50 Book Challenge 2016 Part Two

You can listen to audiobooks directly from the Kindle app on iPhone. Click on the book, then read or listen (there is a headphone icon you can click).

Audible app, though quite expensive seems only option amd enables me to carve out time for books I wouldn't otherwise have. Also lots of abridged stuff for free via BbC iplayer radio- Vanity Fair, The Beach are some recent examples. Stephen Fry narrates VF very well, I thought, though less fond of some of thr characters especially Becky Sharpe.

Just signing into the new thread.

Can I ask other posters about their audio books? Is there an app you can download for free / cheaply? Or is there a subscription platform anyone could recommend?

I get the occasional audio book from the library but that means I can only listen to it when near a CD player getting increasingly old fashioned!!

book 5 Summer of blood is a book I started reading in 2015. It was a bit dull compared to the other Dan Jones book so I'd thought id have some fun with the book challenge but now it's time to finish this.

The Murakami is a slim volume as well, which helps with the numbers on a challenge thread. I quite fancy reading it again, and I might check out Born to Run.

at canyouforgiveher's fried library book.

Hoping to get my reading mojo back this weekend

Just marking my place on the new thread

canyouuforgive I can sympathise too. I had a letter on Monday reminding me to return some books I borrowed last October. I thought I already had. I have no idea where they are.

Canyouforgive - Will the library forgive you? :o I've had one or two disasters with library books in the past too.

Wow - thread 2 already! Welcome to all newcomers :)

I'm ploughing on with Disclaimer by Renee Knight. Nearly finished (heading for the disappointing reads 2016 shelf). And I've been listening to The Time Traveller's Guide to Medieval England by Ian Mortimer on audio book. This has been a very enjoyable and interesting listen so far. An innovative take on the history book that seems almost like a novel, and the author has a good sense of humour.

Cote and everyone else who has mentioned it, I'm loving born to run and am going to read the Murakami after God in Ruins. Will be good for my non-fiction list too!

1. The Third Wife by Lisa Jewell

copied this from previous thread and agree with the poster's review. But have to tell you-I set this book on fire! And it was a library book too. Reading it while cooking dinner and left it on the stove (the way you do) and the ring was on. I went in to chat to my daughters and came in to find the book in flames! I put it under the tap, read the rest of it, and had to pay the library to replace it.

Thanks for the new thread.

1. How to be Brave by Louise Beech I can't praise this highly enough. I loved it. A first novel, and it feels like it, but in such an honest fresh way. A mother and 9 year old daughter come to terms with the daughter's diagnosis of diabetes. They have some help from the past, in the form of the mother's grandfather, whose story of survival at sea gradually unfolds and carries them through their own changed circumstances, and becomes a powerful story within the story. The mother daughter relationship and dialogue is beautifully done; I think it's often hard to portray a child realistically as one of the main characters in an adult novel, but, having a similar aged child, she seemed pretty real to me. I cried, more than once, in public, mainly at the grandfather's story, and I am normally a cynical, stony faced old cow.

I listened on audible, and the narration was very good. My audible books take an age, because I usually just listen on my commute, which isn't all that long and I only work 4 days a week, plus factor in holidays, days I have to catch up on emails, want to listen to music instead, or bump into a colleague and chat...one book can take me weeks!

Born To Run by Christopher McDougall is even better. It is the incredibly entertaining and curiously informative book about the author's trip to Mexican canyons, to meet and run with the Tarahumara tribe, whose people seem to have the secret of extreme endurance. He puts together a very convincing case of how we are running animals (rather than walking animals like pigs and chimps, for example), drawing on evidence from human anatomy and anthropology. Fascinating book!

Shiny new thread Following on from the previous thread:

Satsumi: I read What I Talk About When I Talk About Running by Haruki Murakami and loved it. That was also back when I ran quite a bit. It was an unusual autobiography and a great insight into the extreme mindset of ultramarathon running (+120km in a race, about three times the length of a regular marathon).

#2 The Truth About The Harry Quebert Affair Well, this has to be one of the worst books I have read in a very long time. Flimsy, cliched writing, paper thin characters and a repetitive, irritating structure. The story, ironically, is told from the pov of a bestselling writer. Waste of a good Christmas book voucher. I got so fed up with it I really just did a skim read of the last third of the book. Thoroughly disappointed. My next book was going to be The Miniaturist but that will be no 4 now as I have to read Enduring Love for work. I expect great things from the masterly McKewan and I can't wait to get stuck in. I've read most of his other stuff but somehow never got to this modern classic. I'm sure it won't take long to read.

Thread 2 already.

No 3 Howards End - E. M. Forster. I've never read any Forster before and always thought it would be quite dry but in fact this was the opposite. Took me by surprise in fact although I did guess the outcome.

On book two, I have some catching up to do :)

Thanks for the new thread! Can't quite believe I'm on book 6 already. I doubt I'll keep up the momentum but enjoying it while it lasts!

Thanks for the second thread Southeast. Into the last 50 pages of book 6, Austerity Britain, will probably finish on tomorrow's commute...