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.

I've lost track of my books - will have to go back to last thread to find which number I'm on.

I finished Marking Time and had to go straight on to Confusion as I was desperate to know what happened next. Am about 2/3 of the way through and now feeling a little bit bogged down if I am honest. Have just got four non-Cazalet books out of the library and looking forward to moving on to one of those next.

Colm Toibin - didn't enjoy Brooklyn much but I did really like The Blackwater Lightship.

I'm losing track too - think that All the Light We Cannot See, Anthony Doerr is No 5. Will have to check.

I was pleasantly surprised by this. I try to avoid modern books set in WW2 as it seems to be very overdone and I find that the authors struggle to recreate the atmosphere. In fact, I nearly gave up on this because the dialogue initially seemed all wrong. However, the only role of WW2 in this story is the backdrop: the rest is about radios , snails and gemstones, amongst other things. It's an easy read - short chapters - and I really enjoyed it.

12. Kingmaker: Divided Souls - Toby Clements

The follow-up from the one reviewed upthread. This was ok but I still felt very frustrated reading it - things that seemed significant but were then dropped in the first book were not resolved here and in fact, similar things happened again! It has such good reviews on Amazon and I wanted to like it more but the plot holes just annoy me too much. I don't know whether the author is trying to be clever by dangling hints and then going for a grand reveal in the third book or if he isn't quite in control of his material and simply forgets he puts them in. A bit disappointing really and I'm not sure I will read the third. If the same happens again, I'll end up throwing it across the room!

1. Everyone Brave is Forgiven - Chris Cleave - life and love in war torn London. I know others on here have loved this, and there are good things about it, but overall I found this book a bit of a miss. The very forced and arch conversations between the various characters were just too much.

1. The World's Wife Carol Ann Duffy - I shouldn't have been buying any new books until making a dent in the virtual pile of purchased but unread books. However, I was just too tempted by the recommendations on this thread of this volume of poems told from famous wives' perspectives. I loved this; it is such a long time since I've read any poetry and it made for a good change!

1. Slow Horses Mick Herron - Slough House is the office building where the intelligence forces dump the staff who've royally messed up but can't be sacked. The officers at Slough House become involved in a real, interesting case and work together towards a solution. I felt this book was close to being good, but not quite there - may read some more in the series to see if it improves as it did show promise.

17. The Plague by C. C. Humphreys. Ridiculous tale of a highwayman accused of being a serial killer who ends up teaming up as a crime fighting duo with his pursuer to capture the real killer. All set during the Great Plague of London. It is a pile of steaming excrement more fetid than the plague pits within. The final chapter set up the possibility of a sequel, or worse, a series. Avoid.

My library is self service and I picked this up from the returns trolley before the staff had put it away. I now resent their laziness and failure to separate me from dreadful fiction. Mostly I'm disappointed in myself. I've cast aside better books for lesser crimes.

Book 13
The Burning World by Isaac Marion
Sequel to ‘Warm Bodies’. This was absolutely terrible. I think he’d read the final book of the ‘Passage’ trilogy and set out to emulate it, so it was completely disjointed and waffly and never really got anywhere. Stay well away.

Tara Have got 'Everest' on DVD but only watched about twenty minutes of it so far. It was annoying me because I couldn't tell who was who. I needed a guide on the cover to say 'Red coat' = Beck and 'Green hat = Rob Hall' etc.

Dragon so pleased you liked The World's Wife. I think it is pure genius!

Seems to be a run of terrible books. Good, it's not just me then. Just started the audio book of Coffin Road by Peter May and so far it's all prosaic prose, preposterous plot, and, urgh, pointless cringy sex.

Love The World's Wife. Duffy at her best is magnificent.

So after googling the Brandon Sanderson Way of Kings, I now find out it's not the first of a trilogy as I supposed but the first of a planned series of 10 books. It seems extraordinarily self-indulgent. Only the first two have been published so far. What happened to telling a succinct tale? Even LOTR was only about 1,000 pages IIRC and that felt long.

Anyway as an antidote I have started a Sci-fi classic by Ursula Le Guin that comes in at 144p long The word for world is forest.

Ohmigosh...I go off the internet for a week due to various bugs felling the children, and I seem to have missed an entire thread! Here's hoping I can make more of a contribution to thread 3.

I have only skim read this thread, but mention of The World's Wife caught my eye. It is a sublime collection, and I have a soft spot for it. Throughout school, I thought I hated poetry and made huge efforts to avoid poetry in my adult life. A friend thrust The World's Wife at me and basically nagged me day in and day out until I read it just to shut her up. It drew me in instantly, and I read it 2-3 times over and over.

Also, that book made me realise that poetry is not meant to be read silently...you have to read it aloud, even if to yourself. That's when some of the subtler rhymes and repetitive sounds become apparent.

I must dig out my copy again.

Oh god, Brandon Sanderson. I quite liked the first Mistborn book and I think did wade through the other two in the trilogy - but he's definitely not an exponent of less is more . . .

I'm reading A Very Expensive Poison about Alexander Litvinenko's murder rather slowly. Much more taken with my current Audible offering which is What We Cannot Know by Marcus du Sautoy - definitely one where I'm trying to stretch it out and make it last because I'm enjoying it so much (at least in part because I love his voice ).

And I just realised that I can remember the Anne Hathaway poem verbatim. I'm not sure whether to be impressed with myself or be embarrassed

I'm reading Lord Of The Flies again as I ripped through it the first time. It really is sublime. Can I count it twice?

Love love love The World's Wife!

Nothing to be embarrassed about poetic, I deliberately try and memorise poems I like still, they are then a balm for any boring activity. I like some Carol Ann Duffy but she's not a favourite of mine.

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. I think this is my favourite so far. It's been on my to-read list for years and I finally got around to it. It's about a young Italian man, looking after his mother in a remote seaside fishing village in 1962. A young American actress comes to stay in his village. Their story then spans across decades - backwards and forwards and quite a few principle characters involved along the way. There is a lovely humour running throughout and in particular the chapters set in Porto Vergogna.

It's going to be a tough act to follow. Next up it will be Rules of Civility by Amor Towles or else The One in a Million Boy by Monica Wood.

Am listening to I Let You Go on audible. It's ok, but not great. I haven't decided whether thrillers or else classics suit me better on audible. Middlemarch on audible was amazing, my favourite so far.

oh missed the new thread! More to add to the 'to read' list...

have been on a bit of a police/murder mystery theme -

9. Rather be the Devil - Ian Rankin - most recent in the 'Rebus' series, with Malcom Fox from his other books included. As often with these, several cases interwoven - a local gangster has been beaten up. The now retired (and showing his age) Rebus starts looking into an old unsolved murder from the late 70s. Another retired policeman is murdered. Have always enjoyed the Rebus books and this is a good one.

Then from the gritty Edinburgh underworld to something more fluffy:

10. The Killings at Badgers Drift - Caroline Graham - this is the first of the "midsummer murders" books, written in late 80s. An old spinster dies of a suspected heart attack but her feisty old friend believes foul play is at work, and convinces Barnaby and Troy to investigate. A cosy murder mystery, not as crazy as I remember the TV series being (not sure I've actually bothered to watch it for years!), but perhaps that will turn up in later books in the series!

I'm now continuing the theme of different police/murder books - have just started the latest of the Shetland series by Ann Cleeves.

no 5 : Golden Hill - Francis Spufford

I'm not sure how I feel about this book. I enjoyed reading it, and absolutely loved the atmosphere of 18th century New York. A lot of the humour is in the juxtaposition of the overly flowery language of the times and the situations being described. I genuinely laughed out loud several times.
But, now that I've finished it, I'm not sure what the point of the book was. The over-arching mystery of the reason why Mr Smith is in New York is revealed suddenly and abruptly 15 pages short of the end, and I personally found it a bit of an anti-climax. I also found it very hard to flesh out Mr Smith in my imagination. Considering he is in every single page and tableau, he is a bit of a cipher personality-wise! I much preferred Septimus and Achilles as fully drawn characters.

1. The One We Fell in Love With - Paige Toon
2. This Is Where It Ends - Marieke Nijkamp
3. The Girl Who Lied - Sue Fortin

4. Girls on Fire - Robin Wasserman 5. The Heat of Betrayal - Douglas Kennedy

1. Forget You Had a Daughter: Doing Time in the Bangkok Hilton - Sandra Gregory
2. Fangirl - Rainbow Rowell
3. Trust in Me - Sophie McKenzie
4. Close Enough to Kill - Beverly Barton

10. Anne Frank: The Diary of a Young Girl

Finally finished book ten. This took a little longer than average to read as knowing the ending and where it was heading made it a difficult read. I think everyone should read it at least once and that was my aim and I can't believe it's taken me so long to do it! Saddens me that had she survived a few more months in the camp she may have went on to be freed and live the life she dreamed of but of course we will never know how that would have turned out.

To whoever mentioned the play about Anne as a journalist up thread that sounds very interesting!

13. The Dark Net by Jamie Bartlett

Fascinating. Lots has been said about this; suffice to say that I think everyone with children should read it.

So in my stupidity i posted on the old thread instead of this one, which wouldn't be too bad if i wasn't doing to to mark my place!

Still plodding along with Code by Kathy Reichs, finding it a tad slow and the short chapters a little grating but overall enjoying it.

runs off to catch up with thread

7 The Beginning of Spring by Penelope Fitzgerald
Frank Reid lives in Moscow in 1913 with his wife and three children. At the beginning of the book - completely unexpectedly - his wife Nellie packs herself and the three children off back to England. The book is about what happens next. It's a beautifully written book and Fitzgerald really created a strong sense of place - of a city waking up at the end of the long hard winter. And there is the underlying hints of trouble brewing. Reid is an insider and outsider. He was brought up in Moscow and has lived there most of his life but he is still a foreigner and nothing is certain for him. There's lots of humour in it. It's not a long book - only a couple of hundred pages or so - but I did feel as if I was there with them.

Am now reading a history of Arbella Stuart who was once seen as a potential heir to Elizabeth I.

Loved that review, Fortuna.

13. Time after Time, Molly Keane
Four ageing siblings live in rancorous disharmony in a crumbling Anglo-Irish big house, when into their lives sweeps a long-forgotten cousin, blind, charming and spiteful, and everything changes.

Not sure how I felt about this - their world is vividly evoked, but the humour is very bleak. I did like the end, when she suddenly softened towards her characters and gave at least some of them hope for the future.

Fortuna's review