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?

Ladydepp - are there any Everest books that you/your son would particularly recommend? Have read a few - but, unlike your ds, not enough yet!

I had to read Ulysses for my degree and I did enjoy it actually. I liked the bits with Molly Bloom best.

45. The Portable Veblen - Elizabeth McKenzie
I wanted to like this so much but it didn't quite live up to its promise. However, it is in equal parts a sweet and rather odd story in which squirrels play an important role. Although the novel is about the romance between Veblen and Paul, it's also about the perils of working for big pharmaceutical companies and having narcissistic/unstable parents, so quite a lot mixed in. But be warned, this really is all about feelings.

I've just got back from near Valencia so I might look out for that Five- actually does anyone have any recommendations for books set in that area that might give me a better feel for it?

30. the Great Gatsby a reread but I enjoyed this so much more than I did 25 years ago- sometimes I think classic books should be carefully doled out as reading them too early in life can just spoil them. I liked the hot helpless atmosphere, and the stop start narration, and generally just enjoyed it.

31. Five Children and It I never read this as a child, when I think I would have really enjoyed it (loved the Katy books, Noel Streatfeild, that kind of thing) and I quite enjoyed it now, though I thought it was a bit patchy and the ending a little weak.

MuseumofHam - I read water ship down earlier this year and also found it a long slog, but didn't pick up on the WW2 connection myself but yes, does fit well explaining the feel of the book.

22. Master of the Priory - Annie Haynes - this is a murder mystery book written in the 1920's, is very of its time and not very good. The story itself has potential, a games keeper is murdered and his wife (who some in the village thought was clearly from a higher status/class background) disappears, believed to be the murderer. A year or so later, a new governess arrives at a house some distance away called the Priory, (owned by a man who is temporary blind after the fire that killed his wife), to look after the unruly daughter. A distant relation of the owner of the Priory is trying to position herself as the 2nd wife resents the governess and sets about trying to find some dirt to get rid of her.

A good writer could have turned this story into something full of tension, jealousy, secrets, the helplessness of suddenly losing your sight, the importance of appearance, and class etc however the author managed the impressive feat of creating a good plot and then producing a truly dull book. The writing is abysmal. Don't bother.

Can I join please? How does it work? Do I need to declare the books now?

Hi Babydances and welcome.

Do you have anything to declare?

Tanaqui - now you've read Five Children and It, you might well enjoy Five Children on the Western Front. have forgotten the writer offhand, but it's shortlisted for the Carnegie this year.

Hahaha! Thank you remus!
I am half way through *A Bear Called Paddington" and also just started "The Chocolate Lovers Club"
I'll try and do the 25 as we are mid way through the year

Welcome, babydances. All you need to do is post when you've read a book, saying a little about it and whether you enjoyed it, and whether you recommend it or not etc. And have fun discovering new books. Your tbr list will be massive by the end of the year :o

Hi all, just updating with my latest books on this shiny new thread.

38. London Falling – Paul Cornell. Police urban fantasy set in London similar to the Aarranovitch books. This one had cops, gangsters, West Ham F.C. and a good dash of the supernatural. It was entertaining but there were so many inner dialogues and sub-plots that at times my mind just wandered from the story. Parts of it were just daft. I am not sure if I will read the next one in the series.

39. Harry Potter and the Deathly Hollows – J.K.Rowling. Audiobook read by Stephen Fry and listened to on the school run. I had forgotten some of this from my first reading years ago so was totally unprepared for the emotional reaction I had. It was fantastic and I cried a lot.

40. Undermajordomo Minor – Patrick DeWitt. I picked this one up on an audible 2 for 1 deal and what a great surprise. This is the story of Lucy Minor who moves away from his home town to take a position in the castle of the eccentric Baron Von Aux . It is a bit of a mix of everything: fairy tale, murder, fantasy, war and love. I enjoyed it enormously. If you like Neil Gaiman this might appeal.

41. The Girl in the Red Coat – Kate Hamer. Eight year old Carmel goes missing while wearing her red coat and cannot be found despite an extensive police hunt. The story is told in two narratives: Carmel and her mother Beth. I had read lots of good reviews on this but for me it didn’t live up to the hype. On more than one occasion I was sorely tempted to give it up but stuck with it only because I was almost half way through. There were too many holes in the story and it was largely unbelievable. Not for me.

42. Ratburger – David Walliams. I read this with my 10 year old. 11 year old Zoe has a wicked stepmother and an unemployed dad and lives in terrible poverty. Her hamster Gingernut dies but she makes a pet of a rat she calls Armitage that has made his way into their flat. Enter Burt the evil chips and burger merchant who is a ratcatcher on the side. He hunts down Armitage and all sorts of shenanigans ensue. It was a bit of fun and my dd loved it. Anything that encourages her to read is fine by me.

I am still working through Neurotribes in paperback. On kindle I am reading Cuckoo Song by Francis Hardinge. We are listening to the third Skullduggery Pleasant book in the car and around the house and walking the dogsI am also listening to 22.11.63 by Stephen King. I am enjoying all and hope to report back soon.

Now I must make a cuppa and catch up on the rest of the thread.

Apologies for the bold fail on some of my titles. Sometimes I wish MN would allow minor edits!

Thanks Remus, I will look out for that!

54. Uprooted by Naomi Novik

This is like an extended fairy story for grown ups, and I really rather enjoyed it. Agnieszka is the daughter of a woodcutter and lives in a village in a peaceful valley, which is under the protection of an ageless wizard called the Dragon. The threat is an enchanted forest, the Wood, which sometimes sends out its emissaries to take the villagers who are either never seen again or who come back as the creatures of the Wood and have to be destroyed. The price for watching over the valley is that every ten years the Dragon chooses a young village woman to serve him for the next ten years. Agnieszka is scared her beautiful, graceful and brave friend Kasia will be taken away, but when the Dragon comes it is Agnieszka who catches his eye.

I rather liked Uprooted too, ChiliieJeanie. Have you read the Temeraire series by the same author? The first one was very entertaining, though I though the series fell off after that.

I loved the idea of Temeraire but I felt the characters never quite became real for me, so each book felt more and more repetitive.

32)Four Children and It by Jacqueline Wilson I found this while looking for 5 children on the western front- it is a sequel rather than a retelling and very typical of Wilson, and I think the Psammead was a little kinder in this one than in the original!

I have now read JW's updating of What Katy Did, this, and Hilary McKay's sequel to A Little Princess (which was quite good but not as good as the Casson family series)- does anyone know of any more recent retellings or updates?

I have looked at the Temeraire series but haven't actually bought and read any of them yet. Sounds like the first one is worth a go then? Even if it's not necessarily a series to read in its entirety.

I'm tempted by Uprooted so one to add to the list!

Tanaqui - I'm reading Five Children On The Western Front at the moment as I've been working my way through the Carnegie shortlist for work. I had to read a synopsis of Five Children and It first to remind myself what happened as I think I was about 8 when I read it...

If you're looking for an amusing light read, I'd say Temeraire is definitely worth a try.

I'm jealous of you reading Robin Hobb for the frist time Muskey, she has written quite a few other trilogies. The assassin ones are a must read.

It feels like a long time since I've updated:

37. The Galaxy Game - Karen Lord. This was cerebral sci-fi set in a future where humanity has split into different races, some of which are telepathic. The various planets have been at war in the past and the wormholes between planets have been closed. The book follows three young people: a teenage boy who is partially telepathic and learns a game called Wall running, a second guy who is learning to be a business man and a girl from one of the telepathic communities. It's not a pacey plot, but is interesting.

38. The Magician's Nephew - C.S Lewis. I mentioned on a previous thread that DD1 was reading The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe. I wasn't which book she should read next, as I remember loving Prince Caspian and The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, but this was the first. I had forgotton how overtly religious it is. There is a retelling of the Garden of Eden and it very obviously links Aslan to Christ. We're going to stick to Prince Caspian.

39. Deadheads- Reginald Hill. Another Dalziel & Pascoe mystery. People seem to conveniently die around Patrick Alderman just when he needs it, but is it fate?

40. Restless - William Boyd. I really enjoyed this, which I'm sure has been reviewed on here before. A single mum in the 70s discovers her mother was a spy in the second world war, and isn't at all who she thought she was. The novel is split between Eva, the mother's, diary and the daughter's discovery.

Phew, I'm now reading After Me Comes The Flood by Sarah Perry, as recommended on here. It fits the weather and has an atmospheric mood but is not compelling me to finish it.

What do you mean by "cerebral sci-fi", Stokey? Which other books would you count in that sub-genre?

I'm asking because that sounds like something I would be interested in, but I read the plot of the book and it sounds like space opera. Need to make sure I'll like it before I start it, as I've been hurt too many times before

First post on the new thread! It sounds like you lot have had some excellent reads recently (although Cote, thanks for warning me off Hugh Howey. I was vaguely interested in the Wool trilogy and am delighted to know I don't need to be anymore.)

60. Birthday Letters by Ted Hughes. Gorgeous, electric, sad poems about his life with Sylvia Plath. Worth reading with a grain of salt, since it's only one side of the story, but the imagery is very strong. My favourite is the poem about meeting a man on a bridge in London who has a fox cub in his coat.

61. A Tale for the Time Being, by Ruth Ozeki. Man Booker shortlisted in 2013; it's a split-narrative novel, one half of which belongs to Nao, an excitable Japanese teen writing a diary in the early 2000s, the second half of which belongs to Ruth, a half-Japanese novelist (quelle surprise) who's found the diary washed up on a beach in 2013. It's clever about quantum physics and Zen Buddhism; it never entirely ties the two stories together, but in a way the open-endedness is preferable.

62. The Essex Serpent by Sarah Perry. Brilliant, brilliant book. Set in 1891 - Cora Seaborne is widowed and takes her young (probably autistic) son Francis to Aldwinter, a village in Essex where she hopes to pursue her academic interest in geology, and where the villagers claim an ancient monster has returned to wreak vengeance. There's a wonderfully non-standard love story; there's a heroine who's big and tall and likes to eat and whose intellect is counted her main attraction; there are incredible descriptions of the countryside and of food; and there's a deep, generous sense of human nature that made me feel utterly emotionally invested in the characters. A book of the year contender, for sure.

63. Evicted: Power and Profit in the American City, by Matthew Desmond. A huge non-fiction study of how eviction shapes the lives of poor renters in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Desmond keeps himself out of it; he writes almost like a novelist, giving us portraits of the individuals he's writing about, letting us get inside their lives. It's a deeply distressing read, but his final chapter is a series of suggestions about how the US can improve conditions for poor renters - it can be done, he suggests, if politicians wanted to do it.

64. A Crime in the Neighbourhood, by Suzanne Berne. Told in retrospect by Marsha, who, when she was eleven, became convinced that she knew who had killed a boy in their quiet suburban neighborhood. Berne is incredibly good at describing the dynamics of angry children, lonely adults, and the meanness of suburban communities. It's a painfully sad read in a lot of ways, but very good.

65. Negroland, by Margo Jefferson. A memoir about growing up black and middle-class in Chicago. Incredibly illuminating about the amount of strain that middle-class black people in the States were put under: they knew that any weakness or failure, professional or personal, would be put down to their race. Jefferson also examines the intersection of class and gender in this segment of mid-century society. I thought it was excellent.

66. The Book of Memory, by Petina Gappah. A black albino woman on death row in a Zimbabwe prison for killing the white man who had adopted her writes her side of the story. It ought to be better than it is - the set-up has a lot of promise, but we never get a good sense of Memory (our main character) as a person; the whole book keeps the reader at a distance, which may be realistic but doesn't make the experience of reading it very satisfying. I've heard her first book, a story collection, is better.

Pleasure, Grendel

Friends, I need your help. I'm desperately a bit obsessed by Jean-Philippe Rameau's music at the moment - I'm listening to his music rather often neglecting DH & DC, earphones in ears and have started playing his stuff on the piano, too. Long-term sufferers of this thread might remember how I get when fixated on a dead Baroque musician so I thought a book about his life & music would be the perfect companion to my present mania about Rameau.

Something like John Eliot Gardiner's Music In The Castle Of Heaven about Bach's life & music would be great. Any ideas?

Lots to look out for there, Grendels - The Essex Serpent sounds wonderful. I loved Birthday Letters when I read it years back, but haven't picked it up for years, should definitely read it again.

I've been enjoying HhHH - thanks to Remus and everyone for the rec - but I'm going very slowly. I'm coming to the conclusion that I should just accept that summer isn't the time for me to read anything serious; too busy at work & with other stuff, so I tend to sit down to read because I'm shattered, & then can't concentrate. Poetry is probably the answer - I can just read 1 page at a time!