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The Return of the Fifty Book Challenge


Spoonie

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Quite a few years ago this forum had a thread where everyone posted all of the books they'd read that calendar year, with the aim of increasing the amount that we all read and getting ideas for new books to pick up. I go through phases of reading nothing and then phases of reading like a demon and since I got a kindle for my birthday at the end of May, it's really reignited my passion for it and I've plowed through a tonne of different books so I thought it'd be nice to revisit the idea. Here's my reading list for 2014 (not including some books that I read in the first half of the year in paper format but can't recall right now!)

 

1: Simon Zutshi - Property Magic
2: Michael Lewis - The Big Short: Inside The Doomsday Machine
3: Michael Lewis - The Blind Side: Evolution of a Game
4: Michael Lewis - Liar's Poker
5: Brett King - Branch Today, Gone Tomorrow
6: Steven Tyler - Does the nosise in my head bother you?
7: Chris Brown - The Essential Smart Football
8: Steven D Levitt - Freakonomics
9: Ron Jaworski - The Games that Changed the Game
10: Stephen King - The Green Mile
11: Nikki Sixx - The Heroin Diaries
12: Steven Adler - My Appetite For Destruction
13: Jack Kerouac - On The Road
14: Ian Fraser - Shredded: Inside RBS: The Bank that Broke Britain
15: Arthur Conan Doyle - A Study in Scarlet
16: Arthur Conan Doyle - The Sign of the Four
17: Tom Sharpe - Wilt
18: Tom Sharpe - The Wilt Alternative
19: Charles Bukowski - Women
20: J.D. Roth - Your Money: The Missing Manual

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Quite a few years ago this forum had a thread where everyone posted all of the books they'd read that calendar year, with the aim of increasing the amount that we all read and getting ideas for new books to pick up. I go through phases of reading nothing and then phases of reading like a demon and since I got a kindle for my birthday at the end of May, it's really reignited my passion for it and I've plowed through a tonne of different books so I thought it'd be nice to revisit the idea. Here's my reading list for 2014 (not including some books that I read in the first half of the year in paper format but can't recall right now!)

 

1: Simon Zutshi - Property Magic

2: Michael Lewis - The Big Short: Inside The Doomsday Machine

3: Michael Lewis - The Blind Side: Evolution of a Game

4: Michael Lewis - Liar's Poker

5: Brett King - Branch Today, Gone Tomorrow

6: Steven Tyler - Does the nosise in my head bother you?

7: Chris Brown - The Essential Smart Football

8: Steven D Levitt - Freakonomics

9: Ron Jaworski - The Games that Changed the Game

10: Stephen King - The Green Mile

11: Nikki Sixx - The Heroin Diaries

12: Steven Adler - My Appetite For Destruction

13: Jack Kerouac - On The Road

14: Ian Fraser - Shredded: Inside RBS: The Bank that Broke Britain

15: Arthur Conan Doyle - A Study in Scarlet

16: Arthur Conan Doyle - The Sign of the Four

17: Tom Sharpe - Wilt

18: Tom Sharpe - The Wilt Alternative

19: Charles Bukowski - Women

20: J.D. Roth - Your Money: The Missing Manual

 

If you could recommend one (except Freakonomics, the Heroin Diaries or On the Road which I've read) which would it be?

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Mine has been poor this year as well. An most of them have been audiobooks. The first two Harry Potter books, an old Stephen King book, 86% of Jurassic Park, The Picture Of Dorian Gray, and Dustin Diamond (Screech)'s tell-all-story about how every on Saved By The Bell was a cunt except him. I'll never look at Kelly Kapowski the same.

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If you could recommend one (except Freakonomics, the Heroin Diaries or On the Road which I've read) which would it be?

It would be one of the following two:

 

4: Michael Lewis - Liar's Poker

19: Charles Bukowski - Women

 

Liars Poker is the true story of when Lewis was a bond salesman foir Salomon Brothers in the 80s and it's tremendous. If you've never read any Bukowski, I'd recommend it to anyone. Factotum or Post Office might be better places to start but this is a filthy nonsense.

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  • 4 weeks later...

Read a few more since I last posted and got a few other ones underway. Looking at it, I'd be on pace for something like 64 books in a year if I'd started in January. Although if every book was like Moby Dick, I'd get to about 4!

 

1: Simon Zutshi - Property Magic
2: Michael Lewis - The Big Short: Inside The Doomsday Machine
3: Michael Lewis - The Blind Side: Evolution of a Game
4: Michael Lewis - Liar's Poker
5: Brett King - Branch Today, Gone Tomorrow
6: Steven Tyler - Does the noise in my head bother you?
7: Chris Brown - The Essential Smart Football
8: Steven D Levitt - Freakonomics
9: Ron Jaworski - The Games that Changed the Game
10: Stephen King - The Green Mile
11: Nikki Sixx - The Heroin Diaries
12: Steven Adler - My Appetite For Destruction
13: Jack Kerouac - On The Road
14: Ian Fraser - Shredded: Inside RBS: The Bank that Broke Britain
15: Arthur Conan Doyle - A Study in Scarlet
16: Arthur Conan Doyle - The Sign of the Four
17: Tom Sharpe - Wilt
18: Tom Sharpe - The Wilt Alternative
19: Charles Bukowski - Women
20: J.D. Roth - Your Money: The Missing Manual
21: Richard S Grayson - British Politics
22: Herman Melville - Moby Dick or the White Whale
23: Greg B. Smith - Nothing but Money: How the Mob Infiltrated Wall Street
24: Lewis Grassic Gibbon - Sunset Song

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I've managed the following so far (just started American Tabloid by James Ellroy as well)

1. Clandestine- James Ellroy

2. The Black Dahlia- James Ellroy

3. The Big Nowhere- James Ellroy

4. LA Confidential- James Ellroy

5. White Jazz- James Ellroy

6. A Drink Before the War- Dennis Lehane

7. A Song for the Dying- Stuart MacBride

8. Birthdays for the Dead- Stuart MacBride

9. Inferno- Dan Brown

10. Deception Point- Dan Brown

11. Heat Wave- Richard Castle

12. The Hunger Games- Suzanne Collins

13. Catching Fire- Suzanne Collins

14. Mockingjay- Suzanne Collins

15. Harlequin- Bernard Cornwell

16. Sanctus- Simon Toyne

17. Pentecost- J F Penn

18. The Road to Woodbury- Robert Kirkman and Jay Bonansinga

19. Planet of the Apes- Pierre Boulle

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American tabloid is excellent! I got into that trilogy from the book club thread on here years ago and was glad I did. I read the first two and was waiting for the third to be released and it's been sitting on my shelf ever since. Will have to start them again and power through all three (and I've just checked and that was 5 years ago, so the book has followed me through five different flats and still not been read!)

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  • 1 month later...

Added a few more on recently, some great stuff too and a few more underway:

 

1: Simon Zutshi - Property Magic
2: Michael Lewis - The Big Short: Inside The Doomsday Machine
3: Michael Lewis - The Blind Side: Evolution of a Game
4: Michael Lewis - Liar's Poker
5: Brett King - Branch Today, Gone Tomorrow
6: Steven Tyler - Does the noise in my head bother you?
7: Chris Brown - The Essential Smart Football
8: Steven D Levitt - Freakonomics
9: Ron Jaworski - The Games that Changed the Game
10: Stephen King - The Green Mile
11: Nikki Sixx - The Heroin Diaries
12: Steven Adler - My Appetite For Destruction
13: Jack Kerouac - On The Road
14: Ian Fraser - Shredded: Inside RBS: The Bank that Broke Britain
15: Arthur Conan Doyle - A Study in Scarlet
16: Arthur Conan Doyle - The Sign of the Four
17: Tom Sharpe - Wilt
18: Tom Sharpe - The Wilt Alternative
19: Charles Bukowski - Women
20: J.D. Roth - Your Money: The Missing Manual
21: Richard S Grayson - British Politics
22: Herman Melville - Moby Dick or the White Whale
23: Greg B. Smith - Nothing but Money: How the Mob Infiltrated Wall Street
24: Lewis Grassic Gibbon - Sunset Song
25: Larry Bossidy - Execution:  The Discipline of Getting Things Done
26: Lewis Carroll - Alice in Wonderland
27: Michael Holley - War Room: The Legacy of Bill Belichick and the Art of Building the Perfect Team
28: Daniel Pink - Drive
29: Martin Amis - Money
30: Malcolm X with Alex Haley - The Autobiography of Malcolm X

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  • 1 month later...

Ended the year on 36 books, which given I only started at the end of May, would have worked out at something like 61 over the whole year. Hoping to get up over 50 this year!

1: Simon Zutshi - Property Magic

2: Michael Lewis - The Big Short: Inside The Doomsday Machine

3: Michael Lewis - The Blind Side: Evolution of a Game

4: Michael Lewis - Liar's Poker

5: Brett King - Branch Today, Gone Tomorrow

6: Steven Tyler - Does the noise in my head bother you?

7: Chris Brown - The Essential Smart Football

8: Steven D Levitt - Freakonomics

9: Ron Jaworski - The Games that Changed the Game

10: Stephen King - The Green Mile

11: Nikki Sixx - The Heroin Diaries

12: Steven Adler - My Appetite For Destruction

13: Jack Kerouac - On The Road

14: Ian Fraser - Shredded: Inside RBS: The Bank that Broke Britain

15: Arthur Conan Doyle - A Study in Scarlet

16: Arthur Conan Doyle - The Sign of the Four

17: Tom Sharpe - Wilt

18: Tom Sharpe - The Wilt Alternative

19: Charles Bukowski - Women

20: J.D. Roth - Your Money: The Missing Manual

21: Richard S Grayson - British Politics

22: Herman Melville - Moby Dick or the White Whale

23: Greg B. Smith - Nothing but Money: How the Mob Infiltrated Wall Street

24: Lewis Grassic Gibbon - Sunset Song

25: Larry Bossidy - Execution: The Discipline of Getting Things Done

26: Lewis Carroll - Alice in Wonderland

27: Michael Holley - War Room: The Legacy of Bill Belichick and the Art of Building the Perfect Team

28: Daniel Pink - Drive

29: Martin Amis - Money

30: Malcolm X with Alex Haley - The Autobiography of Malcolm X

31: Ori Brafman and Rod Beckstrom - The Starfish and the Spider: The Unstoppable Power of Leaderless Organisations

32: John Steinbeck - The Grapes of Wrath

33: Daniel Coyle - The Talent Code: Greatness isn't born. It's grown

34: Harper Lee - To Kill a Mockingbird

35: Ken Kesey - One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest

36: Muhammad Yunus - Banker to the Poor: The Story of the Grameen Bank

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I should work for Amazon, because I spend a lot of my life advertising Kindles - but I would recommend that you get a Kindle ;-) Books downloaded in seconds and I presume that you could still get the full catalog of English language books from Amazon, irrespective of where you are! And it's possible to get tonnes of free eBooks too

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Half-seriously: obviously I could get one if I really put my mind to it (otherwise, yeah, seriously I don't think they are sold much here if at all). Having it posted would probably be too much of a theft risk (think I've bitched about that on here before), it bearing a resemblance to an ipad or something else that can access Facebook and Candy Crush. Taxes would also up the price tag considerably (glorious socialist paradise). More likely I'll pick one up next time in another part of Poland, in which people read thngs other than Doremon.

 

Cheers though, I had been thinking about it - I borrowed a Kindle Fire for a bit and didn't like the feel much (and too many distractions with the apps and net access on that model) but have been thinking it's pragmatic just for storage and portability, as I seem to find myself moving between Poland and wherever, . 

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I thought about getting tucked into this challenge but 50 seems like a big ask. I probably do about half that in a year and I read almost every day (in short bursts on public transport right enough but still).

 

Couldn't get into the kindle. Tried it for a while but ultimately missed real books too much. I like reading to be an analog experience. Just about everything else in our daily lives is digitized these days, it's nice to keep some things that aren't. I totally understand the appeal though.

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