50 Book Challenge Part Five

TooExtraImmatureCheddar here's a link to Cote's excellent discussion of the themes in Cloud Atlas:

www.mumsnet.com/Talk/what_were_reading/1512201-Cote-Dazur-yes-please-give-us-your-insights-on-cloud-atlas

"I take it you liked it?"

I don't mean this in a bad way, but I don't know how to engage with someone who has understood so little from a review that she doesn't know if it was positive or negative Maybe read it again and then we will talk? You might like to read the book again as well, just to see what it was about. Seriously, I don't know what to say.

49. First Love by Gwendoline Riley not keen on this, it was thankfully brief! A very bleak uncomfortable read, portraying the unhappy marriage of Neve and her husband, who is vile to her, taking every opportunity to belittle and verbally abuse her, and while it is not fully explained, what led to her ending up with him.
50. The Woman In Cabin 10 by Ruth Ware good psychological thriller which kept me guessing what had become of the mystery passenger in cabin 10, had to suspend my disbelief for the later parts but really enjoyed this.
51. Stay With Me by Ayobami Adebayo I thought this was absolutely excellent. Set in 1980's and present day Nigeria, Yejide has been married to the love of her life for four years and the couple are trying to conceive. They are under huge family pressure to have a baby and so her husband, Akin, takes a second wife in order to do so. Utterly compelling, tragic, unpredictable and beautifully written.

60. The Veiled One.
61. An Unkindness of Ravens
62. The Speaker of Mandarin All Ruth Rendell Wexford. I've read these three before but have a hopeless memory for whodunnit. I'm also reading them in reverse order and enjoying the nostalgia. We're back in the 1980s now. Rendell was always very good at capturing the mood of the period.

Probably. I do remember something where it started to explain but I think I was grumpy by then and not listening. I must have mixed you up with someone else, sorry Cote! I take it you liked it?

Buying Snow Crash in penance.

Thanks for the Snowcrash tip! Have now got it on the kindle.

Erm... My Cloud Atlas review was the furthest thing from "scathing".

Have you missed the part of the book where it explains the meaning of "Cloud Atlas"?

1. Dragon Bound, Thea Harrison
2. A Man Lay Dead, Ngaio Marsh
3. Enter A Murderer, Ngaio Marsh
4. The Nursing Home Mystery, Ngaio Marsh
5. Dancers in Mourning, Margery Allingham
6. Horror Stories, E Nesbit
7. The Rithmatist, Brandon Sanderson
8. Magic Flutes, Eva Ibbotsen
9. The Haunting, Margaret Mahy
10. A Company of Swans, Eva Ibbotsen
11. The Changeover, Margaret Mahy
12. The Coming of Age of the Chalet School, Elinor M Brent-Dyer
13. The Feud in the Fifth Remove, EBD
14. The Susannah Adventure, EBD
15. Carnation of the Upper Fourth, EBD
16. The Golden Road, LM Montgomery
17. A Monster Calls, Patrick Ness
18. Goldenhand, Garth Nix
19. The Circle, Sara B Elfgren & Mats Strandberg
20. Dietland, Sarai Walker
21. Bayou Moon, Ilona Andrews
22. Day of the Triffids, John Wyndham
23. Which Witch? Eva Ibbotsen
24. Miss Pettigrew Lives For A Day, Winifred Watson
25. Stormy Petrol, Mary Stewart
26. The Summer Without Men, Siri Hustvedt
27. Witchlight, Susan Fletcher
28. Fire, Sara B Elfrgren & Mats Strandberg
29. The Key, Sara B Elfgren & Mats Strandberg
30. A Problem For the Chalet School, EBD
31. The Chalet School Reunion, EBD
32. Redheads of the Chalet School, EBD
33. Wolf by Wolf, Ryan Graudin
34. The Power, Naomi Alderman
35. The Raven Boys, Maggie Stiefvater
36. Cargo of Horses, Monica Edwards
37. Pawn of Prophecy, David Eddings
38. Queen of Sorcery, David Eddings
39. Magician’s Gambit, David Eddings
40. This Enchanted April, Elizabeth von Arnim
41. Castle of Wizardry, David Eddings
42. Enchanter’s End Game, David Eddings
43. Guardians of the West, David Eddings
44. King of the Murgos, David Eddings
45. Demon Lord of Karanda, David Eddings
46. Sorceress of Darshiva, David Eddings
47. Seeress of Kell, David Eddings
48. One Fell Sweep, Ilona Andrews
49. Princess Priscilla’s Fortnight, Elizabeth von Arnim
50. The School in the Woods, Dorita Fairlie Bruce
51. The Crystal Singer, Anne McCaffrey
52. Killashandra, Anne McCaffrey
53. Crystal Line, Anne McCaffrey
54. The Dream Thieves, Maggie Stiefvater
55. Blue Lily, Lily Blue, Maggie Stiefvater
56. The Raven King, Maggie Stiefvater
57. Fraulein Schmidt and Mr Anstruther, Elizabeth von Arnim
58. Three Go To The Chalet School, EBD
59. The Fellowship of the Ring, JRR Tolkien
60. Kushiel’s Dart, Jacqueline Carey
61. Belgravia, Julian Fellowes
62. My Not So Perfect Life, Sophie Kinsella
63. Confessions of a Failed Southern Lady, Florence King
64. The Burning Page, Genevieve Colman
65. Ragnarok, AS Byatt
66. The Fate of the Tearling, Erika Johansen
67. The Two Towers, JRR Tolkien
68. The Return of the King, JRR Tolkien
69. A Gift of Dragons, Anne McCaffrey
70. Deep Secret, Diana Wynne Jones
71. Walk in the Woods, Bill Bryson
72. A Little Life, Hanya Yanighara
73. Strange The Dreamer, Liani Taylor
74. The Diamond Throne, David Eddings
75. The Ruby Knight, David Eddings
76. Silence Fallen, Patricia Briggs
77. The Sapphire Rose, David Eddings
78. Domes of Fire, David Eddings
79. The Shining Ones, David Eddings
80. The Hidden City, David Eddings
81. Assassin’s Fate, Robin Hobb
82. White Hot, Ilona Andrews
83. The Black Loch, Patricia Leitch
84. The Island of Adventure, Enid Blyton
85. The Castle of Adventure, Enid Blyton
86. The Valley of Adventure, Enid Blyton
87. The Highland Twins at the Chalet School, EBD
88. Assassin’s Apprentice, Robin Hobb
89. Cloud Atlas, David Mitchell
90. A Court of Wings and Ruin, Sarah J Maas
91. Pottermore Presents, JK Rowling

Sorry, I had a major laptop failure yesterday and couldn't get back online for ages! Here's my list to date. It is very filled with children/YA/crappy fantasy so far!

So, Assassin's Fate. First of all, I thought this trilogy as a whole dragged because I just don't like Bee. She spends the whole time peeing herself and whining. That said, I was hooked by the old Robin Hobb magic for all the Fitz and the Fool bits, and I loved the ending. And I did like the deliberate winding up of all loose ends - from Paragon to Kettricken, you got an ending for all the old favourites. Completely agree with Nighteyes about who Fitz ought to have had as his mate, too - Molly never quite did it for me.

Cloud Atlas - aaargh! I loved The Bone Clocks, but wtf was David Mitchell doing with CA? I liked the first two or three installments, but all the futuristic stuff bored me stiff. I was really struggling to care by the end, and I still don't know why it was called Cloud Atlas. I have a vague memory of reading Cote's scathing review of it a couple of years ago and I was getting v pissed off with the vague comet birthmark stuff.

Test

Neal Stephenson's mind-blowing Snow Crash is £1.99 on the Kindle.

Don't think, just get it!

18.The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood.
Not read before, grabbed off DH's shelf to read before the telly adaptation gets going properly.

Blimey. This was great. Beautifully rich descriptive writing, which offset the stark subject matter disturbingly well.

31. City of Thieves by David Benioff. Set during WW2 in Russia in a besieged city, a captured deserter and a looter can avoid execution if they can find a dozen eggs in the next 6 days.

This was given to me by someone in work as a MUST read book. It's fast paced with likeable characters, but is just a chewing gum book and a very quick easy read. The author is one of the creators for the TV series of Game of Thrones.

I've got All Quiet on the Western Front lined up next.

I also gave up on A Japanese Lover, It didn't feel like Allende at all.

I didn't make it past the opening scenes of the film of A Clockwork Orange, but am tempted now by the book, since so many make it worth the read.

altered - Your grandfather sounds like he was a very interesting man What happened to his instruments?

I didn't think A Clockwork Orange was unbearably violent. I agree that it was good, though.

A Clockwork Orange is stunning and profoundly disturbing at the same time. It isn't an easy read but well worth it - I struggled with the language at first and kept looking up the words but eventually just went with the flow - much better.

The Things they Carried is in the monthly deal, and worth a read - although I found the second half much weaker than the first half.

I have never read A Clockwork Orange but did see it as a stage production when I was at uni. It was brilliant but quite horrific. We all marched down to the union afterwards desperately needing a drink only to find the actor who played Alex standing at the bar! It was genuinely hard to be around him. Poor fella.

Very, very, very. It took me years to get past the first ten pages, as they are so harrowing - but it honestly is superb.

I've never read A Clockwork Orange so am rather tempted. Is it very violent?

A Clockwork Orange is £1.99 in the Kindle monthly deals. A work of genius, imvho.

So I've just gotten to "part two" in I Let You Go - Clare MacKintosh whilst on the bus home from work! Did not see that coming. Pity I always get to the good bits when I have to stop reading.

Be interesting to hear your thoughts, cheddar. There are a few of us who've read Assasin's Fate recently.

Fire away cheddar!

Damn. The reason I didn't rejoin this thread this year is because I was spending a fortune! Have just read the last 2 pages and bought 5 books (or 3, depending on how you count them) - Pottermore Presents, the Guy Gavriel Kay one and the first Marie Brennan Natural History of Dragons one.

Please may I join now? I am longing to discuss Assassin's Fate, Fitz and the Fool by Robin Hobb.