1. Harrow the Ninth (Tamsyn Muir)
A re-read of the second book in the locked tomb trilogy, in preparation for the final volume which I have lined up. I liked it first time around, but found it very confusing at times - this time I loved it. Builds brilliantly and the final quarter of the book really fires on all cylinders.

2. Daft Wee Stories (Limmy)
Audio book of loads of...well, daft wee stories by Limmy - which is the only way to experience them I think. His voice, accent and cadence really brings life to the tales which veer between disturbing, surreal, touching and disgusting but are always imaginative and funny. There's some proper laugh out loud moments and although the quality does vary, they're never less than very entertaining.

3. Nona The Ninth (Tamsyn Muir)
The third, and , book in the Locked Tomb series. It was not what I was expecting at all, but then the second book was so completely different from the first I shouldn't have been surprised. It is, however, an absolutely brilliant read. Full of her trademark well drawn characters doing and saying interesting things whilst the plot unfolds in unexpected and interesting ways. The origins of the world that has been so meticulously built since Gideon the Ninth is somewhat explained, but not entirely or entirely clearly, and it keeps you guessing throughout. At times it reminded me of Atwood's Oryx & Crake (not the subject matter, but the vibe of a society waiting to crumble under the pressure of forces beyond its control) but in the end it's it's own thing and it has a lot to say about the nature of power, money, identity and division. Great stuff.

4. Breakfast of Champions (Kurt Vonnegut)
Wow. What a book. This is the first time I've read anything by KV, but it won't be the last. I loved the style of the writing, the crazy characters, the minute detail he goes into, the drawings, the commentary on the state of society - everything really. Brilliant.

5, 6 & 7. Salvation Sequence (Peter F Hamilton)
Compromising a trilogy of hard sci-fi that straddles the line between hard sci-fi and furiously entertaining wide-screen action (Salvation, Salvation Lost and The Saints of Salvation). Such a great trilogy of books with amazing ideas, likeable characters and supremely evil fascist villains against the backdrop of intergalactic warfare for the future of humankind, taking place over 20,000 years.

8. The Satsuma Complex (Bob Mortimer)
Bob's debut novel. It's got some great turns of phrase, as you'd expect, but it's a very, very lightweight little murder mystery romcom type thing that without Bob's voice in my head would never be the kind of thing I'd normally read. Going to listen to the audio book to get the full benefit. Amusing, inconsequential fluffery buffery with a side order of fun and laughter bars.

9. How High We Go in the Dark (Sequoia Nagamatsu)
Beautiful, bleak and timely human centred sci-fi which takes in the themes of uncontrolled climate disaster, global pandemic, our relationship with death and the human response to all of the above. I didn't think I would get through the second chapter it's so grim, but I'm glad I did because ultimately this is an optimistic book that believes in people and the connections they make. Recommended.

10. Toast on Toast (Steven Toast)
Audiobook of the autobiography of acting legend and national treasure Steven Toast, part ghostwritten by a former BBC presenter let go as part of Operation Yew tree but, crucially, read by the man himself and his voice that has in the past been described as 'uneven'. It's the tale of an unrecognised genius fighting against the theatre critics, film critics, TV critic's, his agent, his peers, TV executives, film executives, his family, his wives, the paying public, Ray Fucking Purchase and a pair of "cunts" in a voiceover production booth making him say 'Yes' in different ways for 5 hours. Brilliant stuff.

11. Diaspora (Greg Egan)
Extremely hard, practically tumescent, sci-fi about the possible future of post-human evolution where almost everyone has either become a virtual consciousness with no physical body (citizen), a robot (Gleisner) or a highly genetically modified physical being (Flesher). After earth becomes uninhabitable due to a catastrophic cosmic event the remaining 'people' set off into space to try and find a new home. Whilst there's a great concept and story in there, the author spends far too much time describing theoretical physics - pages and pages of it, which really distracts from the story which is, like I said, pretty compelling. It's far too much like homework and although I persevered it eventually got to be too much like homework and I didn't finish it - noped out at about 78%. I might go back to it, but fuck me it's hard going.

12. Slaughterhouse 5 (Kurt Vonnegut)
Superb. I love his style of writing, the weirdness of his turns of phrase, the characters he creates and (this being only my second of his books) the fact that they seem interconnected as well. I'm going to work my way through everything he's written now. This is a bleak, darkly humorous and anguished anti-war sci-fi tale based around the main protagonist, a man cut adrift in time, and his the trauma experienced as a German POW in Dresden in WW2.

13. How To Stop Time (Matt Haig)
Wonderful page turner of a story about an ordinary kind of guy who just happens to be over 400 years old. Like all of Haig's books, it's beautifully written and the tale of love lost, the search for meaning when you have to live without connections and the at times Zelig-like passage through time, places and circumstances is such a pleasure to read.

14. The Bear & The Serpent (Adrian Tchaikovsky)
Second in the Echoes of the Fall fantasy trilogy by my favourite author, continuing the story of the shapeshifting clans facing an ancient existential threat from times of myth. This part introduces new clans in a new part of the world, as the Champion of the North (sort of based on North/Native American legends) travels to the Sun River Nation (sort of South/Central American/Aztec legends) to act as bodyguard to their boy-king who is facing challenge to the throne from within his own family. All the while, the Plague People land on the shores of the North and slaughter all of the clans they meet. A great story, full of great characters and ideas - looking forward to the final part.

15. Homage to Catalonia (George Orwell)
Goddamn, George Orwell was a fucking badass. His account of fighting alongside the Communists and Anarchists against Franco's fascists in the Spanish civil war. Brilliantly written, as you'd expect, but also tragic, funny and moving. You can feel Orwell's frustration and passion in every chapter and his genuine love for the Spanish people and country. His accounts of his actions under fire are very typically British and self-effacing but as terrified as he describes the experience as being, you don't charge a machine gun nest with a shitty gun that isn't likely to work when you want it to and take it out with hand grenades that are as likely to kill you as the are the fascists without being a genuinely courageous person. Legend.

16. The Hyena & The Hawk (Adrian Tchaikovsky)
The final book in the Echoes of the Fall trilogy does not disappoint. Part all action fantasy and part allegory of how much the human race are total cunts, it doesn't let up and has you shouting from the rafters for the true people to beat the unstoppable Plague People. Yet another superb story from my all time favourite author.

17. After the Revolution (Robert Evans)
It's 2070 and around 20 years after the first shots were fired in the second American civil war, the USA has become a lot less United and a lot more chaotic. Paramilitaries and militias try to control the violence across much of the continent and mass conflicts have mostly died down to regional skirmishes between the balkanised nations left over. The Republic of Texas lies in an uneasy and fractious peace between the people of the American Federation and the held at bay Christian Fascists of The Heavenly Kingdom - until the borders are breached and the soldiers of Christ start slaughtering their way towards the free city of Austin. Told from the slowly converging perspectives of a fixer (Manny), a brainwashed and naive teen desperate to get to her 'love' and serve her God in the Heavenly Kingdom (Sasha) and an ex-military near-immortal post-human cybernetic killing machine (Roland), this is a story of PTSD, fascism and how normal people can become complicit in and desensitized to the horror of war and the things done in their name. I loved it.

18. Children of Memory (Adrian Tchaikovsky)
The third and presumably (but not hopefully) last in this series by my favourite author. What a finish if it is though - the hard sci-fi series takes a very interesting turn and the story here is more like a dark fairy tale or fantasy than the previous two installments. But holy shit, it's still dealing with the big issues that would face a post-scarcity interstellar distributed society. Amazing stuff.

Hello!

1 - Babel - RF Kuang - ★★★★★
2 - The Red Scholar's Wake - Aliette de Bodard - ★★★☆☆
3 - The Song of Achilles - Madeline Miller - ★★★☆☆
4 - The Luminaries - Susan Dennard - ★★☆☆☆
5 - Godkiller - Hannah Kaner - ★★★★☆
6 - Song of Silver, Flame Like Night - Amélie Wen Zhao - ★★★★☆
7 - Fifty Sounds - Polly Barton - ★★★★☆
8 - Becoming Ted - Matt Cain - ★★★☆☆
9 - Mistborn: The Final Empire - Brandon Sanderson - ★★★★☆
10 - Gay Man Talking - Daniel Harding - ★★★☆☆
11 - Lies We Sing to the Sea - Sarah Underwood - ★★☆☆☆
12 - Killing Jericho - William Hussey - ★★★★☆
13 - We Can Be Heroes: A Survivor’s Story - Paul Burston - ★★★★☆
14 - Yellowface - Rebecca F Kuang - ★★★★★
15 - Essayism - Brian Dillon - ★★★★☆
16 - The Carnivorous Plant - Andrea Mayo - ★★★★★
17 - Some Desperate Glory - Emily Tesh - ★★★★★
18 - Batlava Lake - Adam Mars-Jones - ★★☆☆☆
19 - Ascention - Nicholas Binge - ★★★★★
20 - Ninth House - Leigh Bardugo - ★★★☆☆
21 - The Book Eaters - Sunyi Dean - ★★★☆☆
22 - Little Thieves - Margaret Owen - ★★★★☆
23 - I’m A Fan - Sheena Patel - ★★★★☆
24 - Dancer from the Dance - Andrew Holleran - ★★★★☆
25 - A Very Easy Death - Simone de Beauvoir - ★★★★☆
26 - Pebble in the Sky - Isaac Asimov - ★★★☆☆
27 - A Marvellous Light - Freya Marske - ★★★☆☆
28 - Small Fires: An Epic in the Kitchen - Rebecca May Johnson - ★★★★☆
29 - A Study in Drowning - Ava Reid - ★★★☆☆
30 - The Island of Missing Trees - Elif Shafak - ★★★★☆
31 - HappyHead - Josh Silver - ★★☆☆☆
32 - Sisters of Sword and Shadow - Laura Bates - ★★★★☆
33 - The Poppy War - R.F. Kuang - ★★★★★
34 - She Who Became the Sun - Shelley Parker-Chan - ★★★★☆
35 - Time Shelter - Georgi Gospodinov - ★★☆☆☆
36 - Doctor Who: The Eaters of Light - Rona Munro - ★★☆☆☆
37 - The Plague - Jacqueline Rose - ★★★☆☆
38 - 100 Boyfriends - Brontez Purnell - ★★★☆☆

EvilRedEye wrote:

Hello!

1 - Babel - RF Kuang - ★★★★☆

I got that for Christmas.

2022 reading

2023 reading

The mighty tome that is Iron and Blood : A Military History of the German Speaking Peoples since 1500 was a Christmas present. I have still to finish Dark Sun ; a hefty book about the spying that went on inside the Manhattan project.

I also intend to target either Dr. Zhivago or War and Peace this year. They are the last two in the collection of Russian novels I possess.

Throughout the year
Great Tales of Horror (s) by H.P. Lovecraft
The New Annotated H.P. Lovecraft (s) edited by Leslie S Klinger
Other Mens' Flowers (p) collected by Lord Wavell.
The Problems of Philosophy by Bertrand Russell
Arguably (e) by Christopher Hitchens
The Creative Act by Rick Rubin
A Gift of Love by Martin Luther King Jr.

Jan
Look We Have Coming to Dover! (p) by Daljit Nagra

Jan-Feb
Dark Sun : The Making of the Hydrogen Bomb by Richard Rhodes

Feb
What does it all mean? by Thomas Nagel

Apr
Oliver Twist by Charles Dickens

May
Ham on Rye by Charles Bukowski.

June
Einstein:His Life and Universe by Walter Isaacson

July
The Escape Artist  by Jonathan Freedland
Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats (p) by T.S.Eliot
The Making of the Atomic Bomb by Richard Rhodes

Aug
All The President's Men by Carl Bernstein and Bob Woodward
The Hyperspace Trap by Christopher Nuttal

Sep
The Jungle by Upton Sinclair


(p) = poetry
(s) = short story anthology
(e) = essay anthology

The Garth Marenghi novel Terrortome comes with the seal of approval, if anyone was unsure.

Hilarious.

Can we also use Audible for this? Haven't read anything in ages but go through so many books via audible whilst I work

Wookienopants wrote:

Can we also use Audible for this? Haven't read anything in ages but go through so many books via audible whilst I work

Gremill wrote:

A thread of all of us to list our reading in 2023 whether it be fiction, non-fiction, comics or audio-books.[/quote]

Not a great start for me when I failed to read the OP. lol

Hoping I do better than last year. Halfway through the first (second?) Witcher book which at least is a start...

I'm taking ages to read anything at the moment - too many other distractions.

I polished off 2022 with a banger, and it’s possible I might be starting 2023 with one too. My last read of 2022 was The Gone World by Tom Sweterlitsch. I don’t even know how to describe this one without spoiling stuff. It starts off with an NCIS agent investigating the murder of a woman and her children, presumably by her husband, and from there the story unfurls into a crazy sci-fi tale of deep space exploration, time travel and a wee drop of armageddon. It’s a cracking yarn with a very interesting take on time travel. If I have one criticism it’s that the ending felt a little rushed. As I was coming to the end I was thinking what a great limited series it would make, only to discover (to my horror) after I’d finished it that Neill Blomkamp is attached to direct a film adaptation.

Now on The Library at Mount Char by Scott Hawkins, which…I don’t even know what I’m reading, but I love it already. So far I’m getting Neil Gaiman with added darkness vibes.

Santa, not santander.

Terminus by Peter Clines.

Although I started this in November last year I finished it a few days ago on audible so I'm counting it as a 2023 book.
Third part in the trilogy following 14 and The Fold. More lovecraftian cosmic horror/sci-fi with the whole end of the world/ancient ones incident but this time told from the perspective of the crew of a stranded ship caught on a remote island dealing with the arrival of the ancient ones whilst a crazy cult complicate matters.

Good fun, really enjoyed it. Not as good as 14 but then thats a hard one to top.

Why is this thread in the Games section?!