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?

Nutshell Ian McEwan.

I enjoyed this when I read it, too LadyMcM, but found the ending a disappointment.

Satsuki

WOW!!!

Talk about "you couldn't make it up" and "Truth stranger than fiction" etc

1. His Bloody Project by Graeme Macrae Burnet. I liked the format and the unreliable narrator element. I felt it was still unclear at the end, and wondered if I had missed something. Will look for threads on here. Grimness of the Highland life at that time will stay with me.

Not sure what is next.

Finished book number one (hangs head in shame ) The Year Of Living Danishly - would rate this 2/5, picked up some quite interesting info about the Danes and Denmark, particularly as there is a Danish connection in my extended family, but overall I found it too formulaic and repetitive to hold my interest. The layout of a month per chapter covering one or other aspect of Danish life that 'just happened' to come to the fore that month and the constant relating everything back to an arbitrary happiness spectrum with the help of some or other expert was repetitive and a little twee. Does the author really expect us to believe that she stumbled across, for example, an adults only swimming night which involved heavy petting in the pool rather than seeking this out as part of her research or that she made up her mind whether or not to stay for a second year in Denmark on what sounds like a year to the day from arriving. Obviously plans for either leaving or remaining have to be put in place months before D day arrives.
It wasn't terrible but I wouldn't recommend it either. On to book number two The Complete David Bowie by Nicholas Pegg. A very long book I downloaded having found myself coming over all maudlin, yet again, when the anniversary of David Bowie's death, and what would have been his 70th birthday, rolled around. This isn't a biography and my intention was to dip in and out of its encyclopaedic style pages but with insights into his life, recordings, collaborators, lyrics etc I've found myself reading it cover to cover (and it was a welcome relief from YOL Danishly) I'm already 10% of the way through its bulk, but I may need to start a non fiction book for balance and light relief.

1. 'A Highland Christmas' MC Beaton

I'm trying to read all of the Hamish Macbeth (and Agatha Raisin) stories in order and am hunting for them in libraries. This one has no murder but several mysteries - a very easy read.

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)

7 A Country Road, A Tree by Jo Baker. This is a novel based on Samuel Beckett's time in France during WWII and his effort with the Resistance. He spent a significant portion of the war in hiding, in small villages on the outskirts of Paris, with his longterm partner Suzanne. I really enjoyed this book, probably more than I expected to. It is a slow moving book but the prose is simples and clear and it kept me hooked. Jo Baker also wrote Longbourn.

I'm listening to Before the Fall by Noah Hawley. It's fine, only about an hour in to it.

I need to step away from WWII now for a little while. What next? I have The North Water by Ian McGuire, Jamaica Inn by Daphne du Maurier, and Nightwoods by Charles Frazier on the bedside table. Can't decide.

1. Arlington Park by Rachel Cusk

What an utter pile of gash, of the who thought that this was :

a) a book that needed to be written
b) a book that would be identified with
c) a book that ought to be published

Is lost on me.

A horrendous superior group of harpies, and snobs, who are utterly unself aware make disgusting remarks and are bitter of things and make points that ought to be feminist but come off as absurd instead.

"She would never have to go to a butcher if she wasn't married"

What?!

There is some dreadful classism, some lovely (and I mean that witheringly) and repeated, othering of people with disability, some massively unsubtle allusion to Madeleine McCann

There is some decent remarking about positive language for men vs negative language for women when describing the same thing eg forthright vs strident, passionate vs evangelical

The oft repeated references to the weather are i think meant to give it a literary air and the beginning is a bit like a copy of Bleak House but with rain not fog and annoying not eloquent.

It gives the effect of I KNOW IT'S FUCKING RAINING STOP FUCKING TELLING ME

I got to the point were I just kept writing Fuck Off on my copy.

"Dinky Smith said" - OH FUCK OFF??? DINKY SMITH??????!!

Wanky book about wankers for wankers tbh. If there was a book called "An Anthology of the Worst Threads On Mumsnet in novelised form" this is it.

every that review was a thing of beauty!! It is so long ago since I read it that I had forgotten specifics of why I hated it so much. You have reminded me beautifully. The comparison to the worst thread on MN is perfect.

How do we stand on novellas? I have two on my kindle - Turtle Boy and Sherlock Holmes. I shall count each of them as half a book

Just got really excited by Samuel B, and then realised who Jo Baker is. I absolutely detested Longbourn.

I read North Water a couple of days ago spinning I'll try and review tonight if it helps you

boldly in response to your request upthread for recommendations of the classics, my favourite modern classic is The Power and the Glory by Graham Greene. I'm also a Virginia Woolf fan - I loved The Waves in particular.

1. His Bloody Project by Graeme Macrae Burnet, about a triple murder in a remote Scottish setting. Already reviewed by many of you upthread. I really enjoyed this.

Thanks satsuki, I'll keep an eye out for your review. I also have Rush Oh! waiting to be read- it's a recent release and something to do with the whaling industry in the early 1900s, but I'll hold off on that one for now.
Remus - A country road, a tree was nothing like longbourn if that changes your mind at all. It is not a plot driven book though, which is surprising given the premise.

Finished book no 2 of the year, Exposure by Helen Dunmore. Post WW2 spy story about ordinary people getting accidentally involved in things that don't concern them and regretting it heartily.
By God it took me ages to get into this, and it felt rather plodding at times, but the second half was excellent as she cleverly built the tension up over time. I finished the last third very quickly as I was desperate to find out what happened. I really liked the sense of period and the little touches which bought it to life very evocatively. Helen Dunmore is a good storyteller and this has made me want to read more by her.

Passme Of course it's up to you but I always count novellas as single books, and a few of the others have, too.

Spinning What's the whaling one?

I'll order the free sample of Country Road and see how I get on. Longbourn had me spitting feathers.

Finished 6. Toast - the story of a boy' hunger by Nigel Slater. Enjoyed it more as it went on and as Nigel gets older. I think I'd have enjoyed the book a whole lot more in print, was using audible credits up but audiobooks not really for me I don't think, unless maybe I can figure out a way to get my phone to play them in the car as they might be good for the 45 min drive to work.

Started 7. Beauvallet by Georgette Heyer. One of the few of hers I've not read - using for the reading challenge mentioned in the original thread for the prompt of 'a book with a title that is a character's name'. From the first few pages not sure I'm going to love it to be honest, it's reading like bad mills and boon, but I'll persevere for a bit.

Just seen it's in present tense, so it's not looking too good.

You've just reminded me about Rush-Oh was intrigued by that a while ago.

Ok doke south. Each one is about 100 pages.. which given I am going back to work tomorrow may just take as long as a whole book!

1. A little life by Hanya Yanagihara

Four college friends move to New York - an architect, an actor, a painter and a lawyer. This novel follows them through their lives.

I loved this book. It's a long one. Can anything beat getting engrossed in a chunky novel in the winter? It's like a family saga but the family are four men. I was a bit muddled between them at first but then got drawn in. Loved the author's writing. She really made you care about the characters.

Think I'll try the Essex serpent next. I saw the author on a panel at greenbelt a couple of years ago and really enjoyed her contributions. I immediately bought her first book but haven't read it yet.

Can I join in? A bit late, but so far this year I have read:

1. Under a Pole Star - Stef Penney
2. My Son's Not Rainman - John Wiilams
3. The Way Home - Rose Tremain
4. The Essex Serpent - Sarah Perry.

3 and 4 both fabulous. Currently reading another Rose Tremain - Sacred Country.

9 How to be a Victorian by Ruth Goodman

I found this a bit patchy. Some sections really worked for me - for example where the author talks about her own experiences of wearing Victorian clothing for extended periods. Other parts I found rather superficial. Overall TBH I felt I'd have got more from a re-read of say Mary Barton (free plot thrown in ) and MV Hughes' Victorian Family autobiographies. (Anyone who has an interest in this period and hasn't read the latter series, I'd thoroughly recommend them, she's a wonderful writer and it really brings to life what it was like to be a middle class girl at the time.)

Arrgh, can't keep up with these threads! So far:

1. Kate Atkinson, A God in Ruins - enjoyed, but maybe not quite as much as Life after Life
2. Evgenia Ginzburg, Into the Whirlwind - one of the Persephone books, a true story about a woman sent to the Gulag in Soviet Russia. Interesting, but not nearly as good as A Day in the life of Ivan Denisovich (and much longer).
3. A Notable Woman. The Romantic Journals of Jean Lucey Pratt. This is a diary from 1925 to the 1980s, so one woman's view of the twentieth century. Some of her diaries from the 1940s were kept for Mass Observation, which was a kind of research project trying to find out about ordinary lives and how ordinary people thought and felt about things. The part from the Second World War and just before and after is the most interesting. She writes well, but there's quite a lot of her being depressed, usually over a man, and the editor has used this to turn her into a bit of a Bridget Jones character, which annoyed me. There are lots of interesting observations. I read it because I love diaries, but that's possibly the historian in me.
4. Noel Streatfeild, White Boots - read it out of curiosity as it was one of DD's Christmas presents. I had read it as a kid, but didn't remember much about it. Like a lot of her books, except with ice skates instead of ballet shoes. She's terrible with plots - things just suddenly happen, or tail off in ways that aren't very satisfying, but she does emotions well, and I like the way she writes about how it feels to be poor. There's a fantastically pushy aunt, who is also a real snob.

So every - did you like Arlington Park or not?

I am reading Pillars of the Earth. It's a tome! But am really enjoying it.

Also must reread The Hobbit. The film is on right now and is annoying me.

Have you room for another? Have read one book this year so far and just started another but have many that I want to read. Quite into light and fluffy stuff though hope that's OK?

1. Trish Ashley twelve days of Christmas. Liked it, easy read to get me back into reading.