50 Book Challenge 2014

[juneybean]

Hopefully nobody minds me starting this thread.

The idea is to read 50 books in 2014 (or more as many people have achieved this year!)

Please also check out our group on Goodreads if you're stuck for ideas of what books to read!

www.goodreads.com/group/show/59438-the-book-vipers

1. The Girl who played with fire by Steig Larsson.
2. The Girl Who Kicked the Hornets Nest
3. The Crow Trap by Ann Cleeves
4. Man Belong Mrs Queen: Adventures with the Philip Worshippers by Matthew Baylis
5. The Racketeer by John Grisham

Book 5 - Apple Tree Yard. Really enjoyed this, give it a 9. Different, interesting, and whilst you identify with the female protagonist, she did challenge your empathy - calling him "Darling" and "My Love" all theway to the end despite what she finds out about him, and professing to love her husband.

Book 6 is The Rosie Project - really enjoying it so far, laugh out loud stuff....

1. Stoner by John Williams. This book is well written and quietly captivating. A real pleasure to read.

I've just added 3 more books to my 'to read' list based on the last couple of pages of this thread!

Book 21 - a book about Nile exploration. I was disappointed by it.

Book 12 Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn

It was okay, fairly well crafted if more than a little ludicrous at times.

Book 3 David Mitchell's autobiography, Back Story, really enjoyed it, love him even more now.
Now need to catch up, has been a bit of a testing time and I have mainly been reading GCSE History textbooks.

Dbx I will go back to The Stand in that case and give it another try.

12. The Crow Trap - Anne Cleeves. The first of the Vera Stanhope detective books. I really enjoyed this, very satisfying Whodunnit. I read all of her Shetland series last year and liked them a lot.

Love, 'The Stand.' One of King's finest imvho.

I've never read any Stephen King, I haven't read much horror at all actually and this challenge seems a good place to start..... which one shall I try first? Recommendations please

The Dead Zone
Firestarter
The Stand

Stephen King at his best imho.

bibliomania - I like So Much For That and wouldn't call it 'literary fiction'. I found it enlightening about end-of-life decisions.

13. Darwin's Island - Steve Jones (non-fiction)
14. After the Quake- Haruki Murakami (short stories)

Getting a little behind but aiming to finish book 8 by the end of this month.

5). 'Running Like a Girl' by Alexandra Heminsley. A kind of sports autobiography and a short book - 240 pages - which took me nearly two weeks to read. I wish she'd been more open because there's too much about the running and not enough about her. The prose was rather mundane, too.

6). 'The Growing Pains of Adrian Mole' by Sue Townsend. Very funny and I enjoyed being taken back to the simpler times of the 80's. Looking forward to reading more of her stuff.

Book 22 - Diane Samuels' book about a play (work related but really v interesting, and now full of highlighting!).

Stephen King's I'd recommend starting with are:

• The Green Mile
• Cujo
• Agree with Cote re The Dead Zone
• or short stories/novellas such as Rita Heyworth and the Shawshank Redemption (iirc) or The Langoliers

All of these are a) not doorstops and b) not drastically 'horror' in tone.

#6 Paul McKenna's Hypnotic Gastric Band

Guess I'll have to review that later in the year based on whether or not it actually works!

Just off to the library to see if they've got Venetia (Georgette Heyer) in for me yet. Have got the audio book which is great but much abridged, so looking forward to reading the whole story and also to comparing it with Austen as it's set in the same era.

1. Cook With Jamie - Jamie Oliver

(Yes, I've read it cover to cover )

I'm not much of a cook book person but saw this in the bookstore and liked that many of the dishes look easy yet innovative. He explains the simplest stuff like what to look for when you buy meat & fish, which is great.

Gods, if we're counting cover to cover cookery books, I can add at least another 8!

You've been counting children's books & stuff you've re-read 20 times already!

Anyway, I'm not striving to reach 50 this year, so not that bothered if you lot make cat's bum faces at my 430-page book written for adults

I'm not cats' bumming at all. But if we CAN count cookery books I've read the following cover to cover since January:

Madhur J World Vegetarian (love reading this!)
Nigel Slater Kitchen Diaries - I've decided that I hate him
Nigella's How to be a Domestic Goddess / Feast and Express (love reading her)
2 World Food Cafe books (great for travel writing as well as recipes)
A Simon Rimmer one - forgotten what it's called offhand but tis a veggie one.

I'm mixing between fairly heavy non-fiction and easy bathtime stuff, as I usually do tbh. Have just been to the library and got another 5 out - all novels, surprisingly, though two are YA.

You counted Charlotte Sometimes, Ballet Shoes and an Enid Blyton book. QED

You are lucky I'm not counting the Thomas the Tank Engine books I have been reading to DS at bedtime

I'm honestly not knocking you for counting cookery books. If you count Thomas, I'll count all the texts I've read with kids at school too! :)

Then I'll start the book reviews I've been reading and probably still won't get to 150 or whatever you read last year!

Oh I just read stupidly quickly, and don't have enough of a social life. And I spend too long in the bath!

1. Life After Life - disappointing.

10. The Chaperone (audiobook) - absolutely wonderful.

Next:
11. Elijah's Mermaid
12. A Commonplace Killing
13. My Animals and other Family (audiobook)

We're going to need a new thread soon, and it's only February :o. A lot more activity on here than last year :)