50 Book Challenge 2019 Part Two

[southeastdweller]

Welcome to the second thread of the 50 Book Challenge for this year.

The challenge is to read fifty books (or more!) in 2019, though reading fifty isn't mandatory. Any type of book can count, it's not too late to join, and please try to let us all know your thoughts on what you've read.

The first thread of the year is here.

What are you reading?

[mynameisMrG]

Thanks for the second thread @southeastdweller I am currently reading my sisters keeper which is not a good thing to read before you go to sleep!

[BestIsWest]

Thank you Southeast.

Currently reading Becoming Michelle Obama

[nowanearlyNicemum]

Thanks for the new thread southeast.
Bringing my list over:

1. Featherboy – Nicky Singer
   
2. Three Cups of tea - Greg Mortenson & David Oliver Relin
   
3. Bookworm: A memoir of childhood reading – Lucy Mangan
   

Currently reading Leap In about sea-swimming which is something I'm a big fan of.

[Ivegotthree]

I've read:

Normal People by Sally Rooney - well written, well observed. If I were younger I'd have loved it but it's about young people at uni which I'm a few years past. Very enjoyable though.

The Dreams of Bethany Mellmoth by William Boyd - utterly fabulous short stories. I'm not usually a fan of the genre but loved every page of this.

Currently reading:
The Diary of a Bookseller by Shaun Blythell - loving this gentle memoir of a man who bought a second hand book shop in rural Scotland.

[HugAndRoll]

Thank you for the new thread.

I've just finished reading book 5: Fuck Anxiety - Robert Duff - Great little book to help you begin to tackle your anxiety head-on. With a conversational tone (including swears) and really short chapters, this is a brilliant book for those people whose anxiety is preventing them from concentrating, and for people in general (like me) who are easily distracted.

It's not preachy, doesn't tell you to think positively, and doesn't insist that your troubles will disappear if you just connected with nature, or some other bollocks. The only reason I can't give it 5 stars is because I wanted it to be a bit longer (it's only 73 pages long).

[FiveGoMadInDorset]

Thank you for the new thread

[FortunaMajor]

Thank you very much Southeast. I was mortified to realise I hadn't said please at the end of the last thread but didn't want to waste a post by adding it. Very sorry.

Bringing my list over. Highlights in bold. No stinkers so far so I can keep the italics out of things for now.

1. The Odyssey by Homer (trans. By Emily Wilson)
   
2. Bookworm: A Memoir of Childhood Reading by Lucy Mangan
   
3. The Song of Achilles by Madeline Miller
   
4. Eleanor of Aquitaine: By the Wrath of God, Queen of England by Alison Weir
   
5. Picnic at Hanging Rock by Joan Lindsay
   
6. Too Much Happiness by Alice Munro
   

Currently reading The Last Hours by Minette Walters and really enjoying it.

I'm still avoiding Mythos by Stephen Fry, but mostly because I came out of the library last week with 9 books and a few of them are showing as now reserved so I can't renew. Now a race to the return date.

[weebarra]

Thanks for the new thread.
1. Queen of Shadows - Sarah J Maas
2. The Panopticon - Jenni Fagan
3. Empire of storms - Sarah J Maas

[Tarahumara]

Thanks for the new thread southeast.

1. The History of Wolves by Emily Fridlund. Linda looks back (with occasional flash-forwards to the present day) on a summer when she was 15, living with her parents in rural Minnesota and doing a lot of babysitting for a four-year-old boy living locally. This was shortlisted for the Booker in 2017, but it didn't really work for me. For some reason I didn't fully engage with the characters, and was left feeling rather unmoved as the plot built up to a crisis point.

[southeastdweller]

For newbies, most of us post our books read so far in each thread. Of course you don't have to

[BakewellTarts]

Excellent thanks for the new thread.

My 2019 reads so far:

1. Across the Nightingale Floor: Tales of the Otori Book 1
   
2. Jane Austin at Home
   
3. The House of Unexpected Sisters
   
4. Provenance
   
5. Romes Sacred Flame
   
6. The Rise and Fall of Becky Sharp (Not finished yet)
   

Going for variety!

[brizzledrizzle]

Thank you for the new thread.

Bringing my list over:

1. From source to sea, Tom chesshyre
2. So disdained , Nevil Shute
3. Cruise ship sos, Ben macfarlane
4. Rosa parks, hourly history
5. Stephen hawking, hourly history
6. 101 bets you will always win, Richard wiseman. Returned for a 99p refund!

7. This is going to hurt, Adam Kay

1. Old man and the sea, Ernest Hemingway
2. The best friend, Shalini Borland

10. Triple crime, felix Francis

[toomuchsplother]

Thank you SouthEast as always
List so far :
1. The Salt Path - Raynor Winn
2. Everything Under - Daisy Johnson

1. An almond for a parrot- Wray Delaney
2. Courage calls to courage everywhere- Jeanette Winterson
3. Admissions: A life in brain surgery- Henry Marsh

6. Ghost Wall - Sarah Moss

1. Snap - Belinda Bauer

8. Chronicle of Youth : Vera Brittain’s War Diary, 1913 - 17 - Vera Brittain

Just caught up in the last thread. Feeling very bemused by the snobbery reference. Opinions and disagreements I totally see but genuinely haven't seen any snobbery after 3 years on the thread.

[Palegreenstars]

1. This is Going To Hurt by Adam Kay
   
2. Normal People: Sally Rooney
   
3. Wundersmith, The Calling of Morrigan Crow by Jessica Townsend
   
4. The Mars Room by Rachel Kushner
   

Thanks guys this thread has really spurred my reading on these last few weeks. I’m also trying to read a few books at a time in the hopes of it spurring me onto increase the amount of non fiction I read (when I’m stressed only fiction will do)

Currently reading The Unexpected Joy of Sobriety and was planning to pick a new fiction up tonight but got stuck in a mumsnet wormhole so will try again tomorrow...

[magimedi]

SouthEast - many thanks

List so far:

The Tenderness of Wolves by Steph Penney.

Watching You by Lisa Jewell

Comforts of Home by Susan Hill

Day of the Dead by Nicci French

How We Learn to Eat by Bee Wilson

On;ly the Dead Can Tell by Alex Gray.

[DrMadelineMaxwell]

Excellent and thought (and tear) provoking book.

[DrMadelineMaxwell]

www.amazon.co.uk/End-Mind-Dying-Wisdom-Denial-ebook/dp/B074DPNGWH/ref=lp_362187031_1_2?s=digital-text&ie=UTF8&qid=1547591183&sr=1-2&tag=mumsnet&ascsubtag=mnforum-21

[mynameisMrG]

oh that's a good idea.

1. Of mice and men by John Steinbeck
2. The sisters by Claire Douglas
3. Animal farm by George Orwell
4. The sense of an ending by Julian Barnes
5. A very British Christmas by Rhodri Marsden
6. Liverpool Daisy by Helen Forrester
7. The secrets of married women by Carol Mason
8. The secret garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett
9. The secret life of bees by Sue Monk Kids

I seem to have chosen quite a few books with secret in the title for some reason

[toomuchsplother]

Drmadeline picked that one be up the other day on daily deals. Been recommended by a few people

[DrMadelineMaxwell]

Very much in a run of medical autobiographies at present.
I've missed logging these...

11 - Medsin - a fictional account of a doctor on the elderly wards taking things into his own hands (and a bit too far) in the name of easing the suffering of some of the patients. I didn't actually know if it was fiction as I was reading it as I'd read so many different similar books recently, so it rather took me by surprise on occasion.

12 - I then read the above book, which is a sensitively written account of what it can be like working in a hospice environment. Extremely well written and captivating.

13 +14 - I needed a bit of humour after those two so I have read today and yesterday, London Call out and Doctor in the house - about a locum gp working in the OOH service

and

15 - Sick note - true stories from the GP surgery. Pretty well written. I bit out of date now though, I suppose.

Interestingly it's been fun comparing how all the different employees ambulance/gp/emergency gp/junior doctor/consultant view each other and complain about each other.

[DrMadelineMaxwell]

Complete change of theme/genre now. I have been waiting for the 13th and final book from a series of fantasy books to be released and it was today. Summoned to 13th Grave is the culmination of the story of a woman called Charley Davidson (once my username on here!) who is also the Grim Reaper. Sounds v odd. If you like fantasy - and don't mind q a bit of smut- then it's a good series.

[Piggywaspushed]

aaaargh... fell off last thread! Checking in while labouring through life in general and a book....

[brizzledrizzle]

It's interesting looking at how eclectic tastes can be, on some of the read do far lists there are books on the sane person's list that I have read and loved alongside others that I thought were terrible or hadn't even thought of reading. I love that about this thread.

I'm coming to the end of beneath the surface, it's been a good read as well as a quick one but I'm finding the last bit of it to be something to pay lip service to just to get to the end. I'm not sure what is up next, for some reading I don't like finishing a book at night and having to choose another when I'm tired.

[PepeLePew]

My list this year, with highlights in bold.

1 Severance by Ling Ma
2 China Rich Girlfriend by Kevin Kwan
3 Conundrum by Jan Morris
4 I'll Be There For You by Kelsey Miller
5 A Short History of England by Simon Jenkins
6 The Penguin Lessons by Tom Michell
7 Lethal White by Robert Galbraith
8 To Throw Away Unopened by Viv Albertine

And some new ones..

9 The Child That Books Built by Francis Spufford

Thank you to Terpsichore for reminding me of this, which was on a high bookshelf. I don’t reread books very often but am glad I came back to this as I think I got very different things out of it reading it now compared to when it was first published. There’s lots to recommend about this memoir of reading as a child. It was much less about the books themselves (unlike Bookworm) and more about the experience of reading (his account of looking for a story that will “give you a jolt like a bare wire” summed up my search for books as a child). Where he excelled was in talking about the shift from reading as a child to adult reading and the need to relearn how to do this when the purpose of books changes really resonated. And it made complete sense of my teen son’s current obsession with sci-fi. Highly recommended for anyone with a life-long love of reading.

10 Get Out Of My Life But First Take Me And Alex Into Town by Tony Wolf and Suzanne Franks

This has hung around on my TBR pile for a while and I thought it would give me some helpful tips on better parenting of pesky teens. It was almost all entirely and immediately forgettable (apart from a vague exhortation to be flexible and willing to change your mind) and I am no better a parent this week than I was last. I’ll go back to How to talk so teens listen and listen so teens talk for guidance.

11 The SCUM Manifesto by Valerie Solanas

Short and totally bonkers tract from the 1960s about why we need a society without men (and without any women who are pro-men) and how we get there. Valerie Solanas shot Andy Warhol because he was “exercising too much control over her” the year after she published this. It’s angry, inspiring and not for the faint hearted (and a beautiful counterpart to Viv Albertine). Given to me by DP, bless his second wave feminist socks. I’d recommend and re-read this, because it’s impolite, scathing and off the charts angry and urgent and funny.

[PepeLePew]

Number 10 on that list should not be in bold!