50 Book Challenge 2016 Part Two

Well clearly I'm in the minority on here for actually liking Wolf Hall . I shall be following it up shortly when I read Bring Up The Bodies. No doubt there will be hate comments about that too, so I shall not review it, but merely add it to my list and move on.

I gave up on Wolf Hall last year, the writing style and grammar really grated on me. Given that I already knew how the story ended, I didn't see the point in torturing myself to read to the end!

Sorry I don't mean to put people off. Some readers obviously got along much better with Wolf Hall than I did. I usually have no problem with unusual grammar & quite enjoyed Shakespeare, for example, but Wolf Hall nearly broke my literal mind with its gimmicky liberties with grammar and deliberate misuse of punctuation. Why? It certainly didn't add anything to the story.

Hmm. I think Wolf Hall will be shuffled further down my pile of unread books.

Sorry Quog but I had a chuckle at "Wolf Hall. It's a slow literary journey"

An example from the singular "literary" marvel that Wolf Hall was:

Finally, he thinks, I must end this: can it be true, he wonders, that as a subject should, I really love my king?

Another:

Christophe rides beside him and pesters him: you have said you will tell me who is Cicero and who is Reginald Pole.
'Cicero was a Roman'
'A general?'

Literary? I would have settled for correct grammar and punctuation!

12. Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell

Just popping on to say I've finished it, will post review later. Have had an emotionally fraught week and can't untangle my feelings about the book from how I'm feeling generally. Though suspect that's what David Mitchell wanted to happen, the crafty bastard.

BlueEyeshadow I've always struggled with Dickens. A Christmas Carol is the only one I've ever finished. Hope you enjoy Bleak House

Just finished Finding Audrey by Sophie Kinsella. Technically a YA read but I find Kinsella's writing excellent and so easy with a great flow. Might tackle Gone with the Wind next.

I've started reading Bleak House, inspired by Dickensian. Never been particularly keen on Dickens, but this is OK so far. Not exactly light going though, so may need something else at the same time.

15 Europe in Autumn by Dave Hutchinson. This starts as a fairly conventional nearish-future thriller, the sort where the main character gets sucked into events entirely out of their control and where s/he never really understands what is going on. I enjoyed this part a lot, it's not particularly fast moving, but the main character is appealing and I really liked the setting (a thoroughly Balkanised Europe where borders have come back into fashion with a vengeance). It's also not overly violent, or at least not graphically so.

I'm not sure whether I'm so convinced about the way it all pans out - but I'm definitely going to buy the next book in the series and read it soon, which I guess is a vote of confidence.

Thanks for the recommendation Daphne,I'll look that one up. First I'm quickly going through the Motel Life by Willy Vlautin. Of mice and men, but set in present day -late 20th century.

Struggling to fit in enough books at the moment! Have managed two but they were nice easy reads
1. The Secrets Women Keep - Fanny Blake
Quite enjoyed this, but not something I'll remember much about later on, so a bit forgettable.
2. The Crossing - Michael Connelly
I LOVE Michael Connelly's books, I devour them. Another Bosch but also featuring the Micky Haller/Lincoln Lawyer character. I do prefer the Lincoln Lawyer books as I love a courtroom novel, but this was still a good solid Bosch novel and as much of a page turner as Connelly's other books. Loved it.

Just jumping in to say 'Hi' so I can remember where I've read up to. I have three going at the moment, hence the fact I haven't finished anything yet!

Loving Lord Peter W still - it's hilarious. I had to suck my scarf this morning to avoid snorting on the bus.

Stitches, from what you've said, I suspect you wouldn't enjoy Wolf Hall. It's a slow literary journey which I just enjoyed immersing myself in. If you didn't enjoy the tv adaptation and were bored by it then it isn't going to be your book of the year! But you never know ....

Stitches- I also found the first episode of WH hard-going, nearly gave up and took weeks to return to it (thank you BBC iPlayer!). Really glad I persisted with it,it warms up rapidly after all the slow scene-setting snd you get drawn in. As for the book? No idea, I'm afraid, also on my to read pile and read mixed reviews. I gave up on her Every Day is Mother's Day found it rather a horrible read, to be honest, nothing likeable about the characters, the storyline or her thinking on this one. Plus mother-daughter dynamics never a pleasure for me to read about. Hoping WH rather different!

I've got my numbering wrong. Wolf Hall is book 13, not 12.

Book 11 In a Dark Dark wood by Ruth Ware. I got sent this by mumsnet as a giveaway. A woman gets invited to the hen night , actually weekend, of an old school friend that she hasn't seen in 10 years. She is really reluctant to go but does, why don't people listen to their instincts. It ends badly . However the journey is fun, some of the descriptions are good particularly of the house, the whole story has a palpable sense of menace. It's not great literature and despite what the jacket says it probably isn't the thriller of the year. It's great fun though, Cote you would hate it it's a first novel by a woman

So, Wolf Hall.... DH bought me this last year, along with Bring Up The Bodies. I thought DH knows me well enough to know that my tastes run more towards SF/fantasy than historical fiction, but he claimed that he wanted to get me a book he knew I wouldn't have read.

I haven't started it yet. I tried watching the TV adaptation but barely made it halfway through the first episode before losing interest and giving up on that.

Is the book more interesting than the TV adaptation, and worth trying? Bearing in mind that I already know the basics about the fates of the main characters.

"By the hairy balls of Christ"

12. Wolf Hall by Hilary Mantel. No need to review it - the whole world knows what this is about! It was a re-read for me and I'm just going to say that I loved it even more this time. The audio book was brilliant. Even if you don't like it, you could still pick up some inventive swearing - "By the hairy balls of Christ" anyone? :o

Mountains of the Mind is not going well. I think it just slipped into a glacier and may not make an appearance for a while.

1. The lamp of the wicked by Phil Rickman. Number four? Five? in his Merrily Watkins series, which I am gradually reading sort of in order, give or take. This was the weakest one I've read, in my opinion - they are fairly silly anyway and the plot of this one revolved vaguely around Fred West and was all very contrived.

I have just finished 'The Truth About the Harry Quebert Affair' by Joel Dicker. Fabulous whodunnit full of unexpected twists and turns but not your usual crime/thriller. It just keeps on delivering right to the very end.

From the Telegraph review - 'The book’s central plot concerns a murder investigation in New Hampshire, reopened 33 years after the events in question when two bodies are dug up in someone’s backyard. That backyard happens to belong to Harry Quebert, a much-loved novelist in his sixties who is still famous for a single book. Inevitably, the locals in the town of Aurora turn against him, and he is arrested. The only person who retains his faith in him is Quebert’s former student, the starry young novelist Marcus Goldman, now crippled with writer’s block. Goldman sets out to solve the mystery, and the result becomes his second book.

It’s like Twin Peaks meets Atonement meets In Cold Blood, with a bromance between literary jocks and some suspected paedophilia thrown in. It’s about fame and infamy, writing and love, theft and imposture; about murder, madness, and religious zealotry. It’s about guilt: not just in the criminal sense, but as an emotion that can dog you for life. It is breathtakingly plotted. But the fiendishness of the book’s construction is not merely mathematical; it relies on the built-in ambivalence of each character, or there wouldn’t be enough left to withhold for so long. The case looks to be solved several times, yet 100 pages before the end (of a 700-page total), just when all loose ends appear to have been tied, a sudden spinning ambiguity erupts in the clues. And we’re still a good couple of resolutions away from the truth.

If the 4 quartets of Earthsea are separate books, then I can update my list as:

17. A Wizard of Earthsea
18. The Tombs of Atuan
19. The Farthest Shore, all by Ursula K Le Guin.

The Farthest Shore I didn't think was as good as The Tombs of Atuan, but better than A Wizard of Earthsea. I found it a lot easier to read because of the interaction between Arren and Ged - it's a lot more interesting to read a very long sea-chase when there are 2 people talking to each other than when there is one man alone in a boat! But the format of the sea-chase was very similar in both books. However, the raft people and the dragons made the big difference for me (I have a weakness for dragons) and the ending was much stronger. Bit reminiscent of the end of Return of the King, but hey, it's hard to write fantasy that doesn't have echoes of Tolkein somewhere, and it in no way felt derivative.

I'm now onto Tehanu, which I have high hopes for because it says on the Wikipedia page that Le Guin came back to Earthsea in 1990 after getting involved with feminism in the 70s and 80s (the earlier books were written in the early 70s) and she realised that she didn't have to write fantasy like she thought a man would.

I'm another one that likes Rivers of London, but again, for the sequels more than the first one. I am not at all fussed by the Rivers storyline, but I do like Lesley, Nightingale and the Folly. The Rivers are an annoying sideline, so far as I'm concerned (apart from Beverley who has developed into an actual character).

Tbh, I can't follow Le Carre's Cold War stuff - I literally can't follow what's happening. But The Constant Gardener isn't trashy at all. I was on the edge of the world he describes for a while and it rings true to me. It was published in 2001 and was set in the (then) current day - probably doesn't qualify as historical!

Thanks Cote for recommendation, read the book about Ebola, a great page turner and no 16 What I talk about when I talk about running Haruki Murakami. My first Murakami book, want to read more of his now. This is part memoir, about running a jazz bar and becoming a novelist and keeping fit by running. I immensely enjoyed this book, I keep going back to it and rereading sections.