50 Book Challenge 2015 Part 2

[Southeastdweller]

Thread two of the 50 Book Challenge for this year.

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

Previous thread here

My best ever beach read was, 'Let the Right One In.' I usually end up taking a Jane Austen as one of mine, because at least I know it'll be worth reading.

I read Let The Right One In and thought it was terribly YA.

Have you read World War Z? I think you might like it.

Re Neal Stephenson - If you would like to give his stuff a go, I would recommend The Diamond Age. It will probably be very different than anything you have read, but if you give it a chance and read at least half of it, I think you will understand why he is considered God in some circles.

As you said, there must be a book other than This Thing Of Darkness that we can both love. This is getting ridiculous

If you liked Let The Right One In so much, you might also enjoy The Girl With All The Gifts. It's not going to be that elusive second favourite we share, though

I really liked, 'World War Z.' Can't read, 'The Girl With all the Gifts' as it's in present tense and so makes me want to scream.

I didn't LOVE, 'Let the Right One In' but it was perfect for a beach read. Saw the stage production last summer, and that was excellent.

Oh yes, I forgot your present tense allergy I don't even notice the tense in a book, come to think of it. Except in Wolf Hall, where it was hellishly grating on even my deaf ears.

YY re, 'Wolf Hall.'

I even rejected Patrick Ness', 'More Than This' which I had been looking forward to, because of present tense thing. It really grates.

Sympathy for the defunct Kindle, wilting Can you read on phone via the Kindle app? I've got the old keyboard Kindle too and don't bother taking it out and about any more, the phone does the job for journeys etc.

Finished number 7 yesterday, The Voyage Out, Virginia Woolf's first novel, about Rachel Vinrace, a young woman who travels to South America by boat with her aunt and uncle and stays with them in a holiday villa. They socialise with various upper class holidaymakers in a nearby hotel, Rachel becomes engaged to a young man staying there, they take a trip upriver into the jungle, tragedy ensues. Being Woolf, there's not a great deal of action but an awful lot of thought about big questions such as what being in love means, the changing nature of society, role of women etc. I like her writing, but didn't find this one nearly as engaging as 'Mrs Dalloway' (who makes a cameo appearance early on with Mr Dalloway, who turns out to be a bit of a cad).

Now reading Coronation Everest which has been lurking on Kindle for far too long - thanks Best and Remus for the reminder Very enjoyable so far.

Remus, if you need a literary fiction, schlock-bridge, have you thought about introducing a few of the lesser hard science fiction types into your life?

Try The Hyperion books by Dan Simmons, Ian M Banks Culture books, Arthur C Clarke's Childhood's' End or Rendezvous with Rama, Earth Abides by George R Stewart or A Canticle for Leibowitz by Walter Miller. I could go on.

You may already have read these and be mentally telling me to bugger off, but for those that don't read science fiction because they are put off by the genre I'd urge them to try, it's very narrative driven which is lacking in much literary fiction but is intelligent, sometimes beautifully written and the best science fiction has more to say about the nature and meaning of humanity than anything else I've ever read.

I'll stop now, there isn't any science fiction on my list so far this year, there will be though. I go in cycles and am on the look out for some new material so any recommendations would be fantastic.

Thanks, Hound.

Have read, 'Earth Abides' (liked) and, 'A Canticle' (less convincing) and don't get on with Banks. Have read some Clarke but it was a v long time ago. I tried, 'Hyperion' but wasn't terribly taken with it, so didn't finish it.

I would like to read some more classic sci-fi though.

You started but didn't read Hyperion? Now you are really breaking my heart, Remus

Hound - What kind of sci-fi are you in the market for? I might be able to give you some recommendations.

16. Coronation Everest - Jan Morris. Loved this. Morris was assigned to the 1953 Everest expedition as official reporter writing for the Times. He follows the climb high up into the mountains, all the time planning how he is to get the news back to London in time for Queen Elizabeth's Coronation without one of his rivals scooping him. In these days of satellite communications It's almost hard to imagine how difficult getting messages from such a remote place would have been in 1953. It's well written and with great humour.

Great recommendation Remus, I'm off to look for the Ranulph Fiennes polar book you recommended now. But next, The Casual Vacancy.

Me too Cote, Hyperion is one of my most favouritist things ever, I gave it to my non-fiction reading DH and said, 'Read that', it took him a year, but he declared it the best thing he'd ever read.

Cote - all kinds, I love hard SF, loved Uplift by Brin & ADORE Stephen Baxter's Xeelee Sequence and Reynold's Revelation Space.

So I clearly love a bit of hard space opera, any in that line would be brilliant.

But I've also read most classic SF, from Cordwainer Smith, to Alfred Bester, through to William Gibson, all Dick & Clarke and Ballard etc.

I really need new things to read, so yes, I'd love to hear.

Dexter is done!

God I love these books, they just get better and better and Ill be both gutted and elated when the last one is released this year!

Dexter and deb are required to show some Hollywood types how working in homicide works,much to debs disgust as there has just been a particularly brutal murder and she's off the case. They come up with a plan to investigate without actually investigating and find some disturbing evidence to suggest debs actor is in danger. Dexters luck appears to run out in this penultimate book and everything spirals downhill for him to a frustrating cliffhanger ending.

As always with dexter, I've devoured it in a couple of days and now I want more!!!!

Going for gone girl as number 8.... Randomly discovered it on my kindle yesterday!

Seconding the recommendation for Neal Stephenson's The Diamond Age. I loved that. I also liked Snow Crash, although I found that one a bit harder to get into at first.

I've currently got Reamde by Neal Stephenson out from the library, but as it's about 6 inches thick and I don't currently have vast amounts of free reading time, I'm starting to wonder if borrowing that was a bit ambitious. I'm definitely going to be in trouble there if someone else reserves it and I can't keep renewing it for another few weeks. I'm enjoying it so far though.

Back to the challenge - here are my numbers 6-10:

6. Don’t let’s go to the dogs tonight by Alexandra Fuller
7. Molesworth rites again by Simon Brett
8. Letters to the midwife by Jennifer Worth
9. Attention all shipping by Charlie Connelly
10. Granta 130: India

The first one is a memoir of growing up as part of a white settler family in Rhodesia. One of those books I've been meaning to read for ages, it's very well-written, very evocative and incredibly sad in places (her family was hit by some terrible tragedies). Worth a read.

Molesworth and Attention all shipping were both given to me as birthday presents by my DP. He knows I'm a Molesworth fan, and this book, written in the 80s by Simon Brett, imagines Molesworth grown up. It's very well done, and funny in places, though also a bit strange - it doesn't really feel right if you imagine Molesworth always as a schoolboy.

Letters to the midwife - this is another one for fans, really. It's a selection of letters Worth received after she published her midwife books, some of them sharing stories of Poplar or memories of being a midwife. I enjoyed it, anyway. There's a nice intro by her husband and daughters.

Attention all shipping is a travel book where the writer visits all the places mentioned in the shipping forecast. I'd never heard of him before but apparently he's quite well known. It's very Brysonesque and I enjoyed it - laughed out loud a couple of times, and finished the book better informed (e.g. I now know where South Utsire is), which is always a good thing.

The latest issue of Granta features stories and essays about India, mostly by Indians - again, really worth a read, very informative (who knew that there was an internment camp for Japanese civilians in Delhi during WW2?) and good as an introduction to writers I hadn't previously heard of.

Next: am tackling the new Anne Tyler.

So, after being undecided between crime or historical fiction for book number 5, last night I started reading Dissolution by CJ Sansom - best of both worlds!!

So carrying on my theme of light reading
12 One Wrong Move by Shannon McKenna
13 Fatal Strike by Shannon McKenna
14 The Miniturist by Jessie Burton
The first one was a reread to get me back into the mind set for the series very good read horrible baddies and kick ass heroes.
The Miniturist I had to read for book club and much to my surprise I really enjoyed it. The way Nella was looking forward to her new life in Amsterdam. The characters in the house were all engaging, the secrets weren't hard to guess. I found the ending unbearably sad but I think that maybe more how I am reading it rather than how the author intended it to be. I would recommend it though.
Still reading my non fiction as well and I think my next book will be the children's Act

10. Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban Continuing my reread of the series. I'm loving reading these again as an adult, and can't wait till DS is ready for these as bedtime stories.

13. Broken Homes, Ben Aaronovitch A serial killer is on the loose, a council worker goes under a Tube train, a rare old book of magic suddenly re-appears and something odd starts happening on a housing estate in Elephant and Castle. Is there a magical connection? It's up to DC Peter Grant to work it out.

I loved the apparently disparate crimes but also the deepening insights I got into Peter Grant, his boss Thomas Nightingale and his colleague Lesley May. As this series progresses, the insights get richer. I never saw the twist at the end coming! Can't wait to read the next book.

Next up: Little Lies by Liane Moriarty.

Does anyone else ever feel overwhelmed by how many books there are to read? Perhaps i'm over-thinking this but sometimes I just feel that however much I read, I will never be well read because someone will always say "oh, haven't you read so and so...".

Does everyone here read purely for pleasure? How do you choose what to read next? Do you feel, like me, that you need to make yourself read some 'worthy' things? I think I actually have too much on my Kindle and it's stressing me out!

whippetwoman last year I actually stopped reading my Kindle because I had too many unread books on there; I felt too overwhelmed to read any of them! I only read paper books and somehow, because I only bought or borrowed a couple of paper books at a time, I was able to read again. Also, having to pay more for a paper book than a Kindle book made me more considered, more cautious in my choices. I'm back to reading my Kindle again now (as well as paper books) but I only download a book when I'm ready to actually read it.

As for choosing books... well, my tastes are very eclectic and I love reading chick lit as well as Booker-short listed books. So long as they are well-written (plot, characterisation, style, descriptions, structure) then I am an appreciative reader. I choose a book according to mood and sometimes that can be a "I feel I ought to read this book because it's a classic" kind of mood :)

Whippet I know exactly what you mean, and for some reason I feel almost embarrassed when I have read a "unworthy" book. I have just finished reading the latest shopaholic book (which was rubbish!) and was feeling inferior about reporting in on that one which I know is daft! Anyway book 10 done.

My next book is when hitler stole pink rabbit