts: 42
Re: 50 Books in 2018!
« Reply #595 on: August 21, 2018, 05:40:17 AM »
You guys surely kick asses. I'm retired & I haven't finished the one book I'm reading in 2018.

Cookie78

  • Handlebar Stache
  • *****
  • Posts: 1888
  • Location: Canada
Re: 50 Books in 2018!
« Reply #596 on: August 21, 2018, 07:45:50 AM »
1. Oathbringer by Sanderson, Brandon
2. The Case of the Missing Servant by Hall, Tarquin
3. The Secrets of Flight by Leffler, Maggie
4. The Drive: Searching for Lost Memories on the Pan-American Highway by Bruce, Teresa
5. The Cloud Garden: A True Story of Adventure, Survival, and Extreme Horticulture
by Dyke, Tom Hart & Winder, Paul
6. The Rithmatist by Sanderson, Brandon (audiobook)
7. Sabriel by Nix, Garth (audiobook)
8. Carry On by Rowell, Rainbow (audiobook)
9. Persepolis Rising by Corey, James S. A.
10. Mr. Midshipman Hornblower by Forester, C. S. (audiobook)
11. Barking up the Wrong Tree: The Surprising Science Behind Why Everything You Know About Success Is (mostly) Wrong by Barker, Eric (audiobook)
12. A Wizard of Earthsea by Le Guin, Ursula K.
13. Disappointment River: Finding and Losing the Northwest Passage by Castner, Brian
14. The Black Mage: First Year by Carter, Rachel E.
15. The Black Mage: Apprentice by Carter, Rachel E.
16. The God Delusion by Dawkins, Richard (audiobook)
17. The Black Mage: Candidate by Carter, Rachel E.
18. The Mackenzie River Guide by Swallow, Michelle N. & Denkovski, Farah (illustrator)
19. The Black Mage: Last Stand by Carter, Rachel E.
20. Walking the Americas by Wood, Levison
21. The Good Sister by Bolan, Chelsea
22. Sisters of the Sari by Baker, Brenda L.
23. The Architect's Apprentice by Shafak, Elif
24. The Beekeeper: Rescuing the Stolen Women of Iraq by Mikhail, Dunya
25. Ancillary Justice by Leckie, Ann
26. Ancillary Sword by Leckie, Ann
27. Ancillary Mercy by Leckie, Ann



25. The Wizard of Earthsea -Thanks to whoever recommended this one in this thread. Leguin is amazing but I've only read The Left Hand Side of Darkness by her and I need to read more. I didn't realize it was YA but I just ran through it super fast.
 
You know there are five more books in this series, right? (one's a book of short stories that takes place in Earthsea.) And they're all amazing, especially the very last one, The Other Wind, sections of which will be read at my memorial service.
Oooooh! Thanks for this info!

woopwoop

  • Bristles
  • ***
  • Posts: 346
Re: 50 Books in 2018!
« Reply #597 on: August 23, 2018, 05:37:51 PM »
You know there are five more books in this series, right? (one's a book of short stories that takes place in Earthsea.) And they're all amazing, especially the very last one, The Other Wind, sections of which will be read at my memorial service.
Oh yes, I have them on my to-read list! Now I am particularly excited to get to the last one, though!

There are three in the Lies of Locke Lamora series too, but I generally save sequels for when I am in a terrible spell of reading bad books and so I have to read something I know will be good to cleanse the palate. Which, man, after that last one... maybe it's time to go back to Leguin!

Tick-Tock

  • Stubble
  • **
  • Posts: 167
Re: 50 Books in 2018!
« Reply #598 on: August 25, 2018, 04:54:36 PM »
69.  Laurie R. King, Mary Russell's War
70.  Connie Willis, The Best of Connie Willis
71.  Amy Bloom, White Houses

Travis

  • Magnum Stache
  • ******
  • Posts: 4219
  • Location: California
Re: 50 Books in 2018!
« Reply #599 on: August 26, 2018, 09:41:16 AM »
21. National Geographic History - March 2018
22. National Geographic History - April 2018
23. A Bright Shining Lie - Neil Sheehan
^^^
No more 1000 page books if I'm going to have a chance here. Whew!

24. National Geographic History - May 2018

25. On Armor - Bruce Gudmundsson
26. Supply in War - Martin Van Creveld

27. The Imperial Japanese Navy 1941-1945 - Paul S. Dull