50 Book Challenge 2019 Part Five

As is The Power for anyone who hasn't read it - I think it's definitely worth a read.

The Road to Little Dribbling by Bill Bryson.
Audiobook narrated by Nathan Osgood

I on the whole enjoyed this revisit of Byson to the UK. He meanders all over the place, mostly bitching and moaning about stuff in poor towns and falling over himself with praise for nice pubs and museums in well off parts of the country. It felt a bit like shooting fish in the barrel by the end. Blackpool is a lazy target for your snobbery Bill. However it did make me laugh out loud several times. I do love his padded cell of the mind where he imagines foul mouthed retorts and violence at fools and jobsworths he meets along the way.

Did the National History Museum ever have a t-Rex in the entrance hall? I thought it was a brontosaurusy type of dinosaur.

I’ve just started Elantris by Brandon Sanderson. Is this going to be crap? Do I pull out now?

Having said that I thought to look - and almost all are on Borrowbox from the library as both audio and e-book :) (Should keep me occupied for a while!)

Just noticed that all the Michael Innes Inspector Appleby books are on Kindle Unlimited for anyone who has it & likes Golden Age mysteries.

Unhelpfully (not having KU) I can't remember which ones I've read, except that I've definitely read most of the the ones that are cheap!

Oh sweet Jesus and all his little pixies. Don't get me started on the ending of Under the Dome.

Family staying with me at the moment, so I'm not reading as much as usual. I'm sleeping in the sitting room so I don't have a proper reading light.

I'm re-reading Unseen Academicals, by Terry Prattchett, which is, as always, a joy. He's not just funny, but compassionate. I'm sad we won't get any new adventures in Discworld.

I'm also reading, in slow installments, Smallbone, Deceased, by Michael Gilbert, a 1950s detective novel, which is proving to be an enjoyable period piece.

Pepe, yes, loved Moondust but have to confess that I’m onto my third copy...first one mysteriously disappeared - must have been accidentally culled - then I rebought as I was determined to read it, but still hadn’t got round to it. I’m away at the moment and succumbed to a copy for £1 in a charity shop - where it’s going back shortly now I’ve finished it!

Thanks for the recommendations PepeLePew I'll keep an eye out for those in the library. I did really enjoy the writing so am up for giving some more a go.

60 The Outskirter's Secret by Rosemary Kirstein

Sequel to The Steerswoman, reviewed upthread. I didn't find this as strong as the first one - for a large part of the book Rowan, the Steerswoman, and her companion Bel are travelling, and there's little forward movement to the plot. Having said that, things pick up again in the last quarter of the book, and I'll definitely read the next one at some point.

PowerBadgers, I love Stephen King but endings aren’t his strong point. I forgive it (mostly) because I enjoy the journey but I still hold the ending of Under The Dome against him.

If you liked it but don’t want horror, I’d really recommend 11.22.63. Or The Stand which isn’t really horror as such, though quite alarming.

And Terpsichore, I’m delighted you liked Moondust too. It’s a gem of a book. I think I loved it even more because I found it on one of those bookcases on a tube station so it had a serendipitous element to it, but I think I’d have loved it if I’d had to pay ready money for it.

I've got a printed copy Tanaqui, sounds like a good thing!

47. The Book Thief by Markus Zusak

You've all read this, right? If you haven't, read it. And get your teenagers to read it. I loved it. And might still be crying a bit.

Do you have a printed copy Sadik or an ebook? I meant to say my ebook copy (from Overdrive) had a lot of typing errors - ii for ü, m for rn - I think it had been badly scanned and not proof read!

I've got Evening in the Palace of Reason from the library - got a long train journey coming up next week and looking forward to reading it :)

The Outsider, Stephen King
A terrible and brutal murder is committed, all the evidence points to one man, but he has proof that he was in another city at the time. I've not read much King, not being a horror fan but thought I'd give this thriller a go. This starts off really well and I loved the first half but I'm afraid the conclusion was disappointingly predictable and just felt like a bit of a cop out. I did enjoy the pace and writing though so might be persuaded to give some more King a go.

Vox, Christina Datcher
A dystopian future where a extremist christian government attempts to remove women's voices by restricting them to 100 words a day. This book is about as subtle as curing insomnia with the swift application of a blunt object to the back of the head. If you hated the Handsmaid's Tale then steer well clear because this is basically a rehash of that. That said the writing was decent enough and had some nice bits in. I didn't love it but I didn't absolutely hate it either. If I could have given it half a star it would be a possibly overly generous 2.5 stars.

44. Evening in the Palace of Reason by James Gaines. Reviewed by many of you upthread, I would never have read this otherwise - I love these threads for expanding my reading so much. I really enjoyed this, although much of the music terminology was over my head (am not musical), this was really interesting about bits of history I knew nothing about and I even listened to some Bach of the back of it, much to dh's surprise! Am currently listening to Mythos by Stephen Fry but didn't finish it before Overdrive took it back, and both the book and the audio book have huge waiting lists now- it's good so I might have to spend some money!

Ooh, thanks for the tip-off, Keith. I'm almost (but not quite ) mooned-out, having seen all the TV documentaries over the past week or so and gone to the cinema to see Apollo 11 (which is very good, btw). I read Tom Wolfe's The Right Stuff last year, which really got me going with all this.

The BBC4 documentary that finishes tonight, Chasing the Moon, is a really excellent history of the whole space programme.

I'll definitely look up that ep of This American Life. Thanks again 🌍🌚

Terpischore, there's an episode of This American Life about the astronaut Frank Borman which I really enjoyed (he was Apollo 8 rather than Apollo 11 but assume he's appeared in your reading)

www.thisamericanlife.org/655/the-not-so-great-unknown

I'm glad some others here didn't like Wide Sargasso Sea. For some reason I found the style extremely difficult and the book as a whole utterly bleak. I'm glad I struggled through it for the new perspective on Jane Eyre but my god it was a chore.

Crashing in with my 2019 list so far. I started off well this year but then struggled to read much for a few months (I'm a huge phase person and seem to go from one extreme to the other). Back on it now though and feeling excited about my TBR pile. Favourites in bold:

1. Lucy, Jamaica Kincaid

2. Stories of the Seen and Unseen, Margaret Oliphant

3. Father and Son, Edmund Gosse

4. Café Assasin, Michael Stewart

5. Down Under, Bill Bryson

6. Personal Pleasures, Rose Macaulay

7. Circe, Madeline Miller

8. Reaching Down the Rabbit Hole: Extraordinary Journeys into the Human Brain, Allan Ropper

9. Things I Don’t Want to Know, Deborah Levy

10. Portrait of a Lady, Henry James

11. Venice, Jan Morris

12. The Man who Mistook His Wife for a Hat, Oliver Sachs

13. Mother Tongue, Bill Bryson

14. The Wonder Spot, Melissa Bank

15. Rhapsody in Green, Charlotte Mendelson

16. Living Alone, Stella Benson

17. The Greengage Summer, Rumer Godden

18. The Cost of Living, Deborah Levy

19. Hot Milk, Deborah Levy

20. Bad Dreams, Tessa Hadley

21. Proust, Letters to the Lady Upstairs

22. My Year of Rest and Relaxation, Ottessa Moshfegh

I loved Lucy so much I plan to read everything Jamaica Kincaid has written. Also thought Deborah Levy's latest memoir was fantastic. The writing was so good I wished it had been 10 times as long.

47: Moondust - Andrew Smith

I've been immersing myself in all the documentaries about the moon landing in 1969 so it seemed the right time to read this book, which has been on my tbr pile for ages. Andrew Smith set himself the task of tracking down as many surviving astronauts as possible and talking to them about their experiences of being part of this great, some would say crazy, adventure to take men (and of course it was very much men) to the moon - a project which ground to a halt in the early 1970s for political and financial reasons.

I really enjoyed this. It's full of interesting details and Smith weaves in an element of memoir - he grew up in the US but comes from an English background. He even manages to speak to the elusive Neil Armstrong, whose reticence and determination to avoid interviews was legendary (he's died since the publication of this book). Highly recommended if you're at all interested in the subject; it's as much a social history as anything and not overburdened by extraneous technical waffle.

Keith I'm partway through Everything Under and agree with what you've said. It works really well and the writing is fabulous.

I've just read 2 books that I couldn't put down at the time, but I'm finding myself being very critical on reflection. I'm not sure if it's deserved or I'm just being a grump.

79. The Female Persuasion - Meg Wolitzer Greer, an idealistic college student discovers feminism and meets 2nd wave icon Faith at a talk. Faith later employs her and becomes her mentor at a Women's Foundation. Told through the eyes of various characters including the best friend and the boyfriend, the book explores different eras in feminism and the issues that have faced each generation.

While Wolitzer wasn't afraid to add flaws to her characters, there was little real character depth/development. I didn't feel like there was any plot as such to justify the length and it lacked any real momentum with some of the side stories adding little and dragging the whole thing out unnecessarily. It felt like a catalogue of issues that were briefly touched on and not really discussed or explored. Too much telling and not showing. The prose was ultimately sound in many places and left me feeling like the author is better than this.

80. Bel Canto - Ann Patchett
    Set in an unnamed South American country, a group of diplomats and foreign businessmen are taken hostage during a failed kidnapping attempt at the vice-president's mansion. All of the women are released with the exception of one, a famous opera singer. The hostages have no common language, but the opera singer plays an important role in uniting them during an extended period in captivity. The book explores the relationships between the captives and with the guerillas holding them hostage.

I appreciate that the point of this was to look at the relationships, but I felt it was lacking in a few areas. Patchett largely ignored the politics of the situation and expects the reader to take this side of things on face value. The book is inspired by real events in Peru, so could have had an interesting look at the background to it to add some depth to the characters. This is the second of hers that I have read set in South America and I can't help but feel that she is very lazy in her portrayal of the countries involved relying on simplistic stereotypes. The pacing was also off with a very slow start and a ridiculously rushed ending. The epilogue was infuriating and unnecessary. However, she writes beautifully, so can be forgiven some of the flaws.

113. Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit- Jeannette Winterson I expected to love this, but I really didn’t. I couldn’t understand why Jeanette (the character) stayed in the Pentecostal Church so long. I also found Winterson’s voice slightly grating on the audiobook, especially all the references to ‘the Loo-erd’ (before anyone accuses me of snobbery, my early childhood was spent about 30 miles away from her Accrington home).

114. Sorry I’m Late, I Didn’t Want to Come- Jessica Pan Last week, while I was still reading it, this was reviewed by Chessie - I liked it a bit better than she did. It is true that it is skewed in favour of comedy- the author took both improv and stand-up classes- but there were other activities Pan forced herself to do in order to become more extrovert, such as holding a dinner party and travelling alone. After a year of all this, Pan had made new friends and was much happier, so I felt (slightly) inspired.

115. Take Nothing With You- Patrick Gale This is a lovely story of a boy learning the cello and coming to terms with his sexuality. The only point against it was that I couldn’t believe that this fairly intelligent young man couldn’t work out who his mother’s lover was! I plan to read more of Patrick Gale’s novels, especially A Sweet Obscurity and other musical ones (if there are any more).

116. Forever Today- Deborah Wearing This is the true story, written by his wife, of Clive Wearing, the choral conductor and Radio 3 producer who suffered severe and lasting amnesia after an illness. I have mentioned him before on these boards, as he is featured in Musicophilia by Oliver Sacks and also inspired Before I Go to Sleep by S.J. Watson. This book was interesting, but the Groundhog Day-style existence of poor Deborah was pretty depressing. It wasn't particularly surprising that she divorced him for a while (they later renewed their vows), lived abroad and attempted to have relationships with other men. I loved the sections about how Clive could still sing, play the organ and even conduct a choir, and I would have loved to read more about that. The book is slightly similar to Falling and Laughing: the Restoration of Edwyn Collins by Grace Maxwell, except that Maxwell’s book is superior and Edwyn Collins has aphasia rather than amnesia.

117. The Antidote- Oliver Burkeman Previously discussed on these forums and subtitled ‘Happiness for People Who Can't Stand Positive Thinking’, this book was just what I needed. Some of the strategies are: expect the worst, get comfortable with the idea of failure, don’t be obsessed with goals, lower your expectations in life, contemplate death (so it doesn’t come as a shock when you realise you will eventually die) and, when suffering from stress, ask yourself ‘Do I have a problem RIGHT NOW’? The book has made an impression on me and I hope its effects will last.

118. Down Under- Bill Bryson I got this cheaply on Audible, having previously enjoyed the book. Unfortunately, it isn’t read by Bill Bryson: the narrator is very characterful but sometimes annoying. His impression of an Australian accent is irritating, but his attempt at a Yorkshire accent has to be heard to be believed! Perhaps inevitably, my favourite parts of the book are the sections about places I know well: Sydney, Melbourne, and also Perth and other areas of Western Australia.

119. The L-Shaped Room- Lynne Reid Banks I enjoyed this- it is far better than the film- and have since been interested to discover that it is part of a trilogy. The first book tells the story of a young(ish) woman who, after being kicked out of home due to pregnancy, takes lodgings in the titular ‘L-shaped room’. Initially, she just wants to be left alone, but she ends up forming some strong relationships there. The book is set in the 1950s and there is a lot of casual racism from some characters: apparently, the author later regretted this.