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

I read a couple of excellent Japanese crime novels this year-Murakami is the only Japanese writer that I've read recently and not enjoyed. I'm glad I'm not the only one who doesn't get him.

I need Kindle recs folks, if anybody is up to it. Need holiday reading! Just ordered, 'The Invisible Library'.

Remus - this is what I've bought in the Kindle summer sale -

Ghostwritten by David Mitchell - currently reading, and definitely worth a punt, even if you don't like Cloud Atlas? I like his writing, and he has a dry sense of humour that appeals to me.

The Gift of Rain by Tan Twan Eng - I thought worth a go - looks interesting - might appeal?

American Wife by Curtis Sittenfeld (you won't like this :o)

The Shipping News by Annie Proulx (probably not either?)

This thread is excellent. I have got so many good book recommendations from it recently. I really like the sound of Crusoe’s Daughter by Jane Gardham. Plus an interesting discussing of female/male writers. For those that don’t like female writers, look away now. I got all of these books from the library, which has made me very happy.

63. Department of Speculation – Jenny Offill
    I found the very short, “profound” paragraphs (statements I suppose) really irritating at first but they gradually resolved themselves into a rather moving short novel on the trials and tribulations of a modern marriage in trouble. All very self indulgent but I didn’t mind that. Remus and Cote would hate this. It’s all about feelings. Literally, that’s all it’s about.

64. God Help the Child – Toni Morrison
    I haven’t read any Toni Morrison since I did my degree (a good few years ago now) and I wasn’t 100% on this one to be honest as it lacks the punch of The Bluest Eye and some of her other earlier work. But rather like the novel above, it all came together at the end, with some frightening insights about racial discrimination and its lasting damage along the way. Which makes it sound trite, but it really wasn’t. This was an uncomfortable novel to read. Which isn’t a bad thing sometimes.

65. The Beautiful Ruins – Jess Walter (a man)
    A bit of an easy read but I actually enjoyed this a lot with its mix of old-school movie star glamour fantasy plot involving Richard Burton. It’s set in the past in Italy and the present in LA and was both fun and touching.

On to something different now – The Desert by Le Clezio – a Nobel prize winning French author who I had never heard of until I saw this book recommended on Goodreads. So far I am loving it. Also reading a Thomas Mann novel on my Kindle called Royal Highness, which I am warming to slowly.

No way would I recommend books to Remus!

85. Death is a Word, Hazel Holt. As mentioned previously, the cosiest of cosy mysteries. The characters fret about bring and buy sales and go teashops for a nice sit-down and a slice of cake. You won't find autopsies and shoot-outs in this book. (Incidentally, the author was a good friend of Barbara Pym's and handled her literary estate. She's also the mother of the author Tom Holt).

Currently on Romantic outlaws : the extraordinary lives of Mary Wollstonecraft & Mary Shelley by Charlotte Gordon, which is just the sort of thing I like - blissfully immersed.

Joyless, thanks for the link to your blog - interesting review. I'm not planning to read Go Set a Watchman. Read the extract in The Guardian and wasn't pulled in.

41. Armada - Ernest Cline

I am so disappointed with this book that I can cry. This is the much-anticipated book by the author of Ready Player One which I really enjoyed last year because it was fast-paced, nerdy, had good world-building, and was about a quest in virtual reality.

This books starts out quite OK, too. It turns out that an alien war is coming and that Armada, the hugely popular online space war game, is a pilot training program for fighter drones. The idea is good, even better than its outdated exploration in Ender's Game, but the execution is abysmal. It is not even YA but pretty much a children's book - a boy arcade fantasy with some daddy issues thrown in and some ludicrous plot. It was just awful.

I'm not recommending this, in case any of you are wondering

"I've bored for Britain on my blog about it"

I'm mystified re the whole idolisation of To Kill A Mockingbird. We read it as teenagers at school and it was by far the most mediocre book we read in literature class, compared to Macbeth and Lord Of The Flies, for example. It was OK, but can't say it was so special that I would be considering it one of the best books I've ever read 25 years later.

37. An Appetite for Violets, Martine Bailey. Romping historical fiction about a cook who is taken abroad with her young mistress and finds herself embroiled in all sorts of intrigues. There are the usual plot elements - mistaken identity, concealed pregnancy, financial skulduggery - but it's all held together by the voice of Biddy, the narrator, and her fascination with cooking - each chapter opens with a recipe which is relevant to the story (and some are very weird indeed - Viperine Wine, anyone?). Reminded me a bit of Jane Harris' The Observations.

whippet, did you see the programme about Toni Morrison recently? Made me want to read God Help the Child, so interested to read your comments. I haven't read any of hers for a few years but they made a big impact.

biblio like the sound of Romantic Outlaws - that's going on the TBR.

Off to read your review of GSAW now, Joyless

Duchess
I've read (and hated!) 'American Wife.'
Also read, 'The Shipping News' which I thought was okay, but didn't love.
No point me trying the Mitchell, as I've only managed to finish one of his so far (Black something), and it didn't make me want to try another.
Will investigate the other one. Thank you. :)

I read the Gift of Rain last year and thought it was good.

Its a while since I updated on this thread and I'm not sure where I got up to but I think it was book 28.

28. The Enchanted April by Elizabeth Von Arnim. Four women rent a house in Italy for a month and the experience is magical and changes their lives. It's got some very funny descriptions of people trying to carve out their own spaces within a shared house. You have to accept that it is a book about having happy endings because Italy is so magical and read it on those terms.

29. Jigsaw by Sybille Bedford. This is an autobiographical novel based on her own life growing up. Would be curious to know how much of it was real as she had such a rackety childhood. It was well written and has prompted me to search out other books of hers.

30. A Sting in the Tail by Dave Goulson. A non fiction book about bumblebees which has taught me a lot about them. Entertaining.

31. A Game of Hide and Seek by Elizabeth Taylor. Young teenagers fall in love but nothing ever happens. Boy goes off to uni. Girl left behind. He never writes. She marries someone else. He turns up again after 20 years. They start an affair. Well written but I couldn't understand why she would love him again the second he turns up. He never seemed like much of a catch in the first place. It was set before and after the Second World War and there were some great bits about contemporary attitudes to marriage and love, etc. But I wasn't convinced by the main relationship.

32. Death of a Dustman by MC Beaton. A simple murder mystery. Easy read, not challenging but fun.

Aw Enchanted April sounds lovely. Only 99p on Amazon so have purchased! Thank you Cedar :)

mmack I loved 1q84 but haven't been able to read anything else by Murakami with any success. I just found the atmosphere in Norwegian Wood a bit desolate or something? I abandoned it about 2/3 in and I rarely abandon at that late stage!

Otherwise, have finished

38. Made in America by Sam Walton. This is an autobiography by the guy who founded Walmart. I didn't realise it was written in 1991/92. It is very much a book about his business philosophy and his rules for success. No scaremongering here! Well written, better than most business books I've read. The presentation of Walmart did jar a bit with my own preconceptions of that vast multinational and its relationships with its suppliers and employees but maybe its all changed a lot since he died? It's all quite foklsy in tone and I don't really know enough to say whether its a total whitewash or not. Certainly puts it best foot forward. Interesting read anyway even with my reservations. Enjoyed it.

39. Daughter of Smoke & Bone by Lani Taylor; This is fantasy YA book and much more YA than Red Rising. The start is terrible but the writing did improve quite quickly so if you do decide to read it a bit of perseverance is required! It is mainly a love story to be honest (though a fairly unusual one), which I was not that interested in, but the world building is quite inventive and imaginative and I did enjoy it from that perspective. I'm not sure i'll bother with the rest though, it's just not really my kind of thing. I've book 2 on watch just in case though as a bit of me always wants to know "what happened next"!

Not sure what to read now, feel like something gentle so might go for Enchanted April... or maybe I should tackle something BIG hmmmm

Oh Remus, I've read a lot of David Mitchell and Black Swan Green was the one I hated. His others (Ghostwritten etc) are VERY different. Might be worth sampling one before you write him off into the abyss ?

I thought you would hate American Wife, and Ghostwritten, Remus :o.

Getting a better idea of what you don't like but not really what to recommend. One final shot :) - don't suppose you'd like Roger Deakin would you? Probably his nature writing isn't exciting enough, but I did enjoy Waterlog - his adventure in wild swimming around the UK. Wonderfully eccentric character (and imo a better writer than Robert Macfarlane).

frogletsmum you should definitely read God Help the Child in that case. I would be interested to hear what you thought of it.

Cedar I really want to read A Buzz in the Meadow by Dave Goulson. I am waiting for it to be returned in the library. Will check out A Sting in the Tail though.

I didn't like An American Wife either or The Enchanted April. Oh dear. But I do like David Mitchell. Number9dream is good.

Book 94 - 'Prague Fatale' by Philip Kerr
Another Bernie Gunther detective story, set in Berlin and Prague during the 1940s. I enjoyed this one - it moved quickly, didn't try to spread itself too far (like the last one of his that I read did), and reached a satisfying, if not entirely happy, conclusion. It helped that I knew a bit about the history.

Thanks, Duchess. Am not really in the mood for nature though.

Have ordered The Enchanted April from the library - thanks Cedar

Whippetwoman I have A Buzz in the Meadow to read as well. In fact in A Sting in the Tail there is a chapter about buying a meadow and why he did it. So I'm hoping it won't be repetitive. I've been boring everyone with facts about bumblebees since reading it

Sorry, wrong thread . Will report it now.

Remus, Do you like Alan Partridge? His memoir is one of the funniest books I've ever read and only £1.99 at the moment on Kindle.

Thanks South, but I really, really can't stand him. Sorry. :(

ok Remus, give us some hints. Facts or fiction? Mountains? Mystery? Heavy literary? What type of book are you yearning for?

Tho sometimes you know, you need something out of your comfort zone to wake you up a bit...

I don't mind going out of my comfort zone at all, but only if it's good!

Mystery would be good, or a classic that I've somehow missed (but not Dickens). Or something quirky. Non-fiction fine, but I'd like some fiction too. Are there any classic detective novels that I might have missed? Something funny would be good - something like Bill Bryson, maybe? Or a sort of off-beat history book?

24. My First Summer In The Sierra - John Muir

Classic of nature writing (recommended by R Macfarlane at a talk I went to), he was a Scotsman who moved to the United States in the 1800s and became an early exponent and protector of the American wilderness. This is his account of a summer helping to herd sheep in the Sierra Nevada - heady and inspiring stuff.

Hmm I don't really read detective novels that much. Have you read the Thursday Next books? Might be too silly tho.

Or how about Jon Snow's memoir?

Or HHhH by Laurent Binet, about the assassination of Heinrich Reinhard in ww2 but done v originally, bit of a marmite book tbh.

Or totally different kitchen confidential by Anthony Bourdain?

Oooh - somebody else recommended 'HHhH' to me irl too!

Don't like Jasper Fffffffffffffffffff - find him v annoying, although in theory he should be right up my street.