50 Book Challenge 2016 Part Four

[southeastdweller]

Thread four 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, second thread here and third thread here.

How're you getting on so far?

*longbourn damn predictive text.

Longhorn might have been a better book than Longbourn (which I hated).

Just checking in. Had a really busy week so not finished another book yet. Still reading Anne Enright book which I'm enjoying in a slow paced kind of way. Have also started HHH thanks to the recommendations on here. Love it and am now buying it for everyone I know( well those who have birthdays round about now). Really enjoyed a pp's critique on Asking for It( my last book). Gave me a new perspective. I always imagine Scotland( me) and Ireland to be very similar culturally but I guess that's not as true as I believed. Working away from home next week so hoping to catch up with some reading then. Think I'm on book ten but will have to count back.

I quite enjoyed Longbourn but Longhorn sounds even better!

Hurray for more HHhH love!

37. Burned by Benedict Jacka

The plot was described earlier in the thread by slightlyglitterbrained so I won't repeat it. Jacka spins a good yarn, but reading one of his in the midst of a re-read of The Dresden Files it does feel like a bit of an imitation of Jim Butcher's series. I do like Jacka, but Butcher is better. But then, I suppose there are only so many ways you can tell tales of an outsider in the world of wizards, just as most police detectives in novels seem to be mavericks with issues with authority, disasterous personal relationships, and the occasional drink problem.

Agreed longhorn sounds like a much more interesting book!

44 The Lie Tree by Frances Hardinge. Victorian set childrens novel with a fantasy edge to it.

This was fine, but I didn't like it anywhere near as much as Fly by Night / Twilight Robbery or A Face Like Glass by the same author.

Partly I think it's just that it is more genuinely a childrens book. Fly by Night in particular may have a child heroine, but is really a mad baroque alternate history novel playing with language and religion rather than progressing in a sensible way through a comprehensible plot.

Apart from that, Faith, the heroine of The Lie Tree just didn't feel convincingly Victorian - I felt that she read more as a modern child dropped into a Victorian stage set, and (while I'm all for addressing feminism, class et al in books aimed at children) the issues in the book felt a bit everything-plus-the-kitchen-sink.

I had similar reservations re the heroine, Sadik. Have just ordered a free sample of Fly By Night - thank you. :)

Hi all. It's been a while since I posted so the thread has dropped from Threads I'm On. I'm currently reading Tipping the Velvet, which I'm enjoying. Gave up on The Year of the Runaways as I couldn't get into the story and didn't think much of the writing.

Hope you enjoy it, Remus :)

26. Brooklyn by Colm Toibin - I know lots of people read this on a previous thread and it got mixed reviews. I liked it - a slow, gently-paced story, as much of his stuff is. My only criticism was that I felt the ending was a bit of a cop-out - I would have liked a bit more about why she made the choices she did in the last part of the book: the consequences or some thought process, at the very least.

Am now reading Miss Peregrine's Home For Peculiar Children by Ransom Riggs for book group and Fire Colour One by Jenny Valentine as one of the Carnegie shortlist for work. Enjoying both so far.

I didn't mind Longbourn actually - I liked the way that the P&P plot line was very much the back drop. It felt to me like a reminder that the servants had their own lives and feelings separate to those of the family they served, that they were still individuals with lives of their own.

Wickham was completely in character in my opinions!

What about When Death comes to Pemberley ? I haven't read it yet but was thinking it might be worth a shot - any thoughts?

Greymalkin Step away from any thought of reading When Death Comes to Pemberley I love Austen and have enjoyed PD James - yet this is one of the worst books I have ever read. Do not pollute your brain with its drivel!

Polemic against the Pemberley book done, I came on to log my latest, Bram Stoker's Dracula. I decided to re-read this in honour of our forthcoming summer holiday to Transylvania and ended up enjoying it far more than I expected. Its horror is very muted to today's taste and the melodrama suited my current mood perfectly.

I read a page of Death Comes to Pemberley - it was one page too many.

7. Rivers of London - Ben Aaronovitch
Been reviewed a lot so wont say too much but was recommended to me by friends. I enjoyed it once i got over the ridiculous of it. Even found myself wanting to know what happened next.

Will actually read Shakespeare next i think, only read this as need to sort kindle out as didn't get time in March.

The BBC managed to make a passably good drama series out of Death Comes To Pemberley, which I did enjoy watching. I didn't enjoy the novel and found myself skimming to the end, which was such a shame because it was P D James and I've loved her novels in the past.

21. Things we have in common by Tasha Kavanagh. This was reviewed on p19 of this thread by ChessieFL and I agree entirely with her review - it's a page turner and I thought it had a convincing voice for the narrator (15 year old Yasmin), but the ending was massively disappointing.

Agree with the warning to stay away from Death Comes to Pemberley. Awful.

42. 84 Charing Cross Road, Helen Hanff

Recommended on here - can't remember the thread, maybe one about comfort reads. I'd known vaguely what it was about (American writer's lengthy correspondence with staff of London bookshop) but was vaguely under the impression it was fiction and a boy-meets-girl story. The letters are real, and there's no boy-meets-girl. I liked it all it at the better for that, although I wouldn't say I fell passionately in love with it and will want to read and re-read it.

Dragon, I agree with the Dracula love. I like a bit of Victorian melodrama.

Completely missed the start of this thread, well done me. A very quick catch-up then:

39. The Turning Tide, by Brooke Magnanti. Complex thriller from former call girl Belle du Jour, who, it turns out, can write. Maybe a little too complex (there are several different plot strands, not all obviously related), but I enjoyed it hugely.

40. The Glorious Heresies, by Lisa McInerney. Five people in Cork's criminal underbelly are connected over the years. On the shortlist for the Baileys Prize and I'm hoping it wins. McInerney writes the best, most complicatedly believable teenager, in Ryan Cusack, that I've read for years.

41. The Exclusives, by Rebecca Thornton. Two best friends are awful to each other at boarding school, then must reconcile 18 years later. Like a dark, nasty Malory Towers. Rather fun in its way, though I won't be rereading it.

42. A Wizard of Earthsea by Ursula K LeGuin. Deservedly a classic. It's written in quite a portentous, old-fashioned style, but the story of Ged, who needs to learn the limits and responsibilities of his immense power, is never going to get old.

43. Selected Poems of Sylvia Plath. I love her. I love her frightening, visual imagination, and the way motherhood repels her as well as attracting her, and I love how she wrote through madness. I just love her. The end.

44. The Sunlight Pilgrims by Jenni Fagan. In the grip of a global winter, a lost young man, a single mother, and a transitioning teenager find friendship and love with each other in a Scottish caravan park. It's really evocative and quite lovely, although the book as a whole feels anti-climactic somehow.

45. The Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kingsolver. This is really so good. I've always loved Kingsolver, but this novel about an evangelical missionary's family in the Congo in 1959 is something else. Transcendent, and highly recommended.

Ohhhhh, I just wrote a huge post and lost it! Grr!

53. The Bettanys of Taverton High, Helen Barber.
    
    More Chalet School prequeling. This one was better - more interesting, probably because there were more of the original characters to draw on. Still not brilliant, mind you!

54. Gerry Goes To School, Elinor M Brent-Dyer.
    
    The very first EBD book - love it! Classic 1920s school story, full to the brim of period detail and brilliant characters.

55. Lady of Letters, Josephine Elder.
    
    Recommended on the Chalet School thread as exploring the deep connection two women can have - really interesting, set between about 1905 and the later 1930s, focusing firstly on the relationship between Hilary and Eleanor (although it does make it very clear that the relationship may be very close and emotional, but there is nothing physical involved) and then going to explore Eleanor's reaction when Hilary meets a man. Really good!

56. Miss Pym Disposes, Josephine Tey.
    
    Loved it! Loved it loved it loved it! I want more! Wikipedia doesn't seem promising on more Miss Pym, but there are a number of Josephine Teys which I shall be purchasing as soon as I get paid. Lucy Pym uses her knowledge of psychology to deal with a murder at a girls' physical training college.

57. Heather Leaves School, Elinor M Brent-Dyer.
    Complete comfort reading - the only one of the La Rochelle series I read as a kid, and I think the best. Heather is taken away from school because she behaves so rudely at home, and has to submit to lessons with a governess and her infuriating neighbours, the Shakespeare family. Four girls called Cressida, Hero, Portia and Cleopatra - brilliant!

I am now reading three books at once - Notes From a Small Island, which is not as good as I remember from the mid-90s, Seven Scamps, more EBD, and The Martian, which I am loving but have to keep stopping because my tablet battery isn't great these days.

south, I'm a bit that you couldn't get into the story of Runaways and didn't think much of the writing. I think it's written every articulately, clearly, with great beauty. And the story of the lives of the characters is totally compelling, IMO, and the picture painted of their environments and the situations they find themselves in extremely vivid, nuanced and powerful. Horses for courses I guess.

biblio, I've only just read your review of Uprooted but I agree (in fact I said some of the same sorts of things in my review!). I did finish it though and it was (just about) worth it.

Only, we did seem to independently arrive at the same conclusions about Uprooted! In a different mood I would probably have finished it too, but I'm going through a phase where I can't be bothered ploughing on the way I usually do.