50 Book Challenge 2016 Part Two

Keepers you've just reminded me that I have Beside Ourselves on my kindle. I've read enough so I know what the book is about and love Kate Atkinson, so perhaps I'll read that after God in Ruins and Murakami's running book.

Just finished number 2. We are all completely beside ourselves by Karen Joy Fowler.

I must say it was really very good. I don't want to say too much about it as I think going into it completely blind and knowing nothing at all made it all the more powerful. I will say that there is something of the Kate Atkinson in her writing style which I enjoy. It is darkly witty. It addresses some big and serious stuff head on, but didn't feel overly preachy or difficult to read.

I genuinely think it has changed the way I think about some things and made me think carefully about some aspects of my life. I suspect it is a book that will stay with me for some time.

Continuing to follow my alphabet of new authors challenge I am now looking for a G. Might have a look back through this thread and see if anything looks promising

KST was fabulous in Electra.
One of my favourite performances of 2015.

Greek tragedy fans: the Oresteia is brilliant.

Wandering off the point there.... Not really, it's all Greek tragedy, innit?

I don't know Electra, at all. I'm going to add it to my 'to read' list - thank you for the idea.

I bet you could still read it, you know. Even I can read French (very slowly and with the help of a good dictionary!) but can barely string a sentence together if I try to speak.

Wandering off the point there....
Anyway, wouldn't be up to reading Antigone in French now, sadly!

Talented families! I have loved Antigone since doing it for French A level. Was lucky enough to see Electra at the old vic last year (?) with Kristin Scott Thomas, a necessarily physical performance which she carried off with great aplomb, all the more so considering she's in her fifties and was acting the role of a woman considerably younger and did so convincingly.

Eric Wow! I'm very envious; I would love to have played Antigone. I'm too old now, sadly. It's a special play for me because my dad once played Creon and my mum was Ismene - it's how they met.

I am a big Heaney fan, so I'm very curious to see what he did with it.

natasha my DD performed a piece from the former for LAMDA and was in a version of the later.

She loved both!

Shake I have no problems at all with men of the cloth doing whatever they wish to themselves - I could just have done without reading about it in several pages of boring detail. :)

Books 6 and 7 are two travel guides, one on Ireland and one on Germany. Trying to make some decisions about this year's holidays, but, as usual, going round in circles a bit at the moment. Both guides were interesting, but I'm still mostly drawn to Germany, I think.

Guthriegirl, I loved the Crimson Petal. It is, in fact, one of my favourite books. I also liked Under the Skin although it put me off eating chicken for months. So I would give Book of Strange New Things a chance. It is too long but I loved thinking about all the themes and ideas and my DH and I had lots of discussions about it. I'm afraid I don't remember the wanking, as mentioned by Remus, so I don't think it's a major plot line. Although even if he did, surely ministers are just men and therefore will behave like any other man?

3. Instrumental by James Rhodes.
What a book! Autobiography of James Rhodes, concert pianist, his story is one of child abuse and its aftermath. His voice comes through the words and it is moving and honest. But it is also a book about classical music and its ability to reach and engage us. Each chapter has a recommendation to listen to and a little blurb about the composer. I love music but have never really got into classical music. Now I am very much looking forward to listening to some classical music, maybe even a live concert. It was a tough read in places but I am very glad I did.

Hrafnkel I thought Moriarty was a decent read. Maybe not as unexpected as Horowitz might have hoped, but it was good to see his treatment of one of the minor characters from one of Doyle's stories and the psychological impact of feeling himself to have been shown up by Holmes.

1. The Psychopath Inside: A Neuroscientist's Personal Journey into the Dark Side of the Brain by James Fallon

This is about a neuroscientist doing research into psychopaths, who then discovers his brain scan is also that of a psychopath. I liked it for the very detailed explanations about the brain - how it works, which parts control what, the mechanisms, hormones (serotonin, dopamine...) etc - but the parts about himself and his life were not as interesting and insightful as M. E. Thomas's brilliant book Confessions of a Sociopath.

3. Two Brothers by Ben Elton
My second Ben Elton book. I recently read and enjoyed Time and Time Again so looked for another of his to read.
This is the story of two brothers growing up in Germany in between WW1 and WW2. They are a Jewish family, but one of the boys is adopted so isn't a Jew. It really highlighted to me how little I know about this period when Hitler became chancellor. It's an eye-opening read and shocking at times. It had me in tears at some points. I loved the afterword that described how some of the story is inspired by his own family's story.
I really enjoy his writing and will look for more to read.

Yay, I've actually completed a book - admittedly, a very short one. I'm still ploughing through War and Peace but I took a little break from it to read Antigone by Jean Anouilh.

It's an updating of Sophocles and was written and first performed in the forties during the Nazi occupation. It deals (amongst other things) with civil disobedience and tyranny which were obviously hugely important issues at the time. Anouilh had to adopt very convincing opposing arguments to get the play passed by the German authorities and also convince the French that it was addressing their situation during the occupation.

It's a very interesting and moving play and I'd really like to see it in performance now. I'm also planning to read Seamus Heaney's version of Sophocles: The Burial at Thebes later in the year - it will be interesting to compare the different versions.

1. Viper Wine by Hermione Eyre.

Essentially a fairly standard linear historical novel about Venetia Stanley, later Lady Digby, and her husband, Sir Kenelm Digby, but with added intentional anachronisms, the conceit being that Kenelm Digby in some way hears echoes of the future (though for some reason almost entirely from the late 20th/early 21st C), hence knows the words to Bowie songs etc.

There were things I did like about this book, but it didn't really work for me. I felt it would have benefited from being about half the length, and the anachronisms didn't really add anything. They were never meaningfully explained (I'd actually been expecting a 16thC take on steampunk when I bought it), nor done with a light enough touch to be magical realism. The main focus of the novel is Venetia Digby's attempts to retain her beauty as she ages and the parallels with modern cosmetic surgery and other treatments, and on the whole it was all a bit heavy handed and over obvious.

I only realised when I got to the end that there was a set of 'notes and questions for reading groups' included - always the indicator of a novel with pretentions.

Sooper I found 7 Killings really hard going. Sections of it dragged on and on and it was a much longer book than it should have been

1. The English Patient by Michael Ondaatje.

It's the story of a nurse taking care of an anonymous patient in a ruined Italian villa as the second world war draws to a close. The writing is very poetic with some beautiful turns of phrase, but the characters all felt very distant to me.

1. Rilla of Ingleside by L.M. Montgomery

I picked up the complete works of L.M. Montgomery on Kindle for next to nothing a while back and have been steadily re-reading the Anne series. I never read the last two (Rainbow Valley and this one) when I originally read (and re-read, and re-read) the series as they were out of print then. Rilla is Anne's youngest child and the book centres on her life and reactions as gradually all the Ingleside boys go to the front, as well as her budding romance with Ken Ford.

There were some great bits; one of the Ingleside boys has a loyal dog who waits at the station and meets every train in case he is on it coming home which really got me. The rest of it was pretty meh though: Rilla herself isn't a particularly inspiring heroice, her romance is barely mentioned and is just dull, there is far, far too much war talk (ok, there needs to be a certain amount of anguish given the setting, but it just got boring) and there was very little of the comic element that was very evident in the earlier books.

I'm glad I've finally read it, but I won't be rushing to read it again when I do my next re-read of the series in about 10 years no doubt!

Signing in :)

I've started A brief history of seven killings but I'm struggling with it a bit so I've decided to read something a little more easy going then come back to it so I've started Am I normal yet? :)

I've been trying to read Black Swan Green but got side tracked.

Book 4 - Boy Interrupted, memoir of a former Smith by Dale Hibbert.

Hibbert's life has been plagued by Aspergers and chronic depression 'more pain than pleasure'.

But his few ups and many downs have included interesting episodes, not least being on the first Smiths line up.

The trouble is Hibberts style is so factual and dispassionate, he doesn't connect with any of the other characters or the reader.

This style aptly reflects his condition but makes for a very flat read. Smiths fans will be disappointed and those readers looking for insight into mental ill health will come away none the wiser.

1. Fated, Benedict Jacka. A decent urban fantasy. A Mage, running a shop in Camden and trying to keep his head down, gets sucked into a dangerous adventure. Enjoyed it and will read the rest of the series.

Chilli, what did you think of moriarty? It was my first book this year. Thought it ok.

1. Worlds of Arthur by Guy Halsall

To be honest, Arthur doesn't get too much of a look in, aside from the first section of the book in which Halsall roundly debunks claims made about the 'historical' King Arthur from the ninth century onwards. Instead, this largely concentrates on examining what the written and archaeological historical record can tell us about Britain after the collapse of the Roman empire, which comes down to 'not a lot'. He looks at the evidence for the usual idea of a single great migration of Anglo Saxons pushing the native Britons from east to west across the British isles during the fifth and sixth centuries and largely dismisses that too. Instead he suggests that while there was clearly an Anglo Saxon migration into Britain it is more likely to have happened over several centuries, including while the Romans were knocking about the place. The appearance of the Anglo Saxon kingdoms as they stand in around the eighth century may well bear more similarity to the better known development of kingdoms in France following the decline of Rome. He suggests that, rather than a mass invasion like the Vikings, the appearance of the Anglo Saxon kingdoms in Britain may be in part down to the changing of group identities as 'Roman' declined as a claim to status. Very interesting.

Full list so far:

1. The Return of the Discontinued Man by Mark Hodder
2. The Invisible Library by Genevieve Cogman
3. The Masked City by Genevieve Cogman
4. The Inner Guide Meditation by Edwin C. Steinbrecher
5. Moriarty by Anthony Horowitz
6. Worlds of Arthur by Guy Halsall