2021 50 Book Challenge

[LonerMatt]

Spoiler: List

1. Death's End
2. Piranesi
3. Living Sea of Waking Dreams
4. Uncanny Valley
5. War of Maps
6. A Constellation of Vital phenomena
7. The New Wilderness
8. Attack Surface
9. Gods of Jade and Shadow
10. The Galaxy and the Ground Within
11. Gallowglass
12. Cultural Warlords
13. A Song for A New Day
14. The Secret Life of Addie LaRue
15. Terra Nullius
16. Fall of Koli
17. A Desolation called Peace
18. Gideon the Ninth
19. Harrow the Ninth
20. Essentialism

20. Essentialism

A cross between a philosophy book, a self-help book and a business book, this is one of those classics on the genre that's actually quite good. The main thurst of the book is that if you don't prioritise your time, someone else will prioritise it for you. Building on this there are concise chapters on simple-to-understand, effortful-to-execute concepts like less but better, editing, etc.

Really enjoyed this, much more than I thought I would. Really quite specific, useful and disarming.

 

[Fueco]

25. The Underground Railroad, by Colson Whitehead

A young slave in antebellum Georgia seeks to eacape bondage on a literal Underground Railroad.

 

[Fueco]

26. Stumbling On Happiness, by Daniel Gilbert

Stumbling On Happiness examines the capacity of our brains to fill in gaps and simulate experiences, shows how our lack of awareness of these powers sometimes leads us to wrong decisions, and how we can change our behavior to synthesize our own happiness.

 

[Geoffrey Firmin]

23. Occupied City by David Peace

This novel. These murders most foul. Of victims….This multiplicity of lives, of motives, of horrors.Of (a)political complicity in the propagation of war crimes. Of pardons most dark. Of Detectives who search for truth only to confront the Big Lie. This is not a simple who done it.

These victims poisoned by a war criminal? Unit 731 Biological Warfare. Chemical Warfare. For the USA fascism and imperialism are defeated. Uncle Joe is the new enemy. All is fair in love and war. Except both victors and vanquished despise each other. One has something to hide. One has something to gain in exchange for…Of. Times. Past, Sydney early 1980’s evening news. A story about an elderly Japanese gentleman (not) who was a member of Unit 731 the Japanese BW &CW Warfare Unit which operated in Manchukou. The exact death toll of civilian & Allied POW’s will never be known....He speaks of his crimes. He begs forgiveness for his crimes....the experiments, rats, fleas. The plague.The truth about Unit 731 and the amnesty from War Crimes prosecution. Determined on the advice of the Shogun MacArthur. A complete pardon in exchange for their scientific research into BW &CW. Which will help the military industrial (scientific) war machine (cold war iteration) advance profits from politics. After all never mind ethical accountability. War is the continuation of profit by other means.

This writing. First person. Second person. Third persona all in one sentence? 12 Chapters and verse interspersed with Buddhist paganism. Shinto rituals. Occultism. This fine grasp of the line where sanity ends and the visionary void opens.A multiplicity of voices…The writer and his tribulations injected into the narrative machine(assemblage).

The killer who is not a killer but a convenient fall guy in the mode of?….and dies at an advanced old age in prison for crimes he (supposedly) did not commit. There is/was a society to clear his name.

Now….I know why the writer quoted Artaud at beginning of this tale. A remarkable, disturbing and challenging novel.

 

[FlyingMonkey]

So. So. Good.

Really glad you are enjoying David Peace.

 

[LonerMatt]

Spoiler: List

1. Death's End
2. Piranesi
3. Living Sea of Waking Dreams
4. Uncanny Valley
5. War of Maps
6. A Constellation of Vital phenomena
7. The New Wilderness
8. Attack Surface
9. Gods of Jade and Shadow
10. The Galaxy and the Ground Within
11. Gallowglass
12. Cultural Warlords
13. A Song for A New Day
14. The Secret Life of Addie LaRue
15. Terra Nullius
16. Fall of Koli
17. A Desolation called Peace
18. Gideon the Ninth
19. Harrow the Ninth
20. Essentialism
21. Dead in the Water

21. Dead in the Water

A livid novel outlining the illegal and immoral practices sanctioned by multiple governments in the formation and corruption of the Murray Darling Basin Plan.

One part 'Girt', one part legal eagle and one part incredibly pissed off commentator, the approach is one to exposure the controversies and problems so galling that one equally wants to laugh and scream. Written by a lawyer who served in the South Australian Royal Commission so there's a lot of insider information shared as well.

Really interesting book, especially for anyone concerned about the river system (which should be all us Aussies!).

 

[Geoffrey Firmin]

24. A MAN by Keiichiro Hirano translated by Eli.K.P.William

First novel translated into English,,,more please.

A slow burn story about the search for a dead mans identity and the reasoning behind his actions and how this impacts upon the life of the investigating solicitor and his family.

Central to the narrative is the examination of the underground market of identity exchange operating in Japan and the lure its offers the central protagonist.

 

[LonerMatt]

Spoiler: List

1. Death's End
2. Piranesi
3. Living Sea of Waking Dreams
4. Uncanny Valley
5. War of Maps
6. A Constellation of Vital phenomena
7. The New Wilderness
8. Attack Surface
9. Gods of Jade and Shadow
10. The Galaxy and the Ground Within
11. Gallowglass
12. Cultural Warlords
13. A Song for A New Day
14. The Secret Life of Addie LaRue
15. Terra Nullius
16. Fall of Koli
17. A Desolation called Peace
18. Gideon the Ninth
19. Harrow the Ninth
20. Essentialism
21. Dead in the Water
22. This is how to lose a time war

22. This is how to lose a time war

Two rivals, unique foils for each other, begin a secret discussion as they fight each other over eons. Eventually they fall in love and have to work out how to escape their respective societies. Fun, short and terse, ending dragged a little, but not too much.

 

[Numbernine]

1.Sickness Unto Death by Soren Kierkegaard
A iight hearted character romp through Christianity meets Existentialism

 

[Geoffrey Firmin]

25. An Artist of the Floating World by Kazuo Ishiguro

First encountered Ishiguro with A Pale View of Hills upon publication but somehow overlook this at the time, so thirty five years after the fact picked it up.

Interesting story set in the ruins of post war Japan. The introspective examination by a retired established artist of his role in the disaster which Japan unleashed upon the world and his observations of an emerging future through his surviving children. Recommended, do Mrs GF is currently reading Klara and the Sun.

I found the forward creatively insightful, Ishiguro elaborated upon the process of writing and the impact of Proust upon the narrative very informative and actually enhanced the pleasure of the text…couldn’t resist. Highly Recomended.

 

[LonerMatt]

Spoiler: List

1. Death's End
2. Piranesi
3. Living Sea of Waking Dreams
4. Uncanny Valley
5. War of Maps
6. A Constellation of Vital phenomena
7. The New Wilderness
8. Attack Surface
9. Gods of Jade and Shadow
10. The Galaxy and the Ground Within
11. Gallowglass
12. Cultural Warlords
13. A Song for A New Day
14. The Secret Life of Addie LaRue
15. Terra Nullius
16. Fall of Koli
17. A Desolation called Peace
18. Gideon the Ninth
19. Harrow the Ninth
20. Essentialism
21. Dead in the Water
22. This is how to lose a time war
23. The Calculating Stars

23. The Calculating Stars

In 1952 a meteorite hits the East Coast of the USA prompting scientists to realise that the world will be warm fast and become uninhabitable, therefore it's time to go to space. The protagonist, a female calculator (in a time before PCs!), wants to go to space and is supremely qualified, yet sexism and misogyny holds her back substantially. The book primarily deals with the parallel technological progress and social regression. While it was a great book can I just say that this author cannot write sex scenes at all, they felt like a mash up of a 13 year old's idea of dirty talk combined with puns.

 

[Fueco]

Spoiler: List

1. Death's End
2. Piranesi
3. Living Sea of Waking Dreams
4. Uncanny Valley
5. War of Maps
6. A Constellation of Vital phenomena
7. The New Wilderness
8. Attack Surface
9. Gods of Jade and Shadow
10. The Galaxy and the Ground Within
11. Gallowglass
12. Cultural Warlords
13. A Song for A New Day
14. The Secret Life of Addie LaRue
15. Terra Nullius
16. Fall of Koli
17. A Desolation called Peace
18. Gideon the Ninth
19. Harrow the Ninth
20. Essentialism
21. Dead in the Water
22. This is how to lose a time war
23. The Calculating Stars

23. The Calculating Stars

In 1952 a meteorite hits the East Coast of the USA prompting scientists to realise that the world will be warm fast and become uninhabitable, therefore it's time to go to space. The protagonist, a female calculator (in a time before PCs!), wants to go to space and is supremely qualified, yet sexism and misogyny holds her back substantially. The book primarily deals with the parallel technological progress and social regression. While it was a great book can I just say that this author cannot write sex scenes at all, they felt like a mash up of a 13 year old's idea of dirty talk combined with puns.

One a scale of 1 to Ayn Rand, how bad were the sex scenes?

 

[LonerMatt]

Not Rand bad, just immature. Let's go with 6

 

[FlyingMonkey]

Not Rand bad, just immature. Let's go with 6

Whether we like it or not, I thought it was pretty realistic given the time and social class of the characters (and author).

 

[LonerMatt]

Oh sure, just was like 'why?' from me, really stuck out like a sore thumb!