2019 50 Book Challenge

[samtalkstyle]

I am a big reader and I like the idea of this thread! I'll join with a few titles I've read recently.

1. The Pentagon's Brain - Annie Jacobsen
An interesting history of DARPA, the US research agency. I found the structure somewhat all over the place, but the content was good enough to make it an enjoyable read regardless.

2. Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy - John le Carre
A classic spy story. The characters were some of the most realistic I have seen, and the writing was incredibly immersive. Would recommend!

3. Hallucinations - Oliver Sacks
A series of case histories regarding various causes of hallucinations, written by a neurologist. One of several themed books. I like the structure of this and the others of his I have read as they are easy to pick up and put down at short notice.

4. The Man With The Poison Gun - Serhii Plokhy
An account of the Russian assassin Bogdan Stashinsky up to his trial in West Berlin during the Cold War and disappearance soon after. This book was riveting for the first half but I found myself tiring of it towards the end.

5. Breaking Rockefeller - Peter Doran
The story of how Shell and Royal Dutch (and their founders) got into the oil business and eventually banded together to break the global market monopoly held by Standard Oil. A fascinating business book that I enjoyed from cover to cover.

 

[California Dreamer]

Welcome Sam.

 

[Fueco]

78. Examined Life, edited by Astra Taylor

A collection of conversations with noted philosophers on a variety of topics. These conversations were further edited into a film, which I now need to watch...

 

[noob in 89]

78. Examined Life, edited by Astra Taylor

A collection of conversations with noted philosophers on a variety of topics. These conversations were further edited into a film, which I now need to watch...

I imagine you’ve already got a nice stream picked out for this one.

 

[Fueco]

I imagine you’ve already got a nice stream picked out for this one.

If you mean to read it by, I actually read most of it at home, either at the climbing gym between sets of boulder problems, on the couch while watching my younger son, or on the patio. I’ll be streaming the film on Amazon Prime.

 

[Geoffrey Firmin]

35. ALT-AMERICA The Rise of the Radical Right In The Age of Trump by David Neiwert

I first encountered this book through podcast interviews on RN LNL in Oz and Ideas on the CBC site. And what a historic trawl through the ideological sewer that is the far right this text is. From conspiracy theories about the New World Order. Mutant derangement and interpretation of the US constitution. Gamergate, Britebark, White Nationalist separatists, the Alt Right and all the political vermin and effluent of the post internet world is dragged out of its spineless shadows and exposed. And in being brought into to the light it is shown as the vacuous mentally vicious unstable ideological fascist ideological vermin that they are.

A remarkable book in easy flowing journalist style. Highly recommended as an in depth well researched contemporary historical examination of what lurks at the political fringes of democracy. Highly Recommended. I wish I still my Nazi Punks **** Off T-Shirt.

 

[Fueco]

79. Desert Cabal, by Amy Irvine

A really short (yes, I read the entire book this evening) but powerful response to Ed Abbey’s Desert Solitaire on the occasion of the fiftieth anniversary of the publishing of that American treasure.

Irvine writes from a feminist and more modern place than Abbey did on the red rock wilderness of southern Utah and northern Arizona.

 

[LonerMatt]

I really enjoyed Jonathon Strange; I should seek this out.

I'd be interested in hearing your thoughts. It reminded me of J Strange in a lot of the prose and characterisation - everyone feels very English experiencing a Grand Tour or Orientalism but the story is very, very different.

 

[jeradjames]

Starting a bit late to the thread. I'll spare you the details of each individual title as it would be a bit long of a post. Will write more as I finish reading the next few works. Bold titles are the one I've enjoyed the most.

1. Towards a New Architecture - Le Corbusieur
2. The Transposed Heads - Thomas Mann
3. No Longer Human - Osamu Dazai
4. Thinking Architecture - Peter Zumthor
5. One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich - Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
6. Confusion - Stefan Zweig
7. Nothing But The Night - John Williams
8. In Praise of Shadows - Jun'ichiro Tanizaki
9. A Single Man - Christopher Isherwood
10. Disgrace - J.M. Coetzee
11. The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle - Haruki Murakami
12. Norwegian Wood - Haruki Murakami
13. What We Talk About When We Talk About Love - Raymond Carver
14. Franny and Zooey - J.D. Salinger
15. And The Hippos Were Boiled in Their Tanks - William Burroughs & Jack Kerouac
16. The Road - Corman McCarthy
17. The Unbearable Ligthness of Being - Milan Kundera
18 Siddhartha - Herman Hesse
19. Demian - Herman Hesse
20. The Tao of Wu - The RZA
21. The Architecture of Happiness - Alain de Botton
22. How Proust Chan Change Your Life - Alain de Botton
23. All Gates Open: The Story of Can - Rob Young
24. The Subterraneans - Jack Kerouac

 

[Fueco]

Starting a bit late to the thread. I'll spare you the details of each individual title as it would be a bit long of a post. Will write more as I finish reading the next few works. Bold titles are the one I've enjoyed the most.

1. Towards a New Architecture - Le Corbusieur
2. The Transposed Heads - Thomas Mann
3. No Longer Human - Osamu Dazai
4. Thinking Architecture - Peter Zumthor
5. One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich - Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
6. Confusion - Stefan Zweig
7. Nothing But The Night - John Williams
8. In Praise of Shadows - Jun'ichiro Tanizaki
9. A Single Man - Christopher Isherwood
10. Disgrace - J.M. Coetzee
11. The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle - Haruki Murakami
12. Norwegian Wood - Haruki Murakami
13. What We Talk About When We Talk About Love - Raymond Carver
14. Franny and Zooey - J.D. Salinger
15. And The Hippos Were Boiled in Their Tanks - William Burroughs & Jack Kerouac
16. The Road - Corman McCarthy
17. The Unbearable Ligthness of Being - Milan Kundera
18 Siddhartha - Herman Hesse
19. Demian - Herman Hesse
20. The Tao of Wu - The RZA
21. The Architecture of Happiness - Alain de Botton
22. How Proust Chan Change Your Life - Alain de Botton
23. All Gates Open: The Story of Can - Rob Young
24. The Subterraneans - Jack Kerouac

I’ve got The Road queued up next. Hopefully it lives up to the hype...

 

[Geoffrey Firmin]

36. Angels Flight by Michael Connelly

LA Noir with the Harry Bosch. Well written character focused drama. I Highly Recommend this as a series.

@Fueco as a 21 yo Jazz and road movie lover it did live up to the hype. Should revisit it at some stage.




.

 

[jeradjames]

I’ve got The Road queued up next. Hopefully it lives up to the hype...

Let me know what you think! I have mixed feelings about it. I have Blood Meridian up next which I'm looking forward to.

 

[jeradjames]

25. Confessions Of A Mask - Yukio Mishima

To anyone who has read Mishima before, as this is my first journey into his works, does most of his novels follow this same dark narrative style? This novel and Notes From the Underground both left me with a sincere gratitude for my fairly normalized life. For those who haven't read Confessions Of A Mask, it explores repressing your inner truth, turmoil, desire, questions of normalcy through the lens of a young boy to early adulthood during WWII in Japan. Looking to read Sun & Steel at some point but prices are steep.

 

[Geoffrey Firmin]

@jeradjames the book depository is a good site for cheap books if you live in a country that does not impose GST or VAT on online purchases.

 

[noob in 89]

Looking to read Sun & Steel at some point but prices are steep.

Woah, thanks for the tip. I got that one for a buck about a decade ago. This will probably send me to the dusty storage locker.

I wouldn’t count on any lighter works by Mishima. The man disemboweled himself. Pretty hardcore!