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

Tana French is very unpredictable. In the Woods and Faithful Place were excellent but I didn't like The Likeness or The Secret Place. Broken Harbour is pretty good but not in the same class as The Spinning Heart.

Tana French's one book I read (In The Woods) was unbearable, imho. Pretentious twaddle, dull as watching paint dry, and ultimately pointless because it all kind of hangs in the air. You kind of understand whodunnit but it makes little sense. Thankfully I have forgotten most of it.

73. Adrian Mole: The Wilderness Years - Sue Townsend

Fourth in the Mole books, this was an improvement on the third one, but now he's in his mid 20's, Adrian's immaturity is starting to annoy me.

74. A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens

My first Dickens book and the writing was as dense and descriptive as I expected, which I did find a little hard-going at times, but I enjoyed it all the same. The ending was quite moving, even though I knew what was coming, and I agree with Joyless about the stunningly written passage about Christmas Day. Looking forward to reading more of his books next year.

Gave up on All the Light We Cannot See as his writing was pretentious and the story very slow-moving.

Mixed reactions to Tana French. I have a couple more of hers lined up, so will report back.

Started John Aubrey: My Own Life by Ruth Scurr and loving it. She's taken extracts of his writing and assembled them as if it were a diary. Some longeurs, but wonderful moments: ancient parchments from monasteries, scattered and despised after the Dissolution, used to cover schoolbooks; witches liking Malmsbury mud; early experiments of the Royal Society, where they scorn the idea of blood transfusions but like the idea of a cart with legs instead of wheels. A few Pooterish moments - he goes to France but gets piles so can't do much.

98. The One Thing by Gary Keller and Jay Papasan

A self-help sort of book with a business focus, this was given to me by someone as I was leaving my last job. It's about increasing productivity and effectiveness by identifying the one thing that you can do in any given day to help you achieve your goals. There are some good ideas, although I wonder how practical some of them actually are in the average workplace. My problem with these sorts of things is that strategies are all well and good, but what if you don't actually know what your goals should be in the first place? I don't mean in a job necessarily, but since this is aimed at also helping one get where one wants to be in life generally (the goals are really your own, and the ones in work are things that you identify as being key to getting you where you want to be) it always ends up as a bit of a non-starter for me. Still, I suppose if I do ever identify something I want to achieve in life at least I will have plenty of tools to help!

I quite like "Broken Harbour" but not enough to gobble any of her others down.

I loved Phil Rickman and read them after Chille recommended them on last years thread. My DH has read a few some of which he likes and others not so much.

Reading The Little Stranger by Sarah Waters and quite enjoying it so far.

Is GertyBoo still posting does anyone know?

98. Vernon God Little by DBC Pierre. Enjoyable but I don't think the plot would stand up to too much scrutiny. A strange one to win the Booker.
99. My Family and Other Animals. So funny. Loved it.

And now I have to pick book 100. I have The Man in the Queue by Josephine Tey, Mislaid by Nell Zink, a Lionel Shriver book, The Casual Vacancy and The Diamond Age by Neal Stephenson to choose from.

Love My Family And Other Animals, mmack!

Wild Strawberries by Angela Thirkell - bit light, not as funny as High Rising.
August Folly by Angela Thirkell - better, more like High Rising, but still not quite as good, for me.

I'm not going to buy any more Angela Thirkell until after Christmas now. I might try one of the Horrid novels - The Castle of Wolfenbach by Eliza Parsons.

49. A Christmas Party by Georgette Heyer - a good but not great Christmassy murder mystery. It was interesting to read Georgette Heyer for the first time and she seems to have a pretty easy to read style, but I must say I got a bit bored in the middle.

I'm told it's not a patch on Agatha Christie's Hercule Poirot's Christmas which I am conveniently reading next!

I am enjoying reading Christmas themed murder mysteries, makes a change from some of the sicklier fare on offer.

123. John Aubrey: My Own Life by Ruth Scurr. I liked it but it's not going to appeal to everyone. She's reverse-engineered a diary for him based on extracts from his other writings, and it has the strengths and weaknesses of reading someone's diary (his contemporary Pepys is the obvious example). At its best, there's a real sense of walking in that person's shoes. At its worst, it gets a bit dull - "Today I drank coffee with so-and-so".

I'm getting stuck into The Safe Place, by Tana French. The setting (a girls' boarding school) doesn't speak to me in quite the same way as the half-built housing estate did. Reminds me to count my blessings that I am no longer a teenage girl.

Book 151 - 'The Moonstone' by Wilkie Collins - a re-read
Only the second time I've read this and it was just right for this time of year - it's a proper curl up in bed and wallow sort of book. Perfect.

106. Lord Jim - Joseph Conrad
     Phew, this was a bit heavy going but I am glad to have read this classic tale of sea-faring cowardice and its tragic repercussions. I enjoyed the last third at least! Attitudes towards non-Europeans are not great in this novel.

107. The Christmas Mystery - Jostein Gaarder
     Too preachy and overtly Christian for me, but it didn't stop me enjoying this tale of a magic advent calendar and a disappearing girl. It was simple and sweet.

108. Master of Shadows - Neil Oliver
     Or should I say, MASTER. OF. SHADOWS.
     I have to write a formal review for this on the give-away thread. I'm afraid this just didn't really work for me. I didn't buy any of the characters, nor did I sympathise with any of them. It's set in Scotland and then in Constantinople during the famous siege in which the Turks finally took the city, so an interesting historical time period, which was the best thing about this to be honest.

mmack I quite enjoyed reading Vernon God Little. I remember it being rather odd but still good.

66: The Winter Children - Lulu Taylor. Reviewed for Mumsnet on my blog, it was a light-weight easy read if full of stereotypical-ness.

67: Lock In - John Scalzi. Following a wide-spread virus, a small percentage (but significant numbers) of the population suffer from "lock in". In order to enable them to participate in life, money is sunk into technological advances. Hadens (they are called for the President who passed the funding legislature) are able to use Integrators or Threeps to walk, talk and otherwise interact whilst their locked-in body remains in medical care. This is the story of a Haden and an Integrator who work for the FBI. Writing a tad clunky, but the ideas are rich. Interested to hear the opinion of the thread's science-fiction specialists.

68: The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald. I thought I knew the story. I didn't. It was less glitz and glamour, more layered and sad. Seeing the tale through Nick's eyes brought a level of humanity to this story of obsessive love and the rich being different. I shall read more Fitzgerald next year for sure.

I have the Poirot and Jostein Gaardner's christmas stories to look forward to ladydepp and whippet. I did wonder about Georgette Heyer, but I used to read her romantic stuff in boarding school and that may've coloured my view somewhat ...

128. Big Magic by Elizabeth Gilbert. This is her latest book, another non-fiction piece but more of a self-help book. As ever, she is the voice of common sense, with many wise words and encouragement. I liked it.

129. Brooklyn by Colm Toibin. A re-read. Still not feeling the love for this novel. I don't get what's considered so brilliant about it. What am I missing?

I mis-counted a few books back so now on 96.

96. Cinderella in Sunlight - Hermina Black. This is an old comfort read from the 1950's Romance Bookclub. Manicurist Barbary is engaged to Aristocratic Ricky to the horror of his Aunt, Lady Melisande. Sardonic Cousin Vance returns from his distant travels and bets Aunt that they will never make it to the altar. Will a month at a house party the South of France prove too much of a strain for the young lovers? Hard to say why I love this book so much as it is cliche after cliche but I'm a sucker for the clothes and the glamour and the romance.

97. Career of Evil - Robert Galbraith. Third in the Cormoran Strike series. Miles better than the ropey second book, this was a real page turner. Couldn't put it down and almost missed my stop on the train racing towards the end. Plenty of twists and turns, gruesome and macabre, complicated plotting, a thoroughly good yarn. Well done JKR.

Joyless - I read Lock In last year. Yes, it's not literature with great prose, but I enjoyed it. This was my review:

Lock In - John Scalzi

Whoa! This was interesting & clever. (Or, possibly, everything looks fast-paced and incredibly smart after the snooze-fest that was Seven Pillars Of Wisdom ). The story takes place in a near future where a viral disease has left a significant minority of the population with Locked-in Syndrome, and the technology has been developed to allow these people to control "threeps" (namesake C3PO of Star Wars) to interact in RL, much like the Bruce Willis movie Surrogates. There is an unexplained death and investigation uncovers a great conspiracy, etc.

The story is good, but it is the details that make Lock In a great read. The author has imagined this future world in fine & consistent detail that feels real and does not disappoint. I highly recommend this book, especially if you are coming out of reading a dull tome and want a gripping thriller as a palate cleanser.

"Will a month at a house party the South of France prove too much of a strain for the young lovers?"

Um... seriously?

59. Timescape - Gregory Benford

This could have been a good book but was ruined by the endless "character development" that took up about 90% of the book. At least that's what I think the author was trying to do in those endless chapters about the characters' families, who is sleeping with whom, dinner parties etc. The author is an astrophysicist and this could have been a great book if he stuck to (what I hope was) the main plot of the Earth in the grip of ecological apocalypse and scientists sending faster-than-light tachyon signals back in time to warn people 20 years in the past about it.

But that's not the route the author has chosen to take, and so what we have here is A LOT of completely insignificant nonsense about the scientist's Jewish mum not approving of his non-Jew girlfriend etc. HELLOOOOO, you are receiving Morse-coded scientific messages from within your experiment in the lab! Maybe, JUST MAYBE, that is a little more important than the bickering between fringe characters in the book?

Also, the main character was a weirdo who missed opportunity after opportunity to make something out of his discovery and the ending didn't make too much sense. If nobody here is interested in reading it (despite my glowing review ) I would be happy to say why.

Yep Cote It's a real period piece and laughable today. It was probably laughable in 1958 too. It still entertains me in a ridiculous way.

I really love Tana French, although I must admit the constant teen speak in The Secret Place made me twitchy after a while.

I like the off kilter feel of them, the faint supernatural hint and I loved the echo of The Crucible in The Secret Place.

She needed to change the ending to The Likeness though. Far far far too reminiscent of The Secret History for my liking.

The Stars my Destination, by Alfred Bester. I've actually read this before years ago under the title Tiger, Tiger!, didn't realise it was the same book when I ordered it. Classic sci-fi, definitely worth (re)reading despite the (typical for the period) pretty dubious writing of the female characters. I love his Scientific People in particular.

I think I've read half of Timescape, Cote, and it's unusual for me to give up on a fiction book

The Likeness was very like The Secret History, Bugrit. Also Faithful Place has a very, very similar plot to one of my favourite Dennis Lehane books. It's hard to be totally original in a crime novel though. I know that lots of people thought Gone Girl was totally original but the ending reminded me of Presumed Innocent by Scott Turow.

I am bookless again. German one (Little Man, What Now' by Hans Fallada) isn't doing it for me at the moment. Help!