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

1. Wives of Henry VIII by Alison Weir

Remus - think your Christie novel is Appointment with Death

1. Longbourn

2. You had me at hello

3. Love, Nina

4. Getting over Mr Right

5. The Husband's Secret

6. The Donor

7. Mr Penumbra's 24-hour Bookstore

8. The Rosie Project

9. Black Venus

10. The Emergence of Judy Taylor

11. Sir Gawain and Green Knight

12. Can Anybody help me? By Sinead Crowley.

13. Alex by Pierre LeMaitre.
    This is a superb crime/thriller. Has anyone else read it? I'm itching discuss it! I don't want to give anything away but I urge anyone who is interested in this genre to read it. It's reasonably graphic but the violence is not gratuitous. Alex is a fantastic character, as is the police detective Camille. One note of caution, it is the second book in a series and was translated before the first (which was just published this week) so there are huge spoilers for the first book in Alex.

14. Romps, Tots and Boffins: the strange language of news by Robert Hutton.
    A 99p kindle offer this started as a twitter hashtag game and really should have stayed there. Mildly interesting and mildly diverting but instantly forgettable.

15. The Examined Life: how we lose and find ourselves by Stephen Grosz.
    Fantastic. So simply and eloquently written but deep and truthful. A book which can be read quickly but which stays in the mind. I can envisage returning to this book often.

19. Drums of Autumn, Diana Gabaldon
20. The Great Divide, Peter Watson (non-fiction - how civilisation developed differently in the Americas to Eurasia due to different environmental factors)

Powered through these two big books (skimming a bit of the second, I admit). I wanted to read them, but in both cases could have done with less. Oh, the detail.

21. The Rosie Project. Needed a lighter read. You can't help rooting for the hero. If I were to be critical (me? never!), it felt rather a lot like the product of writing workshops: insert narrative tension here. The narrative arc felt schematic. But a pleasant read all the same.

12 Years a Slave - very good, and very itneresting. The movie followed it pretty closely, which is always a good thing. The book goes into a bit more detail on how they managed to track him down in the end.

1. The shock of the fall by Nathan Filer.

I thought this was brilliant. I have a very close relative who suffers with schizophrenia so it was a hard read and me sobbing in parts. It is for book club but I am not sure I will actually be able to discuss this book.

Thanks, Mum2Jakie. It is! :)

Book 6 Life After Life by Kate Atkinson. I really enjoyed this although I'd have liked a little more 'closure' at the end. Very clever book and very touching in places.

Southeastdweller thanks for the recommendation. I ended up taking Breakfast at Tiffany's with me - didn't even manage to take it out of the suitcase while I was away! I have added your recc to my list of future reads.

Book 35 - another Christie, 'Cat Among the Pigeons.' I quite liked the 'school story' setting of this, and some of the teachers amused me. Quite liked the 'jolly hocky sticks' conversation of the girls too.

It might be 'amongst' - can't remember offhand.

I really like, 'Breakfast at Tiffany's' - really sweet little book, though the homophobia leaves rather a nasty taste in the mouth, even if it is supposed to be a bit satirical.

22. Death by Black Hole - Neil De Grasse Tyson. A collection of essays on cosmology.
23. Red Carpets and Other Banana Skins - Rupert Everett. I really enjoyed this. A very engaging and funny autobiography. I have his second one in my virtual tbr pile.
24. Surely your Joking Mr Feynman - Richard Feynman. Another autobiography.
25. Rivers of London - Ben Aaronovitch. This was brilliant a supernatural police procedural, funny but quite dark.
26. The Graveyard Book - Neil Gaiman. I loved this book.

18. The Love Object - a huge collection of Edna O'Brien's short stories. Some great, some not my cup of tea.

Foos - What did you think about Feynman's autobiography?

I want to read about him and tried Genius but it was so terrible that I stopped reading it.

Hi Cote. He has quite an odd writing style. It is basically a series of anecdotes, in roughly chronological order. I found it interesting and quite an easy but I didn't really warm to him as person. The bit where he is working on the atomic bomb is the most interesting from a historical point of view.

1. Breakfast at Tiffany's - Truman Capote

Remus, I agree about the homophobia, in fact I seem to have read quite a few books written in the forties and fifties so far and the racism, homophobia and sexism in them all is pretty constant.

Book 16 (I think) 59 Seconds by Richard Wiseman.

A look at psychological research in areas frequently covered by self-help books to see what actually works. Interesting and entertaining read.

1. The Genesis Secret by Tom Knox.

This is about a journalist who goes to an archaeological dig in Turkey and unexpectedly finds out that all the worlds monotheistic religions might be based on lies. Unfortunately the story is spoiled by two or three instances of real stomach churning, sickening violence, one of which was so graphic it actually gave me nightmares!! I only finished it out of sheet bloody mindedness in the end!

Oh, I think I read that one, Cardiff. I have a weakness for the whole genre of archaeologists-stumble-on-ancient-secret-then-get-chased-by-ruthless-guardians-of-ancient-secret but I don't like when they depict really horrible violence (as they often do). It's a cheap way to up the drama.

And the thing is, I'd love to visit that ancient site in Turkey. That's interesting enough without without really horrible things happening.

What is the name of the site?

Gobekli Tepe

I was in Sanliurfa in 2006 so potentially could have visited if I'd known about it (and if they allowed visitors then - not sure).

Yes biblio, that's the place Gobekli Tepe. I am fond of the genre too. In fact the next book I've started today seems like a similar thing except this time it involves a lost piece of parchment!
I think I would have really enjoyed the Genesis Secret if it wasn't for all the graphic disembowelling etc.