50 Book Challenge 2016 Part Five

We are OK. Thank you all for thinking of us.

Welcome to the thread, boldly :)

Cote, how're you holding up? What an awful few days for you.

28. Half A Crown, by Jo Walton. Half A Crown is the final book in the Farthing Triology, which is set in a 1960s Britain that negotiated a separate peace with Hitler about 20 years earlier (Hitler has since conquered Europe). The country has become increasingly fascist, the result of the events set in motion in 1941 (during the first book). By the time the third book begins, a conference is being held in London so that Germany, Britain, and Japan can partition the world into three spheres of influence. At the same time, personal and moral obligations cause major conflict for Carmichael, a man who's been forced into a terrible position but uses it to disrupt the system as much as he can. I don't want to give away too much, but the series is fantastic! I highly recommend it.

Goodness, Cote, I hope you and your friends/family are alright.

65. Temeraire by Naomi Novik

I really liked this. Set during the Napoleonic Wars in an alternative history featuring dragons, Captain Will Laurence of the Royal Navy leads a successful attack on a French ship in the Atlantic. On board the French vessel was a dragon's egg close to hatching. To his horror, the dragonet imprints on Laurence rather than the young midshipman chosen by lot to be Temeraire's handler, and so Laurence has to leave his beloved navy and join the ranks of the aviators, who live somewhat outside of society.

Is it too late to join you all? Not sure I'll make it to 50 this year as I don't get much quality reading time with toddler around but I have managed a reasonable amount so far. Of course, if take into account all the picture books, I'd be much closer to 50!

Hope you are ok, Cote- worrying times.

Book 79
The Things They Carried by Tim O' Brien
Based on his experiences in Vietnam, I thought that the first half of this was stunningly good. What I hadn’t realised in advance is that it isn’t actually a novel but a collection of pieces which merge fact and fiction, sometimes novelistic and sometimes more journalistic. Because of this, it began to feel increasingly disjointed and I found the second half far less successful than the first. Still worth a read though.

Hope you're OK, Cote

2016 seems to be turning into one hellishly awful year. Hope you manage to stay safe and you and your friends and family are all ok, Cote

Sorry to hear you've been caught in the midst of these awful events, Cote. Beyond comprehension.

I've had a bit of a hiatus on the reading front... quite a few upheavals and massive changes in personal circumstances have rather thrown me, so I have not picked up a book since February until just last week. Things are now beginning to settle somewhat, so I'm back and my list so far is:

1. Never Let Me Go - Kazio Ishiguro

1. Flowers for Algernon - Daniel Keys
2. Bike Snob
3. The Accidental Tourist - Anne Tyler
4. Cannery Row - John Steinbeck
5. SLammerkin - Emma Donahue
6. The Shadow Wife - Diane Chamberlain
7. Rivers of London - Ben Aaronovitch

And I've just finished No.11 The Mango Season - Amulya Malalladi which I found an enjoyable read and an insight into the nuances of life in India.

Not sure if this has been reviewed upstream, but it is the story of a young indian woman, Priya, who has spent 7 years living and working in America, during which time she begins a secret relationship with an American man. She plans to marry him and returns to India with the intention of telling her family who she knows will be horrified and see this as the ultimate shame.

Unbeknown to her, her family have arranged a meeting with a potential husband for Priya when she gets home.

Priya is shocked when many of her fondly cherished memories of growing up in India are seen through her now westernised eyes. I found myself identifying with the juxtaposition of the sense of obligation to please/appease family with a sometimes conflicting set of personal interests and how difficult it can be to challenge long-held traditions. A good read and now I'm back in my game! Next up, Death at la Fenice - Donna Leon which is the first of a series of books mentioned by Bibliomania which might just provide a bit more of the escapism I need right now!

Cote- how awful.

Thank you, all. Yes, I'd like my life to get a bit less interesting about now.

Cote What's that curse - may you live in interesting times? I think we would all appreciate some less interesting times right now.

40. Our Endless Numbered Days by Claire Fuller A girl is effectively abducted by her survivalist father, held in a remote cabin for 9 years and told that the rest of the world has disappeared. The narrative jumps back and forward between the times in the forest and after her return to civilisation, dropping enough clunky hints about what really happened to have a fairly good idea before the final twist. I found it difficult to suspend my disbelief that this could happen anywhere in mainland central Europe for the length of time it did in the 70s/80s. That niggled me throughout, though I read plenty of other books with nonsense plots. The author is very good though at building a sense of threat / foreboding, particularly in the scenes involving the volatile and unstable father. Good for a quick read, but not one that will particularly stay with me I think.

Bloody hell, Cote.

Have been thinking of you Cote. Glad you are safe .

Blimey Cote, stay safe

I have also abandoned reading slightly because I left the Southe of France as it became the scene of a nightmarish massacre and now I'm in the middle of a coup d'état in Turkey

I've been staying up pretty much the whole night the last two days, to make sure friends & family are OK. FFS this is fast becoming the worst summer holiday in living memory!

Currently half way through The Things They Carried - absolutely superb so far.

I have abandoned reading slightly as I have been struggling to focus on the writing, but I have a knew pair of glasses turning up next week and I am so excited about being able to read again.

35. The Voyage Of The Dawn Treader - CS Lewis.

One of my favourite Narnia books, in which Lucy, Edmund and their tiresome cousin Eustace sail East in the Dawn Treader in search of the end of the world.

66 Curtsies and Conspiracies by Gail Carriger

Still working my way through Carriger''s steampunk books in between (slightly) more serious reading. This one is book 2 in her Finishing School series, set in the same universe as the Parasol Protectorate series, but aimed at a younger readership (tween rather than YA, I'd say).

They're set in what purports to be a finishing school for young ladies - which happens to be based on a large dirigible - but which in fact is a school for aspiring high society spies. The plots are pretty slight, but they're fun, with lots of boarding school jolliness and so forth, and the heroine is lovely. I'd recommend to tween to young teen dc as well as to anyone wanting a lightweight fantasy read.

Oh dear Remus! I've seen them when I've picked up a Michael Connelly, and wondered- I will stay away.

💐Joyless, how horrid.

We should definitely have a book emoticon, like this: 📚

42. Just One Dammed Thing After Another by Jodi Taylor. I think this was reviewed a fair bit on one of the earlier threads, which is why I read it- it just took a while for me to be first in the download queue! I did enjoy this as an unusual take on the time travel romp, it moved a long at a good pace, and covered lots of ground- I read it all in one sitting as I kept wanting to see what happened next. The downside of that for me is that I think the characterisation suffered- only a couple of the characters really came to life for me, and by the end it really bugged me when she kept saying "this is the real st Mary's/ this is what we're like", when in my head she was still the new girl, and I hadn't really seen her become part of the tea drinking, wild haired, eccentric "team". I did like how Sussman escalated slowly though, and Mrs Partridge was great. I'll read the next.

Book 78
Every Dead Thing by John Connolly
The first in the Charlie Parker crime series, which I’ve seen recommended on MN several times. Well, I’m here to tell you that whoever recommended it is WRONG. The ex-cop figure is fine, the idea (nasty man murdering people horribly and cutting off their faces) is fine, a couple of good characters (gay hitmen were my favourites) also fine, but Connolly is an absolutely dreadful writer from the Tell Not Show School of Terribleness. If the book had been 80% shorter with 60 or so fewer characters, massively reduced back story, a bodycount that didn’t descend into cartoon-esque figures, had had a decent ending and been written by Raymond Chandler it might have been good. As it was, it was bloody awful and I wish I had given up after twenty pages. Stay well away. I got four for a pound or so on Kindle - needless to say I will not be reading the other three.

42. The 100 year old man who climbed out of the window and disappeared by Jonas Jonasson Man escapes from his old people's home on his 100th birthday and unintentionally starts out on an adventure. It has the story of his life as a parallel story to the current day. Black comedy. I enjoyed it.

43. A Whole Life by Robert Seethalter set in Austria it follows most of the life of a young man through his life. It's a short book, has some brilliant descriptions in it. Both this and the previous book have a main character where life happens to them rather than the other way around. They are very different books in style and direction but I was interested in this similarity between them.

Huge sympathies with you for your back problem, Joyless . Struggling with chronic back pain here too -nothing like it for causing sheer misery is there?

38. Where'd You Go Bernadette? by Maria Semple Another recommendation from this thread. A rich, quirky, dysfunctional American family, seen through the eyes of the teenage daughter, as she tries to solve the mystery of her mother's disappearance through a series of documents and emails. Funny and observant, but, my word, every single character is deeply annoying. The book ends pretty abruptly, soon after the question of the title is answered, but, despite being irritated by all of them, I would have liked to have known what happened to the characters next.

39. Red Bones by Ann Cleves Third in the Shetland series. Another highly readable character driven murder mystery. Follows a similar formula to the second - tight knit community, old secrets, enough red herrings to keep you guessing, conveys a great sense of island life. It's certainly a winning formula, but I might wait a bit before reading the 4th in case they start feeling too samey.