50 Book Challenge 2017 Part Eight

69. The Couple Next Door by Shari Lapena

Anne and Marco go to their next door neighbours dinner party, leaving their 6 month old baby home alone. They’ve got the baby monitor, they’re popping back to check on the baby every half hour - but when they get home, the baby’s gone.

Fast paced, with lots of suspects, lots of twists. I didn’t like the last chapter though.

126. Narrowboat Nomads, by Steve Haywood
127. The A-List Family, by Christina Hopkinson
128. The Underground Railroad, by Colin Whitehead

The Underground Railroad has received a lot of attention. It's a harrowing read, as is necessary for a book about slavery, so I interrupted my reading with the first two books as easier reads (non-fiction account about a retired couple meandering around UK waterways and a chicklit book about working for a A-list couple, backstage-at-Hello-magazine type of thing).

I wasn't initially sure that the conceit of a physical railway line to transport runaway slaves would work, but I think it did - it added a note of allegory that allowed each of Cora's destinations to also act as an allegorical representation of a phase in African-American history. It's intensely vivid - you feel what it would be like to be a human in these circumstances. I'll remember this book for a long time.

34??? Can't find my last post to check
Forensics:the anatomy of crime by Valley McDermid
Really good overview of the main branches of forensics- fingerprints, dna, fire, poisons etc, and the current developments in each, interspersed with relevant, and really interesting stories demonstrating each area. Expanded my decomposition and arson knowledge

35 the lie of the land by Amanda Craig
Loved hearts and minds, and this follows two minor characters who due to redundancy and crashing property prices duck out of hurry scurry London life for rural devon. I liked the focus on rural politics- sustainability of milk prices, isolation, migrant workers and unaffordable housing, and the harsh reality of living on the land. The story became increasingly flighty - child rape resulting in concealed birth, one sister retrieving sperm and passing to her sister for a unconventional pregnancy, and a medical student running secret blood tests from a stained tissue....
I really enjoyed this, and the serious issues she portrays are actually enhanced by a bit of frivolity in the plot development. The health visitor, married to an infertile farmer was especially thoughtful

36
Your life in my hands by Rachel Clarke
Can't remember if reviewed this. Based on recent junior doctors strike this real junior doctors tells it like it is working in an NHS hospital, and the gossamer thin resources meaning repeated cancelled operations and treatments, and overwhelmed and undersupported doctors who unless resolute and determined face constant challenge to their ability to provide the service they aspire to. Stories of ambulances queuing at a and e for hours are nothing new, but the stories of the medics trying to cope, and the sheer burnout of staff, and near misses with avoidable deaths are tremendously concerning.

Still on acts and omissions- thanks bibliomania - and also the first Ruth Rendell Simisola being sold off by the library

Popping in to mark place. Have four books on the go at the moment, so might be some time in finishing them.

49. This Is Not A Game: You Don't Get A Second Life by Walter Jon Williams

This a was a good little techno-thriller involving internet, bots, economy (although not brainhurty) and a murder mystery. It is about an online game designer called Dagmar, one of whose close friends gets murdered in a way that suggests her boss and perhaps also herself could be next in line. She soon harnesses the collective intelligence and power of millions of players of her game to solve the murder and put things right.

I'm happy to see that there is a sequel, too

100 Flight of Magpies by KJ Charles
Book 3 in the Charm of Magpies series. More occult murders and romance - fine, but felt a bit rushed and not up to the first two books in the series.

101. Swimming Lessons by Claire Fuller I really enjoyed this suspenseful and touching novel. Nan and Flora's mother has been missing for 12 years, presumed drowned, but their father begins to see her around the small coastal village. An accident reunites the sisters with their novelist father at their old, book filled home, these scenes are alternated with the letters addressed to him that their mother had hidden in books in the house prior to her disappearance. Im making it sound really twee but it's not!

Someone mentioned up thread that The Uncommon Reader by Alan Bennett was good, and short, so I looked it up on Overdrive and listened to the Audible version FOC, beautifully read by Mr Bennett himself. Only two and a half hours long, this felt like cheating, but I'm claiming it anyway! I preferred the first half where the Queen gets into reading with Norman as her guide. Generally raised a few wry smiles and one laugh out loud line concerning the Queens penchant for encouraging the prime minister to get into literature alongside her. The first audible book on my list but it was lovely to be getting on with other things and 'reading' at the same time. Pity Overdrive have such a limited selection of audiobooks.

24. Daughters Of The Dragon picked up in a Kindle sale for 99p this uses the fictionalised life story of a Korean woman to tell the historically accurate truth about thousands of Korean, Chinese and a few European women who were either tricked or abducted into forced sexual slavery by the invading Japanese Army during the Second World War. Working as a so called 'Comfort Woman' the protagonist is raped up to 40 times a day, with a queue of soldiers outside her door allocated 10 minute slots. Subject to verbal and physical abuse by her captors and rapists and obviously at risk of STD's. Her life following her escape from this nightmare continues to be difficult not least because the patriarchal Korean society and 'honour' culture considers the comfort women to be to blame for their past. In terms of a novel this was not particularly well written, the voice of the modern day descendant was irritating and the theme of the Dragon comb passed down through generations is repetitive and overplayed. However it did open my eyes to this terrible atrocity. Another case of mans inhumanity to (wo)man knowing no bounds. Japanese estimates put the number of women forced into sexual slavery by their militia at around 20,000 but it is more likely that the number is ten times that amount - 200,000 or more. Approximately three quarters of comfort women died during or shortly after the war, some committed suicide, others died from enforced crude abortions still more were executed by the Japanese military before they shipped out to avoid any future embarrassment concerning the atrocities that had been committed. Of those who did live to tell the tale most were left infertile due to sexual trauma or sexually transmitted diseases. Today the few surviving Korean Comfort Women participate weekly in 'Wednesday Demonstrations': "Every Wednesday at noon, a group of elderly women march on the Japanese embassy in Seoul, South Korea, demanding an apology from the government of Japan. They march in the pouring rain, bitter cold, and stifling humidity that only Seoul can dish out. They have not missed a single Wednesday in over twenty-three years. They are the last of an army of comfort women—women the Japanese military raped and tortured as sex slaves during World War II. They are all more than eighty years old now, and many are in their nineties. The Koreans call them “grandmothers,” a term of great honor and respect. Their ranks are dwindling fast. " from "Daughters of the Dragon" by William Andrews

Ooh, that was me, Rosehip! I don't re-read that much, but I make an exception for Catherine Fox.

I've just done a comparative essay for my MA on Sophocles' Antigone and Jean Anouilh's Antigone. Good gory stuff.

Southeastdweller Yeah ... Thought I might give Elizabeth Strout a go, she came up plenty too.

Need to do a big update, but just popping by to say thank you to however recommended the Catherine Fox series. Approaching the end of acts and omissions and Ioving it - so nice to have a new series to read!

105 Oedipus Rex by Sophocles
The one where Oedipus finds out he killed his father and married his mother.

HOLY SHIT! That was totally freaking awesome! If I could have read that whilst simultaneously covering my face with my hands I would have. The sheer drama of the thing, the pathos and the irony and the tingly delicious feeling of knowing from the very start what's going to happen and then watching it all unfold as Oedipus' life falls apart

I plan on using this line to shout at my children
"You are nothing but vexation here. Begone, and give me peace!"

Ooh plays!! Have a big Arthur Miller soft spot. Death of a Salesman and the Crucible.

Yeah, I studied Oedipus at university, and it all gets a bit Shakespearian/Grant Mitchell at the end.
Plays! Now, THAT'S a good reading-goal idea. What should I read? What's everyone's favourite play? I did a whole module on Shakespeare too, so not him. Can't remember if I've read Antigone or not, though I do know the plot, so maybe.

Excellent
I'm going in...

The one I remember is Oedipus Rex. I don’t think “mistake” is a strong enough word for the goings on in that!

It definitely gets very gory towards the end. Can’t comment on how gory it is compared with Antigone as I’m not familiar enough with Antigone. The Christmas Day Eastenders analogy - along with a dash of crime drama - would also work for Oedipus.

Can Oedipus be even more gory than Antigone? I think there are two Oedipuses aren't there? Oedipus makes a mistake and Oedipus' mistake comes back to haunt him.

Antigone also super short for those wanting to reach their reading goal. Read it in an hour, it's free on the kindle, and you know, you can mention at dinner parties, "oh yeah, I've read some Sophocles" all casual like and folk will be totally [impressed]. It's also a bit mad with all the death and mega-drama is a bit like every Christmas Day East Enders episode ever but with togas, the underworld and some blind dude checking out the innards of dead birds.

I remember studying Oedipus at school. That’s one that really stuck in my memory. Compelling but not one for the squeamish.

103 The Year of Living Danishly: My Twelve Months Unearthing the Secrets of the World's Happiest Country by Helen Russell

Burnt out London journo goes to the back end of beyond in Denmark with husband who has a job with Lego, buys candles, pastries and interviews white middle class, middle aged Danish people who astonishingly report themselves to be extremely happy and Denmark to be utterly marvellous and better than anywhere else in the world for ever amen.
Read like a series of Grazia interviews with annoying bullet point summaries at the end of each month but apart from all that it was a reasonably enjoyable listen and I'd now quite like to go and visit Copenhagen.

104 Antigone by Sophocles
Bought to read before I start on Home Fire (modern reselling of Antigone)
Antigone, daughter of Oedipus, defies her Uncle, Creon, the King of Thebes by performing the burial rites for her brother Polyneices (killed in battle by her other brother Eteocles) and is sentenced to death.
Anguish and death ensues.
Really enjoyed this short play which despite being written in about 440BC contains some lines astonishingly relevant for current politics.

"The man who thinks that he alone is wise, that he is best in speech or counsel, such a man brought to the proof is found but emptiness."

Will definitely be reading more of his plays. Oedipus up next.

42. A Christmas Carol Charles Dickens Scrooge, ghosts, Tiny Tim, Bah humbug!, the works. It's incredibly cheesy, and drawn in VERY broad strokes, of course, but it's rather glorious despite that, and surprisingly witty. ("There's more of gravy about you than the grave!" cries Scrooge to Marley, trying to convince him that he's just indigestion.) I can just imagine Victorian families reading the whole thing out loud on Christmas Eve, and rather wish I had the sort of DH who would let me do it. I'm glad to have ticked off a classic on this year's list, and - for a member of the Slow Readers Group still hoping to reach 50 - it's also blessedly SHORT. God bless us, every one, etc etc.

66. The Other Wives Club - Shari Low

Signed up for kindle unlimited and downloaded this easy read. Had a rubbish sickly weekend and this was much needed about Adrian Gold celebrating his 50th on board a cruise with his two ex wives and current wife. Very chick lit but couldn’t handle the rest on Into Thin Air this weekend.

I'm reading Jack Reacher number 4. The toothbrush has been mentioned. "It was a plastic thing that came in half and clipped into his pocket like a pen." No mention of a cover, and the folding and clipping just sound like a recipe for getting more germs into crevices. I wouldn't.