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?

83 The School for Good and Evil by Soman Chainani. I saw this and picked it up following Tenar's review of the sequel above, and because the blurb on the cover reminded me a bit of Uprooted by Naomi Novik & I was interested to see how it differed.

Children's fantasy - Sophie is the prettiest girl in her village, Agatha the plain oddity. Every year 2 children are kidnapped and taken to the eponymous schools - Sophie expects to be taken to the school for good, Agatha just wants to stay home.

Nothing particularly unexpected, the ending was unsurprising, but very enjoyable and plenty of twists and turns on the way. Reminded me somewhat of Diana Wynne Jones (always a good thing!), and I can imagine it would go down very well with tweens/young teens.

book 25 Robyn Hobb the mad ship book 2 of the river Wild Traders Triology I love these books. The triology is based on the adventures of the Vestrict family and their live ship Vivica. If you like romantic fantasy you'll love Robyn Hobb

I've given up mumsnet for a bit so am way behind but wanted to keep my booklist going, so apologies that haven't caught up on recs and comments!

44. ghosts of Heaven by Marcus Sedgewick. Another Carnegie shortlist, my least favourite so far, although an interesting idea, the 4 component parts were all quite short and I didn't get properly absorbed- sad though and I think I will remember it.

45. Leviathan by Scott Westerfield I am late to the steampunk party but I did enjoy this!

42. Born to Run by Christopher McDougall. Recommended upthread by Cote and others, this is a non fiction book about ultra marathon running in general and, in particular, a tribe called the Tarahumara who live in a remote canyon in Mexico and excel at endurance running. What is their secret? I absolutely loved this! Funny, interesting, touching and inspirational. Fab.

Book 92
The Man in the High Castle by Philip K Dick
Oh dear. I’d been really looking forward to reading this, having loved ‘Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep’. The premise is really interesting – Germany & Japan won WW2 and much of the world is divided between these two powers. The book is either really, really stupid, or I am really, really stupid for not ‘getting’ it. It shifts between a few central characters, without ever really aligning the reader with any of them, and the ending is completely and utterly preposterous. This really didn’t work for me. If anybody else has read it and loved it, I’d love to know why.

Remus - I didn't like that book at all, and I am (or was, about 10 years ago) a massive PKD fan. I think his best are DADOES ("Blade Runner"), A Scanner Darkly, Martian Time-Slip, and his books of short stories.

tumble - I'm glad you liked Born To Run. Isn't it brilliant? An absolute must-read for anyone remotely interested in running, and surely a great adventure to read about for the rest of us, as well.

Thank goodness for that, Cote. I honestly thought I'd missed something profound somewhere.

I visit Mumsnet rarely too, Tanaqui. Have been thinking of leaving again (left last year but came back. Doesn't seem such a great place to be anymore, apart from the book threads :)). Will stay on to complete my 2016 list but then may just keep my list on Goodreads, using their annual reading challenge.

Monty - Enjoy This Thing Of Darkness which I called This Hand Of Darkness for the longest time. It is truly brilliant. I love it that the author has chosen a neutral "tone" and just let the (shockingly, all true) events speak for themselves. No whining, no heartstrings-tugging. No droning on about how hurt everyone is by every event. It's my kind of historical fiction - so close to non-fiction in every detail that it can almost be called non-fiction. The opposite of HHhH

Agree that it is v close to non-fiction, but anyone whose heart strings aren't tugged by poor Captain F hasn't got a heart at all!

Any recommendations for books about either Vietnam or South America, anybody? Non-fiction, ideally, unless the fiction is absolutely, unreservedly, brilliant.

oh you lot are just making my "to read" list even more rediculous! My most recent ones are:

33. The Wine of the Angels - Phil Rickman - first of the Merrily Watkins series recommended by someone on here back at the start of the year. Written at the end of the 90s (so just as woman were first becoming vicars for CofE) a woman becomes the vicar for a small village surrounded by an old orchard. She suspects the vicarage to be haunted, there's a contraversal play about a 17th C vicar suspected of witchcraft who hung himself in said orchard to avoid his persecutors, her DD seems to be getting a bit Woo - then a local teenage girl goes missing. All a bit silly but very easy to read.

34. The End of the World Running Club - Adrian J Walker - an end of civilisation book! Asteroids hit the northern hemisphere. There is virtually no warning, our narrator, Ed, manages to get his wife and DCs in the cellar of their Edinburgh home just in time. Eventually they are rescued and taken to the local army barracks where they remain for a few months, while he's out with a group looking for food in what's left of Edinburgh, a rescue team arrive and airlift everyone except one solider to Cornwall where big boats have been sent by unspecified southern hemisphere countries who are going to evacuate the UK. The group left with 3 weeks to get to Cornwall before the ships leave, finding all the roads distroyed have few choices, so decide to run. Ed is not a hero, but a very ordinary man. Gets a bit odd when he seems to be losing his mind at one point, but generally well written.

Another book that makes me regret we didn't buy the house with the airraid shelter under the garage...

"anyone whose heart strings aren't tugged by poor Captain F hasn't got a heart at all!"

Erm...

I loved the book, though. And felt bad for Capt F, but didn't need tissues tbh.

Remus, I enjoyed Inca-Kola (non fiction set in Peru). Also The Old Patagonian Express - I have a feeling I've already recommended Paul Theroux to you on these threads? It's a while since I've read either of them though.

Only joking, Cote.

Thanks, Tumble. Have read quite a few of Theroux's, but I find him difficult to love, I'm afraid.

Thanks for the Peru rec. What I'm actually after, and failed to say, is probably early 20th century-ish. Not sure what I want really but will know it when I see it!

Well, I've had a peer at my shelves, and Lost Crops of the Incas is a really excellent read, Remus (and freely available to download as a pdf) but possibly not exactly what you're looking for

Tenar I really enjoyed The Name of the Wind too. Great book.

Remus Tissues at the ready!

Cote Completely agree about the tone of it - it's very neutral, almost detached, which I like. There's no need to bang on about how everybody feels every five sentences. It detracts from the atmosphere of the story. "Show don't tell", and all that.

Remus what about Between Extemes by John Keenan and Brian McCarthy? It's been many years since I read it, but I remember finding it moving due to the whole backstory of them having been incarcerated together, and dreaming of trekking through the Andes etc. Probably helps if you've read An Evil Cradling / Some Other Rainbow, but not compulsory.

I've swapped their names round Well, I knew who I meant.

Remus - I love that SK quote

Vietnam and South America are both off my patch when it comes to reading, I'm afraid. Years ago I had a brief dabble with Gabriel Garcia Marquez and the like before realizing that I strongly dislike magic realism.

Read:

The Diet Myth: The Real Science Behind What We Eat, by TD Spector.

Really enjoyed this - written by an expert with genuine scientific credentials rather than someone trying to sell you their diet. Two people can eat the same things, and their bodies will react differently. Why? It seems to be down to the interaction between their genes and the microbes in their guts. There's a strong association between global overuse of antibiotics (in farming as well as human medicine) and the increase in obesity, and the mechanism seems to be that antibiotics are damaging the microbes in our gut that are good for us. We're still at a very early stage of understanding the mechanisms. The ideal diet for each of us will be individual, based on our own microbial make-up, but there is some general advice about how to encourage the right kind of environment in your gut (cheese from unpasteurised milk, eating a very diverse diet, lots of fruit and veg, and shaking things up every now and then through fasting, or eating meat if you're a veggie/abstaining from meat if you eat it a lot).

It gives you all the science but it's also an entertaining read, with various personal anecdotes (he's scathing about the earliest research papers he published, which is refreshing) and case-studies.

Mad Girl, Bryony Gordon

In the vein of Matt Haig's Reasons to Stay Alive - her account of living with OCD and associated problems (drug abuse, bulimia etc). She manages to write lightly and engagingly about her problems, without making you doubt the devastating impact on her life. I read her earlier memoir of her wild 20s, The Wrong Knickers, and while I found it readable (it has been widely compared to Bridget Jones), I found the happy ending a bit glib. Here she shows the shadow side, including the impact of her mental health on her marriage and her pregnancy/early motherhood.

I thought it was a great read, and it has increased my compassion for someone trying to battle against constant intrusive thoughts and the like. I'll admit that I sometimes feel people would be able to get better if they only tried hard enough, so this was a valuable insight into what it feels like.

Those were books 86 and 87.

Have read most of Garcia's and Allende's and realised that too, Biblio! Alende's, 'My Invented Country' about Chile is worth a read. Her 'Paula' is superb too, but neither of those are magical realism.

Thanks for the recs. What I really want (and this conversation is helping me to decide what I actually want, so forgive my being a pain if you can!) is stuff about the Vietnam war, or the political history of South America - all of it, or just one country.

Cuba would be good (does that even count as South America - my geography is terrible: for years I thought that Peru was somewhere near Russia, although there is an excuse for that, based on something I read aged aged 7 about a magic panda called Izzy!).

Remus I haven't read it yet, so I have no idea if it would be any good, but I recently picked up El Infierno by Carlos Martinez Moreno in a charity shop.

According to the blurb it "chronicles the rise and bloody fall of Uruguay's Tupamaro urban guerillas," and it's based on "tape recordings, prisoners' affidavits and accounts of kidnappings, torture, murder and reprisals on all sides." So it looks like it would be a heavy read, but would say a lot about the political history of Uraguay.