50 Book Challenge 2017 Part Four

Orange stuff is the Aperol, Remus

Friends, I feel for you. It's bad enough that you live in a cold place without sun for +300 days of the year, but... but... no Aperol Spritz? What?

Looks pretty and I like Prosecco, but what's the orange stuff? As far as I'm concerned, nothing can beat a Margarita, but I will taste an Aperol Spritz ASAP to see how it measures up.

Photo make Aperol Spritz look like Irn Bru??!!
13. Humble By Nature by Kate Humble Listened to the audiobook, wouldn't recommend it. Some interesting excerpts but mostly a bit dull, and towards the end feels increasingly like an advert for her business which, it turns out, has the same name as the book.

Delurking to say I had my first Aperol Spritz in La Rochelle last year - loved it and would LOVE one now!
(I am still reading but due to a manic phase at work haven't updated but will do soon!)

I want one NOW!

Aperol Spritz

16. The Food of Love by Amanda Prowse. Chick lit dealing with the topic of anorexia. Realistic and a page turner.

17. Hons and Rebels by Jessica Mitford. I adore Nancy Mitford's novels and I've also read a couple of Mitford biographies, but I hadn't read Decca's autobiography (up to her early 20s) before. First published in 1960, it was an exciting time in her life and an interesting period in history too (the lead up to and early days of WWII). I thoroughly enjoyed this.

18. Nora Webster by Colm Toibin. Nora has just been widowed, and this book follows her life and her relationships with family and friends in the three years after her husband's death. It's a calm, understated book with a gently meandering plot - reminds me of an Irish version of Anne Tyler. I thought it was better than the other Toibin I've read, The Blackwater Lightship.

19. The Tidal Zone by Sarah Moss. The narrator Adam's teenage daughter goes into anaphylactic shock and nearly dies (not a spoiler as it happens right at the beginning of the book). The book is about the family adapting to the 'new normal' of her condition, interspersed with snippets about the building of Coventry cathedral after it was destroyed in the blitz, as the narrator is writing a book about this while being a SAHD. I love Sarah Moss, and she is on top form here. Really enjoyed this.

What is it?

"I have never had an Aperol Spritz. Do I want to?"

Whaaaat?!?!

Of course you want to. Trust me on this. You want to have a cool and delicious Aperol Spritz (or three) very soon.

Ha ha, I was wondering about the aperol spritz. Is it like Febreze?

Forget books. I have never had an Aperol Spritz. Do I want to?

(Not that I work for Persephone. But it's very much that sort of book.)

15. Grass in Piccadilly Noel Streatfeild
Adult Streatfeild. 1946. Lord and Lady Nettel have been forced to sell their country home and convert their Mayfair house into flats. Six very different families - from the Cockney Parkses in the basement to Lord Nettel's fast-living daughter Penny - move in. All six have secrets, stories and sorrows. Can they find a happiness in peacetime?

I enjoyed this, with some qualms. It's biggest strength is its descriptions of post-war Britain - electricity forbidden within certain hours, newsagents rationed per square mile, the different way people who stayed and fought for London feel about it to those who left and returned to find it ruined. Some brilliant contemporary descriptions of the Great Winter of 1947. I also like reading about good people doing their best in difficult circumstances, and different people muddling along together. In real life, i expect everyone would have just nodded Britishly at each other on the stairs, but I liked them all helping each other out.

Qualms - well, Remus is a bit right about her characters. We've got loyal family retainers, loveable Cockneys, a standard-issue child ballet prodigy, a shallow talentless actress and a kind writer father. We also, I am very sorry to say, have a hook-nosed anti-Semitic stereotype of a Jewish refugee, (who eats ham and throws Christmas parties ). His wife is lovely, but it really doesn't excuse it. And a couple of gay men, who also serve no purpose except to provide a side order of homophobia.

It's a shame, because otherwise it would have made a perfect Persephone book.

23. Bound by Benedict Jacka

Follows on directly from the last, but saying too much about that will give away major spoilers for the earlier books. Suffice it to say, diviner/probability mage Alex Verus has been outmanoeuvred and along with his friends is in deep trouble. There's much plotting, a fair amount of violence, and lots of magic as you would expect. I still think Jim Butcher does this better, but I also enjoy Jacka's world.

Also isn't His Dark Materials a trilogy too? Count 'em! Also hope that Harry Potter is just The Philosopher's Stone and not another 6 books you're doing yourself out of

cote Adrian decides he's an intellectual and joins the library to see where it leads. It leads to misunderstanding and confusion

bluebell I think you can count the Mars Trilogy as three. And they're pretty big!

No idea what this means. I may have had a few glasses of wine (and a sneaky Aperol Spritz )

Remus is speaking Adrian Mole.

1. Sky Thieves by Dan Walker
2. His Dark Materials by Phillip Pullman
3. Mars Trilogy by Kim Stanley Robinson
4. American Gods by Neil Gaiman
5. Harry Potter by J.K. Rowling (been meaning to read this one for absolute ages!)

5 for now but I have to start somewhere :-)

1. Bee Wilson, 'this is not a diet book'
2. Harry Potter & the chamber of secrets (with DC)
3. Jennifer Weiner, 'all fall down'
4. Lauren Sandler, 'one and only'
5. Rene and Goscinny, the Nicholas Book (children's book)
6. Katja Rowell, fussy eating book
7. Nicola Yoon, 'everything everything' (YA book)
8. JD Robb, 'echoes in death'
9. JD Vance, 'Hillbilly elegy'
10. Jonathan Kellerman, Heartbreak Hotel
11. Haemin Sunim, The things you can see only when you slow down

So the latest I read was Buddhist Monk's Haemin Sunim's The things you can see only when you slow down. Rather a pleasant little book about mindfulness & being present in the moment, if you enjoy that kind of thing. The book contains a number of chapters on topics such as "rest", "mindfulness", "passion", "relationships" etc. Some of the insights were refreshing to read as a reminder, others were a bit banal and I skipped through. What I really enjoyed actually was the lovely artwork by Youngcheol Lee that accompanies the writing. A book to read in bits & pieces alongside reading something else. Not groundbreaking in any way, but worth taking a look at.

"I got a book by some woman called Evelyn Waugh and another by a bloke called George Elliot, but, frankly my dear, I prefer the Norwegian leather industry."

No idea what this means. I may have had a few glasses of wine (and a sneaky Aperol Spritz )

33. Night Waking by Sarah Moss
    Thankyou for recommending this to me, BestIsWest, I enjoyed it greatly.
    Anna, a historian with a book she needs to finish writing, is living on a remote, otherwise uninhabited Hebridean island with her two sons and ecologist husband who absents himself to count the puffins. She and her eldest son are disturbed to find an infants body buried in the orchard, leading Anna to investigate the islands past.
    This novel is extremely good, Sarah Moss writes so well about family and relationships. I found it quite an uncomfortable read at times, the frustration, PND, and the torturous lack of sleep experienced by Anna are all too familiar to me at the moment, but am very glad I persevered.

34. The One Hundred Year Old Man Who Jumped Out of A Window by Jonas Jonasson a quirky, easy read which is very amusing in parts, I enjoyed this, though I had to be in the right mood for it, it could be seen as irritatingly twee if not!

I stopped after the first two Moles; I read them as a kid and reread for comfort, never wanted to follow him into adulthood, never felt like it would work the same way.

7 The Ashes of London this took me a shamefully long time to read...it's just as well I only have a modest 20 book challenge this year. Once I found the time to read it I enjoyed this book. Definitely has resonances of Shardlake.

Next up is Anatomy of a Soldier by Harry Parker. I hope to read this one rather more speedily!

One every five years maybe.

I did say to dp earlier that it was probably not the best idea to read two in a row!