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?

M&M is excellent - still believe that, having taught it more times than I care to count!

I agree, Remus - there are some books I'm bored of after teaching them twice. OM&M definitely isn't one of them. Sad to lose it from the specs.

Sadik - my favourites from the Carnegie shortlist were The Lie Tree, Lies We Tell Ourselves and Fire Colour One. I enjoyed all of them, to be honest, in different ways but those three were the strongest contenders in my opinion. Is your DD reading any of the others? Our inter-school event is this week and will be interesting to see what the students make of them!

I'm glad I finally got around to it, I think it'll be staying with me for a while.

I was previously under the impression that there was universal Neil Gaiman love on this thread, so I was keeping quiet about how much I wanted to like Stardust when I read it last year and how much I ... just didn't. Too knowingly whimsical, too knowingly clever, didn't care about any of the characters. I keep looking at his other books thinking they sound like just my kind of thing, then I remember.

birdsong Sebastian Faulks book 20. I am dissapointed with this book not because it was a bad book but because it wasn't the great book that the cover promised.
I really didn't care about the main character Stephen wrayford he was unexceptional and lacking warmth.
Having said that the writting was good but not exceptional as the book wove through the main characters experience of World War 1 and the sub story of his granddaughter in the 1970s.
I was a bit incredulous in the 1970s section where Elizabeth didn't know about the flu epidemicin 1919 and didn't know about the thievapiel monument (wrong spelling sorry).
Onwards and upwards sticking with WW1 I am going to read Private Peaceful by Michael Murpergo

I've never read a single Neil Gaiman book. Am I missing something? Would I like his stuff?

I want to like Neil Gaiman. He seems like an interesting person with interesting ideas. I've enjoyed watching and reading interviews with him. But I thought American Gods read like a young adult novel and I was very bored by it, and thought it was supposed to be his best. I have the Ocean one though and graveyard book but somehow I never start them.

I quite enjoyed Ocean at the end of the Lane but I wouldn't say it is brilliant. I agree it feels a bit like YA to me.

My DS loved Fortunately, the Milk.

22 Chestnut Street by Maeve Binchey.

I was tidying the pile of books by my bed and found this at the bottom, short stories based on a street, not her best and zipped through it and will be going on the books for charity shelf

30. Total Recall by Arnold Schwarzenegger

This was brilliant I got it as a bit of a joke when it was 99p for a day but was quite surprised to see that I loved every page of it, from his childhood days in a small Austrian village where his father made him "earn" his breakfast by doing sit-ups, deciding when young that he had to go to the US because that is where the opportunities are and setting his eyes on bodybuilding as his most realistic chance of reaching international fame and making it to the US. Sleeping in the cupboard of a gym while he prepared for Mr Austria as a stepping stone with a fanatical workout regime, spending up to 5 hours in the gym per day. Winning competitions right and left and finally making it in the US with the title of Mr Olympia at the age of 20, and arriving in California with practically no English and absolutely no money.

How he got from penniless immigrant with no English skills to making his first million less than 15 years later (through real estate investments!), being one of the highest-paid male actors in Hollywood, marrying into the Kennedy family, and being elected Governor of California (twice!) is a great story. I am surprised to find that all this wasn't because he was a meat-head with a pumped up body, but that he is an incredibly driven man who had crystal clear vision of his goals and never stopped pursuing them, not for one day.

It is a truly inspirational story, a book that I intend to give DS sometime around his 16th birthday. Heartily recommended to everyone on this thread (and I'm surprising myself more than I'm surprising you by saying so!).

Cote Schwarzenegger!
Should I be reading this?!

I would never think of reading something like that Cote, that's what is great about this thread.

I don't love Gaiman either, by far the best thing I've read of his was Good Omens with Terry Pratchett. I think he's a bit fantastical for you Cote

42. A Fortunate Age - Joanna Rakoff. This was about a group of university friends in the late 90s that have just moved to Brooklyn. They all went to a liberal arts college together and have grand dreams of writing, making music becoming academics and actors. The plot, such as it is, follows them all getting gradually disillusioned and settling down. I found it incredibly self-indulgent, it doesn't really go anywhere, the ending is appalling and the characters quite interchangeable. It could appeal to someone who knows NY better than I do as pages seem to be filled with names of cafes, restaurants, which tube line they took and so on. But really I have no idea why it got published.

I'd agree - I feel like I ought to like Neil Gaiman, but I don't, really. (With the exception of Fortunately the Milk, but that's partly because I adore Chris Riddell's drawing.)

Lookingforme - I think dd's read quite a few of the Carnegie shortlist, though not sure exactly which ones. Very sadly their lovely school librarian has left :( and been replaced by a HLTA who's main job is literacy work with low achievers. (Obviously, that's a good thing to have - but a shame to lose things like the poetry club etc that were aimed at those who already love reading.)

Sadik, I spent a very happy summer reading the Master and Commander series. I had no idea what was happening half the time when they were splicing the mainsail or whatever, but I liked the humour and the friendship, and I really liked the parts on land, including Jack's wooing of his wife-to-be and his interaction with his children later on.

57. All together now, Gill Hornby
I relished hating her first book, The Hive, partly because it felt like it was thrust down our throats as the perfect Mumsnet read. I didn't hate this one as much - group of misfits join choir, lives are transformed etc. She makes a few sharp observations but it's all fairly predictable. Not a must-read, but reasonably okay as a sun-lounger read.

58. Not working, Lisa Owens
Twenty-something leaves her job to find her passion in life, and realises she doesn't have one. Why oh why is everyone doing more with my life than I am? It's written as a series of vignettes/apercus rather than a more traditional narrative, which cuts down on the tedium. It's fine if you're in the mood to indulge a quarter-life crisis - overall, not as groundbreaking as its author possibly thinks.

I hope I like the Master & Commander books - it'd be lovely to have a whole long series to read :)

Unless you're up to speed on nautical terminology, you'll need to let a certain amount wash over you. My favourite is the second book of the series, Post Captain - it might be worth starting with that, and if you don't like it, the series is probably not for you.

Just reread my review of Not Working. Why oh why is everyone doing more with THEIR life. Worrying Freudian slip into the first person there.

The Loney by *Andrew Michael Hurley

Yet another disappointment, and a bone of contention chez Remus at the moment because dp loved it. I thought this was all foreplay and no orgasm, to put it crudely.

It has all the clichés of a horror story – a couple of religious nutcases and a misunderstood good guy priest, whining dogs, a bleak house in the middle of nowhere, creepy sounds in the night, a few weird locals who seemed lifted right out of American Werewolf. Unfortunately it never really goes anywhere, and by the end I was reading it just to see if dp had had some sort of secret insight that I wasn’t going to understand until the very end. Perhaps it might have made a half decent short story. Imvho it made for a dull and frustrating novel.

Cote I doubt you'd enjoy Gaiman. The only two of his I've enjoyed were American Gods and Anansi Boys. If you liked Stephen King's little bald doctors in Insomnia then maybe give the latter a try?

The Ocean at the End of the Lane didn't even feel like YA to me. It's a children's book, I'd say.

That was Book 67.

25. Foxglove Summer - Ben Aaronvitch another in the wizard PC Grant /Rivers of London books. This time the action has moved out of London to the countryside - 2 girls have gone missing and Grant is sent to see if it's magic related. He's still struggling with the betrayal at the end of the last book. A better book than the last. Enjoy this series on the whole ( can't remember who recommended it on the 2015 thread), but one to read in order.

The previous discussion about weather in books when you read it seems important for this one - the book is set in a heatwave, and I think it would have not worked as well to read it in winter.

23 Dragons at Crumbling Castle by Terry Pratchett

Picked this up, book of short stories, as an introduction to Terry Pratchett for my children, this was our bedtime book. And oh what a disappointment, unfunny, difficult to read aloud, lots of bits went over their heads, they are 8 & 10.

five what about Truckers Diggers and Wings for your children? I read them myself at that age and also the other Trilogy that starts with Only You Can Save Mankind. I loved them and moved very quickly onto The Colour of Magic after.

whippet - Yes, read it I was talking to a few business people over the weekend (incl. a famous one) and was surprised to hear that they had all read it, too. Apparently it is rather well-known in motivational/business circles.

Most of it, especially the beginning was like reading Jack Reacher's autobiography - short sentences, simple thoughts, very driven & strong man etc. It was also more though, especially the parts where he talks about business and political vision. I really enjoyed it and got a lot from it, which is far more than I can say about most books.