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?

"series of ridiculously middle-class crime novels"

Shut up and take my money! How have I never tried one of these before?

I read 84 Charing Cross Road as a teen; I need to re-read it don't I? Maybe my mother still has a copy, that photo you posted Best looked familiar, I'm sure she had it at one point.

Waves at Tarahumara - now I understand your name, I've just read 'your' book:

18. Born to Run by Christopher McDougall An exploration of the art, science and psychology of running, how we do it, why we do it, theories about what works to improve form, endurance and speed, and reduce injuries. This mainly focuses on the amazing endurance feats of the elusive Tarahumara people of Mexico. I don't know how much of this to take as gospel, as I have a feeling the author wouldn't let the truth get in the way of a colourful anecdote, and there were plenty of these. The book is spiced up by following a number of unconventional characters from the world of endurance running. I found his writing style a bit too 'gung-ho derring do' for me, but was happy to run (pun intended) with it, as the book overall was fascinating and entertaining.

19. Red Dwarf: Infinity Welcomes Careful Drivers by Rob Grant and Doug Naylor I had a debate with myself whether to include this on my list, as it's hardly high literature, and it's a novel based on a TV series, plus I listened to it on audio, but it is a novel, and damn better than some I've read. It gives the back story of the characters, and how they came to be on Red Dwarf. Funny observations throughout on human (and hologram, and mechanoid, and cat) nature. If you liked the TV series you'll like this.

rediculously middle-class crime novels sound like a good one to add to my 'to read' list.

30. Red Bones by Ann Cleeves Third in the great Shetland series of murder mysteries, this time set on the island of Whalsay where human remains are found in an archaeological dig, closely followed by the death of the elderly landowner in what appears to be a tragic accident.
31. The Psychopath Test by Jon Ronson An interesting exploration of what a psychopath is and how a leading psychologist says they may be identified. I found the section where he meets the profiler Paul Britton very interesting as I read Britton's memoirs as a teenager and it was intriguing to read what he is like (and an less biased version of events).
32. The Power by Naomi Alderman What a fantastic book! Thought provoking and intelligent dystopia where women simultaneously develop the ability to give electric shocks to others and the entire world changes as a result. I only finished it this afternoon and need to digest it a bit I think.

I'll be starting Night Waking by Sarah Moss next, and also began The 100 year old Man Who Climbed Out of a Window by Jonas Jonasson yesterday for my book on kindle to keep me awake during night feeds.

Just started reading Alive Alive Oh! by Diana Athill - it's on Kindle deal today along with some other non-fiction

13. Nurture Shock Po Bronson & Ashley Merryman This is basically Freakonomics for child development - a pop science collection of studies on various aspects of childhood, with a particular interest in the paradoxical. So, for example, telling your child they're clever and beautiful makes them more anxious and lowers confidence. Television-watching doesn't make kids overweight, but lack of sleep does. Watching educational TV programmes makes kids more aggressive than watching violent programmes - but aggression is a positive social trait. The most empathetic and popular kids are the meanest. (This includes relational aggression, not just physical aggression.) Teenagers arguing with their parents is a positive sign - it means they respect your rules and opinions. If they don't argue, they're probably doing forbidden stuff behind your back. And doing ordinary marital fighting in front of your kids is better than hiding it, because it shows them how to resolve conflict. (Obviously DV is an entirely different matter.) I enjoyed this. It's very readable, and definitely gave me some things to think about.

And agree with everyone about Charing Cross Road. Wonderful book.

Have read Duchess and Underfoot in Show Business. Both are okay but not a patch on 84 CCR.

Letters from New York sounds interesting.

I read Letters from New York a few weeks ago. It's an OK short read but I wouldn't go out of your way Best to buy it. Isn't it odd that most of her books are still not available on Kindle?

11. Allegiant by Veronica Roth

The conclusion of the Divergent trilogy. I'd been putting reading this off because the implausibility of the whole rigid personality based faction system - and the way their whole world seemed to be confined to one city - had been really annoying me by the end of book 2.

Anyway. Book 3. Tris, Tobias and a few others leave the city. What they find out there explains away a lot of the the faction system. And again, leads to not very interesting conflict and sacrifice.
It's a fair enough conclusion to the series, but it's not a book (or series) that I can feel much enthusiasm for.

1. The Dark is Rising - Susan Cooper
2. The Adventure of the Christmas Pudding - Agatha Christie
3. Our Endless Numbered Days - Claire Fuller
4. Love Letters of Henry V111 to Anne Boleyn (totally counting this even though it's only about 70 pages, I'll read an extra long one at some point to balance it out!)

5. How to be Both - Ali Smith

1. Toast - Nigel Slater
2. A Man Called Ove - Fredrick Backman
3. Chess - Stefan Zweig
4. Beauvallet- Georgette Heyer

10. The Book Thief - Marcus Zusak 11. The Story of a New Name -Elena Ferrante 12. The Glorious Heresies - Lisa McInerney 13. The Girls at the Kingfisher Club - Genevieve Valentine 14. Soulless - Gail Carriger 15. The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins

Just finished 16. She-Wolves: The Women Who Ruled England Before Elizabeth by Helen Castor, which I really enjoyed. Really interesting portrait of four early queens or queen consorts and an exploration of female power at the time. I thought it was well written, interesting enough to breeze through without feeling like a chore, but meaty and well researched enough to be compelling.

^"series of ridiculously middle-class crime novels"

Shut up and take my money! How have I never tried one of these before?^

And mine! Straight to Amazon I go!

1. Having a Lovely Time - Jenny Eclair I'm not sure why I read this as it's pretty similar in its flaws to the other one I read (Life, Death and Vanilla Slices) - in that the men are all mainly 2D bastards and the women are 'fat' and repulsive at a size 16. Which was irritating. But it's a good easy read when sleep deprived...

Has anyone read the Jefferson Tayte Mysteries by Stephen Robinson? They're in the Kindle Spring sale at 99p, wonder if they are in the same vein as Shardlake?

29 The Signal and the Noise: The art and science of prediction, by Nate Silver
I liked this book a lot - it's in the same vein as Thinking Fast & Slow / Black Swans, but much more entertainingly written (unsurprisingly given the author is a journalist/blogger). The book looks at predictions across a number of fields - sport / economics / chess / climate science amongst others and discusses the way we understand and think about the future. I particularly enjoyed the chapter on the way in which Deep Blue was programmed for the matches against Kasparov. Definitely a stand out. The only negatives for me were small type/cheap paper - particularly because it made many of the graphs hard to read. It's pretty US-centric, but that doesn't really undermine the message (even the chapter on baseball - which I know is a sport something along the lines of rounders but that's about it . . .)

I enjoyed Born To Run very much, but it wasn't my favourite ever book or anything like that! I just happened to be reading it at a time when I wanted a new username

Stitches, I agree about the Divergent series but I didn't see the end of the last one coming!

Talking of YA books, I am very much looking forward to reading Illuminae and have ordered it for the library I work in (obviously not because I want to read it or anything). Its going to be made into a film. I hope it lives up to the hype. YA can go either way.

Hi all. Think I've finished two books since I last posted...
11. Leap Year by Helen Russell From the author of The Year of Living Danishly, non-fiction looking at how people can prepare for and bring about change in different areas of their life. Listened to this on Audible, I enjoyed it and found it interesting.
12. A Spool of Blue Thread by Anne Tyler The story of three generations of the Whitshank family in Baltimore, how the various family members get along with each other and go about their lives in different eras (goes back and forward in time a lot, sometimes moving to a different setting or sometimes through a character remembering past events). One of the quotes on the cover says "it takes organised wit to write about human muddle as Tyler does". My favourite aspect of this novel was the way it looks at the stories that get passed on in families, tales of previous generations that become 'truths' about the family (even if one-sided or inaccurate), but actually how some of the big stories are the secrets/scandals/controversies that aren't shared widely and so get lost in time as the generations move on.
I think I could have loved this book, but I've been so busy/tired that it's taken me almost three weeks to read, some days only a few pages before falling asleep (yes, yes to both waking up when the book hit me on the head and trying to read on with one eye open while the other 'rested'!!). Really disappointed as I feel this slow going on my part spoiled it a bit for me. Wish I'd saved it as I now have a couple of weeks off work and more reading time. Will look out for more Anne Tyler, this was my first.
Might be Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close next. It's in my TBR pile, recent comments on here make me think I'm not going to enjoy it which has strangely spurred me on to get on with it. If I'm not going to like it, it might as well be tried and dismissed to the charity shop swiftly rather than sit around for an age like many of the others in the pile.

Epic post here because I haven't posted for a while.

33. The Beautiful Dead by Belinda Bauer

Thriller about a serial killer who becomes obsessed with a news reporter. Pretty good although the end was a bit far-fetched and there was no real explanation of why the killer acted in the way he/she did or why he/she became obsessed with the reporter.

34. My Not So Perfect Life by Sophie Kinsella

This is very similar to all Kinsella's books. In this one, a woman is very envious of her boss's lifestyle, then has chance to observe it close up and realises it may not be as glamourous as it looks. Very fluffy and predictable, but I do like Kinsella's books so I enjoyed this.

35. Swallows and Amazons by Arthur Ransome

Listened to this on Audible. Nice piece of nostalgia, but a bit too much detail on sailing techniques at times.

36. The Breakdown by B A Paris

Cass takes a shortcut down a country lane and drives past another woman. Later, Cass hears that the woman was murdered. Then Cass starts forgetting things and getting silent phone calls. Unfortunately, I worked out within a couple of chapters what was going on and I almost never do that, so I was disappointed to find that I was right.

37. The Year of Reading Dangerously by Andy Miller

I like books about books, but was disappointed with this. It's far more about him than it is about the books, and I found him snobbish and patronising so didn't really want to read about him! There was also nothing remotely dangerous in the reading list - it was all just stuff he had intended to read and never got round to.

38. The Twenty-Three by Linwood Barclay

This is the last in the Promise Falls trilogy, when we find out who has been causing all the chaos in the town and why. Kept me engrossed.

39. A Vintage Wedding by Katie Fforde

I knew within a chapter that this was going to irritate me, so I'm not sure why I kept reading. Two women separately move into a village and meet a third woman who already lives there. Within a couple of hours they have decided that they will be best friends and also start a business together running cheap weddings (despite none of them having any experience whatsoever). The rest of the book is about their business, which consists of organising two weddings, both for people they know, in ridiculously short timescales. Everything that happens is unbelievable - miraculously the village is full of people with relevant skills who don't mind donating their time/expertise/whatever for free of next to nothing. One of the women becomes expert at cake icing and wedding makeup after watching a couple of tutorials on YouTube. One of the women has a day job as an accountant, yet still inexplicably has time to organise a wedding within 10 days in April despite this being the busiest time of year for accountants. Oh yes, and there are the obligatory love interests. One does something silly and is then never seen again (despite this being a tiny village). One woman ends up with her ex-husband's brother, and not one person says anything about this being even the slightest bit odd. The third woman has OCD, meets a messy man and is miraculously cured. As I said, I don't know why I kept reading as I just got more and more irritated with it but I suppose I wanted to see if it would improve!

40. Do No Harm: Stories of Life, Death and Brain Surgery by Henry Marsh

Already reviewed several times so won't say much except that after a few chapters it got a bit repetitive and he was very arrogant which irritated me (example - while queuing in a supermarket he has the thought that he shouldn't have to queue as he's much more important than all these other people).

41. Jane Steele by Lyndsay Faye

A parody of Jane Eyre where the heroine is a serial killer (tagline is 'Reader, I murdered him'). This started well, but about halfway in it starts with a different plotline relating to something that happened in the Punjab and started to drag. Also a few anachronistic words/phrases which jarred a bit. Entertaining enough!

Now starting Robert Goddard The Ends of the Earth - he is one of my favourite writers but his last few books haven't grabbed me. This is the last in a trilogy and I haven't been very excited by the others so not sure whether I will enjoy this or not. Also listening to Chris Packham's Fingers In The Sparkle Jar on Audible which I am enjoying.

Sadik that sounds right up my DH's street, so will add that to my list of potential birthday presents.

19. The Unexpected Inheritance of Inspector Chopra - Vaseem Khan - On his last day at work before retirement, Inspector Chopra discovers he's going to inherit a baby elephant, and is troubled by the death of a young man who died during the night before. No one seems interested in investigating the death and assuming he drowned due to drunkeness - so Chopra starts his retirement by investigating his death, with a baby elephant in tow.

It's very slow and plodding, and a bit dull in parts, I stayed with it as it's a book club book for later in the year, but not one I'd recommend.

I'd definitely recommend, Cheerful. I don't know if the Kindle version would be worth looking at rather than the paper one though (if your DH has one) - I felt that for the best part of eleven quid for a paperback it was pretty poorly produced.

Nora Webster by Colm Toibin Thankyou for recommending this, HappyFlappy!

Glad you enjoyed it Murine [smils]

River yes, having had 50 Shades of Grey pressed on me, I felt obliged to read it. It's a terrible, terrible book.

That happened to me with that Dan Brown Stiches. The Da Vinci Code is appalling.

It's bad enough when the storyline is rubbish, bit truly unforgivable when this is combined with shite writing.

I think you're being harsh happy. It's not as easy as he makes it look.

The famous author admired the blue Parker fountain pen he held in his hand, a gift from his mother before she went to the rainforest to study the mating habits of trees, then used it to write dozens and dozens of terrible sentences. The silent scratch of the pen rang out loudly round the room he had worked in for 20 years, the sound bouncing back and smacking him in his handsome ear like a shark, as he constructed a cipher that would, he predicted with his superior predicting skills, be impossible to decipher, unless you watch Countdown regularly and are familiar with "anagrams". He wore blue socks, one on his injured leg, and one on his uninjured leg, and another waited in his drawer. He admired his reflected reflection in a dull spoon as he looked forward to eating a dinner of chicken, noodles, and intrigue.

That was one long train journey to Paris. If there's one memory that underlines why I love my Kindle so much it's that one - I never have to be stuck with one ill-chosen book again.