kogoyos

6mo

y'all know what focking time it is

stopped really caring about numbers but I read 40 (I'll probably get to 42) books this year which is my lowest in a while but had my longest average book length at 364 pages

1. Lonesome Dove by Larry McMurty
2. The Border Trilogy by Don Winslow
3. La Sombra del Viento / The Shadow of the Wind by Carlos Ruiz Zafon
4. The Idiot by Fyodor Dostoyevsky
5. Beware of Pity by Stefan Zweig
6. The Magus by John Fowles
7. Lapvona by Otessa Moshfegh
8. Pachinko by Min Jin Lee
9. Babel by R.F. Kuang
10. American Tabloid by James Ellroy

Grenouille

6mo

My top 5 for the year:

1. Madonna in a Fur Coat (1943) - Sabahattin Ali
2. Flowers for Algernon (1966) - Daniel Keyes
3. Frankenstein in Baghdad (2013) - Ahmed Sadawi
4. Homegoing (2016) - Yaa Gyasi
5. A Gentleman in Moscow (2016) - Amor Towles

plants

6mo

bout 20 books read this year. highest since i was a teenager i think. want that to be my new baseline. hitting 40+ like op would be ideal. anyway

1. The Dispossessed by Ursula K LeGuin
2. Stoner by John Williams
3. A Story of Yesterday by Sergio Cobo
4. One Day, Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This by Omar El Akkad
5. The Immense Journey by Loren Eiseley
6. Small Things Like These by Claire Keegan
7. The Stranger by Albert Camus
8. De Profundis by Oscar Wilde
9. Eleven by Patricia Highsmith
10. Flowers for Algernon by Daniel Keyes

Benny Boy

6mo

CLASSICS

East of Eden (John Steinbeck)
The Master and Margarita (Mikhail Bulgakov)

LESSER ENTRIES FROM AUTHORS I LIKE

Death with Interruptions (Jose Saramago)
Croppers Cabin (Jim Thompson)

JUST OKAY

The Taiga Syndrome (Cristina Rivera Garza)
Carmilla (Sheridan Le Fanu)
The Big Clock (Kenneth Fearing)
Madonna in a Fur Coat (Sabahattin Ali)
The Twenty Days of Turin (Giorgio De Maria)

GOOD

Epitaph for a Tramp (David Markson)
Last Days (Brian Evenson)
The Friends of Eddie Coyle (George Higgins)
We Have Always Lived in the Castle (Shirley Jackson)
Run Man Run (Chester Himes)
Fevre Dream (George RR Martin)

BETTER

Swallowed (Rejean Ducharme)
Impatient with Desire (Gabrielle Burton)
Hollow (Brian Catling)
Tender Is the Flesh (Agustina Bazterrica)

MY S*** FOR REAL

Black Wings Has My Angel (Elliott Chaze)
Mean Business on North Ganson Street (Craig S Zahler)
92 in the Shade (Thomas McGuane)

COULD'VE DONE WITHOUT

Who Censored Roger Rabbit? (Gary K Wolf)

pops

6mo

Tried to read more this year.

Non fiction:
1. Sapiens / H****Deus by Yuval Noah Harari
2. Meditations by Marcus Aurelius
3. My Heart Will Cross This Ocean by Kadiatou Diallo
4. The Chronicles of Doom by S.H. Fernando Jr.
5. We Need New Stories by Nesrine Malik
6. The Power of Positive Thinking by Norman Vincent Peale

Fiction:
1. Crime and Punishment by Dostoevsky
2. The Alchemist (reread) by Paulo Coelho
3. The Centaur by John Updike
4. The City and its Uncertain Walls by Haruki Murakami
5. The Postman Always Rings Twice James M. Cain
6. Say Youre One of Them by Uwem Akpan

Bizzle

6mo

1. Mason & Dixon by Thomas Pynchon
2. Underworld by Don DeLillo
3. The Passenger by Cormac McCarthy
4. The Story of a Life by Konstantin Paustovsky
5. Jesus' Son by Denis Johnson
6. Ubik by Philip K. D***
7. Who Will Run the Frog Hospital? by Lorrie Moore
8. Alone in Berlin by Hans Fallada
9. Everything Ravaged, Everything Burned by Wells Tower
10. Close to Home by Michael Magee

HrdBoildWndrlnd

6mo

70 books this year, tried to read a little more non-fiction as that's out of my usual and I tend to struggle with them. I'm continuing with my read through of the Star Wars New Jedi Order series (they're mostly not good).

My top few reads in no particular order:
1. Clandestine in Chile by Gabriel Garcia Marquez
2. Tomorrow They Won't Dare to Murder Us by Joseph Andras
3. Rosemary's Baby by Ira Levin
4. The Fifth Child by Doris Lessing
5. Hurricane Season by Fernanda Melchor
6. Blood Meridian by Cormac McCarthy
7. A Long Day's Evening by Bilge Karasu
8. Brown Girl in the Ring by Nalo Hopkinson
9. The Honditsch Cross by Ingeborg Bachmann
10. I, Tituba, Black Witch of Salem by Maryse Condé

CRACKASTEPPAVEGAN

6mo

It was not a good year for my (leisure) reading habits. I'm ashamed, actually

earthwalka

6mo

congrats on reading Lonesome Dove. I don't when I'll be reading that one

Pachinko lives up to the hype?? I watched the first season of the show and remember enjoying it.

S/o to Babel

I really liked My Year of Rest and Relaxation so I need to check out another Moshfegh novel

goddess

6mo

i read 34 books this year (i hope to read one more), my goal was 30. i had a lot books i started and didnt finish.

my top 5:

cheating death stealing life by eddie guerrero
rosemary's baby by ira levin
butch fatale dyke d*** - double d double cross by christa faust
becky lynch, the man by rebecca quin
new orleans noir - various authors

earthwalka

6mo

really want to read Madonna in a Fur Coat. head wonderful things about it.

Homegoing is amazing! love to see it on any list.

earthwalka

6mo

Great stuff here man, havent read any of it but you did your big one here.

Rosemary's Baby!! I watched the film this year and loved it. How is the book in comparison?

I've seen the cover for Tomorrow They Won't Dare Murder Us in bookstores and it's always strikes me as something I need to pick up

Hurrican Season... I want to read this mainly because it has a fitzcarraldo edition.

earthwalka

6mo

I like how you structured this.

really wanted to read east of eden this year but just did not get the chance.

HrdBoildWndrlnd

6mo

Rosemary's Baby as well! what did you think of it?

kogoyos

6mo

Lonesome Dove was a real page turner, I know the length turns people off but once you get into it it's a great read if you fw westerns

yea I thought Pachinko was really good. I'm a fan of multigenerational family sagas tho

Moshfegh is one of my favorite contemporary writers. I'd probably say Year of Rest and Relaxation is her best but I really enjoyed Eileen and Lapvona (much darker and more violent tho) too

glad you liked Song of Solomon btw! I gotta read Sula next year

Grenouille

6mo

Pick it up for 2026. It’s so good. The protagonist is a real yearner

HrdBoildWndrlnd

6mo

Rosemary's Baby (the book) was way funnier than the movie. I think the book leans a little more into the satire of upper class culture that the movie kind of backseats in favor of horror. Both movie and boom were great in different ways.

Tomorrow They Won't Dare... is so good. Short too which helps lmao. On the cover topic, the covers of Fitzcarraldo publications are so stylish I want to read every single one. Hurricane Season was very nasty and good, the story keeps recontextualizing stuff that happens in previous chapters in a really cool and unique way

goddess

6mo

i read 34 books this year (i hope to read one more), my goal was 30. i had a lot books i started and didnt finish.

my top 5:

cheating death stealing life by eddie guerrero
rosemary's baby by ira levin
butch fatale dyke d*** - double d double cross by christa faust
becky lynch, the man by rebecca quin
new orleans noir - various authors

earthwalka

6mo

lot of Dostoevesky in this thread. I feel left out

goddess

6mo

as i was reading it i didn’t get much out of it but after finishing it (and watching the movie) i ended up really appreciating it. it was unsettling and eerie in a very calm, long drawn out way which i wasn’t really expecting.

what were your thoughts?

earthwalka

6mo

okay Im sort of sold on Rosemary's Baby now.