50 Book Challenge 2015 Part 4

• Fell ** Short sorry my typing skills have suffered due to not being on line :)

In between getting back to work after long sick leave and moving house and having no broadband for weeks (that was the most traumatic bit!!!!) I have read
36. Night Circus: Feel in love with this book, the magic, the era, the love story....everything! I wanted it to go and on and on.
37. Sheila O'Flanagan Connections: Sort (silly) stories about different people at a five star resort in the Caribbean. It was light and just what I needed the week we moved house!
38. Everything and Nothing by Ariminta Hall.....reminded me of "Hand that rocks the Cradle" film years ago. Readable and not too tense. Set in London.
39. Now reading The Last Days of Rabbit Hayes by Anna McPartland: Set in Dublin with funny Irish wit about a lady dying of cancer. Shedding a few tears but it is a lovely read.

I am sure I read a couple more books but cannot remember! If I think of them I will put them up.

Hope everyone is well

"very hard to believe that all female authors can be dismissed as not very well written/enjoyable"

That is not what Remus & I said and it certainly isn't what I meant.

My comment is on a very personal level, and not an objective criticism of women authors' literary talent. Most women authors write what is called "women's fiction", about women's friendships, marriages, children etc. That sort of book interests me not one bit. I already live that life and have zero interest in reading about it in my spare time. Out of the rest, most write heartstring-tugging books about feeeeeliiiiinnnngss which again interests me not one bit. There are very VERY few women authors who choose to write on subjects that interest me AND do it with a bright, clear, non-sentimental, and intelligent 'voice'. That is why I am personally not usually interested in reading books by female authors.

There have been exceptions such as Donna Tartt's The Goldfinch, but these are rare and far between.

Nobody has said that all female writers are rubbish - just most of them!

Re my previous post, not trying to upset anyone on our lovely thread, just surprised.

32. The Soul of Discretion - Susan Hill - this is the 8th book in a the Simon Serallier series, in many ways more of a family saga than a detective novel. An enjoyable comfort read but I would say the series has gone slightly off the boil over the last couple of books.

I generally read a mixture of male/female authors and find it very hard to believe that all female authors can be dismissed as not very well written/enjoyable, that is surely a rather sweeping generalisation?

I know what you mean, southeast. I see a book that appears to be being talked about by everyone and I convince myself I should read it too. I don't need to, and get cross with myself for falling for a marketing gimmick

I loved A God in Ruins too :)

No 60
Colette McBeth The Life I Left Behind

Six years ago, Melody Pieterson was attacked and left for dead. Only a chance encounter with a dog walker saved her life. Melody's neighbor and close friend David Alden was found guilty of the crime and imprisoned, and the attack and David's betrayal of her friendship left Melody a different person. She no longer trusts her own judgment, she no longer trusts her friends. In fact, she no longer really has any friends. She’s built a life behind walls and gates and security codes; she’s cloistered herself away from the world almost entirely.

And then, soon after David is released from prison, Eve Elliot is murdered in an attack almost identical to Melody’s. With the start of a new police investigation, Melody is suddenly pulled from her ordered, secluded life and back into the messy world around her. But as she learns more about Eve's murder, Melody starts to wonder if perhaps David hadn’t betrayed her after all...if perhaps the killer is someone else entirely, someone who’s still out there, preparing to strike again.

I really enjoyed this : I thought halfway through I'd guessed who had done it but I was wrong which made it even more intriguing
Love Colette McBeth's Precious Thing too

Book 29 Big Brother by Lionel Shriver.

DH is a big fan and loved this. I've only read We Need To Talk About Kevin and really rated it, so had high hopes.

The writing is crisp and clean. The plot dances along.

But does Shriver, whose own brother died of obesity related heart disease, have anything new to say about Fat? I'm not convinced. That morbid obesity is complex, that morbidly obese people are not Bad People, that good takes up too much air time in modern society - hardly world breaking news.

The GoT books are really not worth the read. I forced myself through two, to satisfy a friend who urged that I'd love them. I didn't. They are badly written, misogynistic and sex-obsessed. I thought they had a couple of interesting characters, but the poor execution and pages and pages of padding were inexcusable.

Completely agree, Remus.

I have quite a wide and varied taste in books - willing to try most things, but know that there are some genres out there that I loathe but which other people adore. For example, I'm never going to want to read the Game of Thrones novels. That's just put the cat amongst the pigeons on here :o

Southeast - what were your favourite books?

I have been thinking about my favourites so far this year. Would be quite good if we had a separate thread at the end of the year to list our top reads of 2015. And see how many or few compare with everyone else's :)

Friends, I thought you might like to know that our Yoga topic is now open

Duchess - I absolutely hated, 'The Outcast'. I love the fact that books (or anything really) can inspire such strong conflicting emotions. It really does prove the theory that a book is shaped by the reader and what he/she brings to it. :)

What were they southeast?

Meanwhile, I'm reading Into The Wild by Jon Krakauer and it's not living up to my expectations

75. The Outcast by Sadie Jones

At the heart of this novel is a young man, Lewis Aldridge, who we see first as a child. He has been living a quiet, calm and contented life with his mother whilst his father has been away at war (WW2). When his father returns and is back in their lives and assuming the role of head of the house it has an unsettling effect on them and events begin to unfold which have a life long effect on Lewis.

His life spirals out of control, one event following another, to the point where he commits an act so serious that he is sent to prison.

The novel, set in the 1950s gives just the right feel of a tight-knit upper middle class community, with repressed social attitudes. You never know what's going on behind closed doors. A seemingly respectable family is suffering horrifically violent domestic abuse at the hands of the upstanding Church-going father, and are too terrified of losing their social standing ever to admit the shame of their terrible injuries. There's self-harm, alcoholism, under-age sex, buttoned-up repressed emotions, post-traumatic stress, social ostracism, bullying and mental illness. It's all there, in bucket loads. It's full on and doesn't let up all the way through. Emotionally it's quite draining and if you're looking for a happy ending well there's really only a glimmer and it's not that hopeful, if it ever does happen.

I don't think there's a single character who wouldn't have benefitted from counselling or psychotherapy and, in Dicky Carmichael's case, much more.

Yes it's a depressing read, but well worth it. It sounds wrong now to say that I enjoyed it, but it is a good novel, well written. After all no-one would ever read Hardy if happy endings were always required!

Tbh I'd rather read Jilly Cooper (although haven't read any since I was 15) than Hilary M, Kate Atkinson, Margaret Atwood etc. At least she doesn't take herself too seriously!

No? Is it?! I seem to recall it was all about the connections between the survivors? Incidental moaning only surely ? !

Secret History is great cote, no idea if you'd like it but if you rated the goldfinch I think that is a great book of hers also.

Loved loved loved life after life, I'll be re reading and I hardly ever do that.

Have to confess I'm a jilly cooper fan too...

"Cote the "dull whining" is what the book is actually about not the so called apocalypse!"

But the whining is all about the apocalypse. The whole book is one big whine about how they no longer have electricity, planes, and especially air conditioning.

Lionel Shriver - read So Much For That. Not bad but not terribly interesting, either.

Kate Atkinson - read Life After Life. Was dull, weak, and rather dumb. Sort of thing my mum would read and find "deep" (apologies to its fans).

Alice Munroe - read Dance Of Happy Shadows or some such. Dullsville, Louisiana. Or something. Very VERY boring everyday stories of people with low socio-economic status.

Hilary Mantel - read Wolf Hall. I couldn't stand its ungrammatical, nonsense style in present tense, and if there was much of a plot, frankly none of it stuck with me. All I know is I'm not touching anything by her ever again.

Margaret Atwood - read Stone Mattess. A collection of half-baked stories about old people that don't go anywhere. Boring. Fantasy elements didn't add anything to the stories.

I haven't read the other authors mentioned on here. I have loved The Luminarirs and The Goldfinch, though, so have to count Donna Tartt and Eleanor Catton among the few female authors I have enjoyed.

Isabel Allende - 'Paula' is sublime, and I enjoyed her other non-fiction stuff too. Her novels got a bit tiresome.

Some of my favourite writers are Lionel Shriver, Anne-Marie MacDonald, Anne Tyler, Jane Smiley, Alice Hoffman, Chimamanda Ngozi Adiche, Anne Enright, Joyce Carol Oates, Carol Shields and Jane Urquhart. Do you really not rate any of them?