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?

Well, I can't say I'm enjoying Under The Dome but it is providing (sort of) distraction from the daily doom and gloom of having to erase my WhatsApp chats every couple of hours, worrying about a terrorist attack if my DM takes the DC to the town centre or shopping area for a few hours, hearing of friends being turned back from the airport as their passports were apparently cancelled, and least but not least, watching mobs getting larger every night in city centres.

And as I'm looking at the latest Jack Reacher book for the same purpose of mindless distraction....

Can someone tell me why it is £4.99 on the Kindle but only £3.85 in paperback? That's a 30% difference in price!

Shakeitoff, I worked my way through all the D'Artagnan books as a teenager, would definitely recommend the full series (esp The Man in the Iron Mask).

VAT I expect, Cote. Is that Make Me? It was okay but not one of his best. I gave all mine away and now I wish I hadn't! I hope things are going okay.

43. My Family and Other Animals by Gerald Durrell. I expect everyone has read this- I found it slow going but it is undeniably charming.

Where is the tattoo going Remus?!

But VAT isn't 30%?

How would they even justify the same price? Paperbacks need to be printed, stored, transported, etc.

Gosh Cote it only sounds incredibly stressful and reading a boring book must just be adding to your woes. Some friends are on holiday in Munich at the moment, the world has just become so frightening.

48. The Little Red Chairs - Edna O Brien. This is the story of a man who has come to live in an Irish village and sets himself up as a healer but is a wanted war criminal in the Balkans. A lady in the village falls in love with him and then suffers the consequences. There are some beautifully written parts, and the image of the 11,451 red chairs each representing one of the victims of the Balkans war will stay with me but I didn't feel it was the masterpiece it's been billed at. The characters in the Irish village are cliched, and as the action moves to London and refugees there, it becomes very bitty. I read another book in the middle of this.

49. Written by Fire - Marcus Sakey. This was the third in the Brilliance trilogy, which is set in our world but where some people have developed special powers. He deals with the fallout very realistically. People react the way I think they would if this happened in real life. The final book pitches the norms against the abnorms in a pitched battle in the middle of America. I didn't find it quite as compelling as the first two but he wraps up the story, leaving room for sequels.

Book 81
Anatomy of a Soldier by Harry Parker
Made it to the end this time – easier to read on Kindle than in a huge hardback! The concept is clever – it’s the story of a soldier wounded in an unnamed combat zone, but akin to Afghanistan. Parker himself lost both legs in Afghanistan. The story is told from the perspective of objects connected to Parker – the bomb that injures him, his mother’s handbag when she visits him in hospital, his prosthetic legs etc. It’s a clever idea and I was particularly interested in the sections in the hospital. My problem with it is that the perspective of the objects removes a lot of the emotional contact for the reader, so it all feels a bit too dispassionate, and you don’t really get anything in terms of character development or character relationships. I’m glad I finished it but still think it would have worked better as a short story or novella, rather than a novel.

Worth a read though if you're interested in literature and how stories work, or in modern war.

Good Guardian review of it here

Cote, it sounds a nightmare. So sorry

Remus, your tattoo sounds interesting!

58. The Bridge of St. Luis Ray - Thornton Wilder
A famous bridge collapses killing the five travellers traversing it in Peru on a certain day in 1714 (not a spoiler). Were the people on the bridge just random travellers, or is there something that links them? This is a classic I guess, and is considered by many to be profound. Whilst interesting, and something different, I didn't find it extraordinary by any means.

59. Landmarks - Robert Macfarlane
Robert Macfarlane is just a beautiful nature writer with such lovely prose and I absolutely adored this book in which he talks about other notable authors and poets of books about the natural world and the environment. I wanted to read every book discussed here as he makes them sound so wonderful. Following each chapter is a list of local and little-used or lost nature words describing weather, geological features and the environment. The back of this edition included a 500 word glossary of local nature words people have sent him, which make interesting reading if like me, you enjoy words and nature.
This is one of my favourite books of the year, if not my favourite so far.

60. The Rest of Us Just Live Here - Patrick Ness
I liked the fact that the central characters in this 'coming of age in small-town America with some gods/immortals' book are not involved in the main storyline of what is happening in their town, whilst at the same time, the book is all about them. Other than that it's fairly standard YA stuff but as I am a woman in my early 40s, I'm hardly the readership it's aimed at!

Sorry, I didn't mean to sound so gushy about Robert Macfarlane! Just read it back and am a bit
I did really enjoy the book though.

I've fallen off the reading wagon at the moment. Ive been on holiday and was so busy I didn't get a chance. I now have my mum staying who complains every time I look at a book or my iPad. She is asleep at the moment so sushhhhh. We will be going to France in three weeks time for three weeks so I am pretty sure I'll catch up then.

whippet - i enjoyed Landmarks too and, no, I dont think you sounded too gushy about it :o I think I'll re-read it - in need of something nature-y.

Have you read Common Ground by Rob Cowen? I've heard many good things about it and have it on order from the library. It's on the Wainwright prize shortlist along with Landmarks and others.

42.Death in Bordeaux by Allan Massie The author's wishlist seemed to include the following components: murder mystery; maverick cop; convey sense of everyday life in 1940 France; convey sense of attitudes to homosexuality and Jews in 1940 France; convey political and domestic situation in early days of German occupation of France and beginnings of French resistance; create 500 surplus characters and give them each masses and masses of no added value dialogue to hammer home points above until reader is past caring. Had the ingredients of something good, but needed a really drastic edit.

This was a present, and was a high quality paperback - stiff jacket, thick white paper, high res printing. Nice looking book, which the giver will have paid good money for, yet the text was littered with typos and formatting errors - disappointing.

68 Postcapitalism: A guide to our future, by Paul Mason
Basically, does what it says on the tin. I nearly gave up on this one half way through, but in the end I was glad I stuck with it.

I've read an awful lot of books by leftist economists that do a great job at analysing what is wrong with 21stC neoliberalism, but which peter out at the stage of suggesting what could actually be done. This one for me was the reverse - if PM had kept the historical analysis (fine) but not bothered shoe-horning it into Kondratieff long waves, dropped the middle very, very long section about the labour theory of value (Joan Robinson had it spot on about the usefulness of the LTV), and got straight to the meat of his suggestions for ways forward, it'd have been great.

As it was, I spent much of the first half of the book thinking he didn't have a clue (why so much about abundance and nothing about climate change? why no mention of precarity in his talk about the networked generation? why no discussion of housing / land?), then he did actually get to these pretty critical issues & say some useful things - in the last 2 chapters. (Nothing about land though - he needs to read this manifesto - it's a very urban analysis.) Overall I'd probably recommend with reservations to anyone interested in the subject.

Landmarks sounds really good - just the sort of thing I'd enjoy. I'm reading Jeanette Winterson- The Gap ofTime at the moment but will see if I can find Landmarks cheaply to read after.

35. The Muse - Jessie Burton. In 60's London, a young woman starts a job in a gallery where she finds a beautiful painting, which has links with 30's Spain. The author''s clearly done lots of research into art (possibly too much), and the Spanish civil war but she's crammed in too much here, with that and various love stories, racism, murder and they don't quite come together. Another problem is that the 1967 story was more enjoyable to read and more credible than the one set in the 30's. I liked this a little more than The Miniaturist but still would only tentatively recommend it.

Taking a break from The Swimming-Pool Library to read a new library book, Out of Time by Miranda Sawyer.

Have been pondering whether to use one of my Audible credits on The Muse. Still unsure. Maybe I'll listen to the abridged version on Book at Bedtime first.

Just finished reading an utterly crap novel that has made me very cross with myself for bothering with - The Lemon Grove by Helen Walsh. Was just vile. No redeeming qualities, nothing likeable at all. Hell, she even managed to make me feel like I would never want to go to Mallorca

69 Waistcoats and Weaponry by Gail Carriger. More YA comedy steampunk, entertaining light read.

22- The Gap of Time- Jeanette Winterson

This is a modern re-telling of Shakespeare's A Winter's Tale. I wasn't too familiar with this play but there was a handy synopsis at the beginning which helped.
I enjoyed the way she handled this story - the use of names as a nod to the original was clever and I settings were believable. The writing was quite compelling and the character of Leo was repulsive when in his jealous rage.

44. Fire Colour One by Jenny Valentine. Another from the Carnegie shortlist- this is a very slight novel, more of a novella really, and I think it might have been better a little longer- the payoff was clever, but i felt not all the characters really had time to come alive, and the texture felt a little light- it all read too quickly! An interesting read though.

68. Just One Damned Thing After Another by Jodi Taylor

This has been reviewed by several others so I won't repeat the synopsis here. Quite entertaining, and I like the time-travelling observers of history idea.

31. All the Pretty Horses by Cormac McCarthy. This is set in the 1950s. Two teen boys leave Texas and ride on horseback to Mexico to work as cowboys. Not my usual cup of tea, but it was recommended by a friend and I enjoyed it more than I expected to. It's fairly bleak though.

32. Colourless Tsukuru Tazaki and his Years of Pilgrimage by Haruki Murakami. Already mentioned several times on this thread, this is the story of Tsukuru Tazaki, whose four close school friends suddenly cut him out of their friendship group. Years later, he decides to find out why they did it. I thought this was an original concept with interesting characters. However, the ending was disappointing - particularly regarding the subplot of Tsukuru's friend Haida, which was never explained.

Ha, Mermaids, your review of the Lemon Grove made me laugh

Common Ground sounds perfect for me. I am off to check the local library catalogue to reserve a copy! In fact I will have to look at the Wainwright shortlist too. I think we both enjoyed Meadowland last year too.

So Chillie, can you give us the potted version of the 6 morning things that will transform your day/life?

I'm currently reading Blood Will Tell by Kyra Cornelius Kramer, which is medical speculation about what caused Henry VIII to have such difficulty in siring living children and what caused a personality change after the age of 40. I'm enjoying the book, although faintly irritated by the pseudo-academic referencing of non-academic sources.

I'm going slower than usual because I have my parents staying, and as with a previous poster, my mother considers that I'm abandoning her if I read in her presence. It's a wonderful thing to have people you can read alongside without anyone being bothered by it.

So Chillie, can you give us the potted version of the 6 morning things that will transform your day/life?

I'm currently reading Blood Will Tell by Kyra Cornelius Kramer, which is medical speculation about what caused Henry VIII to have such difficulty in siring living children and what caused a personality change after the age of 40. I'm enjoying the book, although faintly irritated by the pseudo-academic referencing of non-academic sources.

I'm going slower than usual because I have my parents staying, and as with a previous poster, my mother considers that I'm abandoning her if I read in her presence. It's a wonderful thing to have people you can read alongside without anyone being bothered by it.