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

Book 18
The Worst Journey in the World by Apsley Cherry-Garrard.
A re-read. I honestly have no words to describe the beauty and the terror and the sorrow of this exquisite book. If you are at all interested in exploration, or science, or friendship, or motivation, or grief, or God, or nature, or what it means to be a man or just how far a man will go and for what, then I urge you to read this wonderful, wonderful book. And for goodness sake don't read it if you want a happy ending. That is all.

:(

12. The Pleasure Of Finding Things Out - Richard Feynman

I've been aware of Feynman's work and writings for years - DH is a science buff and a huge fan - but it's the first time I've read one of his books. This is a collection of talks, interviews and essays on subjects ranging from nanotechnology, the atomic bomb and the Challenger enquiry to the role of science in society. As a lay person most some of the physics and maths went over my head but Feynman was a born communicator and his wit, lightness of touch and refusal to claim that he has any answers are charming and engaging.

I was definitely a fan of Wolf Hall, I loved the way she challenged my perception of Cromwell. I read it mainly in the middle of the night when dd1 was tiny and having happy memories of leaning her between me and the massive tome. I also enjoyed BUTB, but am a bit worried about three third, knowing what happened!

Narrow Rd to the North was one of my reads of the year last year.

On the other hand, I read Bleak House for A level and have avoided Dickens ever since.

I haven't attempted Dickens since my school days either.

Stokey - I'm also a massive fan of Wolf Hall (and BUTB) and also the Narrow Road to the Deep North. I will very happily read them all again soon! Booker winning books don't normally appeal to me, but these were superb.

Like some others I read Wolf Hall on holiday and just couldn't keep away from it, it totally gripped me. I read Narrow Road more slowly and for me it just got better and better and better as it went along. I loved the main character, Dorrigo. I still think about it and him quite often.

I also adored Cloud Atlas, such a clever book. I've mentioned this before but there is a podcast on BBC World Book Club with an interview with David Mitchell. He comes across very well and I found it very interesting to hear his insights into the book.

I enjoyed your review Satsuki, it is such a thought provoking book!

Yes ladydepp there is just so much in CA - so many layers. The narratives are not just different genres, but each represents a different kind of text so you've got journal, letters, novel, film, interview, oral history, and also of course the music, and that's before you get into what it's about! I watched a couple of interviews with dm when I finished it, he does come across as a nice person and quite self-effacing. Will look up that podcast.

Glad to hear some positive reviews for the deep north, will keep at it.

You're tempting me to revisit CA

Finished Almost English by Charlotte Mendelson. I enjoyed this. It focuses on a mother and daughter who live in a cramped flat with the paternal grandmother and grand-aunts, who have managed to turn their corner of London into a relic of the Austrio-Hungarian empire. The daughter goes to boarding-school, where things go wrong.

It felt that there was a bit too much plot, some of it a bit perfunctory, but overall I thought it was a well written social comedy. The whole socially awkward adolescence thing is over-familiar territory, but there was plenty of good stuff to enjoy.

Rogue "i" in Austro-Hungarian above

12 The Blue Castle by LM Montgomery of Anne of Green Gables fame. Got it from another thread here. It was a lovely light love story.

1. Ancillary Justice by Ann Leckie

2. The meaning of everything; the story of the OED by Simon Winchester;

3. An astronauts guide to the universe by Chris Hadfield and

4. The Unconsoled by Kazuo Ishiguro;

5. The Good Fairies of New York by Martin Millar

6. The Skeleton Cupboard: The Making of a Clinical Psychologist by Tanya Byron ; I really enjoyed this , it was a more honest account than I expected which made it more interesting than a straightforward account of case histories would have been. Some of the cases v harrowing. Was a bit disappointed that they turned out to be fictional. Her own engagement with her supervisor and her clients made it very personal. Short read too. Would recommend this one.

No 7) is Golden Son which is riveting!

Otherwise I also liked Wolf Hall and didn't notice the odd grammar at all! Haven't got round to BUTB yet but it is on my kindle and I'm sure I will read it eventually. So definitely keep your comments coming Quog

Really enjoyed The Blue Castle last year! Glad you liked it too Canyouforgiveher.

Currently reading The Good Fairies of New York and I'm not feeling the love right now at all.

I'm not sure if it's the mood I'm in - but I somehow feel like I would have totally loved it in 1992 when it came out - but that the world (or me?) has moved on. I used to like Terry Pratchett, and now can't read him at all, so maybe the same problem.

Anyway, going to leave it for a while & try something else - wavering between Heinlein's Starship Trooper (after both DH and the librarian laughed at me for never having seen the movie) & Nothing is True & Everything is Possible.

Agree that world has moved on, but my feeling was that it was sort of lovely to go back there for a little white.

Maybe if I'd read it then I would still like it now . . . very likely, I think.

"Heinlein's Starship Trooper (after both DH and the librarian laughed at me for never having seen the movie)"

I had quite a Heinlein period in my late-teens when I read nearly all his books - quite a feat while growing up in a second-world country in the '80s with one English-language library in the city (at school) and one English-language bookstore with maybe 20 sci-fi books at any given time. I haven't read Starship Troopers, though, possibly because I had the preconception that it would be a silly story about starships with laser guns going Pow Pow at each other - a prejudice later reinforced with the movie.

I hear that the movie has very little to do with the book, though. Apparently, the book is quite interesting and is basically about politics, power, etc. I'm quite tempted to read it, although my recent attempts at reading Heinlein have been sad disappointments because his writing hasn't aged well, and neither have his misogynist & ultra-capitalist views.

Satsuki, I agree with you wholeheartedly about the emotional impact of Cloud Atlas and where it comes from - not tear-jerking stereotypes and sympathy with some of the characters, but the meticulously drawn-out perspective of human race's past and future. How cruel and selfish we are as a race. How we rape, enslave, establish dominion over the weak given half the chance.
Our overarching trajectory towards ruin and oblivion, despite our best intentions and willingness to do good.

It left me broken for some time. I followed it with This Thing Of Darkness, which oddly mirrored many of Cloud Atlas's themes and even peoples (e.g. Maori and Moriori), and had a slump for while, thinking "What is the point of reading now? Whatever I read will be a disappointment after those two books".

I know you posted a link to a more in depth review you had written of Cloud Atlas several pages back, cote, I'm going to go back and read it now I've finished the book. I keep thinking about it and remembering different strands that didn't strike me while I was reading it; stuff like the names of characters and how they tie in to some of the themes, what makes us 'civilised' etc. Very much a novel of ideas. I have thing of Darkness on my shelf, might save it for a bit so I don't ruin myself!

I've accidentally dropped Narrow Road, and taken up The Railway Man. I'm already halfway through, and it is harrowing and inspiring. Will continue with the Flanagan, but I am engrossed in the Lomax. Didn't mean to read them quite in tandem like this, but good to get immersed in a time and different treatments of the same kind of events.

Oooh, I am definitely going to read Cloud Atlas this year after reading all these reviews! I tried it before but I tend to not get on with short stories, so I gave up. I will try again, especially because I have now read and loved The Bone Clocks.

20. Tehanu, Ursula Le Guin. I loved this. It's the final part of The Earthsea Quartet, and follows Tenar and Ged later in life. It was beautifully written with a down-to-earth quality that was lacking in the earlier books. Therru is a little girl who has been brutally burned and raped by her uncle and father, and the book is really about women's power - what can Tenar do to help Therru, and what future can Therru have? It's a really good feminist's book!

I should go back to Vanity Fair now for my book club but I'm just a bit bored by it.

Reading 'The Kind Worth Killing' ... not the greatest book - a real light beach read ...

There was also a book called The last Highlander which was a similar story to Unbroken - really good, harrowing read ...

I'm so glad to hear people's thoughts on Wolf Hall I thought I was just particularly stupid for being what seemed the only person in the world not to like it. I'll stick to Phillippa Gregory for my historical novels!

I'm tempted to read Cloud Atlas now too after reading this thread.

I, Partridge by 'Alan Partridge' is currently just £1.99 on Kindle. It's one of the funniest books I've ever read and I highly recommend it.

See, isn't this thread a respectful celebration of difference in taste? Which is admirable, I think. I love Vanity Fair, one of my all time favourites which I return to regularly, I absolutely detested Truth about the Harry thingey Affair unlike a recent poster who raved about it. I dislike most sci-fi with the odd exception. I am currently equivocal about the merits of Hilary Mantel.. Love reading people's differing views, agreeing with some, loudly disputing some others.

12. Nyctophobia by Christopher Fowler

Newly weds Callie and Mateo move to Hyperion House in Spain, along with Mateo's daughter. Hyperion House is a house designed so that the front part of the house is completely light during the day, but the rear part is in perpetual darkness.
Everything seems perfect at first, until Callie starts researching the history of the house, and starts to suspect that something sinister is lurking in the darkness.

The first part of the book was good - building up Callie's character (the story's told from her perspective), so an increasing creepiness as Callie learns more about the history of the house.
But it all gets a bit odd towards the end. There's bits of the big reveal that I'm just not getting, so it didn't really hang together in a satisfactory way, IMO.

Just finished book 8. Room by Emma Donoghue

Narrated by the 5 year old son of a woman who has been held captive in a room for 7 years. Much of the first half focuses on their existence in the room and I found it quite difficult to get into, I quite enjoyed the second half that charts their first month or so after they leave (I don't think that's a spoiler). The second half was far superior but that could have been the fact that it took quite a while to settle into the child's way of telling the story. I enjoyed it and would recommend it.

1. Room, Emma Donoghue
2. One Hundred Years of Solitude, Gabriel Garcia Marquez
3. The Husband's Secret, Liane Moriarty
4. The Captains of the Sands, Jorge Amado
5. The Importance of being Earnest, Oscar Wilde
6. You had me at hello, Mhairi McFarlane
7. The Pursuit of Love, Nancy Mitford
8. The Last Kingdom, Bernard Cornwell

1. Wolf Hall - Hilary Mantel

Mixed feelings but all in all I'm glad I read it. I found her idiosyncratic style refreshing and it helped transport me to the era, but the story wasn't as gripping as I'd hoped and very confusing sometimes. I also thought it was a little overlong. I'm quite looking forward to reading Bring Up the Bodies later in the year as the story seems to be more appealing with the heavy focus on Anne Boleyn. It's also 200-odd pages shorter than W.H...

1. Passenger 23 - Sebastian Fitzek

As ladydepp said on Monday, this audiobook about an undercover detective investigating murders on a cruise ship is silly and implausible. I loathed hearing the gratuitous descriptions of some of the crimes and the dialogue is often howlingly bad. This book reminded me of the even worse After the Crash, but this was slightly better written. Don't feel too hard done by, really, as it was free with my Times+ subscription.

Starting The Good Liar tomorrow.