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?

Welcome to the thread Cheerful

I love the Cazalets too, although family sagas aren't normally my favourite genre. EJH is a proper writer, though, and the characters are so interestingly and individually portrayed it just works for me. I also find the time period - the twenties up until and throughout WWII - makes for an interesting background to the family relationship stuff.

A word of warning though .. you might know that EJH wrote the first four books in the early nineties and followed them up almost twenty years later, just before she died, with All Change, the fifth volume in the series. It isn't anything like as good IMO as the others sadly. I had to read it but I almost wish I hadn't .. I wish she'd left well alone. Volumes three and four are great though!

This is why I hate borrowing books. I'm a messy reader. I eat when I read, I read in the bath and my books always look battered. DH on the other hand has never forgiven my dad for writing a phone number on his copy of The Godfather when he had no paper to hand. Needless to say, I hate reading DH's books.

I'd always be very careful with someone else's book, as with anything borrowed. I once bought a replacement copy of a friend's book when I dropped her one in a puddle, despite it drying out tolerably well, but I don't mind how they come back if I lend them out as I wouldn't lend something that was special to me in any way. I also buy very battered copies from charity shops, and love it if they have written dedications. I might draw the line at someone using one as a jotter though, with your dh there, best

I read whilst eating too. Still feeling guilty over the accidental marmite fingerprint I left on a brand new library book. I wiped it up as best I could but the shame of it . And my new Christmas present copy of Alan Bennett's Keeping On Keeping On has a soup splash on one page. I feel so ashamed of my messiness. DH is horrified.

I read while eating, cooking, brushing my teeth, waiting for nail polish to dry, etc. Kindle is great for all that as you don't have two hands to hold the book & change page. I don't read while cutting vegetables anymore, because I managed to slice into several fingers rather deeply and concluded that sharp knives and no eyes are not a good combination.

Yes kindle is great for reading everywhere. I have a lot of hair and used to detest drying it, now it's 20 mins more reading time, props up nicely against the mirror. I also read while prepping dinner, my knives are all blunt

1. 'Death of Dustman'- M C Beaton

Another Hamish Macbeth, new characters in the village. I'm still enjoying these - easy to read too.

Good to know, Highland too. I may have to read it anyway though. I felt just like that about the sequel to Catch 22, and then I read it and wished I hadn't bothered.

I love other people's dedications in books. I always try to write in books I give people. It's such a personal thing, a book present, isn't it? That intersection between a book that is a bit you and a book you think will be a bit them. It's like saying, here's the place we have in common. #isabitofatwataboutbookssorry

Cheerful I love the Cazlet books. Was thinking the other day that I might reread them !

Whilst the spine is broken on my books by the time I have finished reading them I still look after them and would be really annoyed if I split something on them.

The Observations - Jane Harris - This book is set in 1860's Scotland and tells the story of Bessy an Irish girl who finds herself working in a rural country house where all is not as it seems. Bessy, as narrator has a quirky and amusing style which makes this an enjoyable read.

5. Help by Oliver Burkeman. Another of Burkeman's books was recommended on last year's threads, but Overdrive only had this one! It's kind of a round up of all sorts of self help books and advice, quite funny and with lots of links if you want to read anything in more detail. I think you might get different things out of it depending on how you feel when you read it, but I liked "its better to be kind than to be right".

I enjoyed the Cazelets when I read them, but they get a lot of love that I didn't feel- I am not sure I rated them above any similar family saga/war time story- can anyone put their finger on what makes them special to them?

Tanaqui. Hmm.

They have a great sense of place and time. And a wonderful sense of all those books I spent my childhood reading - picnics and games and everything being jolly ripping, which I love.

I also thought they really capture what it's like to be a teenager, and how awful it is a lot of the time.

She's also brilliant at character. I like how human they are, and I like how she approaches her morally compromised characters. I don't want to spoil the books, but lots of the adults are having affairs or wanting to have affairs. Antisemitism is rife. And at least one character (so far) is doing something generally considered unforgivable. And the book doesn't excuse any of it or shy away from the consequences - we see exactly why those are awful things to do, and what effects those actions have on the other characters (and the characters who do them). But more-or-less everyone remains human and almost no one is an out-an-out villain with no redeeming features. (Well, very few people are.)
Take Zoe. She's written up as about as shallow and selfish as you could imagine at the start of the first book. But you rather like her now.

There are definitely things I don't like about it. The working-class characters are mostly awful. I'm getting a bit annoyed with most of the women hating sex. Zoe's redemption arc is ... less feminist than I would have liked. And it's wartime - it would be nice if one woman at least could have a job she likes.

But generally I'm loving it.

And I like that the underbelly is right up there, IYSWIM. You have something that starts out feeling like Malcolm Saville or Noel Streatfeild or something - children running around in the countryside building camps in woods and eating strawberries and cream and going on bike rides. And then you get further in and you discover housewives bored out of their minds, and lesbians not allowed to admit that they're anything but best friends, and small boys packed off to boarding school, and people going on about how great Mussolini is ...

That's interesting tanaqui. I got so bored by the Cazalets I gave up after book one just found it all really dull. It is pretty universally loved though so hard to say why it didn't work for me. The writing itself perhaps, hadn't enough edge or wit to elevate it.

Agree with lots of what Cheerful has to say. Having read Elizabeth Jane Howard's autobiography last year I can see how much of her own life she poured into those books. They feel very 'British Upper - Middle class' though and it does take a while to put that to one side. I found the way they start out as an idyllic portrait of between war life and then the underbelly is slowly revealed quite fascinating.

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

8 The Uncommon Reader by Alan Bennett. I feel like this is already a very well known book and I'm a latecomer. It's very short, a novella really. About the Queen discovering a love for reading and as a result developing a growing dissatisfaction with the demands of her role upon her time and attention. I did enjoy it but have to be honest, I found myself reading in autopilot mode and not focusing on the story or thinking about it too deeply at all.

I have started Nightwoods by Charles Frazier. He wrote Cold Mountain which I loved. Nightwoods is starting off very well so far.

Does anyone else find they get distracted from what they're reading by a pile of books waiting to be read? I certainly do - there's not enough time! I returned some to library today and borrowed Dark Matter by Blake Crouch to add to my pile. I heard it get a very good review on a podcast yesterday.

Not really loving Before the Fall by Noah Hawley on audible but I will definitely finish it - it's easy listening while walking the dog.

Apart from this thread and amazon recommendations, how do you all choose your next book?

14. Slade House - David Mitchell

This is quite a short book so managed to read it in about 3 hours. Every 9 years a guest is invited to a house in Slade Alley and greeted by a stranger who appears to fulfil their wishes. However all is not what it seems.
There is a cross over with some of Mitchell's other books, especially The Bone Clocks but it does work as a stand alone novel. Enjoyable.

Just finished Ove, my third book and have just begun The Turning Point. I am looking forward to receiving my copy of The Boy Made of Blocks.

Spinning one place I get recommendations is Instagram. I follow Addymanbooks who does great photos of vintage books.

Newspaper reviews and supplements. Friends. I follow a couple of publishers on social media; Penguin & Faber, and browsing life brary and charity shops.

Library! Though a telling slip.

A lot of them are presents. Some are books I've heard people talk about on Twitter, or are books with a reputation. I'm in a book group too, though we don't meet every month. And I have a couple of friends with very similar tastes to me and we lend each other books.

Finished book 3 the girl on the train I really liked it. But I'm usually a but dense when it comes to plot lines and seeing where things go, but had this one nailed ok not right at the beginning but before they give the game away. Proper chuffed with myself. Going to disappoint myself by watching the film tonight.

Will start book 4 in bed later lucky jim by Kingsley Amis

11 The Skeleton Cupboard: The making of a clinical psychologist, by Tanya Byron
Read/reviewed by several on here. I have mixed feelings about this one. I really approve of her aim to get people to think more about mental illness, and how as a society we understand and relate to people we consider mentally ill. I also totally see why she couldn't use genuine cases, and needed to use what she calls 'constructs' drawing on her actual experiences.
Having said all that, I felt maybe - exploited ? - by the presentation of fictional 'people' in the context of a 'true' narrative, particularly as (as she says herself in the afterword) several felt almost designed to be tearjerking situations. She writes well, and I'd love to read a novel using all her experiences but unashamedly fictional.

I don't know if I'm being unreasonable here - I didn't have the same issue with The Examined Life by Stephen Grosz, but then his examples are much 'quieter', if that make sense, and more about the process of psychoanalysis than the cases themselves.

New books still look new once I've read them, unless they've been on any adventures to the beach in which case there will be sand falling out and smudgy suncream fingerprints everywhere! I don't mind other people borrowing my books and am not precious about what state they are returned, and as much as I love a beautifully new book, a well read second hand one is often soft and comfy and lovely in a different way.
Lots of the books in my TBR pile were gifts, I write down the name of books I'm interested in from magazines, newspapers, TV etc, and a lot of the best books I've read in the last couple of years have been lend to me by a friend who chooses novels that I have almost always never heard of and then been totally drawn in by.
Finished book 4. Lessons I've Learned by Davina McCall. I listened to this on Audible and it didn't always feel like a book - it's narrated by Davina herself and the style is so chatty that it's just been like listening to her blethering to me while I've done the dishes for the last few weeks. In book form I probably wouldn't have read it cover to cover but dipped in to pages that looked interesting. With anything like this, different bits will 'speak' to different people. While I enjoyed it and will remember a few good points from it, I couldn't recommend it as it definitely won't be everyone's taste.
Enjoying Hurrah for Gin while busy with work but looking forward to getting on to something a bit weightier (only a little bit!) - whoever was asking if anyone ever feels like they get distracted by seeing/hearing about other books while in the middle of something...YES! Definitely me!