50 Book Challenge 2016 Part Three

[southeastdweller]

Thread three 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.

First thread of 2016 is here and second thread here.

How're you getting on so far?

For those who like to read all of a series together, does that mean you wait till everything is out before starting them? Don't think I could do that, too impatient.

Another question: I've got The Martian in my to-read list after reviews on here, but DP has just bought the DVD. Is this one of those films where you really should read the book first or does it not matter?

We watched The Martian last week. I loved the book so really enjoyed seeing it brought to life with the sets and technology and scenery. However, the film (necessarily) doesn't have as much technical scientific detail as the book, so I found it good to have read it first and have it in the background, as I could just watch the film without asking too many questions of how and why.

The other thing is, much as I liked the book, I don't know if I'd have enjoyed it as much if I knew the outcome; you have to work quite hard through all of his problem solving detail, and the plotting around it is the payoff. I personally need the suspense to sustain me in a first reading of a book, not so much for a film.

So personal choice, but I'm pleased I read it first. It is quite a fast read, iirc.

Of course, if you did it the other way round, the book would fill in any gaps the film left, and you could picture Matt Damon. So swings and roundabouts

I don't think I've ever been in a position to read a whole series in one shot. I feel like I would find it a bit much and want to space it out.

I have Game of Thrones in its entirety pretty much on the Kindle, so I shall see if I ever get around to it.

Still on Black Swan Green. Have slowed down a bit the last couple of days. Don't know if it's me or the book; nothing much is going on in it yet. I haven't slept much this week due to teething and poorly toddler so haven't been able to concentrate as much though. Started The Uncommon Reader on Kindle.

I find series books a bit off-putting at the moment. My 'to read' list is so long already that I don't want to commit to something with lots of sequels!

I loved The Martian last year and am looking forward to seeing the film. I've heard it's not as good as the book, but Matt Damon should help me not mind that!

Hope your toddler is better soon, Satsuki

The film has a different feel to the book. I think they tried to emphasise the loneliness of Mars, so it felt quieter and slower-moving. It is beautifully shot though, and I loved the costumes and spaceships.

Thanks tumbletumble. She is ok in the day but in that awful stuffy stage at night. That with her molars coming is making her cut a sad figure at 2am, and me a sadder one when I have to get up at 6.30!

23 Girl in a Band - a memoir by Kim Gordon (of Sonic Youth).

MN bookclub giveaway that I expected to like. I read Boys Boys Boys . . . by Viv Albertine and Bedsit Disco Queen by Tracy Thorn last year, and enjoyed both books a lot (despite never having been an EBTG fan).

Sadly, I was far less taken with Girl in a Band - KG's evidently a talented musician and artist, but I just found her writing a bit dull. Reading reviews, she's criticised for namedropping, but tbh that wasn't really an issue for me (Viv Albertine drops far more names, and more interesting ones ) - more that she didn't make any of it sound very exciting.

I suspect part of the problem is that the book was obviously written in the fallout from her split with her husband/fellow band member; maybe a bit more distance would have made a better book.

book 10 Bernard cornwall the burning land book 5 of Saxon chronicles)this is my favourite book yet. As I know other posters are reading the series i don't want to give away too much. All that I will say is Uthred returns to the north after falling foul of Alfred only to be recalled South by another oath he has made in the past and this oath may change the course of uthred's fate

15 The Woman Who Walked into the Sea by Mark Douglas-Home

The sequel to The Sea Detective. Cal is an oceanographer who can use his knowledge of currents and tides to find where people and objects lost at sea are likely to end up and to track where flotsam and jetsam washed up on the shore originated from. In this book a woman abandoned at birth who is looking for the truth about her mother comes to a small, isolated community on the Scottish coast. It's not as compelling as The Sea Detective, probably because Cal is not such a major character and his oceanography plays a very small part. It's a good read, but nothing special.

19. The Year of Living Danishly by Helen Russell. I really enjoyed this. The author is a journalist, living in London with her husband. They are stressed and miserable and trying unsuccessfully for a baby. He is offered a job for a year working at Legoland. They decide to go for it and this the author's account of their settling into their new life in rural Jutland. There's humour and lots of interesting facts revealed through the author's interviews with various people in her attempt to discover why people living in Denmark are so happy (on a scale of 1 to 10 most of her interviewees are a 9 or 9.5).

She couldn't really have done a more positive piece about Denmark if she had been working for the Tourist Board. Despite the harsh winters, it really does sound a very good place to live.

11. The Driver's Seat - Muriel Spark. 1970 novella from the 'Jean Brodie' author about a repressed middle-aged woman living in a British town who goes on a holiday to the continent for some adventures. I found this so boring until the last twenty minutes, which was exceptionally creepy. If it hadn't been so short I'd have given up on this audiobook.

12. The Widow - Fiona Barton. Newish thriller about a woman whose husband has died and who was accused of abducting a child, this is the kind of book that's best enjoyed when you don't know much about it. The story, told from different perspectives, was absorbing, the pacing was fab, the journalism theme intriguing, and I always looked forward to coming back to it. I was disappointed, though, that the main character never felt quite 'real' enough and some other characters weren't defined enough. All in all, a really good debut and a cut above Disclaimer, Her, I Let You Go, and The Girl on the Train.

Just dropping in to say I have always been a big Margaret Forster fan and was really sad to hear of her recent death. I like her style whatever subject she is covering and plan to re read a few now.

I'm also on Nora Webster at the moment and enjoying the gentle flow of the book.

Both of my last two books have a feminist flavour, for those of you who like that sort of thing - one fiction and one non-fiction.

12. Bodies of Light by Sarah Moss. This is the story of Ally (short for Alathea) Moberley, growing up in the second half of the 19th century with her devout, strict, feminist mother, her artist father and her little sister May. Ally's ambition is to become a doctor, at a time when this was almost impossible for women. I'm a fan of Sarah Moss, and I really enjoyed this book.

13. Romantic Outlaws: The Extraordinary Lives of Mary Wollstonecraft and Mary Shelley by Charlotte Gordon. This was recommended on last year's thread - possibly by bibliomania? It's a biography of two women - one was an early feminist and the author of Vindication of the Rights of Women, the other is best known as the author of Frankenstein and the romantic poet Shelley's wife. The two Marys are also mother and daughter, but never knew each other as Wollstonecraft sadly died a week after her daughter was born. This biography is written with alternating chapters about the two women, so you discover their lives in parallel. It's fascinating stuff, as they both led such interesting, varied, difficult, tragic lives.

17. The Past by Tessa Hadley I think I got this out of the library because of a recommendation on MN. It was also reviewed by the New York Times (good review)

I have to say I didn't get this book. it was ok but there wasn't one character I truly liked/loved which makes it all a bit of a slog.

Plus it was fairly unbelievable in admittedly pedestrian ways. So these 4 siblings plus spouses/children where appropriate spend 3 full weeks in the grandparents old house which isn't even in a particularly lovely area or on the beach or whatever. 3 weeks! I could barely spend 3 weeks on hols with my husband still less my siblings. And one of the siblings at the last minute brings along the early 20s son of one of her ex lovers which means her sister has to share the bunk room with her kids because he needs a room and the 16 year old niece needs a room. None of this raises more than a "oh Alice now I'll have to share the bunk room".

Can you imagine the threads on AIBU?

"My sister insists we spend 3 weeks together at my grandparents old house which means I have to use up all my holiday time. Then when I arrived she had brought along some guy we didn't know for this "3 week sibling get together" and he took MY room (not hers) and I ended up bunking in with my 2 kids. For 3 weeks. Would I be unreasonable to tell my sister to fuck off and to go home???"

Just dropping in to say I have always been a big Margaret Forster fan and was really sad to hear of her recent death. I like her style whatever subject she is covering and plan to re read a few now.

Love Margaret Forster. My favourite story of hers is her describing going down to oxford from a tiny council flat and being in rooms and Lady X whom she roomed with coming in and seeing her in the bath and saying "I've never seen anyone ever sit at the tap end before!" MF had never had a bath available before so didn't know which end to sit at. This struck me as so true, so revealing, and so hopeful as she ended up being close friends with these women and also ended up one of the most influential literary figures of her day.

The truth is that Margaret Forster was not the first of her family to have this searing intelligence and creativity-she was the first to be given the opportunity to express it.

It makes me think how many many wonderful potential writers, scientists, composers, thinkers died unseen because of the class structure that put them down. and it is still going on.

Canyouforgiveher

And, as well as the class structure, even worse if they were (shock, horror) women - this was really brought home to me in the books reviewed above.

Following on from my review of The Widow, I've just seen it's £1.99 on a Kindle daily deal.

DD spent yesterday with her nose stuck to her Kindle reading Gone, so thanks for the recommendation, Sadik

17. Ice - Gillian Clarke This volume of poetry was a pleasure to read and felt rich with the natural imagery of the Welsh countryside, of snow, ice, birds, rivers and the sea and all imbued with a rich sense of Welsh history. Really accessible, beautiful and sometimes moving poetry. At the moment it's only £1.69 on Kindle which is an absolute bargain in my opinion.

14. The Knife Of Never Letting Go by Patrick Ness

No use sugar-coating it: This was crap. I don't know how it compares to what people usually read as YA but it was shockingly stupid, dull, and badly written with a 200-word vocabulary, featuring what must be the dumbest and least inspiring protagonist in the history of literature. I can't even call it a coming-of-age story because he was as gormless at the end as in the beginning. Gah.

Don't even get me started about the pathetic excuse for a story. People who can't be bothered to worldbuild should not try to write sci-fi imo. Why couldn't he set his story at any point of the world's history when people have settled at another continent island, for example? Complete rubbish.

tumbletumble Spotted that you read Bodies of Light and enjoyed it--have you read Night Waking? Same author, about a woman and her husband who move to the island of Colsay to do research; they've got small children who aren't sleeping, the woman finds the skeleton of a child in the garden, and the whole thing is interspersed with letters from May Moberley, sister of Ally in Bodies of Light. Apparently it's very good.

Glad your dd enjoyed Gone, Cote :) I've never understood the love for Patrick Ness myself. Tbh I think the unashamedly trashy and amusing YA authors are a much better bet.

(A bit like fantasy / sci-fi - I try to avoid the 'literary author-does-genre-fiction' as it can be a painful experience.)

I didn't get on with The Knife of Never Letting Go either. I ploughed through about a fifth of it before deciding it probably wouldn't get any better and giving up on it.

Has Dd read Lord of The Rings Cote? Think I was about 10 or 11 when I first read it and loved getting sucked in to that world.

15. The Peripheral - William Gibson. This follows two different threads - a near future which is a bit more down at heel than ours but with 3d printing at the fore and a more distant future about 100 years ahead mostly set in London. In the near future, Flynne has been hired to play a computer game where she acts as security for a party. While playing the game, she sees a murder. This links the plot to the far future where there is a publicist, rich Russians and an uber-reality type star. Typical Gibson world, he shows rather than tells. I enjoyed it and liked the fact that it isn't really a dystopian world just one gradually changing.

I've also been reading Gobbolino - The Witch's Cat by Ursula Moray Williams with DD1 (6), and had forgotten what a lovely book it is. Well worth a read, and a good starter chapter book as each chapter is it's own episodic adventure.

Updating my list:

1. The Versions of Us - Laura Barnett
2. All the light we cannot see - Anthony Doerr
3. Red Rising - Pierce Brown
4. Golden Son - Pierce Brown
5. Flash Boys - Michael Lewis
6. There's Only Two David Beckhams - John O'Farrell
7. Authority - Jeff Vandermeer
8. Blue Monday - Nicci French
9. Mockingjay (reread)

10. Gilead - Marilynne Robinson 11. The Exclusives - Rebecca Thornton 12. A Clubbable Woman - Reginald Hill 13. The Advent Killer - Alistair Gunn 14. Ruling Passion - Reginald Hill 15. The Peripheral - William Gibson