50 Book Challenge 2017 Part Two

1. Reaching Down the Rabbit Hole by Dr Allan Ropper. Tales from his professional life as a neurologist, this is similar to Do No Harm (by a brain surgeon). It's a great read, fast-paced and interesting, and I found the section on the definition of brain death particularly thought provoking. However I think that, on balance, I prefer the Oliver Sacks approach of discussing a smaller number of really unusual cases in a lot more detail.

1. A Summer at Sea Katie FForde

A bit predictable but an interesting/different setting (Scotland). I feel very inadequate when faced with a character who is an excellent midwife, can cook and bake for groups, can knit Fair Isle garments and entertain a 9 year old!

Interesting, the different views on The Boy in Striped Pyjamas - I'm afraid I too found it rather simplistic. I saw the end coming from about page 2 and in many ways thought it was a cop out.

And thanks for the name of the Julian Barnes book about Shostakovich - I have been desperately trying to remember it!

Have just seen that Burnt Shadows is on Kindle Daily deals . I read it a while ago and found it a very moving book https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/aw/d/B002R88G5Y/ref=mpssa112?ie=UTF8&qid=1485811698&sr=1-2&pi=ACSX2366SY340QL65&dpPl=1&dpID=51EWdvdvb5L&ref=plSrch

1 The Nest by Cynthia D'Aprix Sweeney
2 Our Endless Numbered Days by Claire Fuller
3 Ready Player One by Ernest Cline (audible)
4 Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day by Winifred Watson
5 Everyone Brave is Forgiven by Chris Cleave
6 Still Life by Louise Penny (audible)
7 A Country Road, A Tree by Jo Baker
8 The Uncommon Reader by Alan Bennett
9 Nightwoods by Charles Frazier

10 The North Water by Ian McGuire. Wow, that was a great read, loved it. I flew through it. It's been reviewed several times on this thread already so I won't go into much detail but it's a gripping read, from the very first page. It is the story of a surgeon who embarks on a whaling expedition with a crew led by a captain of infamous luck. It is quite graphic and gruesome in parts - not just regarding violence between crew members, but against the whales, the bears, the seals. Even the weather is a violent character in the story.

I have Rush-oh! by Shirley Barrett in the TBR pile - its another book about whaling but I gather it's quite light hearted. I think I better leave it for a few books down the line. In the meantime I think it will be Jamaica Inn.

Still struggling with Before the Fall on audible and it's quite irritating. I haven't yet returned an audible book but am tempted with this one.

southeast I was disappointed by the noise of time.

Thanks remus I have gone for age of wonder, love the Romantic period - looks really interesting.

I couldn't get in with Boy in Striped Pyjamas was given to me as a gift but it was too mawkish seeming for for me and I couldn't bear it.

I am wallowing in the The Long Goodbye - it is just wonderful and exactly what I need at the moment. The news is making me feel rather fragile and angry at the same time so need some literary comfort.

Re The Boy in the Striped pyjamas. I was just discussing this at tea with my two eldest boys. I loved the book although I found it heart breaking. I think it was written as a children / YA book which might go some way to account for the simplicity. Ironically it was the simplicity and naivety that made it work for me.

Oh, watching that would make me cry buckets!

Thanks for your comments Clueless. I am well into the second part of th book now and am totally engrossed! When Irene Nemirovsky died in Auschwitz it was not only an offence against humanity but a great loss to the literary world.

I read "the Boy in the Striped Pyjamas" a couple of years ago but found it too simplistic/naive. I know many people who have really enjoyed it, but it wasn't for me.

There was a film on Netflix called something like "Among the Wolves" or "Naked among the Wolves" (sorry - I can't remember the exact title) which is a fictionalised account of a true story. A small boy was smuggled into Buchenwald in a suitcase (had he not been hidden in the case he wold have been gassed on arrival). The story concerns the prisoners' determination to keep him alive in the horror of the camp.

The child the story was based on did survive the camp, but only because at one point another boy was substituted for him on an extermination list. (Apparently when he learned this as an adult he was shocked and filled with guilt.)

HappyFlappy Suite Francaise was one of my favourite reads of last year. Until I read the first part I had never heard of the exodus from Paris, but read it against a backdrop of news stories about refugees trekking across Europe and couldn't help but see aspects of history repeating itself. The author creates some fabulous characters. My copy had several pages describing the author's own life story and including letters that were sent during the war, and the fiction of Suite Francaise felt even more powerful knowing the circumstances in which it was written. It will stay with me for a long time I think.
I'm back on WWII theme, listening to The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas at the moment.

I LOVE Trollope, Barra. Real people, real situations and fantastic dialogue.

How people seem to prefer Dickens is a mystery to me!

Sadik I will look out for it thanks! Although trying to not buy/borrow books and work on my TBR pile

I've started The Age of Wonder Here Excellent so far - lots and lots about Sir Joseph Banks (naturalist with Captain Cook and later President of the Royal Society) and his sex life!

I think anybody who liked This Thing of Darkness would enjoy it. Currently cheap on Kindle.

16. Bridget Jones' Baby Let's just say I enjoyed the film and leave it at that.

Matilda2013 had you seen that Rainbow Rowell (which bizarrely is actually her real name) has since written a 'real' version of Cath's fanfic? It's pretty slight, but entertaining if you can pick it up in the library / as a cheapy.

Number 5 for me - King Solomon's Mines by Rider Haggard - an adventure across colonial Africa searching for the eponymous King Solomon's mines. In some ways this was an adventure written for schoolboys with a hugely distasteful dose of racism totally unacceptable to a modern audience. However, it did also have a real streak of humour and I found its presentation of the narrator's attitude to what he would term "natives" really interesting - it wasn't a simple case of believing in the inherent superiority of the white hunter as there was also respect and affection for some of the indigenous people.

Satsuki - thanks for that, I'll add Shardlake 2 to my "buy if it's cheap on the kindle" pile. That pile is getting rather large .

I haven't read Flowers for Algernon for years but my overriding impression was that the short story (which I read first) was excellent and deserved to win a Hugo, while the novel felt to me as though it had been lengthened to a pre-determined size almost.

I've just looked at the Wikipedia page for the story to refresh my memory. I won't quote as it would be a spoiler for those who are about to read it, but the second paragraph of the background section - on the author's inspiration for the story - is really sad. Although circumstances may be making me more sensitive about this I guess.

9. Rhapsody in Green, Charlotte Mendelson
Short essays about the author's delight in her tiny garden. I got this from the library because I acquired a small patch of ground a year ago and would like to do something with it. I was vaguely hoping for a "how to" manual. This is not it. It's still a pleasant read though, funny and rapturous. It would make a good bedtime book, or a present for a gardening-mad mother-in-law.

Trollope is a great pleasure of mine and The Warden is a good place to start. I've also read a very good biography of Anthony Trollope, he had a very interesting life!

1. How to Be Both - Ali Smith. This book is divided into two sections which can be read in either order. One is narrated by an Italian painter around the renaissance and the other is narrated by a teenage school girl in modern day. there is some connection between the two - the girl went to Italy the year before with her mother, who has since died, and saw the painter's frescoes. And in the painter section, the narrator watches the girl in modern times, looking at the paintings and interacting with friends. I had the Kindle version which had the painter's story first then the girl's story, then switches it round and has the girl's story first and then the painter's. I think "real" books were random as to which order they were printed in. I think I would have felt more connected to it with the girl's story first - it's a bit more real and poignant. I'm not sure whether it actually works as a narrative technique, I felt each story could have been a bit fuller. I'd have liked to read more about both characters, I didn't feel either story was finished. But it's an interesting play on narrative technique, it'll probably end up as a GSCE text in years to come.

3 Treatment by Mo Hayder which was a bit too scary to read when DH was out in london for the night

Am now reading The Watchmaker of Filigree Street which is gentle and dainty but I think is going to be really meaty later on.

I couldn't get into The Essex Serpent at all.

highlandandcoo I wonder if you know that Barchester Towers isn't the first book of the series, it is The Warden so that's the one to start with if you want to read them in order. They are well worth reading I really enjoyed them.

1. Viper Wine by Hermione Eyre set in the 17th Century Venetia Digby is a famous beauty but past her first 'bloom'. She starts drinking a concoction called viper wine in order to restore her beauty. Her husband Kenelm is enthusiastic about books, learning and scientific discoveries. There are echoes from the future which appear in the book - some of them through ideas which appear in his mind but some of them through the deliberate placing of anachronistic details, for example Van Gogh's Sunflowers makes an appearance. It is a post modern novel where the author even gives herself a small cameo. Eyre has developed the story around the real lives of the main characters - they were real people. I enjoyed it - it was funny and sad and thought provoking.