50 Book Challenge 2015 Part 4

Off the top of my head, and looking around my bookshelves quickly I would put these women at the top of my list: Hilary Mantel, Barbara Kingsolver, Kate Atkinson, Zadie Smith, Jane Austen, George Eliot, Anne Enright, Lionel shriver, Isabel Allende, Alice Munro, Anne Tyler...

Plus guilty pleasures Jilly Cooper and Kathy Reichs

I liked the Elizabeth Moon books I read (science fiction and fantasy).

Book 91 The Dawn of the Dreadfuls
The prequel to Pride and Prejudice and Zombies
It's ridiculous, but was just what I needed right now.

Daphne du Maurier - yes! I agree that she is worth a read, although I don't love all of her stuff. I don't think I'd read anything else by Kate Atkinson or Iris Murdoch and I definitely won't read anything else by Hilary Mantel or Sarah Waters.

I might allow Doris Lessing onto a list, but doubt I'll read any more of hers either. I wonder if women maybe do poetry better than novels? It does seem to cut down on the wittering if reduced to 14 lines or so, at least!

Cote the "dull whining" is what the book is actually about not the so called apocalypse! Hence my struggle...

Have to disagree on Margaret Atwood also

I guess women tend to write more emotive less derring do type fiction, which I have to say I also enjoy. Jane Smiley is great, AS Byatt too. Kate Atkinson, daphne du maurier, Elizabeth Howard...

50. Do No Harm by Henry Marsh (very good)
51. Moriarty by Anthony Horowitz (good)
52. Keep your Friends Close by Paula Daly (disappointing).

Onto:

53. Murder Bag by Tony Parsons (audio)
54. Man at the Helm by Nina Stibbe

My favourite female authors are: Jane Austen, Margaret Drabble, AS Byatt, Virginia Woolf, Penelope Lively, Anne Tyler, Barbara Kingsolver, Sarah Moss, Donna Tartt and Nancy Mitford.

30. Long Way Home by Eva Dolan
    Very good crime novel. A police procedural following the two main protagonists, DI Zigic and DS Ferreira, who head up the Hate Crimes Squad. A man is found burnt in a shed and the story follows the developments in the case.

31. Beirut, I love you:A Memoir by Zena El Khalil.
    Non-fiction. This memoir is about Zena El Khalil, her family and friends as well as her relationship with Beirut. I remember hearing about Beirut and Lebanon regularly on the news when I was young and thought this would give me some insight. Uh no, Zena is quite the irritating partying negative drama queen. All her relationships are tinged with hysteria. 9/11 and the civil war are briefly mentioned but the book is mainly about her relationships. Would not recommend.

Remus - Thanks for the heads up! I won't be putting Night Watch to the top of my reading list.

I didn't really enjoy Station 11 and was a bit irritated that I spent any money on it all. I laughed at Cote's review - exactly what I thought! Wish I'd read that before I'd bought the book.

As for female writers, surely it's just what you like to read. Everyone is different. In my favourite books of all time there are two female writers: Barabara Demick for Nothing to Envy (excellent non-fiction about North Korea recommended on a thread here a few years ago) and Beloved by Toni Morrison.

No 59

A non fiction book to help with my 11 going on 16 ds

Get Out of my life...but first take me and Alex into town

Very helpful best selling survival manual in understanding what the heck is going through their minds and what they do & why

55. The Martian by Andy Weir

Mark Watney is stranded on Mars. A storm blew up which necessitated the aborting of the mission he was on, but he was blown away by debris as the crew made their escape to the launch zone. His suit was showing no vital signs so after the commander made an attempt to find him without success she gave the order to leave, and his crewmates believed they were leaving his corpse on the red planet. But he survived, with no way to communicate to earth, a Habitat designed to last 31 days, and a limited food supply. The next mission to Mars isn't due to arrive for another four years...

I was given this one as part of World Book Night, and am pleased to say I really enjoyed it. Some other people in book club who have read it weren't too keen on all the technical detail of what Mark was doing to try and increase the odds of survival, but I found that quite interesting. The book is told largely in the first person, but it also cuts to what is going on at Nasa when they realise from satellite images of the landing site that he is still alive, and also the crew returning to earth.

I could start with - Iris Murdoch, Margaret Drabble, Barbara Pym, , Hilary Mantel.

Just out of interest, and maybe we could have a separate thread about good women writers that we really like, who do you rate, *Lady Depp?

22. Just finished the Collini Case by Ferdinand von Schirach, translated from German. A very short courtroom drama that was quietly compelling. Not much character development but lots of plot. I liked it.

Are you seriously discounting (almost) all books written by women?? .

How very sad.

I was going to start a list of great women writers but there is no point, as there are so many I would be here for ages...

That viral flu in Station 11 sounds improbable. I think I'll take it off my ' to read' wishlist.

Re. women and sci-first - I read a book called "Where Late the Sweet Birds Sang" by Kate Wilhelm last year. One of the more enjoyable post-apocalyptic books I've read recently. Pretty convincing world building IMO. A small community decides to try and save humanity from extinction (through a combination of famine, flu and widespread sterility) by cloning. The first part of the book covers the beginning of the clone experiment, and the second part picks up way in the future, when the clone society is well established.

Very true. You and I seldom like the same books, but we do seem to hate the same books for the same reasons

Donna Tartt didn't do a great deal for me tbh - I wouldn't go out of my way to read anything else of hers.

It does amuse me though, that you and I disagree over so many books but both have such an aversion to female writers. We must both have slightly off-kilter brains, but differently skewed! :)

I agree wholeheartedly, Remus. That whole section three pages long that went on and on and on about who doesn't like who and why is clear indication of why I don't like "women's fiction".

Donna Tartt and Eleanor Catton are good. I can't think of any other woman writer I'd want to read again.

I haven't got to the airport, and will not be doing so. My biggest problem with it (other than the fact that it is boring as fuck) is all the banging on about that actor geezer and his love life. I don't object to feelings as such, but I honestly have no interest in feelings that happened years before the time that the story is supposedly set in, of a character who's dead on the first page.

And all that crap about the first cello likes the fourth flute but the fourth flute doesn't like the 17th drum and on and on and on interspersed with loads of lines from Shakespeare (so the writer can google Shakespeare quotes - awesome!) then meandering back to the night when an actor who's been dead for 20 years was having a glass of wine and a shag 20 years before THAT is really, really not what I want to be reading.

I'm getting angry just thinking about it, as you can see! Tosh.

I should have known better - other than Jane Austen and the occasional Liz Jensen, I'm struggling to think of a female writer who doesn't drive me to fits of rage.

wilting - Yes, I should have listened to you

"Personally I really struggle to categorise it as sci fi at all. Or even as speculative fiction."

That's exactly what it is, though. There is no doubt whatsoever that a book talking about the aftermath of a great flu that kills off most of the world's population is post-apocalyptic sci-fi.

"'Cause the "apocalypse" is hardly necessary to what plot there is at all"

Of course it is. Take out the collapse of civilisation due to the flu and there is absolutely nothing left in the book except for some dull whining.

"and the imagined "future" isn't that different from what is here now"

That is the failure of the book. It should have been very different but the author couldn't manage it.

"And all those people living happily in an airport hmm, maybe I've just read too much dystopian fiction to swallow it!"

It's complete rubbish. Where is their clean water coming from? What happens to their waste? What is their social order? Who makes the decisions? 20 years passes and fucking NOTHING happens?

"Trying now to desperately think of women writing good sci fi but struggle beyond Margaret Atwood and Ursula le Guin"

Those are not great, either.

Ah cote you hated it. Listen to me next time

I think as a book it was mis-sold really. It is not some grand post apocalyptic sci fi drama. It did the book a great disservice to sell it as such. Personally I really struggle to categorise it as sci fi at all. Or even as speculative fiction. 'Cause the "apocalypse" is hardly necessary to what plot there is at all and the imagined "future" isn't that different from what is here now. And all those people living happily in an airport , maybe I've just read too much dystopian fiction to swallow it!

Trying now to desperately think of women writing good sci fi but struggle beyond Margaret Atwood and Ursula le Guin, neither of whom are writing sci fi currently and again, MA's certainly veers into more literary territory... Haven't actually read any UlG , there must be someone surely???

My sister has persuaded me to buy Daughter of Smoke & Bone which she says, despite a silly love story stuck in there, is actually vg I may live to regret it, will report back in due course It's £1.49 if anyone's interested but yes, it is yet another trilogy....

39 Station Eleven - Emily St John Mandel

Well, this was very disappointing. Not that I held such high expectations for (1) a 1st book, that was (2) written by a woman, and (3) was much raved about by several friends who never read sci-fi and instead usually read "women's contemporary fiction". I can only imagine that people who have adored very weak sci-fi like Never Let Me Go might like this book. Or those who have never read any sci-fi.

It was disjointed, devoid of a real plot (let alone an engaging and/or clever one), improbable, and with complete lack of worldbuilding. A viral flu kills off most of the world's population and the the ones left alive somehow manage to find food, shelter, and clean water very easily which leaves them free to procrastinate and whine all day long. That's pretty much all the book talks about anyway.

None of it made much sense. A viral infection that becomes symptomatic in several hours and kills in a day is the easiest disease in the world to contain, since it would burn itself off very quickly. Just broadcast everyone to stay indoors for 1 day - what seems to be the problem?

The post-apocalyptic world rings completely false, as well. All of it falls apart too quickly, and the author has given no thought to what such a world of few survivors would actually be like. "Schools" where kids are taught about the lost world and its comforts made me laugh. Surely, you would try to preserve knowledge of math, chemistry, physics, biology etc rather than stories of past comforts.

I could write more, because there really was a lot wrong with this book, but I think I've spent enough time on it.

80. Adventures in Human Being, Gavin Francis. Essays about various parts of the human body, written by a doctor. I admired this rather than loved it. He writes well, but I'm not sure the author and I share the same set of enthusiasms.

81. Wedding Babylon, Imogen Edward-Jones. Part of series of lightly fictionalised narratives about various fashionable occupations. I gobble these down like candyfloss (actually I haven't had candyfloss in years).

82. Bitter Experience has Taught Me, Nicholas Lezard. Journalistic articles cobbled together into a book about what it's like to be in your mid-40s and turfed out of the family home. As the author seems to think women enjoy domesticity, thus excusing him from ever having to get to grips with it, I sympathise with the former Mrs L. But I like real-life accounts of people facing up to a life-plan that's gone off-piste, and finding that life goes on, so this suited my mood.

83. Pretty Girls, Karin Slaughter. I tend to avoid serial killer narratives - why would I want those images in my brain? Sisters investigate the disappearance of their other sister many years ago, linked with disappearances still going on, and find the answer strikes close to home. I don't enjoy reading about snuff porn, but I did like the portrayal of a family, and this did keep me up half the night.

Also re-read Trouble for Lucia by E F Benson, an old favourite. Got a good way into The Riddle of the Sands by Erskine Childers - Edwardian spy mystery, along the lines of The 39 Steps, but the characters spent so long messing about on a yacht that I got bored and abandoned it.

Hope it's all ok for you Best.

I enjoyed Station Eleven, but then I don't mind reading about people's feelings... sorry, feeeellllllllings . I also liked the idea of the travelling players performing Shakespeare. I do think that they would have got back on the grid quite quickly though.

In the meantime I have read:

60. The Aftermath - Rhidian Brook
    Set in Hamburg in the immediate aftermath of WW2, a time I know little about, when the English, French, Americans and Russians were trying to rebuild the country. The family of an English military man moves into a requisitioned German house and the father takes the unusual decision to allow the original inhabitants to remain. This was actually ok, and it's an interesting premise, but it didn't go far enough somehow. All the ideas for a great story were there but it jusr needed fleshing out and developing in my opinion.

61. Sophie's World - Jostein Gaarder
    I loved this. Sophie, aged 14, starts to receive mysterious packages in her postbox containing what is essentially a philosophy course. It's like philosophy for beginners with a bit of a story thrown in. Despite its simplicity, I still managed to lose the plot somewhere around Descartes but got it back for existentialism! Don't read this book unless you don't mind reading what is really a long lecture on the history of philosophy from the Greeks to Satre. I think people either love or loathe this book. I loved it.

I was fine with everyone's feelings in Station 11 but there's no way that in a still operational airport someone wouldn't have been in radio contact with other airports trying to find out what was going on. The virus couldn't have gotten up to Anchorage and Juneau and places like that very quickly and the whole continent was still fully stocked with petrol and diesel. It wouldn't take that many engineers to get a few power stations up and running either.