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?

Ha!

1. The Mandibles: A family, 2029-2047 by Lionel Shriver.

What happens to several generations of a rich American family when there is a huge fiscal crisis. I enjoyed this book. It's all set in the near future and is full of inventive details. It was quite thought provoking, particularly reading just after the referendum. There were lots of characters which was a bit confusing. I could have done with a family tree diagram at the front. Quite a bit of the plot is explained through unrealistic conversations between characters which was irritating. Ultimately a great idea and definitely got better as it went on.

70. SPQR by Mary Beard

Covers the first millennium of Rome, from what the Romans said about the city's origins (and what we can actually know about them, which isn't a lot), through the early kings (again, not a huge amount of verifiable information is known about them), the Republic, and of course the emperors up to Caracalla. It's quite an achievement really, and Mary Beard is very readable.

So havent posted in over a month, really sorry for not popping in. Taken me so long to read books and then ended up losing mumsnet password and didnt feel able to post.

19. Harry Potter and Goblet of Fire Jk Rowling not going to review as many people have read it but I really enjoyed visiting this again and spotted lots of thinga I missed the last time I read it.

• 20. Murder on the Links -Agatha Christie. I really enjoyed this and finished this so early. Poirot receives a letter from a man in France who fears for his life, tigether him and Hastings go over only to find the main has already been murdered. Fantastic book, didn't guess who'd done it at all which was great. I love how Christie uses a mixture of different narratorsnin her book and you're never sure how reliable they are.

Currently reading Murder in the Orient express as seem to be in a Christie craze. Also got new Harry potter script to read after.

Any recommendations for this month on Kindle?

Good to see you back Eitak, I quite fancy a new Christie soon too and I've never read Murder on the Links so I might tee that one up .

I couldn't see much on the Kindle deals, a couple of Ian Rankins, I always enjoy those. The Revenant is on there too, I haven't actually read it but am reliably informed it is worth a read.

I would be interested to see what you think of the Cursed Child. I am not going to read it as I'm going to see it in October.

I've just started a very promising book called Sapiens by Yuval Noah Harari. It was a Christmas gift and I'm only 2 chapters in but really enjoying this non-fic book about the origins of humanity. It's got pictures too .

I got The Revenant in this month's Kindle deal, too.

40. The Girl Who Played With Fire by Stieg Larsson

This is the sequel to the international bestseller and surprise sensation The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo, and focuses on the hitherto unknown story of Lisbeth Salander - what happened to her that made her into what she is: a smart young woman on the edge of society who is extremely violent when provoked, who distrusts authority & takes the law in her own hands.

This time, the story is about trafficking of women in Sweden, a country where prostitution is criminalised by law. In fact, the entire book is about how women are mistreated, assaulted, pushed aside, not taken seriously or flat out sabotaged in a professional setting. Every single female character (and there are many) suffer in one way or another from sexism at the very least and even violent rape in one case. Government officials ignore them and their male colleagues (for the most part) collaborate with this oppression. The book seems to be saying that the rational response to this rigged game of oppression is to always hit back harder than you get, even if you are a tiny girl and although the result might be that you get treated as mentally unstable.

This series is bloody brilliant. If any of you have missed reading these books, you really should

Speaking of the old Muppet men - I absolutely detested The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo.

Yeah, well, I'm reading the navel-gazing Frenchness that is HHhH now and you won't be too happy to hear what I've got to say about that, either

You don't like it?! There's no hope for you.

Says the woman who reads Polyanna

To each her own and all that but I'm at 9% and the idiot is still rambling about how best to write historical fiction in general. Unbearably... French.

:) Can you pretend he's from Glasgow or something instead?

Would a man from Glasgow actually say stuff like this?

"This is what I think: inventing a character in order to understand historical facts is like fabricating evidence. Or rather, in the words of my brother-in-law, with whom I’ve discussed all this: It’s like planting false proof at a crime scene where the floor is already strewn with incriminating evidence."

Why the fuck do you do it then, Laurent? Huh? And do you really think I want to hear what you talk about with your BIL?

"I'll have to resist the temptation to flaunt my knowledge by writing too many details for this or that scene that I've researched too much, I must admit that in this case - regarding Heydrich's birthplace - my knowledge is a bit sketchy. There are two towns in Germany called Halle, and I don't even know which one I'm talking about. For the time being, I think it's not important. We'll see."

Oh yeah, it really sounds like you know so much, Laurent. Thank you for deciding to spare us the excessive details acquired during your superior research

I'm at 9% and there's been no story yet. Just crap like this. I can practically hear him whining on about historical novels in general and just how much he has read about WWII. In French. Gah.

Please someone say that some sort of story will appear soon.

Fence-sitting just isn't ever going to be my forté, is it?

I blame you for neglecting to warn me that this is a (1) First book, and (2) By a French author, although I may not have had the opportunity to talk about my distaste for what the French call their "literary style" before now

I promise that there IS a story in it - not a v uplifting one, but definitely a story! The navel gazing is sort of the point of it as well though. It's basically questioning the very act of writing about history, and how the telling of the history invariably changes said history in its telling etc. I thought it was really clever.

I didn't notice any 'Frenchness'. I know I thought it was a darn sight better than Madame Bovary, which is one of the last French novels I tried to read!

He sounds like he is smoking a joint and musing on historical novels, characters, etc. With just a little bit about Heydrich thrown in. The whole thing is very disjointed and reminds me of Wolf Hall, especially the present tense thing. I thought you hated books in the present tense.

It is so much better than Wolf Hall. I've got a 'bit' better with present tense - still don't love it though.

The point is, it is not just a story cote. It's also about the act of writing itself and the impact the author has on what, on the face of it, is a factual account of how heydrich was assassinated.

But of course, you may not be interested in that

I thought it was v well done and I enjoyed the extra insight and reminders that this was a perspective not a statement of fact.

And personally I think first books are often the best!!

If it's any comfort, he does actually cover the events as well.

61. Life Class – Pat Barker
Part one of a trilogy, this was eminently readable and jogged along nicely but I didn’t fall for this WW1 novel in the same way that I did the Regeneration trilogy. Saying that, I’ve got the next two lined up from the library. I found the description and the scene setting to be excellent but just didn’t believe in the characters enough.

62. Under Major Domo Minor – Patrick DeWitt
This strange, short novel set in a mountainous land with castles and deranged nobility was much more like a fairy tale than anything else but as there are trains it’s not a book about the distant past. It’s actually quite funny in parts, following the fortunes of the flawed hero Lucy (male) and the scrapes he gets into, but it’s not a patch on The Sisters Brothers, which I really loved.

63. The Outrun – Amy Liptrot
I thought this was excellent and raced through this book, which has just been awarded the Wainwright Prize. What you get here is a well-executed combination of nature writing and autobiography in which the author talks about her years as an alcoholic in London and her childhood and recovery in the Orkney Islands. As you can imagine, there is an awful lot of introspection here but I did not find it tiresome and I learnt so much about islands and the landscape of the far north. I recommend this for all lovers of nature writing but still prefer Landmarks (which was also on the shortlist for the same prize).

64. Mr Mac and Me – Esther Freud
As I’m originally from the Essex/Suffolk borders I enjoyed this gentle novel set at the beginning of the first world war and set on the Suffolk coast. It’s told from the point of view of a local boy who befriends Mr Mac, who is the artist Charles Rennie Mackintosh. Lots of interesting detail about measures taken in WW1 and Mackintosh is a figure of which I knew rather little. Didn’t set me alight though.

65. The Muse – Jessie Burton
This was absolutely fine, another readable novel, rather like the one above, but there was nothing standout here that captured my imagination. The action moves between two different time frames, late 1960s London and 1930s Spain and gradually the two come together until the earlier informs the latter. I liked the heroine, Odelle Bastien, who has emigrated from Trinidad and ends up working for her mysterious boss in a London art house, but I just didn’t believe in the 1930s characters or any of their dialogue.

I think I am jaded and hard to please these days!
Although I haven’t posted for a while I have been keeping up with the thread and have been enjoying all the reviews - and the arguments

"It's also about the act of writing itself and the impact the author has on what, on the face of it, is a factual account of how heydrich was assassinated"

That could be interesting to read about, but imho not from a some guy whose writing career is just starting with this book. As could be expected, he has very little insight about the act of writing (up until 13%, at least), just a lot of "Ooh I now know so much on this subject and all these other books I can name are so inferior" etc.

I can't imagine why he thinks I want to know that he paid 800 Euros for a book written by Heydrich's wife, either.

whippet I haven't posted for ages either (moving house plays havoc with reading ) but have also been thoroughly enjoying the arguments! Thank you all for keeping me in the reading world despite having no time to pick up a book.

I loved HHhH. I found the details of his writing and research amusing/interesting. He personalised a historical event with intelligence and wit; not pretentious at all. He isn't boasting of how much he knows - you've misjudged taken the tone of it differently than I did . The non-committal, meandering early passages increase the devastating impact of the true history as it unfolds with greater and greater certainty and inevitability. It was very effective, and affecting, I thought.

He's published one book. He's probably writing all his life. I don't get the relevance anyway of it being his first book. His experience of writing it is as valid as if it was his tenth.

I think stephen king wrote something on writing too. More straightforward iirc. The Binet book is a bit self conscious in tone. I could see it might irritate.

Book 84
A Walk in the Woods by Bill Bryson
A re-read. I remembered this as being my favourite Bryson, alongside the Australian one. It’s certainly worth a read, but this time around I recalled that the first half is substantially better than the second. The second half is patchy, largely because he’s walking small bits of the Appalachian Trail alone, day by day, rather than with Stephen Katz in a big chunk of time. So in the second half you lose the dialogue, the exasperation and pleasure of being with a companion etc. I’m glad I read it again and I loved the first half, but could have lived without the rest of it.

Book 85
The Cursed Child by JK Rowling (a bit!) and others (whose names i can't remember and can't be bothered to look up
Oh dear. I wasn’t going to read this but a friend dropped it round for me to borrow. Its one high point was its brevity – I read it in a morning. Suffice to say, it’s pretty dreadful. Maybe with the special effects on stage etc it’d be okay, but as a text it was clunky at best and downright ridiculous at worst. It read like a cross between bad fan fiction and Douglas Adams-esque parody. The plot was stupid, the characters one dimensional and the language clichéd and awkward. One to stay well away from.

39. The Diving Bell and the Butterfly by Jean-Dominique Bauby.
This has been sitting on my bookshelf for more then 5years just waiting to be read. Hmm.. I wanted to like it. I knew the story already, had sympathy for this man in his prime locked into a body only able to communicate by the movement of one eye. But it felt superficial. Where was the rage, the soul-searching, the boredom, the self-pity? We had some dream sequences, a couple of superficial reflections from his life; I felt no connection through his book. Disappointing.

40. Purity by Jonathan Franzen.
A recommendation from a friend. This is a character driven family/coming of age saga. Maybe other people will find some deeper meanings. I quite liked it, I certainly raced through. Why didn't I love it? Not sure. I have read two of his (long) books now and the characters are often a bit whiney and difficult to like. But aren't we all? 😉

Grifone - I think you have inspired me to re-read The Stand. It is also on my "to be re-read" list but I'm avoiding the re-read as it made such an impact on me as a teen and I don't want to spoil the memory.

HHhH is on my Kindle waiting tbr but every time I start I'm slightly bored. I'm enjoying the discussion though, so maybe one day I'll persevere.