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.

ooo new thread! i'll just pop up my list.....

1. Ancillary Justice by Ann Leckie
2. The meaning of everything; the story of the OED by Simon Winchester;
3. An astronauts guide to the universe by Chris Hadfield and
4. The Unconsoled by Kazuo Ishiguro;
5. The Good Fairies of New York by Martin Millar
6. The Skeleton Cupboard : The Making of a Clinical Psychologist by Tanya Byron
7. Golden Son by Pierce Brown
8. The Hot Zone: The terrifying true story of the origins of the Ebola Virus by Richard Preston
9. The Day Without Yesterday by Stuart Clark ;
10. Crazy Rich Asians by Kevin Kwan ;
11. Overlord, D-Day and the Battle for Normandy by Max Hastings;
12. The Summer Book by Tove Jansson;
13. Quartet in Autumn by Barbara Pym;
14. The Heart Goes Last by Margaret Atwood;
15. Brilliance by Marcus Sakey;
16. Agent Zigzag by Ben MacIntyre;
17. Creativity Inc by Ed Catmull.
18. All the Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr
19. Foxglove Summer by Ben Aaronovitch
20. A French Affair by Katie Fforde
21. After Me Comes the Flood by Sarah Perry;
22. Dark Eden by Chris Beckett;
23. The Uncommon Reader by Alan Bennet;
24. The Year of Living Danishly by Helen Russell;
25. A Female Genius: How Ada Lovelace started the Computer Age by James Essinger;
26. The Settlers by Jason Gurley
27. Where'd you go Bernadettte by Maria Semple
28. Rilla of Ingleside by LM Montgomery
29. The Janissary Tree by Jason Goodwin
30. Genghis Khan & the making of the modern world by Jack Weatherford
31. Seveneves by Neal Stephenson
32. Clothes Clothes Clothes Music Music Music Boys Boys Boys by Viv Albertine;
33. Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell
34. Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant by Anne Tyler
35. The Bees by Laline Paull;
36. Hitler by Ian Kershaw and
37. The Epigenetics Revolution by Nessa Carey. O dear. I found this really heavy going. It is incredibly turgid and THICK with jargon & acronyms. A typical sentence,

"Both EZH2" and LSD1 are up-regulated in certain cancer types, and their expression correlates with the aggressiveness of the cancer with poor patient survival" or

"Plant genomes encode active DNA methyltransferase enzymes, and also proteins that can 'read' methylated DNA".

There's a glossary at the end but it's not that accessible as you read and there are no quick links back to complex explanations. To be honest, for the total layperson (I have no science background whatsoever), there are insufficient explanations. I followed her farenuogh to (kind of)understand what methylated DNA was but after that it was just too much. ncRNA, miRNA, proteins, suppressors, histones, promotors, transposers, on and on; technical detail is all very well, but you need to EXPLAIN it if you are writing an alleged popular science book. Too often she seemed bogged down in the mechanistics and less on providing a comprehensible insight into an exciting field. Added to that, far too frequently, she was like, we just don't know, this process is poorly understood, let's move away from these shifting sands. I'm surprised this has so many rave reviews. I really think you need some background in molecular biology to get much from it. Hope the rest of you get on better with it than I did!

I'm also currently trying to read High Rise by JG Ballard which is deeply unpleasant and I'm just not enjoying either poor me... I suppose I had an awful good run on hols. Couldn't last!

We are actually in Hay this week mermaid', it's our favourite place too, but next week we are moving closer to Symonds Yat etc.

Whippet

Oh dear. You sound as if you've had an even worse run of books than I have!

Ha. Not worse than you Remus by the sound of it but I am feeling the book rage at the moment!

Very envious of you, Best. Would love to be in Hay right now. Enjoy the rest of your holiday, hope the weather stays good for you :)

I do know what you mean about Common Ground, whippet. The narration by other people, which clearly was invented by Rob Cowen, made the book hard to define. Was it fiction, non-fiction, biography/autobiography, or some of everything? I did, however, enjoy it in the main, whilst raising eyebrows at those bits that disappeared off into a flight of fancy. I think my favourite chapter was the one about the swifts.

I forgot to add these to my last post so handily adding now and thread marking at the same time .

59. The Ghosts of Heaven - Marcus Sedgwick. This was interesting. Four different stories are presented and they can be read in any order and it still makes sense. I boringly read them in chronological order but can see how they would work read in any other combination. I expected a bit more from this to be honest and enjoyed some stories more than others.

60. Where’d You Go, Bernadette – Maria Semple. Bernadette has disappeared and her 15 year old daughter is determined to find her. Quirky and fun read.

Wilting I reread High Rise this year and didn't get on with it all. Like you I found it very unpleasant and in fact I was quite unsettled by it which surprised me in some ways as I had loved it first time round. Maybe life and kids makes the unpleasant much less palatable.

Enjoy Hay Best. I am a teeny weeny bit envious!

Going with lists, here's mine so far with highlights. I see you liked Stasiland particularly Remus - now I found her really annoying, and mostly only stuck with it because I didn't have anything else on audio at the time.

1 Island of dreams
2 Dark star
3 Ready Player One
4 Regeneration
5 Help!
6 Inequality: What Can be Done
7 The Hearing Trumpet
8 Viper Wine
9 Grief is the thing with Feathers
10 Deep Sea and Foreign Going
11 The City and the City
11.5 Witch Week
11.75 The Magicians of Caprona
12 Dark Intelligence
13 The First Fifteen Lives of Harry August
13.5 The future of the Euro
14 The First Casualty
15 Europe in Autumn
16 Spark Joy
17 Nothing is true and everything is possible
18 Starship Troopers
19 Lean In
20 Fair Girls and Grey Horses
21 The Three Body Problem
22 Fated (Alex Verus)
23 Girl in a band
24 How to be Both
25 The invisible library
26 Europe at Midnight
27 Cursed (Alex Verus)
28 Thinking fast and slow
29 The Dark Forest
30 Taken (Alex Verus)
31 Fever and Spear (Your face tomorrow)
32 The Humans
33 Night School
34 Legacy (Night School 2)
35 Fracture (Night School 3)
36 Resistance (Night school 4)
37 Endgame (Night School 5)
38 Social Class in the 21st Century
39 Storm Front
40 Sorcerer to the Crown
41 Names for the Sea
42 The Best of All Possible Worlds
43 The Precariat, the new dangerous clas
44 The Lie Tree
45 The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland in a Ship of her own Making
46 The Life Project
47 The Girl who fell beneath Fairyland and led the revels there
48 Bad Science.
49 The New Spymasters
50 Do No Harm
51 Behind the Beautiful Forevers
52 Clockwork Angel
53 The Watchmaker of Filigree Street
54 HHhH
55 Clockwork Prince
56 Undercover: The true story of Britain's secret police
57 Fanny and Stella
58 Soulless
59 Changeless
60 Blameless
61 Heartless
62 Timeless
63 Stasi Child
64 Stasiland
65 Prudence (Custard Protocol)
66 Curtsies and Conspiracies
67 The Demolished Man
68 Postcapitalism
69 Waistcoats and Weaponry
70 Clockwork Princess
71 Manners and Mutiny
72 Unquenchable Fire
73 Harry Potter and the Cursed Child
74 Between Two Thorns
75 Alex's Adventures in Numberland
76 Any other Name
77 Perfect Wives in Ideal Homes
78 Interworld
79 All is Fair
80 Gemsigns
81 The Difference Engine (only a highlight on audio)
82 Binary
83 The School for Good and Evil

Haha Remus, there is no chance that I will read another M Atwood book

Checkpoint - I just looked up Neil Spring and his ghostbuster stuff really doesn't look like my sort of thing. Stick around and you'll soon see what I mean by SF

whippet - re "Both EZH2" and LSD1 are up-regulated in certain cancer types, and their expression correlates with the aggressiveness of the cancer with poor patient survival" or "Plant genomes encode active DNA methyltransferase enzymes, and also proteins that can 'read' methylated DNA".

I totally know what those sentences mean now and I would have had no idea before reading The Epigenetics Revolution. I thought the explanations were fine - short and to-the-point. Sorry that you didn't enjoy it like I did.

Just found it clumsy convoluted difficult reading I kinda understand the first sentence but the second one hmmm... She just always went for the techno speech. Put it in plain English woman!

Btw, Inside the O'Briens is 99p today. I believe it is good, it's been on my tbr pile for ages.

Also Knausgaard's A Death In the Family is 1.99. Not so sure about that, I tired to read A Man in Love before and didn't get on with it that well. V self absorbed. Lots of detail on day to day banalities and frustrations. Narrator quite irritating. A Death is the first of the four part series. Gets rave reviews. Has anyone read them?

whippet - Oh no, sorry to hear you didn't like The Shadow of the Wind! I loved it and, to defend it, I think the women are deliberately meant to be the way they are. I read it as a gothic novel and saw the women as typical gothic female characters - either innocent victims or seductresses. I think he plays around with this a bit eg. Bea is lusted over and is clearly aware of her sexuality, but she's also a victim of male dominance (her father/brother/fiancé). So I suppose I saw it as a novel very much in the gothic tradition but with a mid-20th-century spin on it ie. on the cusp of developing women's rights. I hope that makes sense - just my take on it.

51. Spectacles: A Memoir by Sue Perkins - Read for book group, who were all quite excited about reading this. I don't watch Bake Off (I can't be the only one?) so wasn't really fussed and the book was just fine. There were some funny bits but some other bits where it was a bit try-hard. There were also some really interesting chapters (particularly the longer ones, mostly towards the end of the book, where she really got stuck into something) but a lot of shorter, little anecdotes that I thought were just OK. Obviously, it's a memoir - she can write about whatever's important to her and the short, everyday anecdotes are probably what make up 90% of most people's lives but, yeah...just fine.

38. Struggled through the last of High Rise last night. AWFUL book. Well written etc but content just SO unpleasant, feel totally depressed by the thing. V male as well. All about the bloody men, the women are like dolls. Yuck. Reminds me of that awful Houllebecq book, Atomised? Just a nasty view of the world and humanity. I do not recommend.

That was my first Ballard too. Will be hard to pick up anything else.

I'd like to join if nobody minds, I know I'm a bit late to the party. I read the girl on the train over the weekend and it's inspired me to get back in to reading. Can anyone recommend something from Kindle Unlimited?

Here's my updated list, favourites highlighted, dislikes in italics.

1. The Road to Little Dribbling - Bill Bryson
2. The Exploits of Moominpappa - Tove Jansson
3. The Blackhouse - Peter May
4. Overcoming Chronic Fatigue - A Self Help Guide using CBT - Mary Burgess/Trudie Chalder
5. Disclaimer - Renee Knight
6. The Time Traveller's Guide to Medieval England - Ian Mortimer

6.5 The Tales of Max Carrados - Ernest Bramah

1. Sweet Caress - William Boyd
2. Coraline - Neil Gaiman
3. The Life Changing Magic of Tidying - Marie Kondo

10. Northern Lights - Philip Pullman 11. Grandpa's Great Escape - David Walliams 11.5 Mrs Zant and the Ghost - Wilkie Collins 12. Mystery in White - J Jefferson Farjeon 13. Wolf Hall - Hilary Mantel 14. Matilda - Roald Dahl 15. Call The Midwife - Jennifer Worth 16. Shadows of the Workhouse - Jennifer Worth 17. Farewell to the East End - Jennifer Worth 18. Billionnaire Boy - David Walliams 19. The Year of Living Dangerously - Helen Russell 20. Tricky Twenty-Two - Janet Evanovich 21. The Examined Life - Stephen Grosz 22. My Life in Houses - Margaret Forster 23. The Road - Cormac McCarthy 24. The Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid - Bill Bryson 25. Amelia Jane Again! - Enid Blyton 26. Bring Up the Bodies - Hilary Mantel 27. Spectacles - Sue Perkins 28. Reasons to Stay Alive - Matt Haig 29. Five on a Treasure Island - Enid Blyton 30. Heartstone - C J Sansom 31. Lamentation - C J Sansom 32 The Year of Marvellous Ways - Sarah Winman 33. The Bolds to the Rescue - Julian Clary 34. Engleby - Sebastian Faulks 35. Overcoming Your Child's Fears and Worries - Cathy Cresswell & Lucy Willetts 36. The Uncommon Reader - Alan Bennett 37. Company of Liars - Karen Maitland 38. A Very British Murder - Lucy Worsley 39 The Woman Who Went to Bed for a Year - Sue Townsend 40. Shakespeare - Bill Bryson 41. The Tent, The Bucket and Me - Emma Kennedy 42. The Wizard of Oz - L Frank Baum 43. Restless - William Boyd 44. A History of Loneliness - John Boyne 45. Just One Damned Thing After Another - Jodi Taylor 46. The Farm - Tom Rob Smith 47. Shop Girl - Mary Portas 48. The James Version - Ruth Dugdall 49. Six Tudor Queens: Katherine of Aragon, the True Queen - Alison Weir 50. The Universe versus Alex Woods - Gavin Extence 51. The Light Years - Elizabeth Jane Howard 52. HHhH - Laurent Binet 53. Grief is The Thing With Feathers - Max Porter 54. Marking Time - Elizabeth Jane Howard 55. One - Sarah Crossan 56. Where My Heart Used To Beat - Sebastian Faulks 57. Go Set A Watchman - Harper Lee 58. Forensics - Val McDermid 59. Confusion - Elizabeth Jane Howard 60. Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone - J K Rowling 61. The Swimming Pool Library - Alan Hollinghurst 62. The Lemon Grove - Helen Walsh 63. Never Mind - Edward St Aubyn 64. In Plain Sight: The Life and Lies of Jimmy Savile - Dan Davies 65. Bad News - Edward St Aubyn 66. Some Hope - Edward St Aubyn 67. Common Ground - Rob Cowen 68. Casting Off - Elizabeth Jane Howard 69. Somewhere Towards The End - Diana Athill

51. The Enemy by Lee Child. I read all the Jack Reacher books last summer, setting myself a challenge of not paying full price for any of them (charity shops mostly)- and then gave them away which I am now regretting! This one was on my kindle. They are great light reading, not as good as a classic Dick Francis, but excellent for train journeys and holidays and that kind of thing. If anyone can rec similar I would be glad to hear- have done all Michael Connelly!

I guess I should do a full list now I am over 50 but will have to search through earlier threads. Thanks to everyone though as I had really quite lost my reading impetus and this has really helped.

wilting - When Ballard is good, he is fantastic.

Please try Vermillion Sands, his book of short stories.

Welcome Bubble.

Those of you who post your complete lists, do you have the lists in a document somewhere so you just cut and paste? I have my list handwritten in a notebook (I'm old-skool, me) and then scattered throughout these threads, so it's a massive pain to re-create it.

Have abandoned a few books that I might have liked in a different mood, but couldn't really engage with - a couple in the Medicus series by Ruth Downie, historical detective fiction set in Roman-era Britain, and another couple set in the early 20th century, with Josephine Tey, the real-life writer, fictionalised as an amateur detective (by Nicola Upson in case anyone is intrigued).

I'm currently reading three books simultaneously:

• a biography of Casanova (can't remember author. Google suggests Ian Kelly)
• Bloody old Britain : O.G.S. Crawford and the archaeology of modern life by Kitty Hauser
• Eating for England : the delights and curiosities of the British at table by Nigel Slater. Very short essays, good for dipping into.

I'm enjoying them all.

I hand write mine too, biblio, thinking of doing the list this time then saving it, as I like seeing everyone else's.

I hand write mine too - DH and I have a little book that we keep a record of our reads in. Mine go from front to back and his from the back. Needless to say, as I read about four times as many books as he does, I've nearly reached his section and will need another record book soon :o

I also keep an independent record on Goodreads. I believe there is a way to download your lists from there on spreadsheet format but I can't really be bothered to investigate - a step too far technology-wise!

Glad I'm not the only one with a handwritten record! I have a series of notebooks dating back seven years, listing titles and giving short reviews. I find it soothing to flick back through them occasionally.

I like Mermaid's innovation of putting disliked books in italics (or did somebody else start it and I've only just noticed now? Apologies to whoever it was if so).

I also handwrite my list and just add my updates to my previous list from the thread before that I've copied and pasted into the new thread.

Hah biblio, right on point! I'd left out Hotel du Lac which actually brings me to 39) whoo hoo!

For me, I track the books on goodreads. I used to do it on pinterest but goodreads is more reliable for me as I can tell itfrom the kindle what I am reading, and when I am finished.

I've put VS on watch for a deal Cote might try the library, it's been awhile. Quite fancy an afternoon in it but only on my own

Wish I could claim the dislikes in italics idea for my own, biblio, but it was someone else's clever idea :)

Sort of looking forward to the DC going back to school so I can start listening to audio books as well. No chance whilst they're around!

That would be me who had the italics idea but had forgotten about it until now!