50 Book Challenge 2018 Part Two

I have a hankering for something set in Australia, on the lines of A Town Like Alice. I'm being too specific in my yearnings, aren't I?

I've been looking out for A Tree Grows in Brooklyn too - it always seems very expensive and there doesn't seem to be a Kindle edition.

Best I read The Fall by Simon Mawer last year and though it was excellent. It was more to do with the relationships than a lot of technical stuff, but it really was good.

1. Cold Comfort Farm by Stella Gibbons - Flora is orphaned at 19 and decides to impose herself on relatives. With several options she chooses the most unsuitable and heads of from a socialite life in London to deepest darkest Sussex.

I found this hard to get in to as I was reading a few pages sporadically and it was hard to take to the dialect and doom and gloom of arrival at the farm. However, when I sat down and just got on with it I found it very enjoyable. I haven't read enough of the books it parodies to really appreciate it and get the jokes, but on a surface level it was quite charming. It did leave me with one burning question...

WHAT ON EARTH DID SHE SEE IN THE WOODSHED?

You're right, that surprises me. Don’t read anything else by Betty Smith, they’re dire.

A Tree Grows in Brooklyn has been on my lookout list for ages too - can’t get it on Kindle I don’t think.

I don't think A Tree Grows in Brooklyn is on Kindle.

Yes I have Annandale, was good too. Not read anything else by him though.

Presumably you've read Touching the Void Best?

Lol Remus, I think you may have mentioned it.

Dare I suggest A Tree Grows In Brooklyn?

No, scrap that, you’ll hate it and it’s one of my childhood favourites.

I am loving the Phillipe Georget detective novels

Did I tell you that I love Skellig?

I need Kindle books urgently, folks. Fiction - nothing too heavy/depressing. Ideas?

I haven’t read The Ghosts of Everest. Read the other two though I might give Into the Silence a retry as I read it when in bed with flu so it’s a bit of a blur.
Ta very much.
Just started Skellig.

11. Wuthering Heights According To Spike Milligan

Picked this up in a charity shop as WH is one of my favourite books. This was quite funny but I’m not sure I really get Spike Milligan’s sense of humour in some areas!

I can't remember what you've already read, Best.

If you haven't yet read Into the Silence by Wade Davis, I'd highly recommend it. Also, The Ghosts of Everest by Jochen Hemmleb. And Coronation Everest by Jan Morris (if an old edition, it will say James Morris).

annandale I like Amis’s non fic too but have yet to finish a novel other than the Rachel Papers (which is short) I think his style is very funny but so...dense that it feels like eating treacle; a little goes a long way. Doesn’t help that his characters are all arseholes. Several of his phrases are part of our family lexicon though. I need to read Money as it is my husband’s favourite book and we challenged ourselves to read some of each other’s favourites last year - he did much better than I did I also have The Zone of Interest in hardback upstairs, that was quite well received I think, perhaps should give that a go this year.

Well done piggy

Remus (or anyone else who knows mountaineering books) any recs for a good read along the lines of Into Thin Air?

Congratulations, Piggy.

Book 7:
The Winter Queen – Boris Akunin
The first in the Erast Fandorin mysteries, set in 19th century Russia. Have read a couple of these and they are hit and miss, but I really enjoyed this one. It’s a bit silly (deliberately) and a bit long-winded in places (deliberately - and generally to add to the silliness). Pretty much all good fun – our hero faces death lots of times but clearly doesn’t die. The ending shocked me though – and I’d have preferred it not to have!

This Thing of Darkness is low stock on Amazon. The power of Mumsnet!

I have an announcement to make.

I have finished Middlemarch which I began at the beginning of thread One!!

Hallelujah!

It is technically Book 3 and I cross a classic off. It is very very long but the Kindle kept me going and- as with all Victorian plots- it has a great plot. I loved Dorothea and Will and felt sorry for Bulstrode. Bloody Rosamund though. She reminds me of a year 10 girl.

I have numbered all my tbr books and DS2 picked the number 14 which is a book I picked up in Waitrose because I liked the cover so it would probably be shit

It's called An Almond For A Parrot No idea what it is about! The Guardian says it has 'shade's of Sarah Waters.' That could go either way, then!

Read Visiting Mrs Nabokov decades ago and really liked it. Never managed to finish an Amis novel though.

Investigates Penguins Stopped Play thing immediately.

Cheddar - I read the sample and really liked it, but the Goddishness would definitely annoy me, I think.

1. Surfacing by Margaret Atwood this was a charity shop buy that I haven't managed to read beyond about fifteen pages on previous attempts. Kept going this time, for such a short book it is very thought provoking as one would expect from Atwood. The nameless narrator returns home to remote Canada looking for her missing dad and brings up memories and reflections on the past. Canada, national identity, gender identity and politics, nature and superficiality are all examined here. Weirdly the effect of the whole book is much greater than the story. As I was reading it I can't say i was enjoying it that much but by the end it had really got me thinking.

7 Visiting Mrs Nabokov by Martin Amis
Fantastic. I'm hopeless at reading Amis novels, have managed 1.5 of them without much joy but I'm not sure why as Experience and books like this collection of reviews and articles from 1977 to 1990 or so are just so enjoyable. I loved his interview with Polanski where he manages to both condemn his actions and appreciate his work. Somehow we have to deal with criminals and bad hombres making art that the world may not want to lose. It's frustrating that he is such a talented reader but somehow apart from Austen has never found a female author worth this sort of appreciation. It was a while ago though. Interesting to read about Reagan's America when rose-tinted glasses are being used to look back on that era. The insane nukies of the Reagan SDI era are being confirmed into Trump's administration - I checked.

Whippet when I have to take DS to his weekend football matches (usually DH does it) I long to take out my book but feel it would be frowned upon by the other parents. Maybe I should take a leaf from your book!

I don't go to a book club but a few of us do a book swap club which helps saves us buying books. We meet bring two or three books each, do a precis and then its first come first served to whoever takes them. It works well for us.