50 Book Challenge 2017 Part Six

Finished this a while ago and had forgotten about it, because I was so underwhelmed.

Book 62
The Literature Book Dorling Kindersley
Didn’t like this either. In book form, it looks gorgeous, but I got it on Kindle. I don’t think it knows quite what it wants to be, other than to look pretty. It’s a strange combination of dull, rather academic-esque bumpf and patronising little soundbites, which don’t seem to fit an adult or young adult audience. Really disappointing.

Satsuki Yes, he was. I even read Lady Chatterley's Lover as a result of him, although DH Lawrence is also rather a trial. At least it was much shorter.

chillie 90s Sean Bean was very inspiring.

33. Working the Ruins: Feminist Poststructural Theory and Methods in Education Elizabeth St Pierre and Wanda Pillow (eds)

Reading quite a lot for my MA dissertation but not including it in the list as it tends to be more chapters or journal articles, and even the complete books I'm trying to keep separate from this as want the 50 books to be more reading for pleasure. However, I do want to give myself some credit for all that reading and, as this is one I just finished and it's a good one, I decided to put it here.

34. Elizabeth is Missing Emma Healey I didn't find this as gripping and unputdownable and gripping as some of the reviews suggested, it took me a while to get into but once I did I did think it was well written and plotted. Very sad, very frustrating at times (which is kind of the point given the narrator) and clever in parts - not so much any big reveal or shocking twists but more things that seem obvious / clear getting obscured and uncovered again and again until they eventually come into focus (though only briefly in the narrator's case).

Sadik - I'm reading the new Neal Stephenson book DODO now. It's not as gripping or sciency as usual but it's pretty OK.

43. Clarissa or, The History of a Young Lady by Samuel Richardson

This ia a big part of the reason for my reading progress being slow this year. I first attempted to read this when I was 14, having seen Sean Bean playing the notorious rake Lovelace in a TV series, but kept abandoning it after 300 or so pages. 25 years on and I have finally waded through all 1,499 pages and need never pick it up again.

It's a tragedy and intended as an instructional tale on Christian virtue. Clarissa is an 18 year old woman of a rich family, widely regarded as the most virtuous young lady in the country and inevitably both beautiful and extremely accomplished. She attracts the attention of Robert Lovelace, rake and despoiler of women, who sees her virtue as a challenge to be put to the test. Her family are horrified by this and attempt to force her to marry a rather unpleasant man against her inclinations, and effectively imprison her when she refuses. Through a devious contrivance, Lovelace effectively forces her to run away with him, then installs her in a house which is actually part of a brothel (although this is concealed from her) as he tries to break down her resistence and prove to himself that all women are rakes at heart. The story is told in a series of letters between the various characters and takes place between January and December of one year. There is a lot of sermonising and moral instruction and it is rather a slog, but I am glad I have finally read it the whole way through.

I had read nearly 40 by this time last year. I've had a stinker. Can't see anything in monthly deals either. Probably for the best.

Remus I'm feeling a bit the same at the moment. most books are unsatisfying and I am yet to read a standout book in 2017. If I'm being awfully honest I have to say I felt a little like this last year too and I put it down to not being as involved in this group and picking up recommendations.
I think I may need to explore a new genre or pick up a book out of my normal comfort zone.

That is exactly my experience with number 1 RMC. Horrendous pain and trying to 'breathe through it' while reading Rankin. Fat chance.

This time I opted for heat magazine

Oh yes rmc to clarify I did not read it during labour you maniac that would have put me off too. I had very fast painful labours so reading wasn't an option really, but it was very comforting to come back to after things had settled down!

Just to clarify that when I finally restarted and finished Middlemarch years later I loved it. But I kept on trying to read it whilst suffering mammoth contractions alone on antenatal Ward after my DH had been sent home. It was late, everyone else was a sleep and the midwife in charge kept telling me she was sure it wasn't labour. I must have read the same paragraph a hundred times. Couldn't read it until I was sure my child bearing years were behind me!

Just checked - I'd read 74 by this time last year, 12 of which were standouts.

Satsuki

Book 61
A Convenient Marriage by Georgette Heyer
Oh dear. This was extremely silly and predictable and a lot of the ‘scrapes’ that the very silly heroine gets into seem to have been the same scrapes that several other Heyer heroines also get into it. I liked the hero, but you don’t really see an awful lot of him and it’s hard to see how they can actually be falling in love when they seem to spend so little time together. The best bits were the silly drunken conversations between two silly young men. Final verdict – silly and not terribly satisfying.

This is proving to be a terrible year for reading. I've read so many that are rubbish that it's putting me off reading, and I'm going extremely slowly. :(

Just looked at the new Kindle monthly deals and they all seem terrible. Is there anything I've missed and might actually want to buy?

I read the Cazelets Chronicles whilst BF x 2 I agree about warm fluffy slippers !

rmc I started middlemarch whilst pregnant and finished it breastfeeding - have fond associations with that book and time. After number 2 however I managed only the Hunger Games trilogy. Apt.

Yes remus I'm already looking forward to cote's review of The Circle

rmc I started middlemarch whilst pregnant and finished it breastfeeding - have fond associations with that book and time. After number 2 however I managed only the Hunger Games trilogy. Apt.

Yes remus I'm already looking forward to cote's review of The Circle

Passme smiling away at my memories of trying to read with a small baby / babies in my life. Also remembering that I tried to read Middlemarch whilst being induced with my first!! Middlemarch!! What was I thinking?!

70. Confusion - Elizabeth Jane Howard. Third of the Cazalet Chronicles listened to on Audible. Still like putting on warm fluffy slippers for me and a good wind down on the way too and from work. Also keeps me going whilst running .

Congratulations Passme
Reading is great for BF!

Hi Cote

Thanks for the tip EmGee 😄 I do have 'I can't Begin to Tell You' on my TR shelf (another charity shop purchase) but I think I will give it a whirl as I quite The New Mrs Clifton 😄

Just purchased 'The Circle' but will leave The City of Z as not sure it's 'my thing'

Cote - My prediction is that you will not like The Circle at all.

Hmm, just seen that Cote mentioned the new Neal Stephenson above. Have you bought it? I might wait for your review :)

42. The Little Coffee Shop of Kabul by Deborah Rodriguez

Sunny, an American woman and proud proprietor of the coffee shop, needs a plan to keep her cafe and customers safe; Halajan, 60-year-old owner of the building, is a woman with a secret love that goes against the rules of Afghan society; Yazmina, a young, pregnant woman from a remote village in the north, is stolen from her home as payment for a debt then abandoned on the streets of Kabul; Isabel is a British journalist in search of the country's stories; and Candace, a rich American woman, leaves her husband for her enigmatic Afghan lover. Five women whose lives come together in the little coffee shop where they share the dangers and the joys of living in one of the most dangerous cities on the planet. Very lightweight and frothy for a book which includes beatings, murders and suicide bombings, but it was quite an entertaining read.

Ha! With DD1 I read half of a Rebus book while waiting for my induction to take hold then read the other half in the two years which followed! I couldn't tell you what the plot was at all.

Passmethecrisps My son was about 15 months old before I read a book after having him. The book I was in the middle of when he arrived is still sitting on a bookshelf with a bookmark halfway through it. I've never gone back to finish it after abandoning it almost five years ago. Hope family life is going well for you :)
Vistaverde Thanks for recommendation, haven't read Charlotte Gray but have added it to my ever growing list.
Stilllovingmysleep I have read The Happiness Project and Happier at Home, really enjoyed them and they've definitely shaped how I think about things. I don't listen to the podcast but do dip into Gretchen Rubin's blog. I've been looking forward to reading Better than Before for ages and so far I'm finding it as interesting as ever.

24. The Lewis Man by Peter May
Second in the trilogy, an unidentified corpse is recovered from a Lewis peat bog and efforts to identify him find a DNA match to a local crofter. He is an elderly man suffering from dementia, who had always claimed to be an only child. The story is told in part from his point of view, while also following Fin Macleod as he is back on Lewis and attempting to help the man's family solve the mystery.
I got totally absorbed in this and read it in just a few days, which is very quick for me! Within the new mystery, several of the themes from The Blackhouse are revisited - life as an orphan, the cruelty/lack of love shown by some adults to children, the strength of family ties and the pull of the islands that draws back those who grew up there and left. I enjoyed the ending of this more than The Blackhouse. The setting was again very vivid, perhaps more so as we've had atrocious weather and I was reading about the islands while the rain and wind lashed against my windows at home! The continuation of the story of the characters from the The Blackhouse is progressing nicely, will definitely be reading the last part of the trilogy soon.

Impressed you've finished a book at all Passmethecrisps :) Its a looong time ago, but it was quite a lot of weeks after giving birth before my brain was up to reading anything.

56 Quantum: A Guide for the Perplexed by Jim al-Khalili listened to on audio.

I enjoyed this a great deal - obviously a difficult topic to explain, and I thought the author did an excellent job of leading the lay reader/listener through the subject. The level of detail was about right for me, though my dd preferred the more macro overview approach of the Carlo Rovelli book I reviewed above (I think she has a lot more prior knowledge than me though!). The performance was also very good.

Has anyone read The Rise and Fall of D.O.D.O. by Neal Stephenson & Nicole Galland? Considering it as my next audible listen, looks like a fun one. (I got all excited when I saw a new Ann Leckie book listed on Amazon, but it's not out til September.)