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?

Yeah, I read it on holiday so wasn't in my usual 'Is this worth my commuting-reading time?' mode!

Book17: The Legacy of Elizabeth Pringle by Kirsty Wark.
Interesting book based on Isle of Arran telling the story of Elizabeth's entire life , 1911-2006 and alternate chapters of the present day life of Martha, rather disappointing, I thought that kirsty Wark would be a better wordsmith, very corny love scenes!!
Book 18 is going to be The Greengage Summer by Rumer Godden

25. Take Me Home by Daniela Sacerdoti

A sort of sequel to Watch Over Me (protagonists are related and it's set mostly in the same Scottish village), Inary is coping with a bereavement while dealing with supernatural goings-on and romantic issues. It's an easy, nice, read and I really like the village, Glen Avich.

26. Deathless by Catherynne M Valente

This is based on Russian folklore and tells the story of Marya in early 20th century Russia whose life and world are changing. It's beautifully written, but in a way that makes you have to work, so the book stays with you after you finish.

27. The Gift of Fear by Gavin de Becker

An interesting look at why we should trust our instincts. The book is partly self-help, teaching people to notice the signs that someone could be dangerous or untrustworthy and partly a study of crime cases de Becker has worked on.

28. Last Breath by Rachel Caine

One of the better books in the quite patchy Morganville Vampires series. There was more of a sense of danger and of things actually going somewhere than in the other books.

Popping in to say 'Hello' but it might be a couple of days before I have anything to report. I'm reading a brilliant but complex/dense book about Berlin's architecture and the way that its buildings have defined it/redefined it throughout history etc. It's v v good indeed, but I'm having to read it in short fits and starts - I'm really wishing I had a long train journey!

Also popping in as it'll be a while before I finish either of mine. One is long and one I have to pay attention to. I'm just over half way through Bring up the Bodies and also making steady progress on The Hollow Crown - wars of the roses non fiction. They are complementing each other well, as members of the same noble families feature, roughly a century apart, and it is interesting to see how their fortunes and allegiances develop.

We used to have Longhorns, very tasty.

14 The Big Sleep - Raymond Chandler

This was an audiobook, listened to it on the way to work and back. Slightly confused at times regarding the plot but loved it, think a re listen or a read will sort everything out

lookingforme I felt that way about the ending of Brooklyn at first, but then I decided I quite liked it. In the end she chose a place rather than a person, and the reasons I think were all subtly there throughout the book.

I haven't been able to do any reading over the weekend or today as been really busy and now shattered. So third of the way through War and Peace (about 400 and odd pages) not as far as I'd hoped to be but still enjoying it and looking forward to getting some time with it.

Tenar the Cat Valence book sounds interesting - I'm currently listening to her reading "The Girl who Circumnavigated Fairyland . . ." as an audio book, and enjoying it a lot (she has a lovely voice).

"I'm reading a brilliant but complex/dense book about Berlin's architecture and the way that its buildings have defined it/redefined it throughout history etc."

Remus - Berlin was an interesting part of my City Planning course at university. When Germany was divided after WWII, the city of Berlin was literally divided in half overnight. Not only did people were obviously separated from friends and relatives, but the city's actual infrastructure was also in complete disarray. Imagine main roads suddenly leading nowhere, electricity, sewage systems, etc

43. The Discourtesy of Death, William Broderick

Lawyer/monk looks into death of disabled woman, intertwined with back-story about the Troubles in Northern Ireland. Disliked this one - uncomfortable with the NI strand and felt it didn't mesh well with the main story; also thought the pacing was off. Didn't enjoy it.

58. Notes From A Small Island, Bill Bryson. Not as good as I remembered! I had this memory of it as being laugh-out-loud funny and it just wasn't. Far too many rants about progress ruining ye olde English architecture - how dare shops etc desecrate Victorian frontages. And I didn't remember him being such a skinflint. He's constantly moaning about how it costs £2.65 to get into National Trust properties. Okay it was written in about 1995, but all I could think was just you wait 20 years, pal! Maybe 20 years ago there wasn't as much of that sort of funny memoir doing the rounds, but now there are heaps that are better-written.

We used to have Jamaica Inn as a bedtime story at school on a recording, it terrified me Whippetwoman.

Thanks for the Moby Dick advice, I love your analysis Satsuki. Maybe I should read it with pass notes!

Also love the EBD names Tooextra, can you imagine the MN baby's names flaming? Which do you prefer: Cressida, Hero, Portia or Cleopatra.

33. The Passage -Justin Cronin. Thanks Remus for recommending this when it was 99p as I loved it. I'm sure it's been reviewed many times but basically it is a dystopian novel which starts with the US government testing a super-human virus on 12 death row prisoners. And then they decide to test it on a little girl. As you may expect, things go horribly wrong. I thought the scope of the novel was great, I liked the way he started at the start and then moved on a hundred years or so to the consequences. The characterisation and different narrative techniques you used all worked really well. It definitely wasn't either your typical vampire book or typical dystopia. It reminded me of The Stand more than anything else.

Has anyone read the sequel?

Yes, Moby Dick is probably one to go through a chapter at a time, full immersion expecting a rip roaring page turner would probably do your head in!

The quote I always remember is " the harpooners of this world must start to their feet out of idleness and not from out of toil", to make sure they hit the target accurately. I usually use it to justify ten more minutes reading instead of tidying the kitchen

I read Moby Dick for fun in my Finals term at uni. I have no idea why - I suspect I lost my mind a little. It was not as "fun" as I was hoping it would be.

60. The House at Bellevue Gardens by Rachel Hore.

I've read most of her other books and enjoyed them. This one was only ok. It's about all the different people who live together in a big house. A couple of the characters were too wet to be interesting and the whole book just felt like average chick lit, quite different from her usual books. Glad I only had it from the library rather than buying it!

23. The Girl In The Spider's Web by David Lagercrantz

This is the 4th book in the wildly successful Millennium series by Stieg Larsson, written after his untimely death and supposedly based on his notes, although he is not credited as one of the authors. It features the same characters and the first 3 books. It's OK - the story isn't too bad although there isn't much suspense, the climax passes you by almost unannounced, and it fizzles on from there. Characters don't feel as 'real' as they did in earlier books, and I was at the superhero/supervillain characteristics attributed to several of them. Especially disappointing was the AI angle that never went anywhere.

cote i think you summed up how i felt with that book, it was the AI lead that was interesting. Such a shame and kinda hope he doesn't write another, it was a good series it didn't need a 4th.

Satsuki That's interesting - I agree that she chooses the place, rather than the person. I just didn't find it believable that she would behave in the way she did back home - there didn't seem to be a real reason for her to forget so easily what she'd left behind in Brooklyn. I get the whole thing about being torn between two places and two lives almost, but felt there should still be an underlying similarity in the way she approached situations. I didn't think she would have behaved in New York the way she behaved in Ireland towards the end of the book. Yet I didn't think it reflected the two aspects of her personality either - if that was the case, she should have been more restrained in her home environment in comparison to Brooklyn. Apologies - I'm not explaining myself very well, I don't think!

27. Fire Colour One by Jenny Valentine - The fourth one I've read from the Carnegie shortlist. I enjoyed this one - about a teenage girl, Iris, who lives with her money-grabbing, fame-obsessed mother and stepfather in California but is taken back to England to meet the father she hasn't seen in 12 years, as he is dying and wants to see her. He is incredibly wealthy and her mother decides taking Iris back will be a good way to get her hands on the money. I thought the writing was excellent for a YA novel - some really evocative passages. The mother and stepfather were a bit caricature-y and unbelievable but it made sense in a teenage-angst-narrative way. My only real complaint was the ending which seemed rushed.

28. Throne of Glass by Sarah J Maas

18 year old assassin Celaena is plucked from a life sentence at the salt mines to compete to be the King's Champion, against lots of other dangerous types.
A champion for the King who successfully invaded her country, causing countless innocents to die, and who sentenced her to life in a salt mine where you're lucky to survive a year. You'd think all that might disqualify Celaena from participating in this competition, but no. It also seems remarkably easy for people to sneak up on her, given the whole master assassin thing.

Anyway, minor quibbles like that aside, it's an entertaining read.

Looking I understand what you mean and I agree with everything you've said really as I did have similar thoughts myself. I think I ended up viewing it that she got sucked back into the old life by degrees, and the overnight amnesia was a symptom of the power the place had over her. It was comfortable, familiar, the easier option, but the flip side of that was the suffocation of her personality. She thought her new found confidence would be enough to sustain her and make it different, but really everything was just the same as before, and the incident with her former employer highlighted it. I did find it all a bit quickly done though - the Ireland part at the end and the relationship development was less believable, and felt really rushed, but I can see what he was trying to do and the ending did leave me mulling it all over, so it didn't annoy me too much overall ifyswim.

Cote The whole post-war Berlin thing and then the post-Wall thing = absolutely fascinating. The city has been in a pretty much permanent state of flux, and every time it raises questions of what should/shouldn't be preserved, recreated, knocked down, covered up etc. I think you'd really like the book. This is it

Stokey - I've read and enjoyed The Twelve which is the sequel to The Passage. Not read the third one yet, and can't even remember if it's been released or not!

FiveGoMad Oh how I love Raymond Chandler! :)

38. Proven Guilty by Jim Butcher

Back to The Dresden Files, and Harry Dresden is given a warning by the Gatekeeper of the White Council that there may be black magic at work in Chicago. The war with the Red Court of Vampires is continuing and the wizards are taking heavy loses, and the daughter of an old friend calls on Harry to help her boyfriend, who insists he is innocent of a violent assault at a horror movie convention. As Harry investigates he discovers creatures which feed on fear are using the convention as a hunting ground. His task is to find out and stop whoever is calling them into his city.

26 Kiss of a Demon king by Kresley Cole
27 Dark needs at Night's Edge by Kresley Cole
28 No Rest for The wicked by Kresley Cole
29 The Lost Tudor Princess by Alison Weir I was given this by mn. It was about a character that I had not heard of before. Very detailed and interesting.
30 Shogun by James Clavell. This was a book that I first read many years ago it was just as absorbing the second time around

I'd like to join in too! Recently rediscovered reading (don't know why I stopped doing it ...) as I have to read loads before starting my teacher training. So far this year I have read

1. George Orwell, Animal Farm
2. Charlotte Bronte, Jane Eyre

Currently reading 1984 can you tell what subject I'll be teaching? Absolutely loved Jane Eyre, so inspirational! As I am studying the books rather than just reading them I'm a little slower than other people, but I like the idea of trying to get to 50 this year anyway!

Hello Puffinity, welcome to the thread! (A quick plug for another Charlotte Bronte novel: if you like Jane Eyre, try Villette. It's set in Belgium and based on CB's experiences at a school there--and its main character is a teacher! I think it's more anarchic and a little darker than Jane Eyre; it's my favourite of the two.)