50 Book Challenge 2017 Part Six

TooExtra - I'm glad that you enjoyed my Cloud Atlas thread and appreciated the book more as a result. It is an incredibly rich and complex book, and I have no doubt that I have also missed quite a few of its myriad references

Oh - wish I'd thought of that. A lot of it was awfully phoned-in. If you're the sort of fan who obsesses about every last detail you'll probably love it, but ... I would have liked more new stuff and more actual stories rather than just her character notes typed up.

I have to confess to having found the Pottermore Presents books online as pdfs - I'd have been very unimpressed with them if I'd actually paid for them.

23. Pottermore Presents Life stories and various Harry Potter trivia from JK Rowling. A lot of this felt very repetitive from the novels - we already know most of Lupin's life story, and I really don't care what his wand is made of. A few nice snippets - the stuff about where everyone's name comes from is always interesting - but probably not worth the money.

49 Two Cheers for Anarchism by James C Scott.

This is described as a 'series of fragments', and I think that's a fair summary - its a collection of mini-essays arranged under six broad headings. The author isn't an anarchist, but is obviously inspired by various aspects of anarchist thought and writing, spinning off from his main research into peasant / agrarian societies in upland regions of SE Asia.

I found some parts fascinating, others annoying. It's quite American, and many things he says Orwell said better (but then if one writes off essays because they're not as good as Orwell, there won't be much left).

Overall I thought it a really good read and will definitely come back to some sections.

Thanks for the new thread. South.

Bringing my list over and updating with my latest book:

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

26. The Hanging Club - Tony Parsons

Back to form for me with yet another thriller/police procedural. The protagonist, DC Max Wolfe is thrust into the lead role of a case which tests his moral fibre and professional integrity.

I don't think this is the first of the series with DC Max Wolfe but I didn't feel that impacted on my understanding or enjoyment of the book. Very enjoyable overall.

Struggling to decide now what to read next. I am very heavily pregnant and am now wondering what I should start just in case it is my transition book

Will go back and read the thread for ideas

Place marking

22. The Guggenheim Mystery Robin Stevens, based on characters by Siobhan Dowd
An authorised sequel to The London Eye Mystery. When Aunt Glo is accused stealing a painting from the Guggenheim Museum, Ted, Kat and Salim have to figure out who really did it.
I liked this - I haven't read The London Eye Mystery since it came out, but this felt plausibly Dowdish to me, and it's an enjoyable if occasionally implausible mystery. I'm not very convinced by Ted's autism - he's of the 'I am 12 years and 281 days old' school of autism, which isn't how any of my autistic friends speak or write. But that's Dowd's fault not Stevens' and I'm no expert - would be interested to hear what autistic readers think of him. I liked that his autism wasn't an 'ishoo', and I liked that he's liked and admired for the person he is.
Not out until August - read this in proof.

I've got Cloud Atlas sitting on my shelf but have yet to pluck up the courage to read it not sure I'm going to like it.

32. Plainsong Kent Haruf. Brilliant. I really enjoyed Our souls at night and this was just as beautifully written. His style of writing reminds me a bit of Colm Toibin's style. Not a great deal happens BUT I get totally hooked on the stories and characters!

Going to read the Claire Mackintosh book (Let me go?) but in French and the title is Ne me laisse pas partir.

I need to reread Cloud Atlas, I read it in my late teens/early twenties when all I used to read was Chuck Palahniuk, Douglas Coupland, Toby Litt and Kerrang , I didn't appreciate it at the time (I think I said "that's too clever for me" and didn't finish it!) but sounds like I would really enjoy it now.

Oh, and I've now read Cote's Cloud Atlas thread and feel utterly thick - I missed most of that and I thought I was quite good at 'getting' books and identifying themes! I did get the reincarnation theme and the overall atmosphere of doom and gloom (ie, strong prey on weak, fragility of knowledge, savagery triumphing over civilisation etc), but I was confused by the references to the story not being authentic (there's a bit where Frobisher says that he thinks Ewing's story doesn't ring true/he thinks it's a fake, not an actual firsthand diary). I suppose that's part of the fragility of knowledge and the rewriting of history (the quote about actual/virtual past and future from Isaac Sachs), but its effect on me was to make me wonder whether any of the stories were true or not, particularly Ewing's section and Luisa Rey's, and I was waiting for something to make that clear and didn't find it. Which I now see is kind of the point (history being inaccurate, facts eliding etc). Having had it explained, I can now see that it is the sort of book you would expect to wind up on an English syllabus at some point - I can imagine writing detailed essays along the lines of "Mitchell's Cloud Atlas is an example of a novel where structure is used to support and explore the themes and tenets of the work itself. Discuss the use of structure in Cloud Atlas." It's a very bleak world view, though, which is why I found it hard to engage with. He's probably right, though, about the way civilisation is heading!

92. Royal Assassin
93. Assassin's Quest

Re-read the Farseer trilogy after finishing Fitz and the Fool. I think Royal Assassin is possibly the best book Robin Hobb has written - really pulls me in. Characters and plot really develop in this one. The final instalment in the trilogy is a bit patchier for me but still had me staying up until midnight to finish it (for the second time). Now I'm yearning to read the Golden Fool trilogy, but I have a bunch of new Kindle books so I'm going to read them first - I would say that it's the sign of a good author to make me want to abandon new books in favour of old, but I am a sucker for series so it might just be my penchant for familiar characters again.

94. A Natural History of Dragons, Marie Brennan. Bought after reading a review of it on here. I am really keen on the idea of this series - quasi-Victorian lady explorer/naturalist, a la Lady Hester Stanhope, breaking sex-based barriers and scandalising Society. It should be brilliant. However, the execution is a little bit off, for me. One of the things that's missing is any sort of description - to make the characters/dragons/scenery leap off the page you do need to build vivid pictures, and the author doesn't describe anything bar the plot. I don't know what the characters look like, and I particularly don't know what the dragons look like, which is odd in a book supposedly about draconic natural history. The characters feel a bit flat as a result - there's very little colour to their interactions either - a real lack of adjectives to bring life to their words. The world-building is a little confused for me - I think it would have done better set in a parallel Victorian England rather than create a not-very-vivid world which is a bit Victorian. That said, I've downloaded book 2 on the basis that the idea is really good and maybe the writing will pick up a bit as the author gets going.

Importing the list

1. Dictator by Robert Harris
2. Conclave by Robert Harris
3. Mistress of the Art of Death by Ariana Franklin
4. Murder As a Fine Art by David Morrell
5. Longbourn by Jo Baker
6. The Poison Tree by Erin Kelly
7. The Owl Killers – Karen Maitland
8. When she was good by Laura Lippman
9. Company of Liars by Karen Maitland

Depressingly few entries since the last thread, although I am still fickle and am abandoning books ruthlessly.

My list so far, and some updates:

1. Only Daughter by Anna Snoekstra
2. Viral by Helen Fitzgerald
3. The Last One by Alexandra Oliva
4. The Atlantis Gene by A.G. Riddle
5. Good Me Bad Me by Ali Land
6. The Rest of Us Just Live Here by Patrick Ness
7. ADHD Nation by Alan Schwarz
8. The World's Worst Children by David Walliams
9. Starborn by Lucy Hounsom

28. Just After Sunset by Stephen King

Collection of short stories. A good read. I liked The Gingerbread Girl and N. best.

29. Endgame: The Calling by James Frey

12 players, from 12 lines, must play Endgame to determine who survives an apocalyptic event. Only those people belonging to the winners line will survive. To win, they have to find 3 keys (Earth Key, Sky Key and Sun Key), and each player gets given a different clue.
This was a fun read, although there are some pretty big coincidences to be swallowed - the clues are very obscure for starters.
The book also has a puzzle written into it, clever reader who solves it wins a case of gold, super, except the competition closed on October 7 2016, so that's just distracting from the story now.

30. The Queen of the Tearling by Erika Johansen

Kelsey Glynn is the heir to the throne of the Tearling, raised in secret. On her 19th birthday, she begins her journey to claim her throne, and free her kingdom from the grip of the neighbouring realm of Mortmesme. She takes power remarkably easily.
Some confusing bits - they keep talking about some crossing (e.g. their medical system is rubbish because they lost the medical ship on the crossing, they've got the complete Harry Potter bookset because that came over on the crossing), but there's no explanation of what the crossing was.
But I liked this on the whole.

31. The Three by Sarah Lotz

On Black Thursday, four passenger planes crash. Only 4 survivors - 3 children, seemingly unhurt, and 1 adult, who survives just long enough to record a voice message on her phone.
It's told in the form of interviews and testimonies, mostly from people close to the 4 survivors. Are the children normal, or is there something sinister going on? Entertaining enough throughout, but the conclusion of the book didn't really work very well for me. Too many things left unexplained.

Bringing my list over cause I love a list…

1. A Hero of Our Time – Lermontov
2. Brideshead Revisited – Evelyn Waugh
3. The House of Silk – Anthony Horrowitz
4. The Return – Hitam Matar
5. The Sympathizer – Viet Thanh Nguyen
6. Ragnarok – A.S Byatt
7. Stuff Matters – Mark Miodownik
8. Fight Club – Chuck Palahniuk
9. A Woman in the Polar Night – Christiane Ritter
10. The Rover – Aphra Behn
11. Falling Awake – Alice Oswald
12. Outline – Rachel Cusk
13. Thin Air – Michelle Paver
14. The Noise of Time – Julian Barnes
15. Snow Country – Yasunari Kawabata
16. The Master and Margarita – Mikhail Bulgakov
17. My Heart and Other Black Holes – Jasmin Wager
18. Perfume – Patrick Suskind
19. The Examined Life – Stephen Grosz
20. What We Talk About When We Talk About Anne Frank – Nathan Englander
21. All Creatures Great and Small – James Herriot
22. Bonjour Tristesse – Francoise Sagan
23. Mothering Sunday – Graham Swift
24. The Revenant – Michael Punke
25. The Little Prince – Antoine De Saint Exupery
26. Norse Mythology – Neil Gaiman
27. Ready Player One – Ernest Cline
28. Five Rivers Met On a Wooded Plain – Barney Norris
29. My Week With Marilyn – Colin Clarke
30. Fantastic Beasts: The Original Screenplay – J.K Rowling
31. The Wonder – Emma Donoghue
32. When Breath Becomes Air – Paul Kalanithi
33. The Lonely Hearts Hotel – Heather O’Neil
34. The Picture of Dorian Gray – Oscar Wilde
35. Nutshell – Ian McEwan
36. Le Testament Francais – Andre Makine
37. Out of Time – Miranda Sawyer
38. The Living Mountain – Nan Shepherd
39. The Gold-Rimmed Spectacles – Giorgio Bassani
40. The Dark Circle – Linda Grant
41. What I Talk About When I Talk About Running – Haruki Murakami
42. Brief Loves That Live Forever – Andre Makine
43. Rush Oh! – Shirley Barrett
44. The Comet Seekers – Helen Sedgwick
45. Nocturnal Animals – Austin Wright
46. By Night in Chile – Roberto Bolano
47. What We Talk About When We Talk About Love – Raymond Carver
48. Ashland and Vine – John Burnside
49. Still Alice – Lisa Genova
50. Bee Journal – Sean Borodale
51. Did You Ever Have a Family? – Bill Clegg
52. Paradise Lodge – Nina Stibbe
53. The Media is the Massage – Marshall McLuhan
54. Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? – Philip K. Dick

I have actually liked most of the things I have read this year apart from The Comet Seekers and Five Rivers Met...

My favourites are The Master and Margarita and Brief Loves That Live Forever. Still going with Moby Dick. Still...

Hello! Marking my place with my updated list:

1. The Dark is Rising - Susan Cooper
2. The Adventure of the Christmas Pudding - Agatha Christie
3. Our Endless Numbered Days - Claire Fuller
4. Love Letters of Henry V111 to Anne Boleyn (totally counting this even though it's only about 70 pages, I'll read an extra long one at some point to balance it out!)

1. Toast - Nigel Slater
2. A Man Called Ove - Fredrick Backman
3. Chess - Stefan Zweig
4. Beauvallet- Georgette Heyer

Thank you for the new thread, Southeastdweller.

39. Testimony, Anita Shreve

I don't think I've read any Anita Shreve before. This reminded me of Jodi Picoult - it was an "issues" book told in many short chapters from multiple perspectives. Easy to read but I found it very troubling. No spoilers to say that it concerns a sex scandal at an expensive New England boarding school, where a 14 year old girl is filmed having sex with three older boys while drunk. The book, while acknowledging that a drunk 14 year old girl cannot be considered either morally or legally to have given consent to sex with a group of older boys/men, then concentrates almost entirely on the impact that the scandal has on the boys and their families, while painting the girl as being a lying, slutty wench. It was quite strange and made me feel quite uneasy.

Half of a Yellow Sun and Eight Months On Ghazzah Street both fabulous :)

I'm grateful to this thread for making me look again at Wild by Cheryl Strayed. I inherited an old first gen Kindle with a very random selection of books stored on it. Wild was one of them and from the title, and the sounds-like-a-made-up-name author, I had shelved it under "Dubious Poorly Written Erotica" along with 50 Shades and other offenders. It actually sounds really good now that I know what it is in real life.

Transferring my list and marking my place:-

1. The Kingsmakers Daughter - Phillipa Gregory

1. How to Be Both - Ali Smith
2. The Observations - Joanne Harris
3. The White Princess - Phillipa Gregory
4. The Heart Goes Last - Margaret Atwood
5. Frazzled - Ruby Wax

1. The Truth about the Harry Quebert Affair

42 Swimming Lessons - Claire Fuller - I had been looking forward to reading this after reading My Endless Numbered Days earlier in the year and it did not disappoint with the same understated and elegant prose.

43 Conclave - Robert Harris - Reviewed multiple times already on this thread and I agree with the other posters in that it was fascinating to read about the inner workings of the Catholic Church but the ending was very disappointing.

44 Truly Madly Guilty - Liane Moriarty - Three couples attend a barbecue where something shocking happens. How they all deal with this event has very different effects on their families, relationships and lives. After watching Big Little Lies I had high expectations for this book but I found it very middle of the road. Not bad but nothing exceptional.

1. The Light Years Elizabeth Jane Howard
2. Marking Time Elizabeth Jane Howard
3. Peter's Room Antonia Forest
4. Run Away Home Antonia Forest
5. The Thursday Kidnapping Antonia Forest
6. Pride and Prejudice Jane Austen
7. Cheerful Weather for the Wedding Julia Strachey
8. Good Evening, Mrs Craven Mollie Panter-Downes
9. Unpublished manuscript

Still stuck in a bit of a reading doldrums - DNF two of the mouldering books on my TBR shelf. Now reading The Guggenheim Mystery by Robin Stevens based on characters by Siobhan Dowd (it's a sequel to The London Eye Mystery.) And tomorrow is my seven hours on trains without small person day (oh, what has my life descended to that this is something I now LOOK FORWARD TO) so will hopefully get that finished tomorrow.

urrgh - too much "really" in that last post.

Thanks for the shiny new thread.

My list so far
1. The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet - David Mitchell
2. Mothering Sunday - Graham Swift

1. Under the Skin - Michel Faber
2. Alias Grace - Margaret Atwood
3. The Muse - Jessie Burton
4. Swing Time - Zadie Smith
5. The Cuckoo's Calling - Robert Galbraith
6. A Question of Identity - Susan Hill
7. The Vows of Silence - Susan Hill

Currently reading Everyone Brave is Forgiven by Chris Cleave. I think a few people on here really liked this, but it's yet to really grab me. Although to be fair The Handmaid's Tale really got under my skin, so I think it might be one of those books that's just so good it ends up ruining your next couple of reads, IYSWIM.

Still working my way through Adults in the Room on audio - finally got to the interesting bits where Syriza have got into government

48 The History Thieves: Secrets, Lies and the Shaping of a Modern Nation by Ian Cobain

A history of the British secret state since the start of the 19th century, taking in the passing of the Official Secrets Act in 1889, the destruction of vast numbers of documents and hiding of vast numbers of more as Britain withdrew from Empire, wartime secrecy (including wars that were never admitted to), the dirty war in Northern Ireland through to Edward Snowden, RIPA, secret terrorism courts et al.

This should have been right up my street, but to be honest I wasn't overly wowed by it. It didn't seem to me that there was a great deal in the book that hadn't already been covered fairly extensively in the papers, or that I hadn't read about elsewhere in other books. (I guess a hazard of writing about the State's secrets is that too many of them are secret . . .)

In particular I was disappointed that the author argues that Britain is notably more secretive than other nations, but then doesn't actually offer any evidence for or against this view. I think it's also a shame that (at least in the modern era) he doesn't differentiate between governments - so we shift in a discussion of legislation brought forwards from the Blair era into the Coalition government without any comment (I figured out which laws came where only by the date of references in the footnotes).

I much preferred The New Spymasters which I read last year, which had less of a political agenda, and more information new to me.

I can spell 'ridiculous' really. And the Horrowitz book really, really was very, very ridiculous.