50 Book Challenge 2016 Part One

[southeastdweller]

Thread one of the 50 Book Challenge for this year.

The challenge is to read fifty books (or more!) in 2016, though reading fifty isn't mandatory. Any type of book can count, and please try to let us all know your thoughts on what you've read.

Who's in for this year?

Hi, newbie here! Books1and 2read:
book1 All quiet by Helen zenna smith
An account of a female ambulance driver on the western front in France during world war 1. A harrowing,informative,grim read but wonderfully written. Highly recommended.
book2 the Summer Book by Tove Jansson
Tells the story of sophia(7years old?) , her mother has recently died, and her feisty grandmother spending a summer on a tiny Swedish island and their day to day existence and experiences. A beautiful book, charming, gentle, evocative and humorous. I thoroughly enjoyed it.
Just about to begin book3 the pied piper by Nevil Shute

Oops! not so quiet

Dd1 was ill today so have had a day bedded down at home reading, bliss. DH was working from home so we've had a fire lit all afternoon, it felt very decadent.

So I got to finish book number 3 Red Rising by Pierce Brown. I think this was a Côte recommendation from last year and I thoroughly enjoyed it. For those new to the thread, it follows a youth growing up in futuristic Mars where his tribe are at the bottom of a complex hierarchy. I don't want to give much away as think it's best to come to these books without spoilers, but I really loved all the classical parallels.

Very pleased I have the next in the series, Golden Son, ready to go on!

1. The Versions of Us
2. All the Light We Cannot See
3. Red Rising

Well, a mountain is a step up from a pebble, I suppose.

2. The Moonstone by Wilkie Collins

The original detective novel, this is brilliant and extremely well constructed as well as funny and entertaining. The plotting keeps the reader interested always in the next revelation, and the characters are well drawn and and all are seen from a number of different narrative points of view, which greatly adds to the texture and suspense of the novel. Hard to follow.

I really struggled last year with My Brilliant Friend , Shakeitoff, despite it being highly lauded. I think it was just too slow-paced for me.

I got quite obsessed with the Elena Ferrante novels just this December and read them all back to back. Fascinating! There was a slight lull in the second one but after that it was just so engrossing. Thoroughly loved them but I can appreciate that they can be annoying too.

I loved Into Thin Air but hated Mountains Of The Mind. Superficial, pretentious rubbish imho.

Booklover I really enjoyed Pied Piper.

Satsuki Have you read No Name - Wilkie's best imho.

Stokey - I agree, it's really hard to talk about Red Rising without spoilers. The sequel is great, too, and 3rd book in the trilogy is out soon

I'm in please if I may, I doubt I'll reach 50 but it's such an awesome goal that if I manage half of it I'll have read loads of (hopefully) wonderful books.

I'm guessing that if I am half way through I book I started in 2015 I can't count that?

Yes you can!

Phoenix - yes, it will count! Welcome. :)

I have Red Rising and the second on my wishlist. I'm soooo tempted after all the great reviews of it...

I am too Remus!

Ok. I've just bought Red Rising I'm slightly confused though. It should've been £4.99 (on kindle) but only £1.99 has been taken off my Amazon gift card balance. I'm not complaining though!

Get its sequel now, too. Golden Son is just £0.99 on the Kindle atm

Oh brilliant, I'm well away then .

I've got the sequel too! (Two books for under £3? Don't mind if I do! .

I've also just got Two brothers and I'm trying to decide between The Wool Trilogy and The Taming of the Queen for the last tenner on the gift card...

Book 3. The Black House by Peter May

I don't know quite what I was expecting from this novel - probably a straightforward whodunnit crime thriller. It is that, in part, but the whole is much much more.

There is a murder, and a detective sent to investigate it, on the Island of Lewis in the Outer Hebrides, where he grew up. This is Fin Macleod, damaged, broken, grieving, and reluctant to return to a place he couldn't wait to leave at age eighteen. He is thrown into the midst of an investigation of a brutal murder in this tight-knit community where things are "not seen". He knows everyone, and they know him. There is tension, resentment, fear. It is bleak, windswept territory, and the people who live there are as tough and closed in on themselves. Fin was a local but isn't now. They don't want him there, or do they? Someone does. And it becomes a taut cat and mouse chase to find the killer.

We are given a lot of Fin's back story, as a child growing up there and that was bleak. I particularly enjoyed the section about the guga hunters on An Sgeir - very atmospheric. I could see and almost smell the place. The wheeling birds, roiling sea, terror of the cliff face climbs. Brilliantly evocative. Looking forward to reading the next in the trilogy.

Great review of The Blackhouse Quog. It's an excellent read.

Although I'm Scottish I can't pretend to be an expert on the Hebrides, although I've visited there and have friends who grew up on Lewis. I loved the atmosphere of the place that Peter May conjured up and it made me want to go back.

Hope you enjoy the next two books as well. I think they're all worth a read, but did feel that The Blackhouse had the edge for originality, probably due to the description of the guga hunting which was completely new to me.

1. Horrible Histories: Scotland by Terry Deary ok, it's a short, children's, non fiction book, but it's a book, and I read it. Had this on the kindle for DS for ages, and he has dipped in and out, but not read it end to end. I will be encouraging him to do so, now I have myself. Well put together and entertaining run through of Scottish history, being HH, focusing on the grislier aspects, of which there are plenty. Lots of anecdotal snippets, many of which were familiar to me, but plenty weren't, and will be worth following up with some 'adult' reading.

Does anyone have any good scottish history recommendations, any period? My mum got Neil Oliver's History of Scotland for Christmas and I'm planning to read it after she's done. Anyone read it? Any good? Looking southward, I've got the Hollow Crown waiting on my kindle following recommendations on this thread. Thanks, looking forward to that.

I'm in! Probably won't make it to 50 with two pre-schoolers but I'll give it a shot. Just reading an Anne Cleeves at the moment
(ravenshead) but I've got valley of the dolls lined up on my kindle and I can't wait! Been wanting to read this book for years.

1. The Rosie Project. I'm sure this has been reviewed many times already so I will say I thought it was fine. Fluff, but not awful fluff. The friend who gave it to me promised laugh-out-loud moments so I was disappointed not to laugh (so hard to find a genuinely funny book) but I definitely didn't hate it. I am unlikely to read the sequel.

highland - I've just spent the last half hour looking at maps and pictures of Lewis, and reading about Sula Sgeir where the guga hunting takes place. Am fascinated now. I don't suppose I'll ever get to visit Lewis, but it certainly intrigues me.

For some reason my autocorrect changed Blackhouse to Black House without my noticing it, so apologies to Peter May for unwittingly changing the title of his novel .

It finished on a bit of a cliff hanging moment that I want to find out how that pans out in the next one.