50 Book Challenge 2016 Part Two

I'm a bit behind updating this thread!

11. Reduced Shakespeare: The Attention-Impaired Readers Guide To The World's Best Playwright by Reed Martin and Austin Tichenor of the Reduced Shakespeare Company. A very funny look at Shakespeare's life and works. If you've never seen one of the RSC's shows, I recommend you do, they're hilarious. The book was just as funny but educational as well and there's a few plays I'll now make an effort to see/read.

12. The Lake House Kate Morton. One of those books that always has a garden gate on the cover, with a story set in the past, usually involving a mystery, and someone in the present trying to solve that mystery. I enjoy this sort of book and I really liked this although you do have to suspend disbelief as part of the story relates to a house that no-one's lived in for 70 years yet it has been untouched by nature/squatters. If you put that aside though it's a very good read if you like this sort of thing.

13. The Time-Traveller's Guide to Medieval England by Ian Mortimer. I found this fascinating - lots of information about what life was like in the 14th century. It dragged a bit towards the end though so it might have been better if I'd read something else alongside and just dipped in and out. I have The Time-Traveller's Guide to Elizabethan England to read too and am looking forward to that.

14. The Box of Delights John Masefield. I never read this as a child and I'm afraid I didn't quite get into it as an adult. There's no background given to any of the characters, although I found out after I finished that it's actually a sequel so I expect they're all introduced in the first book. I enjoyed some of the individual magical sequences but I felt a bit cheated by the ending.

15. Close My Eyes Sophie McKenzie. Psychological thriller about a woman, Gen, who had a stillbirth 8 years ago, and is suddenly approached out of the blue by a woman who tells Gen that her baby is alive. Gen starts investigating and gets caught up in danger. I enjoyed the first half of the book but the end was too far-fetched.

MegBusset look out for The Cazalet Chronicles by Elizabeth Jane Howard. They're all about an extended family. Book 1 starts in the late 1930s then it goes through the war and ends in the 1950s. I love them!

5 The Kind Worth Killing by Peter Swanson

I really enjoyed this. Although it was (yet another one) likened to Gone Girl and The Girl on the Train, I personally found it much better than either of those. Interesting plot and surprises, in the right hands this could make a good, quirky, dark-humoured film.

I'll probably give his earlier book a read

Whitewine - I've loved her Shetland series, which gave a very good sense of place, so found the slowness of the first Vera book was a bit annoying, but then the Shetland lot are more recent books, so she might have got her eye in a bit more... Will give the rest a go, I need a none taxing series to read.

Dinosaur I don't particularly remember the first book being any more plodding than the rest! I would say not fantastically well written but I enjoy that style of crime and it reminds me of the TV show, scenery etc.

Book 5 Station Eleven by Emily St John Mandel

Brilliant. Just brilliant. Post apocalyptic stuff with a time slip sections to the past.

The Last Breath by Denise Mina

I'm a big fan of Mina. Intelligent, well crafted crime fiction with the focus on the why rather than the how.

Whitewine - I've only read the first Vera Stanhope book, which clearly needed editing and about 100 pages taking out, are the later ones a bit less ploding?

Had never heard of her before, Sadik.

The Lie Tree is on my list too, Remus. Do you like Frances Hardinge's other books? I loved Fly by Night/Twilight Robbery and A Face Like Glass, but wasn't so taken with Gullstruck Island or Cuckoo Song.

I read lots of Elizabeth Howard's novels when I was a teenager, Meg, though I have to admit I can't really remember much about them! Rather old fashioned, I think.

1. The Moth Catcher-Ann Cleeves - latest in the Vera Stanhope detective series. Good comfort reading and I enjoyed the plot line on this one well enough.

Astonished at how slow I'm reading! Trying A Man Called Ove next for book group which should be a quickish read.

I thought this was an interesting read, touching on the subject of female writers and why they're so undervalued - www.theguardian.com/books/2016/jan/30/hilary-mantel-elizabeth-jane-howard-novelist?CMP=twt_gu

Must admit I had never heard of Elizabeth Howard and will be looking up her novels.

I'm reading, 'The Lie Tree' that just won the Costa prize. It's okay so far - have a feeling I'm not going to end up loving it though.

1. The Exclusives by Rebecca Thornton. This is set in a highly academic girls' boarding school in the 1990s. Recommended upthread by Satsuki as a page-turner, and I agree - I couldn't put it down!

1. The Road Home by Rose Tremain. Recommended on mumsnet, really enjoyed this.

1. The Politics of Washing: Real Life in Venice by Polly Coles. I adore Venice and am fairly non-discerning when it comes to books set there, but I would have preferred this to be more memoir and description of the author's time there (she and her Venetian husband moved their four children there for a year) and less whinging on about damn foreign visitors spoiling the place. She had some very valid points to make about the loss of real life for real people but really laboured them.

ash I went into the bookshop yesterday and they had signed fest editions which I nearly bought but thought it might be odd when I ask him to sign it again at the book talk.

Ash I enjoyed Lean In but found it a bit overlong and repetitive

5persephone,s Mollie Panter Downes Minnie,s Room, the Peacetime Short Stories excellent book, I am not usually a fan of short stories but she is such an accomplished writer. Stories written and portrayed between1945 and 1965.Brilliant!
4Charles Dickens biography by Claire Tomalinreviewed previously.
3Nevil Shute Pied Piper reviewed
2The Summer Book by Tove Jansson reviewed
1Not So Quiet byHelen Zenna Smith reviewed

12 Dark Intelligence by Neil Asher
Action sci-fi, first in a series. Mixed feeings on this one. It's a bit too violent for my taste, but I just tend to skip those bits, so that wouldn't necessarily put me off. Its told from multiple viewpoints, and I felt there were just too many voices, and as a result it took me a very long time to get into the story. The last 1/4 was excellent, though once it all came together, and I'll probably watch out for the others in future, hoping that they'll carry on from there.

Ooh Quogwinkle I will look into that...

Ordered the new one on the Romanovs as mentioned above, it should have arrived when I get home after this weekend away. That will be book 7 I think.

*3. The Snow Child by Eowyn Ivey
*
I've had this knocking around the house for over a year and just got round to reading it.
I did enjoy it, although it took a lot of getting into and I never felt totally absorbed by it. It felt a bit like it had been written deliberately to be discussed at book clubs!

Ash - I used to get frustrated waiting for the next audible credit to arrive so I switched to buying them all in one go. It works out cheaper to do it that way and also it means you don't have to hang onto your credit wondering whether Audible will have another 2 for 1 sale just after you've used that month's credit!

Finished 5. The Fry Chronicles - Stephen Fry yesterday morning. Listened on Audible, it's read by Fry himself which I feel makes it work really well because of the way he writes. This is the second part of his memoirs covering from the end of his school days through university at Cambridge, the Footlights et al, then his early career including Blackadder. I loved it. I'm desperate to start listening to the next volume, More Fool Me but don't get another Audible credit for a few weeks.

Think 6 will be Lean In by Sheryl Sandberg as I'm starting a new job soon.

oh Ladydepp - I forgot the 3rd "Red Rising" book was due out soon, I enjoyed books 1 & 2 as well (believe Cote recommended them start of last year), and agree, Darrow needs to pull himself together clearly needs a shag and to drop the angst . But I felt book 2 doesn't end in a complete story in the way book 1 does, while it's clear at the end of book 1 he's going to carry on to the next stage in his life, it felt like it ended at the end of a 'story' in his life and was complete in itself, book 2 ending on a cliff hanger would work better if you can go straight into book 3 - annoying I've had to wait a year!

Have got over my puzzling out of The house on the Strand and am ready to start reading something new again today - nothing on my Kindle is grabbing me though...

1. Golden Son by Pierce Brown - 2nd book in Red Rising trilogy, it's scifi dystopia and was a bargain for 99p!. I liked this a lot more than Red Rising which I thought dragged in the middle. This one fairly cracked along and I do love the world the author has created. I still find the main character, Darrow, a bit thinly drawn. He is like a teenage boy's ultimate angsty hero, and the story feels quite YA in tone for me. Having said that I am looking forward to reading the final book in the trilogy after it comes out next month.

I am now wading through Americanah, not sure I am going to warm to this one, but the writing is very good and I am determined to finish it!