50 Book Challenge 2015 Part 4

[southeastdweller]

Thread four 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 can count, and please try to let us all know your thoughts on what you've read.

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

Happy reading

54. Celeste Ng; Everything I Never Told You. Beautifully written and very sad. I read most of it one sitting.

55. Maggie O'Farrell Instructions For a Heatwave It's July 1976 and London is in the grip of a heatwave. It hasn't rained for months, the gardens are filled with aphids, water comes from a standpipe, and Robert Riordan tells his wife Gretta that he's going round the corner to buy a newspaper. He doesn't come back. The search for Robert brings Gretta's children - two estranged sisters and a brother on the brink of divorce - back home, each with different ideas as to where their father may have gone. None of them suspects that their mother might have an explanation that even now she cannot share.

I really enjoyed this book, great characterisation , plot very moving & gripping , love Maggie O'Farrell , it did take a while to get into but once I did couldn't stop reading

Might be topical this coming week
Good read in the garden

Meanwhile, I'm on to the non-fiction book Genghis Khan and the Making of the Modern World by anthropologist Jack Weatherford, which is going really well so far.

It's the end of June and halfway through the year and I have just finished book number 26. So if I stay on track I should manage to read 50 by the end of the year

22. Catching Fire - Suzanne Collins. This is the second book in the Hunger Games trilogy. I didn't enjoy this as much as the first one. Far too much time spent on the 'love triangle', with Katniss endlessly analysing her feelings between the 2 boys. This second book felt much more YA than the first (which it is of course!). This sentence made me laugh out loud and sums up the book for me. After yet another monologue from Katniss on whether she loves Gale:
    I really can't be thinking about kissing when I've got a rebellion to incite
    

23. The Ocean at the end of the Lane - Neil Gaiman. This is the first Gaiman book for adults which I've read. I read Fortunately the Milk with my DD.
    Wow, how to write a synopsis of the plot for this book! Very basically it tells the story of a boy who befriends a family of 3 women (girl, mum and gran) and he unwittingly unleashes a strange and evil being. Loved this, very unlike books I usually read and I am keen to read more from him

24. Slammerkin - Emma Donoghue (author of Room). A great read, set in 18th century London and tells the story of Mary Saunders, a girl from a poor family who falls into prostitution. She is desperate to better herself but doesn't seem to be able to. I did not see the end coming at all and was quite shocked by how things turned out for Mary. Reminded me of The Crimson Petal and the White ( but not so long).

25. The Girl in the Red Coat - Kate Hamer. This is the story of 8 year old Carmel who gets lost at a festival. She is found by a man who tells her that her mum has been in an accident, that he is her grandfather and has been asked to look after her. The story is told in alternating chapters by both Carmel and her mother.
    I have an 8 year old DD so I thought twice about reading this as I thought it might be too emotionally difficult to read. Since having my own dc I have avoided watching films and TV programmes about missing children. But I felt strangely detached from this book. I read it fairly quickly as I wanted to find out how it ended but I never really connected with it.

26. Wake - Anna Hope. Another great read, one of my favourites so far. This tells the story of 3 different women and the men in their lives trying to re-build their lives in 1920, 2 years after the end of WW1. Each women has lost a loved one or has a loved one who has returned from the war very damaged: physically and emotionally. Beautifully written and very moving on the futility of war, and the after effects of war on both men and women. Very poignant when you think that just 20 years later WW2 would start and those women who lost husbands/fiancees/brothers/fathers in the first war would very likely go on to lose sons in WW2.

I have just started Rivers of London by Ben Aaronovitch after seeing it in my local library. I remembered reading good reviews of it on this thread!

Another 2:

34. Red Bones - Ann Cleeves - this is the 3rd in her Shetland series, and I think the one they started the TV programme with. It's a good detective book, not quite clear if it is a murder or not for a while, although compared to the first 2 books, didn't seem to convay the uniqueness of the Shetland location - I think perhaps the timing might have affected that, in the first book it was set in the time after Christmas, so when it's barely light, before the Fire Festival on the Islands, it was set at the time the environment was the harshest, then the second ws set in the "simmer dim" - the time round mid-summer when it doesn't really get dark and the effect having no night has on the mental state of the Islanders - again, the environment felt like it was shaping people's behaviours. This book is set in April time, so it could be any remote rural community, it's a bit miserable and rainy and foggy, but not different to other parts of Northern UK. It does, however, touch on a lot of the more recent Shetland history, but would give the story away to mention how! Good read, not as impressive as the earlier 2 books. (I'll still probably continue to work my way through the whole series as nice escapism!)

35. Mrs Dalloway - Virginia Woolf. I read this as I was recommended "the Hours" on here, but told that I would get more out of it if I read Mrs Dalloway first. I really didn't enjoy this, I can see that it was an unusual way of telling the stories, but I didnt find I cared at all about any characters. Left me cold. Now not sure if I want to read the hours!

Eleanor - I think i'll add Wake to my "to read" list, sounds good!

I'm bookless and frustrated. I got two out of the library the other day, and they were both so bad that I didn't give either of them more than ten pages each. I'm okay for Kindle reading for a few days (although it's all academic stuff, so not really calling to me) but I have no physical books at all. I pity my family.

Has anybody got any recs for (pre-1930 ideally) mountaineering books that I might not have read? Or does anybody know a decent book about post-war Germany and the Berlin wall etc? Please help!

Remus - I think you would enjoy the non-fiction book I'm reading about Genghis Khan at the moment:

Genghis Khan and the Making of the Modern World

It's £1.89 on the Kindle at the moment.

It's very interesting. I'm only just realising that the entire area where Genghis Khan was born & considered home was closed off after his death and then declared a no-go area during Soviet times. So when Soviet Russia ended and research became possible, it was basically no different than it was at the time of Genghis Khan. Also, after Soviet regime fell, it became possible to collaborate to translate and interpret the much-fabled "Secret History of the Mongols", about the life of Genghis Khan. The author was involved in all this research. The book is really interesting. I think I may have found another book that we both will like

Thanks, Cote. Yep - that's definitely my sort of thing.

Bought!

Ooh, how exciting. We'll read it at the same time. I'm only 11% through and that because I sat up until 2AM reading it last night

:) I only really read the Kindle on my commute tbh, unless it's something that I can't put down, so I suspect you'll be well ahead of me!

I doubt that very much, you merciless devourer of the printed word

Dinosaurs - I loved The Hours, much more than Mrs Dalloway. I would say, even if you don't like Mrs Dalloway, give The Hours a go. It's very good.

Have got The Wake on my tbr pile for reading soon. I love novels set around WW1. Really enjoyed Strange Meeting by Susan Hill and My Dear I Wanted to Tell You by Louisa Young.

Mums life -ooh exciting which uni is dd going to ?

I've just started no 56

Tamar Cohen The Broken

Has anyone read it?
It's a psychological thriller about a disturbed woman whose husband leaves her
It's tangled up with her best friend & their two daughters
Can't stop reading so far . Am half way through

Fab news is she your eldest?

Book 25 Stardust by Neil Gaiman.

An adult fairy tale. But not particularly dark and not particularly magical. All a bit random really.

31. Crooked Heart by Lissa Evans
    A lovely, funny novel about a boy during WWII who is evacuated to a family in St Albans. This makes it sound like a typically heartwarming children's story but in fact it's quite dark in places - the family (a mother and her adult son) are engaged in criminal activity of different kinds and the boy's own personal situation is very unorthodox. Was really surprised I had never heard of the writer before.

32. Being mortal by Atul Gawande
    An excellent non-fiction book by an American doctor about how we deal with people who either very old and infirm or have terminal illnesses. Very moving and thought-provoking. I could relate to a lot of it. For example, he says that for people who are elderly, remaining in their own home and having some independence is more important than being "safe" but stuck in a home where your entire life is regimented. For dying people, quality of life left is more important than quantity of life.

33. The girl on the train by Paula Hawkins
    You all know this one. Quite enjoyed it, though worked out whodunnit very early on and was a bit surprised to find there wasn't a twist.

34. Bedsit disco queen by Tracey Thorn
    Memoir of a life in pop. Enjoyable, well-written and gently humorous. Didn't pack the same punch as the Viv Albertine memoir but worth reading.

35. The soul of the marionette: a short enquiry into human freedom by John Gray
    This is a short work of philosophy. He takes a rather bleak view of free will, arguing that essentially we are the product of other forces. And he's absolutely opposed to the notion of human progress, taking apart the Steven Pinker idea that humanity is becoming less violent. It's interesting and well-argued, taking a lot of its ideas from fiction, including science fiction. I find it difficult to summarise, tbh, so you're best off reading it. Definitely worth a read, I think.

I was a bit meh about Stardust, WordFactory. Reminded me of Enid Blyton.

I am halfway through Master and Commander by Patrick o'Brian. Turn of the 19th century seafaring novel. Absolutely loving it though not a clue what all the nautical terms mean, topgallantsails on the larboard bow at four bells on the Fo'c'sle and all that but it doesn't seem to matter. Great stuff.

Congratulations to your DD, mumslife!