Books & Reading Thread 2025

[RobMCFC]

Happy new year everybody.

This thread has proved popular with a few posters these last two years, so let's start a new thread for this year.

The main contributors to the 2022 version were @Paladin, @ob, @JRockBlues, @stoneblue and @FogBlueInSanFran has indicated that he wants to get involved this year. As ever, everybody is welcome to post on here about what they are reading or what books they are looking forward to.

I enjoyed reading everybody comments last year, and I've even marked down a couple of books mentioned by others that I will read this year (in fact I've bought one of them this morning, so I'll probably get to this sometime in the first quarter).

Here's an idea, and it's just a thought at the moment, but how does everybody feel about picking two or three books that we all read at some point this year? I generally enjoy doing my own research and am happy to find my own books, but as noted above, I have found the thread useful as a way of discovering stuff that I would have otherwise missed. Of course, the big difference between somebody taking your recommendation on an album or film versus a book is that you are asking somebody to commit to anywhere between 1 and 4 weeks of their reading time, which may be a big ask. On the other hand, there does seem to be a good degrees of crossover on what we all read (e.g. three of us read Stephen King's Billy Summers last year and really enjoyed it).

Like I said, just an idea I had, but I'd be interested to see what everybody else thinks.

Happy reading in 2024.

 

[mackenzie]

Might continue the Orwell theme and read Animal Farm soon. Read it at school but can hardly remember it.

 

[JRockBlues]

I usually maintain a thread over at LibraryThing so crossposting to here won't be a problem for me to continue. Though, like here, my updates became a little sporadic.

 

[FogBlueInSanFran]

Yes I wouldn’t mind doing a book or two we all do.

 

[journolud]

Jibbed out early from this thread last year having failed to get to grips with reaching my reading targets but in the spirit of half arsed commitments to self improvement and the like here I am again. May well help to have a couple of set texts but meanwhile have downloaded White Noise by DeLillo to my kindle, ironically after reading a bad review of the new Netflix film of it. Taking a total punt with this

 

[richardtheref]

Am on Goodreads and managed 31 last year. Going for 32 this year as always attempt 1 more than the year before. Hit my target by reading Thin Air by Michelle Paver as it was only 220 pages and had only a week to complete the challenge.
Currently reading Pine by Francine Toon. Very good so far.

 

[RobMCFC]

I usually maintain a thread over at LibraryThing so crossposting to here won't be a problem for me to continue. Though, like here, my updates became a little sporadic.

Looks like a good site that. I've heard of it but never looked into what it was all about.

Some of the groups on there are "75 Book Challenge" - I don't think I could read that much if I was retired.

 

[PragueBlue]

Looks like a good site that. I've heard of it but never looked into what it was all about.

Some of the groups on there are "75 Book Challenge" - I don't think I could read that much if I was retired.

I'm going to try and do 52 this year. Have most of them sitting on my bookshelf ready. Nice bit of classical/opera through my headphones and lose myself in the book and music!

 

[richardtheref]

Is it correct that if you list over 200 books on Librarything you have to pay?

 

[JRockBlues]

Is it correct that if you list over 200 books on Librarything you have to pay?

Used to be but no longer. It's a free site these days. I joined it 17 years ago (bar a couple of weeks). Needed somewhere to keep track of my books as it was starting to become difficult to remember what I had already acquired over the years. I got gifted a membership when a glitch wiped out some of my data.

Looks like a good site that. I've heard of it but never looked into what it was all about.

Some of the groups on there are "75 Book Challenge" - I don't think I could read that much if I was retired.

When I first joined up I just used it to catalogue my books but then started joining in on a couple of the groups. It has quite a friendly social side. I also joined up to a lot of the challenge groups as a way to broaden what I read as I used to just read SF&F but have given up on them now as I tended to be avoiding larger tomes in order to try and complete them.