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.

Book 53: Hot Milk by Deborah Levy. Beautifully written examination of relationships. In particular and in very fine detail that of the mother & daugher (Rose & Sofia), with an amusingly sharp visit to the father & daugher relationship. The primary relationship though is that of the daugher with herself and her life. Her relationship with her mother is suffocating and which Levy's expresses through her depiction of southern Spain where the story is based. Best Booker candidate so far, but still not a 4 or 5 out of 5.

The Collector - Read this years ago and it completely freaked me out. Can't remember the second half or any details but I still have a vague feeling of discomfort and horror when I see the title.

I'm doing badly. Am reading Edith Warton's Age of Innocence - it's okay but not making me keep leaping back to it. Still also plowing on with various history books, none of which I'm enjoying. Also continuing King's Dark Tower, the only light in a rather dim book-filled tunnel right now.

Joyless wow that must have hurt. I have just (3 weeks ago) had a really important LTR that I thought I'd be in forever end, so I am thankful I could combine the shitness of that and A Little Life in one fell swoop.

I also forgot to mention I am half way through the audiobook of The Night Watch by Sarah Waters, which I'm really enjoying. I started reading her books at the start of the year and have really liked them all. The Night Watch isn't my fave but it is very good indeed and the narrator (Juanita McMahon) of most of her books on Audible is AMAZING. Really very good indeed and I have been completely absorbed. The reverse chronological order of the book is a little annoying but it sort of works and is necessary, it isn't just for the fun of it so I'll forgive the author that.

Hello booksters

I have been trying to put together a list if what I have read so far but failed as am not sure how to do it other than trailing through all the prior threads - I need a better methodolgy.

Interesting to hear the feedback on the Booker books, I read His Bloody Project on holiday and have just finished my second The North Water, which I preferred. A friend recommended Hot Milk too Joyless, it's on my wishlist.

59. Purity - Jonathan Franzen. I'm a bit late to the party on this one, but it was a Kindle deal yesterday. It follows a girl called Pip (short for Purity), who wants to find out who her father is. Her mother refuses to tell her. She gets asked to apply for a job with a famous east German Andreas Wolf, a Julian Assange type character, who runs something called The Sunshine Project. The book is about the internet, investigative journalism and identity and of course a nod to Great Expectations with fatherless Pip, but in the end felt a bit shallow.

60 The North Water - Ian McGuire. This is set in the 1850s as the whale trade is coming to an end, replaced by cheaper coal and paraffin. It starts dramatically with a graphic description of Drax murdering someone and raping an unconscious boy. The writing is visceral, full of swearing and gore and all written in the present. The main character is a surgeon Somner, who has been discharged from the Indian army under a cloud and takes a place on a whale trip as an act of desperation. There is the unlucky captain Brownlee whose previous boat hot an iceberg,the boat owner Baxter and a feeling of doom hanging over the mission. I found this book very intense and disturbing, but I did enjoy it and would recommend if you're after some "grit lit".

DH is just over halfway through A Little Life and he's with you guys. 'Very good, very harrowing' is his succinct review so far. I will add it to my pile when he's done with it, but will approach with caution and make sure I start it some time when I'm feeling strong.

I've got A Little Life in my pending pile. Might put it off for a little while until I'm feeling a bit better. Don't want anything too harrowing right now.

Sadik - I am a big Neal Stephenson fan AND I love books about scientists but was disappointed by Quicksilver and didn't bother with the sequels. (I have read all other books by the author) The romantic pirate and the harem girl did it for me.

The Dark Days Club sounds fab, Vanderly, definitely one for my list.

I've got a few things on the go at the moment, and they're all pretty good. I'm enjoying The Wolf Border, interspersed with chapters of The Pedant in the Kitchen from an earlier rec. On audio I've put Snow Crash aside to listen to The King of the Vagabonds (the sequel to Quicksilver) as it came available from the library.

Crosspost, Cote - so far I've only listened to the first sub-book of Quicksilver (they come as 3 separate books on audio), so I haven't got to the harem girl as yet.

Ooh Snow Crash is a great book. Don't go in expecting great literature, but the IDEAS in that book! It was positively revolutionary when it came out in early-'90s. There wasn't even any internet for the public, and here is this book talking about virtual reality, a program called Earth that shows in high resolution any point on the planet you want to see (the idea for which Google blatantly stole with Google Earth), and the whole Sumerian angle just blew my mind.

Cote - I lived in Cambridge in the late 80s / early 90s, and at the time it felt like 90% of the people I knew were busy reading cyberpunk and making the world be so (I'm having a bit of a 90s nostalgia-fest atm in a lot of my reading ).

I'm reading A Little Life in small chunks as I'd be too overwhelmed by it otherwise. "Harrowing" is exactly it.

Remus, have you read The House of Mirth? I prefer it The Age of Innocence; Newland Archer works my nerves.

Sadik, The Dark Days Club is so much fun! And, it's the first in a trilogy. The second book will be published later this year or in early 2017, I think.

42. Postcards From The Edge - Carrie Fisher

Picked up on a whim in the Kindle sale, and really enjoyed it actually. It's a thinly disguised autobiographical novel based on the experiences in rehab and post-rehab Hollywood of actress Suzanne Vale. Full of dark humour and doesn't take itself too seriously, while still being very insightful into the world of addiction.

51. Follow You Home by Mark Edwards Psychological thriller which I wouldn't have chosen myself (got from some Amazon giveaway / reward). A previously happy, but dull, British couple have a horrible experience in Romania, while backpacking around Europe, which deeply affects them after they return home. It was readable, but the suspense in the first half was somewhat overcooked, and in the second half, when what actually happened and its consequences start to unfold, things become unrelentingly grim. To be fair, this isn't really my favourite genre, but it was ok as a quick read - beans on toast, after the gourmet meal that was the Poisonwood Bible, but you can't eat gourmet every day.

90. A Second Chance, Jodi Taylor
More time-travelling historian fun. I think the series has hit its stride in this, the third book. Gobbled it down with great glee.

72. Something to Answer For – P.H Newby
Winner of the very first Booker Prize and set in Egypt in 1956 during the time of the Suez crisis and the French/British invasion. A morally bankrupt man returns to Egypt to help the widow of his former friend – is he a con-man? Is he mad? Is he ill? What was really going on? I had not a bloody clue.

73. Work Like Any Other – Virginia Reeves
Current Booker long-list title reviewed by Joyless on this very thread so already summed up well. A decently readable novel set at the turn of the twentieth century following the fall and subsequent imprisonment of an ex-electrical worker who siphons electricity to support the family farm (not a spoiler btw.)

74. My Name is Lucy Barton – Elizabeth Strout
Yes another Booker long-list. Short, simple, unassuming but rather nicely written, Lucy Barton looks back over her life and her relationship with her mother. I liked this but it’s not a patch on Olive Kitteridge plus I kept singing my name is, my name is, my name is…Lucy Barton aka Slim Shady which didn’t help

75. Toby’s Room - Pat Barker
The second in the Life Class trilogy and much better than the first – a lot of the book is based on a real hospital and a real surgeon, Gillies, concerned with facial injuries and facial reconstruction. The character of Toby is deeply unlikeable (though he is barely in it), in fact none of the characters are that likeable but I found this book oddly educational. A different take on WW1 dealing with women and war artists. You can look at the Gillies archive of drawings/photographs of the facial reconstructions online, which is fascinating.

Thank you to my local library service for having about 7 booker long-list titles available as ebooks so I have read them all for free.
I totally agree with Joyless – Hot Milk is definitely the best long-lister I have read so far. If it’s not on the shortlist I will be sad.

whippet - if you're interested in reading another book which looks at the early days of plastic surgery and facial reconstruction, WW1, then I'd recommend My Dear I Wanted To Tell You by Louisa Young.

Picked up my brand new copy of Nutshell by Ian McEwan from the library this morning. Wasn't expecting it quite so soon, must crack on and finish the Cazalets this weekend.

Thanks for the recommendation Mermaid, I will go and look that one up right now

I like the sound of The North Water. Have ordered the free sample to see what I think. Also like the sound of His Bloody Project on the Booker longlist.

Not read House of Mirth yet. Might give it a go when (if) I ever finish with Newland Archer and his obsession with yellow flowers.

Absolutely loathed the book before Toby's Room - found it preposterous. Really interested in the facial injuries/reconstruction stuff though, but not enough to ever read another Pat Barker book. Does anybody know a good non-fiction book on the subject, by any chance?

40. Americanah by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie;

Hmm. Overall I'm disappointed with this. It starts off well, I liked Ifemelu, the depictions of Nigeria, the desperation for choice, the relentlessness of the turmoil and how that played out in lives, particularly women's lives. The middle section was also quite good, the immigrant experience, suddenly being faced with race issues, a black woman's hair and her relationship with media and its depictions of beauty, the struggle to get career traction.

Then she starts her blog. An apparently wildly successful blog even though her ideas are so controversial she has to tone them down for her many speaking engagements. She also meanders through various relationships and these are used to talk further about RACE. We get lots of excerpts from the blog about race. No one gets it apparently. Everything is about race. No matter how people engage with her she seems to despise them. No matter what your experience it does not compare (not even the Jews). By the end, she's even sneering at her parents.

The plot ultimately is thin and it falls apart entirely once Ifemelu is back in Nigeria. It turns into a device to enable the author to talk about her ideas about race at the cost of other v interesting happenings in the book that could possibly have had the same effect without the obviousness. The relationships of her Aunt Uju for example, her struggle to establish herself, her son's lived experience - given his background, surely he was a character worth exploring? And why did Ifemelu herself decide to go back? It wasn't all that clear to me and Ifemelu herself has v little insight into her actions and motivations. All in all , v disappointing.

85 The Pedant in the Kitchen by Julian Barnes
Reviewed upthread by Satsuki, so I won't repeat except to say I enjoyed this enormously, and am now torn between lending it to my parents immediately, and keeping it here to read again.

BestisWest how are you getting on with Mount!? I will be picking it up from the bookshop tomorrow, I'm really looking forward to it!

131 and 132. Mary Poppins and Mary Poppins Comes Back by P L Travers

Just bought the set for DD so rereading!

133. Jump! by Jilly Cooper

Managed to finish all the existing Rutshire Chronicles before the new one is out! This one is nowhere near as good as Rivals et al, but is a great improvement on Wicked!. The main character, Etta, is a bit wet but we get to see more of Dora who is a great character.

ARF @ " is he a con-man? Is he mad? Is he ill? What was really going on? I had not a bloody clue."

I am impressed with everyone reading the Booker lists! Life a tad stressful at the moment and I can only manage easy rereads.

55. Nothing to Lose by Lee Child. This isn't one of his best.

I couldn't get on with the st Mary's books, I didn't find the narrator engaging enough and they weren't funny enough to read just for that.

Am not sure about the new JC either- my faves are the girl name ones- Octavia, Patience, Harriet (although I did love Rivals), so don't want to be disappointed! On the other hand a bit of dependable boot inspiration might come in v handy atm!

I rarely rarely venture into Booker land

Haven't read Jump! Chessie, must check it out. Wasn't keen on appassionata and wicked was really terrible. But Jump sounds more promising!