50 Book Challenge 2018 Part Two

I just saw American Wife by Curtis Sittenfeld is only 99p for Kindle at the moment. It is a great book - I read it late last year and finished it on NYE. So not on my 2018 list but would highly recommend as a really intelligent and human novel that tells the story of a political marriage in really gripping detail. A not-entirely-unrecognisable marriage either!

4. The Amber Spyglass - Philip Pullman - the 3rd of the "His Dark Materials" trilogy. The religious undertones of the first book go completely bonkers in the final installment. I read the other 2 a while ago and didn't get round to this one for some reason. I can see why so many young people love the books, but I found it hard to believe in the worlds created.

1. Birdcage Walk - Helen Dunmore
2. Wonder - RJ Palacio
3. Why Mummy Drinks - Gill Sims

4. The Trouble with Goats and Sheep by Joanna Cannon
I'm guessing this may have been done to death on this thread last year - but I'm a newbie
I struggled to keep up with who was who and who had supposedly done what, when and to whom and whilst the pace quickened at the end I felt there were too many loose ends for it to be a truly satisfactory ending! Interesting way of telling snippets of the story from the viewpoint of both adults and children.

Hi all!
I'd like to join. Hoping I can read a few books this year. Will be having a baby soon and hoping once I've found my groove and on maternity leave I can read some more.

I got back into reading 2 years ago and enjoy all sorts. Some to make me think and some to make me just get lost in a book!

Currently started the Constant Gardener- never seen the film.

Any book recommendations to get me started?

2 Mary Queen of Scots by Antonia Fraser
A biography of Mary Stuart's life. Inevitably the best part was when she was ruling Scotland. The first couple of hundred pages which covered Mary's childhood in France and her first short lived marriage was a bit slow but once she got back to Scotland it was much better. A few criticisms though. Fraser obviously assumed that everyone knew the entire story of Mary's life because she jumps ahead several times and mentions things that haven't happened yet, including the deaths of several key characters. I found that annoying. There aren't translations provided for all the French quotes within the book which made it pointless to include them. A map or two would have been useful as well. Apart from that I was struck by how sad the majority of her life was - she ended up trapped in England, never seeing her son again and eventually paying a high price. Book is well worth reading.

3 A Winter's Book by Tove Jansson
Short stories and a few extracts from letters by Tove Jansson. From these I can see the influences on the Moomintroll books. Very enjoyable.

I was at a catholic boarding school when The Thorn Birds, bookend TV series, first came out. There was a lot of resentment towards our school priest that the looked nothing like Richard Chamberlain.

Howards End is on the Landing - Susan Hill
Susan Hill writes about her year of reading from the books she already owns at home.

I liked some parts of this but others just fell flat. Positive aspects were I enjoyed the stories around how she acquired some of her books, her interactions with other authors and the descriptions of authors and books that were once popular but now no longer heard of.
Negatives; some of her pronouncements were just odd. She tells the story of how Lewis Carroll was obsessed with little girls and once followed a group over some fields as he desperately wanted a smile from one of them. Then she says its disgusting that he was accused of being a pedophile as he was a Christian and therefore would never hurt a child. Eh? Why write that story if you don't believe it? Another example is she names a set of novels written throughout the 1960s and 1970s as 'that terrible time of unions' - again just an odd thing to say, that sticks out in the book.

Overall I think its an interesting idea to write about the books you own and the stories behind them, but I think in order to enjoy it you have to have very similar taste to the author and really appreciate her opinions, and I don't think I do.

Yup, ashes of roses. I always thought it was a sort of dusty pink.

Was it the Thornbirds where the heroine had a dress in the colour of ‘ashes of roses’? I remember loving that description but never quite knowing what colour it was. Made me think of my Gran’s corsets.

1. #dearcancer: Things to help you through by Victoria Derbyshire and friends.

I really enjoyed this collection of letters and tips Victoria received after her cancer diagnosis. Short but thought provoking.

I read the "other" Thing of Darkness, by the way, which is by Harry Bingham and part of a Welsh-set crime series. I happen to like the series (sticks out tongue) although another poster gave it a shot and wasn't impressed.

Sick child yesterday so I was at home and able to improve the shining hour with some reading, in between cleaning up vomit.

6. Curiosities of Literature, by John Sutherland
Disappointed in this - very short anecdotes and lists about writers, the kind of thing you see as page-fillers in the Reader's Digest. The stories were all fairly familiar - Ruskin's disappointing wedding night, the Shelley/Byron writing challenge that led to the creation of The Vampyre and Frankenstein etc. Hack-work.

7. The sober diaries : how one mum stopped drinking and started living by Clare Pooley
A Dry January read. It's a blog turned into a book. Nice middle-class mum realises she's downing too much vino and stops, finding that she enjoys her nice, middle-class holidays (summer in Cornwall, skiing in Verbier, short break in Jamaica with her husband) even more. Might have been the hangover from Poverty Safari (see if sobriety is so delightful in a high-rise in the Gorbals). She gets breast cancer but a friend gets her in to see a top consultant the next day, and it all works out fine. I shouldn't be sneery, as cancer isn't a breeze even under the best conditions, and she's well-intentioned and honest and it's all very readable. She doesn't pretend to be writing a searing sociological treatise. I'm irritated by writers who talk about their "research" and then tell you what they Googled earlier. Despite my moans, I didn't actually dislike it.

8. In Search of Lost Books by Giorgio van Straten
Non-fiction translated from Italian, about manuscripts that disappeared. I knew about the burning of Lord Byron's memoirs, but wasn't familiar with all the authors he mentioned. It was okay but didn't transport me.

Looking at those reviews, all that cleaning up of bile may have affected my mood.

This thread is bringing back memories of The Thorn Birds!!! Rather risqué TV viewing for kids but we managed to persuade our parents to let us watch it :) Then we snuck the book off the book shelf and the eldest read all the smutty bits out to us - although I didn't have much of a clue what it was all about. Finally read the book many years later and loved it. If I didn't have such a large TBR pile, I might reread it...

Remus, have you read any Patrick White? You could try The Tree of Man or Voss. I've read Tree of Man which I enjoyed (but it was years ago - also quite grim I think) and I have Voss on my shelf as a tbr, but I think Voss is his great classic novel. Have a look as they are super-Australian.

I remember loving The Thornbirds (boy and TV) as a teen, but suspect I might find it rather overblown these days. I wept at one part but won't say which as might spoil it!

7. Enter, A Murderer and 8) The Nursing Home Murder by Ngaio Marsh I am on a roll with these - they just suit being mildly unwell as require no concentration and are really quite entertaining. I never watched them when they were on TV, so no spoilers, and Overdrive seems to have loads of omnibus additions.

I think I just put Penguins Stopped Play in the charity bag - must check to see if I did actually read it!

While I'm on here, I finished book 6 First Love by Gwendoline Riley a couple of days ago. This was shortlisted for the Bailey's prize last year. The writing is brilliant, but it is an uncomfortable read - if the main character went on the MN relationships board, I am pretty sure she would get a unanimous LTB.

Remus if you're after something Australian, one of my favourite books last year was The Life and Loves of Lena Gaunt. Main location is Perth but it goes all over the place.

Foal's Bread by Gillian Mears is also excellent, if you want a more outback-ish sort of setting.

Or have you read any Elliot Perlman? Seven Types of Ambiguity is one of my all-time top 100 or so, but he seems pretty unknown in the UK - I went to an author talk of his and there were about six people in the audience who weren't with the publisher/bookshop.

I presume you've read A Fraction of the Whole as that was quite popular in the UK too; I was a bit disappointed by his second one, Quicksand.

1. Just Write: Here’s How! by Walter Dean Myers

A how to write guide aimed primarily at the YA market, for which the author has written many books. (Aside: this is the second book I’ve read this year by someone who’s written over a hundred books of which I’d read none.)

A quick read - started and finished on the same day - as it was hanging around on my Kindle. As with most writing books, the writing advice boils down to “if you want to write, write” but there’s also a lot about how he doesn’t have what he thinks of as a traditional background, didn’t finish high school and so on, and yet overcame these obstacles to write and get his first book published. All of which is I guess meant to be inspiratioal to the target market?

Back to Beethoven now...

A work in a school and by coincidence a consignment of the children's book Skellig, landed on my desk this week, so it became book number 3, after all the love for it on this thread.
Two children befriend and nurture a strange being, Skellig. We never find out exactly what he is but the nearest description is part human, part angel, part bird. He in turn influences and nurtures them in his own way.
It's a strange one, it felt very much a children's book, but despite that I felt that some of the underlying messages & symbolism were going over my head. It was okay, I think it could make a good film, but I didn't love it.

It is basically all one-room schoolhouses and lizards and no air conditioning and rugged American engineers (I can't remember if he's an engineer, but he's something madly Nevil Shute) falling in love with sunburnt Australian girls in slacks.
There isn't much plot beyond "the Outback is a bit shit and the Wild West was probably a bit shit too back in the day, so take your judgy pants off" (there's also a whole bit set in the Midwest) "and oh, by the way, I'm never leaving, sorry." So, basically the setup of Alice without any of the Malay stuff or the awesomeness that is Jean Paget.
And no wanking vicars. Though plenty of horniness.

Beyond the Black Stump is nowhere near as good as A Town Like Alice (definitely one of the lesser Shutes), but it is madly Australian outback.

1. The bookshop on the corner by Rebecca Raisin

Not a great book, I found it quite slow and not at all gripping.

It's about a small town and the shop owners there including the bookshop owner Sarah, it seems the most excitement the town sees is when a reporter arrives from New York to write an article about the town.

Loving! I hate my crap phone typing!

10. Eight Cousins, LM Alcott.

Re-read (baaa!) but this time I was annoyed by the sickly sweetness of everyone living Rose so much and the contrast with poor Phebe who actually does have a tough life. Am in a generally bad move due to fucked-up house purchase, though (fx it gets sorted tomorrow - last day before supposed date of entry) so could just be grumpy.

I’ve never watched the TV series though.

Right another two books added to my wishlist.... Into thin air and a thing of darkness.

Book number six is sweet little lies
By Kaz Frear

I bought this by mistake, thinking it was something else someone had recommended me.

It was a happy mistake though, as it's actually a decent book.

Kinsella is a police officer on the murder squad, investigating the killing of a seemingly normal lady in London. She has a fairly dysfunctional family background and suspects a link between her father and the disappearance of a young girl in the past.

My synopsis makes it sound a bit shit, but the characters are actually really interesting - the author plays with the stereotype of the aging, jaded, cynical maverick (in this, Kinsella is a mid-twenties female) and the dialogue is believable. It's well paced, and although not entirely unpredictable, is certainly an entertaining read. I'd recommend and would probably look for other books by the author.

Currently reading American God's. It's a reread but I originally read it on holiday so was pissed