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?

Oh, I really like Hound of the Baskervilles! Having said that, a) I haven't read much Sherlock Holmes and b) I read it as an impressionable teenager, when I found it very atmospheric and genuinely creepy.

15. The Time Machine by H G Wells

This started out well but I was ultimately disappointed with it. I'm glad I finally read it but must admit the recent film with Guy Pearce had a much better story.

The half-baked explanation for Eloi & Morlocks were pulled out of a hat, with no evidence whatsoever. Sciency bits were silly and I was left a bit re what seemed to be the moral of the story:

SPOILER - SPOILER - SPOILER

People got too soft because there was nothing left to fight for? While they are being hunted for food? What?

Yy hound of the baskervilles not one of the best but v readable and short!

TooExtra VF is one of my fave books of all time (in fact it was DEFINITELY my fave book for years and years). Becky Sharp is still my role model (perhaps not an entirely positive one...) You've got such a fun experience ahead of you!

Yes, Life after Life needed more of an edit I think, but then I was bored by behind the scenes st the museum or whatever it was called.
Not a fan of Sherlock books, love some of the old black and white films,v atmospheric and quite like the post-modern BBc version in small doses.

Grendel, am with you on Vanity Fair" definitely in my top 5 best ever books and a go-to comfort read for me. It's utterly timeless.

Lost this from Threads I'm On

Still reading Raising Steam, and picked up Alphabetical by Michael Rosen from the library this morning, which looks v interesting.

Book 27
The Spy Who Came in from the Coldby John le Carre
My gosh this was depressing. I’m glad I read it. It was gripping and terrifying and twisty and turny, as you’d expect a critically acclaimed book about espionage and counter-espionage to be, to my word it was relentlessly, horribly grim. None of characters come out of it terribly well, and the treatment of women is v much of its time and context – a bulldozer of a book.

Book 28
The Big Bow Mystery by Israel Zangwill
Urgh. This had some promise in its early stages, and in places was quite funny, but reading it was a lot of work for what turned out to be something absolutely ridiculous. The ending was absolutely, shockingly, lazily stupid. Having quite enjoyed some of it, the ending made me hate it. Do not read this book.

I'm thrilled by the Lipizzaner love on here.

Cheddar Most people I know would be like your in-laws. IIRC you can actually have dressage lessons at Lipica as well as looking round the stud farm. It's one of the first things I plan to do when my lottery numbers come up.

OnlyLovers I hope I haven't misled you. AATG isn't really about the Spanish Riding School. Although it does feature, it isn't the main focus.

I'm rather fond of The Hound of the Baskervilles - if only for the line: "Mr Holmes, they were the footprints of a gigantic hound." I agree, though, that it isn't the best SH story.

Natasha, that's fine, passing mention is enough for me to give it a go.

Cote - it's been ages since I read The Time Machine. So I may be misremembering.

But I thought that the Eloi and the Morlocks had been completely separated for long enough to evolve separately before the hunting business started?

(Although it's still difficult to imagine an Eden-like environmental unchallenging enough to account for the Eloi's evolution, especially when you consider some of the nastier aspects of human nature)

Hound would have made a great short story, but is a bit waffly and ploddy as a novel.

I have read the Hound before - I had an illustrated copy with a picture of the Hound leaping out of the darkness, eyes and mouth glowing. DSis and I used to scare each other with the picture long before we actually read the book. I used to have nightmares about it - was probably about 9 when we got the book and about 14 when I read it. It was a compendium of A Study in Scarlet and the Hound.

The Time Machine is a good read though I think, and interesting as an early exploration of what was a relatively new scientific theory (was is c30 years or so after Darwin?) in fiction and also for the insight it gives into the concerns of the time; the consequences of the industrial revolution, the threat of communism, etc.

Hound usually appears as a single in 'children's classics' series along with Call of the Wild and the like. Ditto Time Machine actually - they are both on my shelf between The Jungle Book and Treasure Island

18. Britain AD by Francis Pryor

The book of a Channel 4 series Pryor did a while ago. It's subtitled 'A quest for Arthur, England and the Anglo-Saxons', but bear in mind that Pryor is an archaeologist specialising in the neolithic, so his focus is the evidence that comes out of the ground which he looks at with the awareness of what came before. There is an interesting chapter on the development of the Arthurian myth in literature, but his big argument is that the idea of the mass Anglo-Saxon invasion is not supported by the archaeological evidence. Instead he sees the shift in the era after the Roman interlude as being more of a cultural change in the people of these islands. Yes, there were Anglo Saxons coming in, but Pryor rejects the idea that they effectively pushed out the Britons, instead arguing that just as some Britons had adopted the Roman culture, others were influenced by connections and communications with Europe and so in effect became Anglo Saxons.

I agree RemusLupinsBiggestGroupie it would be better as a short story. It's not that I didn't like it, just find it quite weak compared to the others and SPOILER Sherlock himself isn't really in it much.

I could never quite understand why it was the one most people adapted for tv or talked about.

5. To Kill a Mockingbird
I'm so behind, it's March and I've only just finished 5 books and some of you have read War and Peace!!
I confess I struggled with the 1st part of this book. I worry that perhaps some of it went over my head and that's why I found it slow. However I do appreciate a lot of it is setting up for the 2nd half. I really enjoyed it from the trial onwards (seeing as a love courtroom drama that's not suprising) and found the ending quite moving in a way. Would love to hear other people's thoughts on this. Maybe I should stick to light hearted fluff!

Stitches - "I thought that the Eloi and the Morlocks had been completely separated for long enough to evolve separately before the hunting business started? Although it's still difficult to imagine an Eden-like environmental unchallenging enough to account for the Eloi's evolution, especially when you consider some of the nastier aspects of human nature"

Time traveller says Morlocks must have been the workers underground making stuff for the wealthy Eloi above. So Eloi's lives must have been so easy that strength and intelligence were no longer required, so that must have been why they became dimwitted softies living in nature and feeding on fruits.

What got me was that there is zero evidence for any of this. The time traveller is just making it all up and it doesn't even make sense.

I don't get his reasoning at all. This is exactly the sort of life that early humans lived (in nature, eating fruits, being hunted by vicious predators in the night) and it resulted in evolution through natural selection. Surely the quicker and smarter Eloi escaped the Morlocks long enough to make babies. Why would evolution just stop?

I need something cheery and lovely, but not anything published in the last couple of years, please, folks. Any recs? Something like Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day. Have had a bad day and am cross and out of sorts. I need a pamper in prose!

Satsuki - Yes, you are right. I had not thought of it that way, but The Time Machine was published only 36 years after Darwin's On The Origin Of Species, so it must have been one of the first works exploring the idea of human evolution.

I guess expected more world-building from such a classic. I mean, his theory is that Morlocks continued to do everything for Eloi (including making their clothes!) because they were just used to it, and in the night they just went and hunted them? Somehow I just don't think so.

Remus - have you read Gentlemen Prefer Blondes?

No, Sadik. I didn't even know it was a book! Will investigate. Not seen the film either.

Not on Kindle.

I enjoyed Pygmalion the other day Remus. Was very cheap on Kindle. Or something like The Goid Companions.

The Good Companions