50 Book Challenge 2014 Part 4

[Southeastdweller]

Thread four of the 50 Book Challenge.

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

Here are the previous threads...

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

www.mumsnet.com/Talk/adult_fiction/2000991-50-Book-Challenge-2014-Part-2?

www.mumsnet.com/Talk/adult_fiction/2094773-50-Book-Challenge-2014-Part-3?msgid=49151537#49151537

44. Confessions Of A Sociopath - M E Thomas

Whoa! This was fascinating. The author is a lawyer, former prosecutor and university teacher who is officially diagnosed sociopath (previously called "psychopath") and this is her very candid account of growing up as someone who bases her relationships entirely on cost/reward calculations and has no remorse. She is the person behind the blog SociopathWorld which is apparently rather well known in certain circles, and is basically outing herself with this book for the goal of helping the "condition" of sociopathy be better understood and "accepted".

She mentions studies, references other books, and makes some interesting comparisons such as the vampire, the ultimate sociopath and "appealing monster" - "charismatic and sophisticated, a predator walking among people undetected... far from deranged and wild and, in fact, his manners are superior to those of the people he meets. His apparent deficits attract his victims and his peculiarities engage them, while he views them as nothing more than objects. He drinks blood because it fulfills him; he toys with people because it amuses him."

There is also an interesting comparison with Blade Runner - how normal humans seek out & destroy the replicants who don't have proper human emotions and therefore are "presumed to be subhuman, therefore there are no ethical constraints on what happens to them, despite evidence that their internal worlds may have been just as rich as those of humans".

She talks about companies being sociopathic, and sociopathy being rather widespread in the corporate world, especially in law and finance. There is also interesting information about sociopaths' brain which is apparently quite different than a 'normal' brain, especially re risk/reward assessments. As the author puts it when talking about her extremely risky driving habits: "I don't really care for my safety enough to change my behaviour" and "I don't have an off switch in my brain telling me when to stop - no natural sense of boundaries alerting me to when I am on the verge of taking something too far. When I do these things, it doesn't feel as if I'm so overwhelmed by the carrot; it's more like I am so unimpressed by the stick."

Brilliant. I totally recommend this.

That does sound really interesting Cote. I remember reading something about her and the book ages ago but never got round to checking it out.

Have just added it to my kindle - thanks Cote.

Cote - that sounds like something that dp would enjoy. Cheers.

Book 98 - 'Little Boy Lost' by Margharita Laski
I picked this up in the library because it's published by Persephone Books, who publish 'neglected' work by 20th century women writers. They are responsible for my sheer adoration of, 'Miss Pettigrew Lives For a Day' which is a very sweet, quirky love story.

This one was set in post WW2 Paris and focused on an English man who had married a French woman and had a baby with her, but then war broke out. He had to leave to fight, and she worked for the resistance. She's killed by the Gestapo and the child is 'lost' - and this book is about the father wondering whether he wants to try to 'find' his son or not. It's a bit overblown in places but there's some interesting stuff about France and the position/behaviour of the French under occupation, and overall it was pretty decent.

I'm deffo going to try to get hold of more Persephone titles.

Thanks, Bssh. Very interested to read your thoughts on M.M after you finish it.

My list below of books read this year so far with highlights in bold:

1. Quiet - Susan Cain
2. Apple Tree Yard - Louise Doughty
3. I Laughed, I Cried - Viv Groskop
4. Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal - Jeanette Winterson
5. Running Like a Girl - Alexandra Heminsley
6. The Growing Pains of Adrian Mole - Sue Townsend
7. Kiss Me First - Lottie Moggach
8. Girl Least Likely to - Liz Jones
9. What Color is Your Parachute? - Richard N.Boiles

10. Bedsit Disco Queen - Tracey Thorn 11. The Color Purple - Alice Walker 12. The Red House - Mark Haddon 13. Notes on a Scandal - Zoë Heller 14. By Nightfall - Michael Cunningham 15. Demon Barber - Lynn Barber 16. The Hours - Michael Cunningham 17. Maggie & Me - Damian Barr 18. The Casual Vacancy - J.K Rowling 19. A Curious Career - Lynn Barber 20. The Snow Queen - Michael Cunningham 21. Lost for Words - Edward St Aubyn 22. The Fast Beach Diet - Mimi Spencer 23. The Hive - Gill Hornby 24. British Sign Language for Dummies 25. Consumed - Harry Wallop 26. Knight Errant - Robert Stephens 27. How to Eat Out - Giles Coren 28. A Room with a View - E.M Forster 29. Mad About the Boy - Helen Fielding 30. Lolita - Vladimir Nabakov 31. Lolita - Richard Corliss 32. Love, Nina - Nina Stibbe 33. Her - Harriet Lane 34. Sane New World - Ruby Wax 35. The Lemon Grove - Helen Walsh 36. The Eyre Affair - Jasper Fforde 37. A Clockwork Orange - Anthony Burgess 38. Let’s Explore Diabetes with Owls - David Sedaris 39. We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves - Karen Joy Fowler 40. Alys, Always - Harriet Lane 41. Marriage Material - Sathnam Sanghera

34. Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage, Haruki Murakami

Tsukuru Tazaki is part of a close-knit group of five friends who meet in high school and become inseparable. They operate as a single, harmonious unit and, despite their differences, are happy to do everything together. But Tsukuru reflects that each of his friends have a name that represents a colour: black, white, red and blue; all except himself - he is colourless - and that makes him secretly feel different, an outsider to the group, destined to drift through life a lonely man who never makes a difference.

So when suddenly, just as they are all about to begin university, the group of four inexplicably reject Tsukuru, our protagonist is distraught but ultimately not surprised. He moves away from the group, who all remain in their hometown of Nagoya, and builds a life of monotonous, predictable routine for himself in Tokyo as a designer of railway stations.

Then, in his mid-30s, his new girlfriend Sara - observant of how the past still negatively shapes his present - urges him to seek the truth of why his friends rejected him so suddenly all those years ago. She makes it a condition of her progressing a relationship with him and she helps him seek them out.

A beautifully crafted novel whose narrative simplicity belies a complex tangle of emotions. I raced through it, thoroughly caring about Tsukuru and his painful pilgrimage towards truth.

Bssh - I've added you on Goodreads, so if you get a random request from someone with a wedding photo as a profile pic, that's me :)

Wednesday what a lovely wedding photo :)

Aww, thanks bssh I keep meaning to change it for something more up to date but don't seem able to on the mobile app! Are you new to Goodreads? Have you joined the Book Vipers group?

Yes and yes, wednesday, but not active on the groups as yet.

bssh I like Vipers, they're a nice, welcoming group!

84. Charles Dickens "Nicholas Nickleby". I enjoyed this, but it was a bit long winded!!

Getting stuck into some Rebus now! I'm reading the whole series as a book challenge so really want to make some progress with them!

35. Manazuru, Hiromi Kawakami

Kei is a woman still teetering on the edge of sanity twelve years after the baffling disappearance of her husband Rei. She loves their only child Momo intensely, but Momo has become a sullen teenager. She's moved back into her aging mother's home and has to negotiate that relationship anew. She's entwined in a purely sexual affair with a married man. And whenever Kei finds herself drawn away from Tokyo to the desolate seaside resort of Manazuru - a place Rei may or may not have visited before his disappearance - she is stalked by ghosts.

This is a haunting, melancholic, stream of conscious novel about the nebulous distinctions between real life and memory, coming to terms with loss, and the mysterious relationships between the living and the dead.

It won't be to everyone's taste, but you might just fall under its spell if you like Haruki Murakami and Banana Yoshimoto., Hiromi Kawakami

Kei is a woman still teetering on the edge of sanity twelve years after the baffling disappearance of her husband Rei. She loves their only child Momo intensely, but Momo has become a sullen teenager. She's moved back into her aging mother's home and has to negotiate that relationship anew. She's entwined in a purely sexual affair with a married man. And whenever Kei finds herself drawn away from Tokyo to the desolate seaside resort of Manazuru - a place Rei may or may not have visited before his disappearance - she is stalked by ghosts.

This is a haunting, melancholic, stream of conscious novel about the nebulous distinctions between real life and memory, coming to terms with loss, and the mysterious relationships between the living and the dead.

It won't be to everyone's taste, but you might just fall under its spell if you like Haruki Murakami and Banana Yoshimoto.

Whoops, sorry for repeating last three paragraphs .

Book 99 - A re-read of, 'Doctor J and Mr H' because I was wondering whether to teach it or not. I'm not! It's okay, but doesn't excite me very much. It's an absolutely brilliant idea, but the execution is wanting, I think.

50. Lexicon by Max Barry

Thanks to all of you who recommended this. I loved it. What a great, thought provoking read.

36. Some Prefer Nettles, Junichiro Tanizaki

Misako and Kaname's marriage is over, they both have lovers, yet the idea of divorce still humiliates them: it is, after all, the late 1920s - a time of great political and cultural flux for Japan. Misako favours Tokyo and modern, Western influences, whereas Kaname retreats to old Osaka traditions. But things are much more complex than they appear: Misako's progressiveness is "a pretty thin veneer" and Kaname's longing to retreat to an old-fashioned Japanese way of life is compromised by his attraction to a Euroasian prostitute.

A short, perfectly formed novel; economical in language yet conveying so much.

39. Spell it out - David Crystal. A book about the English language; why the alphabet we use is what it is, how different pronunciations for letters arose, and the various apparent anomalies in spelling and pronunciation. Loved every single page and I'll be putting this on my Christmas list. If you've ever wanted to make sense of 'plough' vs 'cough' or 'stationery' vs 'stationary' then go and read this!

Thanks Mrs, that sounds interesting.

41. A Million Suns
42. Shades of Earth - both by Both Revis

These were the last two books in the YA 'Across the Universe' series. General concept: girl is frozen on spaceship as part of a mission to travel to a new planet 300 years away. Gets accidentally unfrozen early. Has to learn to live on mysterious ship with all the 'shipborn' crew and befriends the boy pegged to be the ship's next leader. Becomes embroiled in the many mysteries surrounding the ship, its mission and its population and onboard government. Will they all make it to the new planet and what will they find there if so?

I don't usually read a lot of YA but I loved the concept for this book, and overall it really didn't disappoint. It was very gripping, in fact I read the last book in one sitting - started it when I got home from work at 7pm last night, read pretty much continuously until I finished it at midnight.

The writing was OK, the themes of power, control, leadership, society pretty well dealt with, but the characters were not really that interesting or original. It really was the concept and cleverly-developed plot with loads of twists and turns and game-changing broadenings of scope that made the series so good.

At times the books suffered from the issue of people just NOT TELLING each other crucial information for rather flimsy reasons, but mostly I just turned off the questioning part of my brain and enjoyed this rollickingly good sci fi adventure.

37. The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen - Alan Moore & Kevin O'Neill

Highly enjoyable graphic novel in the style of a Victorian 'penny dreadful'. Packed with literary references, jokes and stunningly intricate visuals.

Book 72 First Among Sequels by Jasper Fforde

Another light-hearted interlude. The fifth Thursday Next book is set many years after the fourth. Her son is now in his late teens and resisting all attempts for him to fulfil his destiny by joining the Chronoguard, she and husband Landen have a 12 year old maths genius daughter, and a second daughter who never seems to be around. SpecOps has been disbanded so Thursday and many of the people she worked with have set up a carpet business as a cover for continuing with their previous SpecOps duties and undertaking some lucrative cheese-smuggling on the side. Over in BookWorld, Thursday also has to assess the two versions of herself from the books written about her for their suitability to join Jurisfiction.

But readership levels are dropping and the BookWorld is concerned. There's a plan afoot to turn the book of Pride and Prejudice into a vote-em-off reality book, and the Council of Genres is contemplating war with Racy Novel, who have been threatening to set off a dirty bomb in Feminist and Ecclesiastical if their demands for greater depth are not met.

It's all wonderfully silly, but Fforde's imagination holds it together in a coherent plot.

I like the sound of the Haruki Murakami one - thanks Bssh.

85. Ian Rankin "Let It Bleed" another solid Rebus story

Those last 2 you've read sound good Bssh