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 Secret History Of Twin Peaks - Mark Frost

In anticipation of the new series, a book presented as a 'dossier' with back history on the town and its inhabitants, taking in a variety of conspiracy theories including UFOs, Freemasons, and the Kennedy assassination along the way. Purely for Twin Peaks aficionados but a good appetiser for the forthcoming series.

Just looking through the Kindle monthly deals for a new read. Would I like We Need To Talk About Kevin?

17. The Hanging Shed by Gordon Ferris.
Recommended somewhere in this thread and it fortuitously was available whilst I was browsing the library. Crime novel set in post-war Glasgow, Douglas Brodie is adjusting to civvie life when a blast from the past gets in trouble and he arrives from London to help. I thought it was a good solid crime novel. Guessed the ending but that didn't spoil it for me.

whippet - I am also reading one of the Ferrante books a year. I loved the second, the first one not as much. I may buck the trend and read the third one early. Also I liked the sound of the YA book you reviewed and have added it to my wish list.

Love a bit of SK. His writing reminds me of David Mitchell in a way. Loved It as a teenager, I was properly terrified by it (although I am a scaredy cat). Misery was good but horrifying. Recently enjoyed The Stand, The Shining and its sequel Dr Misery. As a teenager I read Carrie, Christine and Pet Sematary but Rose Madder was terrible and I then moved onto other authors.

Cote gosh that was a while ago. I have just trawled though a load of zombie threads where a handful of us were raving about Ready Player One.

Satsuki The audio is great if somewhat in your face.

11122aa We can be terrified together ...

Meg the Kevin book is awful! I know people rate it but I found it really naff. Very black and white, where the subject requires a much more subtle layering. . Hamfisted? I gave up on it. I'd just watch the movie and read another book. Tilda Swinton is always watchable.

Now I liked Kevin. Took me a while to get into it but what a read!! I much preferred the book to the film. It is horrific though but a very interesting take on the complexities of human character. I thought about it for ages afterwards.

I loved Stephen King books as a child,I used to enthusiastically reserve them at the library from the age of about 11 and nobody seemed to bat an eyelid! It is extremely creepy and I remember being terrified by Salems Lot too. I have the follow up to The Shining, Doctor Sleep, sat on my shelf to be read at the moment, is that going to scare me?

I would've loved that offer HappyFlappy! I've gone a bit Kindle book buying mad during incessant night feeds with a poorly, coughing baby these last couple of days so have plenty to keep me sanebusy now: the first two Shardlake books (£1.39 each), first three Anne Cleeves Shetland books (£1.19 in today's big deal),and from the monthly deals: The Last Girl by Joe Hart, Do No Harm by Henry Marsh and The Book of The Unnamed Midwife by Meg Elison. I'm tempted by The Dust That Falls From Dreams too but I think that's enough to be going on with this month, oops!

Ohhh, I loved Kevin. I thought it was anything but black and white. But it does seem to be a bit of a marmite book.

Agree that Kindle isn't brilliant for reading The Luminaries - part of the point of the book is this underlying structure which (I am ashamed to admit) TOTALLY passed me by on Kindle. It's signposted by some of the pictures/emblems etc used in the print book which you don't get in Kindle - though TBF it is also very heavily used as a theme in the book and I missed it all.........

Some great-looking books in Kindle sale this month:

Do No Harm
A Place Called Winter
The Power
Dark Fire (Shardlake)
Dadland
We Need to talk about Kevin
The Glass Palace
A couple by Lisa Genova (Still Alice)
The Woman Who Ran (based on The Tenant of Wildfell Hall which I know is popular on here)
Rose of Sarajevo

Not heard of this one before but it sounds intriguing:

Gone to Ground: One woman's extraordinary account of survival in the heart of Nazi Germany

Berlin 1941. Marie Jalowicz Simon, a nineteen-year-old Jewish woman, makes an extraordinary decision. All around her, Jews are being rounded up for deportation, forced labour and extermination. Marie takes off the yellow star and vanishes into the city.

Also, The Other Side of Loss. Can't remember if this is a book that has been recommended to me or if it is just of those "The X of Y" books that seemed to be everywhere a couple of years ago (The Sweetness of Forgetting, The Art of Racing in the Rain, The Art of Hearing Heartbeats, etc). Has anyone read it and would you recommend?

Noooo, now reminded of the time I went to see Pet Sematary with my friend at the cinema. Mistake. I still remember the trauma now (and I embarrassed myself by screaming aloud). My friend still laughs at me about it. Me = wuss.
However, I would love to call a cat Church. We have one now that looks just like the cat in the film. But not as evil. Although he does try and trip you down the stairs.

I read Misery as my first SK either last year or the year before as recommended by Remus. I did enjoy it but it made my chest tight with anxiety the whole time I was reading it.

13. All That Man Is, David Szalay

An easy read but surprisingly moving. A series of interlinked fragmentary stories about men of different ages Each involves a journey and they are set in a variety of places around Europe. Strangely seedy and mostly unlikeable but the Message (that the things you give a shit about when you're young fall away, and that life runs out very quickly) certainly hit home.

14. Big Brother, Lionel Shriver

Almost gave up on this one as I'd forgotten how annoying Shriver's narrators' voices can be, and how showy-offy her writing is in places. I think her books are actually best read out loud - I've heard her read on the radio and the way she writes works much better when read aloud. Anyway, I thought this was interesting though I'm not sure I would recommend it to a friend. It's an honest look at America's very weird relationship with food, told through the story of a woman who risks her marriage to help her morbidly obese brother to lose weight. Would be a brilliant book group read (much to discuss!) but most of the characters (and plot) seemed to be there only to hang off the central issue of the book, and had no real life of their own.

DH is a big Stephen King fan and we've got most of his books (if not all). I don't like horror so won't read them. I've seen some of the film versions and that's enough for me! One of the more recent ones that he didn't get on with was Under the Dome which he said was just unpleasant.

Book 11 The House by the Lake by Thomas Harding
Harding's grandmother was German and the family had a holiday house by a lake just outside Berlin in the 1920s. They were forced to flee in the 1930s because they were Jewish and never went back. After World War 2 the house ended up right on the edge of the border between West Berlin and East Germany - on the East German side. The book is the story of the various people who lived there and what happened to them and the house. A fascinating read although a bit slow in one or two places.

keith I think a couple of people on here have read that Gone to Ground, sounds familiar.

I am reading The Name of the Wind - anyone read it? It's a fantasy, a genre which I've not really dipped into for some time, but thought I'd give it a go for a change.

12. Pyramids by Terry Pratchett. I haven't read a Pratchett for years. Good fun.

Gone to Ground worth a read, if you're interested in that period/place.

I'm reading A Place Called Winter - liking so far.

Loving Bitch In A Bonnet.

Ladies and gentlemen, get your spit shields into place, here comes the Rev. Mr Collins.

Book 9. is my friend's unpublished manuscript. Does that count? She's a professional author and it's a full-length more-or-less finished book, which I'm pretty sure is going to be published, but it isn't technically a real book yet.
Anyway, I really enjoyed it. It was a bit daft but lots of fun.

I don't see why it wouldn't count.

I don't either - it doesn't matter whether or not it's been published yet.

13. No Picnic on Mount Etna - Felice Benuzzi The memoir of an Italian prisoner of war who escapes his camp in the company of two others to climb Mount Kenya. The whole enterprise is completely bonkers, with cobbled together equipment, information gleaned from the pictorial logo of Mount Kenya on a tin of oxo, and the advice of a seasoned mountaineer that the prisoners aren't fit enough. Oh, and the fact that when they've climbed the mountain, the plan is just to return to the pow camp. I loved this; the narrative voice was very evocative of my (extremely unadventurous) grandfather and there was a real subtle humour. I didn't expect to like this - it was a gift - but I am so glad I have read it.

14. Ready Player One - Ernest Cline - I read this because I am a sheep following the 50-book-thread herd. It was fine, but (whispers) not, in my opinion great - I guess I'm not enough of a gamer!

I've had my eye on No Picnic for ages. Would I like it, does anybody think?

Ranulph F's Cold is 99p. I liked it.

Dragontrainer if your not a gamer or a total 80s or dungeons and dragons nerd then I can see why it would float your boatime. His next book is awful.

Oh I agree dragontrainer RPO good fun but only a 3ish star read for me. Bit of light entertainment. I love the stuff referenced but I still found some of it a bit daft.