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?

properly grinning at "hint: there are no cool kids at the back of a doctoral seminar", bibliomania. Damn right!

Thanks Grendel. Disgruntled and very part-time PhD student here, as you might be able to tell...

31. Lucky Man, another badly abridged audiobook, sigh. Michael J Fox reads it himself, movingly and well. But having started the paperback, I remember how all the detail really fleshed out the story, adding to its pathos and his sudden change in circumstance when he was diagnosed with Parkinson's. The abridged version leaves out much of this and the story becomes a mere quite show-offy celeb tale, with the occasional misery anecdote added on. Didn't work for me. Shall revisit the proper book.

biblio That will hopefully be me in a year or two - I'm all for moral support!

Moving, why do you listen to abridged audiobooks? It seems pointless to me. I'm not trying to sound twattish, btw, I'm just genuinely curious.

I don't by choice but wanted to listen not read this particular book as lifestyle wise can fit in many more audiobooks than paper ones! This one was only in abridged version in audio. I do read the occasional proper book if I have a lot of free time/am on hol/no audio available.

And it can be a 'better' experience via audio, rather moving to hear Michael read his own story, just wanted to hear all of it, not some editor's version. There are some wonderful narrators out there- David Tennant, David Morrisey, Juliet Stevenson spring to mind. Always the occasional dud.

Excellent Satsuki, thank you! Ada's Algorithm sounds v interesting

Is that as in Ada Lovelace?

Yes it's an Ada Lovelace biog. I haven't read it yet, so can't vouch for it, I've just had my eye out for it out of interest.

What is an abridged audiobook? Is it someone's summary of a book?

I think if I want to know what happens in a book without having to read it, I would just read it's Wikipedia page or Cliff's Notes. Am I missing something?

it's its Wiki page, rather.

Cote - It's much more than a summary but cuts out some detail- so say a book which would take 11 hours to read, unabridged, may be edited down to about 8 hours. Some books are offered in either format, others just the one. Typical R4 readings are abridged- some even dramatised (which I tend to avoid).

Sacrilege! What do they cut out? 11 hrs > 8 hrs is a 27% cut

I understand that in the past audio books were abridged to reduce the amount of cassettes or cds needed. I am not sure if more recent books are still abridged with digitisation.

I see what you mean Moving. I'm far too anal to lever isten to an audiobook that's been abridged but each to their own!

25 HHhH - Laurence Binet. Reviewed many times up thread. I must admit I struggled with the style initially however it grew on me enormously. By the end I was sorry to finish it. Very good.

Laurent not Laurence

The Humans by Matt Haig. An alien from a very advanced life form is sent to earth inhabiting the body of a mathematics professor, Andrew Martin, with the task of identifying and killing any other humans who know about the major discovery the professor has made.

I really wasn't taken with this. I found the first half irritatingly inconsistent - half the time 'Andrew Martin' is utterly clueless about human behaviour, the other half he knows what things are & mean without any problem, seemingly without internal logic as to his ignorance vs knowledge. To start with, I thought it was the set up for a straight down the line comic novel with lots of 'Ford Prefect' style jokes, at which point I wouldn't have minded, but it's just not that funny. The second half I found cloyingly sentimental and predictable. I'd picked it up partly because it's set in Cambridge, where I used to live, but I thought the town was used more as a stage set than feeling genuinely part of the novel.

That was no. 32. Next up may take a while to read: Frontline Ukraine - Crisis in the Borderlands, essentially what it says on the tin, a study of the background to the crisis.

The kindle book by Alan Bennett that Satsuki had seen may be Writing Home, my 'desert island discs' book and a bargain for 99p.

Writing Home is one of my favourites too SouthEast. My paperback copy fell apart so tempted by the Kindle.

22. The First World War - A Very Short Introduction - Michael Howard

Picked this up in the library in the hope that it would fill in some of the gaps in my historical knowledge, which it did - rather a dry read compared with most of the history books I've read, but a decent primer and I feel that I understand the causes and consequences of the war quite a lot better now.

The Alan Bennett fan club :o I bought a kindle replacement for my lost paperback copy last year for £4.99 and thoroughly enjoyed rereading it. 99p is an absolute bargain.

Have got the third volume on my watch list for when it's published in October.

Third volume Quog? Excitedly off to google.