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

10. Old Filth - Jane Gardam. A book group choice by an author I had never heard of but have since discovered has written a lot of books. The book tells the story of Sir Edward Feathers who was a "Raj Orphan", born in Malaya his mother died soon after childbirth and at the age of 4 he is sent back to the UK to live with a foster family. The beginning of the book finds him retired and living in Dorset with his wife Betty after a successful and lucrative career as a judge in Hong Kong. The story of his life is shown in flashbacks and the title relates to his nickname Filth which stands for " Failed in London try Hong Kong".
    A great read, fairly short (260 pages). It is the first in a trilogy and I am keen to read the next.

11. The Signature of All Things - Elizabeth Gilbert. I loved this too and raced through it in less than a week (quick by my standards). It is set in the 18th and 19th Century in Philadelphia and traces the life of Alma Whittaker, precocious daughter of a British self-made millionaire and a dour Dutch woman. Born in to a family interested in, and making their fortune from botany, Alma herself becomes a successful botanist. An epic book which encompasses family, sacrifice, science, evolution, spiritualism among many other themes!

I have now just started The Apple: Crimson Petal Stories by Michael Faber, which I downloaded recently when it was a Kindle daily deal. It is a collection of short stories based on some of the characters featured in the book The Crimson Petal and the White, another epic book which I read a few years ago and loved. Again another fairly short book which should help to bump up my total

I have recently read A Journal of the Plague Year by Defoe for research purposes whippetwoman and very much enjoyed it. Hard to imagine how it must have been to live through (if you were lucky to survive of course) and the sheer scale people were dying.

Hope you feel better soon!

Happy birthday, Provencal and hope you feel better soon, whippetwoman!

EleanorRugby, Jane Gardam is one of my absolute favourite writers and Old Filth one of her best. The next too in the trilogy are both wonderful and add layers of depth to the story and the minor characters from Filth. Would also recommend Crusoe's Daughter, one of her early novels, which is superb IMHO.

Latest ones read for me are 13 - Bodies of Light, Sarah Moss, and 14, The President's Hat, Antoine Lauraine.

Bodies of Light had me completely hooked and frustrated at the same time. It's the story of Ally, daughter of Alfred, a Pre-Raphaelite artist, and Elizabeth, an early suffragette and campaigner for women's rights. It's beautifully written and emotionally involving, but Moss initially draws us into Elizabeth's and Alfred's very separate (and conflicting) worlds and then seems to lose interest in them as Ally matures and the story follows her training to become one of the first female doctors in the UK. Clearly she's done lots of research and it is fascinating stuff, but I was conscious of being told lots of facts at times. I would recommend it though, and am now reading her book Night Waking which is linked (though set today) by historic letters from Ally's younger sister May.

The President's Hat was a Kindle cheapie buy, a short and amusing little tale about Francois Mitterand leaving his hat in a restaurant. The hat is then picked up and lost by a series of people, each time bringing about a change in their fortunes. Not bad for 99p.

29. The Lacuna, Barbara Kingsolver -- The story of Harrison Shepherd, a young man who grows up in Mexico, and finds himself working in the house of artists Diego Rivera and Frida Kahlo, where he meets exiled communist Lev Trotsky. I absolutely loved it. Loved it. It's long and slower than wading through golden syrup, but it hooked me even so, and I will be seeking out more by the author.

30. The Night Guest, Fiona McFarlane -- Ruth is an elderly woman who wakes one night, certain that a tiger is prowling around her coastal home in the middle of the night. When Frida turns up, claiming that she has been sent to look after her, Ruth doesn't know what to believe. Can Frida be trusted, or is there something more sinister going on?

I enjoyed this but didn't feel it worked quite as well as it could have. It was beautifully written, and Ruth's confusion was caught well. I think it would have worked better witout the final clarifying chapter, leaving the reader to piece together the clues.

#12 Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell. An odd one. I liked bits of this, but not all. Still not sure about how it was constructed as to me, not all the stories flowed together that well, and when I started reading it, I didn't realise it was a set of connecting tales.
That said, the section with the Orisons of Somni were chilling and thoroughly engaging. I don't think this is a book I'd read again, but I would try other DM books.

MollyMa I completely agree with your opinion of The Humans. I couldn't understand why it got such good reviews.

MrsCosmopilite you need to read Cote's explanatory thread about Cloud Atlas!

frogletsmum yes definitely plan to read the next two in the Filth trilogy. Thanks for the recommendation of Crusoe's Daughter, I am keen to read more of her books and it is good to have one recommended, especially as it would seem she has published quite a lot.

20. Witches by Tracy Borman

A study of the witch hunts in England under the reign of James I, centred around the case of the death of the son of the Earl of Rutland and his younger brother's serious illness. Three local women, Joan Flower and her daughters Phillipa and Margaret, were accused of causing the death and illness through witchcraft and sent for trial in Lincoln. The mother died on the journey to Lincoln after their arrest while her daughters were interrogated, tried, and eventually hanged as witches. Borman covers James I's belief in and fear of witchcraft, the rise of witch trials under his reign and across Europe, the spread of suspicion, the tortures involved, and other matters.

Towards the end of the book, though, and after the trial, Borman drops into more of a narrative style. The Earl of Rutland was one of the favourites of James' court so the case was unusual in that it closely touched one of the highest families in the land. He was extremely rich, and his daughter from his first marriage caught the eye of the dissolute George Villiers, who eventually became the Duke of Buckingham. Borman sets out an account of how the marriage of Katherine and Villiers eventually came about, and tries to sow a seed of suspicion against Villiers himself for the death of the younger son (who probably had epilepsy), which happened quite a while after the deaths of the Flowers and which left Katherine the heiress to a substantial fortune and land.

Interesting read, but I felt that its coverage of the case of the Flowers was surprisingly thin in places, given that it was that on which the whole book is meant to hang.

17. Clever Girl - Tessa Hadley

A mostly tedious tale of a woman's life from childhood to her 50's, I felt it was overwritten in places, which alienated me from the book and the main character, though it was interesting as ever to note that someone as academically gifted as this protagonist was can make stupid decisions, repeatedly, in life.

18. The Sense of an Ending - Julian Barnes

A middle-aged man receives a bequeathed a diary from an old school friend, which causes him to look back on his life and meet up with his university girlfriend, after forty years, to work out what the bequest was about. An engrossing read with many original and thought-provoking passages on ageing and memories, I was also delighted with how authentic the dialogue felt (unusual in contemporary novels, I find). I'm going to read more of his books and I would recommend it, especially if you're after a short book, but I'm a little baffled this won the Man Booker prize in 2011.

Book 19 is very different from those two - a biography on Alexander McQueen, a compulsive read so far.

MrsCosmopilite - Check out this (short) thread and let me know what you think.

I am about 67% through The Stand; I really enjoyed the first third of the book but (like the Dark Tower series) it has got a bit slow going and I'm feeling a little bogged down in it. I will keep ploughing on and hope it picks up the pace again soon.

23. Shopaholic to the stars -Sophie Kinsella. Dire and unpleasant.

24. Summer at the Little Beach Street Bakery - Jenny Colgan. Enjoyable light hearted chick lit.

25. The Bone Clocks -David Mitchell. Not sure what I thought about this. Some parts I really liked - the war Correspondent, the bestselling author, some parts left me cold - most of the Marinus story. And the ending just seemed tacked on and rushed. I think I need a few days to digest it.

Wow Cote, just read your review of Cloud Atlas. You put some really hard work into that. I may give it another go in a while.

Absolutely agree Cote that is an epic work! I think I preferred your surmising rather than the wordiness of the original. Possibly because the original has taken me three long weeks to read it in 10-minute bursts here and there, with frequent interruptions.

Reading back through what you've said does highlight the connection between the stories, and there were things I didn't see coming. Best - does The Bone Clocks do the same thing with a story inside a story inside a story?

I have promised myself that I'll be rereading Terry Pratchett this year but I still have three books on my shelf to get through, plus one beside the bed that I'm nearly done with, so it'll be another few weeks.

A Journal of the Plague Year and Hyperion are now on my to read list due to reviews upthread.

This is why I love this thread - the reviews make me consider books I'd never consider before; it's definitely broadened my read.

MrsCosmo' The Bone Clocks follows the story of Holly from the age of 15 when she runs away from home to old age as a grandmother living on the west coast of Ireland. The story is told in the first person in a number of different voices, first Holly, then a Cambridge undergrad, a war correspondent, an author, then Holly again. Holly has strange 'psychic episodes', and interwoven with Holly's story are a number of mysterious characters and strange happenings.

I recall Cote Saying that she felt it was too similar to Cloud Atlas but not having read that I can't comment

26. The Buried Giant by Kazuo Ishiguro

Oh dear. I'd been so looking forward to Kazuo Ishiguro's new novel. It got off to a reasonable start, but went swiftly downhill for me. If it hadn't been an audio book I would probably have given up a lot earlier. It was purely down to the good narration by David Horovitch that kept me going as long as I did, but even that couldn't stop me from fast forwarding through the last hour and a half just to get to the end. Ending appeared to be as I had guessed from the start. So not really sure what I've gained from this novel.

I really don't like giving bad reviews, and do try to find something good to say, but I'm very sorry to say that I can't find anything positive to say here. People who like fantasy novels would probably gain a lot more enjoyment from reading this than me. Sadly very disappointed and wishing I hadn't bothered.

Re The Bone Clocks vs Cloud Atlas:

The similarities between Cloud Atlas and The Bone Clocks are quite extensive, to the point that the latter feels like an imitation of the former:

Both books feature:

• 6 stories
• ... all of which are first-person accounts
• ... spanning decades
• ... starting in the past (1984) and extending far in the future (2043)
• ... and ending on a roll rather than winding down, as if they were cut prematurely

The themes are similar, too:

• Man's selfishness & cruelty, especially towards each other
• The yearning for safeguarding our knowledge/self/experiences for posterity
• Growing old
• Dystopian future

Cloud Atlas was original, gripping, and well... perfect First halves of the stories marched towards an inevitable conclusion, with the dystopian and post-apocalyptic two feeling incredibly real. Then came the second halves, and the reader is locked into the epic ensemble, with no escape from the author's logic as shown over and over in a variety of ways across continents and centuries. People are cruel and exploitive, we kill and enslave when we can; we have not changed, will never change, and this will be our downfall. Our technology will disappear in a single generation, just like our experiences and memories do as we grow old and die. It is a powerful blow to the gut, made all the more painful because of the hopeful note it ends with (1st story, so 1850s... but the reader already knows how the human story will end because the last story was laid out in full in the middle of the book).

A similar theme plays out in The Bone Clocks in a very similar format, but in a less effective way imho and for it I blame its fantastical/supernatural subplot of warring immortals.

I'm not quite sure why the author has felt the need for this subplot, especially since it takes up almost 25% of the book and imho doesn't add much to it, while the other 5 narratives take up between 14%-17%.

Re Bone Clocks' fantasy subplot:

Why has David Mitchell seen the need for the whole warring immortals story?

What I see as the main theme that this book explores is the drive for survival and the selfish/reckless/ruthless lengths to which people will go to survive :

• Holly comes from an underprivileged family and does what she can to get by on her own
• Holly's roommate tells her about all that she will have to do to survive in the world on her own.
• Hugo is a sociopath and his survival instinct has no counterweight in conscience or empathy. He also comes from a (relatively) underprivileged background and has no problems with who he hurts as he goes about manipulating people for his ends.
• Ed is an adrenaline junkie for whom survival is a game, a hobby. However, through his eyes, we see Iraqis' desolation and their very real fight for survival (which will then be repeated in future Ireland, in the last story told again by Holly)
• Crispin Hershey fights for his reputation, not his physical survival, but does it in a shockingly ruthless way. His selfishness stops him from reversing the damage.
• Marinus et al, despite their immortality through reincarnation setting them apart from mere mortals, put their very lives on the line and risk true death for innocents they don't know and will never meet.
• The other group of immortals brutally kill children to extend their own lives.
• At the end, Holly is truly fighting for survival, in a time of poverty, scarcity, and return to a medieval way of life.

The book seems to be asking How far is it OK to go in the fight for survival?" - Is it OK to kill someone else to live longer? And if you are horrified by that, is it really different than our generation causing certain death and misery to future generations by selfishly and recklessly exploiting the world's resources?

The author has an answer to the dilemma: The best way to live forever is not through luck-of-the-draw reincarnation or exploiting others for your own selfish ends. It is living through your descendants, passing your knowledge and wisdom on to people you love and who love you, seeing your mannerisms, phrases, physical features, and memories live on in your children and grandchildren.

In all, a very similar message to Cloud Atlas, executed in a markedly inferior way. Imho there was no need for the blood-sucking vampires extravaganza, and the author gave this message and more in a much better way with Cloud atlas

Duchess - Book critics are ripping into Ishiguro over his new book. I have never understood the adoration for his Never Let Me Go but his second non-sensical and boring foray into speculative fiction has apparently pushed even his fans too far.

That's an interesting review. Thanks for the link, Cote. It did at least confirm that I am not alone in thinking that it isn't that great. I could see what he was getting at but it was all a bit too strange.

I always enjoy Cote's analysis of David Mitchell. She does all the thinking that I can't be bothered to do.

Not been on here for a while, because I've been only reading one book and I was v slow with it because it wasn't gripping me enough.

Book 41 - Hide Me Among The Graves by Tim Powers
A vampire novel set in Victorian England and featuring Christina Rossetti amongst others. It was okay - a bit stupid in places, far too long but had a couple of mildly diverting characters.

I've just tracked down a first edition of, 'Mountain Prospect' by Scott Russell. He was a POW in Japan and wrote about his love of the mountains whilst in captivity. I'm really looking forward to it.

South - I really recommend Barnes', 'Flaubert's Parrot.' I gobbled it up in a single train journey and loved every minute of it.