50 Book Challenge 2015 Part 3

Adding my list so far:

1.Elizabeth Gilbert - Signature of all Things

1. EF Benson - Mapp & Lucia 1
2. Emma Healey - Elizabeth is Missing
3. M C Beaton - Agatha Raisin and the Quiche of Death
4. Suzanne Collins - Hunger games book 1

1. Marion Coutts - The Iceberg
2. Amanda Prowse - A Mother's Story
3. Adele Parks - State We're In

Need to read more!

Book 17 - still alice. Fantastic book very thought provoking.

Ok list so far for 2015:-

1 The Crimson Petal & the White by Michel Faber
2 The Blue Castle by LM Montgomery
3 Risky Business by Amy Andrews
4 Far From the Tree by Andrew Solomon
5 Rivers of London by Ben Aaronovitch
6 Countdown City by Ben H Winters
7 The Last Policeman by Ben H Winters
8 World of Trouble by Ben H Winters
9 World War Z by Max Brooks
10 American Gods by Neil Gaiman
11 Moon Over Soho by Ben Aaronovitch
12 When I Met You by Jenna Forte
13 Sovereign by CJ Sansom
14 The Hunt for Red October by Tom Clancy
15 John Dies at the End by David Wong

Sovereign was boring boring boring and I'd never have finished it if my kindle had been functioning. That's it for me and Shardlake.

I've read other Tom Clancy and liked them. The Hunt for Red October not one of his best imo, final quarter of the book seemed pointless to me and the propaganda is a bit heavy handed. In short it has dated.

Really enjoyed JDATE i've a 5yo and a 4yo so the penis jokes seemed sophisticated and refreshing to me If you like stuff like The hitchhikers guide to the galaxy or Men in Black it's similar sort of enjoyable nonsense, (albeit with more penis jokes). It's a bit comic book in flavour and maybe a tad episodic but overall a thumbs up from me.

Now onto

16 Rendezvous with Rama by Arthur C Clarke. picked this up on a kindle deal, really hope it hasn't dated...

Book 10 - Dissolution. The first in a series about Matthew Shardlake, a lawyer working for Thomas Cromwell and investigating murder at a monastery. Really enjoyed it. A compelling mystery and really interesting historical details. I'm looking forward to reading the rest of the series.

Here's my list so far:

1. We are all completely beside ourselves - Karen Joy Fowler
2. In Cold Blood - Truman Capote (MFC Jan)
3. Child 44 - Tom Rob Smith
4. Portney's Complaint - Philip Roth
5. The Talisman - Stephen King
6. Black House - Stephen King
7. The Miniaturist - Jessie Burton
8. May We Be Forgiven - A M Holmes
9. Daughter - Jane Schmullt

Favourites bolded.
Hated WAACBO, thought the miniaturist was lacking.

Book 42 - 'The Black Eyed Blonde' by Benjamin Black.

Black is the pseudonym of John Banville (of, 'The Sea' fame) and this is his attempt at a Philip Marlowe (Chandler) novel. It's not bad. After a slow start, I quite enjoyed it. It's not Chandler (who is tbh?) but it's believable enough in the way it works the Marlowe character, and some of the prose is decent. It was a bit overblown in places - the beauty of Chandler is that he always knew when to stop, and Banville doesn't always. It felt like a slightly older, more wistful Marlowe, who's maybe become a bit less bitter and a bit more whimsical.

So, not a work of genius, but an enjoyable read. I've read a lot worse!

Hello there, I'd love to join your thread if I may . I've been lurking for a while but this is my first post. Your recommendations and reviews have been really inspiring and I have a whole list of books I want to read now, thank you!

Anyway, here's my list so far, stand out books in bold and meh ones in italics:

1. Gone Girl - Gillian Flynn;
2. Wild: A Journey from Lost to Found - Cheryl Strayed;

1. We are All Completely Beside Ourselves - Karen Joy Fowler;
2. Life After Life - Kate Atkinson;
3. How to be a Woman - Caitlin Moran;

1. The Narrow Road to the Deep North - Richard Flanagan;

And I'm currently reading...
21. Never Let Me Go - Kazuo Ishiguro.

Here's my 2015 list so far:

Standout books in bold
Books that underwhelmed me in italics

1. Charles Dickens: A Life, Claire Tomalin
2. The Strange Library, Haruki Murakami

1. Invisible Cities, Italo Calvino

1. Indignation, Philip Roth
2. The Dispossessed, Ursula Le Guin
3. The Bell Jar, Sylvia Plath

Currently reading and really enjoying:
26. Americanah, Chimamanda Ngozi Adiche
27. The Buried Giant, Kazuo Ishiguro

Have also added I'll have what she's having to be reservation list at the library - I blame this thread for my library account being higher than usual ;-)

Oops bugrit !

Bugat -5
That Lisa sottoline sounds good I've ordered it from the library - Thankyou !

I'm reading 'quarter past two on a Wednesday afternoon '. By Linda newberry

It's about an 18 year old who disappears & is written from the perspective of her younger sister 20 years on

I seem to be reading a lot of books about missing people

Ha ha, Cote That review is brilliant.

Here's my list so far:

1. The Strangling on the Stage, Simon Brett
2. The Shock of the Fall, Nathan Filier
3. Agatha Raisin and the Quiche of Death, M. C. Beaton
4. The Secret Place, Tana French
5. The Sleep Room, F. R Tallis
6. Dissolution, C. J Sansom (Reread)
7. Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Season 8 part 1
8. The Nature of Monsters, Clare Clark
9. The Paying Guest, Sarah Waters

And adding:

31. Trigger Warnings, by Neil Gaiman Short story collections are always a tricky one, and I found this a bit of a mixed bag. A lot of the stories here are short and didn't really grab me, but a couple of the stories made up for that and then some the Sleeper and the Spindle, for example, with a twist on the Sleeping Beauty story that I didn't see coming, and the short story featuring Shadow (from American Gods) in the Peak District for some reason.

32. Keep Quiet, Lisa Scottoline While driving his son home from a movie, Jake makes the mistake of letting Ryan practise his driving on a back road. The worst happens and Jake is caught in a moral dilemma call the police to report the accident, ruining his son's life, or to get in the car and pretend it never happens. Well, it wouldn't be much of a story if he took option A would it? I picked this up from the library as part of a 'blind date' they were running in February -- books sealed in envelopes so you didn't know what you were going to get. It's probably not a book I would have picked up otherwise, but I'm glad I did, as this was a pacy read, with quite a few twists and turns that I didn't see coming. It's a shame then, that it was a bit spoiled by the somewhat convenient ending.

Anyone else getting the impression that Cote didn't really enjoy JDATE?

15. Confessions of a Sociopath by M.E. Thomas. This is a book about being a sociopath, written by a high functioning, non criminal, diagnosed sociopath, and therefore much more positive (I hesitate to use the word sympathetic!) towards sociopaths than a book written by someone who researches / diagnoses / works with sociopaths might be. Raises some interesting moral questions about the position of sociopaths within our society. When I was halfway through I started finding it a bit repetitive (okay, I get that you enjoy manipulating people and feel no remorse or empathy) but it picked up again towards the end, with an interesting bit about how the (currently childless) author would feel if she had a child with the same condition.

19. John Dies At The End - David Wong

You know how I am not a fan of hate and shower disdain on YA? Well, if there were circles within YA like circles of hell in Dante's Inferno, this book would be in the absolute lowest circle of YA - the one for books written by horny teenagers with the maturity of a giddy 4-year-old and the IQ of a carrot.... for other horny teenagers with the maturity of nursery children and single-digit IQs.

Case in point:

“Identification please.”
John smiled. “Assey Cocklord.”
It turned to me, repeated the question.
“Felipe Enormowang.”
“Identification not on database. Please state your habitation sector.”
John: “Your Ass.”
Me: “The suburbs west of Your Ass.”

SERIOUSLY?!?!

It is not just superficial and focused on the usual teenagey concerns - that would be traditional YA which I must admit I now look much more favourably on because of just how God-awful this book was, with its never-ending Ghostbusters theme (continually playing in my head even now), vomit-fest, penis obsession, and ludicrous half-assed attempt at a fantasy plot.

I'm now going on to The Master And Margarita and will shortly start doing my damnedest to pretend that I have never EVER come across this pathetic excuse for a book.

Meanwhile.....

Here are the books I've read so far in 2015, since it seems we are bringing them over to show off

1. Spares - Michael Marshall Smith
2. The Istanbul Puzzle - Laurence O'Bryan
3. Last Man Standing: Tales From Tinseltown - Sir Roger Moore
4. [Re]Awakenings, an anthology of new Speculative Fiction
5. The Martian - Andy Weir
6. Do No Harm: Stories of Life, Death, and Brain Surgery by Henry Marsh
7. A Spy Among Friends: Kim Philby and the Great Betrayal by Ben Macintyre
8. Ashes of the Earth: A Mystery of Post-Apocalyptic America by Eliot Pattison
9. Alan Turing: The Enigma by Andrew Hodges

Good to hear, Provencal. I have a fairly limited repetoire cooking-wise so always up for new ideas.

Yay new thread

Am also reading JDATE and really enjoying it!!!

I have Gwynnie's first cookbook. There are some really nice recipes in it

Love that fresh thread smell

30. Georgian London: Into the Streets, Lucy Inglis. Non-fiction. Organised region by region across London. Some enjoyable stories, a fair amount that felt quite familiar. I think the author isn't a professional historian - the book developed from a blog - and while I'm not qualified to say, she may have taken some of her sources too much at face value. At the start of the book she names Defoe as an eye-witness to the plague. As was said at the end of the last thread, Journal of a Plague Year is a great book, but it's not eye-witness testimony.

31. I'll Have What She's Having by Rebecca Harrington. Inspired by thelittlebooktroll from the last thread. Author tries out various celeb diets. Felt very blog-like, but I love this kind of thing and gulped it down with glee. It may have inspired me to borrow Gwynneth Paltrow's cookbook from the library....

32. A Caribbean Mystery, Agatha Christie. Not one of the greats.

33. I'm Your Man: The Life of Leonard Cohen, Sylvie Simmons. The first chapter, about his forebears and childhood, is dull, but then this became pretty compelling. Loved his years on Hydra (why am I not living a Bohemian life on a Greek island with a poet? Although Amateurs in Eden by Joanna Hodgkin is a brilliant corrective as to why that might not be as much fun as you'd think).

My list:

1. Life by Keith Richards
2. The Hobbit by JRR Tolkein
3. The King's Curse by Phillippa Gregory
4. The Book of You by Claire Kendal
5. The Constant Princess by Phillippa Gregory
6. We Were Liars by E Lockhart
7. The Soul of Discretion by Susan Hill
8. Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy by John Le Carre
9. The Mime Order by Samantha Shannon

Just finished This House of Guilt. Given the reviews I'd seen of this I expected it to be amazing but it was very similar to other books I've read in the same vein. It's a shocking terrible story about a father in Australia who drove his car into a dam and left his children to drown in it but the book doesn't really offer any insight other than a blow by blow account of the court case.

Now started The Far Pavilions.

Next up will be Wolf Hall on the audiobook for when I'm cooking/cleaning and either Longbourn, Elizabeth is Missing or The Children Act on my kindle. I also have a few library books to work my way through so think I may have to renew them. Of if only to have more time to read!

Book 14. The Miniaturist - this has been reviewed lots of times so I won't go into details but I liked this book.

Finished The Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kingsolver (description on thread 2) on the audiobook version. Very glad I persisted with this one - the narrator took some getting used to - as it's so beautifully written. Would recommend.

Book 15. The Country Escape by Fiona Walker was a bit meh, and I struggled to finish it. Fairly standard chick lit rom com that is nowhere near as good as her early books. I have fond memories of kiss chase, french relations etc and wish she'd introduce some likeable characters for a change .

Book 16. Agatha Raisin and the Wizard of Evesham. An easy read detective novel. Needed to read something lighter after the miniaturist and Poisonwood. This fit the bill perfectly!

Bringing over my list...

1. Far From the Madding Crowd.
2. Me Before You.
3. Country Girl.
4. City of Bones.
5. Rebecca's Tale.
6. Dear Thief.
7. Blood Family.
8. Nineteen Eighty Four.
9. How To Build A Girl.

And just finished book 13 The Girl With All the Gifts by M.R Carey.

A zombie apocalypse book. I haven't read one before (though I've watched World War Z and I am Legend). I assume that most narratives like this are told from a survivor's point of view, but TGWATG is structured so that much of it is told by Melanie, a child zombie, which provides an interesting take on humanity, the collapse of civilization etc. The scenes where Melanie first encounters the outside world are wonderfully fresh and sweet and life-affirming.

And that's the most interesting thing about the book. The character who tells us most about life, is actually dead!

Apparently, TGWATG was written by a screenwriter, who penned the screen play at the same time as writing the novel. It will make a brilliant film.

Finished We Were Liars and I am sooooooo disappointed!!! I was left thinking 'what was the point?!' I read the 'twist' and wondered if that was actually it or there was going to be another one it fell so flat! Maybe if I was a teen it would have shocked me more?

Am undecided what to read next....