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?

31. Gentlemen & Players - Joanne Harris. Revenge themed novel set in a boys' grammar school in northern England, this was a big disappointment for me. None of the plot twists were believable, the structure confusing and the characterisation was awful. I also find it really annoying in a novel when several narrators have almost the same voice, like they did in this book.

Now on Love from Boy, a book of letters from Roald Dahl to his mother.

Agree re Gentlemen and Players. it does seem to defeat the purpose of several narrators, when they share very similar voices.

One book, which has only two voices as opposed to several and handles them both brilliantly is The Collector by John Fowles. He begins with the 'unsavoury' voice but portrays it so well that you, well at least I, have sympathy until the second voice begins and jolts one back to reality.

51. The Lifeboat by Charlotte Rogan

I enjoyed this much more than I thought I would. It's set in 1914 and is about a woman standing trial for what happened while she was on a lifeboat with 39 other passengers after their ship sank. Most of the novel is her notebook of what she remembers of the lifeboat and the claustrophobia of a small lifeboat combined with the vast emptiness of the ocean comes across very strongly and it's a very good exploration of human behaviour under pressure.

52. How to Train Your Dragon by Cressida Cowell

Children's book about a Viking boy who has to catch and train a dragon in order to be initiated into his tribe. It's a cute, fun read.

53. Storm Front by Jim Butcher

I think this has had a few reviews on these threads already. It's quite an enjoyable, easy read.

54. The School for Good and Evil by Soman Chainani

Every four years two children are stolen from the village of Gavaldon, only to appear eventually in fairy tales, one as a hero or princess and one as a villain. Sophie is desperate to be taken to the "good" school and Agatha is worried she'll be taken to the "evil" school, but of course things don't happen the way anyone expects. I really like the concept of this book and it is very well written, but I did get a bit annoyed by the "good" girls who spent most of the time being pretty and wishing for princes, and I couldn't tell if this was the author trying to make a point about fairy tale princesses or not.

55. City of Fallen Angels by Cassandra Clare

Book four in the Mortal Instruments series. YA stuff about vampires, werewolves, Nephilim, warlocks. Enjoyable but forgettable.

I had a different experience with Gentlemen and Players. I listened to it on audio book and really enjoyed it. It was very well narrated so that I didn't find the different voices confusing at all. Perhaps I wouldn't have found it as good if I had read it, I don't know. I believe Joanne Harris has written a sequel.

Adding The Collectors to my long tbr list. I recommend Engleby by Sebastian Faulks which I read recently - a good example of an unreliable narrator and a twisted tale slowly unfolding.

Different lass is the sequel - although you don't need to have read Gentleman and Players first to enjoy it.

The highly recommended (Remus & Cote I think possibly???) This Thing of Darkness is 99p!!!

Have snapped it up, it better be good now

I loved This Thing of Darkness - enjoy!

45. The Martian - After a slow start, I really enjoyed this, and ended up staying up far too late two nights in a row reading it.

Not sure where to go next, I'm having Kindle fatigue and feel like I need to visit an actual book shop.

Yay to 'This Thing of Darkness' - wonderful book. It is the first thing I ever recommended that Cote actually enjoyed! From that point, I knew that there was hope for her.

Has anyone read Reader I Married Him-edited by Tracy Chevalier?

Short stories written by authors such as Helen Dumore and Susan Hill and all inspired by Jane Eyre. They are all dazzlingly different and very enjoyable, with the added bonus that such is the genius of Charlotte Bronte that she can inspire 200 years after her birth.

20...I started the list late!

Book 72
End of Watch by Stephen King
The final book of the trilogy which began with ’Mr Mercedes’. Brady Hartsfield is supposedly in a vegetative state in hospital, but there’s some weird shit going down and his consultant is getting weirder by the minute. Meanwhile retired detective Bill Hodges has some very bad news, health-wise. The title and this early news set up the score for where things are going – it really is a case of time running out. This was okay but not great. It was basically a combination of Stephen King by numbers (damaged but loveable hero, kooky sidekicks, cute girl who needs saving etc) and JK Rowling (Strike has his leg; Hodges has his illness; it all goes pretty slowly for several hundred pages and then suddenly the writer tries to shove what should have been the final half of the novel into 100 pages or so; mawkish ending). So, a hell of a lot better than ‘Revival’ but not up there with King’s best. Having said that, I’d rather read bad King than a lot of the crap that gets published and even acclaimed nowadays!

This dropped off my watchlist.

I'm still reading Harry Potter and Goblet of Fire. Been struggling to focus so reading has taken a back seat, hopefully get back into it this afternoon.

38. Binnie Keeps a Secret by Hilary McKay (spoilers ahead). I enjoyed this too - Binnie's family don't have quite the charm of the Cassons for me, but the modern part of this story is a familiar tale of trying to fit in, well told.

It interleaves with a story from 1913, which I have confused feelings about- it was definitely charming and well done, and if I was about 10 I think I would have found it fresh and possibly tear jerking. But I'm 45, and it had very strong echoes (to me) of Noël Streatfield and Antonia Forest- one episode in particular was pretty much lifted straight from Streatfeild's Tennis Shoes. But most children reading this now won't have that lens, and it isn't a book for adults with adult reading histories.

I hadn't realised how many children's writers must have been revisiting WW1 (presumably because of the centenary) - any recommendations apart from 5 Children on the Western Front?

s
Stokey, I liked The Martian, but I'm glad I read it before I saw the film- if you haven't seen the film it is worth a look to see how they dealt with it.

60 & 61 Blameless and Heartless by Gail Carriger.

Books 3&4 of the Parasol protectorate series, as per above. Entertaining fluff - she's settled well into her characters by these books, and there's enough plot to carry it all along.

Running with the Kenyans by Adharanand Finn Likeable account of a running journalist's exploration of the factors which make Kenya produce so many great long distance runners. In an attempt to understand this better, and to see if his own running can benefit from a Kenyan regime, he moves his young family to the Rift Valley for 6 months and enters a marathon. Easy going style, the bits about how the family get on are engaging, but the meat of the book is about running and runners, and is probably mostly of interest to people who are already into athletics and distance running (which I am).

Was number 36.

book 22 (I think) Michael Morpurgo Private Peaceful I read this at the request of my dd. I was and still am reading a book called judging Dev about Eamon de Valera but as its a weighty volume I decide to read something a bit lighter or so I thought. private peaceful is an amazingly powerful book. Despite it being aimed at children it packs a punch that shouldn't be forgotten. If truth were told this is the book that I wanted Bird Song to be. Emotive fast paced (I read it all in one evening) it has all the hall marks of an excellent book. The message is quite simple that war can either bring out the best in people or the worst and sometimes it is hard to know who your enemy's are.

63. My Groupon Adventure, by Max Dixon

Non-fiction. Male comedian in his 20s decides to spend a year throwing himself into Groupon experiences. Very blokey, a few dubious gags, but overall I rather liked it. Some funny bits (I laughed at the phase when he was obsessed with printing his face on things - jigsaw, mug, duvet set) and I liked his point that these experiences are mini-glimpses of other lives we could have led. You don't have to do the same thing tomorrow that you did yesterday.

59. Beowulf A Translation and Commentary by JRR Tolkien

This was so much better than the freebie translation I downloaded. It's not written into verse but you can feel the flow of the epic saga as the account unfolds. The commentary comes from a series of lectures that Tolkien gave in his capacity as Professor of Anglo-Saxon at Oxford in the 1930s. The translation itself was completed in 1926, although he did return to it later to make corrections, and the evolution of the translation is also discussed through the input of Christopher Tolkien, who indicates that one of the hands making alternative suggestions on the type-written text was that of CS Lewis.

As well as the translation and the commentary, this book include Sellic Spell which was an attempt to reconstruct the Anglo-Saxon tale behind the folk tale element of Beowulf, but also to demonstrate "the difference of style, tone and atmosphere if the particular heroic or historical is cut out." There are also two versions of The Lay of Beowulf, a poem written by Tolkien. Really good and interesting read.

Museum - Like you, I though Running With The Kenyans was OK but not spectacular. I would definitely recommend Born To Run, if you haven't read it already.

Book 73

True Grit by Bear Grylls
This is exactly my sort of thing – a collection of episodes of struggle and (mostly but not always) survival against the odds, looking at people who have managed to endure terrible things and not give up. I’d read about lots of these before , especially the mountaineering and polar ones, but it was an interesting collection and there were a number (especially army ones) that I hadn’t come across before. He’s quite an engaging writer, although he could do with being able to extend his repertoire of phrases meaning, ‘Wow – that’s pretty amazing, isn’t it?’ I could live without ever hearing the word ‘grit’ again too.

39. There will be Lies by Nick Lake. Another from the Carnegie shortlist- I think this might be my favourite so far. Like Lies We tell Ourselves, it possibly packed too many issues into one book (I won't list because it would be a shame to spoil it I think, so this review is only really for anyone who has already read it!).

The mythic element slightly jarred for me at first, but by the end I felt he had made it feel an intrinsic part of the story. Like a lot of things I read at the moment, I felt I knew the story already, but here the familiarity blended well with the myth (and I liked the nod to Gaiman's American Gods). I will definitely look for more of his books.

60. The Ruby in the Smoke by Philip Pullman

Just a short one, and strictly speaking a children's book. I picked it up in a charity shop because I did enjoy the TV adaptation and it is a good story. Sally Lockhart is 16 and has been brought up by her former army officer father. Having been taught by him, her knowledge of English literature, French, art and music is somewhat lacking, but she has a good grasp of military strategy, a knowledge of business, can ride like a Cossack, and knows how to shoot straight. When her father drowns in suspicious circumstances in the South China Sea, Sally is left to fend for herself in Victorian London. But unbeknown to her she has become the focus of attention of a malevolent woman searching for a famous ruby with a deadly reputation.

Are there any highlights in this month's Kindle books?

39 Three men in a boat by Jerome K Jerome Story of three men on a jaunt up the River Thames and some of the adventures that befall them. Funny parts about the differences between the fantasy of camping and the reality, getting lost in Hampton Court Maze. I enjoyed it.

40 The Guest Cat by Takashi Hiraide a very slight book about a couple who befriend a neighbour's cat and the effect that it has on their lives. This was OK but I was expecting something a bit more lyrical in style. It does have some good descriptions but nothing outstanding.

41 The Mystery of the Clockwork Sparrow by Katherine Woodfine I picked this up in the library where it had been misfiled in the adult section. I started reading it and soon realised that it is actually a children's book. Set in Edwardian times a young woman starts a job working in a brand new department store which is obviously based on Selfridges. There is a murder and a robbery and the mystery of who stole the jewels. It is aimed at 9+ and would suit children of that age. The plot was quite linear - I could see the twists coming a mile away - but I still found it exciting. My 9 year old would love it and I've encouraged her to read it now I've finished it.