50 Book Challenge 2015 Part 4

Whippet - I hated The Buried Giant. I am cross with myself for having wasted an Audible credit on it. It was tedious and it never got any better. I'd give up now if I were you before you lose the will to live :)

IMO life's too short and there are too many good books out there to persevere with one that's not right for you.

Well then don't read The Buried Giant Remus.
I am losing the will to go on with this inconceivably dull book. Can someone please tell me that it gets better and is worth persevering? I am halfway through and wondering if I can be bothered to read another whole half which is about 200 pages.
I am hoping a mad rampaging dragon appears, setting fire to all and sundry, just to liven things up. Yesterday I had a rare free hour between work and pre-school, picked up the book and fell instantly to sleep. In my car. And I wasn’t even comfy.
Aggghhhh.

That Atlantis trilogy was a light read Remus, might fit the bill?

Both still on my list - but I need something that I can read in dribs and drabs and that won't make me think too much. Basically, I want the new World War Z!

Is it that time of the year again, Remus?

Have you read Confessions Of A Sociopath yet?

There is always Measuring The World which you haven't read yet.

Hope all ill people are okay.

I am bookless, having a 'baddish' week health-wise and desperate for something gripping but not too taxing to read. Please help me, oh wise ones.

30. The Atlantis Plague and
31. The Atlantis World by AG Riddler

Really enjoyed this trilogy, held my attention right to the end. Great mix of drama, science fiction, thriller, I recommend! It's not perfect mind you, everyone in it is apparently capable of making remarkable logical deductions from the scantiest of evidence, he introduces characters he has no real use for and then drops them and everything wraps up v neatly but still, v satisfying absorbing read.

Book 36 Finally started The Night Circus: only 100 pages in and totally entranced and enchanted, feels like exactly my type of book!

Glad to hear your good news Best get the date and go for it!

Duchess oh good, I'm looking forward to watching it!

Good news about the op, Best- hope you don't have to wait too long for a date.

tumble- I loved The Hours too. Read it last year and watched the film. It's one of the very few films I've seen that I thought were true to the novel and was done well, with a good cast.

Bibliomania - I like the sound of Cutting Up Playgirl , I think I'll order it from the library , thank you !

65. The Boy in the Book, Nathan Penlington. Non-fiction - man buys "Choose your own adventure" books on e-bay, finds the original owner wrote notes in them as a boy, decides to track him down. I remember those books and expected this to be a nostalgic wallow in childhood fantasy, but this was disappointing, dull and stagey (the author was also making a documentary about his "quest"). His writing about how hard life can be for shy adolescents is heartfelt, but it just wasn't all that interesting.

66. An Englishwoman in New York, Anne-Marie Casey. The cover made it look like chick-lit, but it was rather more astringent than that. Interlinked short stories about women in their 40s in New York. I rather enjoyed it, as the author observes her characters coolly. I think the cover tries to sell it to the wrong audience.

67. The Curse of the House of Foskett, MRC Kasasian. An enjoyable pastiche of Sherlock Holmes with a female side-kick. Nicely gothic set-up, snappy dialogue, gory murders. I enjoyed it, but felt a bit squeamish about some of deaths.

68. Cutting up Playgirl: A memoir of sexual disappointment, "Carrie Jones" (pseudonym). Non-fiction - author is breathtakingly honest about her sexual development. Being the good girl for her parents, trying to please boyfriends and live up to a certain image, and the difficulty of knowing and meeting your own authentic desires. Not at all prurient. I was impressed with this - truthful in a way we don't often hear.

69. Oxygen, Andrew Miller. He writes well but this book didn't quite work for me - I'm not sure how the two storylines (dying mother, request made to political emigree) really cohered. Possibly went over my head.

70. The Accident, Ismail Kadare. I still like the matter-of-fact strangeness, but this didn't quite work for me. A car-accident in Vienna - a pair of lovers die in mysterious circumstances. There is some political connection. I didn't quite get it.

71. The Elizabethans, A N Wilson. I wanted to quarrel with the author a lot of the time. If he attributes the conduct of the Dutch wars to Elizabeth being menopausal, how does he explain the bad decisions made in every other war by male leaders? Grrr. Men follow strategies, while women are confused by their hormones. But he does create some rather lovely and memorable vignettes, eg. Dr Dee's library as the real Prospero's book, and the final chapter on Elizabeth as Hamlet. Idiosyncratic, out to please nobody but himself.

Feel like I've been away for ages - life a bit intense. Sorry to those with health problems.

Duchess, Dominion is one of the books I abandoned too. Cote, I see you mentioned Jason Goodwin - I'm currently reading Evil Eye by him, part of the Yashim series, and I'm enjoying it. From conversations with eunuchs in the harem to companionable evenings in the decrepit old Polish embassy, it's such an interesting world to enter.

I'm not going to bring over my full list, but the books I've read since the last thread are as follows:

60. East Lynne, Mrs Henry Wood. Deathbed scenes, court-room drama, people dashing about in carriages - what more could you ask from a Victorian melodrama. Ladies, never abandon your marriages no matter how miserable you are, or it will surely lead to disfigurement, the death of several children, and worst of all, the sight of your ex-husband dropping burning kisses on the lovely upturned face of your rival.

61. Keeping up with the Kalashnikovs, Ross O'Carroll-Kelly. I've mentioned this series before - a satirical look at modern Dublin, although at one point the action moves to Uganda and then to a pirate ship off the coast of Somalia. Equal opportunities offensiveness and very funny, with the occasional unexpected note of sweetness.

62. The Fall of the Stone City, Ismail Kadare. Set in Albania during the 1940s (German invasion) and 1950s (Communist-era investigation into an incident from the time of the invasion). The author is Albanian. I was enchanted by this - at times it reads like a dark fairy-tale, leavened with glints of humour. Hard to read towards the end, but never gratuitous.

63. The Origins of our Species, Chris Stringer. Non-fiction - an up-to-date account of current thinking on human evolution. An account not just of what researchers think, but why they think it. Interesting.

64. Holy Island: a DCI Ryan Mystery, L J Ross. I think this was self-published and in dire need of an editor. Female character, aged all of 27, is apparently a leading international authority on the Neolithic and Mesolithic, which means she goes wittering on about Druids and Satanism. Obviously she ends up falling for the handsome grey-eyed policeman with the tragic past, who turns up in the nick of time to solve the murders and rescue the next intended victim. Teeth-gnashingly bad.

46. A Murder is Announced by Agatha Christie

The Chipping Cleghorn Gazette carries a personal announcement of the time and place of a forthcoming murder, and the inquisitive villagers descend on the house of Miss Blacklock at the appointed time to discover that none of the residents know what is going on. Then the lights go out, shots are fired, Miss Blacklock is injured, and the young man who held up the room is dead. Miss Marple comes to investigate a village where no one really knows the background of anyone else, and several people may not be who they claim.

Rather a convoluted story really, but good fun.

That's good news, Best.

30. The Hours by Michael Cunningham. This has three strands running through it, with three female protagonists. One is Virginia Woolf (while writing Mrs Dalloway) and the other two are later generations of women whose lives were influenced by or had parallels with Virginia Woolf's or her character Clarissa Dalloway's.

This was recommended by Atticus upthread, and as I read and loved Mrs Dalloway last year I thought I'd try it. I'm glad I did, because this is definitely one of my favourite books this year. The writing and the characters are superb, and the Virginia Woolf bit felt very realistic.

I've just added the film to our Lovefilm list. Not sure it's DH's kind of thing though!

Thank you all . The surgeon said yes to the surgery so just waiting for a date now.

I've started the 6th Vera book too.

bookworm you must read Rebecca, it's one of my all time favourites. The film was on on Saturday and that was great too.

Congrats Atticus !

36. Fatherland - Robert Harris. A re-read from 20 or mr years ago, and I didn't enjoy it as much as last time. Readable though.

37. Doctoring The Data - Dr Malcolm McKendrick. Extremely interesting and eye-opening book about medical/pharmaceutical practices of selling and prescribing us all meds that we either don't need or that don't work. Such as statins. (And I work for the NHS!) Read it please.

38. A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry. Just when you think things can't get any worse, they do. What a downer of a book, but very well written. Glad I read it.

39. Direct Red - Gabriel Weston. A true account of a trainee-surgeon's life, and some of the cases she has to deal with. Sad, happy, sometimes shocking, but a good read.

40. Odysseus and the Wooden Horse of Troy - Martin Waddell. I read this to my son twice (half an hour each time) so thought I'd include it as I have just given up half-way through Assassin's Quest by Robin Hobb.

41. I am David - Anne Holm. Another re-read from childhood, this time going back as far as junior school. I think I got more out of it this time, as I could see everything from an adult's point of view.

Sorry not dating befriending - he sticks up for Jess which makes Kez even more mad !

No 54

Another Young Adult novel 7 Days by Eve Ainsworth

Chapters are narrated by Jess who is badly bullied & the main protagonist Kez who a bit obviously in my mind has issues at home

A very quick read but increasingly gripping as Jess ends up dating Kez's boyfriend
Slightly terrifying for me as I've got a child about to start secondary school !

Book 31: Tigers in Red Weather - Liza Klaussmann. Story of two cousins brought up in Massachutes around the time of JFK, RFK and Teddy Kennedy and their lives following their respective marriages. The characters are unlikeable and the same tale is told from varying perspectives without us gaining anything new or fresh. I think it tries too hard to be cool, possibly even a bit shocking, but is actually just plain dull.

Book 32: The Hare with Amber Eyes - Edmund de Waal: I was utterly engaged with the story of this cosmopolitan family - de Waal's own. The first half of the book is about Charles, youngest son of uber rich Russian emigree bankers, who collects art in Impressionist Paris. He also had a passion for all things Japanese and acquires a collection of 264 netsuke - tiny japanese carvings - around which this family tale is spun. Charles's family are also Jewish and experience the growing anti-semitism in France during the period of the Dreyfus affair. Our author follows the netsuke to Vienna where Charles's nephew has to run the family business unexpectedly. WWII catches up with the family and they lose everthing - except the netsuke which a maid hides. The author's grandmother Elisabeth returns to Vienna and is given the hidden netsuke. Elisabeth is quite an extraordinary woman for her time, having persuaded her father to allow her to study, to attend University, she qualifies in law, moves abroad yet returns to Vienna to get her parents out during Nazi occupation. We don't get nearly enough about her in the book, nor do we get enough about the author's great-uncle Iggie and Iggie's Japanese partner - Jiro. I thoroughly enjoyed reading the book - despite expecting it to be about Japan and history of netsuke. The author has a really good voice and his use of language almost caused me to purr from time-to-time.

Atticus congratulations!
Best good luck with the surgeon tomorrow

Will update books later ...

Congratulations to you Atticus on the new arrival, enjoy those lovely newborn snuggles!

On to book 27: The Children Act by Ian McEwan. Didn't really enjoy this book, although it got off to a good start. The story follows a court case where a 17 yo leukaemia sufferer is refusing a potentially life saving blood transfusion, due to his religious beliefs.

Started book 28: My Cousin Rachel by Daphne DuMaurier. Loving this, although only a 1/3 the way through. My first book by the author, although Rebecca has been on my tbr pile for a while now. May try that one next.

Michel Faber's book Under The Skin is £1.09 on the Kindle today. Having seen the excruciatingly awful film starring Scarlett Johansson, I'm not rushing to read it, but those of you who have enjoyed his previous books might be interested.

Good luck today, Best.