50 Book Challenge 2018 Part Two

1. Sharp Objects by Gillian Flynn

I really liked this 1st book by a woman author Suspense was developed well, writing was quite good, heartstrings not tugged despite tragedy and trauma, characters all damaged in their own way, and the self-harm angle was done just the right way, too. I'm very pleasantly surprised.

Our protagonist is a woman who goes back to her home town to cover the story of two girls abducted and killed in the same way. She has to face her estranged family, and the trauma of having lost her sister to a strange and protracted illness as a child, which got her started on cutting words into her body that left permanent scars all over.

I would recommend this to everyone here. It is a FAR superior book to Gone Girl.

Cote as someone who has worked with children all her life I can tell you lots of people don't remember what it is like to be a child. It is very very sad.

"Understanding the way a child's mind works and understanding a child's point of view"

Do some people need to read children's books to understand how children's minds work?

I'm genuinely surprised. Don't you remember being a child?

That seems fair! I wasn’t bored, exactly, but it was definitely one of those “I’m considerably more clever than you” books. I just can’t see the point.

pepe here is my very short review!

91. Hot Milk - Deborah Levy . Too clever for it's own good. All sorts of metaphors and parallels but I just could not be bothered to try and understand them. Was bored rigid from about 50 pages in. Wish I wasn't so OCD about finishing books , came very close to abandoning it a number of time

Pepe I hated Hot milk. Thought it was just too clever for it's own good. Seemed full of 'symbolism and meaning' but I couldn't be bothered to work it all out. Will see if I can find my review.

6. Malice by Keigo Higashino

Crime fiction. The body of acclaimed novelist Kunihiko Hidaka is found in his locked office within his locked house by his wife and his friend , Nonoguchi, both of whom seem to have solid alibis. Or do they...
When police detective Kyochiro Kaga gets suspicious about Nonoguchi’s statement and starts investigating him, he begins to uncover a twisty and puzzling tale full of secrets and betrayals.

An entertaining page turner.

Yes exactly - we look for different things, I’m not a big reader for plot so that is why I can enjoy a well written children’s book if I don’t want to be taxed, even if the bad guys are weasels and I know they’re wrong ‘uns from the start

And Mr Toad is an archetypal character - I know someone just like him, and everyone knows what you mean when you call them Mr Toad, and it comes from a children’s book. I often snarl “canary coloured carts” when I’m in a rage and children are present, it’s very useful.

I’m not really enjoying The Dry at all, finding it very dull. And no badgers in it! Liking, and nearly finished Burial Rites though. Feel like something cheerful next.

Satsuki - Wind Of Willows might have the best description of a river that in the history of the printed word, but it's still a story about Mr. Toad, Badger, Ratty, and Mole

Jack Reacher books have some of the most braindead prose I have ever read, but at least they are written for people at or close to my age, featuring adult humansThis might not be important to some people, but it is to me

I must be the only person in the world who
couldn’t make any headway with Elena Ferrante. I was bored and couldn’t finish the first book. Everyone I know has loved them all!

1. Hot Milk by Deborah Levy

Shakeit my MIL has recommend the Elena Ferrante books to me this evening. Adding them to the list!

Everyone has their go-to genre for a quick and easy read. Mine is urban fantasy with an ass-kicking lead female and a little romance on the side. Not too much of the bush and rod action though, thank you very much.. 😉😉 I don’t really like most “chick-lit” but you never know what unexpected discovery is around the corner. To my surprise, I really liked The Time Traveller’s Wife when I read it over 10 years ago (my DSis brought it in holiday and I had nothing else to read) and that I would class as chick-lit. Not sure what I would think of it now as I think your book likes and loves can change over time.

Updating with my recent reads:

7. The Story of the Lost Child by Elena Ferrante.

The last in the Neapolitan novels. Told in the first person (by Elena) this follows Elena Greco and Lila Cerulla from their thirties into old age, in their roles as mothers, partners, earners. The first person viewpoint is fascinating; I found myself wondering what the characters would be like from someone else’s perspective.

As usual the characters and settings come alive in her writing with a fitting ending. Not my favourite of the four (I preferred the second and third books) I still raced through it, eager to see where the story would lead. I have loved reading this quartet of books.

8. The Lunatic Cafe (Anita Blake novel 4) by Laurell K.Hamilton.

Fourth book in this urban fantasy series. Shapeshifters, werewolves, vampires and Anita Blake, kicking ass and solving crime.

15. Good Wives by Louisa May Alcott

Didn’t enjoy this as much as Little Women - while it was good to revisit the characters this was even more preachy and I was disappointed that it didn’t feature more about Meg and Beth. I’ll still read the next couple in the series when I get chance though.

@ all good fun in the bush.

Remus I have The Thornbirds on my kindle to read and after that review I think it will move closer to the top of the TBR list!

Agree that the ending of The Dry was a disappointment. I liked it up until that point though. Can't be doing with stupid and convenient coincidences, which is why I will never read another Kate Atkinson book too.

Book 8
The Thornbirds – I enjoyed this. On the whole it wasn’t too Goddish, and there were no wanking vicars. I liked the descriptions of Australia, and I liked the ending. There were enough characters who were sufficiently well developed to keep my interest, and the balance between conflicted vicars and characters who were not conflicted vicars was in my favour. I thought some of the internal monologues (vicars and non-vicars, all conflicted) were a bit tedious and I thought a couple of characters were introduced solely in order to die, but on the whole it was all good fun in the bush (not a euphemism, although it sometimes was fun in that bush too).

7. The Cornish Coast Murder by John Bude

Published in 1935 this is reminiscent of Agatha Christie but nit as well written. A murder has occurred in a small Cornish village but whodunnit? Was it the niece, the shell shocked WW1 veteran who is stepping out with the niece, the handyman? Its up to the local police aided by the vicar to solve the mystery, and It does keep you guessing until the last chapter which is admirable.

It does help we are having a break at the moment in a beautiful 1920"s house now hotel and I keep wanting someone to drop down dead so that Miss Marple can solve the mystery.

Next up Slow Horses and impulse purchase in Waterstones while waiting to buy something else.

8. The Devil In The Flesh Basically a semi autobiographical novel written by a teenager who has an affair with a woman who's husband is fighting in the trenches in WW1 Torn between loving it and thinking it's a lesser version of The Age Of Reason

I tend to find I read crime fiction as a 'lighter' read - although that may not make much sense given the subject matter. It’s all to do with genre and conventions, I think. You know what you’re going to get and that’s absolutely fine if that’s what suits you at that moment. I’ll switch to 'literary' fiction and non-fiction when I need something more challenging.

toomuch, I’d recommend Nicci French if you’re looking for a 2-author novel. Maybe not the Frieda Klein series if you don’t want to commit to 7 books, but they’ve written a lot of other things.

I’m struggling to think offhand of many others with two authors but there must be a good few. The Martin Beck books? Diary of a Nobody? (though Weedon Grossmith drew the illustrations and probably wrote less of the text). The Irish RM?

I read plenty of non-challenging stuff - particularly children's lit/urban fantasy - so I'm not knocking light reading! It's more that the plots/characters in some chick lit tend to be dire and irritate, not soothe.

On the chick-lit discussion - it's generally not my scene at all, but I have read a few. I agree that Anna Maxted's are more substantive than most (disclaimer: I used to know her years ago, so picked up the books because of that) but she hasn't published any new ones for years - I think she moved into writing more mainstream romance under a pseudonym.

Mostly I just find chick-lit way too stereotyped and predictable, but I suppose it can make relaxing comfort-reading if you don't want to think too hard. Last year for fun I read about half a dozen books set in bookshops, including "How to find love in a bookshop" by Veronica Henry, which was definitely chick-lit - fine if you like that kind of thing, but you could see all the happy-endings coming a mile off. I think one book like that a year is plenty for me.

Yes, you don’t always want challenging and I read a lot of lighter stuff when younger. Now though I don’t have the patience for it and am more likely to read short stories or an article, or watch something decent on tv, than read a fluffy novel these days, but everyone’s got their thing that works for them.

I’m reading The Dry at the moment southeast and finding it a bit of an effort but sort of want to finish it.

8. Quiet by Susan Cain Non-fiction, subtitled "The power of introverts in a world that can't stop talking". This was more in the style of American business/self-help/pop-psychology books than I was expecting, which I found irritating at times, but it was an interesting read and gave me some fresh perspectives on myself, DP and the way we interact with each other and the world.

Piggy, I don't really class Jilly Cooper as chick-lit but I was trying to think of examples of lighter literature written by women with a predominantly female readership (although I first got into JC by picking up my dad's copy of Appassionata!). Bad example, because I really don't class her stuff in the same way.