50 Book Challenge 2017 Part Three

[southeastdweller]

Welcome to the third 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 first thread of the year is here and the second one here.

DrDiva

Book no 9. Heart and soul by Maeve Binchy. Haven't read Binchy for years but it was from a pile of books given to me by FIL after MIL died a few months ago. It was OK. I do like the way she weaves characters around and even brings in characters from other books but I find the characters themselves to be two dimensional with unrealistically simplistic lives. But it was a nice easy read.

Have just started back on placement (student nurse) and have tons of reading to do and a 5000 word essay so it's likely to be easy reads for the next few months. Have a huge number of outstanding books on my Kindle; might start a Monty Don book next.

Sorry for your loss Whippet & Diva

What did you think of Ragnarok Whippet? We did it for book club last year and I think I was the only one who finished it. Some lovely descriptions but no real story, I thought. In fact my favourite bit was the afterword.

I read We should all be feminists but won't count it as it was so short. It was OK but a bit obvious, maybe better for people who have no prior ideas about feminism.

I've just started The year of our war by Steph Swainston, a fantasy type book. Dh recommended it and the blurb compares it to China Mieville & Mervyn Peake. It has giant insects, immortals and winged humans & is generally bonkers so far.

10. All Creatures Great and Small, James Herriot. A lovely book of loveliness - Yorkshire Dales, characterful farmers with equally characterful animals, a fickle boss and a series of dodgy cars. Mild and humorous and gently self-mocking. I loved reading this and would quite like to crawl into that world with its craggy hills and Jersey cows (even though I'm a bit scared of cows, but Herriot makes them sound mostly ok ).

Have been reading but not had a huge amount to post. Still reading Code but having returned to work a couple of days ago my reading time has been cut short.

So sorry to hear about your loses Whippet and DrDiva .

Thanks for all the good wishes. She was a lovely MIL
I'm sorry to hear about your FIL DrDiva

Stokey, I enjoyed Ragnarok but I think I would enjoy to read the myths in translation or in a straightforward context rather than they way they are presented in the book. I wanted to know more about the girl though!

Sorry for your losses Whippet and DrDiva

19. Me & Mr Darcy by Alexandra Potter

Chicklit about an American woman who joins a tour of locations related to Jane Austen. There is a grumpy male journalist. Very predictable and heroine was rather annoying but quite good fun.

Sorry for those who have had losses :-(

It's arrived Remus. My heart was in my mouth as the package turned up with one of these but thankfully the contents are fine.

Got to finish His Bloody Project tomorrow then I'll get cracking. Thank you so much.

Just placemarking - I'm still working my way through Things We Cannot Know by Marcus du Sautoy on audio. It's excellent, but I need to listen a bit at a time, and then stop and think

Don't have any 'proper' books on the go right now as I'm waiting on an ebay copy of A Long Way Home (the book that inspired the film Lion), and don't really want to start anything else first, so have reverted to Draco Veritas in the meantime.

13. Night Watch by Terry Pratchett

I decided on a re-read after watching Terry Pratchett: Back In Black at the weekend and discovering that Neil Gaiman and I agree as to the best of the Discworld novels. An series of incidents put Commander Vimes on the roof of the Unseen University in a thunderstorm, and the lightning strike sends him and the murderer he was pursuing back through time to the dark days of the end of Lord Winder's rule, his own youth, and revolution, and he has no idea how to get back home.

Gad it's arrived, Best, albeit looking a little the worse for wear. That's the second parcel in a week I know of that has had that happen to it. Opportunistic postal workers, maybe?

Cote - I was generalising. I'm on 96% now and I still don't like it. Will probably finish it in the next half an hour, unless I decide to drown it instead.

Glad not gad - keyboard being a pain.

Sorry to hear your news Whippet and DrDiva.

Chillie - Terry Pratchett decorated my house. I had the audiobooks on while I was painting. I did the whole house in 5 weeks and got through quite a few of them. My Mum is moving in a few weeks and will need the full works doing in the new house, so I think I will have to pick up where I left off. Never made it as far as Night Watch, but will keep going until I do. I'm doing them in publishing order rather than by sub-series, which I know isn't always recommended.

I haven't done much reading myself the last few days as I am helping Mum have a massive clearout ready for moving. I emptied the loft today and had a fabulous trip down memory lane with old toys and the like. I've also 'acquired' a lot of our childhood books, so lots of Enid Blyton, Arthur Ransome, Elinor Brent-Dyer etc. As the youngest I'm not sure I can genuinely lay claim to most of them, but finders keepers. We all used to get a really lovely illustrated hardback book for Christmas each year, so I have liberated many of those too. Ones like A Little Princess, The Railway Children, Five Children and It and The Borrowers. I'm really looking forward to reading them all again. I've also found my English, Spanish and French Literature books from school, all covered with tiny notes inside. Not sure I'll be reading any of those again in a hurry. I'll need to buy a new bookcase. Jackie and Blue Jeans Annuals circa 1975 anyone?

Sorry to hear of your losses Whippet and DrDiva. I had missed them

Going to put Nightwatch on my TBR list. Never managed a Pratchett book but millions can't be wrong can they?

Sorry for your loss too drdiva

Do Not Say We Have Nothing from the Booker list is on deal today - I know a couple of people read it on here, but can't remember the verdict.

Excited about the new Philip Pullman Trilogy later this year; might be time to reread His Dark Materials.

Thank you for the good wishes everyone, really appreciated.

Someone mentioned Michelle Paver upthread - she got me into audible books, with the Wolf Brother series, read by the sublime Ian McKellen. They were wonderful, in large part because of him, I think. I am currently listening to Gods and Warriors, and while I am enjoying it, the poor narrator hasn't a hope of measuring up!

Still ploughing through Nicholas Pegg's The Complete David Bowie on Kindle, I think the physical book must be a brick because I'm only up to 77% but really enjoying it.
Bought Northwater when it was on the 99p deal yesterday so pleased to see some love for it on here today. Is today's deal Do Not Say We Have Nothing worth buying. I'm getting quite the backlog since signing up to the deal of the day email

Sorry to those who've been bereaved.

Chillie, I agree about the brilliance of Night Watch. Terry Pratchett was unusual in being morally serious without every coming across as po-faced or earnest.

Fortuna, very jealous of your stash of childhood books.

16. Books for Living, Will Schalbe.
Short essays about books that have meant a lot to him. It was all a bit Thought for the Day and didn't give much insight into the actual books. The most memorable chapter harks back to when he was 20, recently out as gay, and AIDS was cutting swathes through the young men he knew.

for whippet and diva. So sorry for your loss.

Been a bit slow with my last book even though it's only 213 pages!
13. The Female Man - Joanna Russ
This is a 70's feminist novel reflecting on the role of gender expectations following the lives of women from parallel worlds. The ideas explored in it were interesting and some of it was unfortunately still very relevant. However, the style of writing was very 'stream of consciousness' and in places it was hard to follow who the narrator was. It was hard to just read little bits at a time and I expect I would have got more out of it if I had been able to read it all in one go. It needs an prolonged, immersive read to really understand and appreciate the ideas I think.
That said, it is worth a read if you are interested in feminist ideas on gender roles and can devote a couple of hours to read it all through in one go. Some passages gave me real pause for thought.

DrDiva & wippet for your both.

Satsuki my views on Do Not Say We Have Nothing are here - longer than I'd put on here.

Book 8: Straight by Dick Francis. Usual up-to-standard thriller where world of horse racing overlaps with gem trading.
Book 9: The Universe vs Alex Woods by Gavin Extence which I didn't expect to like but really did. Tale of unusual young teenage male (clever, nerdy, naive, principled) who develops a friendship with elderly widowed vietnam vet. Serious topic, but - I felt - beautifully done & not mawkish.

I remember reading How to Suppress Women's Writing by that author, boldly - highly recommended. She makes serious points with great wit.

Book 17
Measuring the World by Daniel Kehlmann
Oh dear. Oh dear. I did not like this. It is about a natural Scientist and a mathematician (who for the purposes of convenience shall be lumped together as scientists for the purpose of this review, since they are pretty much interchangeable). One likes sex, the other is pretty much asexual but other than that they are essentially the same person, except one likes running around measuring hills and stuff, and the other one does sums. Neither of them has any clue at all about the world, or people or any self-awareness.

I have no idea what this book was TRYING to be, but what it IS is trite, uninspiring, pretty damn boring nonsense. I think it’s supposed to be a bit amusing, in a Teutonic sort of way, but it didn’t make me laugh at all. I knew quite a lot about Humboldt already, and had previously been interested, but this novel has positively murdered any previous interest I had in him.

Sorry Cote but I hated it. The only reason I finished it was to try to find out what on earth you saw in it, but, if anything, I thought it got even worse in the second half. It reminded me of something along the lines of, 'The Thousand Year Old Man who Jumped out of a Window and Wandered about for a Bit' or 'A Short History of Combine Harvesters whilst Salmon Fishing in the Yemen' or other ridiculously 'whimsical' novels of that ilk.

Just finished the Bhopal book. It isn't particularly well written (or possibly a poor translation) but it is still a shocking catalogue of greed (both corporal and personal), arrogance, callous disregard for human life, ignorance, apathy, sheer-bloody-idleness, cost-cutting and a contempt for safety measures that was horrendous.

No-one was held responsible, the Union Carbide company was fined a derisory sum. (Monsanto has now taken over as exploiter of the world's poor.)

No-one can put a figure on the dead because many of them were just nameless humanity - drought-stricken farmers and their families who had been forced into the slums of Bhopal. Estimates range between 6,000 and 30,000 dead in the disaster itself an the two years following. There is even now an unusual number of tumours and birth defects. It's horrific!

About to start book umpteen (I'd have to check the number). "But You Did Not Come Back" - another Holocaust one. After this I think I'll find something lighter.