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?

Quick update on my reads since last posting:

Book 14: A Symphony of Echoes Jodi Taylor. Book 2 in the Chronicles of St Mary. Easy reading bit of nonsence about time travel historians.

Book 15: A Crisis of Brilliance: Five Young British Artists and the Great War David Boyd Haycock. Excellent read about a group of YBA as WWI breaks out. 3 of the 5 became official war artists, all survive. If you're interested in art (and art history), read this. If not, you mind find all the artsy angst a tad tedious! I loved it, but I love art and just smiled indulgently when needed.

Book 16: Blame my Brain: the amazing Teenage Brain revealed Nicola Morgan. Aimed at teenagers, so the neuroscience was easy reading. Basically, teenage brains are different. After all the growing, the teenage years are when the brain does all its pruning and re-organisation. I can't imagine having to continue as normal while all that re-filing was going on! Also covers gender differences, addiction and depression. An interesting read from a writer who's not a scientist.

I've a lot of thread to catch up on and doubtless oddles to add to the TBR list! So, off I go ...

20. Tom Pollock - Our Lady of the Streets

Book 3 of The Skyscraper Throne trilogy. An excellent urban fantasy series, and this final book in the series is a fantastic and satisfying conclusion. I'd recommend this trilogy to anyone who enjoys reading urban fantasy.

It's difficult to say much about this final book without spoilers for the first two books. Behind the normal everyday London, there's a secret London filled with urban goddesses, train spirits, living statues, the Mirrorstocracy, pylon spiders and more. Features 2 strong female protagonists, young graffiti artist Beth and her friend Pen, who stumble across the hidden London and get caught up in an increasingly desperate struggle.

Oooh Sadik give it a go. It's an adult novel (I gather she's better known for her YA stuff).

Grendelsmother23 I will also be adding Radiance to my TBR pile. Sadik DD has also read all Cat Valente's Fairyland books and loved them. I read a blog post by Patrick Rothfuss where he said he wished he had written The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland....

to all who have suffered the loss of a loved one. May reading bring you the solace you need.

Cote, I'm afraid that I chuckled at your struggles with Brief History of Seven Killings. I read it just before it won the Booker and felt that it needed a damn good editor. Someone was far too indulgent with Marlon James with all the multiple sound-alikes telling the same story. I actually think it could've been truly great and gave it 4 stars. Despite that, my struggles started past the half-way point, so it does seem likely it's not going to improve for you ...

I still have HHhH to look forward to, but have a few more books to read for my writing challenge

Oh dear LookingForMe, my colleague has been pushing The Tea Planter's Wife after I recommended she read Anne Tyler. She'd been thinking of getting Marlon James and all I did was re-direct her to something she'd find more enjoyable.

whippet, I also really enjoyed Satin Island, a fascinating bit of musing and ruminating. Just the right length though, any longer and it might have become too navel gazing ...

Grendels thank you for the recommendation on the Tottenham riots book, that sounds right up my street.

Finding it hard to keep up with the thread at the moment but have been ploughing on with the reading. Finished 11. The Never List by Koethi Zan at lunchtime. It was fairly harrowing in parts but I'm not hugely affected by that kind of thing if it's fictional so was able to read before bed at least! The narrator is a woman who had been kept captive in a cellar for three years with three other women, regularly tortured etc until she had managed to escape. The story is essentially about her personal journey when the perpetrator is up for parole, in trying to uncover new evidence which might keep him in prison - related to her friend who had been imprisoned with her but had disappeared from captivity was presumed dead. Lots of psychological control (both in the subject matter and between narrator/author/reader) and in general I thought the book was well written, but the ending was a bit too abrupt for me, almost like the author had been pushed for time before the deadline and left a few loose ends hanging. Though there is a twist in the tale which I did not see coming! Not sure what I'm going to start next, I've got a whole load of crime books at home which I might keep going with. Or maybe something completely different!

Book 35
Fool Moon by *Jim Butcher
The 2nd in the Harry Dresden Files series. I hadn’t planned to read before the 1st one, but it was 99p on Kindle and I was a bit desperate! Actually I rather enjoyed it all. It is v far from great literature but Harry is a likeable if troubled detective-esque figure (he’s a wizard!) and this one had werewolves and evil FBI agents. A fun, easy read.

Wilting - if it's any consolation, I thought The martian was mostly a load of boring, geeky, adolescent twaddle. I only finished it because Cote kept telling me it was brilliant. It really wasn't (imvho!).

Thanks too the the rec of Krakatoa - not read it and it does sound interesting, although I'm not feeling up to anything terribly long or intellectual at the moment so will save it!

46. The Widow by Fiona Barton.

Very disappointed with this. It was a good premise (widow apparently about to tell all about her husband's alleged crimes) but it was just boring. It jumped around in time too much which I found confusing, and the widow had no personality at all.

Also adding Skyscraper Throne as well as Cat Valente to my list. I've had to make a spreadsheet to keep up with all my read / to be read books from this thread

Remus - you may have already noticed this - The Dresden Files Book 1 Storm Front is also 99p on the kindle at the minute.

I was just debating whether to give that series a go given the reduced price.

Have read the first. Will try to dig out my review. I liked the second one better.

Here we go:
"The first in a fantasy/crime series. Harry Dresden is a wizard, and private investigator. This was okay - quite diverting, satisfying ending, short and sweet. Not terribly well written, and I'm not sure I liked it enough to bother with any more in the series, but I did quite enjoy it."

18. Memoirs of a Professional Cad - George Sanders

Short memoir from the actor most famous for his performance in All About Eve, this lacks detail but it's generally very entertaining and he was certainly an intelligent and witty man. This was a pretty good kindle bargain for £2.49.

Having taken a break last year from A Little Life, I'm back with it for night-time kindle reading and my current daytime book is Eileen.

Joyless - YES. A Brief History Of Seven Killings does need a good editor. Or at least A editor of any kind! I am loathe to give up on a book and usually don't. I have pushed on and made it to 37%. Kindle informs me that making it to the end of this book will take another 7 hours and 9 minutes out of my life. Argh. Can't decide if I should just skim-read to the bitter end.

I will also have to say that I am that the author took the piss with the title of this book. A Brief History? BRIEF?

Thanks Remus.

I think I'm going to leave The Dresden Files for now.

Just found this thread; am late to the party (as always) but love the idea of chronicling what I read - although hoping I won't be judged for the trashier choices . Will just start with what I've read in the last few weeks (been unwell so high quantity low quality) and add as I get back to normal!

1. The Pact (Jodi Picoult - re-read)
2. New Beginnings at the Chalet School (yep, I found that thread tonight too!)
3. No Greater Love (Danielle Steel)

12. Death of Kings, Bernard Cornwell

Some obvious giveaways given the book title! Alfred the Great, King of Wessex dies having finally made peace with Uhtred. Not surprisingly, there is quite a fall out from his death with uprisings and betrayals, lots of battles and shifting alliances between the Saxons and the Danes. Despite his love for the Danes, Uhtred seems well and truly aligned with the Saxons and continues to lead their armies in fierce battles in the forging of England as we know it today.

Several of the established characters leave the story in this book, some don't appear at all, whilst others become more prominent. There are lots of plot lines still to be developed and others to be resolved which I am looking forward to.

My one criticism of the overall series is that Uthred seems too much of the hero. He does have some 'negative' qualities (his arrogance and intolerance of Christianity, including his disdain of his Christian eldest son) but nothing to make him truly dislikable, or more balanced really. I would like to see more imperfections!

Moving swiftly on to 13: The Pagan Lord, Bernard Cornwell the seventh in the series.

Marking place.
Reading Christopher lloyd 'A well tempered garden'
Read Roy Strong ' Small gardens'

Welcome Margot. Just let us know what the books are about & whether you like them or not (and why). Curious minds want to know

Meanwhile, I cracked and gave up on A Brief (hah!) History Of Seven Killings. Deciding I need some reading joy in my life after that crap pointless, slow, and plot-free book, I bit the bullet and bought Seveneves which (after nearly a year in print!) was £9.99 on the Kindle. So now that's the most expensive book ever to have graced my Kindle. I needed an intelligent book featuring clever and educated people! (Yes I know how that sounds Don't judge me until you suffer through 200 pages of unintelligible Jamaican dialect, reading what passes for thought in the heads of dimwits with guns. Gah.)

Woohoo southeast what are you making of Eileen so far?

Cote I actually thought that "Brief" in the title was making a point. You know how the first line is "the dead never stop talking" and how (if you got this far) Alex Pierce takes a really long time to write his series of New Yorker articles about Jamaica? I reckoned James was latching on to the Modernist idea that to tell a story in full is to go back and back and back and back in time until you find (almost arbitrarily) a place to start telling from. I liked that he called it "brief"it's about a complicated country with a complicated history and deeply vexed politics. It's as brief as it can possibly beand it's STILL 800+ pages long! I thought of it as a wry joke.

Oooh. The newest Neal Stephenson book, Cote?

It looks very interesting. I still need to finish Reamde though, I only got about a third through that before I had to return it to the library.

Hi Margot, welcome, and don't worry, no snobbery here about what people read.

31. The Woman in Blue, Elly Griffiths. The latest in a series that mingles crime/police procedural with a bit of archaeology, an occasional bit of woo and the usual private lives of police officers and pals. The main character is Ruth Galloway, archaeologist and single mother. It's not the best in the series - there's very little archaeology and Ruth herself is shoehorned into a plot that doesn't really need her, but it's a likeable enough outing for the regular characters. Woman found dead at Catholic shrine - whodunnit?

I'm currently on (32) Britannia Obscura : mapping hidden Britain by Joanne Parker. She describes Britain as seen by pot-holers, megalith enthusiasts, canal boaters, ley-line enthusiasts and aeronauts. This is the kind of thing I like - I love the idea of places as palimpsests of different eras of history. Not every bit of the book is fascinating - the details of Victorian canal-building sent me off to a refreshing sleep early last night - but as a whole, the book is a pleasing meander through different ways of seeing.