50 Book Challenge 2017 Part Three

Sophie Hannah is great Gangsta.

Just finished The Bone Clocks and it was a brilliant - an original and involving take on reincarnation and "vampirism" - absolutely fab!

(And to think I nearly didn't read any David Mitchell books because I thought it was the DM who is married to Victoria Coren, and couldn't bear the thought of drowning in smugosity).

About to start Colm Toibin's "Nora Webster", but it will have to wait until tomorrow now because my eyeballs are exhausted!

Also - got through another audiobook - Northanger Abbey. I LOVE Jane Austin - totally made up for the Dickens

Tanaqui It's a library book, which is why the order I've been reading them all in is slightly odd. Hurrah for the my local library reserves. They are missing Falconer's Knot though which is really annoying as characters keep referring to it.
Gaudy Night is one of the books I go and hide in when I need to go and hide in literature. Bloody love it.

I'm going to have to go back to the last thread to check my counting!

6. (maybe) Night School by Lee Child. The most recent Jack Reacher, but set back in the 90s, much better than last years' Make Me, though not one of my absolute favourites.

Gaudy Night is so good!

Cheerful, I am jealous you found a copy of The Thursday Kidnapping- I read it as a child but have never seen a copy since. I do have all the Marlowe books though, so
Shouldn't complain!

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
11 Before the Fall by Noah Hawley
12 Beautiful Ruins by Jess Walter.

13 The Boston Girl by Anita Diamant. Didn't like this at all. Its narrated by an 85 year old recounting her life story to her granddaughter. The characters were very poorly developed. Stereotypes all over the shop! I think it should be in the YA section and it's not that I don't read any YA at all but I wasn't expecting that; it's not my favourite genre at all. Anita Diamant also wrote The Red Tent which was better than this one.

Have started Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk, can't recall the author's name. So far it's good and completely different subject matter from anything I have read lately.

I've been working hard to relaxing with some undemanding books, namely half of Sophie Hannah's back catalog.

They are great but extraordinarily bizarre. The motivation is always utterly mind-boggling (e.g. obsession with idea of living in Cambridge leads to mass murder spree; women spends 30 years in a psychotic fugue state because she never got over her childhood dog being sent away; serial killer is actually failed bookseller targeting Kindle owners). And the lead is a cop who has an emotional incestuous relationship with his mum and can't eat in front of others or shag his wife. OMG.

I hate that as well emgee.

When I have a paper book I always check as I dislike being taken by surprise. With the kindle it isn't so easy and I have been a bit taken aback when something has ended abruptly

The Spy Who Came in from the Cold = excellent. It's the only JLC I've read. Dp has just bought it, so I'll try to remember to report back once he's read it (remember that this is a man who likes Ian McEwan and didn't like HHhH* though, so his views are clearly bonkers.

Just seen there is discussion about One Hundred Years of Solitude. I read this last year and struggled at points but it's a bit like my relationship with Virginia Woolf, there are brilliant moments that remind me why I am reading it. I don't get on with audiobooks really so no advice there.

I am in no way up to date with the thread and work/uni/kids/life has taken over. However some reading updates:-

1. The Universe vs Alex Woods by Gavin Extence
2. The Romanovs by Virginia Cowles
3. A Pointless History of the World by Alexander Armstrong and Richard Osman

1. Blue Dog by Louis de Bernieres

No idea what to read next but I spent an extortionate amount on books last week as I went to a book talk with Bettany Hughes about her new book Istanbul and Elif Shafak about her book The Three Daughters of Eve which might be my next read.

I have Lorna Doone on the go on my kindle but it makes me want to shoot myself so I might just delete it from my life.

12. Deceived Wisdom: Why What You Thought Was Right Is Wrong by David Bradley Another one that had been sat unread on my kindle for years, this is a book that would be better to be dipped into (I saw a goodreads reviewer had described it as a toilet book!). It debunks old wives tales and beliefs ranging from not feeling 'the benefit' if you keep your coat on indoors to the existence of a dark side of the moon and is fairly entertaining, although I would have liked more in depth accounts in some sections and there were several "deceived wisdoms" that were just common sense that they weren't true, such as that eating your bread crusts makes your hair curl.

I'm well into This Thing of Darkness now too, I am absolutely loving it. I have borrowed it from the library but may need to buy myself a copy of this one.

The Spy Who Came in From The Cold is a good John Le Carre

Adding The Mask of Dimitrios to my tbr list, Cote. I've only read one John Le Carré book (A Most Wanted Man) and I didn't get on with it. Gave up halfway through. Maybe this is what I needed instead.

Thanks for all the responses r.e. One Hundred Years of Solitude - sounds like it is worth continuing with, but perhaps I'll try to pick up a paper copy at the library and ditch the audiobook. I don't think I'm listening to it regularly enough to keep on top of what's happening.

Mr Herriot is keeping me very happy in the meantime.

Bringing my list over.

1. The Light Years - Elizabeth Jane Howard
2. Marking Time - Elizabeth Jane Howard
3. Peter's Room - Antonia Forest
4. Run Away Home - Antonia Forest
5. The Thursday Kidnapping - Antonia Forest

I liked One Hundred Years of Solitude a lot when I read it but should probably read it again as it was a long time ago. I also liked Love in the Time of Cholera and... Love and other Demons, something like that? Think it was short stories. But yes, maybe a bit weird to listen to - you have to get stuck in and suspend your disbelief.

Love all James Herriot.

I liked A Hundred Years of Solitude.
Book 14
Age of Wonder: How the Romantic Generation Discovered the Beauty and Terror of Science yy Richard Holmes

A book of two halves. I absolutely loved the first40% or so, which discuss, in turn, Joseph Banks (botanist with Captain Cook and later president of the Royal Society and William Herschel, the astronomer. Unfortunately it all got a bit dull after that and it never really came back together again (although I did enjoy the section on Frankenstein). If you’re interested in science and history, I’d say it’s worth a read – but it wasn’t as good as it could have been overall.

Marking my place.

Still a way off finishing any book other than DCs bedtime story books and school reading books, and I really don't think I can count those.

Ooh, yay for Dorothy Sayers, glitterbrained. They get much better as they go along too, until you get to the utter, utter glory that is Gaudy Night.

I've read that too, RMC123

Also, Forgotten Voices of The Holocaust

Very moving, and makes me so grateful that our generation, at least in the West, has barely been touched by the horrors of war. The courage and suffering of many people is salutary.

I've added the feminist book to my list Therearenoghostshere. I've recently been listening to The Guilty Feminist podcast, which is very funny but also wise. It's been making me think a lot about the world my daughters are growing up in.

I loved A hundred Years of Solitude but pretty sure I read it while living in a jungle somewhere, so probably the perfect place for magic realism. Love in a time of cholera is a more coherent story IIRC, would definitely recommend it.

1. The Word for World is Forest - Ursula LeGuin. This is about humans colonising a planet, cutting down its trees and raping and enslaving its people. Yay. It was written at the time of the Vietnam War but is still depressingly relevant, if a little preachy at times.

15. Forgotten Voices of the Great War. True recollections of the WW1. Harrowing, shocking and at times amusing. It never fails to shock me the conditions these men lived and fought in and the impact on the Home Front. Needing to immerse myself in it all for something I am working on but think I will have to have lighter reading alongside. That said it's a collection of love letters between soldiers and there partners next!

Coming towards the end of:

13. The Year of Living Danishly, by Helen Russell

Reviewed already on here. I'm slightly irritated by the authorial voice, but she's won me around with her account of a Danish Christmas.

I think that One Hundred Years Of Solitude works either if you concentrate deeply or if you just float and let the prose wash over you. Either way, it has to be immersive.

A friend really struggled with it but it was because she skimmed some bits, left several days between readings, etc etc. So she kept detaching from the buendo family & having to re-work the characters.
She also got really hung up on how the house kept growing or shrinking to fit the story and it totally spoilt the book for her. I did tell her to not get so embroiled in small points...it wasn't that type of book!

Come to think of it, magic realism probably want her cup of tea and she just wanted to tick the book off a list. She ended up, instead, hating it with a passion

DH is a big Stephen King fan but he hated Under the Dome - he said he found it increasingly unpleasant for no good reason and actually gave up which is unheard of for him.

I liked One Hundred Years of Solitude but it was a slow read as it's full of descriptive passages and stream of consciousness. I seem to remember having to really concentrate on it (it was a long time ago so I'm a bit hazy now).

I hate it when books do that EmGee you just get comfy and think that you have several chapters left, then Grrrrr.