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.

Hunger Games is definitely a YA book. But 10 and11 year olds are not teenagers. In my book, YA means 12+. (So His Dark Materials is borderline. But it so fits the tropes of a children's book - taking bears! Little girl going off on an adventure! that I'd put it in children's.)

You just said His Dark Materials would be for 10-13 year olds. 13 is teenager. So not really for children, is it?

Anyway, reading His Dark Materials in my 40s wasn't a great literary experience, as you can see in the link below. Maybe it would rock my world if I were 10 but not even 13 as I was reading Asimov, Heinlein, and Arthur C Clarke (there was no such thing as YA back then, especially where I was living) by then. No way is there anything in there that I would want to read as a 40-something year old.

Just to make this clear again: I'm not saying children's books can't be great. I'm sure they can, for children. Teenager books can also be great - for teenagers and possibly a bit before and after. I just don't ever want to read anything dumbed down for children and teenagers, as all that was a very long time ago for me and I have grown and developed significantly since then, not just in who I am but also in what I expect in stuff I read. (Others might read for different reasons or expect different stuff from what they read, which is perfectly fine, too.)

I don't think it's much to do with what section of the bookstore you choose from, it's what you find between the covers

I abandon particularly bad offenders, but even books I have liked and found largely interesting have suffered a little from this tendency. The North Water I enjoyed but it really did rely on repetitive goriness, especially toward the end, to make its unsubtle point, and the characters ended up being a little insubstantial. Golden Hill couldn't resist a ridiculous sexual interlude which didn't add as much as it took away. "Adult" themes are not always complex ones.

My point anyway is that children's literature is more simple, I agree, but it is a different discipline and there is still value to be found in it.

I haven't read Golden Hill so can't comment but re The North Water: "I enjoyed but it really did rely on repetitive goriness, especially toward the end, to make its unsubtle point, and the characters ended up being a little insubstantial."

I have to disagree. The book is what is called "American realist literature", so the foul language among sailors, gory details of what does on, etc is part of that.

Which unsubtle point are you referring to?

2. Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen. An average book at best. Didnt really enjoy it that much.

Perhaps you would like to step outside and say that, 111?

Don't misunderstand me. I don't mind violence in the least, or realism, or the genre; I'm a big fan of it. I have a postgrad American lit degree so am familiar with "what is called American realist literature" in general and I enjoyed the book.

Civilisation vs savagery/the amorality of nature and human nature etc etc - Did you find it subtle? I found it very evocative at first, but after describing diarrhoea in a couple of different ways, do you need to find a third and a fourth? Then even things that aren't diarrhoea are described as being like "rectal oozings"; a man smells of "crotch", blood spurts, blood spurts, blood spurts, on and on. Drax felt quite 2d villain by the end. My objection isn't one of squeamishness, but an aesthetic one - the pudding was overegged, and I felt a more subtle engagement with the subject would have given it more depth. It felt very much like it was striking one note, and this actually strained the realism for me. It was a good read with some good writing, but yes it did feel like gore took the place of other, more complex, insights in the text.

Another one was The Son - terrific premise, told with vivid, startling, realism - then just became sex and scalping ad infinitum and lost all its edge. Even scalping and sex become dull if not deployed with restraint

It just occurs to me that some modern adult fiction would do better if it didn't rest on these things quite so much and had to be more story-driven, and I'm merely acknowledging it requires a particular skill in children's writing to have to focus more centrally on story in the absence of this stuff.

I thought the article by Diana Wynne Jones was interesting re. the differences in writing for adults vs children. I think her comments only really worked though because her adult books are again a certain type of light fantasy. TBH I couldn't really say whether Howls Moving Castle or Year of the Griffin are aimed at teens are adults particularly

Comparing to say Ursula le Guin - another SF author who writes for both adults and children - and it doesn't work at all. Books like The Left Hand of Darkness / the Disposessed or even a simple little story like The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas are patently and clearly aimed at adults, and wouldn't be meaningful for anyone under the age of say 14/15.

"I have grown and developed significantly since then, not just in who I am but also in what I expect in stuff I read."

Slightly embarassingly, I think I probably had more mental space and time for complex / difficult novels when I was 18 than I do now. These days I am happy to read quite 'hard' non-fiction, but rarely read literary novels at all (not counting re-reads of things I first read when younger).

I'd agree with Diana Wynne Jones' adult books. Her books for children though, can have pretty dark themes: loneliness, exclusion, being exploited by adults, betrayal, use and abuse of power. The first one I read (age 9 or so) had the main character realising towards the end of the book that his beloved sister has planned to sacrifice him in order to gain power and has in fact been exploiting him all along. In another book, the main character has to make a choice that saves the lives of his family and friends, but by causing the death of a large number of soldiers. I think the key thing that makes them suitable for 9 year olds to read is the lack of nihilism - there is some way in which things "come good" in the end, though not necessarily without pain/loss.

I find that they have emotional depth as well as being written in a way that challenges the reader to pay attention because things are shown briefly or implied and she expects you to pick up on them and pay attention rather than spelling everything out. The magic in them always follows very logical (often twisty, but fundamentally consistent) rules, so there's enjoyment in figuring out the logic. Simplistic and happy they aren't, but they're certainly aimed at children rather than teens.

oops - missed half of the first sentence. I meant to say "I'd agree with Diana Wynne Jones' adult books being light fantasy."

Yy glitterbrained. I loved Diana Wynne Jones. Howl has a John Donne poem as a very satisfying riddle driving the story iirc.

Oh, agree that DWJ is wonderful. Perhaps the thing is that she's really a children's author who also writes light books for adults, whereas Ursula LG is really an adult author who sometimes writes for children (not to do down the Earthsea books).

I don't know if I'd enjoy a book like The Power of Three as much if I hadn't read it as a child - for me I think a lot of the pleasure in reading children's books (as opposed to YA lit) is in coming back to things I enjoyed when I was young. I don't think on the whole I get more out of them than I did back then (the only exception I can think of being the Laura Ingalls Wilder books which I now read for farming tips )

1. The Muse - Jessie Burton

1. Gone Without a Trace - Mary Torjussen
2. Flesh Wounds - Christopher Brookmyre
3. Phantom: a Harry Hole Thriller - Jo Nesbo
4. Dead Simple (Roy Grace Series) - Peter James
5. All Good Deeds (A Lucy Kendall Thriller) - Stacy Green
6. The Turtle Boy - Kealan Patrick Burke

8. His Bloody Project - Graeme McRae

1. The Rosie Project - Graeme Simsion

10. The Last Day of Christmas: The Fall of Jack Parlabane (short story) - Christopher Brookmyre 11. Tales of Protection - Erik Fosnes Hansen

12. The Wall of Sky, The Wall of Eye - Jonathan Letham

Another of DH's random uni book shop purchases, this is a book of sci-fi/thriller short stories. Many of the stories are set in some sort of dystopian future and have a particularly bleak outlook. Of particular note for me were The Happy Man in which a man is brought back from the dead to support his family but just spend his time shifting between his life and his own hell and The Hardened Criminals where a prison is built out of blocks made of bodies of prisoners.

I enjoyed the stories and became quite engaged in a couple to the point where I was sorry they weren't longer.

Well, yes, sadik nostalgia plays a large part. I wouldn't enjoy The Secret Garden in the same way if I read it fresh as an adult (good luck cote ) but I would certainly appreciate it and its place in the 'canon' and view it from a different perspective; as I said earlier, your intellect works on it in a different way.

"I wouldn't enjoy The Secret Garden in the same way if I read it fresh as an adult (good luck cote )"

I knew it! Argh!

in the same way is crucial - I'd enjoy it in a different way and for different reasons. You'll be fine!

(And if you tear it to shreds on here you're going to seem like a big meanie )

Cote - You will hate The Secret Garden. I defy you to read Goodnight Mr Tom and not be moved though.

Agree that The North Water made use of gore in order to try to hide some shortcomings in plot. And one only has to read Pat Barker to find books that make use of lots (and lots and lots and lots) of really boring sex scenes to try to hide the fact that the writer hasn't actually got enough content/isn't good enough as a writer to fill a novel otherwise.

I hated The Secret Garden when I was a child . . . kept trying to read it because it features in a Noel Streatfield book (The Painted Garden perhaps?), but I could never see why it was so popular. (Loved A Little Princess though.)

It can work both ways though - Gail Carriger writes steampunk comedies and the main difference between her books aimed at adults & those for children is the large amount of gratuitous innuendo. They're much funnier with the sex scenes IMO .

"And if you tear it to shreds on here you're going to seem like a big meanie )

Well, you know I've never let that stop me before so why start now?

It was an act of courage to recommend me a children's book so I'll try to be nice. Try. Can't guarantee.

Remus - I know you know what I hate so it's not looking good, is it? But I'll still read it fast, I hope

Goodnight Mr Tom a good suggestion.

And yy re: boring sex > plot. This spoils a lot of promising modern lit, and I'm starting to see boring gore creeping in the same way.

Nevertheless can I slither out from the suggestion I recommended it? I thought it didn't quite fit the black/white description of a child's novel in your post in the sense the child is kind of unlikeable, but I skidded to a stop short of actually recommending that you read it that was cheerful

This is all looking very promising not