50 Book Challenge 2016 Part Three

8 Rachel's Holiday By Marian Keyes

Rachel is the middle of the Ealshi girls and descends into drug addiction while working in New York. she is brought back and placed in rehab in Ireland. I love Marian Keyes for my chick lit fix. I first read this when it originally came out so this again is a re-read, however since I last read I worked as an admin for the substance misuse team in a prison so read it with fresh eyes, and actually having lived a few years between first reading it and now some parts did touch a nerve about how Rachel did lead her life.

Next is The Night Manager, I know it starts in Sunday by I do like a Le Care book.

Museum I also love Edward and have put the second book on my to read list.

*reader

Quogwinkle Thanks, will try reeder iq too

tumbletumble, I also absolutely loved Flight Behaviour, it's one of my very few 5 star rated reads. Like you, I wasn't sure how the raw material was going to become something really special ... and then it did. I do intend to try more of Barbara Kingsolver's works, although I couldn't get into The Lacuna at first try.

I also really loved The Long Road to the Deep North and This Little Life, both in my 5 star rating, but realise just how marmite reads they are! But then life would be boring if we were all the same, or all liked the same stuff

I've been having to read lots of raw material in order to write my employer's Corporate Social Policy Sadly, none of it has come in book form, so it doesn't even help my count ...

Talking of price drops, The Summer Book by Tove Jansson is 99p on kindle daily deals today.

11. Edward Adrift by Craig Lancaster the sequel to 600 Hours of Edward, and it was lovely to be back with him. Edward has Aspergers and OCD, and by the end of book one things were looking up for him. We join him three years later to discover some things haven't turned out as expected. This covers a three week period that takes him further out of his comfort zone than he's ever been. Narrated in the first person with humour, insight and quirkiness, the author has left the door open for a third Edward book. I hope so - I love Edward!

12. The Spanish Game by Charles Cumming Spy thriller set in Madrid in 2003 - so post 9/11 but pre Atocha bombings. It was an interesting snapshot of what the main political concerns and preoccupations were in Spain and wider, barely more than a decade ago. Pacy writing, good plot, great depiction of Madrid / Spain, but the final twist was a twist too far for me - without giving too much away, I hate it when spies stop trying to fix the world and just spy on other spies - pointless. The main character is interesting but I felt little sympathy for him. Overall a good read.

Moosey - I use Bookbub but prefer Daily Cheapreads. And, of course, ereader iq, which is the most comprehensive catalogue of book price drops.

28. The Damned by Andrew Pyper. I really didn't like this. A man is haunted by his twin sister who died when she was 16. It descends into horror nonsense, really not my thing.

I'm in the middle of The Moonstone by Wilkie Collins and loving it.

I popped on the thread to see if anyone of you use www.bookbub.com? It lists free and bargain bestseller ebooks. You add your email, select your favourite genres and authors, then it lists recommended ebooks.

TooExtra - I felt the same way, I enjoyed the first of the Mistborn books, but wasn't at all as impressed by the second.

23. The Well of Ascension, Brandon Sanderson. Book 2 of the Mistborn series. Vin and Elend struggle to save the city while simultaneously being manipulated by a mysterious being. Patchy. Some of it dragged and it didn't grab me as much as the first one did - felt like a chore at times.

Book 10 - the hypnotist's love story by lianne moriarty - yes it is basically chick lit but good chick lit, with a bit of a twist. The story line is a bit silly in places and the characters all a bit similar but she has a very good eye for relationships and social interaction and can be very funny. I liked the main character Ellen a lot. A very light read, a 'palate cleanser'!

Book 7 The Girl on the Train by Paula Hawkins

Enjoyed this one. Particularly impressed with the three very distinct voices of the three first person narrators.

Book 8 Save the Cat by Blake Snyder

Have been meaning to read this seminal screenwriting book for a long time. Very entertaining!

#9 Purity: A Novel by Jonathan Franzen

I mostly read non-fiction, and this foray into fiction reminded me why I have a hard time with novels. Purity is a Cinderella story, and it's also story about a cult leader; it's a story about narcissistic people who use other people. Only one of the three intersecting storylines is interesting. The book is overambitious, some of the characters are totally implausible. Franzen is really skilled at describing everyday miscommunications, people who bicker at each other. I cannot fathom why he decided to write a novel that features Wikileaks, nuclear weapons and billionaires. It's like using watercolors to paint the frescoes of Sistine Chapel. Parts of the book are really well-written and thought-provoking, but a lot feels like a first draft. Cannot recommend this at all.

That's a blast from the past sadik, I used to love the Pullein-Thompson pony books. Will be interested to see your review.

Next up I've got Fair Girls and Grey Horses by the Pullein-Thompson sisters. Saw this mentioned somewhere on MN (I think) and greatly looking forwards to reading it :)

19 Lean In by Sheryl Sandberg.
Like a pp, I was much more impressed by this than I had expected to be. I thought she did a good job of not victim blaming, and acknowledging the structural inequities that women are dealing with, while giving some useful thoughts on ways to deal with them at a personal level. Obviously - again as she acknowledges - it's mainly relevant to a fairly small segment of educated middle class women, but that's not intrinsically a bad thing. I've passed it to DD to read - having opted out of the rat race myself years ago and run away to be a hippy

Just finished Little Beach Street Bakery by Jenny Colgan. A quick and easy read. Pretty 30-something girl, needs a new start, moves to Cornwall, finds rundown house on the harbour with incredible sea views, peppercorn rent (yeah right!), sets up bakery, finds love etc etc. Fine if you like something light and romantic, baking bread, bees and Cornwall. A bit too chic-lit for me.

Now on (5) The Target - David Baldacci

I've gone on another diversion.. I was meant to start Matt Haig's The Humans but ended up reading Childhood's End by Arthur C Clarke in the bath - at least they're both alien related, albeit from different perspectives! I thought it would be a bit dated and rubbish, and it is very dated but also a very interesting read and pretty engaging considering it's 60 year old sci fi. Only a few chapters in but interested to see where it goes. Here's the blurb:

"Spaceships have suddenly appeared in the skies above every city on the planet. Inside is an intellectually, technologically, and militarily superior alien race known as the Overlords. At first, their demands seem benevolent: unify Earth, eliminate poverty, end war. But at what cost? To those who resist, it’s clear that the Overlords have an agenda of their own. Has their arrival marked the end of humankind . . . or the beginning?"

Finished so far: (and I'm going to steal a pp's idea of highlighting my favourites )

1. The City and the City - China Mieville
2. The Guest Cat - Takashi Hiraide
3. Lost in a Good Book - Jasper Fforde
4. John Dies at the End - David Wong

Just marking place in new thread, will pop back later!

Saw Flight Behaviour on Mil's bookshelf the other day might ask to borrow it now having seen your review tumble. I quite enjoyed Poisonwood.

I'm on top of a mountain with very limited internet access but just wanted to pop in to thank whoever recommended Dissolution when it was Kindle Deal of the Day. I'm reading it now and really enjoying it

Book 21 Dead Street by Micky Spillane
A retired cop finds out that the girl he loved, who he thought had died 20 years ago, is still alive, having been blinded and lost all of her memories in the attack that he thought had killed her - and she's still in danger. Can he save her, and will she remember him? Have never read a Spillane before and would definitely read another based on this sweet little hard boiler. It’s modern (post 911) and was one of the last he wrote. It’s actually more a love story than a straight cut crime novel, and I really enjoyed it.

10. The End of Your Life Book Club by Will Schwalbe. This was mentioned by more than one poster on last year's thread. The author's mother has been diagnosed with cancer. He takes her to chemo treatments, and while they're waiting they discuss books they have read (having agreed to read the same books beforehand) - a book club of two. There's a lot about their relationship and how they and the rest of the family are dealing with the diagnosis as well as the actual books they discuss, which gives it more human interest than some similar 'books about books'. I enjoyed it, and found it didn't matter whether or not you had read the books yourself (there were several I'd never even heard of). It's a sincere and moving account, although I did find it a little bit preachy at times.

11. Flight Behaviour by Barbara Kingsolver. I read The Poisonwood Bible two years ago and it was definitely one of my top five books in that year. For a while, I thought this was an also-ran and I'd be writing a good-but-not-as-good-as review. Mainly because I couldn't see how a novel about a farming family in rural Tennessee in the early 21st century could have anything like the scope and complexity of one set in the Congo in the 1960s with a missionary family as the protagonists. But gradually I realised that the incredible skill of this author is how she tackles big issues (religion, politics and imperialism in one; the environment and social issues around the education / poverty divide in the other) and brings them to life by setting them into the context of a family that the reader grows to care about. An amazing book.

15. Stonehenge by Mike Parker Pearson

An account of the Stonehenge Riverside Project, which spent seven years from about 2004 conducting archaeological digs in and around Stonehenge to test a theory based on Pearson's that the neolithic peoples who built Stonehenge and the surrounding monuments saw it as a place for the dead. They found the remains of a neolithic village at Durrington Walls henge, which they believe to be where the crowds of people required to build the monuments lived in the periods around the summer and winter solstices, discovered the remains of what they call Bluestonehenge and the end of the processional avenue on the banks of the Avon, and were able to create a new chronology for the development of the sacred landscape over the centuries. Fascinating read.

My list for the year so far:

1. The Return of the Discontinued Man - Mark Hodder
2. The Invisible Library - Genevieve Cogman
3. The Masked City - Genevieve Cogman
4. The Inner Guide Meditation - Edwin C. Steinbrecher
5. Moriarty - Anthony Horowitz
6. Worlds of Arthur - Guy Halsall
7. Celtic Tree Magic - Danu Forest
8. Lawless and the Devil of Euston Square - William Sutton
9. Where Witchcraft Lives - Doreen Valiente

Thanks Quog, that sounds very interesting and I've added to my wish list.