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.

10 The Sherlock Chronicles by Steve Tribe. Glossy coffee table book with lots of photos, written after broadcast of His Last Vow but before filming of The Abominable Bride.

Good points? Interesting if you're a fan, with descriptions of how various effects were done and some of the behind the scenes planning with interesting details like Derren Brown's actual involvement and that The Great Game was the first episode filmed after the never broadcast Pilot. Plenty of stuff that goes beyond standard interview/article fair. Various production notes chucked in, with props lists including "Bag of thumbs" etc.

Bad points: it was originally £25. At least Dick Turpin had the decency to wear a mask. I got it for £4 in the Works. Technical details probably only contain enough depth to interest a lay person like me. The tone however...yes, I don't find reading middle aged men kissing their own arses much fun to read. Self congratulating from Moffat and Gatiss to the point it felt masturbatory. If you're too busy being proud of how clever you are then you stop being clever (as seen on TV). Pity because the stuff about all the little shout outs they had originally to former Holmes adaptions was actually clever. Interesting read for a non-techie Sherlock fan only.

The Luminaries is £1.39 on the Kindle just for today. I really enjoyed this and good value at around 800 pages

I really enjoyed The Luminaries too and that's a really good price. I did find (on my old Kindle) that some of the design features of the book (no spoilers) weren't really apparent - I didn't realise the extent of the craft until I saw someone's hard copy. Also some of the charts don't display well, but I have a basic old Kindle and this version might be better.

sunset I read on Kindle and thought I'd like a paper copy for that, but not sure if it's worth a reread yet. It was very good, but not a great deal of depth - however I did enjoy the horoscope patterning once I'd sussed it so might like it more second time round.

11. Ready Player One Ernest Cline

I enjoyed this. It is a light, fun, feel-good read, and if you have an ill concealed movie/gaming/comic book geek in you, it appeals very deliberately to that, taking place is a virtual reality world designed by a man obsessed with 80s arcade games and films, amongst other things. It is very silly at times POSSIBLE SPOILER though not sure since so out of context and paraphrased - "how do I get up there?" "How about using my trainers?" "Your trainers?" "Yes, I've never mentioned these before but one of the things they do is enable you to fly!" Handy. Full of very daft and convenient stuff like this but you've just got to go with it. Very entertaining and looking forward to the upcoming Spielberg adaptation.

12. Wishful Drinking Carrie Fisher

This was short and basically a written version of her one woman stage show. It is a funny, affecting memoir of being the daughter of Hollywood stars, a star herself, the wife of an iconic singer-songwriter, and her struggles with addiction and bipolar disorder, told with wit and self-awareness. I found some of the anecdotes very funny, though there is an underlying sadness to it all, and her desire to turn harsh reality into something comic is inspiring.

Cheerful, that book sounds right up my street and it's in my local library. Have reserved it.

Life a bit hectic at the moment so haven't quite kept up with thread.

Have been reading: My beautiful genome : discovering our genetic future, one quirk at a time, by Lone Frank. An exploration of consumer genetics and also a sophisticated review of the nature v nurture v choice debate about what shapes our characters. She takes a personal approach, so there's more about her upbringing and family background than there is pure science, but I liked that. Interesting, thought-provoking and often quite funny (particularly an account of an unflattering character profile of herself that she received).

The story of the human body : evolution, health and disease by Daniel Lieberman I've read a few books about human evolution, so this is all fairly familiar territory. Interesting in terms of the mismatch between our bodies as products of evolution and the unnatural way we use them now - our diet, shoes, even our reading.

I've started Sapiens by Yuval Harari and so fair it covers exactly the same ground as the above. I need to read on to see if it actually is as innovative as some reviewers describe.

I'm also simultaneously reading Take Six Girls by Laura Thompson about the Mitfords. She starts from the point that their story is already well known (so not the book to start with if you're new to the subject) and examines the differences between their perceptions and their accounts of themselves and each other. I'm enjoying it.

This thread is making me do strange things. I stood and stared at my bookshelves yesterday for about 20 minutes trying to work out which book were 'cakey' books.

I have Ready Player One waiting for me at the library. Really looking forward to it!

biblio, I fancy reading Sapiens, so you'll have to report back.

Whippet Ready Player One is like a Smarties Easter Egg with lots of little Smartie packets inside

Hooray!

In honour of world book day local charity shop is selling 10 books for ONE SINGLE ENGLISH POUND!!!!!!!!

I got:
Christy Brown - A Shadow on Summer
Lee Child - Personal
Amitav Ghosh - The Hungry Tide
Hilary Mantel - Beyond Black
Helen MacDonald - H is for Hawk
Lisa Williams - The Art of Being Normal
Alan Bradley -The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie (especially pleased with this one)
Jesse Kellerman - The Brutal Art
CJ Sansom - Dissolution
Simon Callow - Shooting the Actor

I can now barely reach the top of my Books To Read pile, in order to add these others.

I am struggling to keep up with you lot, so much reading going on & I'm feeling much . Have been reading Slaughterhouse Five & Hallucinations without making much progress, so put aside for the following:

10. Essex Serpent - Sarah Perry. Much reviewed on here already and I largely enjoyed this with all it's various interlinking threads. I did think the [SPOILER ALERT] consummation of Cora & Will was both an odd scene & unnecessary. Worse, it was out-of-step with what I felt was a strong running theme of friendship. I feel the ending would've been all the stronger without it.

11. Ink in the Blood - Hilary Mantel. Barely a book, more a few pages in a diary, but a couple of interesting things to take from it as a writer.

Haven't feel properly well (as in not ill) since the New Year which might explain why I seem to be struggling on the reading front. Of course, there's waaaaay too much on the to-do list, but that's been the case for years! I know I've seen others struggling with difficulties but am afraid the only one I can now remember is Satsuki to whom I'm sending good wishes for your DH.

whippet, I will report back. Someone here was reading it recently and none too impressed - sorry, tried to scroll back but brain a bit fried.

Have been lured in by all the Ready Player One love and have also reserved it at the library.

Happy, that's an impressive haul. Personally I really liked Beyond Black, although the love wasn't universal. Also liked H is for Hawk and Dissolution. Good stuff.

That's a great load of books, happy, I'd have been giddy with that offer.

Thank you joyless, that's lovely of you I hope you are feeling well again soon yourself

I also see where you are coming from with the Essex Serpent. One of the things I was most impressed by was the emphasis on friendship, too. However, I decided that overall I liked that it bothered me so much, and gave me so much to think about. SPOILER I thought their actions "consummated" quite well the idea of the village and residents being under the spell of the serpent, and brought everything to a head. Also I can't help but think it was actually the more realistic culmination of all their back and forth relationship, as much as that jars with what I would "like". I would like to read it again.

21 Faulks on Fiction by Sebastian Faulks.

TV series spin-off with the author writing about a range of book characters under the rough categories Heroes, Lovers, Snobs and Villains. I think I remember someone else reading this upthread and not being wildly impresssed. It did feel very much a selection made by a man of a certain age and class, and really rather dated (even though it is only a few years old).

Nothing particularly novel or earthshattering in the way of insights, but I found it amusing enough not least for the mental parlour game of figuring out what books / characters he really should have included.

I raged about that book, Sadik. Thought it was massively sexist - Pride & Prejudice portrayed as being mainly about Darcy's journey? Hey, women experience personal growth too! And he was horrible about the lovely Marian Halcombe, talking about doing her from behind if memory serves. Absolutely infuriated by it.

bibliomania did he not pick up any clues as to what Elizabeth's journey to self awareness might have been in the and Prejudice bit It sounds awful.

14. 206 Bones - Kathy Reichs

First Kathy Reichs book I've read. Probably not fabulous to start on the 12th book of a series but was a library read. 206 bones covers the murder of four elderly woman whilst Dr Brennan has been accused of not carrying out investigations properly. Story continues to evolve and mishaps happen that she can't explain. Story was okay I wasn't completely gripped and not thrilled with the ending either. Overall a very so-so book for me.

Number 15 will be Daisy in Chains - Sharon Bolton.

10. Mindplayers by Pat Cadigan

This was part a "sci-fi classics" book I picked up when the price came down, knowing nothing about it except that it was about connecting minds and stuff. All that is right up my street, and I liked the non-feeeellz tone of the book à la Neal Stephenson & early-Gibson, but ultimately it just wasn't very good.

Then I realised that it is a (1) First book (2) by a female author, and we all know how I feel about those. Meh. There were some interesting ideas and all came together (sort of) in the end, but it just wasn't good enough to recommend.

I bought The Luminaries today so glad to hear that some people liked it! Is it very kiwi?...

Book 20
It by Stephen King
A re-read (probably the 5th?) but sometimes you just gotta. Re-reading this is like falling straight back into childhood – it’s not all golden but my goodness, it’s nice to think back on it sometimes. Like a lot of King, this could have done with a bit of editing/cutting down but what particularly impressed me on this reading of it was just how well structured it all is, moving cleverly in and out of childhood and adulthood as a team of people who had tried to defeat a monster as children, return as adults and try to finish the job. What’s it about? Well – a monster, of course. But also love and friendship and pain and fear and fun and joy and death and life and despair and hope and good and evil and light and dark sad endings and happy endings and probably various other binary oppositions that I’ve currently forgotten. I love it. There’s one weird bit that I’m still (After all this time? Always) not sure how I feel about and whether or not it was necessary, and a sad (except IS it sad, or is it actually a sort of happy?!) bit that I still wish didn’t have to happen, but this is overall King at his very finest.

I loved The Luminaries.

Stephen King ain't no Shakespeare but wow, he can write! A good SK book is pure gold.

The Luminaries has a good story which the writer then spoils by pratting around with it too much, and the ending is dreadful. I liked so much about it, but ultimately I felt a bit cheated.

Amen to that, Cote.

y Luminaries review = Mixed feelings about this one. I really enjoyed the actual story, and thought it was very clever in the way that we saw the same events from different angles/characters throughout, but thought that the long windedness let it down and that there was quite a lot of unnecessary backstory and some really boring pen portraits of characters, that all got very samey. I didn’t see any point at all in the astrology stuff and thought the ending was weak. In fact, I felt rather let down by the ending and even up to 99% of reading, I was expecting to be more positive in my review than I’m now being. Overall though, it now feels as if it was a lot of effort for not much reward – pay dirt, as it’d be called in the mining towns, I guess.

Then again, for £1.50 or whatever it is, you get an awful lot of pages for your pennies!

I haven't read any Stephen King since I was a teenager. I don't know if I dare. They used to scare the life out of me and caused many a sleepless night. I still check behind the shower curtain for Pennywise and have issues with drains. The Dark Half was my favourite. Do they get any less scary as an adult? I'm rubbish with horror.

I'm going to have to sleep with the light on now so Gage doesn't come to get me.

It is the only one that ever scared me.