If only we'd not read On the Road the first time around, either.
I read 425 books, somehow. Here are reviews of Gone With the Wind and The Better Angels of Our Nature.
These are some highlights (more highlights to follow when I post the next instalment on Game Under).
Good, clean fun:
C.S. Lewis’ Sci Fi Sex Tapes
G.K. Chesterton’s post-modern Christian nationalism
The Worm Ouroboros by E.R. Eddison
The Life and Revelations of Saint Gertrude
Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam
Bird Parliament by Farid Al-Din Attar
Best We Forget by Peter Cochrane
Listen, Little Man!, Dialectical Materialism, The Psychology of Fascism, The Sexual Revolution and Character Analysis by Wilhelm Reich
The Return of the Native by Thomas hardy
Hero and Leander by Christopher Marlow
The Maubignon
Kallocain by Karin Boye
Drawing the Global Colur Line by Marilyn lake and Henry Reynolds
Howl by Allen Ginsberg
D.H. Lawrence Sons and lovers
The 120 Days of Sodom by Marquis de Sade
Re-reading Edgar Allan Poe
A Journal of the Plague Year by Daniel Defoe
The Decameron by Boccacio
The three Theban Plays by Sophocles
Frankenstein by Mary Shelley Junior
On the Origin of Species by Charles Darwin
The Gods Themselves by Isaac Ashimov
The London Hanged by Peter Lindebough
David Hume
Secret Art of dr. Seues
Maps of Meaning by Jordan Peterson
Trips to the moon by Lucian of Samosata
Inuyashiki
The Years of the Sword by R.j. unstead
The Book of Enoch
Transmetropolitan
The Ghost in the Shell
The War of the Worlds by H.G. Wells.
The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith
The General Theory of Employment etc. by Keynes
The Incal
Economic Policy for a Free Society by Henry C. Simons
Debt by David Graeber
Mutual Aid by Peter Koroptokin
Moore’s Irish Melodies
An Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard by Thomas Grey
We The Living by Ayn Rand
Global Inequality edited by David Held
Disappointing in one way or another, though not necessarily bad:
The Story of the Volsungs
Planned Chaos by Ludwig von Mieses
War is a Racket by Smedley D. Butler
Flying Saucers by J. Posadas
Complete works by Rimbaud
Capitalist Realism by Mark Fisher
The Society of the Spectacle by Guy De Bord
No Country for old Men by Cormac McCarthy
Blackshirts and Reds by Michael Parenti
Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas by Hunter S. Thompson
On the Road by Jack Kerouc
Meditations on First Philosophy by Rene Descartes
Male and Female by Margaet Mead
Sons and Lovers by D.H. Lawrence
Justine by Marquis De sade
Re-reading Edgar Allan Poe
The Last Man by Mary Shalley junior
John Locke two treaties of government
Mein Kampf by Adolf Hitler
Night by Elie Wiesel
Dialectical and Historical Materialism by Joseph Stalin
The Year of Our War by Steph Swainston
Frederic Tuten
Discipline and Punish by Michel Foucault
Reflections on the Revolution in France by Edmund Burke
The Fable of the Bees by Bernard Mandeville
John Stuart Mill
The Principles of Political Economy and Taxation by David Ricardo
London Labour and the London Poor by Henry Mayhew
The Hanging Tree by V.A.C. Gattrell
Everything except Wise Blood by Flannery O’Connor
The Incal
The Confessions of Nat Turner by William Styron
The Christian Life by John Calvin
Payback by Margaret Atwood
Uprooted by Noami novik
The Levinas Reader
Snow Crash by Neal Stephenson
Altered Carbon by Robert K. Morgan
Population, Capital and Growth by Simon Kuznets
China Mieville’s shlock
Aphra Behn
The Pisspot by Henry James
The Turner Diaries by Post-Modern Hitler
Pleasantly surprises, though not necessarily good
Picnic at hanging Rock by Joan Lindsay
The Future of an illusion, Civilisation and its Discontents by Freud
Diaries of a Beautiful Daughter by Simone De Beavour
Submission by Michel Hatesmuslimsbut
Hunter by Andre MacDonald
Quotations of Charmain Mao Zedong and Ten Poems and lyrics by Mao Zedong
The Green Book by Maumar Gaddafi
Caleb Williams by William Golding as well as his autobiography of Mary Shelley senior.
Metro 2033 by Dmitri Glukhovsky’
Vindication of the Rights of Man by Mary Wollonscrfot
George Orwell’s non-fiction is actually alright.
The old Man and the Sea by Ernest Hemingway: utteraly hilarious
The Years of the Sword by R.j. Unstead
The Book of Enoch
Transmetropolitan
The Ghost in the Shell
Wise Blood by Flannery O’Connor
Adolf Hitler: My Part in his Downfall by Spike milligan
Kenneth Williams’s autobiography
The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood
The Hunger Games
Spinning Silver by Naomi Novik
The Red Star
When Gravity Fails by George Alec Effinger (the best Cyberpunk by far)
Jean Baudrillard’s OG Matrix
So, what books did you read (or listen to) last year and what did you like and dislike amongst them?
This year was my worst reading year since 2016 but I still got a good number of books read. I finally got around to reading Leo Tolstoy with Anna Karenina, which was worth the time. I was a little fatigued by it by the end, but it was quite an end. The Seven Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle was an interesting, complexly structured book involving time travel and the inhabitation of multiple bodies. I'd hate to write something like it; far too much work. I don't know if I expected much from The Sudden Appearance of Hope by Claire North (AKA Catherine Webb AKA Kate Griffin), but it was surprisingly intriguing and 'adult' (rather than young adult). It's about a woman people can't remember, which allows for a lot of trickery and escape attempts. Washington Square by Henry James was much better than the hugely dull The Turn of the Screw.
I also liked The Reluctant Fundamentalist by Mohsin Hamid and, inevitably, Oathbringer by Brandon Sanderson (though its impact was less on a re-read).
Finally, can I never read On the Road by Jack Kerouac again?
By Miu Watanabe.