50 Book Challenge 2016 Part Six

[southeastdweller]

Thread six 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, fourth thread here and fifth thread here.

Oops - been slacking and now 7 books behind. The Moonstone took me a while to read.

My list :

1. Ann Tyler - A spool of blue thread
2. Stella Gibbons - Cold Comfort Farm
3. Peter May - Lewis Man
4. Arundhati Roy - The God of Small Things
5. Henry Marsh - Do No Harm
6. Fredrik Backman - A Man Called Ove
7. Malala Yousafzai - I Am Malala
8. Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie - Americanah
9. Graham Norton - The Lives and Loves of A He Devil

10. Alex Ferguson - My Autobiography 11. Anthony Doerr - All The Light We Cannot See 12. Kate Hamer - The Girl In The Red Coat 13. Rabih Alammedine - An Unnecessary Woman 14. Kitty Neale - A Daughter's Disgrace 15. Gabriel Garcia Marquez - A Hundred Years of Solitude 16. Aravind Adiga - White Tiger 17. Ed Viesturs - K2 - Life and Death on the World's Most Dangerous Mountain 18. Jojo Moyes - After You 19. Maya Angelou - I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings 20. Alexei Sayle - Stalin Ate My Homework 21. Susan Calman - Cheer Up Love 22. Bill Bryson - Shakespeare - The World as Stage 23. John Irving - A Prayer for Owen Meany 24. Emma Kennedy - The Tent, The Bucket and Me 25. Wilkie Collins - The Moonstone 26. Patti Smith - Just Kids 27. Dorothy Allison - Bastard out of Carolina 28. Pamela Schoenewaldt - When We Were Strangers 29. Peter May - The Chessmen

Many of the above were suggestions from last year's challengers and some of the last few and my current books from kind people who gave me ideas on my thread about my US road trip.

Book 101
The Fireman by Joe Hill
Mixed feelings about this one. Post-apocalyptic type thing, where a kind of spore of some sort is causing people to develop markings on their body which look like dragonscale, and then to spontaneously combust. I liked the concept, the problem was in the execution (in both senses of the word) as I just don’t think the writer is good enough. It was far too long, and far too uncontrolled and because of that it mostly killed (see what I did there?!) what potentially could have been a god read. Some interesting characters and sections of quite interesting plot/description, but on the whole I thought this was trying to do too much and that the writer isn’t sophisticated enough to cope. It got more and more silly as it went on, as we reel from one crisis to another and another. I think Joe Hill has benefitted hugely from having a famous father (whose work he makes a number of rather clumsy references to in this) – the problem is that he isn’t really doing anything that his dad and others haven’t already done before, and better.

I detest Pat Barker. Thought Regeneration was pretty good but that the next two in the trilogy were bloody awful and I loathed Life Class - thought it was completely preposterous.

86. A Storm of Swords I: Steel and Snow by George RR Martin

The war for the Iron Throne continues to rage, the wildlings are preparing to attack the Wall, and Daenerys Targaryen is seeking an army to lead as she plans her return to Westeros to claim the Iron Throne. Lots of violence, death, betrayal - pretty much as you'd expect really. This series is an epic tale though, and very well spun.

Mermaid, think I'll give The Fish Ladder a go.

Monty, congrats on the house! I bought my first flat last November and am surprised at how much I love having my own patch.

I've given up on Troubles by J G Farrell. Set amongst the Ascendency in 1920s Ireland, as the civil war is brewing, in a grand old hotel now falling to pieces. I expected to love it, but for a reason I can't quite put my finger on, it just wasn't doing it for me. I didn't adore the writing, or the setting, or want to know what happened next.

Feeling slightly disgruntled that I've recently tried a number of books, confidently expecting to like them, but they haven't quite hit the spot.

Anyway, onto Byron's Women, by Alexander Larman, and I'm enjoying it a lot. A collective bio of the women in his life: mother, lovers, wife, daughters. Good fun.

I've had a real run like that, biblio - hence resorting to Ballet Shoes and Stet.

I've finally finished my latest audiobook though, with a clear day at work & no-one else around.

89 King of the Vagabonds by Neal Stephenson, second in the Quicksilver series. Historical fiction set in the late 17thC. Not vintage Stephenson by any means, and not a patch on the first one, but entertaining enough as pastiche 17thC picaresque. Helped along by an excellent narrator, I doubt I would have enjoyed it any where near so much if I'd been reading it as a regular book.

Also started my next audiobook, which is Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal by Jeanette Winterson, narrated by the author.

I'm wondering though if I should really read Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit first - although I've read several of her books (many years ago now), I've never actually read Oranges. What do those who've read both think?

Yes I've read both, Sadik. I don't think it matters which one you read first but they are definitely a pair, so you might feel you want to read Oranges straight after.

I started an audio book this morning 11.22.63 by Stephen King. It's going to take quite a while as I don't have a great deal of listening time this week or next. Bad time to start really :)

Anything good/cheap on Kindle at the moment, please? In a rut - again.

Just finished no Regeneration - Pat Barker and I really liked it, agree it is better than the Life Class series. I'm going to press on with the next in the trilogy (despite Remus's dire warning ). I'm going to have to order it from the library alongside the Robert Massie book which I've read the first few chapters of as a Kindle sample as I'm economising.

I need more WW1 books though. Any good recommendations? Fiction or fact. Kindle bargains would be good.

Thanks, Mermaid - I'm sure Oranges will be in the library, so easy enough to get hold of a copy.

Best - have you read Strange Meeting by Susan Hill? It focuses on the friendship between two officers preparing to go to the front.

Best - I assume you've read Memoirs of an Infantry Officer and also Testament of Youth? For something lighter, did you read The Camels are Coming as a child? - based heavily on WE Johns own experiences as a WW1 pilot.

60. A Wanted Man by Lee Child another reread, again a competent - hmm what genre is this? Not quite a detective story, not quite a thriller?

Remus, I got a new Patrick Gale in the kindle sale but I haven't started it yet - but I've enjoyed his other stuff so might be worth a punt?

Mermaid As it happens, I've just found the Susan Hill OK Kindle for £2 so downloaded that.

Sadik I've read Testament of Youth but not the Sassoon. I can't find it on Kindle though. Pretty sure my Dad has it so I can borrow it. He also had lots of Biggles books which I read as a child but not that one.

Another who hasn't updated for a while!

38. A Short History of England - Simon Jenkins - does what it says on the tin, a history through from Saxons and Vikings through until the coallision gov of 2010. I did find the author's political slant pretty annoying from 1990s onwards, although his treatment of the Thatcher government was pretty fair for a Guardian columnist. Good for those who like me had a distinctive lack of joined up history education!

39. The Lords of the North - Bernard Cornwell - 3rd in the Last Kingdom series, and our loveable mass killer Uhtred, son of Uhtred is back up north, which is a bit of a state. Has his eye on winning back Bebbanburg, and then it all goes a bit wrong. An enjoyable read with the usual high levels of killing and shagging and being moody.

40. Howl's Moving Castle - Diana Wynne Jones - aimed at a YA audience. It's a story of a girl cursed by a witch setting out to seek her fortune, meeting a wizard with a floating castle, who is a bit impossible and has to fight the beforementioned witch. Light and fluffy, think a young teen would enjoy it.

41. Night Blind - Ragnar Jonasson - follow up from Snow Blind by the same author - but you don't need to have read that. It's a murder mystery book set in a small town in northern Iceland, following the murder of the most senior policeman in the town, our main character has to find his killer. However, this book really falls down on the translation. It feels clunky, it doesn't flow, and there are glaring errors (eg in one scene a suspect is apparently craddling a coffee cup between both hands, but earlier the same day she had her wrist broken and arm plastered) and it means all the characters seem very flat and unreal. I wonder if a different translator could have created a very different book...

Remus - Phil Rickman's Night after Night is on the daily deals, someone on here recommended it to me earlier in the year when it was cheap and I really enjoyed it - although not my usual book. Basically a Big Brother type programme set in a haunted house, with famous 'inmates' who are a combination of believers in all things 'woo' and sceptics. With obvious 'woo' stuff kicking off.

Ah, sorry Best I don't have a kindle, so just looking at my real bookshelves :)

I think there's a lot of overlap between the various WW1 Biggles books, tbh, with the same stories getting reprinted in different assortments, so you've probably read them, just with a different title. I only thought of them because I'd just suggested Biggles yesterday on a children's books thread!

I remember being totally baffled by Biggles goes to School. There was a long section set on 'the links'. I had no idea what they were until I was an adult.

53. Dorothy Must Die by Danielle Paige

Some light reading as too much going on to concentrate on much this week.

Modern Kansas teenager Amy Gumm is caught in a tornado and deposited in the Land of Oz. Turns out Dorothy returned to Oz, and has become a tyrannical dictator, who's ruling with terror (aided by her trusty companions from the first Oz book) and sucking the magical lifeblood out of Oz. After Amy gets on the wrong side of Dorothy, she ends up getting recruited by a group of wicked witches who aim to kill Dorothy and restore Oz to the way it was before Dorothy started messing with it.

It's a YA book, entertaining enough, and a light read as I said, but I think this is one where you need to be familiar with at least the first few of the original Oz stories by L Frank Baum to get the most out of this.

Best, you might be interested in The War That Ended Peace, by the historian Margaret Macmillan (who also wrote Paris 1919). It's a brick, but Macmillian is quite engaging.

Also, The Paying Guests by Sarah Waters might work, if you've not already read it. It's set after the WW1 and addresses some of the fallout for the women who were left. Also, A Farewell to Arms.

Was going to suggest Memoirs of an Infantry Officer too, Best

Thank You Vanderley and Satsuki. I've read A Farewell To Arms and I'll look the others up.

Sadik, I would definitely recommend reading Oranges first. It's interesting to read them together - Why Be Happy is quite honest about how she used imagination and humour to make the reality more bearable in Oranges.

50. Brideshead Revisited, Evelyn Waugh A classic that I had somehow missed up to this point, despite having read others by Waugh. At times amusing, more often sad, always beautifully written.