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?

Just finished
18 The Woman in Cabin 10 - Ruth Ware - a mystery/thriller of the type. Would recommend, it's good for it's type!

Laura Blacklock is a travel journalist who is invited on maiden voyage of a 'boutique cruise'. Couple of nights before leaving, she's the victim of a break-in at home that's left her sleep deprived and shaky, so we're not sure if she's reliable as a witness. Amongst the things stolen from her flat was her handbag containing her mascara, which she only realises when getting ready for the first dinner on ship, so knocks at the next cabin (no. 10), borrows one from the lady in there and thinks nothing of it. She then gets hammered at the dinner (making her an even more unreliable witness), but wakes in the early hours and is sure she saw someone thrown from balcony of no. 10. However, there was no guest in cabin 10, there's noone onboard that matches the discription of the woman who gave her the mascara, there is noone missing from the crew/guests and noone believes her. Added to this, the wifi on the ship is down, so she can't contact anyone and is trapped on a boat with a murderer.

It's quite well written and nice and tense. I did get annoyed with the main character now and then for not clear thinking, but overall no too annoying and enough clues to help puzzle out, although I didn't get it completely, I was sort of on the right track !

Murine I read The Lie last year and agree with your review. There are many books that describe the horror of war, but this book was about the horror that is marked on the survivors - the "lucky ones".
May I recommend another of Helen Dunmore's books - The Seige about the seige of St Petersburg in ww2.

Regarding A Little Life , I feel such ambivalence in starting it. Almost like I know I'll feel cheated, but so many friends have recommended it strongly that I feel obliged to give it a go aaaargh

Thanks for the recommendation PoeticLE, I just looked The Siege up on Goodreads and it sounds good so I've reserved it at the library. I'm looking forward to it, and pleased I've discovered another author whose writing I really like!

I'm looking at A Little Life now. It's been on my bedside table for nearly a year. It's never quite the right time to start it; I always settle for something more cheering, which covers, I think, just about everything.

17. The Loney by Andrew Michael Hurley The atmospheric suspense horror of the 'something in the woodshed' variety was laid on so thick it was almost a parody, yet this didn't work for me at all. The characters were not strongly developed, and were mainly caricatures, with the main narrator having virtually no personality or presence. The book didn't seem to have any particular message or moral to convey; its main purpose just seemed to be to tell a creepy tale, and as I didn't find it creepy, I was just left thinking 'so what?'.

I've got A Little Life sitting on my bookshelf unread. I'm not sure I want to read something harrowing to be honest. I do want to read it and I don't.

I picked up The Tidal Zone today too. I must stop buying Kindle books. I have tons on my Kindle unread. I am completely addicted.

I have managed to read 28. Five Rivers Met on a Wooded Plain by Barney Norris. A big thumbs down from me. Set in Salisbury and following the lives of five people that witness or are involved in a car accident. I found this to be poorly executed. None of the five characters were realistically drawn. I didn't believe in them at all and found the whole book to be dull and unrealistic. One to avoid.

I'm reading so slowly at the moment. I need to buck up and cut along.

I read 'A little life' last year and remain undecided whether I liked it or not or whether I thought it was actually a good book (or not). It is definitely a great readin terms of it being readablebut the author goes very heavy in the main idea: bad things happening to the protagonist, and then more bad things, and more and more and more until you as a reader begs for mercy. It's relentless!

I heard such mixed things - people who thought it was astonishing and people who thought it was dire. It never really sounded like my sort of thing though.

I quite fancy that one, InvisibleKitten.

I share the ambivalence about A Little Life. I've seen in it the library and contemplated it, but I don't really want to be harrowed by fiction. I'll sometimes read non-fiction with a harrowing element (as in politics or history rather than misery lit), but it's not something I seek out in fiction, with a few rare exceptions.

Speaking of history, currently reading The strangest family : the private lives of George III, Queen Charlotte and the Hanoverians by Janice Hadlow An excellent family saga - you see how parents start of with such good intentions and end up repeating the same mistakes in each generation.

Honestly, if you don't want to read anything harrowing, DO NOT read A Little Life. Seriously. At one point, as I was reading it, my hands started to hurt. I was reading it in the car waiting for my daughter at school, and I had to put gloves on. This is not a spoiler - there is nothing about sore hands in the book (!) - but what I was reading was so awful, my hands hurt and I couldn't bear to turn the pages with bare fingers.

I'm still very glad I read it but I can totally understand why people would choose not to!

Thanks for the info about Helen Dunmore's The Lie - that sounds wonderful and right up my street. I need to tackle a few books on my TBR pile before I can buy anything else though.

Yes, A Little Life is the only book to actually make me feel faint. It also made me cry loads but I have a very soft spot for it and I did really enjoy it. It's a terrific read and very rewarding but deeply harrowing.

Just finished two more:

1. Days Without End by Sebastian Barry. The story of a young Irish lad who joins the US army in the 1850s and what happens to him after that. Lots of gory battles and it also touches on the fact he is gay but just incorporates that as part of the book rather than focusing on it with a lot of hoohah, which I liked. The author won the Costa book aware and talked about writing it because his son was gay and it was a way of trying to get into his world, which touched me.

A good book but one I wanted to like more than I actually did - there's nowt wrong with it and I'm sure many will rave about it but I found it hard to connect with the main protagonist and found the way dialogue is set out in the book (without speech marks etc but more like a rambling stream of consciousness) somewhat irked me. I also read it fairly soon after A Place Called Winter and they seemed vaguely similar, perhaps this one fell a bit flat for me after A Place Called Winter.

10. The Help by Kathryn Stockett. I listened to this on audible and by God it was amazing. Incredible. I didn't want it to end and felt bereft. It's a from a few years but but I have never read it, the audible narrators (a different one for each character) were so wonderful and I laughed and cried loads during the book. Super highly recommended, especially the audiobook which will blow you away.

14. Heartburn by Nora Ephron

I have always enjoyed her writing in film scripts, just now getting around to reading this novel, which draws much from her life and which was made into a film with Meryl Streep and Jack Nicholson. It describes Rachel's discovery of her husband's affair 7 months into her second pregnancy, and, as she says in her introduction, her primary achievement in fictionalising events was in turning something so painful into a comedy. It is funny, I laughed out loud a couple of times, it is also of its time in ways I wasn't expecting - language that wouldn't be considered PC now (well, homophobic actually, although it is deployed in the service of wry humour, and at a time when the mores surrounding sexual orientation were still being negotiated, but still) and the seeming acceptance of faithlessness in long term relationships, despite the pain so obviously caused. It was also very modern in ways I wasn't expecting; the discussion of male and female roles in marriage and parenting haven't moved forward all that much. It was enjoyable, but slight, and I look forward to getting a collection of her essays and digging a little deeper. There are also lots of recipes and descriptions of food in here and that always endears a book to me.

I am going to pick up the Dave Eggers again after that little interlude, and I'm also reading the first Red Rising on the Kindle - pretty good so far, though nearly had me running at the mention of a zither a few chapters in - once bitten, twice shy

Exit pursued by zither, Satsuki?

biblio. Zither and thither. It only had a cameo though so tentatively reading on.

37. The Day of The Jackal - Frederick Forsyth . Great thriller about the planning and detection of an assssination attempt on De Gaulle. The joy of this book is in the detail. I remember loving it when I read it the first time around as a teenager.

38. Almost too embarrassed to declare this as it is probably the worst book I've read in a while. Sleeping Tiger - Rosalind Pilcher. I didn't really mind The Shellseekers, it's the kind of book you can let wash over you on a summer holiday but this was bad. Really really bad. Just glad I didn't pay for it.

Ham - I'm so glad to hear that somebody else disliked The Loney. I thought it was dreadful, but my dp loved it.

Remus Ham hated The Loney. And so did the rest of our book group. Load of old twaddle. Used a thousand words, when one would have done. About as atmospheric as IKEA!

Yes!

I've never been to IKEA, but I'd choose a trip there over a re-read of The Loney. Even my auto correct hates it, keeps changing it to the Money. It was like the author had been given a creative writing exercise, and had to write something in the style of Dennis Wheatley and Cold Comfort Farm, but hadn't realised that Cold Comfort Farm was actually funny.

33. Dark Fire - C.J Sansom Why have I not read these Shardlake books before!! Loved it and loved it even more discovering there are six in the series and all are already down loaded on our Kindle account. And I thought DH only ever read rubbish!! Somehow I managed to start with book 2 but have now started on book 1.

RMc my mum has been trying to get me to read Shardlake for years and it was only because of the unanimous love on this thread that I eventually did. I'm waiting for #3 to come in to the library.

Satsuki I LOVE heartburn! Glad you enjoyed it too. Worth considering Nora Ephron's essays too eg this or this.

As for me, instead of making book recommendations, I should buckle up and start reading much more than I currently am as I'm only on book 9 and can't seem to finish this particular book. I normally read loads but am going through a Mumsnet-exhausted-on-the-sofa-phase in the evenings which I need to snap out of. And when I pick up my kindle in bed to do some reading finally in the evening, I fall asleep promptly.

Tips to fit in more reading in my day? Maybe I should make a rule of reading non-work-related stuff during my lunch break at work?

Thanks stillloving yes I'm definitely going to get an essay collection I really enjoyed her writing.

I read mainly when my toddler naps and also when I sit up with them at bedtime. A Kindle hitting my face is my signal to go to sleep at night. I would make use of your lunch break if you can, my dh started reading at lunch and he has been so much more and productive. We're both generally too tired in the evening to read for long.

"A Kindle hitting my face is my signal to go to sleep at night."

Nobody in RL would understand this. I love you lot

Just checking in to keep this on my active list. I've hit a bit of a fallow patch right now. I'm slowly reading The Essex Serpent which is beautiful, but definitely needs a clear block of time when I'm not tired. I picked up Me Before You in the library as a light read, got to around page 100 then realised that a key plot point was much too close to home right now so have abandoned that.

On audio, I've got The Devil In The Marshalsea, but I'm not really getting on with it, and keep skipping back to old books. It should be just my sort of thing, but I'm finding it rather over-written, and just feeling too often that characters do things for the sake of the plot. I suspect I'd like it much more as a paper book where I could skim & enjoy the setting/story without thinking too hard about it.