50 Book Challenge 2016 Part Three

Well done Natasha and Looking! So impressed. W&P still waiting untouched on my kindle...

Muskey so glad you are enjoying The Saxon Stories too. I love Bernard Cornwell's books.

I agree that Alfred is a very unpleasant character; at least Uhtred openly admits his faults whereas Alfred justifies all his with religion. However, we never 'hear' his thoughts, so we can't really know.

I have been picking all the books up in charity shops and at bootsales and have the whole series now

15. Danny The Champion Of The World - Roald Dahl

Read to DS2 as his bedtime story over a couple of weeks but worthy of inclusion here as it's such a tremendous story. I'm sure you've all read it but just in case you haven't, it's about Danny and his father's attempt to poach all Mr Victor Hazell's pheasants and a tremendously warm and funny story.

Talking of psychological labelling, have just finished Skeleton Cupboard by Tanya Byron, think it's already been reviewed on here.

I thought it mostly very insightful, occasionally a little righteous but really took note of her epilogue, rather a warning on how we live as a society, how mental health for each of us is on a spectrum, not just for those with a disagnosis; how we deal with our challenges thanks to our personal support networks or "by finding someone to project our issues on to" (or words to that effect) or by presenting as mentally ill. She also highlights the sad fact that more children than ever are diagnosed with MH issues and suggests this is something we as a society need to deal with. Hear, hear and

32. Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban JK Rowling. Another reread.

21. The Three Body Problem by Cixin Liu

Plenty of others have reviewed this. I found it took a little while to 'settle in' to the writing style, but once I did, I enjoyed it a great deal. I found some bits more plausible than others, but will definitely be looking out for the sequel.

Next I'm going to tackle How To Be Both - will see if I manage more than 20 pages . . .

Yes - I have an uncle who may be on the spectrum. Bit like Sheldon in TBBT, really - very intelligent but terrible with people. My grandparents are really worried about how he will cope when they die, and they are now in their late 70s (he is early 50s). Mum has been told she will have to look after him, but it will be difficult because they live 4 hours apart. He can live alone but DGma looks after him a lot - cleans his house etc, cooks him meals. He'd feed himself left to his own devices but I don't think he would clean. He also suffers from depression and has been suicidal on occasion. He has never been diagnosed with anything and probably never will be. It's hard to know what to do.

Cote
Am spectacularly pleased to see that you enjoyed Dissolution. Do please read the second and meet the wonder that is Jack Barak.

Oh please don't worry tooimmature I'm fine, I thought it sounded an intriguing book; the weighing up of the benefits of taking the pressure off in the short term against the longer term benefits of staying 'on track' has been on my mind recently, and I think I'd find it interesting. The flip side of my interest however is that I don't think I'm in the right place to actually read it, even though it is obviously a (much) more extreme exploration of those ideas than anything affecting me ifyswim.

The 'labelling' thing is interesting as it's only relatively recently that diagnosis has been an option for some issues; there must be many adults with SNs that are in limbo in that respect and misunderstood. There is a much greater understanding now of children with SENs (with a way still to go) but I don't know if that has yet translated into an awareness of, and provision for, the difficulties they will continue to face as adults (I mean by society, not that parents aren't aware)

Satsuki, I'm sorry it hit a nerve. I think if I explain the story more it might help. I came to the conclusion that the approach isn't necessarily wrong, but that the parents in this case didn't put appropriate safeguards in place when they died. Basically, when the mother is dying, she gets a very loosely connected friend of the family to take Freddy into his house-painting business - this friend turns out to be an irresponsible stoner type who just ups and abandons Freddy one day (but continues to take the money from the mother's estate!) Ava, the sister, doesn't offer to take/oversee Freddy and at the time of the crime hasn't seen him for 2 years. I think free schooling and refusing to label him isn't the cause of the harm, if Ava had been more involved, or, if Ava hadn't existed, some other, better-known and more responsible adult had had some oversight of Freddy, his upbringing would have been irrelevant. The mother arranges for Dave the stoner to take Freddy based on very little acquaintance with him - I don't think many parents leaving a child with additional needs would do that. I would like to think that many adult siblings wouldn't do that either, knowing their sibling's situation (although I do sympathise with Ava - I think the lack of a diagnosis/any clear idea of what's wrong/any discussion at all of the situation allows her to bury her head in the sand, at least to some extent, and the mother never asks her to look after Freddy either - I don't think she would have refused, had she been asked. It's more presented as a fait-accompli by the mother that Dave will look after Freddy. I suppose it's a continuation of the mindset that children should not be made to do things - ie, she doesn't want to make Ava look after him). I know it is very hard to decide what to do - whether to burden a sibling/other relative or not, or whether to try and push for a diagnosis so the child can access help more easily, because the benefits system etc is set up to need a diagnosis. I don't know what safeguards there are for adults with additional needs when their parents die or what you have to do to ensure your child qualifies for whatever help may exist (if there is any at all). I hope I'm not making things worse by rabbiting on!

Should clarify, tooimmature, the home/free schooling and labelling bit struck a chord with me, not the actual crime

bigbadbarry my dh and I were talking about how fed up we were with prostitution/rape/sexual assault as a shock plot device becoming more prevalent in books in general. I don't read modern crime novels, but it's everywhere even in 'literary' books, always luridly done and often without a real need for it in the story.

tooextraimmaturecheddar that book has hit a nerve with me as it is focused on something I've been reflecting on a quite a bit in rl lately. I don't know if I dare read it in my situation at the moment though!

I have not even started w&p and all of you have finished it! I just haven't had the space for something so long and complex in my head at the moment, but I am determined to get on it at some point.

11. Pretty girls by Karin Slaughter (bit of light relief from war and peace). I think I'm done with Karin Slaughter books now - I don't mind grisly up to a point but the trouble with these sorts of authors is that they have to keep on upping the shock factor until they just get unbearable. I am getting much less tolerant for psychopathic killers who kill and rape in ever more inventive ways, purely to leave clues for the investigators. I am getting much much less tolerant for raped and murdered women as a shock plot device. Entertainment, not so much. That said, it was a proper exciting page-turner and I read all 550 pages in 24 hours! What my friend calls a stand-by-the-kettle read.

Yay for Looking and Natasha for finishing War and Peace! I shall go back to the W&P discussion thread and await responses with interest.

26. No Book But The World, Leah Hager Cohen. This was so sad. So so so sad! It's about a family who brought their kids up in a sort of free discipline way - the father used to run a 'free school' and he doesn't believe in teaching children, he thinks they should learn of their own accord and should only do what they want to, and should express their feelings however they want. His daughter is frantic to conform and she narrates the story, but it's really about the son, who has some form of unspecified special needs, maybe a type of autism, maybe not. The parents refuse to have him tested or labelled, and he doesn't attend school but does learn to read (with difficulty) and passes his driving test, for example. The book opens when he is arrested in connection with the death of a 12 year-old boy. He is unable to tell anyone what happened and his sister and lawyer gradually piece it together, so you spend a lot of the book wondering whether he actually did something to the boy and if so, was it an accident or not, or whether the boy got hurt and Freddy just didn't realise he needed help, or something. A lot of it has to do with the concept of personal responsibility/agency, and social conformity. The free school environment in the woods sounds idyllic and much better for Freddy than forcing him to attend normal school, but then once his parents have died he is basically abandoned to the world and he's not equipped for it, and his lack of a label means that his sister can't even describe his issues to the lawyer - she struggles to define him and it feels like a betrayal of her parents to even try. I was so wrapped up in this book - it was beautifully written and I was agonising over Freddy - I stopped to try and tidy up and I couldn't stop thinking about him. It just felt like he had been utterly let down by everyone at every stage, but his parents had acted with the best of intentions and in some ways what they had done for him had been the right thing! It was really powerful.

I feel like putting out the bunting and setting off fireworks as I've actually finished War and Peace. It took very much longer than I thought it would - partly because I've had two separate weeks when I was ill but also because it just isn't an easy read. That isn't to say I didn't enjoy it because I did but it is challenging in places and can't be skimmed.

The second epilogue is definitely a slog and after two or three sentences my mind would wander so, although I have actually read all the words, I'm a bit hazy about the content. It is just, plainly and simply, tedious beyond belief and to my mind, unnecessary. But Tolstoy is a great writer and who am I to criticise?

I retain my reservations about the translation (Pevear and Volokhonsky). When I've arranged my thoughts I will try to explain some of my niggles on the W&P thread.

All in all, I'm pleased to be finished and very glad to have read it all the way through this time - previous attempts have always involved missing out huge chunks. And now I can get on with other (shorter!) books on my TR pile.

1. Life, Death and Vanilla Slices - Jenny Éclair

1. A Most Desirable Marriage - Hilary Boyd

I've read 8 books so far.

Latest being Safe House by Chris Ewan which I got cheap on Kindle. Quite enjoyable nonsense.

I'm also struggling my way through Spill Simmer Falter Wither.

15. A Tale for the Time Being Ruth Ozeki

A novelist, Ruth(!), living in Canada comes across a packet on the beach, apparently flotsam from the Japanese Tsunami. It contains the diary of a 16 year old girl, Nao, an old watch, a collection of letters and a journal written in French. The novel then proceeds in sections as the reader switches back and forth between Nao and Ruth.

This was, for the most part, enjoyable and engaging, and is easy to get into. I was worried at first that the 'teenage' voice would become annoying, but Nao's story is the most compelling of the two narratives, and I think Ozeki does her point of view well, and her story is very affecting. I did feel it lost it a bit towards the end, as it went into quite a longwinded but superficial digression into quantum mechanics which I felt would have remained better as an allusion informing the novel rather than forming such a large part of its 'reasoning'. It has a lot in it; culture clashes, WWII, the sex industry, art, the environment, Zen Buddhism, 9/11, feminism, suicide, earthquakes, the internet, the nature of time, much of it interesting and thoughtful, but it left me feeling that maybe it didn't quite pull it all together. Or rather, it did, but stretched itself too far towards the end.

I'm now reading Strange Weather in Tokyo and The Moving Toyshop, a mystery, on the Kindle, which is very funny and enjoyable so far, quarter of the way through.

Going to catch up on thread now.

18. Darkening Hour bought on a whim after narrator (Adjoa Andoh) was highly recommended on audiobook thread..

It was very gripping, easy to read, good detail of the characters, thought provoking about their motivations. Interesting case of modern day slavery in the UK and the fine line between this and live in help, at times.
But AA as narrator spoilt it at times for me with rather OTT accent. Overall worth an easy read.

Stokey yes I do like Arturo Perez Reverte - my favourite was the one set in Seville, with the murder mystery surrounding an ancient church, the disgraced Vatican guy, and the interludes with the comedy lowlife folk.

Warning - lowbrow celebrity twaddle alert...

13. All Balls and Glitter by Craig Revel Horwood Should have been a lot of fun, but unfortunately whoever he paid to write it seems to have attended the Take A Break school of ghostwriting, and managed to make the style excitable (but not exciting) and plodding at the same time. His own voice doesn't come through. Very linear descriptive, then I moved here, then I worked on this project...then I got married to a woman... what!... but let's completely gloss over that. He gives only a superficial glimpse into how the events described shaped him, what his feelings were about them, so overall a bit disappointing.

12. Dissolution by C. S. Sansom

I really enjoyed this story of a Commissioner for Thomas Cromwell investigating a murder at the Scarnsea monastery during the time of Dissolution of the Monasteries. It is a period I knew practically nothing about, having received the sum total of my knowledge on the subject from the film The Other Boleyn Girl, and I loved the book not only for the murder mystery but also for the historical insight.

I am happy to see that it has quite a few sequels, too

11. Limitless (The Dark Fields) by Alan Glynn

This is the book that the film Limitless with Bradley Cooper was based on, and it is pretty good. The story is about a struggling, burnt-out, wannabe author who receives a pill from his ex-BIL who says it will help him get things done. It turns out to be much more than that, and his life changes immediately.

This was a good read, although I like the ending of the film much better.

I still haven't managed to read anything since Room although I am a practically no way little way through two books by Mario Vargas Llosa. Hopefully I will be back this side of Easter having finished something.