50 Book Challenge Part Five

It's The Occasional Garden Cheerful, here:
www.eastoftheweb.com/short-stories/UBooks/OccaGard.shtml

Never occurred to me they would be online!

I like a bit of Saki too, but I agree that he's best in small doses.

Romanovs - I don't mean to put anyone off, as the problem may lie with me rather than with the book. If you're in the mood for a long, in-depth read, this may appeal - but as Remus says, it's a slog. (It's not just about length, as I gobbled down The Strangest Family, which was a similar length but felt somehow sprightlier).

35. And then there were nuns, Jane Christmas
I wandered into a less-familiar part of the library and picked up a couple of books from the Faith section. This is an account by a Canadian woman in her mid-50s (twice divorced, three grown children, currently engaged) of spending time in Catholic and Anglican religious houses to explore whether she wants to be a nun. There's no fine writing (thank goodness) and she's prepared to poke fun at herself (a voice spoke to her from a tea towel telling her to go to Whitby). Through a previous job, I'm somewhat familiar with the environment she describes and I enjoyed this.

I just bought Barkskins by Annie Proulx for £1.99 in the weekend sale that Kindle have on, they have The God of Small Things by Arundhati Roy and The Godfather by Mario Puzo for the same price too.

Papillon by Henri Charrière is down to £1.99 on the Kindle. I'm pretty sure that you 50-Bookers are the reason why it's on my Amazon Wish List

Ooh, I don't know that one, what's it called?
Lots of his are available free on the internet.

I love Saki Cheerful- the Clovis stories are my favourite, but the one I remember best is the one where the garden comes...and goes. This thread makes me want to do almost as many rereads as new reads!

Romanovs is on my to read pile.

Romanovs book is by the writer of the Stalin book that I've been reading for months and months. I'm determined to finish and count he damn thing, because I've invested so many hours in it, but I hate it.

Would love to know if any of JLC's Cold War ones are worth reading, as Spy is magnificent.

Gosh. Obviously taking too long to read this book as I lost you all.

Although we are about to come to the end of The Giraffe, The Pelly and Me which I have never read before. Not sure I can really count that though.

I do enjoy seeing dd taking pleasure in proper stories now though. Many years of reading ahead.

18. Beasts and Super Beasts Saki
Short story collection I've been reading in the background for about a year, so hope it counts. I like Saki; he's a sort of horsehair PG Wodehouse, with a rather twisted sense of humour but a similar talent for one-liners. '"I must be going," said Mrs Eggelby, in a tone which had been thoroughly sterilised of even perfunctory regret.' Etc. His shorts get repetitive very quickly though - there are only so many times you can read about the upper classes inventively getting one up on each other - so I prefer him in short doses.

Tanaqui I did not. Hurrah!

I'm glad you liked The Lie EmGee! I'm reading Capital by John Lanchester now as I'm making an effort to read the poor neglected books that have been on my kindle for years, I'd been putting it off because I thought it might be a bit dry but it's really good so far.

TheTurn, personally I like Le Carre's The Constant Gardener, but I'll admit I find some of his Cold War stuff fairly impenetrable so I may not be the right person to make recommendations.

RMC, I was bored senseless by The Hare with Amber Eyes, and it's the kind of thing I expect to like.

Finished The Romanovs. It all felt a bit too much - too many names, too much drama - and I felt that I didn't have the brain space to grapple with it properly. I won't count it as part of my total, but I did feel it rewarded even the fairly cursory attention I paid to it.

Also read The Widow, by Fiona Barton. Thriller that was being heavily touted as the new Girl on the Train last year. Fairly bog-standard. Was expecting something a bit more twisty.

That was book 45!

And Cheerful you are very welcome anytime! But i must warn you days into magical lands are fairly rare!

The Hare with Amber Eyes by Edmind De Waal Finally finished this one aftr having it as my 'phone' book for a while. To be honest I was really disappointed with it. It is the story of 264 netsuke, small Japanese carvings which have been in the authors family since the late 19th century. The author is a member of the wealthy Jewish banking family, the Ephrussis. They were contemporaries of the Rothchilds, both in social circle, place and wealth with branches of the family across Europe. The Second world War has a predictable and devastating effect on the family and it's fortunes but some how the collection of netsuke survive. They are hidden in a mattress by the family's loyal gentile maid in Nazi occupied Vienna, and returned to the family after the war.
I should have loved this book. It was recommended to me by my MIL who loved it so much she still gives copies as gifts at least 5 years after reading it. I didn't love it. The first part of the story deals with Charles Ephrussi, wealthy art patron, collector and the first owner of the netsuke, back in 19th century Paris and to be quite honest I found it dull. It wasn't until roughly a third of the way through the book, when Charles sends the netsuke as a wedding gift to his nephew in Vienna that I became interested. Here the book is at its best. The descriptions of the family's life and wealth pre war and the dramatic turn of events in Vienna when the Nazis took power really held me. Finally I thought the book was picking up pace but then after the war, with the return of the netsuke to Japan I lost interest again. It felt to me that the real story was in those turbulent and heartbreaking war years and the rest felt like padding. Glad I have finally finished it!

13. The Spy who Came in From the Cold by John Le Carre

Leamas is a long-serving British agent working in 1960s Berlin. He is jaded and cynical at the loss of many agents. He is given the opportunity to get out, but only after one final assignment, where he is to convince the East Germans that he is a defector. However the true nature of his assignment is kept from him.

A cracking read. Dark, lean and tense. Great reflection on the morality of British espionage. Unexpected but utterly believable plot twist at the end. Best read this year. This was my first Le Carre, and I’d be keen for recommendations for which of his others to read.

Murine and Poetic - I enjoyed The Lie based on your recs on this thread and will try and get hold of The Siege. Sounds a fascinating read.

I love Hilary McKay Cheerful- did you know she was an Elinor Brent Dyer fan?

Pollyanna is one of my childhood favourites, so I'm not listening to any dissing!

Am well stuck into the next Gordon Ferris!

I read a lot of Asimov as a teenager, including many of his non-fiction essay collections. There was a time when all I read was Asimov, Clarke, and Heinlein.

He criticizes 1984 for doing a bad job of predicting the future, which is why he says "it is bad SF, if SF at all" and "Orwell didn't have the SF knack of foreseeing a plausible future". Of course Asimov died in 1992 so was lucky not to see how the world changed in the last 25 years, making many of Orwell's predictions like Newspeak and Doublethink become reality.

Asimov focuses instead on what he sees as technological impossibilities, like "multiple people needed to watch 1 person at all times, so everyone can't be watched". Whenever he write this review, it appears computers and automatic surveillance was not yet a possibility. We now know that Orwell's description of constant surveillance capabilities was not unrealistic, at all.

Have been resisting getting involved in this debate, and am not about to start now, but wondered if any of you had read Isaac Asimov on 1984?

www.newworker.org/ncptrory/1984.htm

It's an interesting read. But he's blistering on its claims to be science fiction.

Oh, and the U is because the title is a Tupac quote, not, as I assumed, to make a nice Twitter hashtag.

17. The Hate U Give Angie Thomas
Latest big YA novel. Starr lives in an area notorious for drugs and gang violence, but attends a private, mostly-white school. She struggles to reconcile the two sides of her life until she's a witness to a police shooting which kills a friend.

Thoughtful and nuanced story about the Black Lives Matter movement, gang culture and police brutality from a writer who grew up in a similar neighbourhood. I didn't love it as much as my Twitter feed seems to, partly because it's quite straightforwardly-written, partly because I'm an uptight Englishwoman and all that American earnestness makes me uncomfortable. (Prom is the best night of her life. Her parents are her one true pairing. Has she never heard of teenage cynicism?)

Shamefully, this is my first book this year written by a non-white author.

I'm reading Gorky Park at the moment and really enjoying it, by the way. It was Kindle Deal of the Day recently and I'm glad that I snapped it up.

I'm about to sleep and have a full day at work tomorrow so won't be continuing this genre debate (although I can see that you all want me to ) but about this:

"Cote was arguing; which is that there a strict set of rules surrounding a certain genre. "

Is that what you call a "definition"?

A book (1) about the future which (2) talks about a new technology and (3) how it changes society in that future is science-fiction. That is the very definition of sci-fi. It's 1984, on all three points: A book about the future that talks about the state exerting near-perfect and constant control over every citizen through constant surveillance with "tele screens" and how that has changed society.

This isn't me being "rigid" or whatever - just telling you what sci-fi means, as someone who has been reading a lot of it for the past 30 years.

Just look it up. It is no secret that 1984 is science fiction.

And on that note, everyone have a good night

I've finished book 40 tonight, The Siege by Helen Dunmore, which I doubt I can do justice in a review, thankyou for recommending this to me PoeticLE, I thought it was wonderful.
I've found it one of those books after which you don't quite feel ready to pick up another book to begin afterwards.
Beautifully written, stark and gripping novel set in besieged Leningrad in 1941, it closely follows one families fight for survival during the first winter. I knew very little about this part of history and want to learn more, as well as adding almost all of Helen Dunmore's other books to my wish list!