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.

Checking in, thanks for the new thread SouthEast. I'm still ploughing on towards the end of A Place Called Winter and properly enjoying it now, it felt very shaky to start with and maybe for the first third or so as though the author was doing a very elaborate set up and putting everything into place. This could have been done more effectively with flashbacks but whatevs. I really like this book, I'm definitely rooting for the main character and I wasn't before.

Quick question, I think this has been mentioned up thread somewhere but: can I real The Bone Clocks if I haven't read Cloud Atlas (by David Mitchell) first? I picked up a cheap copy of the Bone Clocks in a charity shop recently.

I read the Bone Clocks before Cloud Atlas and it was fine - not huge amounts of crossover, but similar themes. I actually found it easier to get into BC which is why I ended up reading it first, I found CA more accessible after that.

ca is more "clever" and brilliantly structured, bc more fun to read imo.

Can I join. Haven't read anything (other than textbooks for my degree) but have realised reading really does help me remain calm. Thinking of shortish book to start tomorrow.

I just finished #8 The Two Towers by JRRR Tolkiein (have read it before)

Have now started #9 Crosstalk for my book club - a kind of cross between chick lit and science fiction - not my thing at all - but then that's the point of book clubs isn't it?

FortunaMajor I completely understand what you are saying. I think I was angry about The Help but it was very muted, possibly because of the style but also because I wasn't shocked - I felt I knew a lot of it before and possibly because it happened in a different county then I felt less connected to it.
I think His Bloody Project just took it to a whole different level! It was an injustice within a period of time I knew very little about but it felt very personal. My family up until a couple of generations ago were tenant farmers and had been for generations. Not in Scotland but I find myself wondering if they too were kept down by such injustices.
I do like it when a book keeps me thinking and makes me want to find out more.

Have decided to restart reading Try not to Breathe. Got up to 15% last year before my holiday finished so am starting from the beginning again.

• by Holly Sedden.

SatsukiKusakabe One problem with ancient paperbacks is the print size. I know my eyesight has deteriorated but the smallness of print is off putting. At least with a kindle copy you can choose large print if tired .

I've had a kindle since they first came out but only in the last few months have I moved to preferring kindle over paper.

bibliomania Did you also find Fear of Flying on your mother's bookshelf?

It is so hard to keep up with these threads and do any reading!

for Joyless and Whitewine.

I love Antonia Forest Cheerful, few writers get teenage feeling and family life so well. Have you read them all?

Also not a Dickens fan here!

I've never read a dickens. I've got them all at home but their hardbacks and I always cheat and skip ahead when reading an actual book. Maybe I'll get Oliver Twist on Kindle someday soon.

Yy re print size, wex. I am totally spoilt by the kindle. Sometimes I look at the print and think are you kidding me?! I never thought that would be a factor in book choice.

11122 welcome. I download a lot of classics I already own on kindle too for ease of rereading, as they're free.

I know what you mean Wex, I tried to read my old copy of War Paint recently, about Elizabeth Arden and Helena Rubinstein but the type was incredibly small. I had to abandon the effort about 20 pages in

OK, bit of a small essay, I've been lazy in no updating so here we go...

The old...

1. The Life Project by Helen Pearson
2. Gone to Ground by Marie Jalowicz Simon
3. The Dreaming Void by Peter F Hamilton

The new...
4) Mother of Eden by Chris Beckett; This was v different to The Dreaming Void. Simple mythic style story telling. It's a follow up to Dark Eden and there is a third book also. They are set in a world with no sun, which is powered from the heat within the planet. Everyone is descended from the original stranded space travellers from earth. Humans being what they are, divisions and ideologies have sprung up, set around these original travellers and a split in the original settlement from several generations ago. You don't have to read Dark Eden first, but I would recommend it as the world building in that novel is v immersive.

This follow up focuses on the divisions and has interesting themes running through it of control, power & religion. At the heart of the book is a young woman who craves broader horizons than her egalitarian beachhead home allow; Starlight Brooking. She meets a headsman's son, Greenstone Johnsons and heads off with him to his much more patriarchal and power driven home. There is an actual plot following the clash of cultures and the attempts of Starlight to assert her own vision but I didn't find the detail of how events played out that credible personally. However, it does kind of work at a broad strokes level and after all, I was coming to this straight from the highly detailed narrative style of The Dreaming Void. The style of this was childish almost in comparison. I did enjoy it, but I guess I prefer more depth overall. I will certainly read the last one though.

5. The Churchill Factor by Boris Johnson; I hate to say it given Brexit etc, but this is a really readable accessible book on Churchill. If only Boris stuck to writing, huh! He clearly hero worships him and the style is informative and chatty, he hits the high points, brings us round some interesting side paths, highlights key events and moments, defends his hero against criticism and allows he was not perfect. A very good read to be honest. Light touch and very informal. I'd recommend. Incidentally, there's a chapter on Churchill's influence on the EU. V interesting reading.

6. Notes from a Small Island by Bill Bryson; this was a nostalgic re read. But omg, I thought I had enjoyed it but I can't have! It is pretty dull stuff. He tried to go around Britain by public transport. There is noting in the way of photos or maps to indicate where he is. Everywhere seems pretty much the same. It is nearly always raining, he is frequently stranded, the architecture is terrible, as are generally, the B&Bs. Can't believe I kept this on my shelf. It will be leaving for the second hand book shop shortly (is there still such a thing?)

Plus it was a cheap paperback and the print v muddy. I kept wanting to turn up my backlight spoilt by my kindle

Day two and we're already on page 3 - this thread is moving very fast this year.

Thanks for setting up a new thread Southeast.

Matilda a friend saw a play of Anne Frank last year where they had her as an adult reporter in Paris looking back on her life, then the present her gradually faded, sounded interesting.

Bringing over my list, no disasters which is good.

1. It -Stephen King
2. Swing Time -Zadie Smith
3. Pandemonium – Daryl Gregory
4. The Mirror Crack’d from Side to side – Agatha Christie
5. The Murder of Roger Ackroyd -Agatha Christie
6. The Essex Serpent – Sarah Perry
7. How to be Both – Ali Smith

and have nearly finished
8. The Way of Kings – Brandon Sanderson
The second-half of this has been faster paced than the first but I am now 90% or 900 pages through and the three main protagonists have still not met each other. I know this is very typical of fantasy but no other genre would let you get away with such bloated writing. Basically the story will barely have started by the end of the first book.

Remus, have you read Into Thin Air? - Jon Krakauer's account of the Everest disaster, it was a gripping, tragic read (one of only a handful of books I've reread) and one of the things that really stuck with my afterwards was the treatment of Beck Withers. Is Wither's account well written?

I'm not sure 1980s Kerry was quite ready for the zipless fuck, Wex.

"Remus, have you read Into Thin Air?"

Has she ever

"can I real The Bone Clocks if I haven't read Cloud Atlas"

Yes, and perhaps it's better in that order. Cloud Atlas is far superior imho and I didn't appreciate it as much after Cloud Atlas as I would have if I had read it some years ago.

Ha ha, my first time on a thread Cote! And there's me trying not to give away spoilers

It's a great book Desdemona.

desdemona It is very difficult to recommend anything that remus hasn't got to yet, but we all keep trying I've got Into Thin Air to read hopefully soon, looking forward to it

Desdemona - I certainly have! Cote - thanks for making that clear.

The Beck Weathers book is proving a huge letdown at the moment. It began well enough, with the events on the mountain, which are pretty well known anyway, to anybody who's read much about Everest. Unfortunately it then turns into a horribly boring middle section along the lines of 'I was born in 1975 to a man named Fred and a woman called Wilma, in Flinstone, Arizona and I had seventeen brothers and we all lived happily in a camper van with idyllic summer holidays on the beach and then I went to college and I was a bit of a genius and I did some weight lifting too.'

It's just awful. And to make it worse it keeps cutting into sections from his wife, brother, friend etc saying 'Beck was always clever but socially awkward' or whatever, 'And then he went sailing and bought a new radio'. I assume it's SUPPOSED to make us understand where his love for climbing came from, or why he became so driven or whatever or whatever, but it's badly written and dull, and often quite arrogant tosserish as well...No scrap that. It's arrogant tosserish tempered with 'Actual I was really vulnerable and unhappy and lacking in self esteem' tosserish.
Hopefully this will stop soon and we'll hear about his return to 'life' and the long haul of his recovery (and the recovery of his marriage which, quite frankly, I'm far less interested in). Unless it picks up substantially, I won't be recommending it!

Crossed posts, Satsuki. Sorry - am a pain.

Desdemona - Remus got us all to read (and love) Into Thin Air

remus Not at all! I get so many great recommendations from here and have none to fling in the opposite direction