50 Book Challenge 2017 Part Two

[southeastdweller]

Welcome to the second 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, it's not too late to join, and please try to let us all know your thoughts on what you've read.

The previous thread is here.

How're you getting on so far?

Finished

1. Shatter by Michael Robotham, which I really enjoyed. It is about a pyschologist, Joe, who is called in to assist the police when a woman is discovered on the Clifton Suspension Bridge wearing only designer shoes and listening to someone on her mobile. Joe is unable to stop the woman from jumping and thinks he hears someone saying 'Jump' as she jumped. It is a good story, scarey and definitely a page turner.

Next is going to be ----

1. Revolution by Jennifer Donnelly. This has been on the shelf for a good while and I see it has been described as a 'young adult' book so not sure how this one will go as I am just a little bit over young. Not even sure where it came from either.

These threads are moving so fast I can't keep up! I have finished book 1 of the year, The Year of Living Danishly by Helen Russell via audible. Non fiction, a book which charts the year she and her husband soend living in Denmark as they get used to the lifestyle there. If you like Bill Bryson you'll probably like this (and the audiobook narrator was v good).
I really enjoyed it, although the entitled media type / posh journo nature of the woman kind of grated at times. Her sense of humour is cracking though, so I forgave her for giving everyone silly names (she refers to her husband as Lego Man throughout) and repeatedly needing to ask experts in their field exactly how to be happy. The author comes across as quite anxious with a large FOMO but it was still a relaxed and enjoyable listen. I learned a lot about Denmark and the realities of life there and laughed and cried at various points. Recommended.

4. Going Solo - Roald Dahl

Wasn't really planning on reading this but DS has to do a project on Roald Dahl. He's read bits of Boy that I've recommended and wanted me to do the same with Going Solo - but I couldn't remember the book so had to re-read it first!

It's a much more adult book than Boy - much of it deals with Dahl's experiences as a pilot in WW2. He's a great story teller so it seems somewhat incredulous that he lived this life before starting to write. Glad I read it for DS though - he's only 6 and I think would have struggled with it - as it is I've got sections marked with Post-its so he be selective about the bits he reads!

8 The Dream Thieves by Maggie Stiefvater

YA fantasy novel passed on to me by DD, sequel to The Raven Boys. I liked this - I thought it was original and unpredictable, and a real step up from the first novel in the series. Not particularly action packed, but very atmospheric, I definitely became invested in the characters (even the unlikeable ones), and - being YA - there was minimal pointless shagging (in fact the only shagging involved two adult side characters, and was relevant to the plot).

(Sadly I borrowed Shiver on audio from the library, first in another series by the same author and gave up in disgust after a couple of chapters - shame as there's a limited selection and they had the whole series!)

1 The Nest by Cynthia D'Aprix Sweeney
2 Our Endless Numbered Days by Claire Fuller
3 Ready Player One by Ernest Cline (audible)
4 Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day by Winifred Watson
5 Everyone Brave is Forgiven by Chris Cleave
6 Still Life by Louise Penny (audible)

Finished Sapiens by Yuval Noah Harari last week. Popular science about the history and possible future of humankind.

I loved it, it has altered the way I look at us humans, how we got where we are and why. Thoroughly recommend it, I must have driven my friends mad endlessly talking about it to them.

This year I'm working my way through all the unread books on my shelves plus rereading some. I'm currently reading Meadowland by John Lewis-Stempel. Not particularly impressed tbh. Lewis-Stempel is very knowledgable and writes well enough but one sentence turned me off the book. Bizarrely, writing about female wrens moving into the nest built by a male wren to lay her eggs he writes: "A slapper seeking a Premier League husband could not be more shallow".

Really? What an ignorant, sexist comment. So much wrong with it, I feel annoyed all over again. Not a keeper, this one.

Next up will be Barbara Kingsolver's Flight Behaviour.

Flight Behaviour is lovely, SangtheSun. Hopefully just what you need after your current book.

I have just started on an Atwood after the discussion above..... Sorry Remus

SangtheSun I was also a big fan of Sapiens and I adored Flight Behaviour - enjoy!

Nabakov's superb Lolita is just £1.99 on Kindle at the moment. Some of the best writing I've ever read in a novel is in that book.

4. Can any Mother Help Me? By Jenna Bailey. This is an excellent book, made up of extracts from articles written by a group of women, who "met" in answer to the title plea in a magazine and corresponded through their own "magazine"(they all wrote articles and one sewed them together and they posted it from one to another) for years- it is like a pre Internet mumsnet. Only some of the magazines and articles have survived, and the author has put together examples which are mainly centred on home and family; but the women were amazing writers and I would love to read another collection of their work.

I loved Can Any Mother Help Me?, Tanaqui, and yes, I found a massive parallel with Mumsnet too. Great book.

I'm succumbing to peer pressure and have reserved The Year of Living Danishly and Sapiens at the library. (I've never been the type of girl for whom peer pressure meant soft drugs and shoplifting).

biblio Me neither although actually being pressured into reading a boo doesn't work for me either as tend to hate the book as being forced to read it! I think says why i shouldn't go to an actual book club and its good i can pick and choose with my online one.

Southeast Thanks for the heads up, its been on my to read list for years so really should do so. Good job i'm not doing a year of not buying books

Finished book 2 Murder 101 by Faye Kellerman. I like this series, and I liked the change of setting from LA to upstate New York and Decker's new partner, but though it started out interesting enough it got a bit rushed and muddled towards the end.
Next up is Lying in Wait by LIz Nugent, I have a train journey today so lots of reading time, yay!

Know what you mean eitak. I'm fine with "sideways" encouragement, eg. people talking enthusiastically on this thread. If someone came up to me and pressed the book into my hand, telling me to read it, it would be a chore and I'd actually quite resent it.

1. 'American Gods' - Neil Gaiman

1. 'Howard's End is on the Landing' - Susan Hill

A memoir recounting meetings/anecdotes about books in her collection having decided not to bu any new books for a year. She lists 40 books at the end which would be her favourites - interesting to see how many I have read/own.

1. Child 44 by Tom Robb Smith

Certainly a page turner, very grim in places. Well written- set in Soviet Russia around the death of Stalin. Leo discovers that a child serial killer is on the loose and has to investigate in secret as the State refuses to acknowledge such crimes can exist in their Communist idyll. I found the ending a bit hard to believe to be honest, but a good read.

Now reading Into the Heart of Borneo for Book Club (definitely not something I'd normally pick up) It's my first Book club- I'm a Billy no Mates here, so a bit nervous!

I've read some of the Michael Robotham novels, although they've all got samey names so I have no idea which ones I've read I do like the character of Joe.

As for Lolita it is pretty hard to stomach but the writing is indeed fantastic. I have it on Audible too. I just don't know how to feel about it. It's one of those books!

Well, I've finally finished my second book Needful Things by Stephen King I actually really liked it! A new shop opens in town claiming to sell exactly what you want but money is not what's required to pay.
It's a bit silly but I did enjoy the characters.

Started How to be a Tudor

Still here (still ignoring Margaret Atwood.

Book 6
The House by the Lake - Thomas Harding
The story of one house (Non-fic) built by a lake on the outskirts of Berlin. This tracks this one house through Jewish ownership, to being ‘Aryanised’ (translation: allowed to be sold to somebody non-Jewish looking for a bargain) through war, to having the Berlin wall built literally through its garden. This was a slow starter not helped by the writing not being great in places (the ability to punctuate accurately would have helped) but in some places, especially the wall section, it was fascinating. Worth a read if you forgive its flaws.

The first half of Lolita is stunning. Some of the best prose ever written, I'd say.

Trump can read?????

Yes - but he moves his lips.

Finished Closed Casket (not quite as good as the Monogram Murders, I think) - an enjoyable light read and have begun No 8 - Celebrating Life - Jonathan Sacks, based on his Credo columns in The Times. It's very ready;e,but also gives great food for thought. I'm enjoying it immensely.

Looking at other people's current reading-works-in-progress:

Loved - Flight Behaviour (and also the Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kingsolver); Lolita - superb book; American Gods - great stuff!; Child 44 - loved the book - the film was rubbish! They changed so much, including a lot that was pertinent to the story.

loathed - Needful Things. I used to love Stephen King's books, but now I find them very "same". Still like "The Green Mile" though.

Remus I agree about the opening passage of Lolita. I read it over 12 years ago and can still remember it pretty much verbatim

"Lolita, light of my fire, fire of my loins. My sin, my soul" And then some more about how the name is pronounced, and how the tongue moves while saying it.

Horrific, and yet so so beautiful.

I found Lolita extremely hard to stomach. It was so hard to square the beauty of the prose to the abuse that was being described. I don't think I will ever be able to re-read it.

Aargh, wish we could edit posts.

I meant to say that I agree with you about the first half, and that the opening passage has stuck with me.

:)

The sing-song 'L' alliteration of that opening, coupled with the hissing sibilance and the whole way he's tasting the name in his mouth is so very cleverly done. I wish I'd written it!

1. Names for the Sea: Strangers in Iceland - Sarah Moss

Writer and her family relocate to Iceland for a year. A look at the the Icelandic people and their way of life and what makes them such a happy nation.

I picked this up thinking it would be similar to A Year Of Living Danishly and in some ways it was. Much more worthy and introspective and a bit humourless though.

Sadik said up thread that the author seemed only to be able to see things through middle class eyes and I think that was very true. For example she seems to have no understanding of why people don't want second hand things, although I think she does eventually come to a realisation.

I was a bit bored by the end.

Re: Lolita opening - he makes the reader unconsciously repeat and 'taste' it too, so they are unknowingly complicit in his delusion from the first sentence, before the extent of it is revealed. It is difficult to read that description of the tongue tapping out the syllables without trying it. Hideous, but brilliant.