50 Book Challenge 2015 Part Five

[southeastdweller]

Thread five 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, third thread here, and fourth thread here.

Happy reading

Oh no re Kindle btw. Hope it's there waiting for you tomorrow.

I can cry

I agree about Never Let Me Go.

Possible Spoiler**
*
I liked the writing style, particularly the first part in the boarding school. But you'd have to think that if there was the science for cloning then there would also have been the science to grow organs in the lab. Obviously the government would fund the organ labs instead of the expense of the clones and the possibility of them rebelling. It just couldn't happen.

Anyone who will ever want to read Never Let Me Go probably has read it already so I'm not worrying about spoilers

Not just that, mmack, but if you have the technology to clone surely you would have your own clone to harvest organs from to forget about tissue rejection. And why the fuck don't those clones organise & rebel or run & hide, at the very least? You would think that at least some of them would NOT lay under the knife like idiots. I've seen actual lambs show more backbone when in line for slaughter

58. The Man Who Couldn't Stop: OCD And The True Story Of A Life Lost In Thought by David Adam

This was a fascinating into the world of OCD, which the author has suffered from for over a decade. It talks about the history of the disease, how it was treated through the ages, current treatments, prognosis, strategies to manage it. It was very interesting and I would recommend it to everyone, but I can't say more about it because all my notes are in my Kindle which I don't have with me now

Please can I join? It is very very late in the year and I have no idea how many books I have read so far but I promise you it's been a lot. Most recent have been:

The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay by Michael Chabon
The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes
The Valley of Fear - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
The Case-Book of Sherlock Holmes
A Feud in the Chalet School by Elinor M Brent-Dyer
Paladin of Souls by Lois McMaster Bujold
Horizon by Lois McMaster Bujold
Dragonsdawn by Anne McCaffrey
All The Weyrs of Pern by Anne McCaffrey
Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince

I need to start Elizabeth Is Missing soon for book club. In the meantime I am going to read HP and the Deathly Hallows again.

I thought people did have their own clones and the teenagers were looking for their original versions in the seaside town. I'm hazy on the details though. I think I might read another Ishiguro book some day but Emily St. John Mandel annoyed me too much to get another chance.

Oooh, and I recently finished Beauty Queens by Libba Bray which is amazing. Teenage feminist fiction - heavily based on Lord of the Flies, but with beauty queens. It's wonderful. It should be MN's favourite book.

Good to have you back, Quog - I'd been wondering what happened to you

My Christmas reading is a book I've been meaning to read for years - Rebecca, by Daphne du Maurier.

Hope you find your kindle tomorrow, Cote.

I love Rebecca, it's in my top 5.

Southeast - what with Christmas shopping and still sorting out probate issues, and me not feeling very well, again, I needed some down time away from the computer. But hopefully will be back fully now.

Cheddar - welcome to the thread. You'll never be short of a good book recommendation now :)

Cote - I hope you find your kindle. I feel your pain - I lost my phone for several hours once, no idea where I'd left it but thankfully some honest people still exist and it was handed in and I got it back.

tumble - interestingly, my favourite sections were the other two, but I did think her religious experiences in India were interesting and clearly meant a great deal to her.

Remus - I think I fancy reading some more of the Shardlake series, Sovereign next, for Christmas. Have also got my eye on the new illustrated hardback of Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone. And the new Bill Bryson - The Road to Little Dribbling.

Cote I've left my kindle in Kwikfit and a cafe before now. Got it back both times. Fingers crossed for you.

Welcome back, Quog/Duchess and welcome TooExtra

I'm at a cafe across the street from the hairdresser, waiting for it to open. I don't know what I'll do if I don't find my Kindle there confiscate DD's Kindle until I get a new one

Just told a friend who gasped in horror and said "I panic when I can't find mine at home. Can't imagine what you're going through!". Love my bookish friends

I didn't mind Eat Pray Love. It was a light, fun read that was not pretentious or heartstring-tugging.

"I thought people did have their own clones and the teenagers were looking for their original versions in the seaside town"

That was a rumour they heard - that there was a woman there who looked like one of them. Turned out to be incorrect.

We know clones are not owned by one person to whom they donate in when that person needs an organ because some like the narrator become carers and so are exempt from organ harvesting.

We have read the book and don't agree on this basic issue which goes to show how badly done it was - nothing explained, nothing properly worked out. Just a lot of pling plong on the heart strings. Gah.

Oi!!! I haven't read Never Let Me Go yet so I am having to skip lots of this thread.

I hope your Kindle is returned to you Cote. I would cry if I lost mine. Then buy another one.

Well I am struggling through Master of Shadows by the historian Neil Oliver. It's his first proper fiction book. I have to finish it to review it as I got it in a book giveaway but I can't get the image of Neil Oliver tossing his long flowing locks in the breeze of some Scottish coastline or other out of my head. It's distracting me and not in a good way. Plus I'm not big on historical fiction.
And there's also a voice in my head to go with the image that keeps saying 'MASTER. OF. SHADOWS' in a film trailer deep voice.

For my Christmas reading I am looking forward to the first two Dark is Rising books by Susan Cooper. I was 11 when I read them last. Oh, and The Christmas Mystery by Jostein Gaarder because I am one of the few people who loved Sophie's World, which I read earlier this year.

at MASTER. OF. SHADOWS.

I would also cry if I lost my Kindle. I have broken 2 already and that was traumatic enough. The first one the screen went wonky, not my fault, but DH bought me a Kindle Fire as a replacement and I dropped it in the bath after about a month. It might have been okay even then if I had sensibly left it alone to dry out, but I was three-quarters of the way through Gaudy Night so I kept reading even though the screen was flickering weirdly...and then I plugged it in because the battery was running out. It went fritz. Electricity + water... I've now got a v big phone so I can read on that and I don't have to carry 2 devices all the time.

I read Never Let Me Go about 6 months ago and I've almost completely forgotten the plot. That's the sign of a mediocre book. The bits I remember are mostly from the film. I haven't read Brave New World for at least fifteen years and I remember that in great detail.

Found my Kindle! We are reunited!

Wiping a tear from my eye at Cote lovingly fondling her Kindle once more.

I'm fairly neutral about Kindles myself. At best, I'm caught up in the story and forget I'm on a Kindle. I'm all about the Ritual of the Library Book - the expectation, the excitement when a long-awaited volume is ready, the serendipity, and the discipline of needing to return it by a certain date, so it doesn't sit reproachfully on a shelf for years.

121. Smoke gets in your eyes and other lessons from the crematorium, Caitlin Doughty. Recommended on this thread. It's very....vivid, not to say gruesome on occasion. It mingles a surprisingly amusing account of how she learns the crematorium trade along with musings on how our culture deals with death. It's very sincere, not at all stunt journalism and very well written. Recommended with caution - there are very graphic images I haven't managed to shake.

Over Christmas, I'm going to make an attempt at John Aubrey: My Own Life by Ruth Scurr. It's the kind of thing I tend to like, and it got good reviews. I also have Home : a time traveller's tales from Britain's prehistory by Francis Pryor and The King in the North by Max Adams. Winter seems the right time for reading history books. Also the second Genghis Khan book. On the historical fiction front, I've got Lamentation by C J Sansom (I've been put off by early scenes of people being burnt at the stake - I'll have to skim past this bit as quickly as possible).

On the more lightweight side, I picked up a Tana French book (crime fiction set in Dublin) and thought it started well, so I'll see if I can line up a couple of others. Also Dublin-based is the latest Ross O'Carroll-Kelly book, Seedless in Seattle. This series is very very funny, but it's written in a phonetic rendering of his Dublin 4 accent so I'm not sure how accessible it is for a non-Irish reader.

Heaves sigh of relief on your behalf Cote :)

Thank goodness, Cote!

Whippet funny you should mention Sophie's World, as I'm reading it at the moment. 37% in and enjoying it so far. Your review of Master of Shadows made me !

Glad you are reunited with your kindle Cote

One of my friends husbands once hid her kindle because, in his opinion, she spent too much time reading needless to say they are now divorced

*Book 82 The Nightingale by Kirstin Hannah. I don't know what I expected from the good reads historical fiction book of the year but certainly a little more. I didn't find the book boring but I certainly found it very very predictable and even implausible in places. This was a book about the French and set in France so why the references to "sidewalks"for pavements and measuring distances in how many "blocks"away they were - this does annoy me. So in summary, an okay read but for me it definitely does not live up to the hype...
*Book 84 The Little Stranger by Sarah Waters. I am planning a cosy night by the fire glass of wine and start this new book ...

Welcome back Duchess/Qwog - fed up with probate too... X

Thank you all for being there for me in my time of need

DH also mentions from time to time that my Kindle gets far more attention than him from me in our marital bed, but if he would never dare hide it. He knows how I get if I can't find it, especially before sleep.