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?

Joyless - How about The Witching Hour by Anne Rice?

Just starting The Girl in the Red Coat

I looked back at my list and of the 22 books I read this year so far, 19 of them were library books (2 of them audio books), 2 were on kindle and 1 a book I bought. I have a stack of actual books I own by my bed waiting to be read but the am reading mostly library books.

16. Every Dead Thing by John Connolly

It's definitely not for the faint-hearted, a lot of gruesome and brutal things happen in this thriller. Charlie Parker, an ex-cop whose wife and child were murdered a few years ago, is asked to investigate a disappearance. There are two distinct storylines and it does make the book feel a little like two novels stapled together, but despite this and the goriness it is actually very readable.

I've also just reserved Eileen from my library - it sounds like just the type of book I'd like.

Talking of new books, has anyone heard about Freya? It's from the author of Curtain Call, which was one of my favourite reads of last year.

Joyless Am struggling to think of a really good ghost story. Do you like Sarah Waters? She did one - forgotten title - but I didn't love it. Assume you've read The Woman in Black? I don't like it but lots do.

Ditto The Turn of the Screw
The Haunting of Hill House is another classic, but I really disliked it.
I think what I'm saying is I'd love a really good classic ghost story, but that I actually don't like many of the classics!

Remus - "HATED (loathed, detested, abhorred Dragon Tattoo."

We really do have completely opposite tastes in fiction. It's quite funny

I'm re-reading The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo and it's even better the second time around, possibly because I now know that the original name (in Swedish) is Men Who Hate Women (i.e. misogynists) and I can spot the various little examples of casual misogyny that are scattered all around the story.

I also love how the story develops as I imagine many do in RL - journalist or police start investigating one thing and end up realising that there is a completely different, much more important story hiding behind it.

And Lisbeth Salander is my hero, of course

Cote My daughter loved it and lapped up the whole series.

Posted too soon - lapped up the trilogy in about a week.

Thanks Joyless . I've added To Say Nothing of the Dog to my to read list

Remus did you finish reading The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo? Just wondering if you read the beginning and hated the list of 100 different characters in the family.

M R James does chilling ghost stories joyless. They are short stories though and some are better than others. I also love Poe, not exactly ghost stories but creepy.

My dh read girl with dragon tattoo last year and has been on at me to read it as it's not my sort of thing on the surface but he's adamant I'll like it. More interested now after seeing cote's post.

Mamabear my least favourite is Northanger Abbey I think.

Satsuki I loved Flight Behaviour-hope you enjoy it

Cote -
I didn't finish it but read more than the list - enough to know that it was really, really annoying me!

Northanger Abbey is a spoof really! I don't find it bears too many rereads.

I would say Pride and Prejudice and Persuasion are my favourite Austen. They're the ones I've gone back to most often. Followed closely by Emma - sometimes I find her interfering smugness too annoying, sometimes it is just what I want I do like saying "badly done!" In the stern manner of Mr Knightley. I must admit to laughing out loud at the idea of Mansfield Park making someone angry - can identify with that feeling exactly!

I'm looking forward to getting stuck into FB elle

Remus - This is exactly what you did with Cloud Atlas! You can't NOT read a book and still say that it was awful and you hated it

Surely with all the adoration surrounding both books, you must have thought that there just might be something fantastically special about them?

Of course I can - if it was good and I liked it, I'd have finished it!

People adore Donald Trump - it doesn't mean I have to.

That was a low blow

I'm not saying you have to love books that others love, especially when those others are ignorant bigots Trump voters. (Case in point: 50 Shades of Grey, which I didn't even pick up.) These are not books written for dumbos, though. They are smart, exceptional books in their genres.

Just sincerely think that you would have liked Cloud Atlas and The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo if you got to even 40% in either. Especially unbearable to me is the fact that you love dystopian and post-apocalyptic stories and you didn't read either in Cloud Atlas before you decided that you hated it

I've tried CA three times now, Cote. It just isn't meant to be. Ditto Jonathon Strange, which you also loved iirc. There's a line from a song by The Smiths which goes, 'I was bored before I even began' and I feel like that about them - I can feel them dragging me down even before I've finished the first 30 pages.

I won't give up on you Remus

(You can stop me bugging you about CA by reading just the dystopian and post-apocalyptic stories, though. Two little stories. Think about it )

I might - if I can find it in the library and not spend (waste?!) any money on it!

Have finished a couple since the last time I posted on here:

13. The Exclusives by Rebecca Thornton - read off the back of something someone said on the previous thread (I think). A few people were discussing it so I won't rehash all the plot details. The premise sounded quite good and I enjoyed it as a light read, with a lot of 90s nostalgia and a school setting which was scarily similar to mine. The ending felt very rushed though which annoyed me, as the rest of the book had been quite evenly-paced. Equally, it was a bit frustrating that the split narrative between 1996 and 2014 didn't come across as two distinct narrative voices. I just don't buy the idea that a 35 year old narrator would sound exactly the same as her 17 year old self. If it was meant to make a point about the fact that she hasn't moved on, it was a lazy one, in my opinion! On the whole though, I enjoyed it.

14. Jeremy Hutchinson's Case Histories by Thomas Grant - reading for book group. This is non-fiction about several of the cases defended by this criminal barrister from the 1950s-1980s. I found this a really interesting read. It covered a range of cases from spy trials at the height of the Cold War to censorship cases like Lady Chatterley and Mary Whitehouse. It was fascinating to see how the outcome of individual cases reflected, or even occasionally affected, how society was changing during the period.

Have started The Tea Planter's Wife and Those Who Leave and Those Who Stay (the third in the Elena Ferrante Neapolitan Novels quartet). I'm going to be busy at work for the next few weeks, so am in need of easy reading.

Ghost story - Dark Matter? Michele someone. Hang on while I Google.

Michelle Paver! Or The Loney.

I've never managed to read Cloud Atlas either (though I might try again - I was given it when dd was very small and not sleeping).

Mind you, Mansfield Park is probably my favourite Austen (tied with P&P and Sense & Sensibility, with Persuasion coming in close behind). In fact, if I had to come up with a list of fictional women I identified with most as a teenager, Fanny Price would be high up the list (along with the Provincial Lady, Jill Tweedie's Faint Hearted Feminist, and Hetty from What Hetty Did).

Reading The Invisible Library as recommended on here, and not that thrilled at the moment, despite the fact that it ought to be my perfect knackered weekday evening read (hence why MNing instead!)