50 Book Challenge 2015 Part 3

[Southeastdweller]

Thread three of the 50 Book Challenge for this year.

The challenge is to read fifty books (or more!) in 2015, though reading fifty isn't mandatory. It's still not too late to join, any type of book counts, and please try to let us all know your thoughts on what you've read.

First thread of the year here, and second thread here.

20. H is for Hawk by Helen MacDonald
    Beautiful evocative writing. Fascinating to read about hawking, a very niche area that can only appeal to a very committed few. I thought the way she blended telling the story of her new relationship with her hawk whilst trying to deal with the grief of her father and telling us about T.H White was impressive.

21. Life of Pi by Yann Martel
    Audiobook. 2002 Booker Prize Winner. Pi Patel is ship-wrecked and loses his family, is left afloat in the Pacific Ocean for over 200 days with only a Bengal tiger for company. It is the story of this journey and a small intro of his life before. I've been meaning to read this for years. I really enjoyed the narrator and story. Thought-provoking, very good.

Onto Of Mice and Men next..

I couldn't read anything when I was breastfeeding my newborn- no concentration whatsoever. With DS2 I discovered Pinterest, staring into space, napping and also a world of sport as it was the year of the London Olympics - good times!

Book 66 - 'The Painted Garden' by Noel Streatfeild
I absolutely adore, 'Ballet Shoes' which I first read aged 6 or 7 and have re-read almost every year ever since, so I was thrilled to find this, which I'd heard about on here but never seen, for a pound in a charity shop.

I enjoyed it, but it's not as good as BS, and I was so disappointed that Petrova, my favourite Fossil, doesn't appear in, although Pauline and Posy do. A lovely way to pass a lazy Sunday morning, but I doubt I'll be re-reading it.

Atticus - 'The Crucible' when done well can be absolutely stunning on stage. Ironically, the best performance I've ever seen of it was a school play. The young man playing John P was incredible.

Book 20 The Quickening by Julie Myerson.

I'm a huge fan of Myerson. I think her brand of literary fiction with a whiff of the paranormal is excellent. I particularly loved her dystopian novel Then.

This novel is trickier. Although the concept is great ( couple go to Caribbean where a murder and other creepy stuff happens ) and the writing a sparkling tour de force, the main characters are beyond annoying.

Not complex or multilayered. Just awful.

Consequently it's difficult to give a shit!

3am breastfeeding for me was either ER box set or one of these: Jilly Cooper, Ian Rankin Rebus books or Tom Clancy (Rainbow Six is a classic )

I found books and a wriggly ten pound plus newborn too much, and resorted to watching boxsets (not really a television watcher). Worked my way through all of Grey's Anatomy in the early months, and am still going with ER eleven months later! DH did lend me his kindle (upgraded himself to a paperwhite) so read the Silkworm, which definitely wouldn't have managed one handed, and read lots of Hamish MacBeth - lightweight in every sense. Also listened to so much Radio 4 that the newsreaders sounded like old friends. Read somewhere about babies named after radio 4 readers, and totally get it now.

Highlandcoo - Don't live in Edinburgh sadly (can't really transfer work wise - have looked into it), though visit most years. Most envious of your travel plan!

15. The Crooked House by Christobel Kent I wasn't sure about this to begin with, and to end with, but loved the rest of it. Teenager Esme has slipped home unexpectedly and is in her attic room whilst her family are massacred downstairs. Her Father is thought to have murdered the others before shooting himself. Esme leaves, creating a new identity, until ten years later she returns with a new boyfriend for a wedding. Struck me as unlikely, but the writing is so atmospheric, and the characters unsettling, that the plot recedes, and the menacing, stark landscape, of marshes and mud and taciturn, ethnocentric characters became quite enthralling. Kent writes atmosphere very well - I read Time of Mourning by her previously, which is a murder mystery set in Florence, and thought she captured the white, dusty heat of the city in summer very well. Esme is rather annoying - she pushes her glasses up her nose every chapter - but the boyfriend is wonderful in gentle and considered dominance. The isolation and sense that it's best to leave things alone in lonely remote communities really resonated with me. By the end there is a surfeit of characters, and the assured pace slips, and becomes rather silly, with everyone suddenly remembering details from a decade before, but I really enjoyed this, and would recommend highly.

32. The King In Yellow - Robert W Chambers

Wow, this was a rare find! This is a book of short stories published in 1895. If you have watched the series True Detective, this is where the unexplained references to Sarcosa and Yellow King were taken from.

The first story is called The Repairer Of Reputations and it is arguably one of the best and weirdest stories I've ever read, with a fantastically unreliable narrator. Like the next three stories, it talks about a play called The King In Yellow that drives its readers insane. In the narrator's words: "I cannot forget Carcosa where black stars hang ni the heavens, where the shadows of men's thoughts lengthen in the afternoon, when the twin suns wink into the lake of Hali; and my mind will bear forever the memory of the Pallid Mask. I pray God will curse the writer, as the writer has cursed the world with his beautiful, stupendous creation, terrible in its simplicity, irresistible in its truth - a world which now trembles before The King In Yellow."

He lives in a near-future, (prophetically) a war with Germany has taken place and Russia has taken over most of Europe. Suicide is now facilitated in the US, with Government Lethal Chambers in every town. Or is it? It is only slowly that we realise that all may not be as the narrator tells it.

The next couple of stories are also in this universe and talk peripherally about this play, The King In Yellow. They are good stories, a cross between J G Ballard's insanity stories and Italo Calvino's Invisible Cities, with descriptions of impossible landscapes in a chillingly calm tone: "Far away, over leagues of tossing cloud-waves, I saw the moon dripping with spray: and beyond, the towers of Carcosa rose behind the moon."

Apparently, Lovecraft was a fan of this author. I might have to read some Lovecraft soon, too...

No 48

I really enjoyed the Heather Gudenkauf I read so I picked up another of hers from the library These things hidden & I actually thought it was better than the other one

It's about two sisters Allison , who had twin babies as a teenager one of which she drowned , & her sister Brynn who helped her give birth to them .
Allison goes to prison & the novel starts five years later when she is released
The book is written from the point of view of the sisters & the mother who adopted the surviving twin

I couldn't read either when breast feeding - I read a lot of magazines & mumsnet

I have just spent 75 quid at amazon for my holiday reading based entirely on this thread! The challenge will be not to touch any before I go away.

I got The Buried Giant, L shaped room, Red Rising, Ocean at the end of the lane, preordered the new SK, 50 lives of Harry August, daddy long legs, various pets alive and dead, a liane moriarty, we have always lived at the castle, and the new shardlake. Hope to get the new Kate Atkinson out the library too and pick up a few at the airport.

I must have read about forty ish books so far this year but despite promising myself I would recorded them I haven't! So I'm starting from now.

1. Penny Vicenzi - A Perfect Heritage. Fun and frothy, I like her best when she's writing about family empires and this was great. Her dialogue is just utterly dreadful though, but it makes me love her more.

2. Beauty by Louise Mensch. Pretty much EXACTLY the same as the PV, but better dialogue.

3. The Childrens Act, Ian McEwen. Lovely considered prose. Nice read.

4. Jacobs Folly by Rebecca Miller. An 18th century Jew is reincarnated as a fly in 2013 America and can influence the thoughts and actions of two people, a middle aged family man and a young Orthodox Jewish girl. Loved this, it was weird, evocative, funny, the historical bits were great, good writing.

5. The Happy Puppy Handbook. Thinking of getting a puppy. Exciting!

6. Jamrachs menagerie by Carol Birch. A boy in Victorian London gets a job with an animal importer and then goes to sea to look for a Komodo dragon to import. Nice book but felt in two halves really. I would have just liked a book about his experiences working with the animals OR the sea voyage, it was disjointed.

21. Mistress of the House - Rosemary Baird. This is non-fiction, and a look at how (generally) wealthy aristocratic women took on the responsibilities for the maintenance of stately homes after marriage. This really made me think about how women used their (then, limited) influence to shape their homes and surroundings, often when their budgets were not within their control. Obviously life was very different for the home owners than it was for their employees, but this was a very interesting read.

Atticus I am excited for you! Enjoy the bit of time off before baby 2 arrives, and glad you loved The Shadow Year :)

I keep thinking of Joyless and hope her results were okay.

I finished Ben Elton's Two Brothers and loved it. A remarkable story about WW2.

I can't get into anything after the surreal, Ballardian stories of 19th Century book The King In Yellow Inspiration, please?

31 Is a debut novel called Bird Box by Josh Mallerman
Set in USA and something awful has happened world wide. Anyone who sees these weird "creatures" goes on a killing rampage and then violently kills themselves. It swings from the beginning of the madness to four years later. The main character is pregnant on twins at the beginning and now has them trained not to look at the sky (windows in house blocked up etc). Her and the kids set off (blind folded) to find safety after being couped up in a house for four years.

I cannot put this down since I started it yesterday!

Not sure if it would be one you would like Cote?????

Thanks Lammy, I'll check it out

Ah newborn baby brain, I seem to recall I watched an AWFUL lot of Come Dine With Me

Lammy, I checked out that book and it sounds terrifying! Don't think I could cope with it!

27. Biocentrism by Robert Lanza; not sure what to make of this, read more like philosophy than science with plenty of quantum physics thrown in to keep you occupied. From time to time I try to read stuff about Q P and generally I really struggle. This was a bit easier to digest than most, he broke up the hard science with some tales from his life which was a relief. But if he wasn't a famous scientist I would have dismissed the central tenets of the book as total new agey nonsense. Essentially, your mind creates reality. And not as I initially thought he meant in that your perception of reality is a manifestation of your senses, but literally, your mind and consciousness creates the reality around it. He's quite convincing it's just such a counter intuitive notion. I was aware Q P had some oddness going on but I never heard of someone extrapolating from the results to this degree. Whatever you think of his arguments, it was an v interesting (albeit strictly middle of the day) read.

Now onto US by David Nicholls.

Hi Wiltingfast and Cote here is the Book Depository review of Bird Box

Josh Malerman's debut novel BIRD BOX is a terrifying psychological thriller that will haunt you long after reading. Most people dismissed the reports on the news. But they became too frequent; they became too real. And soon it was happening to people we knew. Then the Internet died. The televisions and radios went silent. The phones stopped ringing And we couldn't look outside anymore.

It is very gripping and somewhat terrifying but only because the people cannot see (they have to be blind folded). I will give a review when I finish it :) I don't like horror (used to read all the "classic" horrors in my youth but am too much of a scardy cat to read them now, but this book is fantastic! Like The Girl With All The Gifts it is tense but very very readable :)

I read some reviews on Amazon that say the mystery is never explained?

29. Station Eleven - Emily St. John Mandel - can't remember who recommended on here, but thank you, loved it! There is an outbreak of a strain of flu that has a very short incubation and people go from first contact with it to dying within less than 24 hours, it wipes out about 99% of the world's population and civilisation collapses. The action starts on the night of the outbreak in Toronto with a famous actor who is acting in King Lear dies on stage of a heart attack - the story follows several people who were involved in that incident - his ex-wife (going back to cover her life with him before the flu), the trainee paramedic who tried to save him, a child-actor who'd been at the theatre. It then jumps between the year 20 after the ourbreak, following the now adult child-actor and going back to cover before the outbreak.

Bits were overly intertwined for my liking, it was a bit too 'neat' that they did meet, but aside from that, my main feeling was that I wouldn't survive an 'end of civilisation' situation, I'd be one of the people dying early on even if I didn't catch the flu...

I've ordered, 'The King in Yellow' and 'Red Rising' and also a taster of, 'Bird Box.' I ordered the latter last week because I liked the cover and because I thought it was YA. Is it?

Cote - You'd probably like Lovecraft. Stephen King really rates him; personally, I don't like him - it's all a bit too weird and overblown for my liking.

Have you read any Kafka? Am guessing yes!

58. Funny Girl by Nick Hornby - 2/5

I really don't like giving bad reviews for books - I feel guilty saying something less than complimentary about a book I've read. But, with the best will in the world, I can't give this any more than two stars.

I kept waiting for the story to take off, to be funny. It didn't, and it wasn't. The character of Sophie/Barbara didn't feel real. There was no substance to her. I didn't feel that I was getting to know her as the central character at all. I felt I didn't get to know enough about her to like or dislike her.

It might have been a more interesting novel if it had been more about the whole production team - more of Bill and Ted the writers - they could have been very interesting. Much more could have been made of them and their writing careers and the production aspects of making a popular television comedy.

The cultural references to the 60s felt shoehorned in, from research. A few quick name-drops of the famous writers, actors, musicians etc from the 60s made in passing do not create an authentic atmosphere.

Hi Cote I haven't finished Bird Box yet so not sure if the mystery "creatures" are explained (side note to myself: don't review books until you actually finish them! I just got so excited by the first 100 pages)

Remus I am not sure if Bird Box is YA (am assuming this means aimed at young adults?) but I do like a lot of books aimed at young people eg Delirium
I like your idea of giving stars out of 5 :) I must try and remember that.

Lammy - I like a lot of YA too, but I know that Cote hates it. I have no idea if, 'Bird Box' is intended for teens or not; had got it into my head that it was, but could well have invented that!

Boy, is Life After Life tedious at this point (150 pages to go). I'm looking forward to the main character dying for the final time!

22. 1888 by Paul Stubley - an account of all the other murders that occurred in 1888, the year of Jack the Ripper. Interesting but I does read a little like a monologue. I have read quite a lot of this genre, I think you'd enjoy it more if you hadn't.
23. An audio book, Midnight in Peking by Paul French, an account of a murder that shook Peking in the last days before the Japanese occupation then the Second World War and remained unsolved. Fascinating but went on a little and the narrator was very annoying. Apparently it was a book of the week on Radio 4 and I suspect it was a lot better abridged.

Moving onto a dead simple murder mystery Eeny Meeny by MJ Arlidge.