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

Just picked up Venetia, but got distracted by The Little Coffee Shop of Kabul which is a 7 day loan so that will be first.

Also managed to pick up The Girl with The Dragon Tattoo for 49p in a charity shop en route to the library which I'm well chuffed about. Managed to get books 2 & 3 free at a book swap 18 months ago but have been waiting to get a cheap copy of TGWADT as I don't read many thrillers and didn't want to spend a lot on it if it turns out not to be my cup of tea.

13. Joan Jonker - Stay In Your Own Backyard

14. Joan Jonker - Last Tram To Lime Street
    Comfort reads after I read the thread. Read before but like a log fire and hot choc in the snow

15. Suzanne Bugler - This Perfect World

16. Amanda Brooke - Yesterday's Sun
    Found main characters in both highly irritating but had a desire to know what happened (even though predicted ends of both!)

15. The Throwback - Tom Sharpe

16. Colin F. Barnes "Artificial Evil".

Read this as a science fiction read for another book challenge and wasn't really that impressed. I felt it glossed over a lot of the more interesting parts of the story (the D number lottery and an interesting aspect with the protagonist's wife) weren't really explored. It's part of a series so I suppose these could be exploited later but I'm not really minded to read the rest on the basis of this one.

Now reading Sue Monk Kidd - The Secret Life of Bees.

1. Starlight And Storm - Gaston Rebuffat

A short but predictably enjoyable book by one of my favourite mountaineers, detailing his first ascent of six north faces in the Alps.

17. Sue Monk Kidd "The Secret Life of Bees".

Thoroughly enjoyed this one. I would definitely recommend it. I devoured most of it in one sitting.

12. The Pedant in the Kitchen - Julian Barnes. Quite a short read, but very good. It's a collection of short essays/articles about cooking, and cookery writers, etc. I enjoyed it - several laugh out loud moments, especially on the frustrations of recipes that just don't work for whatever reason. Have had plenty of those :o

1. The Rosie project 5/5

1. The Rosie project 5/5

16. Blind Salvage - Shannon Mayer
    The 5th book in the Rylee Adamson urban fantasy series. I loved it and I can't wait for book 6 which should be published in March. This one ended with a big build up to the finale of the series and now I have to wait :(

17. The Thirteenth Tale - Diane Setterfield
    I found this one slow going for the first half but by the end I really wanted to find out what happened. I really hadn't guessed the twist in the tale at the end.

1. The Sleeper - Emily Barr

The second of hers I've read this year - really good as usual. Some twists that I really didn't see coming.

Book 23 (or 29 if we're counting cookery books)
My Sister Lives on the Mantlepiece - good idea and I quite liked it, but thought it was missing something overall.

hope you don't mind me joining. I've just read through quite a lot of this (very long) thread and added a load few books to my wish list.

I haven't kept a list since 1st Jan, but looking at my pile by my bedside table and my kindle (I am completely faithfully to both forms of book - as long as it has words I'm happy) I think my list for 2014 so far is:

1. The light between oceans - M L Stedman A story about a lighthouse man in Australia after the first world war - recommended

1. The sea sisters - Lucy Clarke One sister following in the footsteps of another to try and understand her death - ok but didn't stay with me

1. The Chaperone - Laura Moriaty A middle aged American woman chaperoning a teenager hopeful to new york to find her own history - recommended

1. The sea change - Joanna Rossiter A story filliping back and forth between 2 generations, one during the war and the other in 1970's India during a tsunami - took a while to get the link but recommend it;

1. Re-read The Book Thief

1. Allegiant - Divergent book 3 - The third in the JA trilogy, I enjoyed it but DD didn't like the end

1. Gone, 8. Hunger , 9. Lies - JA dystopia by Michael Grant - At first I thought this was quite promising, but it started to get a bit silly after the first book and went downhill after the second. I won't be reading anymore

10. Wool, 11. Shift, 12. Dust - Very good dystopian literature; not really JA, number 2 is a bit slow but overall very well written.

11. The Snow Child, Eowyn Ivery - A childless couple move to Alaska. They make a snow man - child size and a child appears in their lives. I bought this because it was cheap on kindle, but it is beautifully written and highly recommended.

I'm pretty sure I've read a few more than that since 1/1/14 but those are the ones I can remember. I will be keeping up with this thread from now on.

16. Candide - Voltaire

FrenchFancy - I really, really enjoyed 'Gone' and the next one, but was then disappointed by the others (and I read all of them just to see if they got out or not!). I think he obviously rushed the next ones, in order to get them out whilst he'd got teenagers hooked. A shame.

french - What is "JA"? Is it an more juvenile sub-genre of YA (Young Adult)? (Or do you call it 'jeune adulte' en français?)

If you are interested in sci-fi, I can recommend you some really good ones. Wool is not what I would consider good sci-fi (implausible, not terribly well thought out, inconsistent) although the premise is interesting and you want to know what happens next. Not enough to make me read the sequels, though.

I'd be interested in a good sci-fi recommendation Cote. It's not a genre I've read a huge amount if, but I've been quite disappointed in the last couple of sci-fi novels I've read, so a good one would be very welcome!!

I'll try to dig up some of the previous posts I've written on this subject

OK, here it goes:

Sci-fi used to be about space travel, first contact with other races, colonies, etc (around the time that man went to the moon). Here is some classic sci-fi that has survived from those days:

Dune - Frank Herbert (Consistently voted #1 sci-fi of all time, although it is published in 1965)
2001: A Space Odyssey - Arthur C Clarke (Brilliant story, a true classic)
The Foundation (series) - Isaac Asimov (Interesting premise, another classic)

I really like Philip K Dick. It is not the kind of book where the beauty of the prose blows you away, but the ideas are incredibly original and he was a genius imho. I'd recommend his short stories (including Minority Report, We Can Remember It For You Wholesale (= Total Recall), and his books Do Androids Dream Of Electric Sheep (= Blade Runner), A Scanner Darkly, and Martian Time-Slip. In each, you will find that the book is much better than the movie.

This fantastic book, I would say, is a bridge between classic sci-fi and new generation sci-fi that builds on internet technology:
Hyperion - Dan Simmons (Named after the poem by John Keats, the book refers quite a bit to Keats. Interesting and poignant, it is considered one of the best sci-fi out there. And it's an easy read.)

New generation sci-fi that deals with the near future on this earth, how things change with technology that we already have (internet etc) or are about to have (nanotechnology, etc):
Neuromancer - William Gibson (The book that started cyberpunk, where Gibson coined the term 'cyberspace'. If you like it, Gibson has written several more in the same vein)
Snow Crash - Neal Stephenson (No doubt one of the best sci-fi ever, impossibly connecting ancient Sumerian myths with programming languages, hacking the brain, etc. Impossible to explain. Time magazine chose it for its list of 100 Best English-Language Books since 1923)
The Diamond Age - Neal Stephenson (One of my favourites, about the day after tomorrow, when nanotechnology is everywhere. Social structures have significantly changed. Little girl finds a high-tech educational book that interactively educates her and guides her intellectual development through the years. Fascinating discussions about politics, society, morals, and pretty much everything else.)
Ready Player One - Ernest Cline (Brilliant new find of the past year (for me). Everyone in the world is playing this one game where keys to immense riches have been hidden. It's a fantastic puzzle, being solved bit by bit, with loads of 1980s cultural references)

Thanks Cote, some of those sound really interesting. I suspect I'm more a fan of the newer ones, but will certainly check out the more traditional sci-fi novels on your list!

Happy to help I'd recommend that you start with Ready Player One. It's a fun & light but still quite interesting entry into new-gen sci-fi.

Thanks for the Sci-fi recommendations cote I'll certainly put them on my list. And yes I meant to say YA but got the languages mixed up

Don't worry, I do that all the time

10. Call The Midwife by Jennifer Worth. Superb - I found the tales of midwifery in the East End in the 1950s absolutely fascinating.

That one does sound brilliant Cote, I'm definitely adding it to my list