50 Book Challenge 2015 Part 4

southeastdweller
really interested to see what her second is like as I agree she did show a lot of promise just missed the mark for me

what is it called ?

44. The Body In The Library byh Agatha Christie

The body of a glamorous blonde is found one morning in the library of Gossington Hall, home of Miss Marple's friends Dolly and Arthur Bantry. No one knows who she is or how she got there, but she had been strangled. When she is identified as a dance hostess at a seaside hotel, Miss Marple and Dolly Bantry head for Danemouth to see if they can find the killer.

This is one of my favourite Miss Marple tales. There's much more going on than in some of them, and the variety of characters encountered in a seaside hotel adds more interest.

Cheers Remus - have just ordered it. Would rather give ABE Books the money anyway.. thanks for the recommendation

I got it in an academic second hand bookshop, HC. Sorry.

ABE Books have got it for a couple of quid.

Remus where did you find The Language of Jane Austen - was it a library book?

I like the sound of it - am a big Austen fan - but even on kindle it's over £25 .. too much!

17. American Smoke - Iain Sinclair

Slow going, this one, though I enjoyed the journey; it's ostensibly about the Beat writers who inspired Sinclair as a young writer, but like all his books it twists and winds across continents, through time, dreams, memory and sometimes outright fantasy. I did enjoy it but not the easiest one for beginners to his work.

#34. Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte - a re- read of an old favourite after many, many years. My over riding feeling on reading this is to marvel that I have never before clocked just how horrible Mr Rochester is; talk about playing psychological games!

#35. Some Luck by Jane Smiley - a family saga based around the fortunes of a farming family from the US. Each chapter represents a year of the families' life. There was a good book lurking in here, but there were just too many characters and perspectives to really get involved with any one. The format of a chapter per year also slightly hampered the narrative. There are two more books in the trilogy, but I'm not sure I'll be bothering.

Duchess - really glad you enjoyed, 'Dissolution.' The whole series is v well worth a read.

Book 74 - 'The Language of Jane Austen' by Norman Page
A scholarly study of Austen's sentence structure, vocabulary choices, dialogue and use of letters, amongst other things. I loved it - but it did make my brain hurt a bit in places, and I had to get the dictionary out a couple of times! Recommended, for anybody who's an Austen buff.

40. Camomile Lawn by Mary Wesley
    Hadn't read the book, only watched the TV series so about time. Loved it. Are there any other books by Mary Wesley I should read?

41. The Wine of Angels (Merrily Watkins) By Phil Rickman
    I had seen it recommended here, but found it quite boring. Vicar moves to village with her daughter and some sort of mystery from the past which I just couldn't get in to. Also thought all the stuff about her daughter very boring. Yawn.

42. My Grandmother Sends Her Regards and Apologises by Frederik Backman
    For those who loves A Man Called Ove, this is Backman'a new book and it's wonderful like a fairytale. The protagonist is 7 year old Elsa. When her crazy grandma who was her best friend dies, Elsa is left with letters grandma left for her to deliver to various people to say she is sorry. Elsa goes on delivering the letters to various characters who touched her grandmas life and we get to know them and their stories. The character of Ove is her and all of Backmans characters seem to be a bit different, outsiders in life with a story to tell. Just like A Man Called Ove, this book is really funny, but also deep and sad and Backman has a gift for making me feel so many different emotions just from reading one page or even paragraph. I cannot praise this book enough. It's just wonderful. A genius writer whose books just seem to hit me straight in the heart.

I just realized that I've made a mess of a crucial sentence below in my review of Crash. It should read as follows:

The book is repetitive, doesn't ring real at all and makes it all seem ridiculous, whereas the film was eerie and felt plausible.

Book 23- the Red Road by Denise Mina.

I'm a huge fan of Mina and rate The End if the Wasp Season as one of my favourite crime fiction books.

The Red Road finds her on great form as usual.

Several story lines carefully crafted centred around two murders on the night Dianna was killed.
The lead character is a refreshing change a working class woman DI, happily married, no drink problem.

I think it's about time someone made this series for the telly.

34. Crash - J G Ballard

I was a bit disappointed by this, especially since I was a big fan of the film directed by David Cronenberg. The book is repetitive and doesn't ring real at all, whereas the film made it all seem ridiculous. Yes, it is still written by Ballard and so is good, but not as good as I thought it would be.

No 53

Gill Hornby The Hive
I was really looking forward to reading this as the storyline sounded right up my street - a gaggle of school mums fighting and bickering around PTA fund raising

However it introduced too many characters, too quickly and I didn't get time to know them. I didn't really care about them. Bits were really funny but it was too sterotypical for me, Bea was a nonsensical character!

DP has been away so I have had a reading fest

48. Still Life With Breadcrumbs - Anna Quindlen
    I got this from the library (which I have just started using again thanks to this thread). A sweet, gentle, if somewhat predictable novel about a once-famous photographer who rents a rickety house in a rural spot in upstate New York.

49. My Life in Houses - Margaret Forster
    Another library book. I had wanted to read this ever since it was a book of the week on Radio 4. Essentially this is an autobiography of her life but is based around the houses in which she has lived. A thoughtful book about the notion of what 'home' really means. I enjoyed this because like the author, I am always interested in other peoples houses and choose random houses and pretend that they are mine.

50. (Yay)!! Levels of Life - Julian Barnes
    Also from the library. A semi-autobiographical book. The first part is concerned with the exploits of the mad-cap early aeronauts who took to the skies in balloons and the second part is devoted to the grief he feels about the death of his wife in 2008. The two sections do tenuously link (although it felt to me like two different books joined together sometimes) but I really do like his writing and found his exposition on grief to be moving.

On to The Buried Giant now as the library has delivered. sorry for being mean about you upthread Warwickshire Library Service.

43. Strange Boy by Paul Magrs

This is a first person narrative, told by a ten-year-old boy who is trying to make sense of his world. His parents have separated, so he and his brother find themselves being ferried around between their home, their Dad's new flat, and their Dad's parents' house, with its overwhelming whirl of people. Then there's their mum's new boyfriend and his family, all of whom live on their estate. It's a lot to get used to, and David is something of an outsider anyway. He also believes he has secret super-powers and is fascinated with John, a 14-year-old who lives down the road.

It's not the sort of book I would usually have picked up, someone at book club gave it to me so I thought I would give it a try. It's quite well handled and a very easy read given the complexities of the relationships. Magrs does seem to have managed to capture the simplified view of life and relationships of a 10-year-old boy.

29. Julie and Julia: My year of cooking dangerously by Julie Powell.

This is a book by an American woman, Julie, living in New York, who decides to cook all 524 recipes from a cookery book called Mastering the Art of French Cooking by Julia Child over the course of a year and write a blog about her experience (this was back in the early days of blogging). I really enjoyed this book - it's funny and touching and made me feel calm and happy whenever I was reading it

sorry for typos

I'm another fan of Alan Bennett

Did Talking Haeds for A Level and saw the perfomrance in London

He's brilliant at depicting the ordinary

63. Dissolution by C J Sansom. I listened to this as an audio book and could not put it down. Have raced through the story, really enjoying it. It will, however, be a while before I get to the next novel in the series, but I'm definitely continuing with them. My kind of novel :)

Just started reading Stoner by John Williams this evening. Good so far I think.

29. The Atlantis Gene by AG Riddle; really enjoyed this, a pacy thriller in a dystopic world facing potentially an end of species type event. Engaging and lots of interesting ideas involving evolution, aliens, viruses and the like. The character development is lacking a bit (hard to believe in the relationship between Kate Warner and two children in her care for example), but overall a great and entertaining read and I have already purchased the sequel!

I have a soft spot for Anne Tyler's Accidental Tourist.

I find with some of her books you have to be in the right mood otherwise they can just be a bit depressing. I particularly felt this about 'Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant'. I think they can be funny but also make you wince. The one where the woman walks away from her family one day at the beach and her husband can't describe her to the police is both funny and sad at the same time. (Can't remember what the book is called).

Southeast and I both like Alan Bennett, so probably both of us have recommended it at some point. If you get on well with that then he has written a few more which you might also enjoy. Smut was a bit cheeky but was very entertaining.