50 Book Challenge 2015 Part 1

[Southeastdweller]

Thread one of the 50 Book Challenge.

The idea is to read 50 books (or more!) in 2015.

Who's in for this year?

I downloaded Flowers For Algernon just now SandraWood - it looks like my kind of book from few pages I read so far
I will be following your comments as may discover other books I wouldn't have though of reading.

Hi all, followed the thread last year but didn't get round to posting.

Am very much up for joining in for 2015. Currently got 3 books on the go (depending on mood I generally flick between a few!): The Help by Kathryn Stockett, Sense and Sensibility and The Shock of The Fall. All very good, although S&S is taking a while to get into and is not my favourite Austen by any stretch.

Will update with a quick review once complete. In the meantime just wanted to mark my place and say hi!

Hi all,

1. Hell's Corner by David Baldacci.

Features ex CIA assassin and all round good egg Oliver Stone saving the world from various ne'er do wells. A bit like Jack Reacher, except Stone also has a crew of handy friends who are mix of social misfits, secret service agents and con artists to help him out. Great stuff.

Will now read back through the thread to pick up some more recommendations!

I'm in! Made it to 59 last year, was v pleased with myself

Top Five
Life After Life
The Goldfinch
The Diet Delusion
Game of Thrones
The Rabbit Back Literature Society

No 1 this year is The Crimson Petal and the White by Michel Faber This was disappointing. The writer is very skilled and it is excellently written with a modern eye but the story itself was very pedestrian. Essentially a rich, spoilt, arrogant and self absorbed young man meets a prostitute who has intellect and wit and insists on taking her for himself. She becomes more and more dependent upon him eventually moving into his house as a governess to his daughter with predictably poor results. Oh and the wife is mad. Yawn. Has this not been told a million times before? There's an effort to contrast the severe religiosity of the era with its hypocrisy but to me they were farcically drawn and difficult to find credible as a result. Certainly the era was not kind to women but I did not really need to read 922 pages to learn that. O dear. Anyway, I would not recommend though I see online some people love it. I would say don't let it put you off his other books, I read Under the Skin last year and really enjoyed it.

Need a break now, might try The Blue Castle by LM Montgomery which I bought on a whim when reminiscing about favourite childhood books! Still trying to finish Far From the Tree also....

I started The Crimson Petal and the White a month ago and just couldn't be bothered.... I think it was just lots of words being put together for the enjoyment of the writer. I had high hopes for that book though

Anti, hadn't read any of his others yet he's ok my list of authors to read more of for this year

Duchess, was wondering about the children's act as I was debating whether to get it the other day, so that'll be going on the list too.

The children act is only 220 pages, reads very fast, you won't regret reading it.

1. The Wrong Knickers by Bryony Gordon - an account of her hedonistic 20s of drink, drugs, bedsits and casual sex - a bit more substance to it than you'd think

Book Two 'NOS4R2' by Joe Hill (Stephen King's son)
Having hated, 'Horns' I wasn't going to bother with this, but needed an easy (but big!) read. It was okay. Various links to his dad's stuff, and I wouldn't be at all surprised if it was discovered that his dad actually wrote some of it too. Overall, I thought it was reasonably interesting but:

• too long - it needed some serious editing
• the ending was a disappointment (like a lot of his dad's stuff!)
• I actually felt a bit cheated at the end. Can't say too much without spoiling it, but let's just say that the 'thing' that happened didn't really need to have, and the book would have been better if it didn't. Setting up for the soppy 'maybe happy ending' felt like a cheat, when we could have had an 'actual' happy ending. I know that sounds silly, but I feel the need for proper happy endings right now!
• I thought he should have had more regard for his characters and less regard for tricks and attempts to be clever. Again, I know that sounds a bit daft!

I probably won't bother with another of his, unless I'm really desperate. It was better than King at his worst (Needful Things, Revival) but not anywhere near close enough to King at his best.

For anybody who has read it though, can I just say that I absolutely loved the character of Lou!

Book Three - Wilkie Collins 'The Dead Alive'

Oh I do love Wilkie! I liked this. V similar to lots of his other books, but that's no bad thing. :) He is a man who likes women, and that's why I like him.

1. The Dispossessed, Ursula Le Guin

A brilliant physicist leaves his arid, anarchist planet of Anarres for the lush, capitalistic sister-planet of Urras, hoping for more acceptance of his ideas. But he soon discovers he's being used as a pawn in a deadly political game.

Impeccably written and full of thought-provoking ideas on science and society.

Now starting The Bell Jar.

Remus I love Wilkie Collins too and I haven't heard of 'The Dead Alive' so will download it to my Kindle. I read 'Armadale' a few months ago and really enjoyed it, but my favourite of his that I have read is 'No Name'

'No Name' is my favourite too. :)

I didn't like, 'Armadale' - I think it's probably the one I've liked least of his so far (and have read a lot of them!).

Have just bought three books based on recommendations above. Arghh, this thread doesn't help my to-read list get shorter!

1. Us by David Nicholls. This was a bit meh. The main character started to really annoy me in the second half. A disappointment after One Day.

1. The Miniaturist

Bit torn by this one. On one hand, the main character is wetter than a whale's wedding tackle - at various points I wanted to shout 'get a grip, take control!' and the other characters seemed somewhat underdeveloped.

It's also very predictable, and in fact you could probably lose the whole 'miniaturist' from the story and it wouldn't make a great deal of difference in terms of plot. The whole thing seemed a bit pointless really, and felt unfinished.

But...the writing is good, enchanting in places and it was an easy read.

Didn't see what the lists of what people earned/what things cost at the end added to it other than 'look! I've done lots of research!'

Would possibly recommend for a holiday read. Would be interested to read something else by the same author.

Next book is May We Be Forgiven by A M Holmes on the kindle, still on with Black House in paperback.

1. The Storyteller by Jodi Picoult

Loved the storytelling aspect of this, would have liked to read it on holiday. Pretty harrowing account of the holocaust and raised some interesting moral/philosophical questions about punishment and forgiveness which I enjoyed thinking about.

Some of the characters were quite annoying, like the main character's lover and her sisters...some of the rest of it was just way too far fetched, like a Nazi and about the only victim he could clearly remember ending up in the same corner of America. So, annoying if you over-think but good for a quick read.

#1 the midwich cuckoos
#2 in cold blood
#3 shock of the fall
#4 12 years a slave
#5 Saturday by Ian McEwan ...I'm finding this really hard work to read though. Its incredibly waffly and not really going anywhere. Its annoying me there are no chapters as such as well. I may have to move on to something else tbh (only the second book ill have ever given up on!)

1. The Woman Who Stole My Life - I like Marian Keyes and enjoyed this. It isn't going to win any literary awards but was a good enough read.

Bring up the bodies next in preparation for the bbc2 series in a couple of weeks.

1. The Scorch Trials (James Dashner)
2. The Death Cure (James Dashner)
3. Die Again (Tess Gerritsen)

Can't decide what to read next!

1. December by Phil Rickman

Four musicians with psychic abilities are brought together in December 1980 to record an album in a studio set up in a ruined medieval abbey. The record company boss (whose name Rickman's readers might recognise from Curfew) is a New Age type and wants to see what mystical forces bringing these four musicians together will create. Instead, on the night that John Lennon is murdered in New York, chaos is unleashed and blood is shed. Fourteen years later, the foursome are forced to return to the abbey to face the evil they discovered there.

Another good one from Rickman's early catalogue, although maybe not as creepy as some. There are two characters here who appear elsewhere in his novels - as well as the record company boss, there is folk singer of gypsy heritage Moira Cairns. And the ghost of John Lennon makes his presence felt as well.

Book 3: Behind the Scenes at the Museum- Kate Atkinson

This is the first book I've read of hers and I loved it. Definitely going to buy more.

#3 Wee White Blossom by Lesley Riddoch

This is an update on Lesley's last book Blossom - What Scotland Needs to Flourish that was written a few years back i.e. pre referendum. So much has changed in the past two years it was good to get Lesley's perspective. It was great to read how women have been the force for change in many cases. The book covers a lot of subjects - land ownership, health, local government, childcare etc and is written in a very warm and inspiring style.

Back to fiction for book #4 and it's going to be Donna Tartt's Secret History.

Book 4. City of Bones by Cassandra Clare

A YA urban fantasy, the first in the Immortal Instruments series.

What can I say? The story is what these stories usually are; an ordinary girl discovers that she's not so ordinary after all.

It's what we know from Star Wars to Harry Potter.

But what does make this book worth a look, for teens and any interested adults, is the world building. Clare has created a richly detailed magical world that sits alongside modern day NY.

Hello, can I join? Have a huge amount of books waiting in my Kindle library and a reproachful bookshelf, dc2 has just turned 1 so no more excuses. Managed a paltry five last year.

I'm hoping to get back into some sci-fi and fantasy and discover some new (to me) authors, have Flowers for Algernon and Feist Magician to this end, so good to see others are reading these too.

At the moment I am half way through Lucky Jim, which I'm finding very funny but difficult to remember to pick up, and have just raced through the first half of The Bad Mother by Esther Walker (1.99 E-book). It's not my usual taste but she's a funny writer and it's speaking to how I'm feeling at the moment

Hoping to ease myself in with these two.

To whoever was reading Ulysses, sorry can't remember your name (maybe hackmum?) it does get particularly slow-going past the half-way point, but picks up again. It's never a page turner as such but I loved it when I read it.

I just approached it purely from the point of view of enjoying the language and wordplay, and letting myself see the jokes as opposed to focusing on the overarching plot, and found it quite an easy read once I got my eye in.

There's a rather good book called 'Ulysses and Us' that unpacks it all a bit, and comes at it from the perspective of it being a book for and about ordinary people. Sorry for the ramble, guess Joyce brings it out in people

I'm still going through my kindle unlimited trial books. Peppermintinfusion A Tale for the Time Being is on there if you're looking for something a bit more heavyweight. It is a booker shortlist from 2013 I think about a japanese schoolgirl and is a good read.

1. The Magpies - Mark Edward. Psychologicla thriller about the neighbours from hell. A very easy read but you do want ot shake tha main character.

1. The Photographer's Wife - Nick Alexander. Another easy read, I spotted the "twist" a mile off and again found the main character (Sophie) rather annoying.

Loved Flowers for Algernon - classic.