50 Book Challenge Part Five

32. Into Thin Air - reviewed earlier

33. The City and the City I think I'm on the fence about this one. I thought it was a very interesting idea and worked well as a metaphor for division; the concept of 'unseeing' was easy to understand as a more general social comment. I didn't worry about how Cleavage had occurred because at least Miéville states explicitly that no one knows how it happened. I did wonder about the physical reality of the city (and, yes, people have tried to draw maps which I've looked at online) and what happens at the edge of Beszel (spelled Besel in the Kindle edition) when an area becomes total Ul Qoma. Do the inhabitants just unsee it?

And the plot was weak. The characters were annoying. The denouement was deeply unsatisfactory. The whole Breach explanation was lacking. In addition, he writes sometimes as if he is leafing through a dictionary and wondering what abstruse synonym he can shove in.

34. We were the Mulvaneys I realised a few pages in that I'd read this before but persevered again - skimmed most of it though. Joyce Whatsername has a saccharine style which really grates with me. The family sounded truly ghastly before The Thing. Not my sort of writer.

Remus, I really like short stories. I've read some good ones in the last couple of years, particularly Tenth of December by George Saunders.
I haven't read any other Carver though and want to read more.

55. Harm Done
56. Road Rage
57. Simisola
58. Kissing The Gunners Daughter All by Ruth Rendell, More lovely Inspector Wexford.

Not read Raymond Carver for a v long time. I've rather gone off short stories, but his are well worth a look.

Vistaverde thanks for the heads up about Anything is possible. I enjoyed My name is Lucy Barton but wanted to dig further into the characters

And...I thought I was due an update...

44. The Comet Seekers – Helen Sedgwick
Drippy book centring around a woman who follows comets around and another woman who talks to the ghosts of her past family who only appear when comets are visible. Their lives become linked – it’s slow and over-long and frankly repetitive. I do not recommend.

45. Nocturnal Animals (or Tony & Susan) – Austin Wright
This is a book within a book. Nocturnal Animals is being read by Susan, and has been sent to her by her ex-husband - but why? The Nocturnal Animals part is rather gripping and horrifying but I found the parts about Susan reading the novel were not that engaging. Sort of a page-turner though. Sort of...

46. What We Talk About When We Talk About Love – Raymond Carver
I have read two books this year that play on the title of this classic so thought I should read the real thing. Excellent American short stories, all depressing and full of unlikeable characters who drink a lot, and who somehow find themselves on the margins of society. The title story was the stand-out for me.

47. Ashland and Vine – John Burnside
I found this to be a confused novel about a film student struggling with an alcohol problem who meets an elderly lady who turns her life around in unexpected ways. This is really a novel that examines narratives and storytelling from many different angles whilst somehow failing to deliver on its own narrative. Part of the novel is essentially a lesson in the history of the 60s underground resistance movement.

48. Still Alice – Lisa Genova
Much reviewed novel about a Harvard academic diagnosed with early-onset Alzheimer’s. As you can imagine, this is not a fun read, but her descent into Alzheimer’s is rather well portrayed.

Murine, I read The Return earlier this year and really rated it highly. It's beautifully written.

I really liked the Rosie Project so I have also added Eleanor Oliphant* to my to read list.

Interested to hear what you think of Into the Water South. I have it on reservation at the library but as I am about 60th in the queue I suspect I am in for a bit of a wait.

34 A Year of Marvellous Ways by Sarah Winman - Marvellous is a 90 year old woman who lives in rural Cornwall. She knows she is waiting for something but she doesn't know what. Drake finds himself washed up in her little town and their ensuing friendship is a story of self discovery for the two of them. This book was poetically written but I struggled a bit with the style eg no quotation marks when characters were speaking but it was good to try something a bit different.

35 My Name is Lucy Barton - Elizabeth Strout - The focus of this book is Lucy's short stay in hospital several years prior to the book being written. A visit by her mum leads to reminiscences of a childhood overshadowed by poverty and difficult family relationships in rural Illinois, marriage, divorce, children and her career as a writer. Whilst a short book it is a powerful one and will stay with me for quite a while. I am looking forward to reading Anything is Possible and discovering more about the characters introduced in this book.

36 The Trouble with Goats and Sheep - Set in the summer of the hot summer of 1976 Mrs Creasy has disappeared. Two 10 year old friends (Grace and Millie) decide to find out what has happened. The Avenue where they live is filled with rumour and speculation and it soon becomes clear that the present mystery may be related to events of almost a decade previously. This felt a nostalgic novel and whilst a bit young to remember the 70s I did feel like I was transported back to the era. I really liked the character of Grace, who whilst perceptive wasn't quite as perceptive as she thought and like any 10 year old girl still had a lot to learn about life.

37 The Summer Before the War - Helen Simonson - Beatrix Nash arrives in the idyllic Essex Sussex coastal town of Rye in Summer 1914 to fill the vacant Latin teacher's job. Struggling to come to terms with her own father's death Beatrix is taken under the wing of Agatha Kent, and soon introduced to her two nephews Daniel and Hugh. Just as Beatrix settles into to village life the unthinkable happens and we are soon transported to the battlefields. I enjoyed getting to know the colourful cast of characters in the book and certainly the scenes set in France were very moving but at over 500 pages it was overly long.

38 Behind Closed Doors - B A Paris - To Grace and Jack's friends they have the perfect marriage but could everything not be as it seems. I read this book in little over a day as it really gripped me in a disturbing sort of way. However, I found the ending to be a real let down.

Currently reading My Cousin Rachel by Daphne Du Maurier

Just added Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine by Gail Honeyman to my to read list.

54. The Love Letters of Henry VIII and Anne Boleyn. More of pamphlet than a book but I am counting it (!) because a) I read it and b) it's on Goodreads.

45. Dead Certain by Adam Mitzner
    A Kindle First free book, I wouldn't bother with this to be honest. Ella, a high flying defence lawyer who leads a secret double life as a singer, meets with her sister Charlotte who shares her news that she has sold her first novel, giving Ella a copy. When Charlotte goes missing, Ella realises that Charlotte's novel predicts her disappearance (we never really find out how she knows this!) and must work out what has happened.
    A page turner, despite unfortunately not being very well written, there are plot holes all over and the manner in which when a scene is relived from another characters viewpoint, all the dialogue is quoted again verbatim so you have to read it twice was irritating.
    The author liked the phrase "he took in a mouthful of air/let out a mouthful of air" a little too much for my liking too, and once you notice it seemed like it was everywhere!

46. The Return by Hisham Matar
    I received a copy from mumsnet for non fiction book of the month. I am very glad I was lucky enough to be drawn as I would probably never have chosen this myself and would have missed an excellent book.
    Beautifully written, Hisham Matar's account of his return to Libya in search of his father is very moving and at times horrifying.It took me a lot longer than usual to finish this as I had to take time to absorb what I had read, I learnt a great deal about Libya and life under Qaddafi's regime and have been doing a fair amount of Internet research to try to fill the evidently substantial gaps in my knowledge.

I'm now reading Apple Tree Yard and will be starting Burial Rites by Hannah Kent tomorrow, looking forward to this one.

Best the main reason I bought it was because I was intrigued by a protagonist called Eleanor Oliphant.

Crikey. That was quite the first chapter!

24. The Cold Cold Ground - Adrian Mckinty

Set in Belfast during the troubles of the early 80s it is a police procedural in challenging circumstances. Detective Sean Duffy is a Catholic Peeler sent to Carrickfergus to "keep out of trouble" but finds himself in the middle of what might be Northern Ireland's first serial killer when two homosexual men are found dead.

I really enjoyed this book with the setting adding a very interesting background. In amongst the heat of hunger strikers and riots, police work takes on a whole new level.

Now for a complete change of pace with the The Strange and Beautiful Sorrows of Ava Lavender by Leslye Walton.

I like the sound of Eleanor Oliphant Scribbky, not least because I knew some Oliphants years ago.

51. Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine by Gail Honeyman

A book about loneliness. Eleanor lives alone, She has no family (except Mummy who she speaks to on the phone once a week) and no friends. Her day to day life is a repeating routine (catching the bus, Telegraph crossword, sandwich and crisps for lunch, listening the The Archers, pesto pasta for dinner). On Fridays after work she treats herself to a Tesco pizza and two litres of vodka and the she doesn't talk to another soul until Monday. She is awkward, completely lacking in social skills and has no verbal filter, so pretty much says whatever she is thinking.
At work she meets Raymond the new IT guy and they end up helping an old man called Sammy this sets in motion a series of events which start to change Eleaor's life and lead her to question her past.
I bet this book will be a big hit this year. It's very like The Rosie Project as Eleanor is so lacking in social graces (due to past abuses and loneliness) and as such there are some genuinely funny actual laugh out loud moments. There are also moments of great pathos and Gail Honeyman does a good job at conveying what it's like to be genuinely lonely. Sometimes she pushes the comedy too far though and it stops being believable which is a shame.
A funny, engaging and heart warming read which also turned out to be a real page turner.

28. Allegiant by Veronica Roth Conclusion of angsty YA dystopian trilogy. I read book one Divergent last year, then snapped up this book cheap and waited for part two to drop in price, which it never did. I wasn't that invested anyway, and had heard, possibly on this thread, that it's book three that clears up the annoying gaping plot holes from book one. It sort of does, but I still found the explanations for groups of people not knowing certain things pretty clunky. About eleven million people must have pointed out to the author that the way things were set up meant that the two main characters must have known each other as children, so right at the end is a grudging half page total cop out chapter to 'explain' this. The narration of the chapters swaps between the two main characters but they speak in the same style and were thinking pretty similar angsty thoughts about the same things in the same timeline, so it only served to make me forget who was speaking. I was reading this during a trip to Berlin, so I appreciated the overall concept that dividing society artificially by factions and labelling some people as genetically pure and some as genetically damaged was always going to end badly, but on the whole I didn't think much of this.

RMC123, good to hear someone else read Sarah Denzil's Silent child: I had the same reaction as you more or less, this book also took me 24 hours to read (so works great for reading challenges and is a fairly good page turner); but I agree, full of inaccuracies and sloppy writing.

Right, number 17 on my list is Diane Ackerman's The Zookeeper's wife. Has anyone read this?
This is a true story, well written & quick paced account of zookeeper couple, Antonina Zabinska and her husband Jan Zabinski in WW2 Warsaw (Poland). This couple rescued about 300 jews at the time, from the Warsaw ghetto, sheltering them in their zoo.
A fascinating story if you're interested in stories of resistance during WW2 (which I am). Many detailed descriptions of the zoo, the animals, the physical surroundings--if you like that kind of thing. The characters in my opinion were lacking in how they were drawn out, but still this made an interesting read. I would now love to visit Warsaw & go to the zoo which as I see is now a museum.
I haven't watched the movie yet, but will do so now that I've finished the book.

34. The Secret Keeper by Kate Morton

One summer's day in 1961, teenage Laurel is hiding out in her tree house and day dreaming of her future, but then becomes witness to a shocking crime. Forty years later, Laurel is a successful actress filming a series of interviews about her life and worrying for the health of her mother. The shades of the past come back to haunt her and she starts to piece together her mother's secret, which goes back to her life in London during the Second World War.

Morton tends to stick with the formula of interweaving the past and present in her novels. I overdosed on them a few years back so this is the first I've read in a while and although I thought it was fairly obvious what the big secret was before the final reveal it is still a well told story.

54. Georgiana - Duchess of Devonshire - Amanda Foreman Very well researched biography of an undoubtedly fascinating woman. Society hostess, deeply involved in politics, compulsive gambler who racked up thousands of pounds worth of debt. In fact debt worth millions in 'today's money' Family life reads like a Georgian Jeremy Kyle show! Lover of husband living within the family for a good proportion of their married life, illegitimate children on both sides of the marriage etc etc.
Another book I should have loved but at times it was really hard going. I found the political sections really hard to get to grips with. Possibly I was reading this at a time when RL is just too full on. Having just read a Mitford biography, then this, I fully intended to move on to a Bess of Hardwick biography. Completely exploiting the Chatsworth connection, but just can't face another biography at the moment- need something lighter in between.

Oh and I meant to say I thought The Class was great too, Sadik. Reminded me a bit of Buffy..

29. The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms (Book 1 of The Inheritance Trilogy) by NK Jemisin.

I quite enjoyed this fantasy story. Grand-daughter is forced to return the City and into bidding to be heir. Politics, gods, magic ensue.

30. Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury.

Continuing to work my way through some of the classics. I think this has slightly dated but I could analogise television with media/internet. People locked into false environments (celebrity/consumerism/drugs), forgetting and destroying books/ideas and following the party line. Guy Montag becomes angry, very angry and sad. Is his world all there is? In finding books and words he tries to make sense of it all and make a difference.

43 Martin Pippin in the Daisy Field by Eleanor Farjeon

I was prompted to re-read this after talking about it with a friend. It's a book of short fairy-tale type stories set in a loose framing narrative with the eponymous Martin telling stories in an effort to get six small girls to go to bed.

It was a favourite of mine as a child, and I think some of the stories are still absolute stand-outs. 'Elsie Piddock Skips in Her Sleep' is relatively well known and published as a stand alone book, but several others are lovely, especially 'Tom Cobble and Ooney' & the story of the Tanthony Pig. A few have dated quite badly though, so I can see why it's no longer in print. I used to skip the bits with Martin Pippin as a child, but they're rather entertaining as an adult - I'm sure they were put in to amuse grown-ups reading the book aloud.

Finished book number 8, Esther Freud's Hideous Kinky, a (supposedly semi) autobiographical tale of gentle, bohemian parental neglect. A hippy-dippy, English, middle class mother takes her two daughters to Morocco, this extended two year road trip is viewed through the eyes of, and narrated by, the younger of the two daughter, who is only four or five years old as the book opens. Often she narrates circumstances beyond her understanding but the reader picks up on the sub text. Perhaps this novel was ground breaking when it was published in 1992, or maybe the Kate Winslet film has increased its renown but having looked forward to reading it, it didn't live up to my expectations. The child narrator angle was, to my mind, done better in Jennifer Lauck's Blackbird: A Childhood Lost and Found, and the tale of a childhood marred by feckless parentage is more vividly realised and grippingly told in Jeannette Walls' The Glass Castle.

On to book 9, Douglas Murray's The Strange Death Of Europe.

Bitch in a Bonnet is 99p at the moment, if any Austen fans haven't read it yet.