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?

Also fascinated to hear the 6 transformatory morning things Chillie

Book 37: The Janissary Tree by Jason Goodwin. Reviewed by many other likers and I am happy to count myself amongst their number. Really wonderful sense of place throughout.

Book 38: William Shakespeare's The Phantom of Menace by Ian Doescher. Basically Star Wars Part IV (the first film) re-written in shakespearian tongue. C3PO is a star, followed by R2D2 who gets lines (as lengthy asides). Amusing, but would prefer to see it on stage.

Book 39: The Great Paradox and the Innies and Outies of Time Management by Isa-Lee Wolf. Written by a twitter "friend", I was pleased to genuinely like it. Snarky, frantic, with an (I think) unique idea of time being manipulated by its guardians for really mundane absurd stuff. Another fun with a capital F kinda book.

biblio I agree, there is no better person than one who is happy to have you read alongside them whilst they entertain themselves. My mother certainly can't and sadly, neither can my boyfriend I'd read way more if I wasn't having to constantly steal time. My daughter has just married a man where they always do their own thing, but together, if you know what I mean. I'm envious ...

Cote I'm glad to hear you are continuing to read whilst in that awful situation but agree that Kindles are - worryingly - increasing in price. I have no issue with paying for books, but when you can't lend those books to others, then I do have a problem. I hope they sort themselves out - and sharpish. A real pain for that to be limiting your reading whilst the world is doing vile things around your very person. Keep staying safe.

That reading in company thing - DH was away visiting his mother this weekend and took his book with him. He said it never even got opened and he was feeling quite bereft, two days without reading! He wasn't much of a reader when we first met but now hates to be without a book and we happily read alongside each other in companionable silence :)

70 Clockwork Princess by Cassandra Clare. I actually finished this last week, but forgot it on my list as I listened to it as an audiobook at work. Third in the Infernal Devices trilogy, and I think the weakest, but good enough.

I'm now listening to Alex's Adventures in Numberland, which I actually realised on starting I'd already read (I've borrowed it from the library audiobooks list, and had in my head that I was borrowing The Genius in my Basement, which is by Alex Masters, not Alex Bellos ). However, it works well as an audiobook on the whole.

A side note - those who listen to audiobooks - do you find words in other languages that you know are frequently mispronounced? I've had this in a few books lately with Welsh words and am now wondering if all the chinese / russian etc words are also pronounced entirely wrongly?

Well, bibliomania and JoylessFucker there is inevitably an acronym - SAVERS. Which stands for Silence (around 5 minutes of meditation, which can be just concentrating on breakthing whilst emptying your mind), Affirmations (I feel a bit of a prat saying these out loud, even though there are only the cats to hear me), Visualisation of your perfect life, Exercise (only needs to be about 5 minutes or so. I'm using a 30 day fitness app at the moment), Reading (20 minutes - the recommendation is self-help books to use this as part of your personal development) and Scribing (20 minutes of journaling, focusing on things you're grateful for, your goals for the day, that sort of thing). Don't ask me if it works yet, I'm only on day 3. I'm not really seeing how it's meant to transform your life into immense success though.

There was a fair bit of German in the Hugo Lamb section of the Bone Clocks, which the otherwise excellent narrator pronounced attrociously badly. I don't know anything about how the recording of audio books works - are they on such a tight schedule / budget, that if the narrator gets to a foreign bit in a language they don't speak, do they just have to plough on, with no option to pause, do some research / phone a friend?

I wondered that, Ham. Somehow I'd always imagined that they'd be expected to read the book in advance & do their research on how to pronounce unfamiliar words.

Book 82
A Woman in Berlin
The anonymous diaries of a woman living in Berlin in the final days of WW2 and then its aftermath. ‘Enjoyed’ isn’t the right word for a book about women facing starvation, repeatedly raped by Russian soldiers, forced to move rubble and machine parts for 12 hours a day etc, but I found it a v worthwhile read. I’m not entirely convinced that it’s truly authentic: it was written by a woman who had been a journalist and it feels rather too polished in places, so I imagine that it was written, and certainly refined, with publication in mind. Well worth a read.

Jealous of those with loved ones who'll read with them.

Thanks for the distilled wisdom, Chillie! They're not bad things (although I'd hate my reading to be confined to self-help books). I think I already do quite a few of these, without intending to, as I have a 25-minute stroll to work and like to muse as I wander along.

I'm rather jealous of your 25 minute stroll to work, bibliomania! My commute is a drive which takes 35 mins in no traffic, but up to an hour during rush hour.

My DH isn't a massive reader but is happy for me to read while he works / watches TV / sleeps beside me.

33. The Long Way to a Small Angry Planet by Becky Chambers. Fun, lively sci fi. I enjoyed this, but I have the impression that it may appeal more to "sci fi lite" readers like me than to some of the serious sci fi fans on this thread.

34. The Lie Tree by Frances Hardinge. Faith, the teenage daughter of a 19th century rector and amateur scientist, comes across a very peculiar tree. When you feed the tree a lie, and spread the lie, the tree will bear fruit depending on how important the lie is and how many people believe it. Then if you eat the fruit you find out a truth. This is a great concept and a good read, but not the kind of book that will stay with me in a meaningful way.

35. The Uncommon Reader by Alan Bennett. Already recommended by many people on this thread, in this book the Queen suddenly discovers the joy of reading. A wonderful book - Bennett at his finest.

31. Seveneves by Neal Stephenson; First two thirds of this completely fantastic though VERY heavy on the technical detail. That can make it tiring to read. I discovered at the end there were some illustrations which I would have appreciated seeing much earlier as it was exhausting at times trying to visualise the complex descriptions. Regardless, the events are riveting, the characters absorbing (love the female characters, very unusual to see so many strong women), the human drama totally believable. It kept me up 'til all hours, so hard to put down. Then two thirds in there is a total break. It's like a whole new book. In fact, I think it probably should have been a whole new book. He has loads to work with, lots to say, why try and squeeze all the what ifs into 300pp or so? The huge change of pace and focus is a bit disorientating. You have new characters (and machinery, >sigh

Sorry, read back over that and I realised there is not much narrative detail in that review, but hard to talk about it without spoilers! I should have at least said though, that essentially the moon explodes and causes a catastrophe on earth, the first two thirds relate to the initial efforts to ensure the survival of the human race, and the last extrapolates from the decisions made to the future...

wilting - I totally agree with your review, including the part about not being able to give much detail without spoilers. I really felt that the book should have ended at 2/3 and the rest should have been the sequel.

The last 1/3 is thousands of years later IIRC, obviously has totally different characters, setting, and issues. I thought that it wasn't as well thought out as the first 2/3. If it were the sequel, maybe Neal Stephenson would have been able to spend more time & effort developing it and it would have been another masterpiece book.

Having said that, a sub-par Neal Stephenson book is still brilliant and head & shoulders above 95% of SF out there, of course

Yeah I really don't understand why he did that. It had huge scope for an equally detailed and expansive sequel but instead, it's just squeezed in at the end. Agree it's not done as well as the initial sections.

Though I feel bad saying that because the last third would stand up well as a stand alone novel in comparison with most sf!

62. Fall of Night by Rachel Caine

14th Morganville vampires book. Starts off well, but is really just YA fluff.

63 The Iron Daughter by Julie Kagawa

Second book in the Iron Fey series about a girl who finds herself involved in fairy intrigues. It's OK.

64 Moon Tiger by Penelope Lively

An elderly woman, a historian, looks back at her life, remembering relationships, family, her career and her time in Egypt during WW2. I found it to be a very sad book and I'm not sure if I liked it or not.

65 When We Were Friends by Tina Seskis

Six uni friends come together for a reunion and the story swaps between the meeting and its aftermath and their shared past. I think the novel lost a bit of focus by bringing in viewpoints from characters only peripherally involved in the story and the writing style annoyed me a bit. It just seemed like the novel didn't really know what it was about.

66. Heir of Fire by Sarah Maas

Third book in the Throne of Glass series. The first two books worked well as silly fantasy-lite; this one tries to be epic fantasy but the writing just isn't up to it. It's pretty boring with a few good moments.

Interesting Remus, I've just seen an interview of Anthony Beevor, military historian author of Stalingrad and Berlin (amongst others) who spoke about the research he did into the systematic rape of german woman by russian troops in WWII. He acknowledged that he was introduced to the women he interviewed by a german journalist, who was herself amongst the victims. I wonder if the book you mention could be that woman?

I was just talking about Moon Tiger with my book club last night Tenar. We were debating which book to read next and that was one that has been on my to read list for ages. Not sure about it now! We plumped for something else though so maybe that's a good thing.

50. Thief's Magic - Trudi Canavan - I've never read anything by this author before but she always gets recommended on fantasy threads on here so thought I'd give her a go. Well I was very disappointed. The book follows a young magic and archaelogy scholar Tyen who finds a magic book which he decides to keep rather than handing into the authoritarian Academy. The other thread follows a girl called Rielle who is living in a strict society run by priests where magic is frowned on, but she can see magic. The book alternates between a few chapters with each character, but what I particularly hated about it is that they never met. Not once. There is no continuity between the two stories. It's the first of a trilogy, but stilll mince frankly.

Quite disappointed that this was my 50th book, I feel I need to cleanse my soul now.

Joyless - I tried reading this but found it all too much and didn't get beyond half way. I thought Beevor seemed almost obsessed by the rapes, to the extent that the figures (which indeed are vast) seemed to be mentioned on every page. They happened and clearly it was absolutely awful, but him repeating it over and over didn't really seem necessary in terms of telling the full story of Germany's defeat. Once the figures were given, I thought he should have got on with other aspects, without keeping returning to it. It became almost gratuitous, I thought.

Oh I love Moon Tiger. An old favourite of mine.

Ah, that explains much Remus. Beevor said that "the Russians" had taken that book badly, to the extent that he is now subject to a 5-year term in jail for it should he ever return to Russia. His Russian publisher is suffering financially as a result and dares not release the translation of his latest book. It was a subject the interviewer kept returning to, having read your review, I understand why.

tumble, if you liked Moon Tiger, have you read Ammonites and Leaping Fish, by the same author? She covers some of the some ground, but very much looking back in old age.

Finished 74. Blood will Tell, which I pre-emptively reviewed upthread. Rather dizzying to think that history would potentially have been very different if Henry VIII had a different medical history (if the author's theory is correct).

Have started 75. Career of Evil by Robert Galbraith. It's okay, although I'm not sure that I'm in the mood for crime at the moment.

Just read what I think must be the same interview, Joyless. Interesting - thanks for the heads up!

That's interesting Remus and Joyless, I bought the Beevor book the other day. It's on loan to my dad at the moment. I'm not sure I want it back now.

36. Under The Dome by Stephen King

This was LONG! Stephen King is a great author, and his portrayal of small towns with their myriad characters is legendary, but surely the story of what happens when they are cut off from the world did not really have to be 876 pages long.

The beginning was quite boring and I went through a phase of wondering if I should just chuck it, but it picked up in the second half. The last 1/4 or so was pretty good, except for the "explanation" and the resolution, which I thought were a bit silly.

Still, I did enjoy the Neocon references and especially the Bush-Cheney dynamic paralleled in this book. And thought the meth-induced side show of the Chef & first selectman Andy Sanders was brilliant

71 Manners and Mutiny by Gail Carriger.

YA steampunk adventure, the fourth and final book in the Finishing School series.
I rather liked this series, the first book wasn't great, but they picked up well from 2 onwards with good characters and suitably silly but pageturning plots. Her Parasol Protectorate series is a steampunk version of Georgette Heyer (some of the characters are pretty much a straight lift from GH) and then the Finishing School series adds lots of James-Bond-esq gadgets.

I think my favourite scene in this book involved the heroine - in a series of entirely logical and reasonable steps - ending up frustrating the band of villains whilst dressed in a ballgown covered with a full length leather apron, with an exploding wicker chicken slung across her back.