50 Book Challenge 2017 Part Four

[southeastdweller]

Welcome to the fourth 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, the second one here, and the third thread here.

What are you reading?

1. The Nest by Cynthia D'Aprix Sweeney
2. Our Endless Numbered Days by Clare Fuller
3. Ready Player One by Ernest Kline
4. Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day by Winifred Watson
5. Everyone Brave is Forgiven by Chris Cleave
6. Still Life by Louise Penny
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 13. The Boston Girl by Anita Diamant 14. I Let You Go by Clare Mackintosh 15. Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk by Ben Fountain 16. Be Frank With Me by Julia Claiborne Johnson 17. End of Watch by Stephen King (last of this fantastic SK trilogy) 18. Eileen by Otessa Moshfegh 19. Jamaica Inn by Daphne du Maurier 20. All We Shall Know by Donal Ryan

21. This Must be the Place by Maggie O'Farrell.

22. Rush Oh! by Shirley Barrett. I thought this was charming and funny and completely engaging. It's about a community in New South Wales in the very early 1900s, in particular about the Davidson family. George 'Fearless' Davidson is the patriarch and is a 3rd generation whaler. He is a widower with 6 children and the narrator is his oldest daughter, Mary. She has a fantastic voice throughout. Other characters include the crew of the 2 whaling boats, the local townspeople and a pod(?) of killer whales who are longtime hunting companions of the whaling crew. I enjoyed the description of the Davidson's inseparable horse and cow - and how the seemingly simple act of bringing the horse to town must always involve waiting for the cow to wander along behind them. There are so many little highlights along the way, I loved this. So far my most enjoyable read of this year.

Will start Dark Matter by Blake Crouch this weekend, and must pick out an audible book as well.

13. Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? by Philip K Dick Set in a dystopian future where a large percentage of earth's population has emigrated to Mars following a massive war. Androids are used in space to do all the hard labour and are not supposed to be on earth. The newest androids are so similar to humans it is virtually impossible to tell the difference. A few have escaped and are on the run on earth. Our hero is the bounty hunter who hunts them down and destroys them. Some fascinating ideas in what is a very short book (less than 200 pages). I thought the denouement was a bit rushed, I would have liked a bit more. But then maybe that's the book's strength, leaves the rest to your imagination.

Have you seen the filmCedar? It is awesome, called Blade Runner. Well worth watching if you haven't.

Vanderley - your friend's book sounds great fun :) (But ouch as to the price having just looked it up :( )

boldly thanks for the Testosterone Rex recommendation, sounds right up my street, also Diva on that basis, I'm off to look at Delusions of Gender too. spinningheart I find myself strangly drawn to Rush Oh on the basis of your review (and the ones I've just read on amazon). My poor TBR list.

Stokey that's exactly how I felt about Go Set A Watchman too. I found it of enormous interest from a writing/editing perspective and felt I learned a great deal from it on that basis. Nail on head there with your final sentence, I'm still in the process of doing that and hope there'll be a real story left when I'm done

Am in midst of reading My Antonia based upon multiple recommendations here ... and am loving it.

Joyless If my review encourages you to read Rush Oh! I would be so pleased because I was thinking how I couldn't do it justice.
My Antonia is indeed beautiful. I have my fathers hardback copy of it from 1946, it was one of his favourite books and makes me think of him.

Sorry about the spoiler, have reported myself.

Good luck Joyless , something I aspire to doing if I can stay off MN long enough

Have been flicking through Shelf Discovery: The Teen Classics We Never Stopped Reading, by Lizzie Scurnick. I'm skimming too much to add it to my tally. It's too American-focused for me - I haven't read most of the books (save for some Lois Duncan and of course the immortal Virginia Andrews) and this book relies heavily on the nostalgia factor rather than on any real insight or good writing in its own right. A disappointment.

12 - The Tea Planters Wife - Dinah Jefferies - Newly married 19 year old Gwen arrives in Ceylon to join up with Lawrence her husband (a widowed tea plantation own) to find that he is not as he seemed when they married in London. The plantation and her husband seem full of secrets and it is not long until she has one of her own which if discovered threatens their marriage. This was ok and I felt like that I had plough through most of the book for it to get really interesting.

13 - We Were Liars - E Lockhart - I won't spoil this book for anybody who is likely to read it by explaining the plot. This was a quick and easy read and the twist was a total surprise. I suspect that if I read this as a teenager that I would have loved it.

14 - Go Set a Watchman - Harper Lee - My thoughts on this are very similar to Stokey and I found it just didn't really engage me. It felt very much like a draft rather than a finished and full crafted novel.

Not sure what I am going to read next. I need to have a look at my to read pile when I get home.

RhuBarbarella yes I have seen Blade Runner. It is interesting to see the differences between the film and the book. There's actually very limited description in the book of the landscapes that they live in - something that is explored so much more in the film.

My Antonia is a lovely book. I thoroughly enjoyed re-reading it last year. I first studied it at university.

Phew found you! Thank you southeast for the thread.
Before I forget, dd said thank you for all your non fiction suggestions it's going to cost me a fortune

1. All I ever wanted by Lucy Dillon. I love her books and quite often re read them. This one is about separation and the effects on the two children, one of whom stops speaking. I think she writes well rounded characters.
2. Everyone brave is forgiven by Chris Cleave. Murine! What a book! I wanted to gobble it all up in one sitting but also wanted to read it so slowly so that it wouldn't end!

spinningheart I have wishlisted Rush-Oh too.

❤️ My Antonia hope you end up loving it too joyless. When I read it I feel like I had a childhood in Nebraska.

Sharing the My Antonia love - it's a great book.

I am a bit vague on the numbering, but guess that I am on:

#13. The Loney John Micheal Hurley - a loner recalls his religious childhood with a brother with special needs, particularly in relation to a pilgrimage his family took to a windswept Northern shrine. Some parts of this were fabulous and really conveyed a chilling atmosphere. Other parts were more of a skim read.

14. Lumen - Ben Pastor. A young intelligence officer in the Wehrmacht ivestigates the death of a nun shortly after the occupation of Poland in the Second World War. Some of this was straightforward detective fiction, while other parts looked to the officer's growing struggles with his conscience in respect of the behaviour of the occupying forces. There was good potential in this book, but it was marred for me by a narrative style I found quite disjointed.

1. Orphan X by Gregg Hurwitz - This was an Audible daily deal and is a Bourne style thriller about an off the grid assassin with expertise in virtually everything to do with weapons, security, computers, martial arts and all the usual spy stuff. He also has a weird obsession with vodka which is rather tedious. The story was diverting but pretty predictable. I understand there is to be a film with Bradley Cooper, surely can't be as good as the Bourne films?!

I'm now reading an Agatha Christie, 4.50 from Paddington. I really thought I'd read it before but I don't remember ANY of the story or the characters. I'm really enjoying it so far.

(Not googling My Antonia, not googling My Antonia, not googling My Antonia... TBR pile still mountainous...)

There is a new Blade Runner film coming out this year

Glad you enjoyed Everyone Brave is Forgiven, mogloveseggs! It's definitely a highlight so far this year for me. I read The Other Hand a few years ago by the same author but much preferred this.

I finished book 25 today, White Nights by Ann Cleeves, the second murder mystery in her Shetland series. A distressed English stranger breaks down at an art exhibition in a remote village, claiming amnesia, and lacking any identification whatsoever, leaving abruptly. The next morning his body is found in a fishing hut nearby and Jimmy Perez begins to unravel what has happened. I like the Ann Cleeves books I've read so far, they are very absorbing and have good plot twists (though unlikely seeming in this one!) keeping you guessing who the culprit is. This one is set in midsummer when the sun does not set and does a brilliant job of evoking the resulting strange atmosphere.

I think I must be an evil person. I still haven't got beyond 40 pages of My Antonia because I almost fall asleep whenever I try reading it.

I like Ann Cleeves a lot too Murine. Vera has the edge over Jimmy Perez for me.

35. A Pocket Full Of Rye - Agatha Christie Miss Marple gets herself mixed up with some wrong'uns again.

Sadik, Maud is a fun book! One thing that Melanie does well is showing how Maud's friends and family influenced her characters. For example, while Maud's grandma is clearly not Marilla, one very important thing that Grandma does is something straight out of Marilla's playbook. It's fun to see those connections (at least for me!).

I'm sorry the UK price is shocking. I know that the book has generated quite a bit of interest from librarians here; maybe it will there, too? And, I might have access to a copy or two that I can pass along.

11 A Passage to India by EM Forster. First time I'd read it and I was decidedly underwhelmed. I think you said Remus that you loved it as a teenager but not as an adult. I found it oddly paced and a bit contradictory. Lots of things were happening and yet very little was happening. All the main characters were frantically introspective most of the time. Felt like there was so much detail of the surroundings that it shot past evocative and into muddled. Felt like giving Ms Quested a decent slap. Got irritated by too many of the characters and felt people suddenly vanished offstage very abruptly. Then there are the musings on the character of the Oriental , even allowing for the era it was written in.

Read it, can say I read it. Feel like I missed something considering the reputation it has. Going to read Ready Player One next to reward myself for forcing myself to finish Passage!

Kindle spring sale is on. I'm thinking about Z:a Novel of Zelda Fitzgerald that I've had wishlisted for a while, and What a Carve Up by Jonathan Coe as I've never read it.

There was a John Le Carre, Agatha Christie, novels of The Graduate and Midnight Cowboy, also saw The Janissary Tree, a detective novel that was recommended on here, a Ranulph Fiennes desert book.

I was looking at their spring sale last night and managed to miss all those, I'll have to have another look!
I bought The Strange and Beautiful Sorrow of Ava Lavender as I remembered it being recommended here (sorry, I can't remember who by) and sounding really interesting.

Thank you for the heads up, Satsuki. I got the Einstein biography, The Day Of The Jackal, and a non-fiction book about Putin's Russia called Nothing Os True And Everything Is Possible.

I LOVED The Day of The Jackal when I read it years ago. Worth a re-read. Thanks for the tip off Cote.