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?

Will do, Best. I'm going to take my time over it, reading slowly. Loved the little docu/film shown on BBC2 Christmas Eve.

Have also got The Essex Serpent lined up to read soon. Looking forward to it v much now :)

Have finished book number 2 The Fate of the Tearling - Erika Johansen. This is the final in the Tearling trilogy and I thought it drew the series to a satisfying conclusion. I'd become quite absorbed in the world of the Tearling through the previous book so if been looking forward to seeing how it all ended. It is a fantasy novel with an overarching theme of trying to build the best society and how human failings can ruin the most optimistic enterprises. The main character is flawed but you can't help but root for her and the characters around her are nicely fleshed out over the trilogy. A good start to my reading year.

I'm in!

Currently reading Golden Hill and have a rather large reading pile!

After browsing this thread, just remembered I wanted to read *The Skeleton Cupboard' by Tanya Byron so that's another to add to the list.

I've put the Essex Serpent to one side for now but will go back to it.

Currently reading The Emperor of All Maladies - Siddhartha Mukherjee which was recommended on another thread.

It's a history of Cancer as a disease, diagnosis, development of treatments etc interwoven with the stories of Mukherjee's own patients.

It is excellent so far. Riveting and really lovely writing. Fascinating snippets too e.g. the role of Marmite in the development of chemotherapy.

Finished 1. The Adventure of the Christmas Pudding -Agatha Christie.
Does exactly what it says on the tin, collection of 6 Christie stories, 5 are Poirot and 1 is (a not particularly good) Miss Marple. Short stories so not much scope to develop intrigue or keep you guessing, but all quite enjoyable nonetheless.

I'm going to start my second book now, which I'm also using for the 'unreliable narrator' prompt on the popsugar 2017 reading challenge mentioned upthread.

1. Our Endless Numbered Days by Claire Fuller

Checking in late as usual. Was only a very occasional contributor last year but hope to be more disciplined this time around. I made it to forty something books last year and hope to hit fifty this year.

I hope your friends are OK Cote.

I am still wading through A Brief History of Seven Killings which must be the least apt title for a book ever, but I promised myself not to give up on any books and I think it is improving a little.

Yes, Remus, I'd really like a new Shardlake, as well as a new Jasper Fforde!

DD and I are going to do this this year. She is starting with Cuckoo Song by France's Hardinge. She is at a music course at the moment though so I don't know how she's getting on. I'm reading Oliver Twist :)

Keith

Was that "street Cat Bob" or something similar?

Someone gave me a copy (because I was bound to love it due to me having two orange cats) and it was absolute sh!te!

Just finished The Thinking Woman's Guide to Real Magic by Emily CRoy Barker and really loved it. Apparently she is working on a sequel which is exciting!

I've read no Shardlake books - do I need to buy one!!? And weebarra I am waiting for the long promised sequel to Shades of Grey by Jasper Fforde, where is it!!!

Am now about to start The Explosive Child for both personal and professional reasons!

Oooh I'm definitely in having been appalling at reading last year and letting down my book club every month. Have started the Reader on the 6.27 so that'll be my number 1 followed by the Light Between the Oceans currently winking at me unread. What a great thread, can't wait to pick up lots of recommendations.

Justfinished my first book (Letters from Westerbork). It was a short volume which was how I got through it s quickly, but it was very affecting - so much so that I have moved onto "An Interrupted Life" which is Etty Hillesum's diaries, instead of "And The Mountains Echoed". (This one is longer.)

For those who aren't aware Etty H was a Dutch Jew who was murdered in Auschwitz in 1945. For about a year before that she was on the HJewish council at Westerbork Concentration/Transit camp in Holland, and her letters bring home some of the horrors. We all know (intellectually) the dreadful things that happened, but it is hard to feel them. It was so awful, and there were so many victims, that there is a tendency for them to sink into an anonymous amorphous mass of suffering - Etty's writings remind us that they were individuals as were are: she writes of the orphaned children thrown out of the barracks into the rain each day; of the constant screaming of sick and terrified children; of the very elderly - many ill, many confused, who cannot grasp what has happened to them.

And yet through it all she never loses her faith in a loving God, and never fails to appreciate even the tiniest of joys (a letter from a friend; a bowl of pea soup; a few moments of silence in an overcrowded and hideous situation).

Her faith is inspiring (unsurprisingly, from what I've read, the camps seem to deepen faith or destroy it, and there is no way to predict which way any individual will go) and her letters very moving. I need to know more about her, and so am now reading her diaries, which I had intended to leave for a later date so that I wasn't reading the same sort of literature in a "lump".

Happy New Year everyone. I would love to join too. I failed miserably last year and have gone with a target of 40 on GoodReads for 2017. Hoping the thread does not move so quickly for long otherwise I will be lucky to get into double figures. I have also pledged to no book buying this year as have so many unread ones lurking on the bookshelves and the Kindle.

I am reading Remember Me by Derek Hansen which is enjoyable but not a patch on his Lunch with .. books.

Would any of you from earlier 50-Book threads know why I have a book called One Night In Winter by a guy named Simon Sebag Montefiore in my Amazon Wish List? It's price is down to 99p today.

Cote - I think it may have been a recommendation I made quite a while ago. I read it when recommended by my late dad (so at least two years ago then). It is good. Iirc it's set at the very heart of the communist elite, so Stalin's cronies. Betrayals, disappearances, deaths, fear and double crossing. Definitely worth a punt at 99p :)

1. Rivers Of London - Ben Aaronovitch

Had been on my radar for a while, so I snapped it up in the Kindle sale. An enjoyable easyvread which is a kind of Neverwhere-meets-Doctor Who romp (he's a former DW writer) through a London filled with ghosts, magic and river nymphs.

Isn't Simon Sebag M a bona fide historian as well or did I dream that?

Happyflappy Yes, that one. Regularly tops bestseller lists along with its sequels/spin-offs. I can't express how bad it is

Your Holocaust books sound terrible and wonderful. I feel I should put them on my list but not sure I could read them.

1. The Coroner by M R Hall

First in a series featuring a woman coroner, newly appointed to her post in a rural area near Bristol. Jenny Cooper has just been through a traumatic divorce and is struggling with anxiety and panic attacks. She stumbles on what looks like an official cover-up of two young people's deaths and puts herself in danger in her determination to pursue the truth.

This was a present from DS who had read and enjoyed it. An easy read, perhaps with too much emphasis on the main character's temazepam addiction, however it was an interesting change to read a crime novel told from the coroner's point of view. I'll read the next in the series if I can find it in the library; not rushing to spend the money though.

Now on to The Essex Serpent, much-mentioned on here. I have the hard-back copy and won't want to lug it round in my bag once back at work next week, so these last few days at home are a good chance to read it. I've taken off the beautiful cover and placed it carefully aside . Looking forward to this one and to hearing what everyone else has to say about it.

Also reading Le petit Nicolas to brush up my French. A lovely little book, slightly reminiscent of Molesworth in the way it's humorously related through a child's eyes. I used to love Molesworth; I must seek him out again if he's still around.

There - Sadly I missed the 99p offer but will keep it in my Wish List, thanks.

I am aiming for 30 this year I got 29 this year, 1 short arghh!! I keep track via the Goodreads reading challenge. I started Stephen King's Dark Tower Series in December, finishing the first two. Something I've always wanted to get into as I love King. Loved them! But I've started this year off with something else I've always wanted to read The Outsiders by S.E. Hinton I'm obsessed with the film.

I'm in having lurked on last year's thread and picked up loads of good book ideas!
This year kicking off with two books on the go..
Alan Bennett's Writing Home and a re read of the first adult book I read (bought from a jumble sale in the late 70s!) Agatha Christie's 4.50 from Paddington.

happyflappy, I read Suite Francaise last year, which is a novel that looks at how the French dealt with the German occupation. What I didn't realise was that Irene Nemirovsky the author, never saw the end of the war as she was shipped off to Auchswitz in '42, so her writing is even more insightful about the effects of the war.

Jumping straight to the end to say that I am in. Will go back and read the whole thread in a bit.

Am pregnant and due in June so that could either mean lots and lots of books read while establishing feeding as friends promise me or none at all for 2 years like it was with dd!

Currently on a Kate Atkinson obsession having only recently discovered her. Having read 5 of her books back to back since November though I am taking a break from her before going back to read human croquet.

I have downloaded The Muse and The Essex Serpent ready to start today.

Averaging a book a fortnight roughly so not sure I will hit 50. Willing to give it a go though. Less time Facebooking and more time actual booking!