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?

Muddler

Glad you're enjoying All Quiet on the Western Front. If you want to read novels (good, well-written novels) set in Germany between the wars and during the war, try Hans Fallada - Little Man, What Now, Alone in Berlin (this one based on actual events) and and Who Once Eats Out Of The Tin Bowl. They are superb - there are a couple of others, too but I read them many years ago and can't remember the titles (I think one was Once We Had A Child, but not sure). He didn't write many books as he was an alcoholic and died comparatively young, but they are very, very good.

"Dickens = shit."

That's the kind of high quality thoughtful reviewing you just don't get on other book sites ;)

This is why I'm proud to be a MumsNetter Waawo

if it wasn't for Dickens, we wouldn't have The Muppets Christmas Carol, and THEN where would we be?

A good point well made Muddler

Agree that Etymologicon is brilliant!

Read it when it first came out (i like words, me ) and thoroughly enjoyed it.

I didn't get on v well with Hans F (have only read two). Not shit like Dickens - just found them a bit soulless.

Would love to hear of more novels set in Germany though, especially Berlin!

1. A Song For Issy Bradley I have suffered a terrible family bereavement and not feeling much like reading picked this at random which turns out to be about a family dealing with an unexpected death, whoops!

Anyway, I kept going to the end. A Mormon family where the father is a Bishop and the mum who converted when she 'married' in. We hear from all the family members about their lives in general and dealing with the aftermath of the death. As the book progresses you learn more about the faith but it is all quite sympathetically dealt with. I found the ending a little underwhelming but the author can certainly write well. Apparently she was bought up as a Mormon.

Remus

WW2 or not world war 2?

Flipping love the Muppet Christmas Carol and agree completely that it is worth Dickens existing just so I can see Michael Caine converse with a frog

Dickens haters : have found him hit and miss. The one that is always held up as amazing is Great Expectations I think it's dull as fuck with an improbable twist. Not that gone on Tale Of either. Couldn't finish Nickleby didn't get far with Dorrit

LOVE LOVE LOVE :

David Copperfield
Bleak House
Hard Times

I feel like I've had a really slow start to this year's reading, but I'm just about to start book 4. That's quite fast by my standards

Favourites are in bold, ones to avoid in italics.

1. Slade House, David Mitchell Kind of David Mitchell lite, but as usual an interesting, interwoven collection of stories surrounding a house that doesn't exist, accessible only to a select few once every 9 years for sinister purposes. Much smaller in scale than Cloud Atlas and a spookier feel than usual, but a great read. The new voice of each character in each new chapter is done well, as usual for him. I read The Bone Clocks after this, so the appearance of one character meant very little to me. Had I read them the other way round, it would have had more of an impact.

2. The Secrets Between Us, Lousie Douglas. A woman on holiday, recovering from a traumatic loss and breakup, meets a mysterious man. Said mysterious man has lost his wife, but whether he's murdered her, or she's run away, nobody knows. After a quick shag at the top of a cliff, mysterious man invites sad woman to live with him and his son and the ghost of his wife too? (Or is it..) as their housekeeper. Possibly dead wife is the local rich and well loved woman, possibly suspicious husband is the the outsider. Intrigue and suspicion abound. Is mystery man a bad 'un, as most of the village suspect? Or is he just a heartbroken floppy haired softy? A pretty light holiday-ish read but there was lots to keep you wondering. You'll probably yell at the heroine to get her act together a lot though.

3. The Bone Clocks, David Mitchell Another amazing, interwoven-story heavy book. I finished it today, and I just feel empty, and like I'll never love another book in the same way. The story starts in 1984 with 15 year old Holly Sykes running away from home and ends 60 years later in a post-apocalyptic (and worryingly plausible) nightmare. Via good immortals, bad almost-immortals, love, heartbreak, illness, survival. I know a lot of people preferred Cloud Atlas, but this is far better to me. Possibly because of the protagonist, possibly because the connections are closer and stronger than in CA, possibly because the post-apocalyptic ending in this one felt much more immediate and sadly very plausible. Either way, DH found me clutching the book to my chest, rocking and muttering that it was going to be fine, the Chinese would save us all. Loved it.

Next up is The Dark Forest, Cixin Liu to follow on from The 3 Body Problem which I finished last year. Highly recommended here, so I have high hopes!

Every - don't mind the period, although ideally after 1900.

Great Expectations is one of the only Dickens I've ever finished, and then only because I had to. Old Curiosity Shop and Nicholas Nickleby are the others.

WhiteWine Sorry to hear about your loss.

nice to see all the Hamilton love upthread - I have tickets for April 2018 an no-one in real life to share my joy with.

5. The Muse - Jessie Burton Extensively reviewed so won't rehash the plot(s). I liked that this raced along at a pace. Preferred the 1960s story as I thought the 1930s one hung together far less well. Enjoyed overall though.

Next will either be Swing Time, or an Agatha Christie (the name escapes me) picked up from the library. I've not read any of her work before, but am a sucker for a detective novel, so see this as a serious omission!

Remus

Sorrows Of Young Werther

The Christopher Isherwoods

The Reader

HHhH

Night

Thanks, Happy.
Sorry to hear that, WhiteWine.
Relieved to hear all the Muppet love. I can cope with Dickens hate, but Muppets hatred would be SERIOUS.
Songbird. Young Wether? Really? Didn't you spend the whole book wanting to punch him?
Anyway, I've finished:
4. Run Away Home - Antonia Forest
Another Marlow Family book. Forest's problem is that she's a bloody good children's author, but she always gets overlooked because she writes genre instead of litrachoor. This was on one hand a mad seafaring adventure novel about some children trying to reunite a boy with his father, and on the other hand a very well thought out book about family, and doing the right thing, and the line between bravery and foolishness ... Thoroughly enjoyed it.

Remus - if you've not read it, Three Men on the Bummel was published in 1900 - and actually amongst the comic set pieces is actually quite interesting from the POV of seeing how British people viewed the Germans (if that makes sense). It's also hilarious, funnier than Three Men in a Boat I think.

(I particularly like the description of German language education vs British language education . . .depressingly, it would appear little has changed in 100yrs wrt their relative success in enabling the pupil to actually speak the language being taught.)

Daphne

I've got Bone Clocks to red after Anna Karenina, Really looking forward to it.

Remus - Sorry you didn't like Fallada - I found him avery moving and perceptive writer, but we are all different.

Songbird

I think Dickens' least worst are Bleak House, Our Mutual Friend, and Dombey and Son.

Sp we match on one out of three.

And I thought The Reader ws nasty.

Yay handsomedevil, another hamilfan

Love him or loathe him, Dickens created some iconic characters and scenes. I find it all a bit much at times, but there is good stuff in there - Great Expectations is excellent at describing the discomfort when rising above your station and having to keep a toe in both worlds. Lots of stories do rags to riches, but they don't all deal with how it feels, and that a part of you will always be where you came from.

I read The Reader at A level and thought it was good then, but don't rate it much in retrospect, having read more since.

Remus was the standard bearer for HHhH last year

10. Chasing Embers by James Bennett

Urban fantasy centred on Ben Garston, who dreams of living as an ordinary man and while he usually appears that way in the over 800 years of his life he is actually a dragon. He has the task of keeping the world of myth and legend a secret after the signing of an agreement under King John which sent all but one representative of each type of mythical being is sent into a long Sleep. There's a human Guild of knights which is supposed to police the Lore, but something has gone wrong and an ancient being has been awakened. The Lore has been broken and the world is under threat.

Pretty decent debut novel. I will probably end up getting the promised sequel to see how it progresses.

I went through a phase of reading a lot of Dickens, but my book group nearly lynched me after I suggested Bleak House. I like Pickwick, Little Dorritt and I've very sad that he never completed Edwin Drood. Cannot stand David Copperfield or Great Expectations.

Thanks. :)

HHhH one of the novels I've liked best in the last couple of years.

Have read Three Men on the Bummel (but not a patch on 'On the Boat' imho) and Isherwood. Didn't get on with The Reader.

Who is night by?

Sorrows too early for me. Only interested in Germany post-1900 really.

To those of you looking for a book to read, may I quickly recommend The Mask Of Dimitrios? I'm reading this book now and it is going very well. I think it's a spy book. A thriller in any case. An oldie (published in 1939) but introspective and very well written.