What did you read in 2024?

This thread is an ILB tradition and always entertaining. Here's last year's version: What did you read in 2023?

The year still has a couple of days to go, but I'm ready to share my list to get things started. And of course there's no rush if you prefer to wait until January to post your list. I always feel good if I can average a book a week for the entire year, but everyone's list, whether short or astoundingly lengthy, is always interesting, personal and illuminating.

BTW, even though the board is I Love Books, it would be OK with me if the reading you want to highlight isn't strictly in the form of books as long as it was a big enough part of your 'reading life'.

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Looking back on the year and this list, I'd name Summer Will Show by Sylvia Townsend Warner as the book I got the most complete enjoyment from this year. The worst book I actually finished was Thunderstruck, Erik Larson.

Other than that, I surprised myself by reading 18 books in the detective/crime/thriller genre (not including Crime and Punishment). This may be a one-time aberration, but I obviously got enough out of them to keep going back to them. It's good to know that there are still roughly another 50,000 of them I haven't read, yet, so I know I have a fall back position when I need one. ;-)

The 56 books I read in 2024 - in the order I finished them (** indicates a rereading):

The Underground Man, Ross MacDonald
A Lost Lady, Willa Cather
Civil to Strangers, Barbara Pym
Pillar of Fire: America in the King Years 1963-1965, Taylor Branch
The Nonexistent Knight, Italo Calvino
Mr Fox, Barbara Comyns
Crime and Punishment, Fyodor Dostoevsky (P&V translation)
A View of the Harbour, Elizabeth Taylor
The Chill, Ross MacDonald
How to Live -or- A Life of Montaigne, Sarah Bakewell
Nineteen Way of Looking at Wang Wei, multiple translators
Grand Hotel, Vicki Baum
The Rebel Angels, Robertson Davies
Kokoro, Natsume Soseki
The Real Cool Killers, Chester Himes
The Hotel Majestic, Georges Simenon
Summer Will Show, Sylvia Townsend Warner
Rum Punch, Elmore Leonard
Something Wholesale, Eric Newby
Cotton Comes to Harlem, Chester Himes
Adventures of Simplicius Simplicissimus, H.J.C. von Grimmelshausen
At Mrs Lippincote's, Elizabeth Taylor
Life with Picasso, F. Gilot & C. Lake (memoir)
Background to Danger, Eric Ambler
**A Red Death, Walter Mosley
The Island of Sheep, John Buchan
Priestdaddy, Patricia Lockwood
The Long Ships, Frans Bengtsson
Thunderstruck, Erik Larson (pseudo-history)
The Man in the Boulevard, Georges Simenon
The Postman Always Rings Twice, James M. Cain
A Childhood: The Biography of a Place, Harry Crews
The Little Sister, Raymond Chandler
Abigail, Magda Szabo
The Continental Op, Dashiell Hammett (short story collection)
The Soul of Kindness, Elizabeth Taylor
Black Money, Ross MacDonald
**The Autobiography of Malcolm X (As Told to Alex Haley)
The English Understand Wool, Helen DeWitt
So Long, See You Tomorrow, William Maxwell
Things Fall Apart, Chinua Achebe
A Gun For Sale, Graham Greene
Living with a Wild God, Barbara Ehrenreich
Envy, Yuri Olesha
Journey into Fear, Eric Ambler
The Columbia, Stewart Holbrook (Pacific NW history)
Dead in the Water, M. Campbell & K. Chellel (true crime)
The Misty Harbor, Georges Simenon
The Seashell on the Mountaintop, Alan Cutler (science history)
Kusamakura, Natsume Soseki
After Callimachus: Poems, Stephanie Burt (quasi-translations)
The Hunter, Richard Stark
The Quiet American, Graham Greene
The Tangled Tree, David Quammen (biology/evolution)
Peach Blossom Paradise, Ge Fei
The Goodbye Look, Ross MacDonald

Notable Fails / Rejections:

You Don't Love Me, Yet, Jonathan Lethem
At Play in the Fields of the Lord, Peter Matthiesen
Loving, Henry Green
Fledgling, Octavia Butler

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As I said, everyone's list, whether short or astoundingly lengthy, is always personal and illuminating.

The Third Policeman, Flann O'Brien
That They May Face The Rising Sun, John McGahern
Things Fell Apart, Jon Ronson
The Identity Trap, Yascha Mounk
Big Sur, Jack Kerouac
Plays:One, Harold Pinter
Miss Wyoming, Douglas Coupland
The Racket, Conor Niland
Consider The Lobster and Other Essays, David Foster Wallace
Universal Harvester, John Darnielle
Accidental Gods: On Men Turned Unwittingly Divine, Anna Della Subin
Sick Puppy, Carl Hiaasen
Ubik, Philip K Dick
Young Hearts Run Free: The Real Story of the 1970's, Dave Haslam
Gilead, Marilynne Robinson
Futuromania, Simon Reynolds
Cat's Cradle, Kurt Vonnegut

The Hundred Years War on Palestine - Rashid Khaldi
Death of a Naturalist - Seamus Heaney
Laidlaw - William McIlvanney
Prisons We Choose to Live Inside - Doris Lessing
Winter Flowers - Angelique Villeneueve
Elite Capture - Olúfẹ́mi O. Táíwò
A Perfect Spy - John Le Carré
The Woman in the Dunes - Kōbō Abe
Closer - Dennis Cooper (yikes)
Shatila Stories - Omar Khaled Ahmad / Nibal Alolo / Safa Khaled Algharbawi / Omar Abdellatif / Ryan Mohammad Sukkar / Safiya Badran / Fatima Omar Ghazawi / Samih Mahmoud / Hiba Mareb
Childhood, Youth, Depdendency - Tove Ditlevsen
Shy - Max Porter
Bleeding Edge - Thomas Pynchon
You Have Not Yet Heard Your Favorite Song - Glenn McDonald
Un Amor - Sara Mesa
Pet Shop Boys Versus America - Chris Heath
The MANIAC - Benjamin Labatut
The Politics of Reality - Marilyn Frye
A Simple Intervention - Yael Inokai
The Kaiser's Holocaust - David Olusoga & Casper W Erichsen
The Birds - Tarjei Vesaas (the best book)
A Hero of Our Time - Lermontov
About Uncle - Rebecca Gisler
The Italian Girl - Iris Murdoch
New Selected Poems 1966-1987 - Seamus Heaney
Roadside Picnic - Arkady and Boris Strugastky
The Transgender Issue - Shon Faye
Shame - Annie Ernaux
Super-Infinite - Katherine Rundell
Planet of Slums - Mike Davis
On the Greenwich Line - Shady Lewis

* = I really loved this
** = reread

Takeaway, Angela Hui
The Rainbow, Yasunari Kawabata
Swami & Friends, R.K. Narayan
Funky Bollywood, Todd Stedtman
Of Mud & Flame: A Penda's Fen Sourcebook
Tokyo Express, Seicho Matsumoto *
Slayers, Amber Benson
Illuminations, Alan Moore
BFI Classics: I Know Where I'm Going, Pam Cook
A Field Guide To Getting Lost, Rebecca Solnit
The Devotion Of Suspect X, Keigo Higashino
Nome De Guerra, Almada Negreiros
Priestdaddy, Patricia Lockwood *
Rashomon & Other Stories, Ryunsuke Akutagawa **
The Leopard, Giovanni di Lampedusa * **
Botchan, Natsume Soseki
The Premonition, Banana Yoshimoto
The Tale Of Genji (abridged), Murasaki Shibiku
Godard On Godard
Oh boy, ILX! That's where I'm a viking!..? *
Selected Stories, Mavis Gallant *
Doppelganger, Naomi Klein *
The Windrush Betrayal, Amelia Gentleman
Summer Will Show, Sylvia Townsend Warner *
52 Pick Up, Elmore Leonard
Desculpem Tocar No Assunto, Rubem Braga
Music & Silence, Rose Tremain
Reach For The Stars, Michael Cragg
Columbia Pictures, 1929-1959
Passing, Nella Larsen **
Female Husbands: A Trans History, Jen Manion
A História da Bela Fria, Teresa Veiga
Things Fall Apart, Chinua Achebe
I Married A Dead Man, Cornell Woolrich *
Nada, Jean-Patrick Manchette *
Portrait Of A Lady, Henry James
Ripley Underground, Patricia Highsmith *
Sexology, Alex Kovacs *

not much. one textbook and some short fiction. hopefully i'll get back into reading in 2025.

I did okay. Similar pattern of reading to the last few years.

Hayao Miyazaki (tr. A. Dudok de Wit) – Shuna’s Journey
Junichirō Tanizaki (tr. A. H. Chambers) – Naomi
Mary Mothersill – Beauty Restored
Fritz Leiber – Swords Against Wizardry
H. P. Lovecraft – The Call of Cthulhu and Other Weird Stories, Supernatural Horror in Literature
Joshua Landy – Philosophy as Fiction: Self, Deception, and Knowledge in Proust
Junji Ito (tr. Y. Oniki) – Uzumaki
Samuel Scheffler – Death and the Afterlife
Elaine Scarry – On Beauty and Being Just
J. R. R. Tolkien – The Fellowship of the Ring
Peter David – Imzadi (Star Trek: TNG)
Peter Humfrey – Painting in Renaissance Venice
Charles de Lint – Moonheart
Richard Moran – Authority and Estrangement: An Essay on Self-Knowledge
Jack Vance – The Demon Princes, Vol. 1 (The Star King, The Killing Machine, The Palace of Love), Vol. 2 (The Face, The Book of Dreams)
Clark Ashton Smith – The Dark Eidolon and Other Fantasies
James Tiptree, Jr. – Her Smoke Rose Up Forever
Alan Hollinghurst – The Stranger’s Child
Gene Wolfe – The Fifth Head of Cerberus, The Claw of the Conciliator
Richard Davenport-Hines – Proust at the Majestic: The Last Days of the Author Whose Book Changed Paris
Malcolm Bowie – Proust Among the Stars
Marcel Proust – À l’ombre des jeunes filles en fleurs
Stanley Cavell – The Senses of Walden
Ruth Harris – Dreyfus: Politics, Emotion, and the Scandal of the Century
Edward G. Seidensticker – Genji Days
Lucy Sante – The Other Paris
Richard Stark – Nobody Runs Forever
Modris Eksteins – Rites of Spring: The Great War and the Birth of the Modern Age
John Keegan – The First World War
Stanley Cavell – The World Viewed, Must We Mean What We Say?, The Claim of Reason (part 1), The Senses of Walden, Little Did I Know: Excerpts from Memory
François Truffaut – Hitchcock/Truffaut
Philip Pullman – The Golden Compass, The Subtle Knife
Julien Blondel – Elric, Cycle premier: Melniboné
Jane Austen – Pride and Prejudice, Mansfield Park, Persuasion

Notable incompletes:

Murasaki Shikibu (tr. R. Tyler) – The Tale of Genji
Jean-Yves Tadié (tr. E. Cameron) – Marcel Proust: A Life
Robert Jordan – A Crown of Swords

This is books. I've also started keeping a list of academic articles and individual chapters.

A lot of genre escapism, some good books.

Adam Roberts - Adam Robots
KJ Parker - Burning Books for Pleasure & Profit
Stanislaw Lem - Peace on Earth
KJ Parker - Under My Skin
Sarah Levine - Treasure Island!!!
Cixin Liu - The Three Body Problem
Stanislaw Lem - Solaris
Cixin Liu - The Dark Forest
Cixin Liu - Death's End
Nathan Hill - Wellness
Witold Gombrowicz - The Possessed
Nathan Hill - The Nix
Arkady & Boris Strugatsky - The Doomed City
Marcel Theroux - The Secret Books

Invisible Cities, Italo Calvino
The Rest is Noise: Listening to the 20th Century, Alex Ross
Homeland: The War on Terror in American Life, Ricahrd Beck
Chuck Berry: An American Life, RJ Smith
Blood, Sweat & Chrome: the Story of Mad Max Fury Road, Kyle Buchanan
Black Caesars and Foxy Cleopatras: A History of Blaxsploitation, Odie Henderson
The Last Action Heroes, Nick de Semlyen
33 1/3: Sandinista!, Micajah Henley
The Salt Roads: How Fish Made a Culture, John Goodlad
Orkneying Saga, Joseph Anderson (ed.)
On A Balcony, David Stacton
Rebel Girl, Kathleen Hanna
Between the World and Me, Ta-Nehisi Coates
Gretel and the Great War, Adam Ehrlich Sachs,
Murder is My Business, Brett Halliday
Strange Pilgrims, Gabriel Garcia Marquez
The Portable Walt Whitman, Michael Warner (ed.)
Niagara Falls NY, Ric Royer
Revenge of the Lawn, Richard Brautigan
Wicked River: The Mississippi When It Last Ran Wild, Lee Sandlin
Two Crocodiles, Fyodor Dostoyevsky/Felisberto Hernandez
Biography of a Phantom, Robert Mack McCormick
Che Guevara: A Revolutionary Life, Jon Lee Anderson
The Wager, Gavid Grann
The River of Consciousness, Oliver Sacks
The Judges of the Secret Court, David Stacton
Poison Heart: Surviving the Ramones, Dee Dee Ramone
The Book of Imaginary Beings, Jorge Luis Borges
Best Barbarian, Roger Reeves
Dona Barbara, Romulo Gallegos
Same Bed Different Dreams, Ed Park
If I Were Writing This, Robert Creeley
Penny, Karl Stevens
But Will You Love Me Tomorrow: An Oral History of the 60s Girl Groups, Laura Flam

Andrei Platonov - Chevengur*
Miguel Angel Asturias - Mr.President
Jeremy Taylor - Four Sermons*
Paul Lynch - Prophet Song
S. Yizhar - Preliminaries
Alejo Carpentier - Explosion in the Cathedral*
Henry Green - Concluding
Witold Gombrowicz - Ferdydurke
Yasunari Kawabata - The Rainbow
V. S. Pritchett - A Cab at the Door*
John Donne - Sermons
Ferit Edgu - The Wounded Age and Eastern Tales
Ernesto Sabato - On Heroes and Tombs*
Montaigne - Selection of Essays (tr. Florio)
Sindbad and Other Stories from the Arabian Nights (tr. Husain Haddaway)
James Boswell - The Life of Johnson
Jen Craig - Wall
Gerard de Nerval - Journey to the Orient
Cristina Campo - The Unforgivable and Other Writings*
Jean Genet - The Criminal Child and Other Essays
Celine - War
Arthur Schnitzler - Fraulein Else
Euclides Da Cunha - Backlands*
Elfriede Jelinek - Children of the Dead*
Jean Renoir - La Grande Illusion
Domenico Starnone - The House on Via Gemito*
Maria Gabriela Llansol - A Thousand Thoughts in Flight
William Faulkner - Absalom! Absalom!*
Elias Canetti - The Book Against Death
Sergio Pitol - Taming the Divine Heron
Oguz Atay - Waiting for the Fear
Vladimir Sharov - Be as Children
The Bhagavad Gita
John Milton - Prose Writings
Victor Serge - Notebooks 1936-1947
Giacomo Leopardi - Zibaldone*

(Using Daniel's annotation)
* = Favourite reads

I probably only regret reading the Boswell, just a sort of muddle through in the middle of the year, though its mostly fine.

Not counting unfinished/abandoned:

To Each His Own - Leonardo Sciascia
* Recognizing the Stranger: On Palestine and Narrative - Isabella Hammad
There's Always This Year: On Basketball and Ascension - Hanif Abdurraqib
* The Message - Ta-Nehisi Coates
* Debt: The First 5,000 Years - David Graeber
* So Late in the Day: Stories of Women and Men - Claire Keegan
Stella Maris - Cormac McCarthy
* The Passenger - Cormac McCarthy
Napoleon: A Life - Andrew Roberts
The Employees - Olga Ravn
* Minor Detail - Adania Shibli
Hurricane Season - Fernanda Melchor
* Small Things Like These - Claire Keegan
3 Shades of Blue: Miles Davis, John Coltrane, Bill Evans, and the Lost Empire of Cool - James Kaplan
Bobby BlueJacket: The Tribe, The Joint, The Tulsa Underworld - Michael P. Daley
Seek: Reports from the Edges of America and Beyond - Denis Johnson
Ultra-Processed People: The Science Behind Food That Isn't Food - Chris van Tulleken
Season of Migration to the North - Tayeb Salih
* Loved and Missed - Susie Boyt
The Method: How the Twentieth Century Learned to Act - Isaac Butler
Doppelganger: A Trip into the Mirror World - Naomi Klein
Every Man for Himself and God Against All: A Memoir - Werner Herzog
*^Jazz - Toni Morrison

* = favorites
^ = re-read

I don't know why I'm putting up a list. My reading year was putrid.

McElroy, Plus
Jones, Loaded
Stein and Newman, Spin Glasses and Complexity
Herbert, The Santaroga Barrier
Nylander, Shenzhen Superstars
Escobar, Eurasia v. NATOstan
Plymell, Benzedrine Highway
Girouard, Big Jim
Nadis, The Gravity of Math
Berenyi, Fingers Crossed
Hoban, The Lion of Boaz-Jachin and Jachin-Boaz
Chaitin, Meta Math!
Herbert, Destination: Void
Malzberg, The Destruction Of The Temple
Mezrich, Breaking Twitter
Robbe-Grillet, In the Labyrinth
Delany, The Motion of Light in Water
Dovlatov, The Zone
Dutton, At Our Wits' End
Brooke-Rose, A ZBC of Ezra Pound
Updike, Odd Jobs
Barss, The Impossible Man
Siegel, The Future Once Happened Here
Smith, When the Cheering Stopped
Phillips, Einstein's Tutor

2024.01	Dust (Wool #3) - Hugh Howey
2024.02	Children Of Memory (Children Of Time #3) - Adrian Tchaikovsky
2024.03	Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow - Gabrielle Zevin
2024.04	Klara and the Sun - Kazuo Ishiguro
2024.05	Beautiful Shining People - Michael Grothaus
2024.06	The Devil's Flute Murders - Seishi Yokomizo
2024.07	McB30 Blood Relatives - Ed McBain
2024.08	Reb15 Fleshmarket Close (2004) - Ian Rankin
2024.09	McB31 So Long As You Both Shall Live - Ed McBain
2024.10	Poirot Investigates - Agatha Christie
2024.11	Germinal - Emile Zola
2024.12	Le Grand Meaulnes (The Lost Estate) - Henri Alain Fournier
2024.13	Black Tulip - Dumas
2024.14	An Episode Under The Terror - Balzac
2024.15	At The Sign Of The Cat And Racket - Balzac
2024.16	Desperate Remedies: A Novel (1871) - Thomas Hardy
2024.17	The Hand of Ethelberta: A Comedy in Chapters (1876) - Thomas Hardy
2024.18	Thomas Hardy: The Time-Torn Man - Claire Tomalin
RE 2024.19	Feersum Endjinn (1994) - Iain M Banks
2024.20	The Diamond Age - Neal Stephenson
2024.21	Left Hand Of Darkness - Ursula K Le Guin
2024.22	The Factory - Hiroko Oyamada
2024.23	Scattered All Over The Earth - Yoko Tawada
2024.24	Lonely Castle In The Mirror - Mizuki Tsujimu
2024.25	Days At The Morisaki Bookshop - Satoshi Yagisawa
2024.26	What You Are Looking For Is In The Library - Michiko Aoyama
2024.27	Tokyo Express - Seicho Matsumoto
2024.28	The Sound Of The Mountain - Yasunari Kawabata
2024.29	The Memory Police - Yoko Ogawa
2024.30	H is for Hawk - Helen Macdonald
RE 2024.31	Cider With Rosie - Laurie Lee
2024.32	Fingers In the Sparkle Jar - Chris Packham
2024.33	Why Be Happy When You Can Be Normal? - Jeanette Winterson
2024.34	Getting Better - Michael Rosen
2024.35	As I Walked Out One Midsummer Morning - Laurie Lee
2024.36	The Warden - Anthony Trollope
2024.36	Barchester Towers - Anthony Trollope
2024.37	Iphigenia In Aulis (trans Buckley) - Euripides
2024.38	The Iliad (trans Wilson) - Homer
2024.39	Iphigenia among the Taurians (trans Buckley) - Euripides
2024.40	Machine - Elizabeth Bear
2024.41	Machine Vendetta - Alastair Reynolds
2024.42	The Machine Stops - E M Forster
2024.43	Elektra - Jennifer Saint
2024.44	When Hitler Stole Pink Rabbit - Judith Kerr
2024.45	Noah’s Compass - Anne Tyler
2024.46	Divine Might - Natalie Haynes
2024.47	Hera - Jennifer Saint
2024.48	Orestes (trans Buckley) - Euripides
2024.49	Oresteia (trans Campbell) - Aeschylus
2024.50	03 Doctor Thorne - Anthony Trollope

lots of iliad-adjacent things

the dumas and the zola have encouraged me to read more of those in 2015.

pretty much all the biographical things also a surprise to me.

a couple of these were a surprise to me when they came up on my goodreads list.

"2024.44 When Hitler Stole Pink Rabbit - Judith Kerr"

I have the record of this if you need it. its in german.

https://i.discogs.com/--7herUTbDhx-xumqf_laLTvNw-i9-b3s6WBRZOZUXc/rs:fit/g:sm/q:90/h:600/w:600/czM6Ly9kaXNjb2dz/LWRhdGFiYXNlLWlt/YWdlcy9SLTUwOTI3/NzUtMTU3OTQ1ODQy/OC03NDg5LmpwZWc.jpeg

High Bias, Marc Masters
You Gotta Have Wa, Robert Whiting
Henry V, William Shakespeare
The Will to Change, bell hooks
Munkey Diaries, Jane Birkin
Why We Love Baseball, Joe Posnanski
Specilege, Marcel Schwob
Ball of Fire, Stefan Kanfer
Pride and Prejudice, Jane Austen
The Age of Extremes, Eric Hobsbawm
The Amplified Come As You Are, Michael Azerrad
Ghosts of My Life, Mark Fisher
The Best of Richard Matthewson, Richard Matthewson
Yeah! Yeah! Yeah!, Bob Stanley
Doppleganger, Naomi Klein
Kitchen Confidential, Anthony Bourdain
Never Let Me Go, Kazuo Ishiguro
The Dawn of Everything, David Graeber
A Wizard of Earthsea, Ursula Le Guin
Easy Riders, Raging Bulls, Peter Biskind
The Black Company, Glen Cook (yeah yeah yeah i know it was lying around and I was bored, I couldn’t help myself)
Omon Ra, Victor Pelevin

and these graphic novels:
The Complete Strange Growths: 1991-1997, Jenny Zervakis
Powdered Milk, Keiler Roberts
Miseryland, Keiler Roberts
Cerebus (first phonebook)

for the most part a lot of short quick reads/rereads this year:

algernon blackwood - john silence
erskine childers - the riddle of the sands
john buchan - the thirty-nine steps
john buchan - greenmantle
john buchan - mr standfast
john buchan - the three hostages
john buchan - the island of sheep
gk chesterton - the wisdom of father brown
ef benson - the freaks of mayfair
ef benson - as we are: a modern review
douglas goldring - the nineteen twenties
various - new road 1945 (fred marnau ed.)
various - surrealism (herbert read ed.)
anna balakian - origins of literary surrealism
various - great horror stories
various - best ghost stories
kafka - stories 1904-1924
kafka - the trial
beckett - murphy
beckett - watt
beckett - mercier and camier
wodehouse - leave it to psmith
wodehouse - summer lightning
wodehouse - lord emsworth & others
wodehouse - ukridge
wodehouse - eggs, beans and crumpets
wodehouse - nothing serious
wodehouse - a few quick ones
wodehouse - plum pie
agatha christie - the mystery of the blue train
agatha christie - lord edgware dies
agatha christie - death in the clouds
simenon - maigret sets a trap
various - pulp masters
graham greene - the third man
graham greene - a gun for sale
joseph conrad - the secret agent
joseph conrad - under western eyes
wh davies - autobiography of a super tramp
robert tressell - the ragged trousered philanthropists
grossmith/grossmith - the diary of a nobody
somerville/ross- the irish rm
elizabeth bowen - the last september
agatha christie - the abc murder
agatha christie - cards on the table
agatha christie - three act tragedy
agatha christie - the listerdale mystery
aa milne - the red house mystery
julain symons - bloody murder
donald e westlake - cops and robbers
roger zelazny - isle of the dead
zelazny/sheckley - bring me the head of prince charming
robert sheckley - the alchemical marriage of alistair crompton
robert sheckley - mindswap
robert sheckley - immortality inc
cm kornbluth - the marching morons
various - farewell fantastic venus!
agatha christie - the mysterious affair at styles
agatha christie - poirot investigates
agatha christie - the big four
jb priestley - the shapes of sleep
len deighton - billion-dollar brain
eric ambler - the intercom conspiracy
nicholas blake - a penknife in my heart
nicholas blake - end of chapter
nicholas blake - the widow's cruise
nicolas bentley - the floating dutchman
jim thompson - the criminal
jim thompson - savage night
jim thompson - a swell-looking babe
jim thompson - after dark, my sweet
jim thompson - nothing more than murder
jim thompson - a hell of a woman
john o'hara - a rage to live
robert traver - anatomy of a murder
david dodge - shear the black sheep
david dodge - ransom of the angel
david dodge - to catch a thief
ethel lina white - the lady vanishes
agatha christie - why didn't they ask evans?
agatha christie - the secret adversary
agatha christie - by the pricking of my thumb
christina stead - cotter's england
capel boake - painted clay
jean devanny - the butcher shop
ronald hugh morrieson - the scarecrow

One a month! Could do better.

Robert Aickman - Dark Entries
Fredric Brown - Martians Go Home
Octavia Butler - Kindred
Susanna Clarke - Piranesi
M. John Harrison - Climbers
M. John Harrison - Settling the World: Selected Stories
M. John Harrison - You Should Come With Me Now
Andrew Michael Hurley - The Loney
Simon Ings - City of the Iron Fish
C.M. Kornbluth - Not This August
Christopher Priest - Darkening Island
Arkady & Boris Strugatsky - Hard to be a God

And:
Junji Ito - Gyo
Junji Ito - Shiver
Junji Ito - Venus in the Blind Spot

Plus a bunch of online short fiction, around 10% of which was really worth the bother.

the dumas and the zola have encouraged me to read more of those

Sorry I can never miss an opportunity to plug the Robin Buss translation of Count of Monte Cristo, which is just peak fabulous. (Also a warning to avoid the boggy Pevear translation of Three Muaketeers - the Will Hobson version from 2014 by the best).

* for favorites

1. Oakley Hall - Warlock*
2. Bulgakov - The Master and Margarita* (reread)
3. Laxness - The Fish Can Sing
4. Davis - Samuel Johnson is Indignant*
5. Pushkin - Boris Godounov
6. Molière - Le Misanthrope
7. Davis - Varieties of Disturbance
8. Hogdson - The House on the Borderland
9. Lispector - Covert Joy
10. Hurston - John's Gourd Vine
11. Huysmans - En Route
12. Le Guin - The Lathe of Heaven
13. Kourouma - Allah n'est pas obligé
14. Williams - Augustus*
15. Gorky - My Childhood
16. Wharton - Ethan Frome*
17. Beckett - En Attendant Godot*
18. Gontcharov - Oblomov* (reread)
19. Molière - Le Tartuffe
20. Carver - Will You Please Be Quiet, Please?
21. Maupssant - Le Horla*
22. Scott Fitzgerald - Tender is the Night
23. Walser - The Tanners
24. Simmons - Hyperion* (reread)
25. Maupassant - La Maison Tellier*
26. Moshfegh - Eileen
27. Murdoch - The Sea, the Sea*
28. Bernanos - Sous le Soleil de Satan

tried to read more than usual this year but then had a baby, so that didn't happen haha. still! wound up with a book a month

richard stark - the hunter
barbara kingsolver - demon copperhead
cixin liu - the dark forest
nana kwame adjei-brenyah - chain-gang all-stars
jordy rosenberg - confessions of the fox
juan gomez barcena - not even the dead
frank herbert - dune: messiah
carson mccullers - the heart is a lonely hunter
martin mcinnes - in ascension
frances spufford - cahokia jazz
javier blas & jack farchy - the world for sale
ursula le guin - the left hand of darkness
paul auster - the new york trilogy

I read a lot in 2024. Looking over this list, I see many books I picked up because of discussion on ILB or elsewhere on ILX, as well as my usual diet of old genre fiction and reference books.

Ackroyd, Poe: A Life Cut Short
Ackroyd, The History of England, v. 5: Dominion
Ackroyd, The History of England, v. 6: Innovation
Ainsworth, The Lancashire Witches
Arendt, Lectures on Kant’s Political Philosophy
Arendt, The Promise of Politics
Baldwin, In the Watches of the Night: Life in the Nocturnal City, 1820-1930
Benshoff & Murphy, Film and Television Analysis (2nd ed.)
Bordwell, Perplexing Plots: Popular Storytelling and the Poetics of Murder
Bowen, Black Magic
Brown, The Fabulous Clipjoint
Brown, The Screaming Mimi
Carr, The Blind Barber
Carr, The Four False Weapons
Carr, The White Priory Murders
Case, Fengriffen & Other Gothic Tales
Case, The Cell & Other Transmorphic Tales
Case, The Third Grave
Chekhov, The Duel
Chekhov, The Shooting Party
Collins (ed.), Ghosts and Marvels
Collins and Traylor, Spillane: King of Pulp Fiction
Crofts, Inspector French and the Box Office Murders
Crofts, Inspector French and the Cheyne Mystery
Crofts, Inspector French and the Sea Mystery
Crofts, Inspector French and the Starvel Tragedy
Crofts, Inspector French’s Greatest Case
Curti, Italian Giallo in Film and Television: A Critical History
Curti, Italian Gothic Horror Films, 1957-1969
Curti, Italian Gothic Horror Films, 1970-1979
Curti, Italian Gothic Horror Films, 1980-1989
Davidson and Fishel (eds.), Bob Dylan: Mixing Up the Medicine
Denwood, Naihanchi (Tekki) Kata: The Seed of Shuri Karate, v. 1
Edgerton, The Columbia History of American Television
Fitzgerald, The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam
Flaubert, The Letters of Gustave Flaubert
Geoffrey of Monmouth, The History of the Kings of Britain (tr. Thorpe)
Haggard, She
Heller-Nicholas, The Giallo Canvas: Art, Excess and Horror Cinema
Holdstock, Mythago Wood
Hughes, Human-Built World: How to Think about Technology
Hume, An Inquiry Concerning Human Understanding
Hutton, Queens of the Wild: Pagan Goddesses in Christian Europe: An Investigation
Jarman & Hanley, Wrestling for Beginners
Kipling, Kim
Kipling, Something of Myself
Lamb (ed.), A Bottomless Grave and Other Victorian Tales of Terror
Lamb (ed.), Terror by Gaslight
Lamb (ed.), Victorian Tales of Terror
Latimer, Black Is the Fashion for Dying
Machin (ed.), British Weird: Selected Short Fiction, 1893-1937
Manchette, Nada
Manchette, No Room at the Morgue
Manchette, Skeletons in the Closet
Manchette, The N’Gustro Affair
Manning & Bristow, The Invisible Host
Morton & Cook, The Penguin Jazz Guide
Moskowitz (ed.), A. Merritt: Reflections in the Moon Pool
Muir, Horror Films of the 1970s
Muir, Horror Films of the 1980s
Muir, Horror Films of the 1990s
Newell, Weird Fiction 1832-1937
Nicolson, Fingers of Fear
Porter, Journey to the Center of the Cramps
Rigby, American Gothic
Rigby, English Gothic
Rinehart, The Wall
Scott & Pierson (eds), Dark Shadows Almanac
Scott, Letters on Witchcraft and Demonology
Scott, Waverley
Shakespeare, Henry IV, Part 1
Shakespeare, Henry IV, Part 2
Shelley, Frankenstein (1818 text)
Singer, Boundaries of the Soul
Sloane, To Walk the Night
Spillane, My Gun Is Quick
Stevenson, Essays in the Art of Writing
Tey, The Daughter of Time
Tey, The Singing Sands
Truffaut, Hitchcock
Tryon, The Other
Urban, Magia Sexualis: Sex, Magic, and Liberation in Modern Western Esotericism
Verne, Journey to the Centre of the Earth (tr. Butcher)
Wallace, Room 13
Wallace, Terror Keep
Wallace, The Mind of Mr. J. G. Reeder
Weldon, The Psychotronic Encyclopedia of Film
Weldon, The Psychotronic Video Guide
White, Fear Stalks the Village
Willard, The Cat and the Canary
Wilson, The Boys in the Back Room
Woolrich, Black Alibi
Woolrich, Night Has a Thousand Eyes
Woolrich, Phantom Lady
Woolrich, The Black Angel
Woolrich, The Black Curtain
Woolrich, The Black Path of Fear
Worth (ed.), The Night Wire and Other Tales of Weird Media
Yokomizo, The Devil’s Flute Murders
Yokomizo, The Little Sparrow Murders

Thanks ILB for the great recommendations.

Boone, Bruce - My Walk with Bob
Clébert, Jean-Paul - Paris Vagabond
Cole, Norma - My Bird Book
Fox, Paula - Desperate Characters
Fraser, Kathleen - What I Want
Ginzburg, Natalia - Happiness, as Such
Gladman, Renee - My Lesbian Novel
Gladman, Renee - To After That (toaf)
Glück, Robert - About Ed
Hjorth, Vigdis - Long Live the Post Horn!
Jansson, Tove - The Summer Book
Komunyakaa, Yusef - Neon Vernacular
Mantel, Hilary - Every Day is Mother's Day
Mahfouz, Naguib - The Cairo Trilogy
Modiano, Patrick - Suspended Sentences
Mullen, Harryette - Recyclopedia : Trimmings, S*PeRM**K*T, and Muse & Drudge
Narayan, R. K. - The Man-Eater of Malgudi
Le Guin, Ursula K. - The Farthest Shore
Le Guin, Ursula K. - Tehanu
Le Guin, Ursula K. - Tombs of Atuan
Levi, Primo - The Periodic Table
Lim, Eugene - Choir
Raworth, Tom - The Relation Ship
Saidenberg, Jocelyn - Negativity
Sante, Lucy - Maybe the People Would Be the Times
Schulman, Sarah - The Gentrification of the Mind: Witness to a Lost Imagination
Seuss, Diane - Four-Legged Girl: Poems
Wideman, John Edgar - Philadelphia Fire
Williams, Diane - How High? -- That High
Winterson, Jeanette - Sexing the Cherry
Young, Marguerite - Miss Mackintosh, My Darling

Almost done with Dambudzo Marechera's Black Sunlight, but I doubt I'll finish before midnight.

Albert Camus, The Fall
Peter Handke, A Moment of True Feeling
Peter Handke, The Left-Handed Woman
Chris Kraus, The Bastard Factory
William Gaddis, Agapē Agape
Annie Dillard, Living by Fiction
Robert Sheckley, The Tenth Victim
Joy Williams, The Quick and the Dead
Thomas M. Disch, The Genocides
Miklós Szentkuthy, Marginalia on Casanova (St. Orpheus Breviary, vol 1)
Jane Bowles, The Collected Works of Jane Bowles
Jane Bowles, Plain Pleasures
Mary Norris, Between You and Me: Confessions Of A Comma Queen
Stephen King, You Like It Darker
Raymond Queneau, Pierrot Mon Ami
Louis-Ferdinand Céline, War
Marlen Haushofer, The Wall
Luis Negron, Mundo Cruel
Jules Michelet,Roland Barthes, Michelet
Melissa Sue Anderson, Inland Empire
Donald E Westlake, What's The Worst That Could Happen?
Asko Sahlberg, The Brothers
Brigid Brophy, Hackenfeller's Ape
Sembene Ousmane, The Money Order
Donald E Westlake, The Hot Rock
Antonio Di Benedetto, The Silentiary
Eliza Clark, Penance
Cynthia Ozick, Heir to the Glimmering World
C. S. Forester, Payment Deferred
John Finnemore, The Researcher's First Murder
Joy Williams, Concerning the Future of Souls
Rachel Yoder, Nightbitch
Miguel de Unamuno, Mist
Jacqueline Harpman, I Who Have Never Known Men
Ta-Nehisi Coates, The Message
Gretchen Felker-Martin, Cuckoo
Jannifer Dawson, The Ha-Ha

whereas yr best staggering genius was flann o'brien

Death in the Clouds, Christie
Birnam Wood, Catton
Jane and Prudence, Pym
The Gunslinger, King
Hateship, Loveship…,Munro
The Shame Archive, Harris
Endless Night, Christie
Otherwise Known as Sheila the Great, Blume
Death at the Sign of the Rook, Atkinson
Monica, Clowes
The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, Lewis
Prince Caspian, Lewis
Dead in the Water, Campbell & Chellel
The Nineties, Klosterman
Cinema Speculation, Tarantino
The Moon’s a Balloon, Niven
The Ministry of Time, Bradley

> Sorry I can never miss an opportunity to plug the Robin Buss translation of Count of Monte Cristo, which is just peak fabulous.

enjoyed CoMC before, and it turns out it was the Buss translation for Penguin Classics

> (Also a warning to avoid the boggy Pevear translation of Three Musketeers - the Will Hobson version from 2014 by the best).

but the Penguin Classics of these is the Pevear version. i was going to go with the Oxford World Classics versions because they at least have the full set. Coward, 1998.

The Oxford version is the one I read as a kid, it’s perfectly fine - I think it’s a translation from the 1840s. But the Hobson is better, especially for the dialogue, and (like Buss) it presents the full text (including rude bits left out of the Oxford) without being overly literal like the Pevear.

After that it gets a bit complicated. The best version of Twenty Years After is a free, self-published translation on ebook only - it’s by Jonathan Loesberg (who translated Crimes of Paris for Penguin). Being self-published, the formatting and copy editing isn’t great, but it’s still the best translation by miles and miles. Loesberg is still writing the next volume, which is an insane thing to self-publish (it’s even longer than CoMC!) but I’m glad he’s doing it.

My 2024 reading w/ Good Reads star ratings:

Horror for Christmas - Richard Dalby (ed) ***
The Word is Murder - Anthony Horowitz (Hawthorne & Horovitz #1) ***
Cimino: The Deer Hunter, Heaven's Gate, and the Price of a Vision - Charles Elton ****
Bring the Jubilee - Ward Moore ****
Fatale - Jean-Patrick Manchette **** [was happy to pick up the graphic novel version of this later on in the year for a bargain price]
Erotic Vagrancy: Everything about Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor - Roger Lewis *** [docked a point for some nasty transphobic asides late on in the game]
Monica - Daniel Clowes *****
He Who Hesitates - Ed McBain (87th Precinct #19) ***
Everything Keeps Dissolving: Conversations with Coil - Nick Soulsby (ed) ****
After the Funeral - Agatha Christie (Hercule Poirot #33) ***
Peril at End House - Agatha Christie (Hercule Poirot #8) ****
Use of Weapons - Iain M Banks (Culture #3) ***
Lord Edgware Dies - Agatha Christie (Hercule Poirot #9) ***
Resurrection Walk - Michael Connelly (Lincoln Lawyer #7) ****
After Claude - Iris Owens ****
The Force - Don Winslow ***
The Gilded Palace of Sin - Bob Proehl (33⅓ Main Series #61) ****
Invincible: Head of the Class - Robert Kirkman, Cory Walker, Ryan Ottley et al (Invincible #4) ***
The Rebel Angels - Robertson Davies (The Cornish Trilogy #1) ****
Proust - Edmund White ****
The Scarlet Papers - Matthew Richardson **
The Mansion of the Gods - Rene Goscinny, Albert Uderzo (Asterix #17) ****
Phew, Eh Readers? The Life and Writing of Tom Hibbert - Barney Hoskyns and Jasper Murison-Bowie (eds) ***
The Cyberiad: Fables for the Cybernetic Age - Stanislaw Lem ***
Lou Reed: The King of New York - Will Hermes ****
You've Got to Read This: Contemporary American Writers Introduce Stories that Held Them in Awe - Ron Hansen and Jim Shepard (eds) ****
Z is for Zorglub - Andre Franquin (Spirou and Fantasio #13, Cinebooks edition) ****
Uncle and the Treacle Trouble - J P Martin (Uncle #4) ****
Unruly: The Ridiculous History of England's Kings and Queens - David Mitchell ** [docked a point for an anti-leftist rant late in the game]
Goof-off at Gomer Corral - Andre Franquin (Gomer Goff #11, Cinebooks edition) ****
The Sentence is Death - Anthony Horovitz (Hawthorne & Horovitz #2) ***
Mighty Alice Goes Round & Round: A Cul de Sac book - Richard Thompson *****
Brave New World - Aldous Huxley ****
Raising Laughter: How the Sitcom Kept Britain Smiling in the '70s - Robert Sellers ***
A Line to Kill - Anthony Horovitz (Hawthorne & Horovitz #3) ***
Redshirts - John Scalzi ****
The Marvels Project: Birth of the Super Heroes - Ed Brubaker, Steve Epting ***
Guardians of the Galaxy: Mother Entropy - Jim Starlin, Alan Davies ***
Challenger: A True Story of Heroism and Disaster on the Edge of Space - Adam Higginbotham ****
Blood Relatives - Ed McBain (87th Precinct #30) ***
Beyond Apollo - Barry N Malzberg ****
Futuromania: Electronic Dreams, Desiring Machines, and Tomorrow's Music Today - Simon Reynolds ***
Sonic Life: A Memoir - Thurston Moore ***
A Fire Upon the Deep - Vernor Vinge (Zones of Thought #1) ****
Some Desparate Glory - Emily Tesh ***
Starter Villain - John Scalzi ***
The Eye - Vladimir Nabokov ****
Powerhouse: The Untold Story of Hollywood's Creative Artists Agency - James Andrew Miller **
The Twist of a Knife - Anthony Horovitz (Hawthorne & Horovitz #4) ****
Mazebook - Jeff Lemire ***
The Book of Skulls - Robert Silverberg *** [docked a point for 70s sexism]
Letterman: The Last Giant of Late Night - Jason Zinoman ***
Hamlet, Revenge! A Story in Four Parts - Michael Innes (Sir John Appleby #2) ****
Rogue Trooper: Blight Alley - Garth Innes, Patrick Goddard **
Close to Death - Anthony Horovitz (Hawthorne & Horovitz #5) ***
Calamity Town - Ellery Queen (Ellery Queen Detective #16) ***
Mike Leigh on Mike Leigh - Amy Raphael (ed) ****
Roadside Picnic - Arkady and Boris Strugatsky, Olena Bormashenko (Translator) ****
The Red House Mystery - A A Milne ***

JANUARY

Primo Levi - The Periodic Table
Lucas Hilderbrand - The Bars Are Ours: Histories and Cultures of Gay Bars in America,1960 and After
Harry Crews - The Gospel Singer
C.W. Goodyear - President Garfield: From Radical to Reformer
Armand Derfner and Vernon Burton - Justice Deferred: Race and the Supreme Court
Harry Crews - A Childhood
Ben Greenman - Dig If You Will the Picture: Funk, Sex, God and Genius in the Music of Prince
Elaine Dundy - The Old Man and Me
Leon Edel - Bloomsbury: A House of Lions
John Maynard Keynes - The Economic Consequences of the Peace
* Anton Chekhov - The Seagull
Flann O'Brien - The Hard Life
Andy Beckett - Pinochet in Piccadilly: Britain and Chile's Hidden History
Abraham Verghese - My Own Country: A Doctor's Story
Isaac Butler - The Method: How the Twentieth Century Learned to Act

FEBRUARY

Denis Johnson - Resuscitation of a Hanged Man
Jun'ichirō Tanizaki - In Praise of Shadows
Lisa Tuttle - My Death
* William Shakespeare - Measure for Measure
John McGahern - Amongst Women
Peter William Evans - BFI: Written on the Wind
Teju Cole - Black paper: Writing in a Dark Time
Stephen Davis - Please Please Tell Me Now: The Duran Duran Story
Joshua Green - The Rebels: Elizabeth Warren, Bernie Sanders, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, and The Struggle for a New American Politics
Edward J. Larson - American Inheritance: Liberty and Slavery in the Birth of a Nation, 1765-1795
William Maxwell - They Came Like Swallows
Harry Crews - A Feast of Snakes
David Yazzi - Late Romance: Anthony Hecht, A Poet's Life
Olúfẹ́mi O. Táíwò - Elite Capture: How the Powerful Took Over Identity Politics (And Everything Else)

MARCH

Michael Schulman - Oscar Wars: A History of Hollywood in Gold, Sweat, and Tears
Henrik Pontoppidan - Lucky Per
Annie Ernaux - A Frozen Woman
Percival Everett - Erasure
Heinrich Böll - The Silent Angel
Ann Powers - Good Booty
Dylan Jones - Shiny and New: Ten Moments That Defined The '80s
* Henry James - The Wings of the Dove
Greil Marcus - When That Rough God Goes Riding
* André Breton - Nadja
Rachel Cohen - A Chance Meeting
Holly George-Warren: A Man Called Destruction: The Life and Music of Alex Chilton

APRIL

Stuart A. Reid - The Lumumba Plot
Maya Jasanoff - The Dawn Watch: Joseph Conrad in a Global World
Joseph Conrad - The Nigger of the 'Narcissus'
Manisha Sinha - The Rise and Fall of the Second American Republic: Reconstruction, 1860-1920
* Thomas Mallon - Fellow Travelers
Steven Hahn - Illiberal America: A History
Tom Schaller and Paul Waldman - White Rural Rage: The Threat to American Democracy
Shirley Hazzard - The Great Fire
Ann Powers - Traveling
Bruce Chatwin - The Songlines
Frances Lannon - The Spanish Civil War
Harold Bloom - Ruin the Sacred Truths
Lee Kravetz - The Last Confessions of Sylvia P.
Antonio di Benedetto - The Silentialist

MAY

Nathan Hill - Wellness
Percival Everett - Assumption
Grace Paley - The Little Disturbances of Man
Samuel Beckett - Watt
Sam Shepard - Buried Child
* John Cheever - Falconer
Anthony Beevor - The Battle for Spain: The Spanish Civil War 1936-1939
Fergus M. Bordewich - Klan War: Ulysses S. Grant and the Battle to Save Reconstruction
* Madeleine L'Engle - A Wind in the Door
Ari Berman - Minority Rule: The Right-Wing Attack on the Will of the People―and the Fight to Resist It
Philip Gefter - Cocktails with George and Martha: Movies, Marriage, and the Making of Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?
Alberto Moravia - Conjugal Love
* William Shakespeare - Much Ado About Nothing

JUNE

Walker Percy - The Last Generation
Edmund White - Nocturnes for the King of Naples
Jonathan Schneer - The Balfour Declaration
Brad Gooch - Radiant: The Life and Line of Keith Haring
* Gustave Flaubert - Sentimental Education
André Aciman - Harvard Square
Karen Tumulty - The Triumph of Nancy Reagan
Kathryn Warner - Edward II; His Sexuality and Relationships
Timothy W. Ryback - Takeover: Hitler's Final Rise to Power
* Evelyn Waugh - Put Out More Flags
Edith Wharton - Glimpses of the Moon
Robert Plunket - My Search for Warren Harding
Hugh Ryan - When Brooklyn Was Queer

JULY

Mike Rapport - 1848: Year of Revolution
* John Banville - Mrs. Osmond
Robert Service - The End of the Cold War
Patricia Lockwood - Priestdaddy: A Memoir
Amit Chaudhuri - Afternoon Raag
Stella Gibbons - Cold Comfort Farm
Elizabeth Dias and Lisa Lerer - The Fall of Roe
James Salter - All That Is
Ursula Parrot - Ex-Wife
Richard Becker - Palestine, Israel, and U.S. Empire
Richard Moe - Roosevelt's Second Act
Jean-Patrick Manchette - The Prone Gunman

AUGUST

* George Eliot - Middlemarch
Steven Hyden - There Was Nothing You Could Do: Bruce Springsteen’s “Born In The U.S.A.” and the End of the Heartland
Hernan Diaz - Trust
The Paris Review: No. 92
Warren Zanes - Deliver Me from Nowhere: The Making of Bruce Springsteen's Nebraska
May Sarton - Faithful Are the Wounds
May Sarton - As We Are Now
A Strange and Sublime Address
Benn Steil - The World That Wasn't: Henry Wallace and the Fate of the American Century
Robert Louis Stevenson - Kidnapped
Jean-Patrick Manchette - The Mad and the Bad
Michael Chabon - The Final Solution
* Janet Malcolm - The Silent Woman

SEPTEMBER

John Ganz - When The Clock Broke
John Bowen - The Girls
* Virginia Woolf - Mrs. Dalloway
Ali Smith - Artful
Julie Salomon - The Devil's Candy: The Anatomy of a Hollywood Fiasco
Domenico Starnone - Trust
Timothy D. Snyder - Bloodlands: Europe Between Hitler and Stalin
Pier Paolo Pasolini - Boys Alive
* Willa Cather - My Antonia
Andrew Holleran - The Kingdom of Sand
Tim Madigan - The Burning: The Tulsa Race Massacre of 1921

OCTOBER

John McGahern - The Dark
Brad Snyder - Democratic Justice: Felix Frankfurter, the Supreme Court, and the Making of the Liberal Establishment
Madeline Miller - The Song of Achilles
Colm Tóibín - Long Island
William H. Gass - Reading Rilke
Domenico Starnone - Trick
David M. Halperin - How To Be Gay
Han Kang - Human Acts
Tricia Romano - The Freaks Came Out to Write: The Definitive History of the Village Voice, the Radical Paper That Changed American Culture
Richard Powers - Bewilderment
Dwight Garner - The Upstairs Delicatessen: On Eating, Reading, Reading About Eating, and Eating While Reading
Madeline Miller - Circe

NOVEMBER

Émile Zola - The Belly of Paris
* Shakespeare - Henry V
Robert Menasse - The Capital
E.M. Forster - Where Angels Fear to Tread
Eric Hobsbawm - The Age of Revolution
J.G. Ballard - The Kindness of Women
Rob Sheffield - Heartbreak Is the National Anthem: A Celebration of Taylor Swift's Musical Journey, Cultural Impact, and Reinvention of Pop Music for Swifties by a Swiftie
B. H. Fairchild - Usher
Pamela Erens - Middlemarch and the Imperfect Life
Alan Hollinghurst - Our Evenings
James Schuyler - Alfred and Guinevere
Jean Strouse - Alice James
Simone de Beauvoir - America Day By Day

DECEMBER

Rebecca Solnit - A Field Guide to Getting Lost
Rachel Kushner - Telex from Havana
Nate Patrin - The Needle and the Lens
* William Dean Howells - The Rise of Silas Lapham
Jerzy Kosiński - Being There
William Dean Howells - An Imperfect Duty
David Bowie and Tom Hagler - Bowie at the BBC: A Life in Interviews
Edna O'Brien - Casualties of Peace
Dan Jones - Henry V: The Astonishing Triumph of England's Greatest Warrior King
Christopher Hitchens - A Hitch in Time
William Burroughs - Queer
Claire Keegan - So Late in the Day
Muriel Spark - Curriculum Vitae
Flannery O'Connor - The Violent Bear It Away

ariel levy - the rules do not apply
heidi julavits - the uses of enchantment
marilynne robinson - home
paige williams - the dinosaur artist
all the pieces matter - the wire oral history
woke up this morning - sopranos oral history
margaret Atwood -bodily harm
james mcmanus - positively 5th street
james andrew miller - tinderbox - hbo oral history
mark kamine - on location
geoff dyer - the last days of roger federer
roger o Hirson - pippin
charles elton - cimino bio
charles cross - cobain unseen
miranda July - all fours
bob woodward - rage
bob woodward - peril
neil Simon - last of the red hot lovers
neil simon - i ought to be in pictures
neil simon - plaza suite
kurt Vonnegut - god bless you mr rosewater
walter kirn - blood will out
michael finkel - the art thief
janet malcolm - iphigenia in forest hills
joyce carol Oates - the faith of a writer
joyce carol oates - man crazy
joyce carol oates - mudwoman

Fiction top 5
Bright I Burn - Aitken, Molly
Colored Television - Senna, Danzy
Rejection - Tulathimutte, Tony
The Bee Sting - Murray, Paul
All Fours - July, Miranda

Non-fiction Top 4
To Hell and Back: Europe, 1914-1949 - Kershaw, Ian
Challenger: A True Story of Heroism and Disaster on the Edge of Space - Higginbotham, Adam
The Passage of Power (The Years of Lyndon Johnson, #4) - Caro, Robert A.
Paved Paradise: How Parking Explains the World - Grabar, Henry

Other fiction
Orbital - Harvey, Samantha
And Then I Woke Up - Devlin, Malcolm
Dracula - Stoker, Bram
The Light of Day - Ambler, Eric
You Should Have Left - Kehlmann, Daniel
Penance - Clark, Eliza
The Only One Left - Sager, Riley
Pompeii - Harris, Robert
The Night Manager - le Carré, John
Ordinary Human Failings - Nolan, Megan
By Force of Arms (Isaac Biddlecomb, #1) - Nelson, James L.
Venomous Lumpsucker - Beauman, Ned
Red Mars (Mars Trilogy, #1) - Robinson, Kim Stanley
The Phoenix Project: A Novel About IT, DevOps, and Helping Your Business Win - Kim, Gene

Other non-fiction
Character Limit: How Elon Musk Destroyed Twitter - Conger, Kate
Economics in America: An Immigrant Economist Explores the Land of Inequality - Deaton, Angus
Chip War: The Fight for the World's Most Critical Technology - Miller, Chris
High Output Management - Grove, Andrew S.
Extremely Hardcore: Inside Elon Musk's Twitter - Schiffer, Zoë

O'Brian, Patrick
The Yellow Admiral (Aubrey & Maturin, #18)
The Commodore (Aubrey & Maturin, #17)
The Wine-Dark Sea (Aubrey & Maturin, #16)
The Truelove (Aubrey & Maturin, #15)
The Nutmeg of Consolation (Aubrey & Maturin, #14)
The Thirteen-Gun Salute (Aubrey & Maturin, #13)

Druon, Maurice
The She-Wolf of France (The Accursed Kings, #5)
The Royal Succession (The Accursed Kings, #4)
The Poisoned Crown (The Accursed Kings, #3)
The Strangled Queen (The Accursed Kings, #2)