50 Book Challenge 2016 Part Five

[southeastdweller]

Thread five 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.

The first thread of 2016 is here, second thread here, third thread here and fourth thread here.

How're you getting on so far?

That sounds great. I was wondering if overseas people can benefit from these online libraries because Ami posted links to the ones in Canada and Australia.

28. Daddy-Long-Legs, Jean Webster. This was reviewed upthread so I won't go into detail on the plot. I have mixed feelings about this. Initially I wasn't enjoying it as much as I expected; it was a bit too girly and silly for me. Lots of naïve, innocent talk about clothes and friends that seemed more like the voice of a 13 year old than young woman. Then as it progressed and Judy became more sure of herself I swung between being happy for her new-found confidence, and finding her self-involved and silly. She is very of her time though, the book being written in the early 1900s, and once I reminded myself of that I found it easier to appreciate her character. In the end I rather enjoyed it, it was quite sweet and happy, and I think it'd benefit from a reread at some point.

Sorry cote , was pretty excited myself

Re overdrive, after poking around s bit more, I think you have to be a member of the library to borrow the digital books. So I'm stuck with my own library. The collection is really crap, the only stuff they have I want is murakami BUT only on audio hard to find anything also...

Friends, I have sinned. I got an email from Amazon.com saying that they have credited my account with about $3 because of some legal settlement and of course decided to use it for the £9.49 Rameau book that I've been crying about. So I naughtily & momentarily changed my address to the US and snapped it up. So now it's mine mine MINE

That's OK, wilting. It was too good to be true, anyway

Wilting-you can join the two at the links I posted. I am not Oz and I have joined and borrowed from them.

*not IN Oz!

Hiya. I've lurked infrequently for the last few threads, mostly to get inspiration but if it's not too late I'd love to join you.

So far this year I've read:

1. Lonely planet's guide to NY
2. Where d'ya go Bernadette?
3. Room, Emma Donaghue - which I loved. I read it one sitting. Couldn't put it down 4)The lies we tell ourself - Which was fine but not as great as the hype imo
4. The other son, Nick Alexander. - A little rushed in the ending, but enjoyable enough
5. The Little Old Lady who broke all the rules - This dragged. I persevered to finish, but I wouldn't recommend it to be honest. Found I didn't actually care about the characters
6. A Man called Ove - which after number 6 I wasn't too sure I'd enjoy. But very glad I read it. Found it rather charming.
7. The Year I met you, Cecilia Aherne
8. The Girl in the Photograph, Kate Riordan
9. The Girl with No Name, Diney Costoloe - WW2 based fiction. Light read and enjoyable. I do have a soft spot for this style though
10. The Secret of Happiness, Lucy Diamond - Mumsnet freebie. Didn't enjoy the story as much as her previous book but okay for a holiday read

I'm afraid these aren't in order, and I've probably forgotten some but I'll update as and when I remember. Will also try to review properly the new reads.

Dragon Trainer - The House by the Lake, sounds like a winner to me. Will check that one out.

Welcome, NeverNic.

My latest:

27. Shakespeare by Bill Bryson. I thought this was great.

28. A Year of Being Single by Fiona Collins. To quote bibliomania's phrase earlier in the thread "there's no point taking a hatchet to fluff", but this was pretty rubbish tbh.

29. Travelling to Infinity by Jane Hawking. This is the book on which the recent film The Theory of Everything is based. I feel a bit torn about this one. On one hand, I feel an enormous amount of admiration for Jane, and I think it was incredibly important for her to tell her story in her own words and make sure her voice wasn't lost behind the fame of her ex-husband, Stephen Hawking. On the other hand, I personally would have liked a bit less about caring for a severely disabled person and a bit more on the physics side of things - but I realise that is hypocritical of me, given my previous sentence. The whole point is that this is her story, not his!

Come and join us NeverNic.

Cote, that sounds like a good idea to me!

In amongst all the chaos of the leave vote there are lots of good Anne Tyler novels on sale today for Kindle. My favourite of the titles is Breathing Lessons - which is one of the best Anne Tyler novels IMHO.

18. Prospero's Cell by Lawrence Durrell . Subtitled 'A guide to the landscape and manners of the island of Corfu' it is not a novel but more a collection of Lawrence Durrell"s thoughts and descriptions of the culture and history of Corfu as he adapted to living on the island. It is written as a series of diary points and is a book I've been dipping in and out of on some recent train journeys.

19. The Little Coffee Shop of Kabul by Deborah Rodriguez. Quite an odd read as it is written in a chick-lit style while describing some of the atrocities experienced by women as a results of both the Taliban rule and historic Afghanistan beliefs and culture. I was interested to discover at the end of the book that the author had lived in Kabul, running both a beauty school and a coffee shop - from the style of the writing I really hadn't expected the writer to have experienced this life first hand.

31. Landscapes Of The Metropolis Of Death - Otto Dov Kulka

A short but powerful memoir from a historian who survived Auschwitz as a child, dealing not so much with day-to-day events as with how one lives with having gone through such a thing, both as an individual and as part of the Jewish community. Not exactly a fun read but very moving and, perhaps, a timely reminder of what awaits at the end of the road of fascism.

37. Caddy's World by Hilary McKay. I had forgotten what a good writer McKay is, I loved this- clever, charming, spot on and a lovely prequel to the Cassin Family series. Would recommend if you read children's fiction.

Book 71
Lies We Tell Ourselves
Already reviewed by Tanaqui.
Shortlisted for the Carnegie, this is set in Virginia in 1959, when the first black pupils were being integrated into previously white schools. I wasn’t expecting to love this tbh, & only bought it because it was 99p & I was desperate. My problem with it is one I often have with YA (and had about the travesty that was ‘And the Mountains Echoed’ last year,) – that of writers trying to shove in every issue and its dog, rather than just trying to tell a good story.

Had this just have been about the integration, it would still not have been terribly good, as it was very repetitive and didn’t really have enough plot to drive it, so it just kept saying ‘The white people were shouting again’ and ‘It was pretty scary but I held my head up high’ over and over. Clearly the writer knew that this wasn't going to be enough, so then shoved in lesbianism too, with the attraction of the central black girl to one of the white girls, whose dad happens to be Mr Lead Racist.

It all got a bit wearisome – a shame because I think the integration stuff is a story well worth telling & the main character and her situation would have been interesting enough without the added complication of being gay, in the hands of a stronger writer. On top of that we also had child illness, child with disfiguring birthmark and child getting beaten up by her father. It started to feel like she was working from some sort if issue tick list, and everything diluted the main point.

43. The Seed Collectors - Scarlett Thomas. This is about a plant-obsessed family. It follows the middle-aged generation, Clem - a film maker and university lecturer - and her husband Olly, Fleur - a yoga teacher, Charlie -a botanist and Bryony, a mother, glutton and estate agent. All their parents were lost 20 years before looking for a lost island with a plant that led to enlightenment. I enjoyed the writing here and the characters - although none are particularly likeable - but the plot was a bit thin and ending a bit abrupt.

44. Curtain - Agatha Christie. Another Hastings & Poirot one. This is Poirot's final case and takes them back to Styles, the scene of the first book. Hastings continuously jumps to the wrong conclusion here which gets rather boring after a while, as it is obvious to the reader what is going on. Not one of her finest.

Just started The Martian. I'm finding it a little dry

A couple of short ones as life keeps getting in the way of my books at the moment!

29. The Yellow Wallpaper, Charlotte Perkins Gilman. A very short story about a woman who is recuperating in an old mansion at her husband's insistence. He is a physician, and has diagnosed her as having temporary nervous depression, which he believes will be improved if she does not work or stretch her mind. Cooped up, and with practically no stimulation, she starts becoming obsessed with the pattern on the bedroom wallpaper.

I enjoyed this. It says a lot about the way women and those with mental health problems were treated at the time.

30. The Happy Prince and other Tales, Oscar Wilde. This was just lovely. Five short stories about love, generosity, foolishness, friendship and pride. I particularly love The Selfish Giant. It's beautiful.

LOVE The Yellow Wallpaper.

27. H Is For Hawk by Helen Macdonald. This part memoir, part biography, and part nature book focuses on the writer's training of a goshawk (Mabel) as a way to cope with her beloved father's unexpected death. Additionally, it examines TH White's attempt to train his own goshawk, along with a look at his career, writing, and psychosexual issues. Macdonald's rhetorical and stylistic abilities are superb, and I can understand why this book has received such acclaim. But, my admiration for it is largely aesthetic; I must admit that I really wasn't all that interested in its meditations on falconry--or the goshawk. Sorry, Mabel.

Next up will be Half A Crown, the final book in Jo Walton's excellent Farthing Trilogy.

Remus It does a lot for such a short book, doesn't it? I loved the end. I keep going back to look at the last couple of pages.

35. The Beggar King by Oliver Pötzsch Third in the Hangman's Daughter series. For this book the action moves to 1660s Regensburg on the Danube, and in some ways the city itself is one of the major characters in the book. I didn't enjoy this as much as the first two, as it relies much more heavily on propelling the main characters from one over the top perilous situation to the next than weaving in well researched facts about the customs, beliefs and issues of the day which made the first two so interesting. Not that the latter was entirely lacking. This book developed the main characters, their relationships and back stories, very nicely. I do wonder if the translation leaves something to be desired - I speak German, and sometimes it's obvious what the original would have been, and I wouldn't have rendered it like that, plus use of some fairly crude modern turns of phrase which jar.

32. Spy the Lie: Three Former CIA Officers Reveal Their Secrets to Uncloaking Deception by Philip Houston, Mike Floyd, Susan Carnicero, Don Tennant, Michael Floyd

This took me a while to read because I have been distracted over the last couple of days, watching in dread & fascination the train wreck that is Brexit. It was also written in a bizarre and patronising style that I didn't warm to. However, it was useful and provided interested insight into human behaviour re lying & deception.

58 Soulless and 59 Changeless Books 1 & 2 of the Parasol Protectorate series by Gail Carriger.
Comedy steampunk romance, lots of cream teas and hitting people over the heads with parasols. Total nonsense, but a fabulous heroine, lots of good side characters, and just the thing for distraction whilst waiting for the four horsemen of the apocalypse to charge across the land.

I've also got a few more serious books on the go, but not really getting on fast with any of them. I bought a copy of Journey Without Maps recommended upthread, but realised afterwards I've actually read it before (still worth a re-read though).

I've also got a book about urban warfare out of the library which has some interesting ideas, but is appallingly badly written, almost a parody of academic-ese.

Book 36 Fire Bound by Christine Feehan my guilty pleasures author
Book 37 A Life Without You by Katie Marsh got sent this by the publishers for a review. Quite surprised but actually really enjoyed it. The premise is that the heroine gets a phone call from her estranged mother , who has been arrested. it made me think of many topics on the boards here. Not sure about the ending though.
Book 37 is The Wicked Boy by Kate Summerscale which I have already started and can see if it carries on as it started will be another favourite for this year

33. On Beauty by Zadie Smith
    Audiobook.
    Character driven novel about the mixed race middle class Anglo-American Belsey family. I enjoyed this novel covering the usual stomping grounds of life, love, betrayal, death. The narration was good apart from the dreadful English accents. White Teeth is being added to the tbr pile.

34. Red Moon by Benjamin Percy
    Werewolf horror fantasy in which being a werewolf is caused by a prion disease. Werewolves fight for their rights to have their own state but are generally treated like second class citizens and discriminated against/hunted down. Like the X-men or the Brilliance series but with werewolves. It was an okay, fairly enjoyable read.