50 Book Challenge 2017 Part Three

I read Fates and Furies last year. Really disappointed as I loved her last one (Monsters of Templeton I think? Off the top of my head. About a girl returning to her small home town in upper New York state. It was low-key but stayed in my head for a long time afterwards)

1. The Bookshop on the Corner, by Jenny Colgan: inoffensive, predictable, escapist fluff about a woman who starts a mobile bookshop in Scotland after losing her job as a librarian.

1. Fates and Furies, by Lauren Groff: a marriage plot with the marriage at the beginning.

1. The Widow, by Fiona Barton: rather like reading a fairly sleazy tabloid account of a missing child and the various people involved, only less well-written.

1. The Hanging Tree, by Ben Aaronovitch: the sixth book in the Peter Grant series, an enjoyable fantasy/mystery genre cross. Reviewed in previous threads.

adapted for Tom Cruise

No indeed Satsu, it's Rosamund Pike and Jack O'Connell, coming soon to a cinema, I think it's in post prod, no release date.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HHhH_(film)

To be honest, I was enjoying the virtual fist fight between you.
I won't be reading it.

It was my Mum who gave me Flowers and the next two in the series in my teens. I never fancied them much so never got round to them. Reading it was like rubbernecking a terrible accident. You know you shouldn't be looking, but you can't help but slow down the car.

Don't worry Fortuna. Dissing books is what we do. Satsuki & I have been doing this a long time

I read Flowers In The Attic as a teenager, as did most of my girlfriends. I have no idea what my parents were thinking, letting me read such dodgy stuff. Brother/sister imprisoned in the attic by their mum? What then happens between them?

Never one to cause an argument about bad writing, I'm just going to wander through and change the subject, or perhaps not...

19. Flowers in the Attic by Virginia Andrews. This was awful, but I couldn't put it down. It's been sitting around the house for decades unread. I always had a rough idea of what happened in it, but had no idea it was so dire. I don't feel I'll be missing out by skipping the sequels.

Here's another paragraph from HHhH:

"I’ll have to resist the temptation to flaunt my knowledge by writing too many details for this or that scene that I’ve researched too much, I must admit that in this case – regarding Heydrich’s birthplace – my knowledge is a bit sketchy. There are two towns in Germany called Halle, and I don’t even know which one I’m talking about. For the time being, I think it’s not important. We’ll see."

The book is full is utter nonsense like this. Moronic, whiny crap about stuff he might write but maybe won't and in any case who cares, bla bla da bla. Despicable weasel. I knew I could hate a man just from the crap he writes because... well, Hitler's Mein Kampf and Trump's Twitter feed. But I never thought I could hate an author because his fiction is so fucking terrible.

Deep breaths...

And I did say "pretty much straight" not "in a straight manner"

The paragraph you quoted is clearly from before he describes the attempt - "my heroes are late making their entrance" - I'm not saying the second half isn't told in the same style, it is, and I liked it, but it is fairly linear compared to the first half and, yes, gripping; and obviously that wouldn't be the paragraph I would choose to illustrate that

I think it's been said before, but it doesn't really lend itself to bits and pieces being taken out of context, but the descriptions of the wait for the car, the escape, the siege, the attack on Lidice, the threat of betrayal, the persecution of those who aided the resistance, were all extremely absorbing to read, imo. If you don't like the style, you aren't going to see past it though

Satsuki - "second half of the book, was incredibly gripping and well told. He told that pretty much straight and what could be more gripping?"

Err... this book? Gripping, well-told, and "pretty much straight"?

Here's a paragraph from that second half: "I’m all too aware that my two heroes are late making their entrance. But perhaps it’s no bad thing if they have to wait. Perhaps it will give them more substance. Perhaps the mark they’ve made in history and on my memory might imprint itself even more profoundly in these pages. Perhaps this long wait in the antechamber of my brain will restore some of their reality, and not just vulgar plausibility. Perhaps, perhaps … but nothing could be less sure!"

I think we're going to have to agree to disagree on what we consider gripping and well-told, in a straight manner

Completely unrelated to HHhH ...
Have just finished book 16. Another* WW1 - Love Letters of the Great War* - think I will have to have a little break or at least read something lighter in tandem!

No I don't think it would have been better as a straight novel, I really liked what he did with it, and didn't finish it wishing it had been different. I enjoyed the style. There were a lot of H's, and they were all pretty assassin-friendly, so I guess you get a pass

This thread reminds me at times of being in my CSYS English class listening to two teachers having a very heated debate over Gabriel Garcia Marquez.

"It's a work of genius, Mrs such and such"
"It's complete nonsense which has no plot at all"
"It's called 'magical realism", Mrs such and such"
"It's called bloody garbage, mr so and so"

I tried 100 Years of Solitude and gave up. I did finish Love in the Time of Cholera but I am still in team Mrs Such and Such. Even if I did fancy Mr So and So

I mean, granted it probably couldn't be adapted for Tom Cruise, but even so the plot to kill HEYDRICH that constituted the second half of the book, was incredibly gripping and well told. He told that pretty much straight and what could be more gripping? I liked reading his personal engagement with the story and found it witty rather than whiny. And yes he talked about what he didn't know, and couldn't be certain about, but it was obvious there was the weight of real research behind the playfulness, and I think the deliberate misdirection and unreliability of the first half made the second all the more powerful and affecting. I'm sure a very straightforward account of the event exists, but it wouldn't have that Je ne sais quoi

But Satsu - don't you think it would have been a better, richer, novel if it had been, say, like Wolf Hall but about Heydrich and the Czechs?

And I read it a few years ago, so I'm excused from getting which one was Himmler and which one was Heydrich mixed up, ithankyou.

"I'm putting your dissent down to a failure of comprehension "

At least in my case, it is a case of my brain's inability to store rubbish

"meticulous, and utterly gripping"

Ahhahhahhahhahaha

"Gripping"? There was barely even a story for most of the book, except his whiny bitching about his girlfriend, how difficult it is to get the story straight in his head, etc. Seriously, most of the book wasn't about the assassination attempt all. It was just so... French

cote and song as you both couldn't even remember who was the subject of HHhH I'm putting your dissent down to a failure of comprehension

Well I'm going to get into review ping pong with cote about HHhH again - it is not a dumb book, just because you didn't like it

25. HHhH by Laurent Binet

Wonderful, unforgettable, book.

Original, humane, meticulous, and utterly gripping account of 'Operation Anthropoid', the plot to assassinate senior Nazi Reinhard Heydrich, 'The Hangman of Prague', by the Czech (and Slovak) Resistance fighters Gabcik and Kubis. Interwoven with the factual events is Binet's commentary on the nature of his endeavour; to write a historical 'novel' that respects its subject, taking into account the danger of reducing real people to characters in a story, and the significance of the choices made in the process of researching and retelling history. I learned many new things about this period, and visited again the sheer horror that never fades; that of The Final Solution and those who perpetrated it.

Oh yeah. I've clearly been successful in my attempt to forget as much as I could if that odious nonsense.

My mistake Heydrich, my apologies Cote, it is an acronym Pass it's

Himmlers Hirn heißt Heydrich

Himmler's brain is called Heydrich

Cote - cough - HIMMLER

I felt all along that I wanted to read an actual proper period novel about a fascinating story that I previously did not know (the attempted assassination of Himmler by two Czechs) but he goes really meta and talks about himself and his writing process as he goes along, in a way I found very annoying. The point he is making becomes one note quickly

Keith Are you sure? If so, I would love that, thank you very much. Very keen to read more Cazalets.

Passmethecrisps I was wondering that!

Oh I see! Thank you Cote. That review made me chuckle. I thought I was missing some sort of acronym

Pass - It is a very very dumb book, supposedly about the assassination attempt on Hitler's life but in fact about the whiny author having a whine about his life, his oh such incredibly profound knowledge on said assassination attempt, and other such completely uninteresting whiny crap on how he deliberately lies or perhaps just doesn't care to provide facts about this story.