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50 Book Challenge 2014 Part 4

950 replies

Southeastdweller · 28/08/2014 12:31

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

OP posts:
MrsCosmopilite · 03/12/2014 10:14

51: Henry's Trials: The Story of Henry John Hatch, First Chaplain of Wandsworth Prison - P.N.D. Maggs
Trigger warning
Henry was a respected and dedicated chaplain until he tried to increase his income by taking in scholars to be tutored alongside his adopted daughter. Allegations of sexual assault were made against him by his students, and the trial which followed was biased. Henry was jailed, later pardoned. He sued his accuser, and again, the trial was biased. Later, he brought action against his original legal team, and yet again, the trial was biased.

A depressing but interesting read which illustrates how the legal system failed a seemingly good man, and the myriad difficulties which ensued following each trial.

Sonnet · 03/12/2014 18:30

Grin re Notes on a Scandal! I love it when opinions on books differ so much!
Just finished All Change by Elizabeth Jane Howard. I'm afraid for me that this fifth book was a bit of a let down. I feel quite sad about it somehow!

Book 85 has to be Candlenight by Phil Rickman. Just need to do some tidying up and then it is a hot bath with my new book - bliss Smile

BestIsWest · 04/12/2014 18:11

68 Love Nina, Nina Stibbe. Took me straight back to my eighties Student days although I do wish I'd had Alan Bennett, Claire Tomalin and Michael Frayn as neighbours instead of Dave Hill of Slade.

  1. Jenny Colgan. Can't remember the name but I enjoyed it.

  2. Do No Harm - Henry Marsh.

Excellent autobiography of a neurosurgeon in which he relates the often heartbreaking stories of several of the cases he's operated on over the years. This was very well written and painfully honest. Recommended.

BestIsWest · 04/12/2014 18:16

I had Untold Stories as a paper back a few years ago and it disintegrated in my hands as I was reading it for the first time. I borrowed my Dad's copy to read it again recently and that was beginning to come apart too. Why do some paperbacks do that?

And yet some last for years.

Southeastdweller · 04/12/2014 20:00

Best - what did you think of Love, Nina?

OP posts:
CoteDAzur · 04/12/2014 20:04

Best - I have Do No Harm on my Kindle and I'm looking forward to reading it Smile

BestIsWest · 04/12/2014 20:34

I liked it south. Maybe because she is around my age and I could relate to a lot of the clothing and hair do rubbish and I liked hearing about AB and co. It wasn't the best thing I've read this year but not the worst either.

Last year I found and re read all the letters my best friend sent me when we were both at Uni, she in London, me in the Midlands. They had a lot in common with Love Nina, funny sweet, set in the same period etc, so it reminded me of her, probably why I liked it.

Hope you enjoy it Cote.

tumbletumble · 05/12/2014 05:36

Me too - I've got Do No Harm on my kindle and I'm looking forward to it. This thread has really encouraged me to read more non-fiction.

I also have Notes on a Scandal and I'm waiting to see which side of the fence I fall!

Currently halfway through Cloud Atlas and enjoying it.

CoteDAzur · 05/12/2014 09:37

Kindle Deal of the day is Charles Cumming's modern spy books - £0.99 each. Imho he is the best espionage author of our times and I really recommend these. Start with A Spy By Nature and go from there.

ChillieJeanie · 05/12/2014 10:41

Book 103 Saints of the Shadow Bible by Ian Rankin

That's it, I'm up to date with Rebus! Rankin is my most-read author of the year since I've read 15 of his.

Rebus is back on the force, although as a Detective Sergeant rather than Detective Inspector. Malcolm Fox, in his last investigation with The Complaints, is looking at a 30-year-old case, with the team Rebus was on then under the microscope. He involves Rebus, who was new to the team at the time, as a means of gaining access to the other members of the team. Meanwhile, a young woman found unconscious at the wheel of a crashed car causes interest when evidence suggests it was no ordinary crash. Her boyfriend is the son of the Scottish Justice Minister, and neither of them are keen on talking to the police.

I will be interested to see where Rankin goes next with this. Siobhan Clarke is doing well as a DI, and DI Malcolm Fox looks to be moving back to CID, and along with Rebus they are all tied together in the different investigations running throughout the book.

BsshBosh · 05/12/2014 18:17
  1. The Book of Strange New Things, Michel Faber A Christian missionary is sent into outer space to evangelise the natives. Beautifully written, but it didn't absorb me enough to make a lasting impression. I was quite bored by a lot of it, especially his time with the aliens who were written as if they were an homogenous group and therefore not very interesting.
RemusLupinsBiggestGroupie · 06/12/2014 00:01

Book 130 - Bitch in a Bonnet volume 2
Loved it.

Book 131 - This Game of Ghosts
Didn't think an awful lot of this, although some of the Tibetan history was interesting. I thought it was very thin, and I liked him a lot less than I have in some of his others. I thought he came across as a bit of a tosser at times, in this one.

hackmum · 06/12/2014 10:06

Do no harm is excellent - a big recommend from me.

I've just finished book no 78, so I have two more books to go before I can post my updated list (I've been doing 10 at a time, so I don't spend all my life on this thread...)

CoteDAzur · 06/12/2014 10:17

If anyone is left in the world who would like to read Gone Girl but hasn't, it is £0.99 on the Kindle at the moment.

bibliomania · 06/12/2014 11:00
  1. The Monogram Murders, Sophie Hannah. Poirot brought back to life. Not bad, but a bit unnecessary.

  2. Bobby on the Beat: The True Story of a 1950s Policewoman, Pamela Rhodes. Okay, not a particularly intellectual read, but I felt like dipping into someone else's life for a bit. All fairly local to me too.

  3. Holiday SOS: Sun, Sea and Surgery, Ben MacFarlane. Another non-fic - life as a doctor that accompanies people being repatriated after an illness or accident overseas.

  4. Nickel and Dimed, Barbara Ehrenreich. A re-read. Still very relevant - the unfairness of life on the minimum wage in the US. A corrective to the idea that simply taking away housing benefit will render housing more affordable.

  5. A Sea of Trouble, Donna Leon. More crime in Venice.

  6. Doctored Evidence, Donna Leon. Ditto.

  7. Penelope Fitzgerald: A Life, Hermione Lee. Wanted to read this due ot the book reviews, but I think they gave away all the interesting parts. Still, reassuring to read about someone who initially failed to live up to their early promise, but who came good late in life. Life as a literary prizewinner still not a bed of roses though.

  8. Bones Never Lie, Kathy Reichs.

Vaguely dissatisfied with my recent reading. Currently coming to the end of Hermione Lee's biography of Virginia Woolf, which I've enjoyed but haven't really found myself immersed in.

Next up is Niall William's History of the Rain and Robert Galbraith, The Silkworm, as both due back at the library in the next 10 days.

ChillieJeanie · 07/12/2014 20:58

Book 104 Curfew by Phil Rickman

Crybbe is a town on the English-Welsh border which has, in its time, been part of both countries. The people there do not like outsiders, keep themselves very much to themselves, and stay off the streets each night as the curfew bell is tolled, as it has been for four hundred years. Into the town comes radio reporter Fay Morrison, who has come to look after her father, an elderly priest starting to succumb to dementia, and Max Goff, a millionaire music tycoon with an overpowering interest in the supernatural. Max wants to make Crybbe into an international centre for New Age spirituality. The locals, however, just want him to go away. And no one says anything about the town's history of dark magic, or the evil that Max's interest in earth magic is about to unleash.

While this counts as one of Rickman's stand alone novels, chronologically it fits in between Candlenight and The Chalice, with characters from both of them and from the Merrily Watkins series putting in an appearance. It starts out with a very creepy atmosphere and gets progressively more so.

CoteDAzur · 07/12/2014 21:23

I'm 42% into The Crimson Petal And The White and frankly not enjoying it very much by now. It's a book about an intellectual prostitute in Victorian London - how can it be this dull? Sad

Can someone give me hope that it will get better soon? I'm beginning to get a bunny boiler vibe from Sugar and I'm hoping that there will at least be some psycho twist to the story at some point.

Sonnet · 07/12/2014 21:51

Finished (85) Candlenight by Phil Rickman - Loved it!! Thank you Chillie for introducing me to him Smile

I am reading with interest all your comments on Love Nina as that is our book group choice for this month. Too early for me to start it yet though so in the meantime book 86 is a charity shop find Saving Max by Antoinette Van Heugten.

BestIsWest · 07/12/2014 21:56

I enjoyed it Cote although I had no idea where it was going and I don't think the author did either. The ending was a bit unsatisfactory.

Southeastdweller · 07/12/2014 22:35
  1. Elizabeth is Missing - Emma Healey

Published in June, this novel is about an elderly lady with dementia and her search for her missing friend, and also about the mystery of her sister, retold in flashbacks, who also went missing. This was a curiously unmoving, and generally boring read. Hopefully the TV adaptation will be exciting to watch and an improvement on this overrated book.

  1. My Salinger Year - Joanna Rakoff

This is a 'coming-of-age' memoir from a writer who used to work at a literary agency in New York where J.D Salinger was a client. The link to Salinger was weak in relation to this book and I didn't believe some of what she said. The 'poor me, little orphan Annie' narrative quickly got tiresome but she's good at evoking 90's New York and made me feel wistful about a time when life seemed less stressful, before the internet changed how we all live forever.

Don't recommend either of these two.

OP posts:
CoteDAzur · 07/12/2014 22:45

Best - Yes, that's exactly how it feels. Author just doesn't seem to know where the story is going and it doesn't seem to go anywhere. After 400 pages, you would hope to see some sort of story developing. Instead, I could write all that happened so far in two paragraphs.

I just wanted to know if something interesting will happen soon. Anything.

RemusLupinsBiggestGroupie · 08/12/2014 19:29

Book 132 - 'The Birthday Boys' by Beryl Bainbridge
This is based on Scott's doomed expedition to the South Pole and is narrated by the five members of the party which made the final push to the pole. Being something of an Antarctic-freak, I'm astounded that I haven't read this before! It's very well researched and really seemed to get under the skin and inside the minds of these five very different men, and the complexities of their relationships. I absolutely loved it.

RemusLupinsBiggestGroupie · 08/12/2014 19:31

I gave up on, 'The Crimson Petal' years ago. It was doing absolutely nothing for me, and since the period and ideas are v much my thing, I decided that if I still wasn't engaging with it, it must be the writer's fault! I found it really tedious.

BestIsWest · 08/12/2014 21:14
  1. Persuasion - Jane Austen

72 - The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks -Rebecca Skloot. Recommended on here often and well worth a read. Sensitively written too.

wiltingfast · 09/12/2014 13:39

Ah no, Crimson is rubbish? It's on my next to read list! Sounded fab and I've really enjoyed his shorter books...

Just finished

  1. the sensorium of god: the sky's dark labyrinth by stuart clark; Really enjoyed this, the character of Isaac Newton was fascinating, I'd no idea he was so interesting! Might even pursue some of the reading mentioned at the back. The struggle between religion and science is fascinating, amazing to think gravity was so controversial. It's not at all a dry sciency read, gives you some insight into the science but mostly it is about the struggle to understand gravity and the context in which that took place. I'm not doing it justice, it was really good and I really recommend it.

Now reading Wanderjahre: A Reporter's Journey in a Mad World by Lutz Kleveman. Good enough, it's about a relatively selfish and narcissistic young man who plunges into reporting terrible conflicts around the world. It's a bit anecdotal in tone and it is interspersed with his reflections on his family history and in particular, his family's relations and involvement with the Nazis. It is interesting to read about someone engaging with such an unpalatable part of his past.

Was going to read The Crimson and the Petal next but not sure now... might try and finish Far from the Tree instead but I can't really lug it about...