50 Book Challenge 2014 Part 2

[juneybean]

Thread 2 of the 50 book challenge. Here is the previous thread...

The idea is to read 50 books in 2014 (or more!)

www.mumsnet.com/Talk/adult_fiction/1951735-50-Book-Challenge-2014

Yes, 'What Matters' v good too. 'Jane's Fame' is worth a read, as well. I've got this waiting in my, 'To Read' pile.

25 The ABC Murders Agatha Christie

Another fan of What Matters in Jane Austen here, especially the chapter about the characters who never talk.

15. Big Brother by Lionel Shriver. I really enjoyed this.

Yy, Jane's Fame is very enjoyable - it doesn't give you insights into her so much, as what people have taken her to represent.

Remus, the abridged edition of the letters is probably a good idea. I ploughed through the full Deirdre La Faye edition, and though it was nice to sink back into the late eighteenth century for a while, there was plently I could have done without.

I enjoyed "What Matters in Austen" too.

OK, here are books 11-20:

11. Through the window by Julian Barnes
12. Granta 126: Do you remember?
13. The Good Soldier by Ford Madox Ford
14. Family Britain by David Kynaston
15. The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins
16. The shock of the fall by Nathan Filer
17. Noah before the ark by Irving Finkel
18. The music of chance by Paul Auster
19. Catching Fire by Suzanne Collins
20. The rocks remain by Gavin Maxwell

Some comments:

The two Hunger Games books I read at the behest of DD, who loves them. They were better than I expected - I particularly enjoyed the application of game theory.

The Julian Barnes book is a collection of literary essays - very enjoyable and worth a read even though I hadn't read a lot of the books he was talking about.

Family Britain (two books, really, in one volume) - very good and worth a read if you're interested in British social history of the 1950s.

Really enjoyed the Noah before the Ark (about the Babylonian flood myths, which predate the OT story) - Finkel is a curator at the British Museum and an expert in cuneiform. Worth reading for the sheer pleasure of someone who really knows his subject.

Finally, I loved The Rocks Remain. It's a sequel to Ring of Bright Water, which I read last year. It's very funny in places but also extremely moving. He's an amazing writer. I had to buy both books from resellers on Amazon. It's the centenary of Maxwell's birth this year, and I can't believe his publishers haven't reissued them.

1. HG Wells: The Invisible Man

10. HG Wells: The Island of Dr Moreau 11. Edgar Allan Poe Short Stories 12. Nathanial Hawthorne short stories 13. Charlotte Gilman: Herland 14 Gilman: The Yellow Wallpaper (a very short but disturbing story!)

Just starting Ray Bradbury's The Martian Chronicles.

Book 7 was a YA one. Pawn by Aimee Carter. Distopian future where everyone is 'graded' at 17 and has their number as a tattoo on their neck. It was OK but rather obvious in places, didn't love it

Book 39 - A Shire Publications book about the history of department stores. Loved it! Short enough to read in one sitting but full of interesting (if quite niche!) info. :)

Lorna - I love, 'The Yellow Wallpaper' but, 'Herland' didn't do anything for me. I enjoyed, 'The Martian Chronicles.'

hackmum - How is Game Theory applied in Hunger Games books?

21. Oryx and Crake by Margaret Atwood

The second in the Maddadam trilogy set in a dystopian future. I'm just setting off on the third in the series now.

Thanks for this brilliant thread - a great source of inspiration for future reading!
My list so far..

1. My Ideal Bookshop by Thessaly La Force
2. Tales of the City by Armistead Maupin
3. Apple Tree Yard by Louise Doughty
4. The Invention of Wings by Sue Monk Kidd
5. A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens
6. Family by Susan Hill
7. Instructions for a Heatwave by Maggie O'Farrell
8. Trailblazer in Flight by Yvonne Pope Sintes
9. Sisterland by Curtis Sittenfeld

10. Harvest by Jim Crace 11. The lemon Grove by Helen Walsh

Heatwave the stand out read of this group. Very disappointed with The Lemon Grove, poorly written and over hyped!

17. The Book Thief

Currently reading 3 different books! (Disgrace, A Doll's House and Reading Like a Writer)

Book 40 - A little book about the history of holiday camps, which caused some major nostalgia! I kept expecting to turn the page and find a photograph of my family with 1970s haircuts!

Jam - I thought, 'Oryx and Crake' was the first one? I hated it, but liked the other one, something about a flood.

1.Robert Galbraith, The Cuckoo's Calling
2.Mad About the Boy, Helen Fielding
3.Tangled Lives, Hilary Boyd

1. I Am Pilgrim, Terry Hayes
2. The Rosie Project, Graeme Simsion
3. Killers Wedge, Ed McBain
4. The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry, Rachel Joyce
5. The Silent Wife, ASA Harrison

This was ok, nothing to get to excited by. Now reading Divergent, to see if I'll allow dd to read it.

12. The Lost World - Arthur Conan Doyle

A reread of a book which used to be a favourite when I was a kid. Still excellent although somewhat of its time in its attitudes towards non-whites (see the cheerful genocide of a previously undiscovered primate species).

Maximum I too read Ring of Bright Water last year and was astonished and saddened that it was out of print. Raven Seek Thy Brother is also well worth seeking out.

No idea who Maximum is , I meant Hackmum!

"I love, 'The Yellow Wallpaper' but, 'Herland' didn't do anything for me. "

Yes, Remus, me too. I had to read them for an academic course. 'Herland' is very 'useful' piece of literature to talk about women's issues but not exactly a fun read. Also, I did a bit of research on her: some seriously questionable moral politics about eugenics and racial/ class purity stuff going on!

'The Yellow Wallpaper' is still a fantastic short story though - very creepy for only 6 thousand words.

Remus you're absolutely right. It's The Year Of the Flood that I've just finished, I just forgot the name I'm now about halfway through Maddadam (the third one)

Let me know if you think the 3rd is worth reading, Jam. Generally Atwood tends to really annoy me, so I'm still not sure whether to bother with it or not. And I thought O&C was a load of nonsense tbh.

Re, 'The Yellow Wallpaper' - I would absolutely love to teach this text, as I agree that it packs so much in and it's short enough to really pull apart without weeks and weeks of work.

28. Danielle Steele - Legacy
29. Vanessa Diffenbaugh - The Language of Flowers

Book 20 The Complaints by Ian Rankin

Not one of the Rebus series, this one features Malcolm Fox who is a detective with the Complaints and Conduct department, the one which investigates bent coppers. He has just finished one case when the novel starts and is asked by CEOP to investigate a detective sergeant who is suspected of having joined a child porn ring. Meanwhile, he is concerned about his sister, whose partner is violent towards her. A couple of days after he breaks her arm, the partner is found dead, and Fox finds himself under investigation.

As with most Rankin novels, the plot becomes quite complex and involves all sorts of different elements and motives, including in this case the disappearance of a property developer who goes missing from his yacht. Rankin is pretty good at crafting his plots so it holds together well, and I do enjoy his writing.

#30 The Power of six - Pittacus Lore . Book 2 in a series. YA sci fi/ adventure story.

28. Anne Rice "The Vampire Lestat"
29. Jasper Fforde "The Last Dragonslayer"
30. Louise Rennison "Withering Tights"

I'm working on very light relief reading this last week, but managing to tick some off my Goodreads series challenge at the same time.

Now reading the second in the Withering Tights series. I was a huge fan of Louise Renisson's Georgia Nichols books as a youngster, but not finding as much humour in these books as I recalled her earlier works having.