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.

*corporate - not corporal

boldly I loved Joanna Russ as a teenager - The Female Man (I particularly remember the section with Laura) and also The Adventures of Alyx.

I'm not talking to you, Remus

1. The Ladybird Book Of Mid-Life Crisis

This is short, painfully accurate, and very funny I loved it and I'm counting it, even if it took half an hour to read. Which I feel justified doing, after you lot have been posting glowing reviews for kiddie books such as Polyanna

Talking about kiddie books, the deeply wonderful Charlotte's Web is just 99p for this week on Kindle.

Cote If you're counting that, I'm counting (not really but I did read it) The Ladybird Book of the Zombie Apocalypse which I enjoyed enormously in the New Year, and which was a million times better than Measuring the World (just saying).

I didn't count it, but I was given for Christmas and would very highly recommend "We Go To The Gallery: A Dung Beetle Learning Guide". (blurb: "The jolly colourful illustrations will enable your child to smoothly internalize all of the debilitating middle class self-hatred contained in each artwork.")

(for anyone who didn't follow the story at the time, the author produced 1000 copies privately printed, Ladybird Books sued her and then brought out their own sanitised spoof books)

(Sadly my copy wasn't one of the original 1000 - she's since published them properly)

We Go to the Gallery is the best one!

Book 7 Code by Kathy Reichs. 3rd in the series of YA novels by Kathy Reichs starring the great niece of the Temperance Brennan. The Tory Brennan and her friends (the Virals) find a mysterious package and decide to follow the clues leading them into a cat and mouse game where they must beat the clock to save the people they love. It was a good read and carried on the story but must admit it felt very YA in parts, lots of angst and teenage rebellion, love rivarlly and our protagonist taking part in cottillion. Not sure i would recommend to those who haven't read the previous two instalments in the series.

Not sure about book 8 - possibly will start Lolita.

Just caught up. Condolences to those who have lost loved ones

Just finished book 18 Victoria:A Life - A.N. Wilson A brick of a book about Queen Victoria. Very well written and extremely well researched. Have to say I found tracking all the family very difficult- thank God for the family tree in the front. Would also say the political shenanigans were quite complex - reread many pages many times and still not sure I got there! Was a late at night reading a lot of the time.
Despite having a stack of books by my bed and swearing I wouldn't buy anymore I seem to have acquired a couple of books about the Tudors ! Damn you long waits at airports with on WHSmith for company!

Book 9 - Into Thin Air Jan Krakauer

Well - I read this with my heart in my mouth most of the time - knowing that there was no happy ending looming. It was an enthralling, absorbing read about places and experiences that I will never see or have. I got the sense of a man really doing his best to do justice to an experience and the people involved by telling what he sees as the truth to the very best of his ability. The whole thing has clearly had a huge impact on him as an individual and he lives with the choices and decisions he made in some impossible circumstances. Reading around this and googling its amazing to see the context, the cost of an expedition, the lengths people go to and the cost in terms of life, relationships and health that people go through to achieve these incredible feats of human endurance. What motivates people to climb the hugest mountain in the world...if you need to know - read this! I'd recommend.....

Makes my couch to 5k adventures pale into insignificance.

"The Ladybird Book of the Zombie Apocalypse which I enjoyed enormously in the New Year, and which was a million times better than Measuring the World"

Yes, but was it a million times better than Polyanna, to which you gave a glowing review, iirc?

Remus thank you for confirming my suspicions about Measuring the World . I had it on my wish list for a while last year, after reading the excellent Humboldt biography The Invention of Nature , but I removed it after looking at it more closely, and getting a whiff off it of exactly those things you did not like. Sorry Cote

10. Only the Innocent by Rachel Abbot Thriller from my Dad's kindle, which I would not have chosen myself. A high profile philanthropist is murdered, by a woman; he wasn't actually that nice, so there are plenty of potential suspects. Started out as what Fortuna would describe as a chewing gum book, but rapidly lost its flavour. Kept promising to deliver sordid secrets, in a breathless Take A Break style. Eventually revealed them, and, yes, they were pretty sordid, but I was past caring by then.

Condolences to those who have been bereaved.

My most recent were library impulse picks:

1. The Dead House Harry Bingham. I hadn't heard of this author or series but thought I'd give it a try. This is the 5th book in the series so I'm reading out of order which I normally try to avoid. I wasn't sure at the start if the heroine, a police officer with unusual attitudes towards the murder victims, was a character I'd take to, but I got completely drawn into the story. I requested the first one in the series from the library, looking forward to it.
2. Irene Pierre Lemaitre, first of a police procedural trilogy set in France, where a murderer is imitating scenes from crime novels. Fascinating concept and clever book but some of it was just too stomach churningly gory for me, so I won't check out the rest of the trilogy just yet.

10. The Readers of Broken Wheel Recommend Katarina Bivald. Perfect antidote to the previous read. Gentle, charming and quirky tale of a Swedish bookworm who goes to visit her American penpal, only to find she has died. But she stays on anyway, getting to know the townspeople she recognises from their letters. Reminded me of Chocolat but with books instead! Not sure what to start next - I got The North Water in the Kindle daily deal so maybe that!

You seem to be a bit obsessed with Pollyanna, Cote!

Well, I'm half way through The North Water now - blimey, it's grim!

20. Lois on the Loose by Lois Price

Travel writing - she rode a motorbike from Alaska all the way to the southernmost city in Argentina then back up to Brazil. I enjoyed it, although I would have liked to hear more about the USA part of her trip.

Ham - stay well away! Cote is going to have a lie down in a darkened room soon to have a good think about why she's wrong - and I am going to read 'Pollyanna' again.

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
11 Before the Fall by Noah Hawley
12 Beautiful Ruins by Jess Walter.
13 The Boston Girl by Anita Diamant
14 I Let You Go by Clare Mackintosh

15 Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk by Ben Fountain. Just finished this novel about a troop of American soldiers on leave during the Iraq War in 2003. The whole novel takes place over the course of a single day during which the 8 soldiers are the guests of honour at the Superbowl. The chief protagonist is 19 year old Billy who is trying and struggling to reconcile his wartime life and self with that of the life he knew as a civilian and the complete disconnect and disenchantment he feels while at home, the only solace is the company of his troop. It was well written, dense.The style is similar to that of John Updike.

Have started Be Frank With Me on audible. And plan on finishing the latest Stephen King trilogy with End of Watch this weekend.

I did enjoy the "Poly"Anna typo, sounds like an AI version that would be more up cote's street My copy has 255 pages, too right I'd count it.

I quite enjoyed The North Water Remus, but my complaint was its unrelenting grimness, which I think reached the point of absurdity towards the end.

Thanks for the review of do not say joyless, I decided against it as I have too much to read at the moment, but it does sound interesting and I haven't read many novels set in China so will look out for it at the library when I've cut down my tbr pile a bit.

I know I'm nearly 2 months out, but I'd love to do this.

elvisharchdruid Read, then come on and tell us what you've read and what you thought about it - never too late, and the amounts people read vary. Join in whenever you're ready

I just finished #10 - Crosstalk by Connie Willis
This was for bookclub, so felt obliged to finish it, but it was utter shit.
Chick lit pretending to be sci-fi, set in the near future, when couples can have a neurological procedure to allow them to be able to feel each other's feelings. THe main character and her terribly predictable cardboard boyfriend has one and hers goes wrong and she becomes properly telepathic and gets rescued by another telepath who happens to work in her office and is the office weirdo until he takes the classic "takes off his glasses and he is really cool" and comes to rescue her when she is freaking out. Over 500 pages, and could have been done in 200 if the editor had cut out the endless repetitive descriptions of people leaving rooms "He picked up his wallet and his phone, put them in his pocket, picked up his keys and his latte, opened the door, switched off the light and locked the door behind him" ..........ARGHHHH
Also alarmingly sterotypical about Irish people, has a 9-year old character who acts as though she is 15, and incredibly sexist (and I'm not a particularly militant feminist- but got really irritated by the amount of times cool weirdo telepath had to rescue her)

Gah, no more chick lit for me.

#11 The Reformation by Edward Gosselin
Non-fiction- Had to read something a bit more grown up after the dire cotton wool fluff of Crosstalk.