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

Love the sound of that Phil Rickman novel Chillie! I have you to thank for introducing him to me

Finished Notes on a Scandal and thoroughly enjoyed it.
83 was The Life Changing Magic of Tidying. Great principals but can't apply it to my books
84 is All Change by Elizabeth Jane Howard. I have been a Cazelet fan since 1996 and after looking forward to book 5 being published last year I never read more than 25% of it so starting again now.

Just purchased Candlenight ChillieJeanie - for after All Change

Sonnet - another fan of Notes on a Scandal . Really glad you enjoyed it, too. I seemed to stir it up a bit on here when I mentioned I had read it. Hadn't thought it could cause so much strong feeling

I'm really glad I stumbled upon him too Sonnet! I picked up a tattered copy of The Wine of Angels in a second hand book shop last summer and have been hooked ever since. Fortunately I have a few more of Phil Rickman's early novels to get before I start being impatient for him to write a new one, but I could just read them all again while I wait!

I suspect I was the one stirring up re, 'Notes on a Scandal.' I absolutely loathed it.

Yep it was you Remus We'll just have to agree to differ on that book

113. The Summer Book by Tove Jansson. Quirky and charming little novel about the close relationship between a little girl and her grandmother, set on a tiny island in Finland over one summer.

"This book has clearly been written as a script for a B-movie, and will no doubt be filmed soon."

Cote, de-lurking to say that The Strain has indeed been filmed, but for the telly rather than the big screen. In fact, it's being telecast right now

Well, I did have a strong feeling that it would be filmed It was not just the stereotypical action-movie stuff but also all those descriptions of where the characters are looking and the expressions on their faces, rather than what they are thinking.

Still here, still reading, but reading very sloooowwwwwlllyyy these days as DH bought a Playstation 4 and I am hooked. Will have to impose limits on my playing.

Two thirds of the way through Michel Faber's The Book of Strange New Things.

45. Midwife : Liza by Valerie Levy. This was really interesting; lots of detail about herbal medicines in the Middle Ages and superstitions about child birth (I would not have appreciated being thrown into the air on a bed sheet to get my contractions going!). I think this is a series but haven't been able to find the next one yet.

46.Yellow Crocus by Laila Ibrahim.
47. The Gentlemen's Club by Emmanuelle de Maupassant.
48. The Bookseller of Kabul by Åsne Seierstad
49. Just started Saturday by Ian McEwan. Not sure if I like it yet, it's taking some time to warm up to it.

Bshh - I'm reading Michel Faber's The Crimson Petal And The White at the moment

Zombies in bonnets! I love it definitely must check out bitch in a bonnet about austen, love austen.

Anyway...

49. Dissolution by cj sansom hmm, I know a lot of you like this series but tbh I wasn't that awfully wild about it. I found the personal relationships interesting. Is that developed further in the series? I have never really enjoyed mysteries as an adult. Think I read too many as a teenager (five find-outers anyone? Anyone??)

50. (yay me!) Dust by hugh howey

51. Shift by hugh howey For me there was a fantastic story here poorly written and treated.

52. Station Eleven by emily st john mandel. This was ok. I didn't find the overnight collapse of society that credible somehow. And there was no focus on the immediate aftermath at all. Just all a bit unsatisfying. Why all the focus on the actor? Maybe I was missing something. I did read it all, it was a reasonable read, just not what I expected.

Now reading the sensorium of god: the sky's dark labyrinth by stuart clark. Pretty good so far. Better than the first one about kepler by miles...

Hello. I haven’t posted for a while but I am still reading and enjoying the thread very much indeed. So here is where I am at since my last post:

58. Jubliee Lines: 60 Poets for 60 Years – ed. By Carol Ann Duffy
59. Best Exotic Marigold Hotel – Deborah Moggach
60. The Enchanted April – Elizabeth Von Arnim
61. Interpreter of Maladies – Jhumpa Lahiri
62. Americanah – Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
63. Burial Rites – Hannah Kent
64. Transatlantic – Colum McCann
65. Ammonites and Leaping Fish: A Life in Time – Penelope Lively
66. Norwegian Wood – Haruki Murakami
67. Divergent – Veronica Roth
68. The Reader – Bernhard Schlink
69. Wessex Tales – Thomas Hardy
70. The Haunted Hotel – Wilkie Collins
71. Candide – Voltaire

Of these, I loved Burial Rights and Norwegian Wood and was so glad to have finally read them. The Reader was also very interesting, although I had seen the film and knew the story – still good though. Enjoyed Divergent, it was gripping YA fiction (and my daughter wanted me to read it). The Wilkie Collins was not his best one, lots of burning gazes and fevered brows. Candide is a great satire and I enjoyed it, having left it years ago.

Aiming to get to 75 by the end of the year!

I went to do some Christmas shopping this morning and also found the last Rebus in a second hand shop, plus treated myself to another Phil Rickman in Waterstones. I'm now not sure which to go for first once I've finished my current read!

Cote - will be interested to read your thoughts on The Crimson Petal and the White. I bought a copy a while ago, but am feeling a bit daunted by its size. Perhaps 2015 will be the year for me to tackle the big books.

I've been putting off reading The Luminaries as well, for the same reason. Fewer books perhaps next year, and concentrating on the big stories.

Talking of big books, though, am over half way through Untold Stories - the end is in sight, hopefully by Christmas :)

Started listening to The Paying Guests by Sarah Waters. I take back the comment I made on the other thread about books from Audible - Juliet Stevenson is reading this really well. Love it so far.

Everything always comes at once though - just picked up my copy of Foxglove Summer by Ben Aaronovitch from the library (have been waiting weeks and weeks for this). It had better be good :o

Duchess - I'm enjoying it although absolutely nothing has happened so far. It has an interesting style and works well as "period" fiction.

Re fear of long books, I would recommend getting a Kindle. I have no idea how long my books are when I start reading them. It is only when I read 15 pages or so and notice only a 1% change that begin to suspect that I may have a 1,000-pager on my hands. By then, it's too late, of course

I loved The Luminaries, by the way. Definitely read it. I still can't get my head around how a 28-year-old woman wrote that amazing book

Wilting - maybe we should write a zombies in bonnets series. There's clearly a market for it!

I really like the Shardlake series and recommend continuing with them. Not many of the characters from the first book are in the second, but Shardlake obviously develops, as does his relationship with Guy - and you get to meet Jack Barak in the second one!

Cote - I have got a kindle :) Part of my problem I think is that I get distracted by the percentages. With a book I can see the pages turned and know where I'm at but a long kindle book where the percentage doesn't go up by much, even though you've been reading for hours, is just as daunting :o. A good example is the book I'm reading at the moment - Untold Stories by Alan Bennett. The hardback copy I borrowed from my dad is about 650 pages long, but you'd need a wheelbarrow to lug it around :o I bought it on kindle and keep checking my progress with the book. It's taking a long time to read it, enjoyable, but the percentage only goes up by about 5% a day. I just need to get my head around that, really :)

I get distracted by the percentages too, though you can turn them off. Every now and then I like to read a "proper" book to remind me what they're like. I read Life and Fate on a Kindle (900 pages of misery centred around the battle of Stalingrad) and I think that was slightly harder work than it would have been with a print edition.

Men Explain Things to Me And other Essays by Rebecca Solnit.

A collection of short essays on feminism by Solnit. The title essay went viral a few years ago and discusses the silencing of female voices. It really struck a chord with me and I read the whole set very quickly. It ranges from very factual to philosophical, but the prose is clear and concise.

I can't say I miss print books. Some of you might remember from earlier this year that I started reading Bach: Music In The Castle Of Heaven from a huge hardback that weighs about a kg, but then switched over to the Kindle copy which mercifully appeared as an Amazon daily deal around that time. The book is huge, heavy and hard to hold in bed, not to mention impossible to carry around with me. It has great color pictures, though, so I looked back at the bound copy for those.

Book 102 Eternal by Craig Russell

Following two murders in 24 hours - one a former left-wing radical turned environmental campaigner and the other a geneticist researching the possibility of inherited memory - Jan Fabel and his murder squad in Hamburg's police have their work cut out for them. There is no forensic evidence at the crime scenes and apparently no connection between the victims, other than their deaths which included being scalped. All that was found at each scene was a single red hair cut fromt he same head twenty years earlier. Fabel and his team have to look into political history of 1970s and 1980s Germany as they search for a killer who believes he has been reincarnated to exact revenge on those who had betrayed him in a previous life.

Be warned, it's pretty gruesome, but Russell does come up with some inventive and seemingly omnipotent killers. He also used to be a police officer himself, although that was in Scotland, so has that insight to add to the police procedural.