50 Book Challenge 2016 Part Three

I've been thinking of re-reading Hitchhikers this year too, Remus. I got them all on Kindle for DH last year who'd never read them. He enjoyed them, found couple in the middle of 'trilogy' bit samey though iirc.

I read a thread on here recently where people were posting favourite quotes and it made me think how good it was but that I'd probably forgotten most of it.

29 The Dark Forest by Cixin Liu. The sequel to the Three Body Problem.

Enjoyable sci-fi, though I found it a little more predictable than the first book. Still well worth reading, though, and I'll be interested to see what happens in the next book.

A different translator to the first one, DD has also read them, and didn't like the style of this translator anywhere near as much. I didn't feel so strongly, but I do think that it came out as a more 'conventional' read, and I wonder if it could be because this translator has smoothed over some of the differences between English and Chinese styles of writing.

Loving the Brief History comments, Cote. Have just read them to dp, who maintains that he wants to read it.

A friend has just given me all of the Hitch-hikers' Guide books to re-read. I haven't read them since about 1984 or so - will I be captivated or disappointed, do people think?

Oh no, Cote - we're definitely just not going to agree on this one! It's a polariser, that's for sure. But thanks for defending your opinion, it always feels oddly healthy to have a strenuous disagreement about a book.

What's your favourite book?

wilting - No, I haven't bought Morning Star yet. Seveneves is going very nicely, though. I might have to re-evaluate my policy of waiting until books I really want to read fall under £5.

Thanks Stitches. I need to read the thread more carefully before posting

Cote - the edible underwear is mentioned in TooExtraImmatureCheddar's review of For a Few Demons More by Kim Harrison earlier today.

Apparently one character gives this to his girlfriend (I assume she's his girlfriend anyway) as a birthday present.

"your repeated assertions that you disliked the characters because they weren't very bright. Trying to think what your reasoning must be"

I haven't said a single thing about disliking characters. In fact (not that I expect you to remember this) I have said many times on book threads that I don't have to like characters to enjoy a book, and expressed surprise that others apparently need to see likeable characters in the books they read. See here, here, and here, for example.

I disliked the book, and that was partly because it was mostly focused on the very limited thoughts of uneducated dumbos with a heavy coke habit. That could have been OK if the book was intelligent. It wasn't. Whatever it wanted to say was said in the first 50-100 pages and the rest was a lot of rambling.

Another reason I disliked the book was that there wasn't much of a plot and all these characters kept talking about the same (very few) events.

I thought Papa Lo was an interesting character. Maybe a book as Papa Lo as the narrator would have been a better one.

"Edible underwear"? What have I missed?

wilting It's because E-books have to pay VAT whereas printed books don't so i guess they don't reduce them as still want to make same amount of profit? i agree with you, i never spend more than a $5 on an e-book.

Yeah, dying to read that too cote

Has anyone cracked and bought Morning Star ?

How they can justify £9+ for kindle books is beyond me

I think I would find it hard to fake enthusiasm if DH bought me an edible leotard for my birthday.

Edible underwear. I had to look up underwear teddies as well because my idea of sexy underwear is clearly underdeveloped, and they're like lacy leotards/bodies/playsuits. I always thought they were babydoll nighties but now I am better informed - and the thought of someone trying to eat a whole leotard off me is the least sexy thing I can imagine.

Welp, no one can change your taste, Cote! I just didn't think "Brief" was quite as inexplicable/perverse a choice of title as you suggested it was. (Also: am fascinated by your repeated assertions that you disliked the characters because they weren't very bright. Trying to think what your reasoning must be; I thought it was pretty illuminating about how children's minds can be twisted early on, like Bam-Bam, whose parents are raped in front of his eyes and who then gets hooked on cocaine by his gang handlers. Whether he has a lot of brains or not doesn't make much difference, surely. He's only a little boy when it happens to him, and we can infer that the adults in the gang, like Weeper and Josey, must have similar stories. Plus, for what it's worth, I think Josey is a genius. Those political machinations are worthy of Frank Underwood!)

Finished no. 29 last night: Maresi by Maria Turtschaninoff. It's a YA book (and probably for the younger side of the YA scale) but deals with major issues including gendered violence, honour killings, social justice, and so on. Maresi, the main character, lives in a fantastical realm (it's the old fantasy-world-as-medieval-Europe scenario) on an island called Menos, under the protection of the Sisters of the Red Abbey. Men aren't allowed on the island, although the sisters trade with fishermen. A girl called Jai arrives at the abbey fleeing the murderous violence of her father, who is coming after her, and the sisters have to defend themselves. Maresi is also approaching the time when she should be apprenticed to an older sister, and part of the book is about her emotional journey from fearing death to learning what her gifts are and how she can contribute to the world around her. If I had a DD of the right age (seven to twelve or thirteen depending on reading level), I'd definitely give it to her; it's so full of powerful women and it's not "man-hating" at all, despite the violence that is brought by men in the second half of the action. Lovely stuff.

"as brief as it can possibly be--and it's STILL 800+ pages long! I thought of it as a wry joke."

It's not a funny one. I found it quite painful tbh.

The only reason it's 800+ pages long is because it bloody repeats everything. Multiple times. And through the confused brains of cokeheads who, let's be honest, clearly didn't have much to start with.

I have read & enjoyed Will Self's Umbrella which is written entirely in stream-of-consciousness alternating between three characters, without paragraphs or punctuation. I'd like to think I don't have a problem with unusual styles or difficult books. This one was just badly done imho.

Is an edible teddy like an edible bear, or like edible underwear?

Welcome margot

When people go back and forth about a book it always makes me intrigued to read it to see what side I would fall on!

Though with the Martian, having read it. I could really see both sides.

Hundred pages left of HHhH. Child off school with chickenpox, so no nap time to finish it. Thinking of sticking and dvd on this afternoon

Please will someone link to the Chalet School thread? Margot, I am in the middle of The School By the River by Elinor M Brent-Dyer and adore the CS series, but I've never read New Beginnings. Is it good?

39. For a Few Demons More, Kim Harrison. Book 5 in the series. This one was a bit more confused, I thought. Rachel is all over the place after Ivy kisses her, so she runs straight out and bites Kisten using fake fangs, and there's a fight over the werewolf focus, and Rachel arrests Trent at his wedding. I got really bogged down by the description of Kisten giving Rachel an edible teddy, from an expensive Victoria's Secret type shop. I had to Google edible teddies and what they are made of (fruit roll-ups or rice paper, apparently), and then spent a lot of time boggling about why Rachel would actually be pleased to receive as birthday gifts from her boyfriend a) an edible teddy and b) fake vampire fangs so she could bite him and he could get off on it. I mean, they aren't exactly presents for her, are they? Says a lot about what she meant to him, IMO. And why would an expensive shop sell edible teddies, FFS? Aren't they trashy novelty items?

Oh Margot - is that a Chalet school reference?

Hi Margot, welcome, and don't worry, no snobbery here about what people read.

31. The Woman in Blue, Elly Griffiths. The latest in a series that mingles crime/police procedural with a bit of archaeology, an occasional bit of woo and the usual private lives of police officers and pals. The main character is Ruth Galloway, archaeologist and single mother. It's not the best in the series - there's very little archaeology and Ruth herself is shoehorned into a plot that doesn't really need her, but it's a likeable enough outing for the regular characters. Woman found dead at Catholic shrine - whodunnit?

I'm currently on (32) Britannia Obscura : mapping hidden Britain by Joanne Parker. She describes Britain as seen by pot-holers, megalith enthusiasts, canal boaters, ley-line enthusiasts and aeronauts. This is the kind of thing I like - I love the idea of places as palimpsests of different eras of history. Not every bit of the book is fascinating - the details of Victorian canal-building sent me off to a refreshing sleep early last night - but as a whole, the book is a pleasing meander through different ways of seeing.

Oooh. The newest Neal Stephenson book, Cote?

It looks very interesting. I still need to finish Reamde though, I only got about a third through that before I had to return it to the library.

Woohoo southeast what are you making of Eileen so far?

Cote I actually thought that "Brief" in the title was making a point. You know how the first line is "the dead never stop talking" and how (if you got this far) Alex Pierce takes a really long time to write his series of New Yorker articles about Jamaica? I reckoned James was latching on to the Modernist idea that to tell a story in full is to go back and back and back and back in time until you find (almost arbitrarily) a place to start telling from. I liked that he called it "brief"it's about a complicated country with a complicated history and deeply vexed politics. It's as brief as it can possibly beand it's STILL 800+ pages long! I thought of it as a wry joke.

Meanwhile, I cracked and gave up on A Brief (hah!) History Of Seven Killings. Deciding I need some reading joy in my life after that crap pointless, slow, and plot-free book, I bit the bullet and bought Seveneves which (after nearly a year in print!) was £9.99 on the Kindle. So now that's the most expensive book ever to have graced my Kindle. I needed an intelligent book featuring clever and educated people! (Yes I know how that sounds Don't judge me until you suffer through 200 pages of unintelligible Jamaican dialect, reading what passes for thought in the heads of dimwits with guns. Gah.)

Welcome Margot. Just let us know what the books are about & whether you like them or not (and why). Curious minds want to know

Marking place.
Reading Christopher lloyd 'A well tempered garden'
Read Roy Strong ' Small gardens'