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?

Grendels I loved it too! I am intrigued by the idea of a trilogy but can't quite imagine where she'll go with it? I would definitely read it though.

Thanks for the sale reccs Ladydepp. I think I'll buy The Accidental Tourist. I've already bought and read A Song for Issy Bradley.

Love your comment about Vernon God Little, Stauski, I remember being utterly perplexed as to how it won the Booker.

Would you recommend the rest of Divergent Whippet , having finished it? I've only done the first and wasn't that enamoured.

I love Bel Canto, I was blown away when I read it.

For those of you who commented on DD1's reading up-thread, I read the first chapter of The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe to her last night, and this morning she had her nose buried in it even walking downstairs, so I think we're there.

34. The Steel Remains - Richard Morgan. DH recommended this - SF writer Richard Morgan's first foray into fantasy. The plot follows Ringil, a disaffected gay war hero, whose estranged mother asks him to find his cousin, who seems to have been sold into slavery. There is also Archeth, answerable to the emperor, who has been left behind by her alien race when they returned home, and steppes barbaian leader Egar. It felt a bit like fantasy by numbers too me and took a long time for the three threads to end up meeting.

Elle, YAY! From what I gather, the 2nd book will follow Pepper and Lovelace, not the rest of the Wayfarer crew...don't know about the 3rd but bloody excited to find out.

Five Go! Where is it?

I liked Vernon and hated Notes on a Scandal - you can generally rely on me to be contrary!

Like Tom Sawyer but found Huck really dull.

North Dorset, part of a history festival

Sounds brilliant. Please go - and report back! :)

8. Blood will tell - Kyra Cornelius Kramer I found this a fascinating read. She puts forward the argument that the reason the king not only failed to produce more living children but is drastic personality change once he turned 40 was down to having Kell positive blood. She also refuted claims regarding many of his wives particularly Anna of Cleves and Kathryn Howard. Overall definitely worth a read if your interested in the Tudors particularly Henry VIII. Definitely want to read other titles that argue a different view now though.

Book 9 is The Girl in the Ice.

Eitak I really enjoyed blood will tell it was a fascinating insight into how Henry v111 personality changed virtually over night and why he had such a poor reproductive record.

muskey i loved the way it challenged current perceptions of the people involved, not only HenryVIII but also his first wife Katherina of Aragon and Kathryn Howard as well. Having just finished Shakespeare by Bill Bryson i seem to be in a tudor spell at the minute.

eitak, Bill Bryson's Shakespeare is on my list to read. If you are looking for something Tudoresque I have just downloaded alison Weirs Catherine of aragon . I have also just finished reading Margaret of York the Diabolical Duchess which was koi sh but not earth shattering.

24. So You've Been Publicly Shamed by Jon Ronson.

Hmm, not sure about this one, it all felt a bit gossipy/Insubstantial. After reading Christina Lamb's book on Afganistan, this felt like meaningless fluff. I felt that he had not done much research into the topic and was re-hashing their stories to not much end. I did have some sympathy for them with the out of proportion response but I don't do Twitter and I just don't know why you would make those idiotic comments on social media, so, people, THINK of the consequences before posting. It is an interesting topic- crowd mentality, social shaming, particularly in view of the relatively recent advent of Twitter/Facebook/Instagram - I just don't think he did very much with it.

25. The Summer without Men by Siri Hustvedt (Audiobook)

I really enjoyed listening to this short book about a poetess and teacher whose husband leaves her for a younger woman. She goes to stay near her elderly mother, in an attempt to recover from her breakdown. Lyrical, gentle musings on relationships, stages of life and growing old. Very good.

Whippetwoman - I found State of Wonder a couple of years ago by accident and also really enjoyed it.

I have also not read Gone with the Wind but I wonder if I should have read it when I was in my teens or twenties. I have a feeling the story might irritate me so I will watch with interest how the rest of you do. I have been meaning to read All quiet on the Western Front for ages. It'll go on the list for this year!

ShakeItOff, glad to hear of the State of Wonder love!

Stokey, if you weren't keen on the first Divergent book then I wouldn't continue. I thought the first one was the best. I know others on here have read them though so they might disagree!

Book 53
A Spy Among Friends by Ben Macintyre
By the same writer as ‘Operation Mincemeat’ which I loved. This one was about Kim Philby who worked for the British secret service but was a double agent, spying for the KGB. It was pretty interesting overall, but nowhere near as good as ‘Mincemeat’. I found it a bit repetitive in places, and the final section was a really weird ramble by John le Carre, which served no purpose whatsoever imho.

Stokey I'd agree with whippetwoman re. Divergent - if you weren't that inspired by book 1, I really wouldn't bother with the others. I also wouldn't watch the films, especially the third one that came out recently, even dd (who did like the books) thought it was ridiculous.

I loved Notes on a Scandal - it should definitely have won the Booker, in my opinion.

28. Miss Peregrine's Home For Peculiar Children by Ransom Riggs - read for book group this month. It is a YA novel about a teenage boy, Jacob, whose grandfather tells him all sorts of fantastical stories about his life when he was a child, living in the home of the title. As he gets older, Jacob rejects these stories, believing them to be fairy tales his grandfather made up. When his grandfather is brutally killed, Jacob starts to find things which suggest the stories weren't made up after all and which lead him to try to track down the other children his grandfather grew up with. One of the most interesting things about this book is that the narrative is supported by photos throughout the book, which link in with the story. These are genuine photos which belong to collectors of 'found' photographs (authentic old pictures found in flea markets and other places). I thought it was really interesting to see how the author had worked a random selection of photos into the narrative - it was fun trying to work out whether the photo or the story came first in various different places. This is the first in a trilogy and is about to be made into a Tim Burton film. I'll definitely read the others.

25. Daughter of the Winds by Jo Bunt

First novel by a female author - what can go wrong, right? I bought this when it was 99p on the Kindle, because it is about Cyprus, its history, its people etc. The author is born on Cyprus shortly after the 1974 invasion that divided the island, and I remember it as a small child, helping my grandparents stick cardboard to the windows at night to darken our windows in case fighter jets came our way. So I thought it would be interesting to read a book about those days.

Oh, was I in for a disappointment! I'm not only talking about the sexist rubbish like the protagonist being "horrified at Mam’s lack of attention to her appearance and wondered what Dad had ever seen in her", name-dropping of luxury brands that she wears, and all the "wanting to run my hands over his firm chest" faux-eroticism.

What grated most for me was the blatant bias, frankly bordering on racism, that led the author to write such offensive gems such as "You told me they were normal people like you and me, but they are barbarians" and prejudiced stereotypical crap like "Turkish inhabitants of Famagusta were the same as their dark-skinned, thick-haired Greek counterparts in the south, but the Muslim presence was palpable. I hadn’t gone far when a wiry man with a pitted face was grabbing my elbow to escort me into his shop selling leather jackets and shoes." WTF?

I read in astonishment as the author presented Cyprus pre-1974 as a Garden of Eden where Turks & Greeks lived in peace side by side, which barbarian Turks ruined with their army As anyone can Google, Greece's military junta organised a coup and deposed of Makarios (democratically elected leader of Cyprus) in order to annex the island to mainland Greece. This goal was called Enosis. Ethnic cleansing had started even before the coup, and most Turks by that point were living in 'enclaves' for their own safety. Author acknowledges this in the book but (in a surprisingly naive display of cognitive dissonance) says it "wasn't of such importance"

The fact that Turks were being killed all over the place in what English press at the time called a "pogrom" and that is why Turkish army stepped in is dismissed with "the Turkish have a history of overreacting and the strength of their overreaction showed that they were waiting for an excuse to start a war". Yes, Jo. You're right. It's just an overreaction. Turkey should have let your lovely peaceful Greeks carry out a Bosna-style genocide. Wouldn't that have been a good thing

Among all the whining and longing for a reunited Cyprus, there is no acknowledgement of the fact that the referendum for Annan Plan to reunite the island failed in 2004 although it was approved by 65% of Turkish Cypriots, because it was rejected by 76% of Greek Cypriots. So tell me Jo, whose fault is it if the island is still divided?

I expected more from someone who was born on Cyprus and presumably has a better understanding of the history of the island. I know that the author is a MNer so maybe she will come across this post at some point and realise that populist misrepresentation and frankly galling bias might pass among her chick-litty readers but it is in fact a disgrace.

So reading between the lines of your review, Cote, you weren't that keen?
I think it's really an added value of a thread like this, when someone comes along with background knowledge that can give you a whole new perspective.

Due back at the library, so just finished book 45, Storm Front by Jim Butcher. Down these mean streets a wizard must walk alone. Crime noir with added magic. It's a good old-fashioned "Oh no, how will the hero get out of this fix?" kind of book. I would have appreciated a higher standard of wisecracking, but I enjoyed it anyway.

Was that too subtle, biblio?

Lucky I'm good at picking up clues others might miss.

cote I just looked it up on Amazon - the title, the description, the cover of the book...it was never going to end well for you, was it

Interesting review, though. Those quotes from the book almost sound like a spoof.

70% through War and Peace. Think I will finish it over the weekend. Looking forward to reading something else, but at the same time think I will miss its comforting presence in my life.

Elle--just realized you were referring to the Hild trilogy, not the Long Way to a Small Angry planet trilogy Whoops! I too can only guess at what the next two will be about, though Hild grows up to become Abbess Hilda of Whitby so I imagine there's a long way to go before she hits that point.

Another mammoth catch-up:

46. Ruby by Cynthia Bond. Shortlisted for the Baileys Prize with tinges of magical realism a la Gabriel Garcia Marquez, set in East Texas (which qualifies as the Deep South in America). Very harrowing - lots of Satanism, child rape and murder. The attention to place and setting is really beautiful, but goodness me this is a hard one to read. All the horror of A Little Life, crammed into 1/2 the pagespan.

47. The Cauliflower by Nicola Barker. Very odd, enjoyable, playful book written in fragments of documents, a sort of biographical novel about the Indian guru Sri Ramakrishna, who was viewed as God. Fascinating for what it does with form, although not really emotionally engaging.

48. Becoming/Unbecoming, by Una. A graphic novel/memoir about growing up in the shadow of the Yorkshire Ripper murders. For all of that, the drawings are incredibly delicate and moving. She also does a beautiful job of conveying the kind of poisonous culture that hates women and blames them for the violence that falls upon them (e.g. our own. I know it's not all roses now, but I am so glad I wasn't a teenaged girl in the 1970s.)

49 and 50. The Tombs of Atuan and The Farthest Shore, by Ursula K LeGuin. Read over the bank holiday weekend, and I really enjoyed these. The gender/magic balance shifts a bit; The Tombs of Atuan is all about a girl who's been consecrated as the priestess of dark and ancient powers, and about how her worldview changes as a result of meeting someone who challenges everything she knows. The Farthest Shore is, basically, about facing death. They're both beautiful and serious and old-fashioned.

51. My Cousin Rachel, by Daphne DuMaurier. Brilliant creepy slow-burn thriller, with a male narrator who's obviously untrustworthy and an equally untrustworthy main suspect. Set in a Cornish country house, so a bit like a better, psychologically complex Agatha Christie. Loved it.

Can I just say THANK YOU to whoever recommended Villette? Why did it never occur to me that as I love Jane Eyre, I might also love Charlotte Bronte's other works? D'oh. I am about a third of the way through and going slowly to savour it.

64. The Head Girl of the Chalet School, Elinor M Brent-Dyer. Complete and unabridged, which means it has all sorts of lovely little extra snippets that weren't in the copy I read to death as a child. Mmm.

47 The Girl who fell beneath Fairyland and led the revels there by Cat Valente
Second Fairyland book, again as an audio book. Amusing, and ideal for an audio book to listen to while working, as it wasn't too taxing and it didn't matter if I missed a bit or got distracted.

Currently a few chapters into The Martian, and enjoying it so far.