50 Book Challenge 2019 Part Five

21. The Butterfly Tattoo – Philip Pullman Clunky, clichéd YA novel. Pretty unbelievable plot coupled with substandard writing. Those with goldfish spans of attention will appreciate the (let’s-just-recap-plenty-of-perfectly-easy-to-assimilate-information-because-we’ve moved-on-a-chapter-and-you-might-have-forgotten-everything) interjections. Otherwise, move on and find something more interesting to read.

PowerBadgers That really bugs me too - must we really know someone’s weight, or how lithe they are, or how glossy their hair is? Or how heroic their breasts are? I really couldn’t care less and it adds nothing to the story. Why do they think we care?

On a slightly more positive (and boob free!) note, I’m currently reading The Science of Storytelling by Will Storr, which a fascinating look into human psychology and how it shapes our storytelling. Interesting whether you’re an aspiring writer or not. There were many parts where I thought “Ah, that explains Brexit!”

And The Mandibles, A family, 2029 - 2047 by Lionel Shriver, which is also fantastic. A family awaiting a large inheritance instead face a catastrophic economic meltdown. Love her writing style and also a fan of anything dystopian, so this is ticking all the boxes for me so far. It was also recommended on one of these threads earlier in the year, so thank you to whoever did that!

The Black Painting by Neil Olson

I picked this up randomly in the library so didn't have any particularly high hopes for it but it really should have been better than it was. It had a missing painting, dead body, creepy old family house everyone is scared to return to, and generally mad and bad rich folks. Oh and a rugged PI type just for good measure. Unfortunately even with all this going for it it somehow managed to just be generally rubbish. The writing was meh, the characters were frightful cutouts of the most tedious sort and the ending was so painfully predictable I had guessed the location of the missing painting and the accidental killer by about chapter three.

On the bright side I got some "big tanned boobs" for boob watch and even at one point some "heroic breasts". However, defining women by their boobs was not enough for our gallant author, oh no, he also managed to ensure we knew the main female character's exact weight within the first chapter because it was vitally important we knew straight away that she is super skinny and remains so no matter how much she eats.

Hadn't realised my list of things to update had got so long, apologies for the screed!

16. Still Midnight, by Denise Mina. Recommended I think on this thread a while ago. Police procedural set in Glasgow with a really interesting main character, detective Alex Morrow. I always enjoy a story with a grouchy woman detective at the helm and this was no exception. Will read more in this series.

17. The Stranger Diaries, by Elly Griffiths. Standalone "modern gothic mystery" from Elly Griffiths. I love the Ruth Galloway books so I knew I was in safe hands with this book and I was right - it's undemanding but I found it really well written and highly enjoyable.

18. A Fatal Inversion, by Barbara Vine. Oh dear, so disappointing. I read this when the TV series came out, which is probably over 20 years ago, and really enjoyed it at the time, plus I love Barbara Vine novels so I was looking forward to a great re-read. The plot was still compelling but I was pretty shocked by the casual racism (much talk of the 'fatalism of orientals' referring to an Anglo-Indian character) - I'm assuming this was intended to colour our views of the characters thinking this way but it was so jarring and heavy handed that I don't think you'd get away with publishing a book with this kind of writing today.

19. Daisy Jones and The Six, by Taylor Jenkins Reid. I know this has divided opinion on this thread but I thoroughly enjoyed it as a light read while I was travelling and I read it in a couple of sittings. Didn't notice the frequent boobwatch incidents; perhaps if I read it for the first time now I would!

20. I'm Not With the Band: A Writer's Life Lost in Music, by Sylvia Patterson. Autobiography by a music writer who began her career at Smash Hits, my very favourite childhood magazine. Lots of top pop gossip interspersed with much darker writing about Patterson's childhood with her alcoholic mother, and musing on the shrinking world of magazines and music writing. The change in tone as she switches between these topics occasionally made me a bit dizzy but I still found this to be a thoroughly enjoyable read.

21. The Henchmen of Zenda, by KJ Charles. Definitely recommended on here - thank you to whoever shared it, it was a thoroughly entertaining romp and I greatly enjoyed it, although I hadn't realised that it had some quite explicit passages, the first of which occurred when I was reading it on a plane. Had to hastily put my kindle away in case I offended any fellow passengers (although I suppose if they are reading over your shoulder they do so at their own risk).

22. Ordinary People, by Diana Evans. I loved this. The reviews on Goodreads are very middling and people seem quite baffled that not a lot happens, but I thought it was an incredibly finely drawn portrait of two relationships, including how marriage, children and aging change things. I also loved the South London setting. Very well done, and I can see why it was nominated for the Women's Prize for Fiction.

TimeforaGandT there's some of it set in Kingsbridge and it was actually an ok read. I was a little unkind in my review. Please try to enjoy it. No pressure to play bingo, but you may find it hard not to yell out breasts every few pages.

44. The Tournament - Matthew Reilly

This wins the stinker of the year prize so far, hands down. Aged 13, the future Elizabeth I attends a chess tournament in Constantinople with her tutor, Roger Ascham, and they end up solving a series of murders. It's a silly premise, but the writing was competent and flowing enough so I settled down for a so-bad-it's-good read.

It turned out to be so bad it was bad.

As Reilly explains in the interview at the back of the novel, this was an attempt to show why Elizabeth remained a virgin throughout her life. His way of doing this is via an extremely regressive virgin/whore dichotomy. Elizabeth has a 17-year-old travelling companion called Elsie who seeks casual sex with strangers at every opportunity (don't even get me started on the likelihood of any 17-year-old acting like Elsie does, let alone in the religious atmosphere and birth-control-free zone of the 16th century). Elsie's pursuit of pleasure means that in the end, very graphically, she gets what's coming to her. Elizabeth on the other hand remains a virgin and is rewarded by becoming the greatest queen England has ever seen.

Boobwatch: Elsie is unsurprisingly gifted in this department. She also manages to 'extend my breasts skyward' during one racy scene. I couldn't do that even when I was 17. Elizabeth is, of course, flat as a board. This is a world where moral character is inversely proportional to bounciness of bosom.

In short, don't touch this book with someone else's barge pole.

20. Olive Kitteridge – Elizabeth Strout
There has been a lot of love for this book on this thread since last year and I concur wholeheartedly. I’ve been crazily busy and reading has taken a serious backseat but every time I picked up this book I was delighted to delve into various parts of Kitteridge’s life. At the very beginning I was concerned that these were a series of short stories (not my fave) but I should have trusted in your fantastic reviews! In each chapter we discover another stage of Olive’s life and another facet to her personality. Each chapter tells a story and so this was also ideal for my rather irregular reading pattern of late. Strout makes the mundane come to life in a quite beautiful way. Current disastrous relationship situations all around me in real life led me to shed a tear in the final chapter of the book.
I fear I’ve started with Strout’s best work… say it ain’t so!!??!! What should I read next?

Now read back to see what everyone else has read and see that Piggy gave a much better summary and review of Warlight than me.

Fortuna you have ruined my summer holiday! I had been saving A Column of Fire for my pool lounger in a few weeks having read the previous Kingsbridge novels last summer. I am not sure I can face it now after reading about boob bingo and on hearing that it’s not in Kingsbridge....

15 - Class - Jenny Colgan

Picked up on another thread describing it as 'Mallory Towers' for adults, centred on following a new teacher and two students in their first year at Downey House for Girls. Ok, this was 'frothy' and nothing serious but I really enjoyed it! If like me, you enjoyed boarding school books as a child, this is a fun, light-hearted read. Happy to find it in my local library and I zipped through it. I've requested the next in the series, so that can't be bad!

A few books to add since I last updated:

33. The Kindly Ones - Anthony Powell

This is Book 6 in A Dance to the Music of Time series and was slightly different in that it did not carry on chronologically from the previous book. We went back to Nick's childhood and I initially found this quite off putting but it was essentially to introduce characters who then appeared when time moved back to the chronology. Not my favourite for this reason. Was worried Widmerpool might not appear but thankfully he did. Now on the eve of Second World War.

34. Case Histories (Jackson Brodie) - Kate Atkinson

This was very different from Life After Life and A God in Ruins (my only other Kate Atkinson reads). I didn't like it initially but warmed to it as the story moved on. I think partially it was because it was not quite what I was expecting from her. Liked it enough to read another in the series.

35. Warlight - Michael Ondaatje

This book is opens in the immediate aftermath of the Second World War and then leaps forward in time. It's about a boy (and his sister - but the boy is the main protagonist) who are left by their parents in the care of an acquaintance in the family home whilst the parents are abroad for work. The boy becomes involved in various shady dealings through a friend of the acquaintance and becomes friends with a motley assortment of people who become his new family. The second half of the book is the boy as an adult looking back at his childhood, his mother's role and absence, the reason for her absence and family relationships. The two halves of the book felt like separate stories and it wasn't a winner for me.

36. The Covent Garden Ladies - Hallie Rubenhold

I read this having read her book about the victims of Jack the Ripper. This book follows three individuals: an unsuccessful writer, a waiter/pimp and a prostitute/madam in eighteenth century London to tell the story of prostitution at that time. A really interesting read and very good social commentary on the period. Recommended.

37. The Seven Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle - Stuart Turton

I know lots have read this and it has divided readers. I enjoyed it, although I may have got slightly muddled at times - feel I need to read it again now I know how it works and ends!

I have juts finished Big Sky. It was what one would expect from a Jackson Brodie novel . I am not sure When Will There Be Good News? will ever be surpassed in the series. I was a bit distracted by some typos / errors (eg Anguilla changed to Aguila a few lines later) and what seemed to be grammatical errors. The horror! I also thought there were too may characters. I lost track of who Mrs Trotter was (and Gary and Kirsty...) and then she popped up again. And I must admit I found the plot clichéd. I won't say why as others will read : but it is definitely an overused one at present.

But- despite all that - a good page turner. Honest!

The Left Hand of Darkness by Ursula K. Le Guin
A lone human emissary to an alien planet called Winter which lives up to its name. He is trying to convince them to sign up to an intergalactic civilization when he ends up imprisoned. He is rescued by an exiled prime minister and they commence an 800 mile trek across glaciers to return to safety.

This is one of those classics I have been meaning to read for years and finally I picked it up in the library and devoured it in a couple of days. It is superb and I loved every minute of it. The world building is fabulous and the two main characters are just wonderful. Woven thought-out is an interesting examination of sexuality and gender that makes the book worth a read on its own. I would very much recommend to anyone else who hasn't got around to reading this.

I really enjoyed Big Little Lies by Liane Moriarty, terpsichore. Have added Nine Perfect Strangers to the holiday reading list.

Refined = reckoned

Ha! Terpischore I read Nine Perfect Strangers on holiday recently. I had no idea where it was going. I was describing it to the DCs and they refined it was very similar to the plot for a well known horror film.

I hesitate to post this after the erudite discussions of Bach and Huysmans but....what the heck

45: Nine Perfect Strangers - Liane Moriarty

I was after something light and undemanding to carry me through a stressful period and this did the job well. As the title says, nine people gather at Tranquillum House for a retreat that promises to address their various problems - relationship issues, weight worries, life stresses. But things unfold in unexpected ways.

This was a bit of a curve-ball, actually. Funny and quite insightful but also quite...scary at points. I enjoyed it more than the previous LM book I read. Also: Breast watch. One impressively-enhanced pair. One ‘gaping chasm of cleavage’ belonging to a 50-something romance writer. But LM is much cleverer about this than Mr Follett, and the owners of said pairs are not defined by them. However, it’s the first time I’ve been able to contribute to this topic so I wanted to mention it

That's interesting Cote. I read Palace of Reason towards the start of the year but came away with the impression that the author believed Bach to be a deeply religious man and that, in addition to his dedication to the discipline of counterpoint, acted as the inspiring and driving force behind his work. That he might not have been a devout Christian is fascinating, is there much debate amongst Bach scholars about that? Are there any other Bach biographies you could recommend that give further insights into his personality, preferably as engaging to read as Palace?

11/22/63 by Stephen King
Audiobook narrated by Craig Wasson

High School English teacher from 2011 is shown a time portal back to 1958 and decides to attempt to prevent the assassination of Kennedy.

This was a big old listen, over thirty hours which took me all of June to get through but it was completely worth it. The mechanism of time travelling felt a bit sketchy and underdeveloped (I wanted to hear more about the Yellow Card Man) but I really can’t fault the rest of it. The characters and dialogue felt completely real and I just loved the deeply immersive experience of small town late 1950s/early 1960s America. I miss these characters and I’m missing that lovely feeling of settling down into a story at the helm of a great storyteller. Any other (non-horror) King recommendations would be welcome.

Oh,I dunno. Maybe you'll get them all reading!

(Posted this on a thread about the DUP by accident. Not sure they’d be fans of this book).

74 Against Nature by J-K Huysmans

This is one of the most unusual and odd novels I’ve ever read. I’ve read it twice before. I rarely go back to a book but this has so little plot and so much detail in the narrative that it merits re-reading. I’m going to recommend it wholeheartedly to anyone who is after something totally different, doesn’t mind a large amount of exposition and meandering reflections on literature and is up for a large number of “WTF” moments. It’s a masterpiece of artifice-drenched realism with lengthy reviews of Latin and Catholic writing and a diversion into French poetry. Bonkers.

Des Esseintes is a bored and wealthy French aristocrat. He’s a grumpy hypochondriac who gets fed up of anything that anyone else likes, and who hates everyone. He has no family and fills his days with increasingly elaborate plans to create artificial and extraordinary beauty. A less murderous Patrick Bateman, perhaps, given his obsession with spending money on stuff.

Nothing really happens - one day he decides to go to London but doesn’t, in the end. Something bad happens to a tortoise. He decorates his rooms. He creates a room full of real flowers chosen to look artificial, or like pieces of human flesh, which give him nightmares then die. He recreates the experience of being by the sea in his bathtub with some rope and chemicals.

You definitely wouldn’t go back to his insane over-decorated house for a second date. This man is not into minimalism but is into gory scenes of torture hanging on the walls in his boudoir and has gone to great lengths to create a replica of an austere monk’s cell out of lavish and expensive materials.

It’s also very funny. When I read this the first time I worried I was missing something because it didn’t seem like it was trying to be a funny book. I’m still not sure whether it is meant to be as funny as I find it, but am reassured by the episode of Backlisted about it where they seem convinced it is a comic masterpiece.

I love this book. I wouldn’t let a self-absorbed teenager anywhere near it, but for anyone else, I think it is genuinely wonderful.

Scribbly - re "I was really surprised to learn that he wasn’t composing to create beautiful music that people would like listening to, instead he was trying to reveal the divine via the discipline of counterpoint."

I believe that's the author's opinion rather than fact. Bach was certainly the king of counterpoint and his mastery of fugues in particular (where not only 2 but 3, 4, and sometimes even 5 voices play in counterpoint) but afaik there is no evidence that he was looking for God with his music. There is, however, ample evidence that he was driven to test the limits of musical complexity, even in Well-Tempered Clavier and Art of Fugue, where his stated aim was teaching the possibilities of composition, nothing to do with "the divine".

My very humble personal opinion: I'm not convinced that he was terribly religious at all. Of course, he would have to pretend, as did everyone else in that period, especially those in lucrative lifelong jobs with complete artistic freedom like Bach.

Re artistic freedom - The single most important reason why Bach's work is so complex, so utterly rich and complicated, is that this genius didn't have to please an audience or sell tickets. He wrote for nobody, just produced his art to the best of his outstanding ability.

Hi everyone. I'm glad to be back in time for all the Evening In The Palace Of Reason love It is indeed a surprising little gem of a book, not just for those interested in Baroque music in general or Bach in particular, but also as a rare beauty of a book that combines historical analysis, biography, and good writing. Again, I heartily recommend it.

Sadik I've just been reading a b interesting article in a back issue of New Scientist about how animals can be observed to follow the laws of economics.

Our Friends in Berlin by Anthony Quinn has finally gone down to £4.99 on Kindle, so I've snapped it up. Lots of people liked his Curtain Call iirc.

I've also reserved Evening in the Palace of Reason from the library :)

Tanaqui, I'd say Thinking Fast and Slow is the absolute classic in the area, and for good reason.

In terms of other things to read, I enjoyed The Signal and the Noise by Nate Silver (don't be put off by the rather long early chapter about baseball...) for the why we predict things wrong / how to think about them logically side of things.

Cordelia Fine's A Mind of It's Own is a very easy read covering the neuroscience / psychology of why your brain behaves in ways you might not expect.

Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable by Nassim Taleb is kind of a terrible book, but I'd still say worth reading if you can get it from the library and skim the ranty / repetitive bits (and also worth realising he wrote this and other things on the subject before the 2008 crash)

I do have an economics background, but I'd say all the above are written for general readers, particularly the first two.

And a slightly random recommendation as you're a fanfiction reader - have you read Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality? It's ridiculously long & repetitive, but I found the first few chapters very entertaining.

Still trying to catch up with my reviews plus I have An American Marriage and The Doll Factory on the go via the library ebook app - I put a hold on both of them weeks ago and typically they both came through at the same time!

51. There There, Tommy Orange

Really enjoyed this. Set in Oakland, California, in the present day, the book has numerous narrators, who are interconnected in ways that are revealed as you read. One of the themes of the book is what it means to have Native American Indian heritage in the modern USA, and that was really interesting - not something I have read much about though we have learned a bit about Native American history and culture on visits to the US. Having visited Alcatraz last summer, I particularly enjoyed the chapters set during the Native American occupation of the island.

52. The Seven Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle, Stuart Turton

Loved the concept, but found the book too confusing to be enjoyable. Man wakes up to find he's at an Agatha Christie-style country house party and has no idea who he is or how he got there. It becomes apparent that someone will be murdered and that he will relive the same day over and over again as different house guests. The only way to escape is to solve the murder. As I say, brilliant concept and I was really looking forward to it, but there is way to much of
It was almost 11 which meant that Lord Sutcliffe would be on his was to the library for the meeting with the butler. If I was to place the candlestick there so it could fulfil its vital role, and get back to the stables in time to interrupt Isabella's liaison with Chalmers, I didn't have much time. I rushed to the corridor, only to feel a dull pain explode in the back of my head. The last thing I noticed as it all went black was footsteps, running away from me in the direction of the Duchess's sitting room....

53. All Among the Barley, Melissa Harrison

Thank you to the 50 Bookers for this recommendation. Set in rural Suffolk (?) in the early 30s (but written last year) it is essentially a coming-of-age story. Edie is a farmer's daughter - delicate in health and rather bookish but absolutely immersed in the practicalities and hard work of farm life. She befriends an older woman, Constance, who has come to the village to observe and write about country life, but Edie gradually starts to notice some of the darker things that have been there just outside her child's field of vision - from poverty and the losses of the First World War to rising nationalism and even witchcraft. The loveliest thing about this book is the utterly luminous way that Harrison writes about the English landscape and the way it can make you feel.

51. Half Blood Blues, Esi Edugyan

Another good'un! When I reviewed Washington Black, I paraphrased an interview I'd read where Edugyan said that she wanted to tell stories of black experience that were not the same old stories. And here, again, she has done it with great success.

Half Blood Blues is the story of a group of jazz musicians, drawn to Berlin by the vibrant music scene of Weimar Germany then stuck there when the Nazis rise to power. The interaction between the musicians is depicted so beautifully (there are shades of the Spiders from Mars here) and the originality of the story draws you in to a time of paranoia and terrible loss.