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

#8 Raising Kids Who Read - What Parents and Teachers Can Do by Daniel T. Willingham

Can a nonfiction book be a pageturner? This one definitely was, I read it in about 24 hours. I've realized my DC don't seem to pick up reading quite the way I did. I wanted to understand what I can do. The book is excellent, research-backed and realistic, written by a cognitive scientist who is also a parent (and a great writer!). Lots of tips what to do. My children see reading as a chore, it's dreary daily homework assigned by the school. I had next to no homework growing up but was surrounded by voracious readers, regular trips to the library, and we had tons of stimulating books at home. This book gave me a clear idea how to change things, and hope that it is not too late.

Remus have you read Dashiell Hammett (you probably have)?

Yes of course, you're right, silly me she's pre-1900. Just glanced at first 'hit'. I'm out, sorry

Remus, I don't think you'll like Elly Griffiths, at least not the Ruth Galloway books. I love them but I'd be surprised if you do. They are written in the present tense for one thing. She does have another series set in post war Brighton but I haven't read them so can't comment. Maybe try a sample on Kindle.

1. One hundred years of solitude, Gabriel Garcia Marquez

This is touted everywhere as a must read but for a lot if it I was unsure. Having finished it I am now thinking it was a really interesting concept, I thought the ending was superb. The story resolves around a family in a fictional Latin American country who found a town. There is lots of magical realism which is something I enjoy so those bits worked well for me. I struggled with all the same names but even that made sense at the end. Garcia Marquez is a bit like Virginia Woolf for me, I really struggle but have moments of amazing clarity and then find myself thinking about it for ages afterwards.

1. The Husband's Secret, Liane Moriarty
2. The Captains of the Sands, Jorge Amado
3. The Importance of being Earnest, Oscar Wilde
4. You had me at hello, Mhairi McFarlane
5. The Pursuit of Love, Nancy Mitford
6. The Last Kingdom, Bernard Cornwell

Yes, I saw her comment about ones set in the past only after I'd posted.

1. The Versions of Us by Laura Barnett, which has been reviewed lots of times already on this thread. It's a 'Sliding Doors' type story of how a life can turn out differently after a chance encounter. I thought the theme was well handled and I enjoyed this.

I have given up on The Devil Wears Prada - I only got three chapters in and it was utter shite. I should have paid more attention when on the back cover some trashy gossip magazine described it as "sooooo Sex and the City". So it's now in the charity shop bag.

I'm re-reading The Last Kingdom, Bernard Cornwell. I read this when it first came out and loved it, but never really got into the rest of the series. However, I have accumulated all the subsequent books over the last few years from charity shops and bootsales so I am starting again.

X1V: The Buddha of Suburbia by Hanif Kureishi. I picked this up in paperback years ago, based solely on recognition of the title based on knowing of the existence of the TV series - which I'd never actually watched :$ Somehow the book stayed with me and now its time finally came. Entertaining enough coming of age tale, with our hero's sexual and ethnic issues neatly dovetailed - that's the point of the story I guess, that some of Karim's problems are related to race, but in other ways he's just as different, hence the same, as many other folks. I liked the depiction of 1970s England - well, London and the suburbs - though, it's extremely well drawn in simple passages that nevertheless feel authentic.

0xF: World War One: History in an Hour by Rupert Colley. I'm reading another, much longer WWI book, published in 1920, which assumes much more familiarity with the details of battles and combatants than I have, so I picked this up as a guide and timeline; it does what it says on the tin really, there's little in the way of opinion, "just the facts."

Yes, have read Dashiel H. Okay but not a patch on Chandler imvho.

I'm really glad to hear people enjoying The Vegetarian. I know Deborah Smith, the translator, slightly and she's doing all kinds of amazing stuff.

Still making slow progress myself but about halfway through my book now.

Remus - The Tales of Max Carrados by Ernest Bramah were contemporary to the Sherlock Holmes stories. Some of them are free on kindle and others are 99p, so not a big spend if they turn out not to be up to much! I listened to a couple of them narrated by Stephen Fry which were an Audible freebie last December. Definitely of their time but might appeal?

Thanks, Quog. Just got some free ones to try out.

The Hot Zone: The Chilling True Story of an Ebola Outbreak is £1.99 on the Kindle.

I've been waiting for this book's price to drop since I read that it is the book that the film Contagion was based on.

Amazon blurb:

In March 2014, the Ebola outbreak in West Africa was first reported. By October 2014, it had become the largest and deadliest occurrence of the disease. Over 4,500 people have died. Almost 10,000 cases have been reported, across Liberia, Guinea, Sierra Leone, Nigeria and the United States.

Impossible to ignore, The Hot Zone is the terrifying, true-life account of when this highly infectious virus spread from the rainforests of Africa to the suburbs of Washington, D.C in 1989. A secret SWAT team of soldiers and scientists were quickly tasked with halting the outbreak.

6. Americanah by Chimamanda* Ngozi* Adichie - I really wanted to love this book. I slogged through it over the last couple of weeks and I'm not sure why I bothered. The story is about a Nigerian couple who separately emigrate to the USA and the UK, although it is mainly told from the woman's perspective in America. To me it felt like one long, tedious lecture about race. I couldn't bring myself to care about any of the many characters, and there just wasn't much of a plot. Adichie is clearly a very talented writer but this novel is just desperately unsatisfying. I am relieved to have finished it!

I have now moved on to A God in Ruins which I am already enjoying about a million times more than Americanah.**

No idea where the stars came from

If anyone is left who hasn't read it, The Martian is £1.99 on the Kindle

10. World War Z by Max Brooks

Presented as "an oral history of the zombie war" this novel takes the format of a series of interviews with survivors of said war. It makes it feel a bit like reading non-fiction and allows the novel to have a very wide scope as people from several different countries and walks of life tell their stories. I did think that many of the interviewees' voices were too similar to each other and some of the characters I would have liked to have spent more time with. It is quite thought-provoking, showing the different ways people respond to a desperate situation.

Just finished #4: The Martian.
I enjoyed it, nothing like I normally read, but exciting and I enjoyed the way it was written.

Now going onto A Man Called Ove

Remus, I presume you've read Le Carre? The Constant Gardener is a good place to start if not.

Finished Lasting Damage by Sophie Hannah. Now that I've reconciled myself to the fact that her endings manage to be both ludicrous and unmemorable, I enjoy the ride to get there. Woman views property website late one night, sees image of dead body in one of the rooms. How did this happen? Enjoyed it for the portrayal of her smothering family (the sister trying to get her son to eat his greens is very mn).

Skimmed through A notable woman : the romantic journals of Jean Lucey Pratt - a woman's diaries from the 1930s to the 1970s. I was ready to love this, thinking it would be very Barbara Pym (her life is not dissimilar - single, but lots of crushes on men along the way). She's grumpier, and the diaries got bogged down in details of work and cats. Didn't love it as much as expected.

Just started Almost English by Charlotte Mendelson and loving it. Teenage girl lives with mother and Hungarian grand-aunts. I love the elderly Hungarians. The action moves to boarding school, so not sure if I'll love the rest as much, but the writing is delightful.

Haven't really been getting on with the Game of Thrones. It's not drawing me in.

Cote, I saw your post and promptly purchased The Martian. I do think I will like it, but I had resolved not to buy any more books this month!

I have a question, lovely readers. Does A Wizard of Earthsea count as 1 book, or is it a quarter of An Earthsea Quartet? I also read The Tombs of Atuan last night. I'm going to review them anyway and I can add my reviews of the last two quarters when I've finished them.

A Wizard of Earthsea and The Tombs of Atuan, Ursula K Le Guin. Slow start to the 1st one - it starts off in very fable-type language, similar to The Silmarillion. It did pick up and I loved the descriptions of the lands. I just spent the entire book going but Patrick Rothfuss has nicked this entire concept in The Name of the Wind! Names, nine Masters, Unmaking, a rich student called Jasper whom the main character hates, an old language that contains all the Names in the world... It was quite distracting, and actually Rothfuss definitely writes in a much more accessible, lively way - I care a lot more about Kvothe than about Ged. But how did Rothfuss get away with that? Did he ask Le Guin's permission? Does he credit her anywhere? Going back to Earthsea, I found the chase after the Shadow not massively gripping, tbh, and there are hardly any characters and you don't even really get to know Ged that well. But, The Tombs of Atuan really got me. I was hooked from the Prologue where Tenar is selected, and I read it in a positive frenzy of hoping that she got a happy ending, because all the horrible ceremonies and stuff were so fucked up. That poor, poor little girl. The dark tombs and the Labyrinth were petrifying too - again, I was too scared to put it down in case something awful happened to Tenar. Again, though, the Undertomb reminded me very strongly of the Underthing in The Name of the Wind, and all the stress on the power of silence in both books was highly reminiscent of The Slow Regard of Silent Things.

I can't remember which number I last posted but I think it was book number four.

5 Sophie’s World by Jostein Gaarder
I started reading this book about 18 years ago… And I found it a bit dull and stopped reading it. I can see why now. Whilst the concept is no doubt good, young girl receives letters and lessons from a philosopher who teaches her (and in turn you) the basic teaching of the great philosophers, you just can’t make this exciting…

6 The Fault in our stars by John Greene
I read this in less than a day, I didn’t realise it’d be so short. I think everyone knows the plot. It’s beautifully written and recommended for a quick read.

7 Rebecca by Daphne Du Maurier
I’m sure I’m one of the few people left who hadn’t read this book and didn’t know the story. There’s a beauty in that, finding an absolute classic that you know nothing about. I was completely enthralled by it, and a girl in my office told me that Alfred Hitchcock had directed the film version so I knew it was going to be good. Rough synopsis is a young girl meets a man in the south of France and shortly after meeting they marry, and return to his home of Manderley in Cornwall. But her life and time there is overshadowed by the death of his wife Rebecca less than a year previously. There’s Mrs Danvers who doesn’t like the new wife and this coupled with her own insecurities makes a real interesting lead character. For any audible fans, I listened to this on audible and the woman doing the narration was brilliant, her voices for the characters made really made the story.

1. Passenger 23 by Sebastian Fitzek - my first audiobook! It was a freebie from Times+. Completely bonkers and implausible thriller about mysterious deaths on a cruise ship. It is a dramatised reading of a very dark and twisted story translated from German. I am still pretty shocked that the Times have it as their free audio book (for subscribers). It is definitely not for the faint hearted and not for anyone planning a cruise anytime soon! Having said that I was pretty gripped, almost more to see what insane plot twist would happen next.

5 (I think!) Back Story by David Mitchell The autobiography of the comedian (not the author) I might have enjoyed it more had I been able to read it without mentally hearing David Mitchell reading it to me. There is something slightly disturbing about trying to read a book in the bath and hearing the voice of someone whose public persona is a bit eccentric! Despite all the pretence of self depreciation, it also came across as quite smug and self congratulating.

Posting more because this had fallen off my Threads I'm On than because I have a coherent review.

10-11: The Invisible Library, The Masked City - as pps have said, the concept alone is great. I didn't find the writing as clunky as others have complained, so might reconsider other books I've avoided on that basis

12 - 13 Hidden, Veiled are the 5th & 6th books in Benedict Jacka's Alex Verus series about a mage based in Camden.