50 Book Challenge 2017 Part Three

Thank you for the good wishes everyone, really appreciated.

Someone mentioned Michelle Paver upthread - she got me into audible books, with the Wolf Brother series, read by the sublime Ian McKellen. They were wonderful, in large part because of him, I think. I am currently listening to Gods and Warriors, and while I am enjoying it, the poor narrator hasn't a hope of measuring up!

Sorry for your loss too drdiva

Do Not Say We Have Nothing from the Booker list is on deal today - I know a couple of people read it on here, but can't remember the verdict.

Excited about the new Philip Pullman Trilogy later this year; might be time to reread His Dark Materials.

Going to put Nightwatch on my TBR list. Never managed a Pratchett book but millions can't be wrong can they?

Sorry to hear of your losses Whippet and DrDiva. I had missed them

Sorry to hear your news Whippet and DrDiva.

Chillie - Terry Pratchett decorated my house. I had the audiobooks on while I was painting. I did the whole house in 5 weeks and got through quite a few of them. My Mum is moving in a few weeks and will need the full works doing in the new house, so I think I will have to pick up where I left off. Never made it as far as Night Watch, but will keep going until I do. I'm doing them in publishing order rather than by sub-series, which I know isn't always recommended.

I haven't done much reading myself the last few days as I am helping Mum have a massive clearout ready for moving. I emptied the loft today and had a fabulous trip down memory lane with old toys and the like. I've also 'acquired' a lot of our childhood books, so lots of Enid Blyton, Arthur Ransome, Elinor Brent-Dyer etc. As the youngest I'm not sure I can genuinely lay claim to most of them, but finders keepers. We all used to get a really lovely illustrated hardback book for Christmas each year, so I have liberated many of those too. Ones like A Little Princess, The Railway Children, Five Children and It and The Borrowers. I'm really looking forward to reading them all again. I've also found my English, Spanish and French Literature books from school, all covered with tiny notes inside. Not sure I'll be reading any of those again in a hurry. I'll need to buy a new bookcase. Jackie and Blue Jeans Annuals circa 1975 anyone?

Glad not gad - keyboard being a pain.

Gad it's arrived, Best, albeit looking a little the worse for wear. That's the second parcel in a week I know of that has had that happen to it. Opportunistic postal workers, maybe?

Cote - I was generalising. I'm on 96% now and I still don't like it. Will probably finish it in the next half an hour, unless I decide to drown it instead.

13. Night Watch by Terry Pratchett

I decided on a re-read after watching Terry Pratchett: Back In Black at the weekend and discovering that Neil Gaiman and I agree as to the best of the Discworld novels. An series of incidents put Commander Vimes on the roof of the Unseen University in a thunderstorm, and the lightning strike sends him and the murderer he was pursuing back through time to the dark days of the end of Lord Winder's rule, his own youth, and revolution, and he has no idea how to get back home.

Just placemarking - I'm still working my way through Things We Cannot Know by Marcus du Sautoy on audio. It's excellent, but I need to listen a bit at a time, and then stop and think

Don't have any 'proper' books on the go right now as I'm waiting on an ebay copy of A Long Way Home (the book that inspired the film Lion), and don't really want to start anything else first, so have reverted to Draco Veritas in the meantime.

It's arrived Remus. My heart was in my mouth as the package turned up with one of these but thankfully the contents are fine.

Got to finish His Bloody Project tomorrow then I'll get cracking. Thank you so much.

19. Me & Mr Darcy by Alexandra Potter

Chicklit about an American woman who joins a tour of locations related to Jane Austen. There is a grumpy male journalist. Very predictable and heroine was rather annoying but quite good fun.

Sorry for those who have had losses :-(

Sorry for your losses Whippet and DrDiva

Thanks for all the good wishes. She was a lovely MIL
I'm sorry to hear about your FIL DrDiva

Stokey, I enjoyed Ragnarok but I think I would enjoy to read the myths in translation or in a straightforward context rather than they way they are presented in the book. I wanted to know more about the girl though!

Have been reading but not had a huge amount to post. Still reading Code but having returned to work a couple of days ago my reading time has been cut short.

So sorry to hear about your loses Whippet and DrDiva .

10. All Creatures Great and Small, James Herriot. A lovely book of loveliness - Yorkshire Dales, characterful farmers with equally characterful animals, a fickle boss and a series of dodgy cars. Mild and humorous and gently self-mocking. I loved reading this and would quite like to crawl into that world with its craggy hills and Jersey cows (even though I'm a bit scared of cows, but Herriot makes them sound mostly ok ).

Sorry for your loss Whippet & Diva

What did you think of Ragnarok Whippet? We did it for book club last year and I think I was the only one who finished it. Some lovely descriptions but no real story, I thought. In fact my favourite bit was the afterword.

I read We should all be feminists but won't count it as it was so short. It was OK but a bit obvious, maybe better for people who have no prior ideas about feminism.

I've just started The year of our war by Steph Swainston, a fantasy type book. Dh recommended it and the blurb compares it to China Mieville & Mervyn Peake. It has giant insects, immortals and winged humans & is generally bonkers so far.

Book no 9. Heart and soul by Maeve Binchy. Haven't read Binchy for years but it was from a pile of books given to me by FIL after MIL died a few months ago. It was OK. I do like the way she weaves characters around and even brings in characters from other books but I find the characters themselves to be two dimensional with unrealistically simplistic lives. But it was a nice easy read.

Have just started back on placement (student nurse) and have tons of reading to do and a 5000 word essay so it's likely to be easy reads for the next few months. Have a huge number of outstanding books on my Kindle; might start a Monty Don book next.

DrDiva

My condolences for your MIL, whippet.

And your FIL, DrDiva

Sorry to hear about your MIL, whippet - I too have fallen off the thread, due to my FIL dying. Still managed to read a couple of books in between the general chaos that always ensues at such times. I've brought my list along:
Books read in 2017

1 The Woman Who Stole My Life by Marian Keyes
2 The Ice Princess by Camilla Lackberg
3 Kitchens of the Great Midwest by J Ryan Stradal
4 Cheer Up Love by Susan Calman
5 Beswitched by Kate Saunders
6 Someone Else's Skin by Sarah Hilary
7 Wifework by Susan Maushart
8 The Year of Reading Dangerously by Andy Miller
9 The Pillars of the Earth by Ken Follett
10 The Adventurous Seven: Their Hazardous Undertaking - Bessie Marchant
11 No Kiss for Mother - Tomi Ungerer
12 Detour from Normal - Ken Dickson
13 The Dark Net - Jamie Bartlett
14 Whisper My Secret - JB Rowley Thus was a freebie n the daily Bookbub deals. It is the story of a mother in rural Australia who loses her first three children. It is a fairly common story, told well, with some stereotyped caricature of character that grated a little, although on the whole this was avoided and there were some well-craft d character complexities. I certainly recognised the echoes of a certain type of small-town Antipodean upbringing that I think was still evident a least until fairly recently.
15 The Skeleton Cupboard - Tanya Byron This has been much reviewed upthread. I really enjoy he'd thus. I think it was the first book all year that I didn't want to put down, and ended up reading far too late at night!
16 Scars Upon My Heart - ed. by Catherine Reilly A wonderful collection of female poets writing about wartime, during wartime. A stark reminder of the terrible heroism and utter loneliness behind that arch phrase, "keep the home fires burning". I really recommend this.

gosh, these threads move so quickly
I've been really busy at work so not much time for reading or MNing, but hope to catch up with both over half-term

6. Swing Time by Zadie Smith - Two girls meet at a (you've guessed it) NW London dance school. The story tells how life pans out both for the talented dancer, and the less talented one. Compared to other Smith novels I've read I definitely enjoyed this more - the plot is excellent and races along. I really liked how dance was used as a constant motif. I'm less bothered about the usual dose of NW London class angst, but that's a minor point.

"Ooh look at the cute scientists who don't quite understand how to be 'normal' because they're so clever- aren't they CUTE' sort of way."

A... what??? You are crazy But I love you anyway

Where do you even see "scientists"? Gauss was a great mathematician and Humboldt was a geographer.

10 Outlander by Diana Gabaldon. It was an easy read but doesn't a lot happen in a very short time. It lurched from one crisis to the next, not sure my nerves can take the rest of the series

I also bought The North Water today - looking forward to it!

12. Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows by J K Rowling - Final book in the series - I've been reading like mad trying to finish as we go to see the Cursed Child soon. I really enjoyed this - it felt like a great ending to the series.

I bought The North Water too. Thanks folks.

I agree with Cote on this next one :

1. The Three-Body Problem by Cixin Liu I feel completely refreshed and invigorated by this book. It was proper science fiction, with proper hard science. It felt challenging, and foreign and strange, but ultimately human, and about the nature of humanity, and how individually and collectively our hopes and dreams for our future are shaped by history and circumstance and place in the world (slight spoiler alert - even if that world is not the earth). Previous reviewers have commented on cultural differences. Here's an interesting quote from the translator: 'the English words are arranged in such a way that the reader sees a glimpse of another culture's patterns of thinking, hears an echo of another language's rhythms and cadences, and feels a tremor of another people's gestures and movements.' In my opinion, he nailed it .