50 Book Challenge 2017 Part Eight

Discovered today that my new employer has a free book exchange

My employer didn't, until I started one. I love it, had some really good books from "the shelf"

112. Why Mummy Drinks - Gill Simms
Having read some of her Peter and Jane Blogs on Facebook I was intrigued to read this book. The lightest of light reads. Shades of Bridget Jones and at points Adrian Mole. Ridiculous story line but some very funny asides on family life. Not amazing but passed the time.

Discovered today that my new employer has a free book exchange

Sounds good! I came across a free mini library in a cupboard in a local train museum last weekend.

Unfortunately I was too busy making sure small DC didn’t lose themselves amongst the trains to investigate properly. Maybe next time....

Welcome, London.

Tanaqui - It definitely exists. I have them all in my Stephen King cupboard, snuggled up to The Gunslinger.

Discovered today that my new employer has a free book exchange. You can take any book you like and leave any you don’t want. There was a whole library book case full. I came away happily with Sue Perkins’ Spectacles.

Can I join in (belatedly)? Am in awe at all of your lists - I keep a paper note of what I’ve read so can’t easily transpose my 86 books of 2017 for this thread. But I can see at a glance that I’ve lots in common with some of the lists.

My preference is nothing too highbrow, and I am (usually) all about the destination rather than the journey.

This year I seem to have specialised in books where I am fascinated by the setting* or society and want to stay there, but couldn’t really care less about the main plot line or characters. Falling into this group this year are The Power, Smoke, The City and the City and The man in the high castle.*

I think my best book of the year so far has to be The Hate U Give. Ignore the misspelled title, this is a standout portrait of a teenage girl and her family and friends living through a crisis. They call it the Black Lives Matter book - and I defy anyone not to emerge from it thinking about Starr, rooting for her family, and re-assessing their views on racism.

This thread has also added to my TBR list already - just picked up Red Rising for 99p. So good to encounter others who read voraciously - and on a Kindle too! Looking forward to joining the conversation.

Biblio I am similarly disgusted that anyone could get Robert wrong!

79. The After Party, Anton DiSclafani
Period piece about a group of 1950s texas socialites. They drink cocktails, live in huge houses, go to nightclubs with swimming pools and feel lonely and bored. It's particularly the story of the friendship between two of the women. Felt very well researched and was enjoyable if lightweight.

80. Hillbilly Elegy: A Memoir of a Family and Culture in Crisis, J.D. Vance
You know this one, right? The boy who grew up in rust belt Ohio with a drug addict Mother but then went to Yale and then wrote a book?

This was very readable, and I found Vance's views to be quite balanced. He's a republican and a believer in pulling yourself up by your bootstraps (which I thought might be obnoxious), but he sees with clear eyes many of the obstacles that prevent some people from deprived backgrounds from achieving their full potential, and while he does point the finger, he's compassionate too. My criticism of this book was that it was long on anecdotes and short on evidence - he says himself that it's more the story of his family than an academic book, but he makes a lot of claims and has only a very few footnotes to studies that back them up with facts and figures. There's also a lot of social commentary but relatively little about the economic or political factors that have shaped people's lives, which detracts from the book IMHO. It's short and well written though so worth a read.

81. Do Not Become Alarmed, Maile Molloy
Two affluent American families are on a luxury cruise to Central America. They leave the ship for a day out, and the children get separated from their parents. The story follows various of the characters through the days that follow - there's no great mystery, as we know most of what happens to both the parents and the kids. There's a fairly heavy-handed contrast between the American expectation that children should be well looked after and safe, and the experience of local families who lose their children to drugs or violent crime. It was certainly gripping though, one of those "One more chapter and I'll turn off the light" books that keeps you awake till 3am.

Thanks to whoever recommended the Dave Gorman above, sounds like one that my DS would enjoy :)

Welcome, Liney A lot can go wrong! That’s how I ruined my memories of Dune, by re-reading it in my 40s

Have you read some of the more contemporary SF? Neal Stephenson is brilliant and we all loved the Three-Body Problem books on here, too.

115. Out of Sheer Rage, Geoff Dyer
Author writes about his inability to write a life of D H Lawrence. All a bit self-indulgent. Not a big fan.

116. The Devil Kissed her: the life of Mary Lamb, by Kathy Watson
Snappy biography of Mary Lamb (sister of Charles; they co-wrote Lamb's Tales from Shakespeare in the late eighteenth century). She suffered from what was probably manic-depression and stabbed their mother to death. She was in and out of asylums, but mostly lived with her brother. We can sometimes stereotype the past, and this is a useful corrective to Gothic images of madhouses - her mental illness was treated sensitively and compassionately. It's a lively read, and there are fascinating vignettes of some of her female friends, in particular. Left me wanting to know more, which is an excellent quality in books (am slightly repelled by those which tell you everything you ever wanted to know and more).

117. Jacob's Room is full of Books, by Susan Hill.
If you hated Howard's End is on the Landing, you should steer well clear of this. It's quite lazy - reads like diary extracts over the year, with comments on the weather and the birds she sees. I'm surprised she doesn't give us details of calories ingested and frequency of bowel movements. The attraction is the book talk. There is the same name-dropping as the previous book (dear old Sachie Sitwell!) and she needs an editor (in the Just William books, Robert is William's brother, not Ethel's fiancé. Dear God, woman). But I love book talk anyway, and my expectations were low after the last book, so I knew what I was getting and rather liked it anyway. Definitely a book to get from the library rather than buy though.

Hello, Cote.

I have decided to re-read a lot of the sci fi I read as a young adult and see if the Now Me still likes it. I'll start with Asimov. What can possibly go wrong?

It really is a great read.

May I say I luffs you lot? I’d get the face if i ever recommended an epigenetics book in RL

I must try to read that again - have a paper copy I got when everyone was reading it last year, but I was too busy to give it the headspace it needed. Definitely a good winter-time book :)

The Epigenetics Revolution is £1.19 on the Kindle just for today. Don’t miss it!

94 Penric's Demon by Lois McMaster Bujold

Novella set in the same universe as The Curse of Chalion / Hallowed Hunt etc which I read earlier in the year. There wasn't a massive amount to this, but it was a pleasant easy read.

I'm glad you read it like that too Remus, people sometimes look as me as though I'm imagining it!

I liked Hidden Figures Best, but I haven't seen the film- I imagine that the film has more narrative drive than the book so might make the book less gripping?

88. Hidden Figures - Margot Lee Shetterley Book on which the film was based. It was ok, a bit dull in truth. It took me ages to finish.

I've read The Green Mile as both the little series (waiting desperately for the next one) and as a novel. It works well in both formats.

I liked The Stand better than It, just to disagree with you all! Also liked The Green Mile, but I read it in the little chapter books it was originally published as, not sure how it would be as a proper novel.

46. HomeGoing by Yaa Gyasi. I would strongly recommend this- it is a stunning achievement for a first novel. Two sisters, who don't know each other, have different experiences in 1700s Ghana- one is "married" to a white man, the other shipped to america as a slave. The novel then takes chapter by chapter in turn through the direct descendents of each sister. It obviously episodic, but it still feels like a novel, not a collection of short stories, and the enormous scope never feels too much for the author. There are flaws, but naming them might be spoilers, and it was great, do try it!

95. My Absolute Darling Gabriel Tallent a grim, disturbing book, the beautiful California coast where 14 year old Turtle (there's never any explanation for the name) lives with her sadistic father is almost a character in itself. The frequent gratuitous abuse depictions, swearing and unrealistic dialogue from the other teenagers are interspersed with loooong descriptions of the setting, firearms and their cleaning. I can see why it's so hyped as it's certainly compelling but I wasn't keen.

64. After You Die - Eva Dolan

Dawn is stabbed to death and her disabled daughter, unable to fend for herself, is left to die. But who had reason to kill Dawn? And did they know they would be leaving Holly to die?

This was a really good read and I didn’t like to put it down but it has been a very busy week. First book I’ve read from this author although I think it’s the third featuring these detectives in a series so may pick up some more eventually.

I'd say the three books featuring Will are much the best of the five MegBusset. The Grey King is possibly my favourite (or maybe The Dark is Rising . . . or maybe Silver on the Tree . . .).

BTW for any fans of the sequence who like fanfic, there's a rather wonderful series featuring a certain character later in life as a charismatic Plaid AM.

49. Over Sea, Under Stone - Susan Cooper

First in the Dark Is Rising series, and aimed at younger readers than the better-known second book ; three children go on holiday to a mysterious Cornish house and discover an ancient map that promises to lead them to the Grail of Arthurian legend. But they are not the only ones looking for it...

Not as good as the second book, but still a fun introduction to the series.

No one had a wank (although there was some interpretive modern dance which is almost the same thing) so that's something I suppose. Quote of the year!

I still haven't finished the Stalin book by Romanovs man, because the writing is excruciating, so I'll give the Romanovs a miss.

Book 108 The Sundial by Shirley Jackson
This is by the author of The Haunting of Hill House and We Have Always Lived in the Castle, both of which I disliked, so gawd knows why I thought it was a good idea to read another one of hers. I was sucked in by positive reviews, the fact it was only 99p on Kindle and the fact that it’s supposedly apocalyptic. Well, apocalyptic it may be (ish), but a load of shite it most certainly is.

Basically a group of silly people end up in a house together, now owned by a very odd woman after the mysterious death of her son, and descent into dementia of her husband. Another odd woman has some sort of paranormal experience where her late father tells her it’s going to be the end of the world and only those in the house will be blessed with survival. Meanwhile there’s a few other odd women, a very odd child and a couple of men who are basically in thrall to the first very odd woman. Most of the novel is taken up with all of these odd people bickering and behaving (guess what?) oddly, and then it ends, not terribly oddly and certainly anti-climatically. This is the last Shirley Jackson novel I’ll be reading.

EmGee, I ended up skimming The Romanovs too. I don't know whether it was all too much, or whether the author's style was just a bit flat.