50 Book Challenge 2018 Part Two

25. The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo- Stieg Larsson This was compelling reading in the main. Kept the pages turning and wanted to know who done it. Lost interest in the final 25% with all the financial crime and double dealings. Will probably read the other two at some point.

Wikipedia says it’s in Skeleton Crew - so the trick to forgetting it is to leave it for approximately 19 years, Desdemona! Might have to download that - borrowed a friend’s copy in about 1997 when I was just beginning my Stephen King odessey.

I'd have thought you'd need to read the collection, rather than counting Survivor Type alone. iirc it's in Skeleton Crew. Can anybody confirm/deny? I can check the contents of my bookshelf, if anybody wants to know for sure.

Book 9
The Nix – Oh dear. This went from something interesting to something deeply, deeply dull and I wish I hadn’t bothered with it. Up to about 30% it was an interesting depiction of childhood trials and tribulations, with some fun stuff on friendship and mostly amusing stuff on one of the children as an adult. A bit overwritten at times (far too much description of people playing video games) but generally quite entertaining. Then it fell to pieces. Cba to review more than that, other than to say I ended up hating it. I really don’t know what it was wanting to be, but what it was (imvho) was a failure of epic proportions. By the end I couldn't have given a toss what happened to any of them.

9. The Dry

Really enjoyed this, although it's a little formulaic. Best bits: brilliantly gruesome opening chapter, evocative depiction of life in an isolated Australian town, slow ratcheting-up of the tension. Agree that the ending was rather naff though.

EmGee, have you read The Plot Against America? It's an imagined alternative history of the US in which Lindberg becomes president and starts to pass anti-Semitic laws. I would imagine it is well worth a read, especially in the current political climate.

I really enjoyed The Blackwater Lightship - I think someone sent it to me in a MN book swap. If so, and if that was you - thank you :) Lovely read. Persuaded me to give him a second chance (as I found Brooklyn entirely meh).

I assume I must have read Defoe at university but he hasn't stuck with me. Think I am going to have to give him another go after reading the comments above.

1. Virgin Blue by Tracy Chevalier. Good but not amazing, and not as good as Girl with a Pearl Earring.

(I am trying to work through my charity shop purchases and saving the Kindle for holidays).

bibliomania no I haven’t. Is A Journal of a Plague Year written in a similar style to Crusoe? I did find the non-Island bits rather a slog (and seriously wtf was with the chapter at the end with Man Friday up a tree taunting a bear in France??).

EllisIsland no, really not like Enid Blyton at all . Love the thought of Julian, George et al dealing with cannibals and getting the vapours at solitary footprints in the sand.

I've finished book 14 thelife she was given. It's about a girl with albinoism who is locked in the attic until she os about 10, then when her dad is away her mother sells her to the circus. This book caught my eye on my goodreads as trending thos week, so.I knew very.little about it before I started.I enjoyed it. I don't know how historically acurate the circus scenes were, but apparently some of the things that happened were based on real events.

I will be starting book 15 the diary of Adrian Mole. This is a re-read but it has been a long time so I don't know how much I remember.

I'm counting Survivor Type, Tooextra. But then I am in 'The Slow Readers Group' What is the trick to forgetting it if this was a reread? I think I'm stuck with certain images in my head for ever now, and if they ever make it into a film I'll be giving it a VERY wide berth!

I mean, happy to demote it if not. Bloody brain.

I have been picking up and starting books and then losing them in the chaos that is my house. Grr. Also totally unable to concentrate on Kindle/phone Kindle app because I just mindlessly MN instead.

12. Survivor Type, Stephen King.

I don't know if this counts as a book on its own - happy to demote it if so! Is it in any of his collections? I didn't think I had read it before until the last line and then suddenly I thought perhaps I had. Um. Ewwwwwww!

13 Just What Kind of Mother Are You? by Paula Daly

This was really disappointing. The premise is a good one. Lisa is busy and overstretched and as a result, fails to let anyone know that her teenage daughter’s friend didn’t show up for a sleepover. The friend is the second girl to go missing in the area, which prompts a massive hunt for her. The writing was much better than I’d have expected, which kept me reading, but there were too many narrative threads to keep it all together, too many random characters with nothing really to add, and the twist didn’t seem very surprising or very twist-y. I live in hope of finding a really good, not particularly gory thriller but haven’t read one in ages. This wasn’t it.

18. Confusion by Elizabeth Jane Howard

Third in The Cazalet Chronicles, all about a large extended family from the late 1930s to the 1950s. This one covers 1940-1945. I love these books but I know there are some here who don’t get on with them. It can take a while to get your head round who’s who when you first start reading them but worth persevering. I’ve been listening to this on Audible (have read in physical format before) and really enjoyed the narration.

1. Ghosts of Everest by Jochen Hemmleb and others.

For those who have enjoyed Into Thin Air and want to learn more about mountaineering's greatest mystery (i.e. did Mallory and Irvine summit Everest?), then this is your book. An American team of climbers, historians and cameramen climb Everest following the same route as Mallory and Irvine from the Tibetan side. You will be left in awe of Mallory, Irvine and other climbers from the 1924 British Expedition Team. Cracking stuff!

Scribblygum I loved Robinson Crusoe when I read it years ago. I was expecting an Enid Blyton style adventure and that is not what I got! Brilliant book.

likeazebra I really didn't like that Marian Keyes, would love to know what you think when you finish. Mind you, I did read it in hospital so maybe that didn't help... I didn't particularly like her last one either.

Scribbly, have you read Defoe's A Journal of the Plague Year? I was utterly gripped.

Happy birthday Just- I love my Fitbit too.

14. Death in a White Tie by Ngaio Marsh. Another good one, but she is driving me mad with her timings- people leave home at 9, go to work, write and article, and get to Scotland Yard by 11. Or in this one, enter a cafe for tea, and announce they have to be at the Yard in 20 min- and somehow have tea and cake and still get there on time! But otherwise most agreeable.

4. Survivor Type - Stephen King

Well I blame the rest of you for this one. Sheer curiosity got the better of me. I don't generally read short stories though, and as a result I found this a little unsatisfying - I'm used to a bit more plot development. Definitely an, um, interesting idea though.

In the meantime, still ploughing on with The Goldfinch. About 2/3 of the way through and enjoying it so far so it will have to deteriorate quite badly for me to dislike it.

Matilda, I read that - I think as a Kindle pre-release deal. I seem to remember it being a bit irritating at times, but with a good twist. Worth it on a deal.

Happy birthday Trying , and happy Fitbitting - I LOVE mine!

1. Stories of Your Life and Others by Ted Chiang Collection of SCIENCE fiction short stories (capitalisation deliberate). This was hard work as a non scientific reader, but worth the effort. The stories were all different, but the typical scenario was that they were set in a recognisable world with one key element of science etc operating differently from ours, which allowed an exploration of how characters behaved in that situation. The style and the concepts tackled reminded me of Borges who I haven't read for years; in fact in one of the stories a situation is referred to as Borgesian. I think someone reviewed this last year, which is how it ended up on my kindle - thank you!

Happy birthday just!

6. The Good Widow - Liz Fenton and Lisa Steinke

Jacks husband dies in a car crash in Maui. But why was he in Maui when he should have been on a work trip to Kansas? And who was the woman he was with?

Another book available on kindle unlimited trying to get my moneys worth of my free trial! This was a good read and the twist wasn’t what I’d guessed it was at all! Some predictable bits but I enjoyed most of it.

Happy birthday just

It is my birthday today and I had asked for Amazon vouchers to put towards a fitbit (40 and fat, determined not to be 41 and fat). When I went on the one I wanted was half price so I had money left over for books !!

I bought a couple of cross stitch I wanted and then went into my wish list to spend the leftovers. I have ordered 6 books but in doing so I realised that there are still some crappy books in their that I have no intention of ever buying so managed to do another clear out in there too.

13. Arrow's Fall by Mercedes Lackey

The big advantage of these books is they are so short! And on a Sunday with nothing in particular to do I've got through the whole of the third in this trilogy.

Talia, Queen's Own Herald, has returned from her circuit of the northern territory with fellow Herald Kris and now takes up her position as a full member of the Queen's Council. But she finds intrigues surrounding Elspeth, heir to the throne. A marriage alliance it proposed with Prince Ancar, heir of a neighbouring kingdom. Talia first tries to find out whether there is anything sinister behind any of the factions vying for control of Elspeth's future, and is then sent on a mission to investigate the worth of the proposed marriage. But there is a greater threat than she realises, one which might endanger Valdemar itself.

7. The Woman who Stole My Life by Marian Keyes.

I'm not sure about this book, really struggled to keep up with it as it seemed to flick around to different people and parts of the story within the same chapter.

1. Robinson Crusoe (or to give its full title The Life and Strange Suprizing Adventures of Robinson Crusoe, of York, Mariner) by Daniel Defoe

Blimey. I wasn’t expecting that. It’s an extraordinary book and actually feels silly and churlish to attempt to review it.

It’s certainly not an easy read. No chapters, capitalisation of nouns, a very odd pared down style of journalistic writing which makes it feel utterly realistic in parts (the scene where Robinson survives the shipwreck is just heart in mouth wonderful) but can be frustratingly dull at other times, very much like a 'What I Did On My Holidays' report but with Robinson cataloging bits of ropes and wood that he has salvaged.

The bookend sections to the main island story are incredibly dull and bizarre, although I did snort in amusement at his first shipwreck which is not upon a Carribean island but upon the wild and most terribly dangerous shores of Norfolk.

Too many great themes to mention, it’s worthy of several book club discussions. My greatest pleasure was reading the section where Robinson is attempting to grow barley on the island, willing him to succeed, and becoming aware that fairly recently I had felt the exact same emotions reading about a man trying to cultivate potatoes in his own shit on the surface of Mars. I wonder if Defoe in his wildest dreams could have imagined that three hundred years after writing his book readers would still be enjoying the same genre that he was father to.

Pressed post too soon!

17. The Uncommon Reader by Alan Bennett

The Queen discovers a mobile library calling at Buckingham Palace, and borrows a book. She falls in love with reading and starts to resent her duties and family from taking away her reading time. This is very short, but very funny!