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

35. The Girl on the Train - lots of reviews on this, I found it an enjoyable but very pedestrian holiday read, preferably in one sitting. Ok, but seriously not worth the great praise heaped upon it. I was pulled in at the beginning by Rachel and the collapse of her life. Don't think I would bother to try any more by this author.

36. An Officer and A Spy by Robert Harris. This is a thriller set in Paris in the late 19th / early 20th century and based on the true story of the Dreyfus case. A French Jew has been found guilty of passing military info to the Germans, but the new head of the French secret service starts finding discrepancies in his case. This is not the kind of book I would normally choose (it was a present) - slightly to my surprise I read it quickly and with enjoyment.

Returning to the earlier chat about male / female writers, is this an example of the "dick lit" genre??

26. An unpublished book by a friend, I won't name it in case of being outed!

58. Revenger by Rory Clements

John Shakespeare, former intelligencer in the service of the late Walsingham, is summoned out of his new profession as a school master by first the Earl of Essex and then Robert Cecil. Essex wants him to find a woman from the disappeared colony Roanoke in the new world but who is now believed to have been seen in London. Cecil wants Shakespeare to find vital papers which are now in Essex's possession and to seek out a threat believed to hang over the Queen. But as Shakespeare infiltrates the dissolute world of the arrogant Earl of Essex, he discovers that he and his family are also targets.

66. (I think) Desert - J.M.G Le Clezio

I had never heard of this Nobel prize winning author until I got a recommendation from GoodReads and there happened to be a copy at my local library.

This was amazingly powerful and poetic writing alternating between the stories of two characters set mainly in the North African deserts, although there is also a large chunk set in Marseille. Nour's story is set around the start of the twentieth century, when the French are taking over the native territories and essentially massacring the desert tribes. Lalla's story is set towards the end of the twentieth century and she is one of the last survivors of the tribe of the Blue Men.

Not a huge amount actually happens in this novel, it is almost all lushly descriptive writing, but I found it really beautiful and hypnotic to read, though in places it is tragic. The endless descriptions of the heat, light and dust of the desert caught my imagination.

Ok, I am off on holiday for two weeks tomorrow and I don't know if this means I will do more reading (sitting by the pool) or less reading (stopping children from drowning in the pool). We're in rural France so not sure about broadband access either. We'll see!

No 61 The Enchanted April by Elizabeth von Arnim

Thanks so much for the recommendation ( can't remember who it was )

4 ladies rent out a medieval castle for a month in Italy
It was published in 1922 so gives a wonderful depiction of what life was like for women in that era
Four very different women get to know one another .

Brilliant book xx

It is a lovely book, isn't it esio? I don't think I'm the one who recommended it, but it's sheer pleasure.

Read (86) Romantic outlaws : the extraordinary lives of Mary Wollstonecraft & Mary Shelley by Charlotte Gordon. Adored this - they led such interesting and difficult lives. Interesting from the point of view of feminism, the interplay between Enlightment and Romantic values, how posterity has understood and misunderstood them, and simply as a rattling yarn.

(87) A Question of Belief, Donna Leon. A day after finishing it, I couldn't tell you anything that happened, but I enjoy this just as an evocation of life in Venice.

Yes bibliomania : would love to see a film in it starring the two Dames - Maggie & Judi !

There is a film of Enchanted April. Was made a long time ago now with Miranda Richardson and Joan Plowright iirc. Was very beautiful scenery

27. Irene by Pierre Lemaitre, I finished reading it before reading the recent comments on here. It was gruesome I agree but for me it was in the same vein as the Scarpetta books by Patricia Cornwell which are really horrible too, but don't seem to really stay with me. I found the violence shocking but also so unreal that it didn't really upset me for some reason. I find other books much more upsetting and long lasting in my mind (A Fine Balance, the Narrow road to the deep North, any book about the Holocaust). Having said that, I don't usually read these serial killer type books any more (I liked them in my late teens, early twenties ) and I have no plans to read any more.

I have just started a thriller called Kolymsky Heights which I am really enjoying so far, I love a good thriller on holiday!

Just downloaded Enchanted April (99p on Kindle). Thanks for the recommendation esio.

52. Penny Vincenzi - A Perfect Heritage. Just what I needed, a good old fashioned blockbuster, this one about the cosmetic industry.

79. Stone Mattress by Margaret Atwood. A collection of short stories which I enjoyed mostly. I'm coming round to the short story genre very gradually, having avoided it for a long time.

Still enjoying Awful Auntie by David Walliams and have started A Song For Issy Bradley by Carys Bray.

47. What the is Normal?! - Francesca Martinez

Unfunny memoir by the comedienne who used to be in Grange Hill, most of her stories are dull and she was irritatingly preachy and patronising towards the end. It's cheap on Kindle at the moment but not worth buying even for £1.99. I should have realised this was poor after reading the glowing blurb on the cover from Russell Brand. One to go back to the charity shop this weekend.

62. Crooked Letter, Crooked Letter by Tom Franklin. Top-class Southern Gothic mystery set in rural Mississippi. This has a great story, sympathetic characters and tons of atmosphere. Highly recommended to John Connolly/James Lee Burke fans.

Book 96 - 'A Day to Die For' by Graham Ratcliffe
An account of the 1996 Everest disaster, by a British climber who was on the mountain as part of a different group. I really disliked this book. In its entirety it had probably fewer than 150 pages about the actual disaster, and hundreds of pages about the author, who, frankly, I wasn't interested in. It claims to be about revealing the truth of events, and has apparently upset many of the climbing community, but all it really does is write about a long search for information about the weather, so there's a lot of, 'I sent an email but he didn't reply' stuff, which, sadly, really doesn't make for interesting reading.

I appear to be reading a lot of extremely disappointing books this year, and this was one of the most disappointing. I wish I hadn't bothered finishing it - but I've given up on so many too, that I thought I should persevere. Am not a happy bunny!

53. 'Smut, by Alan Bennett.

ladydepp - I don't mind reading books about serial killers and quiet enjoy watching series/movies on such subjects, but truly disgusted me about Irène was the torture and murder of not only the pregnant woman but the fetus she was carrying. I can read just about everything but not baby torture

Cote - I agree that the newborn baby section was really a step too far. I naively assumed that both mother and babe would be rescued at the very last minute after a complicated chase. I was pretty shocked when that didn't happen. It does make me wonder what taboos are left?

As my mother often comments, what's wrong with a nice quiet murder that needs solving, like a poisoning or a single gunshot wound? Everything needs to be so gruesome, and the misogyny is just tedious.

Anyhow, I'm still enjoying Kolymsky Heights and have also started The Shock of the Fall which a friend recommended. so far I am enjoying both.

Remus - have you read The White Spider? A classic climbing book.

Thank you Duchess for recommending the film The Hours. DH and I watched it last night and both loved it! For once, the film lives up to (maybe even improves upon) an excellent book.

59 I Am Pilgrim by Terry Hayes

A thriller in which a retired US intelligence agent is summoned back to track down the most difficult of all terrorists to find - a so-called 'clean skin' acting alone and seeking to unleash mass murder on the continental US.

I thought this was really good. There's a huge amount of detail, lots of threads interweaving, and a detailed backstory for both terrorist and intelligence agent. A few too many coincidences, perhaps, but a cracking read.

Book 97
'No Way Down - Life and Death on K2' by Graham Bowley
Another mountaineering disaster, but this time one I'd recommend. Bowley is a journalist, not a climber, and wasn't involved in the events described - one night in 2008 when a collection of expeditions from different countries were all caught up in a series of problems and avalanches which resulted in 11 deaths. For me, it was a far better read than the Ratcliffe book I criticised below - for one, Bowley is a far better writer, but I think the main reason is that, as he was not involved and had no stake in the events and their aftermath, he had nothing to prove and no axe to grind. It was also far more focused and succinct than Ratcliffe's. I haven't read much about K2 before, and I really enjoyed this. It was also a very quick read - I finished it in one day.

38. The Shore, Sara Taylor A collection of linked stories set on The Shore, an small group of islands off the coast of Virginia. The stories move in time (but not chronologically) between the 1870s and 2043, and many of the characters are related - the Shore is isolated from the mainland, has its own ways and a fair amount of interbreeding, and is sometimes portrayed as a sort of Eden and other times as backward, insular and brutal. The snapshot-like structure is both clever (if this were a novel about all the characters it would be much longer) and frustrating because the stories are tiny glimpses into a fascinating world where traditional medicines, folklore and even supernatural powers rub up against modern life. I loved the brevity but also wanted more of the characters. Highly recommended.

Remus, have you read Al Alvarez's Feeding The Rat? A short and very well-written biog of climber Mo Anthoine. Not at all gung-ho, more about what drives people to climb.

Thanks, Froglet. Have come to the conclusion that I like my climbing books with plenty of added disaster though. :)

Book 30 My Struggle by Karl Ove Knausgaard.

Don't line what to say about this one. It was a huge sensation last year. A six book epic piece of life writing with the author just riffing about everything from his breakfast to why having children doesn't make him happy.

Zadie Smith described these books as crack.

I dunno .