50 Book Challenge Part Five

EmGee - I liked Gorky Park but calling DS Arkady would have been a step too far, I think Thanks for the recommendations.

Ha! I knew it, Remus Now read my review and let me know what you think.

Keith
That's increasingly my complaint with YA too - it's like writers are playing 'Issue Bingo'.

Book 46
46: The City and the City China Miéville
Brace yourself, Cote!
I really liked this! It’s set in a fictional place along similar lines to East/West Berlin, but the two cities share the same geographical location – a street could be partly in one city and partly in the other, for example, and depending on which city you’re a citizn of, you have to learn to ‘unsee’ the other. Into this weirdness, enter a murder victim. It soon becomes clear that she’s been murdered in one of the cities but her body has been found in the other. And if things aren’t weird enough yet, that’s when it all gets weirder. The novel isn’t flawless – it’s a bit rambling in places and the writer doesn’t always control grammar or punctuation as well as I’d have liked, but I found this absolutely fascinating. So glad I read it – one of the stand outs of my year, so far and one of the first books in a long time that's made me wish I could stay up all night to finish it. It kept calling to me when I was at work.

Cote DH was a big fan of Martin Cruz Smith. He even wanted to call our DC Arkady!

While it's not really my favourite genre, I really enjoyed Fatherland by Robert Harris and Mostrum by Donald James in addition to Gorky Park.

21. This Rough Magic by Mary Stewart
    First read this book when I was a teenager. Really enjoyed rereading it now. Lucy, an actress, is spending a holiday in Corfu with her sister and finds herself caught up in an adventure. To say much more would give away the plot but there are fights, guns and a dolphin. Written in the days before tourism took over it evokes the island beautifully. Even though I remembered some of the plot it still kept me gripped.

22. The Phantom Atlas by Edward Brooke-Hitching
    I was given this book for Christmas and have been dipping in ever since. It is a beautifully illustrated book about islands and other geographical features which have made their ways onto maps over the centuries but don't actually exist at all. Written in short sections, each one explains how the phantom land/island was first recorded and when it was debunked. Fascinating. My only slight criticism is that it was sometimes hard to see all the detail on the maps - could have done with being an oversized book to see them properly. Interesting for anyone who enjoys looking at maps.

Not sure what I am going to read next. I've got quite a few books around to read but not really taken with the idea of any of them at the moment.

20. The First Book of Calamity Leek by Paula Lichtarowicz

This one was a bit odd, and a little confusing to start with, but did draw me in after the first few chapters. It's told switching between then and now.

Calamity and her sisters have been raised in the Garden by Aunty and the revered Mother, safe from the dangers outside, where injuns and demonmales lurk, where the sun in the sky is a malevolent force wanting to sizzle all females up, and Calamity and her sisters have spent their whole lives training to be weapons. The book starts with one of the sisters, Truly, falling from a ladder after trying to see over the Wall of Safekeeping. Truly is fatally injured, but manages to whisper that there are no injuns before she loses consciousness.

It's clear from very early on that Truly's accident has been the catalyst for life in the Garden changing forever.

The truth behind what's going on with the Garden, Mother, Aunty and the sisters is revealed slowly throughout the book. It's difficult to explain any further without giving the plot away, except to say that it went off in a different direction than I'd expected from reading the blurb on the back of the book.

Longtime lurker here, these book threads are great, thank you all for posting about the books you're reading😊
I will try and get my books list from my Amazon account so that I can add to the body of knowledge

Hello DrDiva, I'm also (mainly) lurking and definitely reading very slowly, I take my hat off to these prolific readers!

17. Gorky Park by Martin Cruz Smith

3 mutilated bodies are found in Moscow's Gorky Park during Soviet times, and Detective Arkady Renko is charged with finding the killer - against Soviet bureaucracy, all-powerful forces in KGB & the Party, ordinary people's fears, and especially he communist orthodoxy saying murder doesn't exist in USSR since people have no rational reason to kill in a workers' paradise.

I loved this book, not just for the mystery which was well-paced and thought out in credible detail, but also (especially) for the cultural, political, and psychological insight into Americans, Russians, the two governments, human nature etc.

Highly recommended if you are into books that look like detective fiction & mysteries but are a lot more.

Glad you liked The Book of Daniel Turn. It's one I rate very much.

14. The Book of Daniel by E.L. Doctorow.
Fictionalised account of the lives, trial and deaths of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, imagining the events from the perspective of their young son, and looking at the impact of this on him as adult.
Immensely moving and hard-hitting, no doubt more so because the main narrative is firmly rooted in reality. Very fresh - the narrative switches from the first to the third person during paragraphs creating a sense of the adult Daniel's unease about who he has become. Coincidentally it references directly my last read, The Spy Who Came in From the Cold, and shares some of the key political themes - one for you perhaps, Remus?

20. How To Talk: Siblings Without Rivalry - Adele Faber & Elaine Mazlish

I'm not usually one for parenting manuals (preferring to make it up as I go along) but the DC have been driving me crazy lately with their constant bickering so thought this (much recommended on MN) was worth a try! It's very American (lots of group therapy and bursting with feeeeeelingz ) but has some interesting ideas which I'll be trying out - feel like I'll give anything a try!

Struggled a bit to find my next book after the William Boyd, which was super-readable and rather gripping.

31. The Elephant in the Room, Jon Ronson

This was more of an essay or long magazine article than a book. Scary stuff about the alt-right and their involvement with Trump (published before he became one of the most powerful men in the world). I was a bit naïve before I read this - I knew that the alt-right were nasty, and mad, but seriously - there are people who believe that Sandy Hook was staged by the US Government in order to give Obama and excuse to change the gun laws. And they tweet vile abuse to the parents who lost their children :( Horrific. Very interesting (albeit disturbing) topic although I didn't think the brief format did it justice.

32. The Smell of Other People's Houses, Bonnie-Sue Hitchcock

I continue to read my way through the Carnegie shortlist for work. This one is set in 1970s Alaska and tells the story of four troubled teens whose lives intersect in a series of coincidences. Loved the setting - it is woven all through with the Alaskan way of life and I haven't read anything like this in a modern book (it opens, for example, with a childhood memory of the butchering of a recently shot deer, and this is a happy memory - the blood, the smell. You might find bits of the book tough if you're squeamish).

My problem with this is it has that YA thing of cramming way too much plot into a rather short book. Four characters, dealing with everything that the author can throw at them: teenage pregnancy, alcoholism, parental divorce, domestic violence, sexual abuse, mental illness.... I would happily have read a book about any one of these characters or their stories. Having them all in the one book was too much.

I now have the Cornish Trilogy (recommend here I believe - good so far :) ) and also a number of books about the neuroscience of the teenage boy brain. Happy reading everyone :)

Hello.
I am lurking.
And reading, very very slowly.

19. Nobody Told Me Hollie McNish
This book was not like eating a blackbird. This book was like having a loud sweary rant about motherhood with an old mate over a bottle of wine. Or two. Comparing scars and telling each other we're doing bloody marvelous really.
Liked this one a lot. The poems were a bit hit-and-miss for me, particularly the ones that didn't scan properly (shudders), but the ones I liked, I loved.

It is, Cote - I generally find that sort of book works well for me on audio, even if I do need to stop and go back & relisten to bits or pause to thing about what has been said. I'm 1hr 40 in now (out of 7hr 50) and finding it very interesting so far.

Crickey, its been bloody ages since I last posted. Been involved in a writing (blogging) challenge which involved loads of reading. Have managed to read one or two books which I'll review below after bringing over my list for this year:

1. The Skeleton Cupboard: stories from a clinical psychologist by Tanya Byron
2. All Quiet on the Western Front by Erich Maria Remarque
3. Where the Eagle Landed: Mystery of the German Invasion of Britain, 1940 by Peter Haining
4. The Sellout by Paul Beatty
5. A Journal of the Plague Year by Daniel Defoe
6. The Great St Mary’s Day Out & My Name is Markham by Jodi Taylor
7. Golden Hill by Francis Spufford
8. Straight by Dick Francis
9. The Universe vs Alex Woods by Gavin Extence

Book 18. Aunty Ida’s Full Service Mental Institution by Isa-Lee Wolf is a bonkers piece of writing. One I really enjoyed.

19. Purity by Jonathan Franzen was frankly hard work. I had high hopes for it but was put off but the stereotyping of the female characters - either sex mad, bad mothers, or both.

20. The Invisible Library by Genevieve Cogman about Librarians who range around alternative worlds and collect books (or documents) for safe keeping. Sometimes things get rather out of hand in magical/fantastical ways. Fun.

21. And the Rest is History by Jodi Taylor - usually reliably tosh read when my brain needs a break. Disappointing this time though.

Oh & I heartily endorse Cheerful's recommendation of To Say Nothing of the Dog - utterly brilliant and I recall actually LOLing frequently whilst reading it.

sparkly I bought that for my niece (early teens) as a bit of fun. It didn't strike me as a creative tool for adults?

Hello you lovely, lovely book peeps! Congrats on the wedding Monty.

37. Out of Time – Miranda Sawyer
An exploration of what it means to reach mid-life and be ‘middle aged’. I’m just a few years younger than the author so it’s been something I’ve been thinking about. This was very readable actually.

38. The Dark Circle – Linda Grant
Nicely reviewed up-thread and I agree!

39 – 40 are four novellas, all under 200 words. This is because I am also reading Moby Dick on Kindle so feel the need to finish books – Moby Dick is looong. They are:

39. The Gold-Rimmed Spectacles – Giorgio Bassani
This is really a book about ‘otherness’, a sad tale concerning homosexuality in Italy pre-WW2 by a Jewish narrator. Very good indeed.
40. The Living Mountain – Nan Shepherd
Beautiful nature writing (in the 1940s) about the Cairngorms, much lauded by Robert Macfarlane, with good reason.
41. What I Talk About When I Talk About Running – Haruki Murakami
I like the parallels he draws between the discipline of writing and running but b’gad I’m no Murakami. I’m far too lazy!
42. Brief Loves That Live Forever – Andrei Makine
Beautiful, spare descriptive writing describing moments in the life of a young Russian man in the twentieth century. My book of the year so far by an absolute mile, but these are literally a description of brief significant moments – not plot driven, so not for everyone.

Now reading Rush-Oh and continuing with Moby Dick. Two books about whaling at the same time. Poor whales.

26. The Butterfly Garden - Dot Hutchison

The butterfly garden is primarily about the FBI investigation into a man who kidnaps young girls, tattoos them with butterfly wings and keeps them in his purpose built garden told through the interview of one of the butterflies herself revealing the horrors of what happened within the walls of the beautiful garden. It was gripping and creepy and i didn't want to put it down! I do wonder sometimes about the people who write these things though.. such creepy ideas in the authors head!

Sadik - Is Quantum about Quantum Theory? If so, I would think that it's a difficult subject to follow on Audible.

58. No Cure For Love by Peter Robinson

Run of the mill police procedural - set in LA, a celebrity is being stalked by someone who also keeps murdering people. I found the celebrity heroine hard to engage with so therefore found it hard to care about what happened to her.

Have any of you tried these books that claim to improve your ability to comprehend & be creative?

One book I strongly recommend, its half price on Amazon, is Wreck the Journal. There's one with a red cover that's half price too by Kerri Smith.

sadik Adrian is thrown by the name Evelyn and thinks it's a woman. They used the same joke in Lost in Translation too.