50 Book Challenge 2017 Part Six

Welcome Hazanduck

Three long train journeys in two days have bumped up my list.
73. The Last Runaway - Tracy Chevalier
Set in 1850's. Story of Honor, a Quaker who emigrates to Ohio from Dorset. She finds herself caught up in the Underground Railroad helping Slaves to escape to freedom in Canada and the Northern United States. Readable and interesting, although rather a light touch on the subject. Did make me want to find out more about the Underground Railroad and this morning in the station I found a book entitled The Underground Railroad by Colson Whitehead. It is endorsed by Batak Obama no less!! So will give it a go.
74. Holding - Graham Norton
Invisible I agree about this book. It was intelligent and thoughtful and a very entertaining read. Past the hours on the train very comfortably and I wanted to know what was happening.

Hi Hazenduck, I would think pregnancy would add a whole other resonance to The Handmaiden's Tale!

I read JS&MN while backpacking around Ethiopia, so my main memory is the sheer physical weight of it. I finished it and left my copy in Dire Dawa, I think. Wonder if it's still knocking around? I was really looking forward to it and had saved it for my trip, but it didn't enthral me. I might give it another go at some point, but at the moment I'm staring down the barrel of 1000+ pages of Rebecca West's Black Lamb and Grey Falcon and wondering if I'm brave enough.

Welocome Hazanduck

East of Eden is wonderful so far.

I hated JS&MN but also hate Dickens which it reminded me of. I did read the footnotes and a paper copy but still just couldn't get into it. And I liked The City & the City so guess I'm Camp Remus .

TooExtra have you read GGK's other stuff? That first trilogy is his weakest IMO, and yes very Tolkein derivative, but I love his more historic novels particularly Tigana and A Song of Arbonne.

I'm reading Imperium by Robert Harris, his first Cicero book. I'm quite enjoying it but can't remember which Cicero I did for Latin A level which is annoying me. I remember thinking he was an arrogant prat at the time., but maybe I just didn't appreciate his oratory.

Chillie & Satsuki - Among the 3 of us, I seem to be the only one who found JS & Mr N gripping but The City & The City unbearably, toe curlingly dull I was thinking of Remus, for example, who iirc really enjoyed the latter but found JS dull (exact opposite to what I thought, as usual )

Meg , Satsuki cheering quietly that you are enjoying Lincoln

Just checking in to keep this on my TIO list. I'm interested to read the various views on JS&MN - it was on my possible Audible list, but if footnotes are critical it sounds like a much better paper read. (Shame - I've got paper/kindle books queued up, audio not so much.)

Almost finished Do Not Say We have Nothing by Madeleine Thien, which is fantastic but definitely not one to dash through.

Hi all, hope I can join to keep me motivated.

I started the challenge a bit late back in March and have been trying to catch up but am currently a bit behind, am on book 24 at the moment. Currently reading Maya Angelou, I Know Why The Caged Bird Sings.

My last read was The Handmaid's Tale which is still on my mind at the moment, so it's hard to dig in to anything new. It was a very odd book to read whilst pregnant!

If it helps, Cote, I loved JS&MN and really enjoyed The City & The City. Although I detested the next China Mieville book I read and have decided not to bother with him any more.

45. Black Powder War by Naomi Novik

As they prepare to return from China, Captain Laurence and his dragon Temeraire receive orders sending them to Istanbul to collect three precious dragon eggs bought from the Ottoman Empire. Instead they find themselves betrayed and the white dragon Lien determined to avenge the death of her master by joining forces with Bonaparte. There's lots of both travelling across continents and hanging around in this one, with surprisingly little battle descriptions given the numbers that go on. I'm still enjoying the series although I understand from a previous poster on one of these threads that the novels decline in quality as they go on so I'm still not sure if I will read the whole series.

101. The Essex Serpent, Sarah Perry. I really enjoyed this - it's just so cheerful! Despite the slightly bittersweet ending, it made me happy. Interesting take on personal relationships - exploring different types of friendship and love. I also liked the religion v science/faith v reason theme.

I'm also enjoying Lincoln in the Bardo meg

Yes, my post was a general response to "noticing that sort of thing" in books and whether it matters - I can't speak of JS in particular as I don't really remember enough of it now to do it justice.

This is really making me want to pick up JS & Mr N again, if I can find my copy.

The Long Cosmos Terry Pratchett & Stephen Baxter
This is the conclusion of the 5 book Long Earth series. Mainly focusing on Joshua Valiente with some time with Nelson Azikwe and a few other characters. While I found it pleasant enough to read, I find it hard to remember what happened. The storylines wrap up neatly enough but over such a long series there isn't any sense of a big build up and climax.

I agree with all you have said, Cheerful.

I didn't say Mrs Honeyfoot was a strong female character. I mentioned her appearance on page 6 along with her 3 daughters to show that it is not one of those books Satsuki was talking about, "with half the population missing".

Like, take the fact that the York magicians - and pretty much everyone who talks about magic - is male. Fine. A lesser author would have some stupid line about how only men can do magic, or male magic is different to female magic or whatever. Even Ursula fucking Le Guin does this.
But Clarke lets you stew about it, then casually tells you in the footnotes (you gotta read the footnotes) that actually several of the Golden Age magicians were female. Then she gives you ANOTHER footnote about all the things the modern male magicians have said to try and reconcile this with the fact that they don't want stinky girls in their boy club.
THEN she shows you what happens when women decide they want in on the boy club, but don't have any actual money, power, education, knowledge or social capital, so it all goes wrong and they get Drawlighted.
And THEN, finally, they get some actual power and BOOM.
But you need the set up of the stuffy magicians for the payoff to work.
(And no, Mrs Honeyfoot does NOT count as a decent character with agency.)

OK I probably didn't give JS&MR enough of a go to see how things pan out, but I agree with Satsuki and Cheerful that context is everything.

"it is noticeable in books where there's no reason for the one-sidedness, as, with half the population missing"

I agree, that would be weird. It's not the case with JS & Mr N, though. I just checked and no less than 4 women appear as early on as page 6 (Mrs Honeyfoot and her 3 daughters).

It took me a couple of goes to get into JS&MN but I did really enjoy it in the end. I can see why it wouldn't be everyone's cup of tea though.

Speaking of which, I am loving Lincoln In The Bardo so far. Strong contender for book of the year if it keeps it up.

I agree with Satsuki. I don't mind that The Great Escape doesn't have any female characters, cos it's set in a bloody POW camp, of course it doesn't. I do mind when an author has chosen not to write about half the population, whether consciously or unconsciously, for no apparent narrative reason.

Having said that, it didn't bother me in JS&MR because I think there are several great female characters and I think it's a deliberate decision not to introduce them until later, because she's writing about the worlds of a. Fairytale and b. Regency England, and women have a very specific place in both of those worlds. Part of what the book is about is power, and Lady Pole and Annabel's power - or, let's be honest, lack of it - is one thing the book is interested in. You start off with an incredibly male world, and then you start to see women wrestling with it.

In contrast, most of the fairytale stories are about women, and the female characters in the footnotes seem to fare pretty well. Which is a contrast she's interested in.

I think you're supposed to notice it, tbh. Like all the stuff about how differently Stephen and Lady Pole are treated with exactly the same condition.

To be honest, I was giving up on the book anyway, so I have focused on the particular thing that made me cross enough to stop. If it was less boring I would have forgiven it more. But generally speaking, in novels that I read for entertainment I'm not really interested in having a patriarchal view of the world endorsed or normalised, either by female or male authors. Historical novels, including historical fantasy, can be prone to taking an attitude of 'well, that's just how society was back then' and I do judge them on how they choose to handle that.

I found both boring cote, hth

Sometimes, as in the book I've just read, there aren't going to be a lot of female characters because that's not what that setting demands.

However, it is noticeable in books where there's no reason for the one-sidedness, as, with half the population missing, it can make the world being built in the novel seem unrealistic and two-dimensional. I found this in the Name of the Wind; it wasn't something I was thinking about or looking for necessarily, but nevertheless it stood out as a weakness.

To each her own and all that, but I wonder how many of you who found JS & Mr N "dull" enjoyed The City & The City

So, you don't ever want to read a book without notable female characters?

What does it mean that Susanna Clarke's story didn't feature a female character early enough in the book, and when it did, she wasn't intellectual enough? Is she misogynist?