50 Book Challenge 2017 Part One

[southeastdweller]

Welcome to the first thread of the 50 Book Challenge for this year.

The challenge is to read fifty books (or more!) in 2017, though reading fifty isn't mandatory. Any type of book can count, please try to let us all know your thoughts on what you've read.

Who's in for this year?

I had hoped you might, cote

I do find it very entertaining but good naturedly disagree with all of it

Some might prefer a straightforward, factual narrative, but I enjoyed this philosophical attempt at a personal engagement with an historical event. It got nearer to the heart of the matter than a step by step walk through might - for me, anyway - and was not dull about it.

I've just reserved This Thing of Darkness at my local library thanks to the recommendations here, it sounds wonderful. Hope they get it in soon!

I'm still reading After the Crash by Michele Bussi, a French thriller which isn't fantastically well written but is very suspenseful and entertaining, I'm finding it a real page turner.
It follows events after a dreadful plane crash in the Alps in 1982, killing everyone on board except for a 3 month old baby girl who is miraculously thrown clear. Two very different families come forward to claim her as their granddaughter, one of whom is wealthy enough to be able to employ a detective for 18 years to find out the truth of the girl's identity.

I have This Thing Of Darkness too, keep holding off on it for some reason, like the sound of the Peter Cook bio too, thanks meg

I'm in ! I used to read fervently (did English lit at university and it still didn't put me off!) However with 5 kids i read less and less so this year I want to make a conscious effort to read more this year and joining you lovely lot will inspire and motivate me

"I enjoyed this philosophical attempt at a personal engagement with an historical event"

You say potato, I say complete and utter whiny nonsense

Okay, I'm 100 pages into The Power and I'm like,....'wow'. Enthralled...engaged....disturbed...in equal measure.

1. Born to Run by Bruce Springsteen - It's hard to know where to begin. I guess with full disclosure - I've been a huge fan of this man's music for over thirty years (that does make me feel old), and think his songs are the equal of just about anybody's. And I love music bios, doesn't really matter whose.

And yet, this took some getting into. The first hundred pages or so I found massively grating. Interesting enough childhood reminiscing and all that, but written in an odd style, almost like thoughts from verses of songs, strung together in a staccato way, often with just a series of ellipses to make a 'sentence' out of vaguely connected ideas.

Once I got "in" though, either the style settles down or it just stops grating, I don't know which, but the last four hundred pages and forty years flew by. There is something of what it's like to tour the world playing audiences of tens of thousands every night here for sure, but it's described and then not re-visited; the real pearls are Bruce talking (fairly) openly about his battles with depression, the death of his father and the counterpoint deaths of band mates Clarence and Danny, and his seemingly endless struggle to reconcile his lifetime of fame and massive fortune with his blue collar mill-worker image and what it means to be a "working man."

Oh, and there's a great anecdote involving Pete Townshend, a smoke bomb and a vase of flowers!

Highly recommended, hope the rest of the year's reading is as good.

Meanwhile this thread is already putting strain on my "no book buying" resolution - Lovelace and Babbage in particular sounds like a book I need to read.

First two entries for 2017:

1. The Dolls House - MJ Arlidge - 3rd book in the Helen Grace detective series - usual bread and butter detective novel but I quite like the characters so am following the series through even though I think the writing style is quite poor.
2. Mr Penumbra's 24 Hour Bookstore by Robin Sloan - set slightly in the future in an old fashioned bookstore where all is not as it seems. The plot revolves around an old cult, Google and trying to break the ancient code using technology. Quite good but not really my thing so I didn't rate it highly but can see that others would enjoy it.

for Cote hope your friends are Ok.

Thanks Remus and others for your comments on The Essex Serpent I was trying to decide whether to download and think I'll give it a try.

Just starting The Wicked Boy by Kate Summerscale - I know some on here haven't rated it but I'm going to give it a try.

Whitewine - For a moment there I thought we were going to be reviewing A Doll's House by Ibsen. If anybody likes reading scripts, and is at all interested in women's rights, I'd highly recommend it. Even better if you can get to see it live!

Joyless thanks, and sorry for your more recent loss. In this case I think that old chestnut "time is a great healer" is absolutely true, and I'm at the stage where I now feel fine to look at dad's kindle. I discovered he has one book on there which was on my wishlist - book 4 in the Ann Cleeves Shetland series, so I'm starting with that. I'm still trying to navigate around it, as it's an old style kindle which is more clunky than my Fire. He appears to have some series which don't start at the beginning - maybe he read the earlier book (s) in hard copy, or back in pre kindle days - so once I've sorted things out a bit I will ask the collective wisdom of this thread whether I need to start from the beginning or can jump straight in with those ones.

I am one of the folk currently reading This Thing of Darkness and absolutely loving it.

I feel qualified to comment on HHhH purely by having read the 'look inside' feature on amazon (and not making it to the end of that). It smelt like a pretentious pile of dung, and I will never, not ever, be reading it.

- not quite! But I must stop reading so many detective books, they are a but of a time waster.

First two books of the year completed (although both started last year - cheating a bit )

1. Harry Potter and The Cursed Child. Really wasn't sure about this. I'm sure it is spectacular on stage but felt a bit thin and weak as reading material.

1. The Girl Who Saved Christmas by Matt Haig. We all really enjoyed this one - the sequel to A Boy Called Christmas, which we read just before Christnas.

Hoping there will be good news for you, soon, Cote

Sorry to hear about your dad, Joyless . I lost mine just over a year ago.

I wasn't keen in HHhH either. I should have loved it but didn't. Had hoped it would have been something vaguely similar in tone to Schindler's Ark by Thomas Keneally.

I guess one woman's whiny nonsense is another's...er.. potato

museum I hate pretentious books, and dung, but I can't go back in time and unenjoy it so will have to conclude you can't judge a book by looking inside it...or something

I didn't find it pretentious. Dan Simmons wins the Arrogant Tosser Award of 2016 for me.

I loved HHhH it was one of my favourite books of last year. I knew the story quite well, or so I thought, until I read this. The book resonated with me in a way I didn't expect and stays with me

I lurked on the 2016 threads but really want to make a concerted effort to read more this year, giving 50 a try.
Book 1. The Muse by Jessie Burton, romped through it and thought it was well-paced. About the provenance of a mysterious painting, set in two time frames, 30s Spain and 60s London. I usually don't like books that do this but thought both periods were nicely realised with equal weight and I enjoyed the intrigue about how it was going to be tied up. Then it all got a bit too neatly tied up.

My first book of 2017 was Dissolution (Matthew Shardlake book 1) by CJ Sansom. I really enjoyed it and started the second book in the series this evening. The historical details are interesting, it paints a good picture of monastery life in Tudor times, and I liked the main character so I'm hoping the rest of the series will be just as good.

Finished my first book of the year - Child 44. Couldn't put it down! Back to work tomorrow so won't be able to polish them off as quickly, this thread has really kick started my reading for the new year though.

HHhH is not a pretentious pile of dung or utter whiny nonsense. You can dislike a book without it in fact being a bad book.

Just sayin

1. The Life Project by Helen Pearson; a book about the British cohort birth studies. These are studies where they follow children from pregnancy to adulthood and death. They collect huge teams of data which are combed for patterns, correlations and causal links. One turned up the link between smoking and lung cancer for example, smoking in pregnancy and impact on the baby.

Excellent read. Extremely well done and engaging. It follows the progress, outcomes and fates of the various groups. The struggle for funding, the impact of thatcher, the leaderships of each cohort, their focus. Mixed in are short insights to various members of each cohort. It is startling how difficult it really is to shake off the disadvantages of your upbringing, and how stubborn and persistent poverty really is. Efforts to use the findings to benefit poor children have benefited middle and upper classes more as they are better placed to take advantage. That sounds depressing but the book really wasn't. V well done.

A good start for me!

It is pile of nonsense dung, though. It actually is

I invite everyone here to download a free chapter of it on Kindle to have a look.

Practically no story whatsoever until the end, where frankly it was too little and too late. Just one big long WHIIIIIINE about just how MUCH he knows about this because he researched it oh so much. And his girlfriend hates him (with which I sympathise, actually. Imagine having this man in your face every day) Then bit and pieces of the story once in a while, only to be told literally in the next page that he made it all up!

I have no problem saying "This book wasn't for me but others may like it" for other books, but not this one. This one is special

But...but...others do like it cote

mayathebee I enjoyed the second and third Shardlake more than the first, biding my time for no. 4 so your hope is not unfounded

Satsuki - I admit that there are aspects of this HHhH fandom business that I find puzzling

Then again, some people liked John Dies At The End. And some people loved 50 Shades of Grey. So maybe some people are just weird

Ooh, wilting The Life Project sounds great.

I feel a bit guilty about my HHhH pretentious dung comment now, not even having read it. Let's just say I had a very strong negative reaction to the author's voice / style, meaning I didn't wish to read an entire book by this man.

God, I'd got back into reading regularly last year on my commute. Thought I did ok (have had lots of previous years with only 1 or 2 books) but jotting down those I can remember, I've only got to about 12 . I'm sure I've forgotten a few but even so... Must try harder.