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?

Number 5 for me - King Solomon's Mines by Rider Haggard - an adventure across colonial Africa searching for the eponymous King Solomon's mines. In some ways this was an adventure written for schoolboys with a hugely distasteful dose of racism totally unacceptable to a modern audience. However, it did also have a real streak of humour and I found its presentation of the narrator's attitude to what he would term "natives" really interesting - it wasn't a simple case of believing in the inherent superiority of the white hunter as there was also respect and affection for some of the indigenous people.

Matilda2013 had you seen that Rainbow Rowell (which bizarrely is actually her real name) has since written a 'real' version of Cath's fanfic? It's pretty slight, but entertaining if you can pick it up in the library / as a cheapy.

16. Bridget Jones' Baby Let's just say I enjoyed the film and leave it at that.

I've started The Age of Wonder Here Excellent so far - lots and lots about Sir Joseph Banks (naturalist with Captain Cook and later President of the Royal Society) and his sex life!

I think anybody who liked This Thing of Darkness would enjoy it. Currently cheap on Kindle.

Finished a couple of short ones to get my numbers up and stay on track:

1. The Noise of Time - Julian Barnes. Not much of an idea what this was about but I gathered that a Russian composer in 1936 looks back on his life and his relationship with Stalin. Loved the author's style of writing, as usual, but found this very difficult to follow.

1. I'll Have What She's Having - Rebecca Harrington. Diverting book about a journalist in New York trying various celeb diets that a few others here read last year. An OK read but it would have been better as a shorter magazine article.

Next up is The Goldfish Boy.

Sadik I will look out for it thanks! Although trying to not buy/borrow books and work on my TBR pile

I LOVE Trollope, Barra. Real people, real situations and fantastic dialogue.

How people seem to prefer Dickens is a mystery to me!

HappyFlappy Suite Francaise was one of my favourite reads of last year. Until I read the first part I had never heard of the exodus from Paris, but read it against a backdrop of news stories about refugees trekking across Europe and couldn't help but see aspects of history repeating itself. The author creates some fabulous characters. My copy had several pages describing the author's own life story and including letters that were sent during the war, and the fiction of Suite Francaise felt even more powerful knowing the circumstances in which it was written. It will stay with me for a long time I think.
I'm back on WWII theme, listening to The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas at the moment.

Thanks for your comments Clueless. I am well into the second part of th book now and am totally engrossed! When Irene Nemirovsky died in Auschwitz it was not only an offence against humanity but a great loss to the literary world.

I read "the Boy in the Striped Pyjamas" a couple of years ago but found it too simplistic/naive. I know many people who have really enjoyed it, but it wasn't for me.

There was a film on Netflix called something like "Among the Wolves" or "Naked among the Wolves" (sorry - I can't remember the exact title) which is a fictionalised account of a true story. A small boy was smuggled into Buchenwald in a suitcase (had he not been hidden in the case he wold have been gassed on arrival). The story concerns the prisoners' determination to keep him alive in the horror of the camp.

The child the story was based on did survive the camp, but only because at one point another boy was substituted for him on an extermination list. (Apparently when he learned this as an adult he was shocked and filled with guilt.)

Oh, watching that would make me cry buckets!

Re The Boy in the Striped pyjamas. I was just discussing this at tea with my two eldest boys. I loved the book although I found it heart breaking. I think it was written as a children / YA book which might go some way to account for the simplicity. Ironically it was the simplicity and naivety that made it work for me.

southeast I was disappointed by the noise of time.

Thanks remus I have gone for age of wonder, love the Romantic period - looks really interesting.

I couldn't get in with Boy in Striped Pyjamas was given to me as a gift but it was too mawkish seeming for for me and I couldn't bear it.

I am wallowing in the The Long Goodbye - it is just wonderful and exactly what I need at the moment. The news is making me feel rather fragile and angry at the same time so need some literary comfort.

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
9 Nightwoods by Charles Frazier

10 The North Water by Ian McGuire. Wow, that was a great read, loved it. I flew through it. It's been reviewed several times on this thread already so I won't go into much detail but it's a gripping read, from the very first page. It is the story of a surgeon who embarks on a whaling expedition with a crew led by a captain of infamous luck. It is quite graphic and gruesome in parts - not just regarding violence between crew members, but against the whales, the bears, the seals. Even the weather is a violent character in the story.

I have Rush-oh! by Shirley Barrett in the TBR pile - its another book about whaling but I gather it's quite light hearted. I think I better leave it for a few books down the line. In the meantime I think it will be Jamaica Inn.

Still struggling with Before the Fall on audible and it's quite irritating. I haven't yet returned an audible book but am tempted with this one.

Have just seen that Burnt Shadows is on Kindle Daily deals . I read it a while ago and found it a very moving book https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/aw/d/B002R88G5Y/ref=mpssa112?ie=UTF8&qid=1485811698&sr=1-2&pi=ACSX2366SY340QL65&dpPl=1&dpID=51EWdvdvb5L&ref=plSrch

Interesting, the different views on The Boy in Striped Pyjamas - I'm afraid I too found it rather simplistic. I saw the end coming from about page 2 and in many ways thought it was a cop out.

And thanks for the name of the Julian Barnes book about Shostakovich - I have been desperately trying to remember it!

1. A Summer at Sea Katie FForde

A bit predictable but an interesting/different setting (Scotland). I feel very inadequate when faced with a character who is an excellent midwife, can cook and bake for groups, can knit Fair Isle garments and entertain a 9 year old!

1. Reaching Down the Rabbit Hole by Dr Allan Ropper. Tales from his professional life as a neurologist, this is similar to Do No Harm (by a brain surgeon). It's a great read, fast-paced and interesting, and I found the section on the definition of brain death particularly thought provoking. However I think that, on balance, I prefer the Oliver Sacks approach of discussing a smaller number of really unusual cases in a lot more detail.

Tarahumara, I also love Oliver Sacks. His book Hallucinations was fascinating especially as someone in my family regularly has hypnogogic/hypnopompic hallucinations - usually dead relatives!

I think I've got Hallucinations somewhere on the depths of my kindle unread - I got it for the exact reason that I suffer from vivid hallucinations at night, particularly when stressed or if I've had alcohol. Always random people in the room or the bed; no one I know! They're terrifying at the time, always have to get the light on to make them disappear. I went through a particularly awful spell where it was spiders. Might read it finally. Does it have any tips for getting rid of the buggers?

1. F ia for Fugitive - Sue Grafton. Another installment in the alphabet series and you can see the author's ability to tell a story improve. The ending unlike some of the earlier installments didn't feel rushed and thus i didn't feel cheated as to why the crime happened. Kinsey si called to a small town of Floral beach to investigate a murder of a 17 year ild which happened 17 years ago. The claustrophobic nature of the town and the family with which she is working really helps with the tension in this story,

Now onto 7. Code by Kathy Reichs and Brendan Reichs. This is part of her YA series with her son which i've read 1st two in the series.

1. Troublesome Engines by Rev W Awdry
2. Mainline Engines by Rev W Awdry

A little light relief. I was a huge fan of Thomas the Tank Engine stories as a child, forty years ago. I read them to my grown up daughter; my partner read them to her daughter; and now we're reading them to our youngest. The attraction doesn't seem to fade. Of course there's a whole gamut of toys and other media available now that I never had! The Thomas the Tank Engine Fan Club is about as much as I remember.

I did once think about writing some spoof business books based on lessons from Sodor; many of the problems are of the Fat Director's own making, like buying (probably cheaper) dirty coal and contaminating engines' fireboxes ;)

1. The Autism Discussion Page on the Core Challenges of Autism by Bill Nason

I think that this book's premise, being a collection of posts from an internet page, usually leads to a poor reading experience; not in this case though. This is a densely packed book, with lots of information. Some we've put into practice straight away; a lot more will I'm sure need many more readings. This was from the library, but I suspect it might be the book that breaks my "no new books" rule first. I'll tell myself it doesn't really count as it's a tool ;)

5 - Phillipa Gregory - The White Princess - I used to really like Phillipa Gregory but I found this one almost laughable in places. It was nice, however to read something light and frivolous after reading The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo

I have now started The Heart Goes Last by Margaret Atwood and I have high expectations as I have really enjoyed the other books of hers I have read. .

Just finished number 5, Those who leave and those who stay by Elena Ferrante, the third in the Neapolitan trilogy which follows the lives of two friends from the slums of Naples in the early 50s to the present day. The strength of the first two books was, for me, the complexity of the relationship between the two main characters, Elena, the narrator and her childhood friend Lila. There's an unsettling bond between them, Lila, who, so far, never leaves Naples and Elena, who, through education, moves away and up in society. I found the other two books page turners but took nearly three weeks to get through this one. I found the communist/fascist unrest events bored me. Perhaps because the two womens' experiences in this period were mostly separate. Only in the last 1/4 of the book when the friends met up again did I start to get absorbed in the book again. Perhaps I'm shallow but I definitely read fiction for the who, not the what. People fascinate me and I think I read to feed this interest as I'm a bit of a loner/introvert by nature in real life. The book ended on a shameless cliffhanger with enough clues throughout the book to ensure that I must read the final book, The story of the Lost Child. Just waiting for my reservation to come through at the library. In the meantime am about to start on number 6, The Unravelling of Oliver by Liz Nugent. Front cover has a quote from the Daily Mail which would normally put me off but it's been highly recommended here and I love a good "psychological crime thriller" so looking forward to it.
Recently took up crochet again to stop me eating so much crap these dark evenings. On the plus side, I've lost 7kg and am halfway through an enormous, cool looking blanket for our bed but it's really cut in to my reading time. Can't believe I've only read 5 books this month. I'll give myself a target of 8 this month. Perhaps I'll get good enough to read and crochet at the same time....

Well, just finished "Suite Francaise", and it was excellent.

The characters are so well-drawn that you really like/dislike them and worry about what is going to happen to them. The panic when the Germans break through the French lines and advance on Paris is so believable - tiny details that bring the reality home; families crammed into vehicles with all of their most precious possessions and pets; the desperation as they can't get everything in; the growing awareness that they are running out of time; the hideous journey on a road too packed with people fleeing on foot, carrying small children, leading dogs, pushing handcarts of possessions, to allow vehicles to move - the selfishness of the wealthy with their cars full of valuables ignoring the plight of the poor.

This book is all about emotion - how people feel, what motivates them - and what happens springs from that as much as from the situations they find themselves in.

Really wonderful writing.

Have started another "Ollalla" by Robert Louis Stevenson. This is a bit of a cheat as it is a short novella published as one of the Penguin Little Black Classics and only 55 pages, but I really wanted to end on a "round" number (this will be 15) and hey - a book is a book!

5 A God in Ruins by Kate Atkinson

This has been reviewed quite a few times on here so I won't go into details. It took me quite a while to get into this - it jumps back and forwards quite a lot, sometimes in the same paragraph (or at least it seemed that way) which I found a little confusing. Once I got into it I enjoyed it. I like the idea that the war effects more people than just those who fought in it, and for much longer. I'm not sure about the ending though, it didn't seem fully explained, as though it were an afterthought.