50 Book Challenge 2015 Part 3

Two fast reads made three books this week after Never Let Me Go. I am on a roll! DD has been poorly with a bad cold in first week of hols and I had a bug so we had a few quiet days.

13. The Children Act by Ian McEwan - short and very thoughtful book about a judge Fiona overseeing a particular case about a young Jehovah's Witness who refuses a blood transfusion. At home, her marriage is struggling. I was very intrigued by the massive decisions individuals such as Fiona have to make which change people's lives. McEwan put a lot of research into the book and included interesting background. I felt this could be the start of a tv drama and wanted to follow the judge in other cases but this was like a snapshot of her life, and just how much influence her decision can affect a person....or indeed not be able to affect later decisions. I enjoyed this a lot.

14. Better Than Before - Mastering Habits of our Everyday Lives by Gretchen Rubin. I have read her Rubin's books on happiness and felt they helped me take a step forward after my mum died, so I was very enthusiastic to read this. Hmmm I don't think the habits book had the same effect as it was quite preachy. She is very much an upholder of good habits and by the end I felt quite overwhelmed by her goodness! But there were some very interesting pieces of research (she is hot on various updated research, tries out gadgets and also includes personal and friends' stories) - it is very personal, up to date and I took away a lot of info. Monitoring, scheduling and having values for your habits as well making a good habit convenient and a bad habit inconvenient. Easy read and helpful for maintaining a healthy well being.

15 is Suite Francaise

Thanks for the recommendation Cote - I've just bought The Three Body Problem. I always liked Neal Stephenson, although haven't read any since Cryptonomicon about 10 years ago.

I also bought The Year of Magical Thinking which I think got good reviews. Just finished Girl on a Train, reasonable page turner but not sure what all the fuss is about.

I think I've read, 'Eiger Dreams' but if not, I will do.

Read Simpson - liked, 'Touching the Void' a lot, but his others less so (and one was dreadful - I wrote about it on here last year iirc).

Read a couple of Bonnigton's but don't love his writing style - it lacks personality imho.

But thank you for the recs. :)

Have you read Eiger Dreams by Jon Krakauer Remus? It's on my tbr list but mat get you out of your slump now?
You read Joe Simpson right?
Chris Bonington? He did one on the Annapurna ascent, back in the early seventies. It's been ages since I read it but I liked it then.

Haven't read any other Dorothy K ones, but hated, 'Icecream Girls.' Can't remember anything about it now though, other than that I didn't like it at all!

I capture the castle is one of my fav books of all time
Completely agree about the Dorothy koomsom
Much preferred ice cream girls

37. I Capture the Castle, Dodie Smith - Cassandra lives with her family in a crumbling old castle. Broke, they have to make ends meet, until the two American heirs to the estate turn up, and Cassandra's sister Rose decides she is going to marry one of them. This was lovely, and for once a diary that actually reads like a diary.

38. The Flavours of Love, Dorothy Koomson -- 18 months ago after Saffron's husband was murdered, she starts receiving letters from his murderer. So far so thrilling, right? Unfortunately this wasn't thrilling in the slightest; it was, in fact, one of the dullest books I've read in a long time. Utterly and completely meh. I managed to finish it, but that was through skipping entire pages. On and on it went, and how is it possible that the most boring element in the story was the letters from her husband's murderer?

Let's get one thing straight; this is not a thriller. The author has used the trappings of the crime genre to write a story about family and motherhood. I like my crime novels to be crime novels, and there is no mystery about the murder here. There is a mystery involving her daughter, and I read on to find out how that worked out, but that's really the only reason I bothered to read to the end.

It wasn't even that I hated it, which is weird considering how much I've written about it here. I think I'm annoyed that I wasted my time finishing it.

Meh meh meh.

39. Meditation on Murder, Robert Thorogood Aslan Kennedy, sucessful owner of a spa retreat on the Caribbean island of Saint-Marie, is found murdered in a locked room with five other people, one of whom is found standing over him with a knife. I really enjoyed this, enjoyed the touch of humour, and found it a good tie-in with the TV series. The mystery itself was pretty good I guessed the method, but not the murderer, but then I have read and seen an awful lot of murder mysteries. It was a fun, quick read and not a bad little locked room mystery.

*

Right, next up is Various Pets Alive and Dead, by Marina Lewycka.

The point is, Cote, that I don't care. I understand the questions it's trying to raise but it was really, really boring.

And now I haven't got anything to read apart from history books, which I don't fancy at the moment.

Sulks. :(

And why do you think "the big black thing on the moon" was there?

Well, for example, what do you think happened to HAL that made it "go crazy"?

21. The Three-Body Problem - Liu Cixin (author) and Ken Liu (translator)

This was fantastic, exactly what I needed after the string of bad books I recently plodded through. It is a story of China's Cultural Revolution, the revival of its sciences decades later, SETI, first contact, virtual reality with a game that is more than a game, etc. It's written very well, which is surprising considering that it is translated into English from Chinese. It is complex, brainy, and detailed in its scientific explanations and speculations. Very interesting and thought-provoking, a cross between Anathem and The Diamond Age. I heartily recommend this book.

Yup - that's all I got. One of the worst books I have ever finished.

Correct version:

Ape men grunt at each other a bit then learn how to wave stones around. Man goes to the moon. There is a big black thing on the moon. Man gets into space ship and floats around a bit. Computer goes crazy. Man floats around some more. Man gets off spaceship and finds another big black thing. Man falls into big hole. The end.

"Man gets into spaceship and floats around a bit. The end."

Seriously, that's all you got from 2001: A Space Odyssey?

It's been over 10 years since I last read it, but I remember very clearly that there were many topics explored in that book, such as how intelligence/consciousness emerges, the evolution of humanity beyond its present state, artificial intelligence and the problems that we will probably face.

15. The truth about us by Dalene Flannigan

Three College friends have a secret, hidden for 16 years, then one wants to confess after she finds religion

It's a fairly short book, but it deals with serious subjects, I'm not sure if I enjoyed it but it was thought provoking

Book 46 - '2001: A Space Odyssey'

What can I say? I absolutely hated this book. Man gets into spaceship and floats around a bit. The end.

I honestly didn't understand the point of this, at all. The writing was fine - he can string sentences together reasonably well, which is why I managed to get to the end of it - but absolutely nothing happens.

This made, 'The Martian' look really, really good in comparison.

14. Winston Graham - Poldark 1. Thoroughly enjoyed this! Looking forward to numbers 2-12 now.

25. Grimm Tales for Young and Old by Philip Pullman

A retelling of 50 of Pullman's favourite tales from the Brothers Grimm, with each accompanied by a brief commentary on the type of tale it is, where the brothers gathered it from, and also some of the other classic versions of the story. The introduction, with background to the brothers and their intentions behind collecting stories, was very informative as well.

14. Memoirs of a Geisha , Arthur Golden

Spoilers for this book below!

Not sure how I hadn't read this before, but I bought it in a charity shop a few weeks ago and it was a great buy. This book really drew me into its world, and I thoroughly enjoyed learning about the traditions and history of this Japanese practice. I love it when a book takes hold like this and you just don't want to put it down.

The main thing I'd say against it was that the main character didn't quite develop into the person I had hoped and believed she would. A lot was made of her 'cleverness' and this didn't really come to much. I really came to admire and like the character of Nobu, and had started to think that the culmination of the book would come in Sayuri throwing off her childish infatuation with the Chairman and instead falling in love with the less dreamy but more real and gruffly loveable Nobu. But obviously this didn't transpire to be the case, and when she ended up with the Chairman I was a bit disappointed to tell the truth, and felt sorry for poor Nobu who I was much more invested in as a reader.

Ellisisland thank you for the advice re: The Unconsoled, I have read a lot of Ishiguro's other books and have had this one sitting on my shelf for a long time...I'm still on the fence re: whether to just dive into it next or not! I don't have his new one to hand otherwise I'd go for that.

to mums life and all those struggling with loss.

I'm trying to catch up with the thread, had a resurgence of a pain from a chronic condition these last couple of weeks and have been unable to concentrate on reading, which has made it doubly miserable.

So, 14# (I think) The Quiet American, Graham Greene. This is a reread but from so long ago I'd forgotten the details and it probably meant more to me this time around than when I was a teen.

I can't really praise Greene's style enough. Attention to detail without superfluity, heart without sentimentality, wisdom without sanctimony. Just great storytelling. The story here, of a war fought on behalf of democracy and amidst the legacy of colonialism, is still sharp and strongly resonant today. He captures human relationships, emotions and motivations with accuracy and compassion.

Hard to follow. Have half heartedly started the first Shardlake, hope to get into it.

I have a cheapo Kindle recommendation:

I am reading The Three-Body Problem at the moment. It is extraordinary sci-fi - imaginative & original like Neal Stephenson's The Diamond Age and geeky & brainy like his Anathem. Those are in my Top 10 books ever, so this is very high praise. And it is currently on sale for £1.79. If you have any interest in sci-fi, don't miss this book.

One of the interesting things about it is that it's written by a Chinese author and translated to English exceptionally well by an American-Chinese sci-fi author. I usually don't read translations because I find them clunky and they get on my nerves, but this one is brilliant. You don't suspect that it is a translation, at all. I imagine that it must be a very difficult task, given how different Chinese is from English.

Here is the Amazon blurb which does not do it justice IMHO:

1967: University student Ye Wenjie witnesses Red Guards beat her father to death during the Cultural Revolution. His crime? Failure to recant his belief in science. This singular event will shape not only the rest of her life but also the future of mankind.

Four decades later, after a spate of apparent suicides among elite scientists, Beijing police ask nanotech engineer Wang Miao to infiltrate a secretive cabal that styles itself the Frontiers of Science.

During the course of his investigation, Wang is inducted into a mysterious online game that immerses him in a virtual world ruled by the intractable and unpredictable interaction of its three suns.

This is the Three-Body Problem and it is the key to everything. The key to humanity's place in the cosmos and the key to the extinction-level threat it now faces.

Book 12. Phil Rickman - Merrily Watkins - The Wine of Angels.

Taking over a small parish and large vicarage in rural Herefordshire, Merrily finds sinister undercurrents bubbling underneath the placid surface of village life. It took me a while to get into this one - the first third or so is quite slow - but by half way through I was hooked and I sat up after midnight finishing it off last night. Great read and I will definitely watch out for the second in the series.

On to H is for Hawk next.

Has anyone seen anything decent in the Kindle Sale? I'm after recommendations.

There's a couple of classic Agatha Christies (Murder of Roger Ackroyd and Death on the Nile) for £1.49 and Longitude - which is a great non-ficton read - for £1.99 but I didn't see much else I fancied.

I don't know how I've got so far without having read it yet! Will persevere.

Remus - It is a major classic. I'm surprised that you haven't read it yet. It has massively influenced not only speculative fiction, but also various fields such as psychology and artificial intelligence. I'd say you should read it, if only to understand what all the references in popular culture are about.

This reminds me - I was once on a conference call and one guy introduced himself as "David Bowman". Rather unprofessionally, I went "Really?!?!" and realised soon that he had no idea why I was surprised. This man called David Bowman from birth had not read 2001: A Space Odyssey, had not watched the film, and did not know about David Bowman

I amused myself to no end by using the line "I'm afraid I can't do that, Dave" during that conference call, though

Sorry about your df, Mumslife.

I'm reading, '2001: A Space Odyssey' but not thinking much of it so far. Anybody read it? Is it worth me carrying on with it?