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?

It's been ages since I posted - busy with work, then DCs and I both had a sick bug, then went on holiday. Have still found time for reading but not as much as usual for this time of year! Hoping to get back on track over the next few weeks and hit 50 by the end of the summer.

Will try to keep the reviews below brief.

40. The Many Lives of Marilyn Monroe by Sarah Churchwell - read this on Satsuki's recommendation and really enjoyed it. I really like the way Churchwell examines a subject, as she did in Careless People, and constructs the story out of a range of sources and information. An interesting read.

41. The Sign of the Four by Arthur Conan Doyle - read for work. Typical Sherlock Holmes mystery. A quick, enjoyable read.

42. Last Night In Montreal by Emily St John Mandel - I know Station Eleven is a bit of a Marmite book but I liked it and have read all her others now. This one was OK but a bit same-y in comparison to the rest. The plot centres around a girl's abduction by her father, who then remains on the run with her for the next 9 years. The narrative switches between accounts of their life on the road and her life as an adult who is unable to stay in one place for long, due to spending her childhood as a fugitive.

43. The Japanese Lover by Isabel Allende - read for book group. This is about an elderly woman who moves into a care home in California and also about a young woman working there who looks after her. It is effectively the story of the older woman's life, starting when her Polish Jewish parents sent her to live with her aunt and uncle in San Francisco in 1939. It tells the story of her secret love for the son of the Japanese gardener. It was OK as a holiday read but I've not read any Allende before and I'm not sure what all the fuss is about. It was basically glorified chick-lit and I thought the characters were pretty stereotypical and the plot predictable.

44. Skyfaring: A Journey with a Pilot by Mark Vanhoenacker - also read for book-group. Non-fiction and the title is fairly self-explanatory. It's basically a collection of anecdotes about flying but is also partly travel writing, partly a memoir. I really enjoyed this and found it made me think about a lot of aspects of flying I've never really thought about before or have taken for granted.

45. I Saw A Man by Owen Sheers - a good, quick holiday read. This opens with a man, Michael, who finds his neighbours' back door open when he goes round one afternoon and, on going in, finds the house empty. The narrative then switches between Michael's back story (the loss of his wife the year before) and his decision to check the house to make sure everything is OK. Grief is the main theme but it was cleverer than just that in places. The ending was slightly rushed after all the build-up, I thought, and some of the characters were a bit stereotypical (again) but, on the whole, it was good.

Am now reading 11.22.63 off the back of this thread - just over halfway through and really enjoying it.

Ulysses has taken a backseat as it just isn't summer holiday reading! I will resume in September, I think...

38. 10:04 - Ben Lerner

Picked up in the library on the strength of the cover reviews, and really glad i did. It's a short-ish novel based on the premise that the narrator is an author living in a New York beset by potentially apocalyptic storms, contemplating both writing a novel and having a baby with his platonic best friend. Not much actually happens, but the story is clever, funny and thought-provoking, and reminded me of David Foster Wallace, George Saunders and early Don Delillo, so if you like that kind of thing (which i do) then I'd recommend it.

Satsuki - It's really well-written, too, with great examples and flowing narrative. I got HHhH going at the same time as The Epigenetics Revolution, thinking that I would tire of reading a science book, but I ended up reading around 10-15% of it at each sitting

I've just put the Epigenetics book on my kindle - sounds interesting.

37. Black Water by Louise Doughty. The new book by the author of Apple Tree Yard. I enjoyed Apple Tree Yard but I didn't love it - this one is much better. Doughty has taken her skill in suspense writing and applied it to a much more interesting plot. This book is set in Indonesia, partly during the 1965 coup and partly in 1998 when the main character, John Harper, who is half-Dutch and half-Indonesian, returns to the islands. Lots going on in this book - action, political / historical commentary and a journey of personal self-discovery. Excellent.

38. Outline by Rachel Cusk. I'm a fan of Cusk, after reading Aftermath and A Life's Work; this is the first piece of fiction of hers that I've read. The story takes place over just a few days. The main character flies to Athens to teach on a writing course. The novel is made up of her various encounters and conversations in that time. It's not for everyone - there is almost no plot - and at first I thought it wasn't for me, but it grew on me over time, until I came to enjoy the detached observational style.

I've added the Epigenics book to my Kindle, thanks for the recommendation and the price shout-out Cote and I have to say that the Laurent Binet is already there - unread.

Am just starting my annual Booker readathon, so my Book 40 is Hystopia by David Means (a first novel, so Cote beware). I was looking forward to this one: a combo of JFK, vietnam vets, psychological treatment of trauma including some form of Psycho cops and yet it was disappointing. It was a book within a book, which I felt was being clever just for the sake of it and it took way too long to get going. Once it did, I enjoyed it, but then we had the waffly book within book bit again at the end Interesting idea, could've been loads better.

Book club read looks to be an amusing whodunnit with oddities. Still got the Ruby Wax to finish too.

78 Interworld by Neil Gaiman and Michael Reaves
YA/children's book, based on the concept of parallel universes and Walkers who can travel between them. Obviously I'm not the target audience, but I still found this pretty average. A little reminiscent of Homeward Bounders by Diana Wynne Jones, but without the emotional depth. However it was a fair enough adventure story for tweens/young teens.

Cote, the epigenetics book sounds fascinating.

29. Brush Back, by Sara Paretsky. This is the most recent book in the VI Warshawski series and focuses on a decades-old murder that could have nasty implications for VI's family, particularly the reputation of her father and her cousin Boom Boom, both beloved and deceased. VI is true to form as a smart, impatient, tough yet compassionate investigator. If that's your thing, I'd recommend this book. I always forget how much I like Paretsky if I've not read her for a while.

30. Forty Rooms, by Olga Grushin The protagonist of this novel, nameless in the first person narration and Mrs. Caldwell in the third person, has aspirations of becoming a serious artista poetwhich drives her early life in Russia and young adulthood. She moves to the US for university and spends her adult life making choices that move her further and further from her art. Some reviews posit that this book is about whether women can be artists, but in my reading, it's not; it's about this woman, and how and why she makes these choices. Grushin's language and structure are beautiful.

31. Life, Death, and Vanilla Slices, by Jenny Eclair Eclair sets up a dual narrative of Anne, whose mother has been seriously injured in an accident, and Jean, said mother. Anne's sections focus on the present and Jean's the past; through them, we see how they have come to their relative, though polite, estrangement. I'm utterly neutral on this book; I read it to fill the time on a blistering afternoon and probably will have forgotten about it by next week

32. The Mandibles: A Family, 2029-2047, by Lionel Shriver Shriver's part satire, part dystopia focuses on the Mandibles, a family whose forebears made a fortune in the automotive industry. The fortune goes caput along with the economy, and the family is increasingly forced to rely on its wits and each other to survive. I'm still digesting this one, but I do have a few quibbles: some of the premise is a bit implausible (a non-US born president? Hahaha!) and just odd (lots of focus on Mexico, Asia, and Europe, but no mention of Canada?). I'd recommend it though, I think.

Somehow, I lost the most important part of my post in The Mandibles: the treatment of race is very discomfiting. It mostly focused on Latino characters, but also delves into stereotypes about about Korean, Chinese, and Indian cultures. The most disturbing, though, is Shriver's treatment of the sole female African American character (one of the few African American characters in the book). I'm still undecided if this is a greater commenrary on US racial intolerance and racist history or not.

Yy cote I started on a few pages and I'm up to nearly 20% already and enjoying it

Hello all again, I've not been here for a while - lots of hideous headaches meaning I can't really read more than 30 pages at a time so slow going. New glasses coming next week so hopefuly that'll take the edge off.

30. The Constant Princess - Philippa Gregory - following on from her White Queen series, this is based on the life of Katherine of Aragon, focussed mainly on her years when she married Prince Arthur, the years of poverty until she married Henry VIII and early years of her marriage to him. Interesting in that normally her story isn't picked up until she's older and Henry is divorcing her, but unfortunately know too much of this period of history so many of her characters didn't ring true.

31 Holy Island - L J Ross - a murder on Holy Island/ Lindisfarne just before Christmas with ritualistic signs, policeman "with a past" recovering from extended sick leave on the island takes on the case. Silly in places but good gory murders a plenty in a small rural community, and a bonkers and unbelievable love story to boot. As it's set mid-winter, was completely the wrong time of year to read it!

32. Dissolution - C. J. Sansom - first in Shardlake series reviewed and recommended on here previously, thank you for the recommendations, another murder mystery series to get my teeth into!

73. State of Wonder by Ann Patchett

This was an absolutely beautiful book. It has a sort of 'Heart of Darkness' element to it and the world Patchett creates in the rain forest is extraordinarily realised. Dr Marina Singh is a researcher for a pharmaceutical company, having switched from obstetrics during her medical training after an accident during a c-section in which she blinded the baby. Her employers are funding the work of an enigmatic scientist, Dr Annick Swenson, who is deep in the wilds of Brazil working on a drug that could return fertility to women in their old age. But she doesn't report in on her progress, no information escapes from the jungle. Dr Singh's lab partner Anders Eckman is sent by the company to find out what's going on, but after a letter arrives from Swenson saying only that Eckman has died of a fever Singh is sent to find out both what Swenson is doing and the fate of her colleague.

Sorry to hear about the headaches, Dinosaurs .

Been away for a few days, good to catch up on all the debate .

45. Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? by Philip K Dick Listened on audio, where it is listed as Blade Runner, but I'm giving it its proper title here, as I've checked, and it is the complete and unabridged 1960s PKD novel, upon which Blade Runner is (loosely) based. Who is human, and who is an android? What makes a person human, and can some people be classed as less so? A bleak dystopian future, where other worlds have been colonised, but a dwindling population clings to an earth which is choked with dust, hooking into a strange new religion, with 'empathy' at its core. A bounty hunter 'retires' escaped androids for a living, but runs up against a job which makes him question everything in his world. Despite some aspects of the novel being of their time, this was a rollercoaster of a book, which I mostly enjoyed.

46. The Poisoned Pilgrim by Oliver Pötzsch Fourth book in the Hangman's Daughter series, set in 1660s Bavaria, and a welcome return to form after a slightly weaker third outing. The themes running through this are relics, pilgrimage, alchemy, science and medicine. The plot rattles along at a good pace, and the characters develop as the series goes on. Good fun.

Chillie - That book sounds interesting. However:

"deep in the wilds of Brazil working on a drug that could return fertility to women in their old age"

Is that explained at some point? AFAIK women's fertility declines after 40 because we start running out of healthy eggs, all of which we were born with. With a donated egg & IVF, women have had babies well into their 60s. So, I don't see how a drug can restore fertility to a woman in her old age unless it can magick up some new eggs in her ovaries. What am I missing?

Cote it's to do with a particular tribe being studied, where the women naturally continue to have children well into later life, and a particular thing they eat which is only located in the area of this tribe's lands. I don't imagine that part is particularly rooted in scientific reality, although the novel does touch on the moral question of whether we should be trying to enable women to have babies into old age.

Re: State of Wonder, it does go into some detail about how this is supposed to work, but it would rob the book of its main narrative drive (which I found lacking in it anyway) to explain it. Like chillie says it is a conceit that provides the jumping off point for an exploration of medical ethics and the mystical unknown; as suggested by the title. I found it disappointing and felt it didn't really deliver for me, though it is well-written and had some good ideas in it on a philosophical/cultural level.

Re State of Wonder I took it that the point of the research was to develop a drug to help with fertility generally, and that the scientists were focusing their research on this tribe due to the naturally occurring phenomenon of the older women successfully bearing children. Not to find a drug to restore fertility to older women. It's some time since I read it though.

Chillie I think you've nailed it with the Heart of Darkness analogy. Like you I love Ann Patchett's writing, the clarity and intelligence of her prose. I was fortunate enough to hear her talk at Hay on Wye a few years ago, and have a chat with her afterwards and she's very warm and engaging.

Have you read Bel Canto ? It deals with hostage-taking in a small South American country, and the relationships that develop between the hostages and their captors. Very subtle uncliched exploration of a highly charged situation. I thoroughly recommend it.

"focusing their research on this tribe due to the naturally occurring phenomenon of the older women successfully bearing children."

Yes, and what I'm saying is that older women successfully bearing children means that the women of that tribe are different to the rest of us genetically, since that can only happen if they are born with hundreds of more eggs (since they are not in menopause) whose DNAs decay much slower (assuming babies don't all have Down's Syndrome etc) than the rest of us. Any scientist given the above scenario would conclude that their diet (incl. a plant that grows only in the Amazon rain forest) is correlation and not causation.

Cote, I understand your point and the biology behind it, but things play out a bit differently in the book. Explaining it would give away some major plot points, though--which I'm happy to do here if nobody else minds, or over PM otherwise.

74. Harry Potter and the Cursed Child by Jack Thorne

Well, I think everyone knows what this is about - 19 years on from The Deathly Hallows and Harry Potter's younger son Albus is starting at Hogwarts, etc. I quite liked it, although I'm not used to reading scripts. Relying entirely on my own imagination rather than descriptions for the visuals made a change!

highlandcoo I did own Bel Canto at one point but never got round to reading it. I'm not sure what happened to my copy. Someone at my book club lent me State of Wonder after her description of it had me sufficiently intrigued to give it a try.

Vanderlyle - Do please PM me

Sent, Côte.

Book 87
The Crossing of Antarctica by Vivian Fuchs and Edmund Hilary
I was so excited to find a beautiful vintage first edition of this. It’s the account of Hilary reaching the Pole for the 1st time by land since Scott, and the account of Fuchs’ crossing of Antarctica. Unfortunately, it’s boring as fuck. Most of it seems to consist of sentences along the lines of, ‘Our machinery broke again, so we hung around for three decades waiting for it to be fixed; within seconds of us setting out again, it broke again and this time took us several millennia to get going again’ (I may have paraphrased it a bit). Both men are such boring writers that you can barely tell which one is writing when. A man died, and not only did they not mention his name, he didn’t even get a full sentence to himself. For something so exciting, this was abominably written. I hated it, but will keep my copy of it because it does look cute.

79 All is Fair by Emma Newman
Fantasy, book 3 in the Split Worlds trilogy. Much the best of the three, the plot has really got going and rattles along at a good pace. Lots of satisfying quirky detail & world building, and pleasing characters. Overall I'd recommend, but with the caveat that the first book of the three jumps about rather too much.

The only annoyance is that she's recently brought out a 4th book to continue the series, but it costs over a tenner in paperback and I don't own a kindle!

Cote - would it be too cheeky to point out that the Epigenetics book is written by a woman . Sounds great btw, yet another book added to my groaning Kindle pile!

I'm quite busy loafing in front of the Olympics but am still really enjoying Sapiens (book about human evolution, very readable)