50 Book Challenge 2015 Part 4

Summersanta - Shirley Jackson's "We have always lived at the castle" is very good and under 200 pages.

I am still looking for recommendations btw. :) Have ordered, 'The Girl With All the Gifts' from the library but have to wait for it.

Book 78 - A re-read of Jekyll and Hyde
I still don't like it

Book 77 The Golden Slipper, and Other Problems for Violet Strange by Anna Katharine Green
This was a Kindle freebie & I only read it because I was desperate. It was very silly indeed/

Help! I am really behind with my 50 and wondered if anyone had some suggestions for some short reads for me to take on my summer hols?!

Just bought it - thanks Cote

Donna Tartt's book The Little Friend is £0.99 on the Kindle today AND its Audible audiobook version is also £0.99 I snapped it up

Dinosaurs - Yes, that sort of thing would be explored in a good book about this sort of thing: Realistic scenarios of what might happen when a group of people know for a fact that they will be butchered for their organs. How they would try to fight back. How they would get organised. How they would try to 'ruin' their bodies for the purpose of organ transplant, with excessive drinking, drugs, and infections.

What absolutely would not happen, in this world or next, is all of them saying "Oh OK, then. Kill me when you feel like it. Enjoy my organs."

Thanks Tumble - I might download that first then!

BTW - I agree about "never let me go" - I have had a rant about it on an earlier "50 book" thread, but I was so irritated by the passiveness of the main characters, and there was no exploration of what would happen if one of them "ruined" themselves with drink/drugs/getting a STD. I wondered if something like being HIV+ would effectively 'save' them...

I do think you would miss some of the meaning of The Hours if you haven't read Mrs Dalloway first. It's certainly not essential though.

Just done a quick google of The Hours, and wondered for those who'd read it, would you recommend reading Woolf's Mrs Dalloway first, or does the Hours stand well enough on it's own without needing to 'get' the references back to the Woolf book it's based round?

I've realised looking at my "to read" books on my Kindle, there's a lot of murder mysteries and a few sci-fi, am going to try to put in some variety or I'm going to get bored! (I do need to switch between different types). Can I have any recommendations that aren't murder mysteries (or even if they are, aren't focussed mainly on the 'who done it?' aspect) or sci-fi-ish?

Pinkglow - I think I'll download the Partridge book to add something to make me giggle, thankyou!

Just added Nothing to Envy to my kindle. Not that it needed any more unread books on it!

31. Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro. I had an unusual amount of reading time on Thursday (while waiting for my car to have its MOT) and I zoomed through this. The main character is a woman called Kathy, reminiscing about her childhood and the strange future she and her peers were being prepared for. It's quite readable and passed a couple of hours nicely, but overall I found it a bit meh. And the love story left me cold. This is the first Ishiguro I've read, but I LOVE the film Remains of the Day so I was disappointed by this.

Thanks wilting- I'll add The Stand and Philip K Dick to my list. The library had a copy of The Road by Cormac Mccarthy. Wasn't sure whether I would like so left it for now Have you read it?

Crawling towards 50 books here...

16. Red Rising - wow, this was a weird one. Great start, pretty good ending but the middle bit was just meh. Too many characters and clearly written by a young author. I thought the protagonist was just way too fabulous for his own good. Great story idea though, but I probably won't read the rest of the trilogy. I was bored way too many times, but I also sort of get why people have liked it. Just not my thing. 2 out of 5 stars.

"Hmm just because it takes place in the future, is that enough to call it sci-fi?"

Um yes

"Anyway does it take place in the future? I can't recall"

Did 99% of humanity perish in an apocalyptic event in the past? No? Then it's set in the future.

"There's no science. There's v little apocalypse."

There isn't much science or apocalypse in most post-apocalyptic books. By definition, the apocalyptic event is already in the past and often there isn't much science left, either.

For example, in the 6th story of Cloud Atlas, an apocalyptic event has bumped humanity back to the technology of the middle ages. There is no apocalypse and no science. Still, it's sci-fi

The stand is one of my favourite novels duchesse. Def give it a go.

If you want to ease yourself into sci-fi you could try Philip k dick's short stories...

Hmm just because it takes place in the future, is that enough to call it sci-fi?

Anyway does it take place in the future? I can't recall.

There's no science.

There's v little apocolypse.

Thanks everyone for the Nothing to Envy recommendation, I'd already spotted it and downloaded. Also agree the Guernsey book is good, so they do still occasionally have good kindle daily deals!!

thelittlebooktroll - I thought Jumping the Queue was rather good

Just two more to add - I seem to be getting behind.

We need to talk about Alan (Alan Partridge) read this because someone on here read it earlier in the year. Found this very funny and if you like that humour you would like this I think

The Betrayal by Helen Dunmore - the sequel to The Seige, really enjoyed this as the atmosphere was so tense throughout and it was really well researched. For some reason though it took me ages to read, perhaps because of the atmosphere.

Right, what I meant is, if Station Eleven is lightweight dystopian or post apocalyptic or whatever you call it, what would delve more deeply into that world without making my non scientific brain hurt too much? Didn't read Red Rising, so that's one for the list.

Yep Cote - post-apocalyptic, it's not scary, it's not really focussed on the period of intense 'survival' but more the 'grind' of a new normal. It was more about the characters than lots of action, and how much harder life is.

35. One Of Us - Michael Marshall Smith

This started out pretty well, and then got shot down with breathtaking silliness (Aliens? God showing up as "one of us"? Come on ) into something resembling that truly awful piece of garbage called John Dies In The End. I skim-read the last 5%. Not recommending it.

I'm now on to Mr Mercedes by Stephen King. It is going down very well indeed as a palate cleanser.

"dystopian novels - nothing too heavy (don't have a good track record for reading complex sci-fi grin) but something a bit "meatier""

Meaty but not heavy? Can you elaborate?

Something like Red Rising maybe. I can't remember if you read it recently or not.

"It's also interesting that a lot of the action is based 20 years later, so not the immediate "society breaking down" and survival - people are farming and coping with the new reality"

Classic post-apocalyptic.

wilting - What would you call a post-apocalyptic story that takes place in the future? Is sci-fi called something else these days?