50 Book Challenge Part Five

They probably wouldn't write it in English, though!

"no one would ever write in a novel about Britain that . . . the only true Britons are the Welsh"
I wouldn't rely on that, altered A friend's dd was once reprimanded in school for speaking "the language of the devil" (ie, English), and I can quite see someone writing a novel saying just that . . .

I am sorely tempted by The Name of the Sodding Wind as relief from The Seventh Scroll satsuki.

I am still irrationally angry about what is, after all, just a cynical money grab disguised as a poorly researched thriller. I need to get a life.

I think it is the condescending tone that gets me most. Gems like knowing that the Minister of Antiquities prefers a robe and sitting on cushions on the floor to sitting at a desk in a suit and tie. I know the current Minister of Antiquities and he would sooner shoot himself in the head than wear a galabeya, and indeed if he did, even in his leisure time, he would almost certainly be fired.

I also really dislike the "real Egyptians" bloodline bullshit. It is divisive, lazy and untrue. I mean, no one would ever write in a novel about Britain that all British people of Anglo-Saxon, Gael, Norse or Norman descent are invaders and the only true Britons are the Welsh. FFS.

If you are going to write a novel about a country, then why not talk to a person from that country? Read a book about it, say?

In tribute, I will write a book about a British couple excavating Stonehenge called Zorg and Sheba, who are foiled by evil villains Kazoo and Dipshit, easily distinguished by their Riverdance outfits.

Noticed that The Snowden Files which I believe was reviewed on an earlier thread and have had on my list since is now down to £2.74 on Kindle (and Olive Kitteridge on daily deal today).

Murine, I read Nightwoods earlier this year and I enjoyed it. Liked the main characters. I think I have a goldfish memory for storylines but this one is worth reading.

"Satsuki I notice the word sodding has crept into one of the titles on your list. Would that be the lute book? "

Satsuki, . You must have missed lute music by now. You are welcome

(Feel free to laugh at my middle-aged sausage fingers )

Thanks for the new thread southeast

1. This Thing of Darkness by Harry Thompson (kindle)
2. Where the Bodies are Buried by Chris Brookmyre (kindle)
3. Nothing to Envy: Real Lives in North Korea by Barbara Demick (kindle)
4. The Dud Avocado by Elaine Dundy (hard copy)
5. Thank Heaven Fasting by EM Delafield (kindle)
6. 11.22.63 by Stephen King (audible)
7. Blue Lightning by Ann Cleeves (Dad's kindle)
8. The Devil in the Marshalsea by Antonia Hodgson (Dad's kindle)
9. The Three-Body Problem by Cixin Liu (kindle)

And now:
23. The Mangle Street Murders by MRC Kasasian Diverting quick read Victorian murder mystery, done in a humorous style. Intelligent female heroine teams up with curmudgeonly male personal detective. I liked that this acknowledged the sexism, racism and classism of the time in quite a light but knowing way. At first the witty dialogue was genuinely funny, but it all became a bit samey towards the end, and I fear this series could go the same way as St Mary's. I'd read another if it was 99p and I was in the right mood, but wouldn't actively seek it out.

Satsuki I notice the word sodding has crept into one of the titles on your list. Would that be the lute book?

I haven't read The Gustav Sonata, mugglebumthesecond, I have it on my never ending wish list to read though as it sounds like the kind of thing I'd like. Would you recommend it?
I found Nightwoods by Charles Frazier in a charity shop for 50p today, has anybody read this? I remember loving Cold Mountain when I read it years ago so bought it, though it'll be a while until I get around to reading it, I've got 4 library books on loan to go first!

Satsuki - I'm going straight into the library tomorrow to ask for The Name of the Sodding Wind! Sounds amazing

14. Golden Hill by Francis Spufford. Reviewed on here many times. I loved it, gripping plot and gorgeous writing - my favourite combo! I especially loved the set piece scenes, so vivid. For once the cover reviews lived up to their hyperbole.

ooh, new thread!

My list so far:

1. Sword Song - Bernard Cornwall
2. The Essex Serpent - Sarah Perry
3. House of Cards - Michael Dobbs
4. Sparkling Cyanide - Agatha Christie
5. The Moving Toyshop - Edmund Crispin
6. Crow Hollow - Michael Wallace
7. Moving - Jenny Eclair
8. The Sense of an Ending - Julian Barnes
9. Rather be the Devil - Ian Rankin

The last is the first of the "Simon Serrailler" detective books as recommended on here as middle class crime fiction - and my days it was very middle class, the discription of sash windows and furniture layouts was almost pornographic. So very naice. However, there's a bit of a twist towards the end that I wasn't expecting.

If you are in the market for something a bit cosy but with a tiny bit of a more edge than a midsummer murders, this is the one for you.

Evening all. Glad I found you. Thanks for the new thread.

My list thus far:

1. The Muse - Jessie Burton

1. Gone Without a Trace - Mary Torjussen
2. Flesh Wounds - Christopher Brookmyre
3. Phantom: a Harry Hole Thriller - Jo Nesbo
4. Dead Simple (Roy Grace Series) - Peter James
5. All Good Deeds (A Lucy Kendall Thriller) - Stacy Green
6. The Turtle Boy - Kealan Patrick Burke

1. The Rosie Project - Graeme Simsion

21. Swansong - Damien Boyd

Another enjoyable middle class crime. This time set in a boarding school where our protagonist, DCI Nick Dixon must face his demons if he has a chance of solving the murder of a 17 year old girl and a cold case. I liked the setting and the characters are fun if not always convincingly drawn out - for example the chief super who supposedly is highly dubious and critical of Nick but actually backs him at every turn and appears really rather fond of him. It's a bit like the author has forgotten how he intended to play it.

Anyway, easy reading and good fun.

14. Reqdy player One by Ernest Cline. Reviewed just above! Although I was a teenager in the 80s, gaming was not my thing, so a lot of the references here passed me by. In fact, I'm not quite sure who this book was aimed at- I assumed young adult, but no idea if a teenager now would get any of the 80s stuff! Also, I found the narrative voice very one note- I wouldn't seek out anything else by Cline.

That should be 16, lost ability to count as well as read.

Bringing my list over. I'd read double this amount this time last year. Had a good start but haven't been finding many good enough to finish in recent weeks. Highlights in bold, raspberries in italics. Quite a few were good but only 3 standouts.

1.All the Light We Cannot See - Anthony Doerr

1. The Essex Serpent - Sarah Perry
2. His Bloody Project - Graeme Macrae Burnet
3. Golden Hill - Francis Spufford
4. 11.22.63 - Stephen King
5. The North Water - Ian McGuire
6. The Three Body Problem - Cixin Liu
7. The Vegetarian - Han Kang
8. The Long Goodbye - Raymond Chandler

Sorry, have been offline and feel off the old thread.

1. The Secrets of Gaslight Lane, M R Kassassian

2. Harpole & Foxberrow, General Publishers, J L Carr

3. The Brontes, Brian Wilks

4. Four Dreamers and Emily, Stevie Davis

5. Do Not Pass Go, Tim Moore

6. The Brontesaurus, John Sutherland

7. Hand to Mouth, Linda Tirado

8. Rhapsody in Green, Charlotte Mendelson

9. Not Just Jane, Ellen De Wees
   10. Weatherland, Alexandra Harris

10. The Dead Student, John Katzenbach

11. Time after Time, Molly Keane

12. The Year of Living Danishly, Helen Russell

13. Take Courage: Anne Bronte and the Art of Life, Samantha Ellis

14. Books for Living, Will Schalbe
    16. Victorians Undone, Kathryn Hughes

15. My Beautiful Genome, Lone Frank

16. The Story of the Human Body, Daniel Lieberman

17. Take Six Girls, Laura Thompson

18. Sapiens, Yuval Noah Harari

19. Good Evening, Mrs Craven: The Wartime Stories of Mollie Panter-Downes

20. Game of Throw-ins, Ross O’Carroll-Kelly

21. Sorcerer to the Crown, Zen Cho

22. The Cyclist who went out into the Cold, Tim Moore
    25. Border, Kapka Kassabova
    26. The Strangest Family: The Private Lives of George III, Queen Charlotte and The Hanoverians, Janice Hadlow

23. The Woman in Cabin 10, Ruth Ware

24. The Last Train to Zona Verde, Paul Theroux

25. One for the Books, Joe Queenan

26. Desperate Romantics, Franny Moyle
    Found this a slow read. Nobody came out well. Kathryn Hughes’ chapter on Rossetti and Fanny Cornforth in Victorians Undone is more sexually explicit and memorable. I’d always felt vaguely sorry for Ruskin’s marital humiliation, but by this account it was thoroughly deserved.

31.Ready Player One by Ernest Cline.
Extensively reviewed on her already. Video game-style quest set in the near future. Enjoyed it although I've never been a gamer so I didn't get the buzz of nostalgia, but the quest was fun, if shallow, and the bleak glimpses of the future world are nicely astringent.

32. Soul of Discretion, Susan Hill. Attracted by the description on here of the series as middle-class crime, and yes, that's accurate! Will probably read a few more of these, although the main character seems a cipher.

Ah I just posted on the other thread.... is everyone here now? Here's my list so far:

Books 2017

1. It -Stephen King
2. Swing Time -Zadie Smith
3. Pandemonium – Daryl Gregory
4. The Mirror Crack’d from Side to side – Agatha Christie
5. The Murder of Roger Ackroyd -Agatha Christie
6. The Essex Serpent – Sarah Perry
7. How to be Both – Ali Smith
8. The Way of Kings – Brandon Sanderson
9. The Word for World is Forest - Ursula Le Guin
10. The Merchant’s House – Kate Ellis
11. Commonwealth – Ann Patchett
12. The Year of our War - Steph Swainston
13. No Present like Time – Steph Swainston
14. Wishful Drinking – Carrie Fisher
15. Wolf Winter – Cecilia Ekback
16. To Kill A Mocking Bird -Harper Lee
17. Go Set A Watchman
18. The Passage – Justin Cronin
19. The Twelve – Justin Cronin
20. A Day in the Death of dorothea Cassidy – Ann Cleeves
21. The Deaths – Mark Lawson
22. The Humans – Matt Haig
23. The Power – Naomi Alderson
24. Breakfast at Tiffany’s - Truman Capote

Not a bad hit rate at 9 out of 24, but 4 of those are rereads so should really be 5

Major rant warning.

I think I need to stop reading The Seventh Scroll before I self-combust.

Does anyone else get pissed off by crap naming of characters?

I am no expert, but surely when writing characters and placing extreme/borderline offensive emphasis on their "bloodline" you would choose names for your characters that actually are used in the group that they are supposed to belong to? For example, if you were going to say how only Coptic Christians are real Egyptians and everyone else is an Arab invader, then you probably wouldn't give your male character an Iraqi/Syrian name and your female protagonist a male Muslim name, right? Then a monk has a Hindu name, and another Egyptian character is called Nahoot. Nahoot I tell you. I could cry.

British Civil Service Sci-fi sounds fun, slightly, think I'll give it a go sometime!

Book 7, Me Talk Pretty One Day by David Sedaris

I've been a big fan of David Sedaris since I was given Holidays on Ice as a Christmas present in high school, so I was looking forward to reading this. I did enjoy it, though I think it would be better as a book to dip in and out of, as the subject matter of the stories is very diverse and not particularly connected in the same way that the stories collected in Holidays on Ice were arranged around a single theme. By reading this book all in one go, I began to feel weighed down by Sedaris's relentless focus on himself. I am being a bit unreasonable perhaps, as this is what Sedaris does, but I felt glad to have finished by the end nonetheless.

Now on book 8, Wilbur Smith's The Seventh Scroll and already in a rage.

MiL SF??? Reminds me that I should dig out my copy of the first Serrano trilogy though, Glitter - I read the first two novels when I was given it, but never got to the third one.

Murine

Miri e, you seem to have the same taste in books as me- have you read The Gustav Sonata?

Realised I'm way way behind on reviews, given that I now have 31 books in my Kindle 2017 collection and the last review was something like #16, so am going to group them by genre:

Regency romances - Georgette Heyer
Friday's Child
The Convenient Marriage
Venetia
Regency romances all previously reviewed on these threads so am going to cop out of a proper review.

Mil-SF/Space opera
Elizabeth Moon
The Serrano Legacy Omnibus One
The Serrano Connection Omnibus Two
These are actually 3 novels each, mainly following the two main characters from the first book - Heris Serrano, a former Space Service officer who resigned in disgrace shortly before the start of the series, and her new boss Lady Cecilia, though we see other character viewpoints throughout the series. Elizabeth Moon's series books tend to be focused around uber-competent miltary women - this series also has plenty of underestimated but secretly uber-competent old non-military upper class ladies too. Political intrigue, space battles, and fox hunting (that's mostly in the first book though).

Marko Kloos, Fields of Fire
Book 5 of the Frontlines military SF series. Hard to review this one in detail w/o spoilers - set in the 22nd century, Earth is overcrowded and short of food. The majority of the population are coralled into crime-ridden "welfare tenements" - essentially whole cities where the inhabitants get housing and an increasingly meagre food allowance but can only leave by joining the military. The Earth and its colony planets are under attack by aliens. The main character progresses over the series from enthusiastic recruit desperate to get out of the welfare tenements to jaded veteran.

Bizarre Lovecraft meets British Civil Service SF
Charles Stross, The Laundry Files
The Atrocity Archives
The Jennifer Morgue
The Fuller Memorandum
The Apocalypse Codex
plus novellas Down on the Farm and Equoid
Near future SF based around the idea that the British Government has an agency (The Laundry) devoted to occult threats. Funny, and fast paced - I steered clear of these for a long while because I really can't stomach gory horror. There are indeed some very dark parts in here, and I might have skimmed very hastily past certain sections. I found the tech bits surprisingly nostalgic - I always wanted a Palm Treo but could never afford one.

Thank you for setting us up south! My list so far:

1 Evil Under the Sun by Agatha Christie
2 Stark by Ben Elton
3 Call the Midwife by Jennifer Worth
4 Capricorn One by Ron Goulart
5 Starship Troopers by Robert Heinlein
6 The ADHD Effect on Marriage by Melissa Orlov
7 The Long Dark Teatime of the Soul by Douglas Adams
8 Only You Can Save Mankind by Terry Pratchett
9 4.50 from Paddington by Agatha Christie
10 The Sherlock Chronicles
11 A Passage to India by EM Forster
12 Ready Player One by Ernest Cline
13 The Queen of Distraction by Terry Matlen

Just finished reading:
14 The Hunt for Red October by Tom Clancy. This was a reread after a gap of about 20 years. I read it in the first place having seen the film, which I love. I prefer the film. The book is far more convoluted with more politics (which is good), lots of technical details (which get a bit much & may well be nonsense) and characters that just appear from nowhere and disappear just as fast! I still enjoyed the story but it could have done with some serious editing especially among the Russians in Moscow who I lost track of!

On to Cloud Atlas!

My list - not a great year for reading so far. I think I peaked too early, as the first two substantially better than nearly everything else I've read thus far.

1: The Essex Serpent – Sarah Perry
2: Fatherland Robert Harris
3: Stasi Child – David Young
4: Golden Hill – Francis Spufford
5: American Gods – Neil Gaiman
6: The House by the Lake – Thomas Harding
7: 84 Charing Cross Road – Helene Hanff
8: The Duchess of Bloomsbury Street – Helene Hanff
9: Magpie Murders – Anthony Horowitz
10: Warm Bodies – Isaac Marion
11: Ashes of London – Andrew Taylor
12: Left for Dead – Beck Weathers
13: The Burning World – Isaac Marion
14: Age of Wonder: How the Romantic Generation Discovered the Beauty and Terror of Science By Richard Holmes
15: Ghosts of Everest: The Search for Mallory and Irvine – Jochen Hemmleb
16: An Astronaut’s Guide to Life on Earth – Chris Hadfield
17: Measuring the World – Daniel Kehlmann
18: The North Water - Ian McGuire
19: Berlin: Portrait of a City - Taschen
20: It Stephen King
21: On her Majesty’s Secret Service – Ian Fleming
22: White Boots – Noel Streatfeild
23: A Place Called Winter – Patrick Gale
24: The Painted Dragon – Katherine Woodfine
25: Black Plumes – Margory Allingham
26: The Nine Tailors – Dorothy L Sayers
27: Plague 99 – Jean Ure
28: Black Out – John Lawton
29: The Companion Guide to Berlin – Brian Ladd
30: Sex and Punishment: Four Thousand Years of Judging Desire - Eric Berkowitz
31: The Seven Dials Mystery – Agatha Christie
32: One – Sarah Crossan
33: The Secret Diary of Adrian Mole
34: The Growing Pains of Adrian Mole
35: Friday’s Child – Georgette Heyer
36: The Grand Sophy – Georgette Heyer
37: The Descent of Man – Grayson Perry