50 Book Challenge 2019 Part Five

Will duly learn Elvish!

Thanks bibliomania !

I have added the Pueblo to my wishlist.
Thank you Sadik!

I hadn't noticed, piggy, but when you said it, I went back and re-read and was suitably admiring.

Finished The Silence of the Girls, by Pat Barker. I didn't hate it, but I didn't love it either. I didn't think it was a radical new telling from a female perspective - having read modern-day accounts of sexual violence in war, I think she soft-pedalled it if anything. There were a few scenes I quite liked, but as I said previously, overall the characters seemed wooden to me rather than people I believed in.

Perhaps try it in a different language next time, piggy

Maybe Elvish?

Thanks for the reassurance on widmerpool issues @PepeLePew and for the recommendation @KeithLeMonde - will definitely try that one.

In exciting news - for me at least - I see that Hilary Mantel's third book in the Wolf Hall trilogy now has a publication date. March 2020. Let the countdown begin!

OK... I have to ask because I am needy did you notice I wrote the second review backwards...?

I liked your review(s), Piggy

59 Casanova's Chinese Restaurant by Anthony Powell
Book 5 of Dance To The Music of Time, and the best so far. Nick's social circle shifts focus to a group of musicians and the emphasis on marriage and love becomes much more pronounced. And real life events such as the Abdication and the Spanish Civil War also play a much bigger role. Playing less of a role, disappointingly, is Widmerpool. To those of you worried you may be the Widmerpool of your group, if you can have the self-awareness needed to ask that question, you can't be Widmerpool.
I am loving these. I'm pacing myself as I don't want to run out of them too quickly.

40 The Pueblo: A Mountain Village on the Costa del Sol by Ronald Fraser
I've been re-reading this as a bedside book the last few weeks. I don't generally bother counting/reviewing multi-re-reads, but I think this one is worth mentioning as it's really excellent and not well known.

It's an oral history of the village of Tajos, near Malaga, published in 1973. The author lived in the village from the late 1950s, and the book is made up of interviews with a whole range of inhabitants of Tajos and it's surroundings. I lived in Andalucia for a while from the 90s, and this book captures the feeling of the region and the people so well. The late 60s/early 70s was the perfect time to take a snapshot of that area - tourism had developed enough that interviewees have perspective on the past, but the old economy of subsistence agriculture was only just coming to an end.

(As a side note, a nice benefit to writing this review is that I've looked up the author, & discovered he wrote various other books about Spain.)

Apologies for over emphasising the wondrousness of my review in my rage.....

Oh ... whoops.

Bloody MN.

Aaargh! Just lost my whole review of The Western Wind because of MN site issues! It was an excellent review and very lengthy!

To summarise :
it's told backwards
it's clever
it makes you revise absolutely everything you believed
remus didn't like it?
I did.

Book number 30 of 2019 eventually turned up one worth reading, although I think I remember remus being disappointed. This was Samantha Harvey's The Western Wind.

Such a clever clever book. Difficult to summarise in any way without spoilers as it is told backwards. But I disagree with some reviewers on Amazon : it absolutely does have an end and it is very cunning : the last section completely pulls the rug out form under the reader : al previous notions are revised.

I did find it hard going at first; she writes very well but is very verbose and it is a bit tortuous . The themes, however of redemption, loss, sin, atonement, responsibility and suffering are very well done. The most likeable (living) character is the narrator. I won't say more on that one.

If you do like clever, literary books this is an altogether far better and more intriguing read than, say that Evelyn Hardcastle (?) one or that other one lots of use read last year about the girl who goes missing Reservoir 13. But kind of similar.

A quick read - The Drop, by Mick Herron. Advertised as a Slough House novella, although Slough House itself doesn't feature, and the only character that carried across was the poisonous Lady Di.

It's a tale of espionage and double-agents carried out between modern-day Germany and the UK, so the stakes are low (rising slightly higher with Brexit) and it's almost a game to the players. It's very post-Le Carre: the characters aren't disillusioned because they never had any illusions in the first place. They are career civil servants thinking about how events will play out on their CVs, but it all goes wrong for some. This is worth reading if you already like the Slough House books, but not the best place to start on the series.

I'm now reading The Silence of the Girls, by Pat Barker. So far, it's all as wooden as a Trojan horse, but I'll see if it grows on me.

Have fallen off this thread and after a good start to my reading year, I have had a run of duds and really got out of the reading habit. Would love to find something really really good. The last thing I read that I would recommend to anyone was The Hearts Invisible Furies back in March. Have managed a couple of light Audible listens but am barely reading my Kindle at the moment.

The last couple of weeks though, I've managed the following:

28. Notes from a Big Country by Bill Bryson I read Notes from a Small Island last year, which I quite enjoyed but not as much as I thought I would. I listened to Notes from a Big Country on Audible, and I preferred it. Notes from a Small Island was about him as a young American adjusting to life in Great Britain and observations of the idiosyncrasies of the British people. Notes from a Big Country was observations on American life after Bryson and his English wife and kids move back to the USA. The USA has changed in many ways while Bryson has been in the UK (consumer helplines and the US immigration system are a particular bugbear of his), but some things, like baseball games and old fashioned diners and motels take him right back to his childhood).

A very amusing read and some great insights into modern American life.

29. Artemis by Andy Weir Like many other reviews of this, I was disappointed after reading the Martian. It's set in a future where there is a permanent city on the moon, and Jazz is a petty criminal smuggler who gets involved in a major crime with various parties trying to gain control of the city. It was marginally entertaining but definitely not the quality of The Martian. Over-complex plot and highly improbable. Long extended action scenes that were hard to visualise so I lost what was going on (Probably written with movie rights in mind)

A short, quick read won't make any of my best lists

@KeithLeMonde I have read A Child of All Nations and I thought it was excellent. She does feature in the book as Roth's lover and she obviously led an interesting life.

Piggy- yes, a wee one that made bits of churches drop off and a bit of a crack that looks like Dr Who would call a rift at school. (Am in SE Italy) we're not in a seismic area at all really, so it's all a bit surprising.

Meg- loved the St Ex books. Devoured them all after doing the Little Prince for French A level. Must find time to re-read. Whilst wearing Guerlain Vol de Nuit of course. (Inspired by the book)

Dutifully done my monthly pedagogical read : Exam Literacy by MFL teacher Jake Hunton. Nothing new here , in that it brings together stuff form many sources, most of which I had encountered or read. But useful and accessible for those who haven't. I like his angle (ditch revision sessions! Stop finishing courses in Jan to spend months revising!). It is great for many as it actually (unlike many ed books ) gives worked examples from lots of subjects. Annoyingly for me (and even though his own brother is an English teacher) there are only 4 pages on English (suspect this is because Eng is always the rogue subject in this knowledge age!). Also, annoyingly, no one at my particular school will pay any of this new-fangled stuff any heed whatsoever and ignore me if I try to suggest it

Not on Kindle though, sadly.

The Little Prince is only £1.99 though, if anybody fancies a really lovely, slightly cutesy read and hasn't come across this yet.

Meg - dashing and romantic sounds great.

Finally managed to finish a book (been a bit distracted by Game Of Thrones these last weeks!):

20. Wind, Sand And Stars - Antoine de Saint-Exupery

Collection of essays by the Little Prince author, chiefly concerning his time as a pilot in the French mail delivery service in Africa and South America in the 1920s and 30s. It's impossibly dashing and romantic, and full of life - a kind of airborne equivalent of Gaston Rebuffat's accounts of the 'brotherhood of the rope' in the golden era of mountaineering.

An earthquake???!

I have been AWOL since the new thread started and have a whopper list of reviews to post.

GrimUpNorth I've just started reading In Our Mad and Furious City by Guy Gunaratne, which might be a good next read for you. It's set on an estate in North London and has just win the Jhalak Prize for BAME writers.

Whippet, have you read any Irmgard Keun? She was recommended to me on here and was an associate of Roth, Zweig etc - her Child of All Nations is obviously based on her own experiences of being an exiled writer, and well worth a read.

I've heard bits of The Doll Factory being read on R4 last week. Sounded good though I do get irritated when the well spoken R4 narrators break into awkward cockernee to do the working class Londoners.

Catching up, as due to rather surprising minor earthquake, we are off school for two days while the engineers check structures.

Terpsichore- I agree about David Sedaris- many years ago, an American friend said I reminded her of him and thrust his books upon me. I found his humour mildly funny, but was never going to laugh-out-loud.

Pencilmuseum- interesting about Teresa Driscoll asking nicely for reviews. I'm afraid I have just left a scathing one about The Friend and sent it back for my 99p back.

So, recent reads:

26. They do it with Mirrors Agatha Christie. Not a classic. Unpleasant characters and too many of them.

27. The Growing Pains of Adrian Mole Picked up a couple of weeks back on a 99p kindle. I am obviously the only woman of my age never to have read any AM despite him being more or less my age. I loved this and truly roared with laughter (loudly) at various points.

My enjoyment of 27 led me to buy

28 The Secret Diary of Adrian Mole immediately. Not quite as raucously funny for me, this one, and I shall wait awhile before reading the others. Still a good, easy, funny all-in-one-sitting kind of read.

29 The Friend Teresa Driscoll.
Oh My Life. What utter dross. Appallingly bad, really. I need to stop compulsively buying these 99p psycho nutjob things just because a) they're 99p and b) all their friends have left 5 star reviews. I actually started making notes of all the cliches of the genre and sheer busyness of the plot. This is one writer who will not use one twist if she can use 39.

We had the ubiquitous people moving to nice arty farty village. We had a New Best Friend who our heroine envies because she's got a Boden coat and nice hair. We had the errant husband. We had the artists. We had the coast (obviously- nutters must gravitate to the sea and the "tangy salt air" like flies round a rotting carcass.

In no particular order, and not really giving any spoilers because at times it all seemed one big brainstorm of non-sequiturs from the writer, we also had: traumatised (and unpleasant) toddlers (lots of stuff here never explained either, did nutjob smash the plates or did the Damian-esque kid? Infertility, adoption, miscarriage, multiple sclerosis, gypsies, PND, financial trouble, drowning, gambling, dementia, pottery, selective mutism people getting run over while shoplifting, far too much detail about the detective leading the investigation and her ex colleague...and an ending that was wound up in about 40 lines.

As my (non Romany) grandmother would say, "total tripe"

Very much a contender for worst read of the year so far.

I think I need a nice Jean Plaidy now. You know where you are with Ferdinand and Isabella.

Pencil - interesting about Mischief , it was £2.99 in Oxfam (and that's the upper end of what I'm prepared to pay for a green Penguin). DH and I have amassed a fairly good collection between us but there always seem to be more...the American ones by women writers in the 50s tend to be especially good. Definitely recommend this if you feel like a mini-splurge.

I went straight on to true crime after that with 33: The Long Drop - Denise Mina
Another short and gripping read but also grim as hell. I love Denise Mina's crime fiction: she's a very fine writer who brings her settings vividly (albeit often dismayingly) to life. Here though she re-tells the actual 1950's case of Glasgow serial-killer Peter Manuel, who murdered 7 (arguably 8 - 1 was 'not proven'), and was convicted and hanged.

While the subject-matter was unremittingly bleak, Mina writes superbly. Her new novel's just out and I can't wait to read it.