50 Book Challenge 2016 Part Seven

111 The End of Elsewhere: Travels among the Tourists, by Taras Grescoe
This was recommended on here by Biblio I think, and the concept really appealed to me. The blurb describes it as an 'epic search for what makes tourists tick', but I thought it suffered from the fact that the author just didn't appear to like people very much. I'd expected him to spend a lot of time talking to people, figuring out why they were choosing this type of travel, but instead he observes and comments without any much attempt to get inside others' choices.
Overall I felt it was summed up by his comment at one point that when he was young and went travelling in Europe, he'd done it all so much better, avoiding fellow travellers - so reminiscent of a hundred college posh-boys explaining how their gap year was authentic and different from the masses.

You can use Calibre to convert ebooks between file formats calibre-ebook.com/ - though it won't convert any which are DRM protected.

So you may be able to get some epub format books onto a Kindle. Would check before splurging tho!

I didn't ask for any books this year, and wish people wouldn't try and guess with books for me. I've still ended up with Five on Brexit Island as a stocking filler (one for the charity shop) and International Rugby Union The Illustrated History. Now, I do like rugby but I don't tend to read books about it. That may well end up going to the charity shop too.

Today I've had a splurge in Waterstones though so have treated myself to The Burning Page by Genevieve Cogman (third in the Invisible Library series), Stonehenge by Mike Parker Pearson (which I have read before but that copy was a library book), The Spartans by Paul Cartledge, and The Daily Stoic by Ryan Holiday and Stephen Hanselman, which I'm thinking of using as part of my morning routine in 2017, possibly as a meditational thing.

Hey spoke too soon, my db gave me The Life Project by Helen Pearson about the cohort studies in Britain. Think someone read it during the year, looks good...

Not Kindle (at least I don't think so) but Verso books have 90% off all of their e-books until January the 1st.
(Buying 8 ebooks at £1.50 each is a bargain, right . . . not at all like buying 1 book for £12 . . . at least, that's what I'm telling myself )

Happy Christmas everyone!

I got two new sci-fi books, Crashing Heaven and Rebel of the Sands, and a copy of the Dung Beetle "We Go To The Gallery" book (the woman that Ladybird sued and then ripped off ) from an artist friend.

I'm very chuffed that DD got (from my Mum who reads the same reviews as me) a copy of The Thrilling Adventures of Lovelace and Babbage - which I bought for a friends dc and then had to struggle very hard not to read before wrapping.

She also got the second Small Angry Planet book, vanished into it for most of the day, and only re-appeared in time for Doctor Who, so will be able to swipe that one too. And a £20 book token and £40 Amazon voucher Older DC are a definite plus on the Christmas book front

Merry Christmas all!

I got DH the Seven Brief Lessons in Physics for his birthday but he wasn't too impressed (he's got A Level physics but hasn't used it for the last 20 years).

I gave lots of books, but the only one I received this year was a cookery book! (Rick Stein.)

Happy Christmas!

Cote, I really enjoyed Daryl Gregory's "We are all completely fine" (a novella), and the prequel/sequel Harrison Squared (which is YA).

73)closed Casket by Sophie Hannah. I had read a Hannah book before and not thought much of it, but I saw her in that Andrew Marr BBC4 thing on genre fiction, and thought she came over well- this is an Hercule Poirot story, and it's not bad- the plot is fine but some of the characterisation isn't great. A good holiday read though.

I got "Seven Brief Lessons in Physics" by Carlo Rovelli.
It sounds like it's aimed at people with no science background (haven't had a chance to start it yet), but after not cracking open a physics textbook for 25 years am using DS as an excuse/reason to start again now. (I ended up with a CS degree instead of physics, always wanted to go back and do physics.)

Happy Christmas everyone! I too got a Paperwhite, very pleased because my old Kindle Fire is painfully slow. No books but £30 of Amazon vouchers so looking forward to stocking it up with a few good reads to kick off the 2017 challenge

I got Birth of a theorem by Cedric Villani. Looks right up my street.

Hurray for festive corpse books! I may be even more excited about the Grayson Perry though, which dp's mate bought him.

Merry Christmas 50 bookers

remus you got your festive corpse book

I also got a paper white, I have not had a chance to take it out yet, too busy with turkey and Lego etc but very excited. I am to download Lonesome Dove on it according to dh who couldn't find it in paperback.

Also got David Mitchell Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet.

My dh gave me a tea cake stand thingy it's quite nice really. Was a bit bemused he knew such a thing even existed!!!

People rarely give me books. Possibly they are afraid

Merry Christmas everybody. Here's our family's book gifts.

No new books for me, but the kids have all received Waterstones vouchers, so we'll be having a family trip out there to select books before too long.

Happy Christmas all

Happy Christmas all.

I got a new Kindle! 3G paper-white. Over the moon with it.

I also got a detective book set in the Cotswolds, some old Bill Brysons (I've already got them but the thought was there) and Pevsner on Herefordshire. (I have a thing about old guide books and maps)

107. A Symphony of Echoes by Jodi Taylor

I thought a bit of a lightweight read would be in order since I've been concentrating on history and politics. The historians of St Mary's have to deal with issues in their own future, as well as resolving an anomaly in the past. Trips to the Victorian London, the Hanging Gardens, and the court of Mary, Queen of Scots are in the offing.

Inspired by others on this thread, I think this evening I will curl up with a large hot chocolate and start on a re-read of The Dark is Rising.

Oh yes I can. Go on. You know you want to

You can't tempt me, Cote. Dan Simmons will never darken my Kindle again.

Book 131
The Secrets of Wishtide by Kate Saunders
By the writer of Five Children on the Western front which I enjoyed. Unfortunately, I didn’t enjoy this one. It ought to have been right up my street – a lady detective, in a big house, in Victorian England. Unfortunately it was all terribly middle class, middle aged and middle England – our heroine gains the trust of pretty much everybody purely through the pouring out of tea and sympathy. I found the narrative voice irritating, and some of the prose was very clunky (another writer guilty of the piling on of useless adjectives) and irritatingly self-conscious too. It also had far too much of a Kate Atkinson-esque use of coincidence about the whole thing. Trite and annoying.

58. A Vision of Fire by Gillian Anderson and Jeff Rovin

Following the attempted assassination of her father, teenager Maanik starts to have violent visions, and child psychologist Caitlin is called in to try and treat her. Caitlin finds out about other young people suffering similar visions. She eventually concludes that the troubled youngsters are fighting possession by traumatised souls, who are stuck in a sort of limbo, still trying to "ascend", following the long ago cataclysmic destruction of their civilisation, and tries to find a way to stop the long dead souls from possessing present day people.

This is book 1 of at least 3, but it reads well enough as a stand alone novel. Entertaining enough, although Caitlin did seem to defuse the threat very easily in the end, but I don't think I'll be in any particular hurry to read the next installment.

Can you not download the first chapter of Song of Kali for free on the Kindle and see how you get along with that? I really think you could find it interesting.