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.

18 Closer Than You Think by Karen Rose
Loved it her books are very fast paced and page turning.
19 Murder on the orient express by Agatha Christie it's a classic for a reason. Even though I have watched the film's and the tv version many times I still enjoyed the book.
20 A Perfect Home by Kate Glanville. I was sent this as a giveaway by mumsnet and therefore feel really guilty that I didn't like it. It was just too weak. The heroine lives in a perfect house in the country with her children and husband. Her life is idyillic apart from the fact her pil don't like her and her husband spends all his time on diy. She set's up a Cath kidston like business which is an immediate success and her home is photographed for a homes and gardens type magazine.
She then starts an emotional affair with him, oh finds out sets fire to home blah blah blah.
I just didn't get it, she wasn't unhappy , her OH wasn't horrible to her and she didn't fall head over heels for the new bloke. I just wanted to shake her. She was a character that things happened to and I really didn't like her enough to care. That said I didn't care enough to hate it either. I wouldn't read another book by this author

Sorry that should say start an emotional affair with the photographer sent by the magazine

Book 14 Brave New World by Aldous Huxley.

A few weeks ago I read Nineteen Eighty Four and this makes a very interesting contrast.

Where the masses are controlled in 1984 through violence and oppression, the world controllers in BNW use unlimited sex, drugs and conditioning. No one suffers, no ones immediate desires are not fulfilled. Everyone is happy this no one questions the prevailing orthodoxy.

Where 1984 is a treatise on totalitarianism, BNW warns of a world run by and for Big Business.

Uncomfortably recognisable, but funny too.

Though for me some of it was muddled both in plot and tone, and the ending is just plain odd, I'm very glad to have read it.

34. Maurice by E M Forster.

Another superb read. Really liked this one. Left me wondering how Maurice and Alec would get by for the rest of their lives. Bittersweet ending.

Maurice contains one of my all-time favourite passages in a novel:

“I think you’re beautiful, the only beautiful person I’ve ever seen. I love your voice and everything to do with you, down to your clothes or the room you are sitting in. I adore you".

Such a wonderful book.

Definitely one for my re-read list :) Was very surprised to find Dorset Libraries only had one rather scruffy copy I had to ask them to transport right across the county! May have to buy my own copy to keep :)

Two more to add;
17. Appointment with Death - Agatha Christie - a nice cosy murder mystery, although the victim was a proper evil cowbag, which meant I could enjoy it while hoping that everyone got away with it...

18. We Have Always Lived in the Castle - Shirley Jackson. I can't remember who on here recommended it, but thank you! It's a quite dark story told from the point of view of one of a pair of sisters living a very isolated life in an old, grand house with a disabled Uncle after all other members of their family have died, and the local villagers hate them.

Maurice might have to go on my 'to read' list! (I've got a pile to work though)

20. People - Alan Bennett

His most recent play, a satire on national heritage and an attack on commodification in today's world, this felt slight and underpowered but doubtless work better as a theatrical experience - I very much regret not seeing it.

21. The Fast Diet (revised and updated) - Dr Michael Mosley and Mimi Spencer.

I read the original book and maintained my 5:2 weight loss for a while but slid off the wagon a little this year. This book (which doesn't have much new info) has helped me get on track again, is pithily written and has some great recipes.

22. Reasons to Stay Alive - Matt Haig

Part memoir, part self-help book, this is a superbly written book on one man's experience of depression and, as he says, a book about making the most of your time on earth'. Important, accessible and compassionate, this book resonated strongly with me and I expect it'll make my top five at the end of the year.

Next up is How to be Both.

Yes, that is exactly what we are looking for on this thread. How could you tell?

Southeast I saw People and it was very good. Saw it at the same time though as two mini-plays of his which I enjoyed more.

14. The poisonwood bible. Lots of other reviews of this, it was ok in general, good in parts, but overlong for me

Room by Emma Donoghue is £1.79 on the Kindle, if anyone is interested.

On the subject of Alan Bennett - has anyone else seen the trailer for the film of The Lady in the Van? Saw the trailer a couple of weeks ago. Film due out in the autumn. Looked rather good . But AB being played by someone else.

After a March of abandoned, really terrible and unfinished books, I have finally managed to find a book worth persevering with to the end. So, #17 - Travels with My Aunt by Graham Greene. A retired bank manager meets his estranged, eccentric and bohemian aunt at his mother's funeral and his relationship with his aunt invigorates his life. I wanted to like this book a whole lot more than I actually did. It was mildly funny rather than laugh out loud and I found it very glib. On the other hand, I actually managed to care enough to finish it, which on recent performance is a rare, rare thing!

Book 11. The Silkworm. I really enjoyed the cuckoo's calling but this was far too long and the characters were all too similar. I was bored long before the end. Its a shame, the writing is good but she needs a good editor.

Book 28. Phil Rickman - Merrily Watkins - The Wine of Angels.

Vicar of Dibley meets Midsomer Murders with a touch of the supernatural thrown in. Really enjoyed it and have downloaded the second in the series.

Biblio no need to be so worried about recommending this, I thoroughly enjoyed it.

24. The Son by Jo Nesbo

Sonny is a model prisoner, and heroin addict. Convicted after he confessed to two murders aged 18, he has been in prison for 12 years and has become something of a confessor to the other prisoners. He absolves them of their sins. But one of them confesses something connected to his disgraced father, a policeman believed to have been corrupt who committed suicide. Sonny is determined to escape and to make those responsible pay for their crimes.

Like all Nesbo books there is a fair amount of violence, although not as gruesome as in some of his Harry Hole series. The story is told from the perspectives of Sonny and the police officer on his trail, Simon Kefas. In spite of Sonny being a killer I actually found myself really getting behind him - the perfect antihero in many ways. Because in spite of what he is doing, this is a man who seems to touch people's lives for the better. Nesbo has clearly given him a messianic quality and it's a cracking good read.

#18 = The Girl on the Train by Paula Hawkins. There's been a lot of hype about this one, so everyone probably already knows the premise of this book without my cack handed summary. Basically, a commuter on the train becomes obsessed with the lives she can glimpse in a house when her train is held up regularly at a set of signals. It emerges that she is an alcoholic and that she has previously lived on the street of houses. Things deteriorate when one of the women she has seen from the railway carriage disappears. This won't be winning any major prizes for literature and will probably be forgotten in ten years, BUT it was such a gripping read that I stayed up well beyond my bedtime to read it (and I am someone who likes their sleep!) I would thoroughly recommend it to anyone who wants an engrossing read that's not too challenging and is able to suspend reality when it comes to unlikely endings!

I am so pleased, work has handed me a new iPhone and taken my nasty blackberry away! Yay! MN was impossible to navigate on the bb

Congrats on the handstand cote !

Really enjoyed the eyre affair too. Would recommend it.

Am getting on quite well with longbourne, half way and def don't hate it.

1. Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel.

Wow what a book. It's about an old actor who dies just before a flu pandemic wipes out 99% of the population. The story jumps forward and backwards in time and is intricately plotted. I really enjoyed it and wouldn't be surprised if it was filmed.

Book 45 - 'Into the Wild' by Jon Krakauer
Thanks for the rec, Cote. I absolutely loved this! For those who haven't read it, it is about a young man who goes off into the wild in Alaska and starves to death. Krakauer paints a really fascinating picture of the guy, who seems to have made all sorts of connections with strangers, whilst being unable to have coped with his relationship with his own family. I found it a really fascinating and thought-provoking read.

Glad you liked it, I love it to. Sean Penn made it into a movie, I watched it a while back and is very good, recommended.
Not too soon after the book though, not for me anyway.

I must read Into the Wild. The film is great - very moving and haunting.

13. When We Were Orphans, Kazuo Ishiguro

A wonderful novel, full of that achingly sad and haunting quality that Ishiguro does so well.

A young graduate sets up as a detective in 1930s London, trying to achieve his childhood dream of success in this profession. The novel switches between his present day career and life in the UK, and his childhood on the International Settlement in Shanghai. The last section reuintes the two angles of the novel, when the adult narrator returns to what is now war-torn Shanghai to try to solve the personal mystery that still haunts him from his childhood.

I'd definitely recommend this.

I also have 'The Unconsoled' by the same author waiting to be read, but it is intimidatingly long and heavy-looking. Anyone read it, and if so would you recommend it?