50 Book Challenge 2018 Part Two

Thanks, South. Have just got the sample. V expensive on Kindle, so might have to be a library job!

I finished Where’d You Go Bernadette and then read This is Going to Hurt in one sitting. Bernadette was great - such brilliantly crafted characters and a completely original, satirical story in an epistolary form. I thoroughly recommend it. Adam Kay’s Book was a real page turner too but widely discussed on here already I think.

Now I’m turning to The Essex Serpent. I think it was that book which saw me off the reading trail last year as I only got as far as p17 last time, not for lack of interest but for lack of time. I hope, having read a sequence of fairly easy to read books I’m now ready for something more challenging and I’ve found my reading mojo again.

1 Everything I Never Told You Celeste Ng
2 Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine Gail Honeyman
3 Women and Power Mary Beard
4 Where’d You Go Bernadette Maria Semple
5 This is Going to Hurt Adam Kay

Take your point annandale and I've just finished North Water which was also harrowing at times albeit in a different way. I'm about to read A Room With a View though, so that will be a break from the grimness I'm sure.

As for being a Steely Dan fan .. me too! Rose Darling was my favourite track. I well remember strolling around school in the 70s with a carefully chosen LP casually peeping out between my books to be admired

Just checking in! Not finished 4 yet, some of you are very quick readers!!

Hi, I didn’t quite make 50 last year but did read more which was my goal. Love this thread for recommendations.

My list so far:

1. My not so perfect life by Sophie kinsella
2. North and South by Elizabeth Gaskell

I’ve just started The Goldfinch by Donna Tartt which I have been meaning to read for a long time.

SouthEast Diary of an Ordinary schoolgirl was my last read of last year/first read of this year. I too would love to see her adult diaries published.

Reminds me very much of Alan Bennett in the similarity of their backgrounds.

Diary of an Ordinary Schoolgirl is already on my wish list South - I'll look forward to it

Gosh - couldn't find you for a while
My list so far:

1. He Said/She Said – Erin Kelly
2. The Mitford Murders – Jessica Fellowes
3. The Cold Calling by Phil Rickman
4. Murder Most Unladylike by Robin Stevens

finished 5. Small Island by Angela Levy
A fascinating insight into 1950s Britain and the bleakness, oppression and racism that those arriving from Jamaica found themselves facing. The novel flips back and forth between 1950s London and the upbringing of the central characters. I would have liked to see more chapters devoted to their later predicaments, as those were the most powerful but overall a very enjoyable read.
started 6: Winter's Bone by Daniel Woodrell - I've got a busy week but I think it will be a quick read.

Has anyone got any good audible recommendations please? It needs to be an easy plot to follow as I get many an interruption!

I'm now going to catch up with the rest of the thread....

It sounds exactly my kind of book, Southeast . Putting in request at the library right now.

Thanks for the William Burroughs feedback satsuki and sunset not sure I'm brave enough to give them a go. I'm thinking I should maybe be concerned as to why DP has so many of his books, thinking about it they may have been left by an old lodger who was a bit peculiar.

Thanks Southeast- it's is on my list. Also A Day in the Life by Hunter Davies which in part is about his life with Margaret.

Hello, please can I join?

Do I do a list and just keep adding to it, or just write what I'm reading at the time?

I used to read loads more than I do currently. Bad habits involving wine during the week tend to mean I go to bed with good intentions of a couple of chapters and end up with a couple of pages. However I really do need to get back being healthy and reading more again; I miss it so much. So... from me....

1. The Watchmaker of Filigree Street by Natasha Pulley - weird and wonderful and needed a lot of concentration. It was worth it just to read about Katsu the mechanical octopus character who stole it for me.
2. A street cat named Bob by James Bowen. 99p kindle job, about as shallow as a puddle and needed during a tiring week when I needed something very easy to read. Passably enjoyable.
3. Last Seen Alive by Claire Douglas - 1/3rd of the way in, very easy to read, but building in tension and starting to get a bit creepy! Maybe not a bed time read....

Popping into this thread to mark my place and I'll bring my list across soon. I've just finished The Fishermen, and I'm currently reading ~ahem~ A History of the English Puppet Show. More on those later.

And, by the by, plus3, thank you for sharing. Not sure why, but photos of piles of people's books or of their shelves always make me happy.

Ah, only very remotely! I love Steely Dan, it's from the song My Old School about the American Annandale. ..

It might be difficult to read too many novels about slavery together. Night Women is horrific at times.

Plus3 they are beautiful. Might have to reread The Tenant of Wildfell Hall, it's been a long time. I prefer Emily and Anne's work to Charlottes.

The Book of Night Women sounds interesting, annandale. I've had it on my bookshelves for quite a while now. Could be a good follow-up to The Underground Railroad and Homegoing, both of which I really enjoyed.

Going off-topic a bit, but I had lunch in Brydekirk in a pub overlooking the river Annan yesterday. Not sure if that has anything to do with your name

4 The Book of Night Women by Marlon James
Whoof. Took me a while to read it, I had a break and read number 3 in between. Really involving, brutal story of a woman, a slave, at the turn of the nineteenth century in Jamaica. My book club read A History of Seven Killings a while back, we all thought it was brilliantly written but none of us finished it. The dialogue of the white characters is clumsy and alien but I'll pay him the compliment of believing that's deliberate. This one will stay with me a long time. The colonialist, racist past and present in Britain oozes back on the tide.

I'm envious, Plus. They're gorgeous. You have one of my favourite ever books on that shelf too 'The English Patient'. I might have to reread that this year.

I'm currently reading Jane Eyre. It's slow going but I'm only 160 pages in, so lots of plot still to come.

Going to revisit Wuthering Heights ...haven’t read since my teens & loved it. Am going on a bit of a Bronte fest - will read Jane Eyre & The Tenant of Wildfell Hall this year as DH gave me these beauties for Christmas

Plus3 isn't it an amazing book? As for boom stalking, will be interested to see where we both go next!

Ontopofthesunset - I'm about two-thirds of the way through and getting a bit bored by all the languidly masturbating boys and the pervading musty smell of penetrated anuses.
** Think I might give this one a miss!!

1 Night Study Maria V Snyder

I'm reading "Naked Lunch" at the moment, having never actually read any William Burroughs. It is, in the words of many, 'difficult'. It's a series of surreal drug-induced dream-like scenes, all of which involve lots of erections and spurting jism and many of which are very violent too. It's not very long but it is quite tricky. I'm about two-thirds of the way through and getting a bit bored by all the languidly masturbating boys and the pervading musty smell of penetrated anuses.

Grr, why did it lose the spaces?