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

Book 60. Major Pettigrew's Last Stand - Helen Simonson

Lovely feel-good story about two widowed people, a retired Major and the village shop keeper, Mrs Ali.

Thanks, Joyless - hacked MNers were doing different things last week like NMing, changing passwords, some even thought of deleting so it was hard to know what to do for the best. For now I've just changed my MN password as I'm sure my old one was only used for this website.

I'm reading the recent Graham Norton book that Duchess read recently and enjoying it hugely so far.

Help - need an emergency Kindle buy that I am guaranteed to love! Any ideas, pretty please?

Hope you're okay, Duchess, and that you've had lots of lovely time to catch up on reading since the scan.

I'm starting a bit late. Reading gets on my nerves, other people's opinions are really annoying. I'd rather write. However, I do have a whole lot of unread books in the house, so this is a place to start. Hoping to be back later with the first one read.

If you don't like reading and find other people's opinions (like ours) annoying, I'm not sure that you will like it on this thread

Mrstwee - your post made me laugh, are you serious? Not sure this thread will suit someone who doesn't like reading . Perhaps those unread books are best donated to a library?

Oh dear, Mrs Twee. It really doesn't look as if this thread is going to suit you terribly well. We have opinions on here...LOTS of opinions.

And we read. LOTS

And sometimes we have opinions about what we've read - lots of opinions, about lots of books.

Yes, lots of opinions from strangers about lots of books. AND we will even have opinions about the books you read. If you have published anything, we would even go out of our way to write our opinions about YOUR writing, as well

66. A Hat Full of Sky by Terry Pratchett

The second of the Tiffany Aching series. Tiffany has gone off to learn to be a witch in the mountains, working with Miss Level, who has two bodies. But Tiffany's trick of stepping outside her own body has attracted the attention of a hiver, a formless being endlessly seeking new, powerful bodies to take over. Tiffany has to learn to be a witch very quickly indeed.

Congratulations tessie. How lovely to have a Christmas baby

Duchess, my copy of Meadowland has arrived from the library and it looks to be exactly my sort of thing so I am looking forward to getting started once I’ve finished up some others. Thank you for the recommendation.

This discussion has made me of those going to Hay too. I only live two hours away and have never been there so we are planning a trip if we can palm DS2 off to relatives for the day.

71. Royal Highness – Thomas Mann
    He’s one of my favourite authors and I loved reading The Magic Mountain, Buddenbrooks and Doctor Faustus when I was in my twenties. Unfortunately this doesn’t compare, although it is very interesting in parts, but it took a good few hundred pages to get going! I guess it’s one of his lesser-known novels. It tells the tale of a young prince of a German principality under Kaiser Wilhelm; what it’s like to be born into a royal family and to have to live a life made for fulfilling royal duties and being permanently on public display. It gets interesting when a rich, intelligent American heiress appears on the scene but my word, there’s a lot of novel to get through before that happens!

72. My Salinger Year – Joanna Rakoff
    I really loved this. In the 90s, Joanna Rakoff spent a year working in the office of a literary agent in New York. It turns out the agent had, amongst others, a very famous client called Jerry. It’s basically a coming of age story and a glimpse into the literary world of New York and I found it to be a really enjoyable read.

73. Volpone – Ben Jonson
    I went to see this at the RSC at Stratford on Monday evening and decided to read the play first, and managed to finish it before I went -–and I definitely didn’t read any at work, oh no not me--. I’m glad I read it as it did make it easier to keep up with the fairly complex plot and it was genuinely funny. The production was excellent by the way, and I heartily recommend it if anyone is able to get up to Stratford. I’m glad to have read a play this year too.

Hope you enjoy Meadowland as much as I did, whippet His writing really drew me in. It was superb. One of my favourite reads of this year so far.

Due to being on holiday , Crap rainy weather & hackergate I've just finished

No 71

Mary Kubica's Pretty Baby

This is another psychological thriller from the author of The Good Girl
Heidi takes in a homeless girl and her baby , but due to her own past she becomes obsessed with the baby
The story is narrated by Heidi , Willow the young mum & Heidi's husband Chris
There's lots of twists and turns and I enjoyed it , I hadn't guessed all the twists

Hi Everyone,

Back to update after my holiday. Sorry to hear some of you have been having a tough time.

37. The Colour Purple - Alice Walker - an audio read, I enjoyed the narration and story.
38. England Expects - Sara Sheridan - 1950's murder mystery.
39. Summertime - Vanessa Lafaye - I was in Florida on holiday so decided to read this book set in the Florida Keys and portraying racial tension prior and during the 1926 hurricane. Interesting and worth a read, especially when you consider Florida today (Disneyland etc.)
40. Are You Dead - Peter James - latest in the Roy Grace series, good comfort read.
41. Deeds of Darkness - Edward Marston - latest in the Home Detective series (First World War) - again a comfort read.
42. One Summer - Bil Bryson - I haven't read a BB book for a while and I do enjoy his style of writing. Goes though 1927 concentrating on aviation but also covering baseball, boxing amongst others. I enjoyed the book but did skim read some of the slightly boring baseball sections!
43. Heartstone- CJ Sansom - I enjoyed this Shardlake saga and almost finished the series.
44. Pop Goes The Weasel - MJ Arlidge - an audio book. Didn't like the narrator or the sloppy writing but the storyline was more interesting luckily. Looking online some people really enjoyed the narration, so it's obviously all a matter of taste!

Am now on Bringing up the Bodies by Hilary Mantel - at last.

I've just started Lena Dunheim's non fic book , creator of Girls
Can't get into it though think it's too young for me

Esio

Finished Murder at the Vicarage and enjoyed it although I was a little disappointed by who the killer turned out to be. I was expecting a twist. However, yet again Agatha kept me gripped!

Have just started I Let You Go by Claire Mackintosh. Let's see if a non Christie can hold my attention!

Feeling very happy today as I had 24 week check up this morning (first time being checked out at a clinic in Sarajevo so was a bit nervous) and everything is looking great. We were also treated to another scan which we weren't expecting and doctor confirmed baby is definitely a girl

Aw, girls are brilliant! (I'm sure boys are too, just haven't had one myself). Congratulations!

Congratulations, tessie Girls are fab and so are boys (have got one of each). In fact it's DS who loves to cuddle and DD is more independent.

Thanks Biblio and Duchess we are over the moon but would have been equally as happy if she were a boy!!

Congrats Tessie. A little girl, how lovely.

Unfortunately had to cut short our break in Hay so didn't get to check out all the book shops or the pubs although we did manage to spend two hours in the old Cinema book shop and came out with a stack of books.

We will go back though and if anyone is thinking of going I can recommend a lovely house to rent.

Book no 61 - Crown of Lights - Phil Rickman, no 3 in the Merrily Watkins series about a vicar set in the villages around Hereford. We visited Hereford Cathedral and some of the villages when we were in the area so I can now visualise some of the scenes in this series. I was not so keen on this one as on the previous two but will continue with the series.

That's a shame you had to cut your trip short, Best.

We used to stay at The Old Post Office at Llanigon, which is a couple of miles from Hay, over the border in Wales.

Book 110 - 'Moonfleet' by John Meade Falkner
Found this when Googling classic children's literature and it was free on Kindle. I enjoyed it - it's a gripping adventure story involving smuggling, a treasure hunt, and the usual boys' own stuff of manly friendship etc. It whiled away a long train journey very nicely.

I loved Moonfleet as a child Remus. Had forgotten about that. Adding to my list.