50 Book Challenge 2018 Part Five

Thank you for the new thread Southeast. Have enjoyed very much reading everyone's lists as they continue to grow. Here's mine, highlights in bold. Haven't read anything awful so far, although I did give up on The Heart's Invisible Furies as it wasn't my cup of tea.

1. All the Light We Cannot See - Anthony Doerr
2. Closely Watched Trains - Bohumil Hrabal
3. Women and Power: A Manifesto – Mary Beard
4. The Road Home – Rose Tremain
5. No is Not Enough: Defeating the New Shock Politics – Naomi Klein
6. Home Fire – Kamila Shamsie
7. The Blackwater Lightship – Colm Toibin
8. Talking to My Daughter About the Economy: A Brief History of Capitalism – Yanis Varoufakis
9. Eleanor Oliphant Is Completely Fine – Gail Honeyman
10. Thin Air – Michelle Paver
11. The Beet Queen – Louise Erdrich
12. Fugitive Pieces – Anne Michaels
13. Testosterone Rex: Unmaking the Myths of Our Gendered Minds – Cordelia Fine
14. Gillespie and I – Jane Harris
15. Run – Ann Patchett
16. Men Explain Things To Me: and Other Essays – Rebecca Solnit
17. Sugar Money – Jane Harris
18. Elmet – Fiona Mozley
19. Stay With Me – Ayobami Adebayo
20. Digging to America – Anne Tyler
21. Why I’m No Longer Talking to White People About Race – Reni Eddo-Lodge
22. The Lost Daughter – Elena Ferrante
23. Exit West – Mohsin Hamid
24. Conversations With Friends – Sally Rooney
25. Homegoing – Yaa Gyasi
26. In the Days of Rain – Rebecca Stott
27. Midwinter Break – Bernard McClaverty

For book 28 I have returned to my old favourite, ever reliable Anne Tyler for Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant. This is slightly darker than her other novels and IMO all the better for it.

I read Red Sister earlier this year and loved it

Ooh, new thread. Must remember to transfer my list tomorrow. In the meantime I've succumbed to a couple of Kindle 99p books:

As I Lay Dying by William Faulkner, and Red Sister by Mark Lawrence. Particularly excited by the latter: it's the first in a fantasy series I've been eyeing up for a while.

Meg - How does the book Requiem For A Dream compare to the film?

Stitches, your post made me guffaw, as that's exactly my thought process re Sophie Hannah. Except I must have progressed slightly further along the continuum this time to allow me to buy the next damn book when I saw it cheap in a chazza shop . I have no doubt that before too long I'll be bellowing RUBBISH and throwing it across the room

Does anyone else read the dovegrey reader blog? I do from time and it can be really good for picking up recommendations (there's also a certain amount of chat about her family, gardening, crafts etc, which I quite like, but you can tune all that out if you don't).

Thanks for the new thread. Posting my list for the first time I think;

1. Water for Elephants - Sara Gruen
2. In Consequence - Trudy Brasure
3. North and South - Elizabeth Gaskell
4. A God in Ruins - Kate Atkinson
5. With the End in Mind - Kathryn Mannix
6. Why I'm No Longer Talking to White People About Race - Reni Edo-Lodge
7. Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte (reread)
8. Birds, Beasts and relatives - Gerald Durrell
9. Howard's End is on the Landing - Susan Hill

Book 30 To Throw Away Unopened by Viv Albertine
This is her second memoir but you don't need to read that or even know anything about Viv to enjoy this book. Each chapter is intercepted with a vignette from the night her mother passed away. This book is essentially about how you become the person you are. How much of your character is defined and created by those around you. This is also an angry book. She is very angry about a lot of things and her encounters where she loses her temper are very vividly reproduced. Overall I really liked this book. Its very honest and raw about becoming an older woman. She talks about everything from body hair to dating in your fifties, elderly parents and broken families.

Anyone who listens to book podcasts, there is a great episode with Viv Albertine on Literary Friction which gives a great flavour of this book.

badb, thank you for the recommendation! I'm going to download the sample today.

Odd, perhaps, but Instagram is also a place where I look for recommendations. Some are from bookstores' or libraries' accounts, but others are from people/institutions I follow whose tastes seem to coincide with mine.

Cheerful I didn’t get on with the Mapp and Lucia books either but I loved the TV series they did a few years ago.

Mercedes from MercysBookishMusings is pretty good at saying a book is crap if she thinks it’s crap, abookolive is too,
Britta Böhler and Barter Hordes are both small enough not to worry about upsetting publishers, old enough to be cynical of hype and smart enough to point out shite writing. I really like all their channels. Steve Donoghue is a law unto himself . His drunken Women's Prize Longlist review with Jennifer from InsertLiteraryPun was hilarious.

Agree though south that lots of the big channels can’t give a fully honest review for fear of upsetting their bezzie mate author pals. When they do a luke warm review I'm thinking “you bloody hated that didn’t you.”

BookTube is almost entirely responsible for all my purchases of newly published books. As time goes by I'm honing down the number of channels whose opinions I trust so if several of my favourite booktubers give a glowing review of a book then I'm quite likely to put it on my Goodreads Want to read shelf.
Positive book tube reviews + mn 50 books thread recommendation + interesting premise = very likely to purchase/borrow/listen.

badb it’s brilliant isn’t it? I virtually read it in one sitting

(1) Witch is When Life Got Complicated by Adele Abbott
(2) Witch is Where It All Began by Adele Abbott
(3) Coming Clean by Kimberly Rae Miller
(4) Die Last by Tony Parsons
(5) Restaurant Babylon by Imogen Edwards Jones
(6) The Sugar Men by Ray Kingfisher
(7) The Hospital by Barbara O'Hare
(8) Fade Out by Rachel Caine
(9) Yellow Crocus by Laila Ibrahim
(10) Into Thin Air by Jon Krakauer
(11) Would You Like Some Magic With That by Annie Salisbury
(12) The Ride Delegate by Annie Salisbury
(13) The Magdalen Laundries by Lisa Michelle Odgaard
(14) Just What Kind of Mother Are You by Paula Daly
(15) Amber Earns Her Ears by Amber Michelle Sewell
(16) Breathe by Sarah Crossan
(17) Kiss of Death by Rachel Caine
(18) Ghost Town by Rachel Caine
(19) A Pocketful of Holes and Dreams by Jeff Pearce
(20) Dead Man Running by Martin McGartland
(21) The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins
(22) Catching Fire by Suzanne Collins
(23) The Mockingjay by Suzanne Collins
(24) Cell 7 by Kerry Drewery
(25) Day 7 by Kerry Drewery
(26) Final 7 by Kerry Drewery
(27) Unwind by Neal Shusterman
(28) Unwholly by Neal Shusterman
(29) Unsouled by Neal Shusterman
(30) Sleepers by Lorenzo Carcaterra
(31) The Plane That Wasn't There by Jeff Wise
(32) Why Queen Victoria Was Such A Prude by David Haviland
(33) Fresh Eggs and Dog Beds by Nick Albert
(34) Bite Club by Rachel Caine
(35) The Bunker Diary by Kevin Brooks

Life hasn't gotten much easier this month as not only do we still not know about husbands ankle but our wee man came down with chicken pox. Managed to get 5 more books read though so not all bad.

Catching up on some of the posts, VanderlyleGeek, have you read Claire Kilroy's novel The Devil I Know? It's about the financial crisis in Ireland, an excellent piece of gothic fiction. Highly recommend.

I've just downloaded Elizabeth Strout's Amy and Isabelle on Audible, on the strength of Anything is Possible. I thought the narrator was going to annoy me, but I got used to her after about fifteen minutes this morning. Thank goodness, I didn't want a repeat of The Woman in the Window.

Terpsichore - less happily, I succumbed to the latest Sophie Hannah despite having sworn never to go near one of her infuriating books again. Someone give me a good shake, please

I have a similar problem with Sophie Hannah
I think my problem is that I generally enjoy reading her books as they’re going along, so it’s all pretty much good going until.... the ending. Which, more often than not, has me all at the sheer implausibility of things, and it shatters my suspension of disbelief so that I’m exasperated with both the book and with myself for picking it up in the first place.

And then a few months later, I see a new one, remember that I enjoyed most of it, and convince myself that the last one wasn’t all that bad and this time there’ll probably be a believable conclusion to make it all worth the reading.

(Right now I’m still in the disillusioned with Sophie Hannah phase, having read one not too long ago. But I suspect in a few months time I’ll also need a good shake and a reminder of why I shouldn’t pick another of her books up )

A lot of the books I’m reading at the minute are ones that have caught my eye on the recently returned shelf at the library. Youngest Stitches is now toddling, which makes it tricky to browse library shelves in any more depth!

Other than that, I have some accumulated unread books at home (which do tend to get picked pretty much at random piggy, although I’ve not gone as far as a random number generator!). Other book selections include those that follow on in a series I liked or books by authors I’ve read and liked. And books I’ve seen recommended on here. And also books on or about autism, as eldest mini-Stitches was diagnosed with ASD last year, so I’m trying to learn and understand more about that.

He doesn't say anything very unexpected, and I am guessing is preaching mostly to the converted

That was exactly my impression of Descent of Man when I read it last year! But still well written.

Ah, new thread. Here is my list so far. Recommended reads in bold.

1. A Dangerous Crossing by Rachel Rhys.
2. The Keeper of Lost Things by Ruth Hogan.
3. Behind Her Eyes by Sarah Pinborough.
4. Everything I Never Told You by Celeste Ng.
5. Little Fires Everywhere by Celeste Ng.
6. The Heart's Invisible Furies by John Boyne.
7. The Fact of a Body by Alexandria Marzano-Lesnevich.
8. The Essex Serpent by Sarah Perry.
9. Into the Water by Paula Hawkins.

lastqueenofscotland, I agree, Everything I Never Told You is one of the best books I've read in a long time.

New adds:
16: The Dry by Jane Harper. A detective returns to his hometown in the aftermath of the discovery of the bodies of his childhood best friend and his family. Everyone assumes the friend has killed his wife and child and then shot himself, but is that really the case? He also has to deal with the fallout from the death of another of his childhood friends twenty years earlier, which everyone in town believed him to be responsible for, and which led him to leaving town in the first place. Verdict: Fine. I'm not a huge crime fiction fan (though I do like a bit of Tana French), but this was ok. I think there's another book with the same detective, but I don't feel like reading it, so I guess that's telling. The title refers to a drought that's hit the region, and that has caused a lot of hardship in the town. I wish she'd done more with that - I'd have liked to read more about the Australian landscape and the small-town vibes etc. But it was ok.

17. The Woman in the Window by A.J. Finn. A woman with PTSD and agoraphobia witnesses a murder in the house across the street, but nobody believes her because of her mental health problems and alcoholism, and her neighbours seem to be gaslighting her into thinking that she imagined it all. This book massively irritated me. I listened to it on Audible, and the narrator was incredibly annoying and read all of the sections where the protagonist was upset or panicked - which was a LOT - in a really hysterical, shrieky voice - I guess to mirror the panicked nature of the prose, which I get, but I can't tell you how infuriating it was while driving. It was like having a whinging toddler in the back, which frankly I get enough of as it is. So I don't know whether that was the real problem, or the book itself. I found the main character incredibly irritating, the prose was repetitive (Anna sees something, she tries to leave her house, she has a panic attack, we hear lots and lots and lots about what it feels like to have a panic attack, nobody believes her, she drinks, she sees something...over and over again), and I had mostly figured out the main story and her back story by about a fifth of the way through because of her hobby. I do not recommend, especially on audiobook, and I fully expect to see it appearing on the big screen in the near future.

I love books and love choosing the next one to read from my long and growing list.

This thread is great for recommendations, and it’s definitely challenged me to try new authors (am about to start Why I’m no longer talking to white people about race on the back of recommendations here), while also helping me avoid some over-hyped books that I might otherwise have bought.

I have a shelf of books I’ve owned for a while but not read and I’m trying to work through those, as well as covering off a list of books I feel I should have read (Love in the time of cholera and Anna Karenina are next up).

Aside from that, I add titles to my kindle wish list when I see recommendations that appeal in magazines (Stylist, The Guardian and The New Yorker, mostly - DP sometimes suggests things he’s read about in the Economist and the LRB).

Then there are the outcomes from random bookshop browsing and a couple of friends whose judgement I really trust - we often share tips and suggestions which usually turn out well.

DP and I have “book club” - we read the same book at the same time and talk about it. I have more time to read than him and read faster so most of the titles are his suggestions but it’s meant I’ve tried lots of different things as our tastes are quite different. And then I’m starting to do the same with the DC - I will often read a book that one of them is reading so we can talk about it afterwards. DS and I enjoyed Ready Player One recently and DD and I are currently reading Nancy Mitford.

Finally I’m trying to do more work-related reading, with a focus on leadership and coaching, so that’s a side project with titles mostly coming from LinkedIn and trusted work associates.

24 - Everything I never told you
I think I’m the last person alive to read this but I was really really fantastic.

Sadik, most of my recommendations have been mentioned. I'd add the New Yorker, the New York Times, and the Globe and Mail (which can be uneven). I also like various podcasts, though they often discuss fiction. I also get ideas from library events and literary friends and other 50 Bookers.

My tastes are...particular/peculiar, so I spend a lot of time browsing. I can also tend to become interested in a general topic and spend quite a bit of time reading fiction and non-fiction related to it without really realizing what I'm doing at first. My current thing seems to be the Gilded Age/hedge funds/the Wiemar Republic/the 2008 financial crisis.

I too loved The Night Circus and its heady atmosphere. Morgenstern's description of the dresses!

My list so far......very short compared to some.

<strong>1</strong><strong>. Mythos - Stephen Fry</strong>
2.	Origin - Dan Brown
3.	The Mitford Murders - Jessica Fellowes
4.	Paris - Edward Rutherford 
<strong>5.The Four Quartets TS</strong>
6.	The Magus of Hay - Phil Rickman
7.	Innocent Traitor - Alison Weir
<strong>8. The Robber Bride -Margaret Atwood (audio R4)</strong>
9.	Land Rover: The story of the car that conquered the world - Ben Fogle
10.	The Good Terrorist - Doris Lessing (audio R4)
11.	Station Eleven - Emily St John Mandel
<strong>1</strong><strong>2. American Gods - Neil Gaiman</strong>

13. Monarch of the Glen - Neil Gaiman
14. Reservoir 13 - Jon MacGregor (audio R4)
15. The Management Style of the Supreme Beings - Tom** Holt

Just finished Stone Mattress - Margaret Atwood. Absolutely fantastic! I'm not normally a fan of short stories, but these were something else.

The first three were interlinked and were like a mini novel in themselves- if Ms Atwood ever decides to write fantasy about dragons and mysterious kingdoms, I'll be the first in the queue, she'd make Robin Hobb look like a novice.

Would have loved the Stone Mattress short story to be longer, to find out more about Verna's backstory and what happened when Bob was missed. I felt the style was reminiscent of Lady Oracle.

Torching the dusties is another tale that I would like to see expanded. So much was unsaid, I want to know more about "Our Turn" - felt this story had shades of the Handmaids Tale take and the Madaddam trilogy.

I love Atwood, she really can do no wrong.

Pondering what to read next......

18. Mapp and Lucia EF Benson Interbellum comedy of manners. Lucia moves to Tilling and tries to oust Miss Mapp as social queen. One of those books where I can see that it's obviously doing what it does very well - it's well-written and clever and so forth - but what it does leaves me cold. I just couldn't bring myself to care about a bunch of shallow layabouts, who'd never worked a day in their lives (except the Padre), and for whom life revolves around who get invited to a bridge party. I'm probably taking it more seriously than it deserves, but this just wasn't one of my books.

Mildly embarrassed to bring my list over because it's a) short and b) full of really quite crappy books. Only two things good enough to bold, which is a bit of a sad indictment. I'm really trying to pick better from hereon out and not be so lazy with my choices.

1. Two Kinds of Truth, by Michael Connolly
2. In a Dark, Dark Wood, by Ruth Ware

1. Startup, by Doree Shafrir
2. My Lady Jane, by Cynthia Hand
3. American Heiress, by Jeffrey Toobin
4. The Child, Fiona Barton
5. Cold Blood, by Robert Bryndza

10. Persons Unknown, by Susie Steiner. I did enjoy this, not quite as much as the first in the series when we were just getting to know Manon, but I certainly find them to be a cut above some of the other mystery/crime series I've read.

11. The Lying Game, by Ruth Ware. I really like her writing and she's excellent on conveying a sense of place - I can really see the coastal setting of this book in my mind's eye - but the story itself was pretty slight.

12. Deadly Secrets, by Robert Bryndza. Really quite unpleasant. A series that I normally enjoy but this one felt unpleasantly salacious and exploitative.

I really will finish something that's not a crime novel soon, honest.