50 Book Challenge 2015 Part 4

These are the books I read so far in 2015. I can't remember the exact order I read them in though. My favourites are in bold and the terrible ones are in italics.

1. In Cold Blood Truman Capote (Jan Classic)
2. Middle Age Joyce Carol Oates
3. Moonlight Mile Denis Lehane
4. We are Water Wally Lamb
5. Norwegian Wood Haruki Marakami
6. Half of a Yellow Sun Chimamanda Ngozi Adiche
7. The Dog Joseph O'Neill The Dog
8. The Housekeeper and The Professor Yoko Ogawa
9. The Thing About December Donal Ryan

Thanks for the heads-up

Don't read, 'Revival' then, Cote. It makes 'Mr M' look like a work of genius in comparison!

36 Mr Mercedes - Stephen King

This started out pretty OK but developed some fatal plot holes in the last 1/3 or so. Towards the end, it just got so improbable that I got swivel-eye syndrome again >>>

I dunno. Maybe Stephen King got old or maybe I grew up. This didn't do much for me.

28. White Nights - Ann Cleeves - Jimmy Perez mystery in the Shetland series. Good writing and reasonable mystery as usual with her books. Keeping on with easy reads until the end of term then hopefully some more interesting stuff in the holidays.

I read, 'A Gathering Light' when it came out, and remember being really disappointed with it. It sounded right up my street, but just wasn't fleshed out or gripping enough for me.

Chillie, thanks for recommending the Baxter/Pratchett - I rather enjoyed the other three and had no idea there was another one about. I'll wait for the price to drop, but its a lurking ...

Remus that book your DD has recommended sounds unusual. I look forward to your review with interest.

My most recent reads have been book 33: Red Rising - reviewed on here many a time. Not a hit for me, although a decent enough adventure romp, but what I now recognise as YA traits did annoy. Book 34: A Gathering Light - young poor girl, bookish, clever, prospective writer from poor, farming stock in the Aiderondacks has chance to escape, then doesn't, then does ... Characters all very stereotypical, the fictional story is written around a true life murder. A decent light read.

i am without my kindle for a week or so as have lent my iPad to my mother to see how she'll get on with it as an alternative to her current laptop. So am rummaging around in my bookcases for "real" books to read. No idea what i'll turn up next ... may have to hit a library and bring home FAR too many!!

Book 80 'Touching the Void' by Joe Simpson
I thought I'd read this years ago, but it turns out that I must have just read excerpts from it, because there were things in it that I'd never seen before. I enjoyed it, although am once again rather ashamed to admit that I like mountaineering books far more when things start to go horribly wrong.

I've finally admitted defeat on the huge historical tome I've been reading for months. It wasn't so much that it wasn't a good read, more that I just couldn't cope with the relentless misery of the events.

Next up is a book that dd1 has recommended. Here She seems to have inherited some of my rather niche interests! :)

"This book was a one-way ticket to Dullsville, alighting at Dull Central, via Dull Parkway and Dull City. "

48. The Long Utopia by Terry Pratchett and Stephen Baxter

Pterry's penultimate novel.

AI unit Lobsang has retired with his now equally robotic companion Agnes to New Springfield in the depths of the Long Earth to try and live a human life. They have even adopted a child. But slowly Agnes comes to realise that something is wrong with the Earth on which they have made their home. Their world is under threat, and it could put the whole of the Long Earth at risk. Joshua Valiente and Sally Linsay, legendary explorers of the Long Earth, are summoned to help find out what is going on and to try and stop it.

I tend to prefer fantasy to sci-fi, but I have really enjoyed this series.

Brave New World is one of my all time favourites. I've never read The Stand but I think I might read it this year.
I'm currently reading Sleepyhead by Mark Billingham. It's the first book in a series about detective Tom Thorne. I've read about 80 pages so far and it's very similar in style to the Peter Robinson Inspector Banks books.

24. Shadow of Light (Bk 2 All Souls Trilogy) by Deborah Harkness
25. The Book of Life (Bk 3 All Souls Trilogy) by Deborah Harkness

The last two books in the All Souls Trilogy. Just what I needed to read - vampires, witches, daemons and humans; romance, adventure and baddies. Fun trilogy, I enjoyed them.

26. Brave New World by Aldous Huxley (Audiobook) Oooh, what a book! And to have been written almost 90 years ago. So many themes still relevant today. Consumerism along with the constant adverts and messages to buy, buy, 'new is best'. What is this distracting us from? The group mentality, the sense of superiority over others not of your group via constant media bombardment. I'm not so keen on the women as sex object, man as alpha intelligent decision maker, but then again, as long as everyone is happy and on Soma! V.good and thought-provoking.

I found Station 11 a bit disappointing. It was an okay viral-mageddon story but did not push any boundaries or bring anything new to the genre. And the story lines were all very neat and tied in a nice bow by the end of the story.

I think I need to revisit The Stand- it must be almost 20 years since I read it..

67. The Psychopath Test by Jon Ronson. Fascinating stuff. You could quite easily start to think everyone you meet has psychopathic traits but then again you could start to wonder about the motives for diagnosis of some conditions (are they promoted by drug companies etc).

Next up - I am attempting The Luminaries by Eleanor Catton. Not sure how far I'll get, though. May be gone a while :o

Welcome, MMack.

I didn't like, 'The Road.' I felt it was all a bit contrived, and that it didn't do anything that Stephen King had already done much better.

Book 79 is another re-read: 'Lolita' by Vladimir Nabokov. I've always listed this as one of my favourite reads, having read it three times between the ages of 17 and 25-ish. I was long overdue a re-read and I still think it's a remarkable book. Having said that, I no longer think it is a work of absolute genius.

The first half is absolutely sublime, but the second half is pretty slow and (albeit deliberately) meandering, and the ending (again deliberately, I'm sure) is all a bit silly. Some of the phrasing, especially in the first half, is exquisite, and lots of it is rather Eliot-esque. Nabokov is a very skilled writer and can move you from fascination, to sympathy, to horror, to disgust to laughing out loud within the space of just a few lines.

If you haven't read it, I absolutely recommend it - with the proviso that the second half might well prove a bit of a let down, after the incredible first half.

Ok cote, go read it and tell us what you think. But on a scale of The Martian to never let me go it's v much at the never let me go end.

Personally I would not call it sci fi because there is no science and tbh there is nothing to show it is set in the future either. But that's not particularly relevant to the story anyway.

Omg Duchess, the road is horrifically grim imo, I can safely say I will never read it again. My mum and dsis loved it though and they don't typically read sci fi or post apocalyptic fiction at all. He is a fabulous writer but he really puts you through the mill...

Thanks Duchess. I'm waiting for a knock on the door as I am sure someone will be delivering me my medal soon .

Welcome mmack :)

And well done for finishing The Buried Giant, whippet :o

Welcome mmack!
I really enjoyed Station Eleven and am yet to read Never Let Me Go but I have been put off Ishiguro by having read:
52. The Buried Giant - Ishiguro
This book was a one-way ticket to Dullsville, alighting at Dull Central, via Dull Parkway and Dull City. I did force myself to finish it but only because I had invested my precious time in reading the first half. Half-hearted, half-arsed fantasy that left me yawning.

53. Flowers for Algernon - Daniel Keyes This, however, was an excellent book, though rather sad and perhaps very slightly dated now, having been written in the 60s (with some of the terminology e.g the word Moron). I think its been reviewed up thread and in earlier threads already so I won't go into too much detail but the book is written from the point of view of Charlie, a man with very low IQ, who becomes a human experiment and has his IQ improved to genius level. I'm not making it sound good but it really was, and following Charlie's journey is emotional as he learns and grows, discovering that the longed for intelligence does not necessarily mean he is happier. Algernon is a mouse who went through the experiment before him and Charlie is able to see his future writ large in the fortunes of Algernon. I would recommend this.

Welcome mmack ! Any book recommendations so far?

Can I join you all? I've been following the thread and I'm waiting to get Station Eleven from the library. I also want to agree that the characters in Never Let Me Go were so passive it made the whole story unbelievable.