50 Book Challenge 2016 Part Two

[southeastdweller]

Thread two 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, it's not too late to join, and please try to let us all know your thoughts on what you've read.

Previous 2016 thread here

I don't mind if female or male authors write about feelings (or are they different from feeeelings?)

I read to feel as well as to think, and the best writers, such as Austen and Eliot, certainly do write about feelings, intelligently so, and this is no bad thing at all. I don't think 'feelings' should become a perjorative term because they happen not to be to one person's taste, or that women writers need to eschew them to be considered good or taken seriously.

3 books that I had the biggest emotional response to growing up were written by men. I've also read some shockingly bad writing by men with not a feeeeeling in sight. It crops up everywhere, penises are no defence against it unfortunately.

Cote - I think you had an anti-female author rant on one of last year's threads too, glad to see you keep trying with the women regardless.

One of my favourite books last year was a first novel by a woman with lots of descriptions of Icelandic landscapes. I think there might have been a fair bit of "feeeeelings" too. You would love it - NOT! . Please read Burial Rites just so I can enjoy the scathing review, please please please?!

(Hilary Mantel is a genius btw)

Margaret Atwood and was sorely disappointed that she gets touted as a top SF writer

I read the grim and depressingly dystopian Handmaids Tale some years ago, and that did not inspire me to read any other books by Margaret Atwood.

Does she write much sci-fi though? I don't recall seeing her books in the sci-fi / fantasy section in bookshops.

Margaret Atwood claims she doesn't write SF because (and I quote) "if a book is realistic or plausible, then it's not science fiction" which has to be one of the stupidest things I have heard on this subject. All good SF is both realistic and plausible, and judging by the one book of hers I have read, most are far more so than the ones she is capable of writing.

"I think there might have been a fair bit of "feeeeelings" too."

I'm glad to see that "feeeliiings" has entered MN lexicon along with "brainhurty"

"Please read Burial Rites just so I can enjoy the scathing review, please please please?!"

Your wish is my command. I just bought the Kindle version for £1.89.

And now I saw that it was:

SHORTLISTED FOR THE BAILEYS WOMEN'S PRIZE FOR FICTION 2014.
SHORTLISTED FOR THE 2013 GUARDIAN FIRST BOOK AWARD.

Oooh this is going to be bad!

"I don't think 'feelings' should become a perjorative term because they happen not to be to one person's taste, or that women writers need to eschew them to be considered good or taken seriously"

It's not feelings, thought, but feeeeeliiiiings As in, heartstring-tugging to jerk a few tears and make the reader think she is reading something touching and worthwhile. That's my perception of what was going on in Secret Life Of Bees and Memory Keeper's Daughter, for example, where characters go on and on about terribly missing a long-lost mother or baby.

Anyway, as I've always said, this is personal preference and not an objective value judgement of who is a good author and who is not. There are books I love and seek out that others find unreadable.

Moving (from a couple of days ago) - yes, Gossip From the Forest is by the same Sara Maitland as Silence. I've heard it highly recommended and it's on my TBR.

In fairness to you (again!) cote, there are many many female writers I won't read (having tried them) among them Joyce Carol Oates and Margaret Atwood.

I recently (December 2015 so can't claim them here) read a fabulous trilogy by Jane Smiley (some Luck/Early Warning/Golden Age) - spanning 100 years of the 20/21st century about one family and it really captured so much of the american experience for me while making you interested/engaged in the characters, letting characters change/develop/shrivel over time the way real people do, and very much capturing some of the lost zeitgeists (if that makes sense) of the 20th century- like the obsession and fear of russian nuclear attack, the whole cold war spy thing etc. Also got a good insight into realities/dreams of farming and agri business etc all while desperately wanting to know what happened next to the people being written about -they felt real.

I wouldn't read Joseph Conrad if you paid me-way overrated in my opinion. Does anyone read him for pure pleasure?? I love George Orwell but he is basically an excellent journalist more than a writer. Neville Shute (who wrote On The Beach) was a mediocre writer who thought up great plots- fab plots. He'd probably be a script writer or tv writer today (so would Dickens I think). I couldn't imagine putting all three of them under "old style prose"

2. Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel

I'll keep it short. Eh...I didn't hate it, but I didn't love it. Then, I got to the end -- LAME!

Next up is Soy Sauce for Beginners by Kristin Chen

Cote - I saw you dismissed Maya Angelou as potentially falling within your category of women author's writing about "feeeliiiings". I think if you're giving Burial Rights a go (which I haven't yet read), then I think, if you haven't read I Know Why The Caged Bird Sings, then it might change your opinion of her.

Authors, not author's ......

"I wouldn't read Joseph Conrad if you paid me-way overrated in my opinion. Does anyone read him for pure pleasure??"

I do

"I love George Orwell but he is basically an excellent journalist more than a writer."

He is a pretty good writer imho. Although written a long time ago, his writing style in 1984 does not date, unlike Nevil Shute's utterly boring and superficial 'style' of implausible dialogue, incredibly superficial prose, and casual sexism.

"Neville Shute (who wrote On The Beach) was a mediocre writer who thought up great plots- fab plots."

I don't remember On The Beach as having anywhere near a great plot, let alone a fab one. It was the completely unrealistic, laughable story of how people would NOT behave when faced with annihilation - not trying to save their lives by moving down south, talking about whether to start fishing season a bit early this year and decide not to (as if there will be a next year, ffs), one guy's wife is concerned about his career (although they are all going to die soon) and shouldn't refuse an assignment, which would take him away from his wife & newborn baby for months so they die alone. What?

An example:

They are talking about a couple and this woman says "I hope they get married and have children". When told how unlikely that is with, you know, certain death by September , she replies:

" Oh dear, I keep forgetting. "

Well, you deserve to die if you're that stupid, don't you?

(Sorry, remembering that book always gets a rise out of me.)

cote if you don't like "page after boring page of landscape descriptions. " fgs avoid dickens. He counts the fucking puddles. Seriously the age of once a week instalments of books for publishing was not kinda to the read in one sitting generations. I am pretty sure it was great expectations that I was reading where someone walked down a road describing the puddles as they went. Mind numbingly tediaous.

Oh yes, weekly installments. They don't feel the same when collected in book format.

There could be a place for long landscape description but imho the first 5% of an SF book where you should be setting the stage for this different technological, political, & economic system is not it.

Most of what Margaret Attwood has written isn't science fiction - or couldn't be considered to be science fiction - as the writer herself doesn't consider it science fiction. So books like 'Alias Grace', 'Surfacing', 'Cat's Eyes' are completely different to her more recent books.

I enjoy reading Dickens partly because of the descriptions. He has brilliant descriptions of the introduction of the trains and how they slice through and destroy parts of cities like London (in one of his books, can't remember which one off the top of my head!).

Anyway back to the reviews part:

3 Leelah's Book by Alice Albinia Leelah married her husband and left India 20 years before. In all that time she has managed to keep the fact that she had a sister secret from him. He, meanwhile, has decided to move back to India and adopt his nephew. They go back to India for a wedding and various things happen. It's well written but I did find the basic plot unbelievable as they are supposedly happily married for all this time but neither of them actually talks to the other. (The husband has spent months having the house they own in India renovated without telling his wife about it, for example). However, the rest of the book was good with lots of ins and outs.

4 Miss Pym Disposes by Josephine Tey A real period piece. Miss Pym visits her old friend who runs a physical training teachers college for girls. There's a mystery but it takes most of the book to get there and I thought the twist was quite obvious. Also not entirely sure about the so-called 'punishment' but can't say any more than that without giving away the plot.

5 The Village by Marghanita Laska. Written in the 1950s and set at the very end of the Second World War it is about a English village on the cusp of change. A really easy read, I enjoyed this one.

The worst book I've read recently for demonstrating Cote's definition of feeeelings was written by a man (A Man Called Ove - sorry, I know lots of you loved it, but for me the sad bits were a bit too "deliberate").

I'm very happy to read about feelings though, and many of my favourite authors are women

By "deliberate" I mean that I felt they were written in order to make me cry. I love a good tear jerker, and have spent many happy hours crying over books, but the emotion should come naturally through the story and the characters, not via some one-liners about how much someone loves his dead wife. I sometimes felt like I was being forced / manipulated into feeling sad!

I think this is what Cote means by feeeelings.

I think the problem with Conrad is it's just so bloody obvious his first language wasn't English. Which is not to say he isn't a great writer, it's just sometimes a bit painful.

cotedazur yes I was in agreement with you, in a roundabout way, in that everyone's taste is different and we don't need to dismiss or deny the 'feelings' elements of good writers, because they are not to someone else's taste. I like literary irony, and witticisms and enjoy good descriptive writing, for example, so would naturally go for different writers than people who primarily enjoy plotting, or world-building, or...terrible writing

Having read your description of 'feeeeliiiiings', we are definitely on the same page there, and it should enter the collective vocabulary. I would never pick up the 2 books you mentioned as would feel immediately they weren't for me, and dislike and avoid mawkishness in general.

However, whilst I'm not a huge fan of Dickens, I would say he got the line between drama and melodrama right in Bleak House, had some good, unsentimental insights into grief in David Copperfield, and had me crying like a baby at the end of Tale of Two Cities

Am really enjoying this debate, really adds to the descriptions of books read. I do find Dickens a bit mawkish on the whole but love Bleak House. As for feelings, well, as described by many writers (male or female), am all for 'em if done well! Sarah Waters and Austen being prime examples.

Personally was put off Conrad for life by being force-fed Nostromo as a teen by a bunch of (male) teachers. It is unreadable!

Ove is on my list! Oh dear, hope to enjoy it, will keep you posted.

I've got to the end of book 3: Tregian's Ground by Anne Cuneo, tr. Roland Glasser and Louise Rogers Lalaurie.

This is a historical novel about Francis Tregian, collector of the pieces in the Fitzwilliam Virginal Book, and subtitled "the life and sometimes secret adventures of Francis Tregian, gentleman and musician". It is set in the Elizabethan and early Stuart era - up to the Civil War - and deals with plots and counter-plots, religious freedom/discrimination (the Tregian family are Catholics), and a lot about music. It travels through Cornwall, London, France, Italy, Holland and probably quite a few other places I've forgotten, and includes encounters with Shakespeare and most of the great political and musical figures of the day.

To me it sits somewhere between The Other Boleyn Girl and Wolf Hall in the literary/highbrowness scale and anyone who enjoyed those would probably get on well with it. Seemed to drag a little in the middle (although that might have been me), but generally engrossing and engaging.

Now, what to read next...?

Away from the "feeeeliiiiings" debate, this has been playing on my mind:

"Most of what Margaret Attwood has written isn't science fiction...as the writer herself doesn't consider it science fiction." (Cedar03 upthread)

Does the writer automatically get to categorise the work? If Margaret Attwood announced that she doesn't consider her work "fiction" then could it still be categorised as such?

Book 5 ,The Warlord wants Forever by Kresley Cole
Book 6, Demon from the Dark by Kresley Cole
Book 7, Dark Desires after Dark by Kresley Cole

This is a series that I am addicted to it's very low brow but good fun.

Any Margaret Atwood fans, The Heart Goes Last is 99p!

cough cough<

I do think you should pay attention to what a writer says about their work, but you certainly don't have to accept it as gospel. A book has an independent existence from its author.

Incidentally cote, could you point me to the interview where she said she didn't write science fiction. Is it available online? I'd be interested in reading it in full.

To be honest though, I'd consider MA to be first and foremost a writer of literary fiction and secondly science fiction.