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

*3. The Snow Child by Eowyn Ivey
*
I've had this knocking around the house for over a year and just got round to reading it.
I did enjoy it, although it took a lot of getting into and I never felt totally absorbed by it. It felt a bit like it had been written deliberately to be discussed at book clubs!

Ooh Quogwinkle I will look into that...

Ordered the new one on the Romanovs as mentioned above, it should have arrived when I get home after this weekend away. That will be book 7 I think.

12 Dark Intelligence by Neil Asher
Action sci-fi, first in a series. Mixed feeings on this one. It's a bit too violent for my taste, but I just tend to skip those bits, so that wouldn't necessarily put me off. Its told from multiple viewpoints, and I felt there were just too many voices, and as a result it took me a very long time to get into the story. The last 1/4 was excellent, though once it all came together, and I'll probably watch out for the others in future, hoping that they'll carry on from there.

5persephone,s Mollie Panter Downes Minnie,s Room, the Peacetime Short Stories excellent book, I am not usually a fan of short stories but she is such an accomplished writer. Stories written and portrayed between1945 and 1965.Brilliant!
4Charles Dickens biography by Claire Tomalinreviewed previously.
3Nevil Shute Pied Piper reviewed
2The Summer Book by Tove Jansson reviewed
1Not So Quiet byHelen Zenna Smith reviewed

Ash I enjoyed Lean In but found it a bit overlong and repetitive

ash I went into the bookshop yesterday and they had signed fest editions which I nearly bought but thought it might be odd when I ask him to sign it again at the book talk.

1. The Politics of Washing: Real Life in Venice by Polly Coles. I adore Venice and am fairly non-discerning when it comes to books set there, but I would have preferred this to be more memoir and description of the author's time there (she and her Venetian husband moved their four children there for a year) and less whinging on about damn foreign visitors spoiling the place. She had some very valid points to make about the loss of real life for real people but really laboured them.

1. The Road Home by Rose Tremain. Recommended on mumsnet, really enjoyed this.

10 Run Fat B!tch Run by Ruth Field 11. Cut the Crap by Ruth Field. Read the last books to inspire me to get fit, tone up and loose a few pounds, feeling better already.

1. The Exclusives by Rebecca Thornton. This is set in a highly academic girls' boarding school in the 1990s. Recommended upthread by Satsuki as a page-turner, and I agree - I couldn't put it down!

I'm reading, 'The Lie Tree' that just won the Costa prize. It's okay so far - have a feeling I'm not going to end up loving it though.

I thought this was an interesting read, touching on the subject of female writers and why they're so undervalued - www.theguardian.com/books/2016/jan/30/hilary-mantel-elizabeth-jane-howard-novelist?CMP=twt_gu

Must admit I had never heard of Elizabeth Howard and will be looking up her novels.

1. The Moth Catcher-Ann Cleeves - latest in the Vera Stanhope detective series. Good comfort reading and I enjoyed the plot line on this one well enough.

Astonished at how slow I'm reading! Trying A Man Called Ove next for book group which should be a quickish read.

The Lie Tree is on my list too, Remus. Do you like Frances Hardinge's other books? I loved Fly by Night/Twilight Robbery and A Face Like Glass, but wasn't so taken with Gullstruck Island or Cuckoo Song.

I read lots of Elizabeth Howard's novels when I was a teenager, Meg, though I have to admit I can't really remember much about them! Rather old fashioned, I think.

Had never heard of her before, Sadik.

Whitewine - I've only read the first Vera Stanhope book, which clearly needed editing and about 100 pages taking out, are the later ones a bit less ploding?

Book 5 Station Eleven by Emily St John Mandel

Brilliant. Just brilliant. Post apocalyptic stuff with a time slip sections to the past.

The Last Breath by Denise Mina

I'm a big fan of Mina. Intelligent, well crafted crime fiction with the focus on the why rather than the how.

Dinosaur I don't particularly remember the first book being any more plodding than the rest! I would say not fantastically well written but I enjoy that style of crime and it reminds me of the TV show, scenery etc.

Whitewine - I've loved her Shetland series, which gave a very good sense of place, so found the slowness of the first Vera book was a bit annoying, but then the Shetland lot are more recent books, so she might have got her eye in a bit more... Will give the rest a go, I need a none taxing series to read.

5 The Kind Worth Killing by Peter Swanson

I really enjoyed this. Although it was (yet another one) likened to Gone Girl and The Girl on the Train, I personally found it much better than either of those. Interesting plot and surprises, in the right hands this could make a good, quirky, dark-humoured film.

I'll probably give his earlier book a read

I'm a bit behind updating this thread!

11. Reduced Shakespeare: The Attention-Impaired Readers Guide To The World's Best Playwright by Reed Martin and Austin Tichenor of the Reduced Shakespeare Company. A very funny look at Shakespeare's life and works. If you've never seen one of the RSC's shows, I recommend you do, they're hilarious. The book was just as funny but educational as well and there's a few plays I'll now make an effort to see/read.

12. The Lake House Kate Morton. One of those books that always has a garden gate on the cover, with a story set in the past, usually involving a mystery, and someone in the present trying to solve that mystery. I enjoy this sort of book and I really liked this although you do have to suspend disbelief as part of the story relates to a house that no-one's lived in for 70 years yet it has been untouched by nature/squatters. If you put that aside though it's a very good read if you like this sort of thing.

13. The Time-Traveller's Guide to Medieval England by Ian Mortimer. I found this fascinating - lots of information about what life was like in the 14th century. It dragged a bit towards the end though so it might have been better if I'd read something else alongside and just dipped in and out. I have The Time-Traveller's Guide to Elizabethan England to read too and am looking forward to that.

14. The Box of Delights John Masefield. I never read this as a child and I'm afraid I didn't quite get into it as an adult. There's no background given to any of the characters, although I found out after I finished that it's actually a sequel so I expect they're all introduced in the first book. I enjoyed some of the individual magical sequences but I felt a bit cheated by the ending.

15. Close My Eyes Sophie McKenzie. Psychological thriller about a woman, Gen, who had a stillbirth 8 years ago, and is suddenly approached out of the blue by a woman who tells Gen that her baby is alive. Gen starts investigating and gets caught up in danger. I enjoyed the first half of the book but the end was too far-fetched.

MegBusset look out for The Cazalet Chronicles by Elizabeth Jane Howard. They're all about an extended family. Book 1 starts in the late 1930s then it goes through the war and ends in the 1950s. I love them!

Haven't seen The Reduced Shakespeare Company for many years, but agree that they are well worth watching. Am not a big comedy fan generally (think I'm wired a bit wrong somewhere) but thought they were absolutely hilarious.

11. Grandpa's Great Escape by David Walliams. Another superb story from DS's (and my) favourite children's author. This story involves the close relationship between a young boy and his grandfather who had been an RAF Spitfire pilot in WW2 but who is now suffering from dementia. As with other Walliams stories it is bittersweet, with some painfully sad bits about dementia, but also with some wonderfully uplifting and comic bits too. I loved it.

Pops head in, Have finished book no 3.

1. The winter children - lulu taylor. About a couple who had twins by IVF, the egg donor being the husband's friend, who it turned out, was obsessed with him in the past, a random inclusion of a dead child buried in the house. Too far fetched and too many inconsistencies.
2. The hobbit - I enjoyed this but found the ending just, well, it just ended really.
3. Raven Black - Anne Cleaves I enjoyed this, not sure if i will continue with the series as i didn't really empathise with any of the characters.

15 books? how????

My list so far:

1. My brilliant friend by Elena Ferrante.
2. SPQR by Mary Beard
3. Perfume by Patrick Suskind

1. Expecting better by Emily Oster

I really enjoyed this book which was written by an economist who wanted to understand the facts and figures around conception ,pregnancy and birth. For example, she talks about caffeine in pregnancy and alcohol in pregnancy, and explains how she applied the facts to her decision making. We are TTC our first so it was really useful and interesting.

1. The life changing magic of tidying by Marie Kondo. This book is based around the central premise that tidiness=happiness. Objects should be kept if they spark joy and discarded (and thanked for the role they've played in your happiness) if not. Intriguing and slightly bonkers (sorry Kondites). I am yet to put it to the test but will update you if so.

I seem to have lost my reading mojo a bit and I'm struggling to concentrate on books. I've been reading Middlemarch as well which I'm enjoying, but haven't quite got absorbed in as I was hoping to.

1. The Incorrigible Children of Ashton Place: The Mysterious Howling by Maryrose Wood.

The first book in a children's series about a fifteen year old governess and her unusual charges. The writing style, with its omniscient narrator, makes the story a little twee and not very much happens in this book, it's mainly setting up plot points that I assume will be expanded on later in the series, so it's more like a long prologue than a novel in itself.