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?

Isn't Philip Reeve the author of the Mortal Engines series, Keith? I remember DD saying that her English teacher had recommended him to her a couple of years back as one of his favourite YA writers, she really enjoyed the series.

18. It Didn't Start With You - Mark Wolynn
This was an interesting psychology book exploring inherited family patterns related to trauma. It had an intriguing premise and I could certainly see how certain events in my family tree had influenced behaviour in later generations. I found it a useful tool to help me examine why I felt and behaved particularly strongly about certain things. Some of the analysis seemed a bit of a leap and I'm unsure exactly how it worked in cases where the traumatic event was kept secret from later generations. I imagine it's to do with the silence and also how that drove behaviour/language around the events.

19. Pillars of the Earth - Ken Follett
I'm sure this will have been reviewed before as it's an old book but this was the first time I had read it.
I enjoyed it - I love books set during this period- however I'm not sure it is worthy of the high praise heaped on it. Perhaps if I had read it when it first came out, it might have been fresh and exciting? As it was, the story felt a bit formulaic and had a real pantomime villain in William Hamleigh. It just missed a certain subtlety for me to rate really highly.

20 1984 - George Orwell - Chillingly perceptive. This is a book that will remain with me for a long time.

21 Her - Harriet Lane - This is about the most disappointing thing I have read so far this year. The basic premise is that Nina spots Emma in the street and recognies her as someone she knew 20 year ago. Quickly the two women strike up a friendship but it soon transpires that one of them has sinister motives for their renewed interest. This book started out very promising with alternating chapters between the two women and the suspense gradually building but the ending was such an anticlimax. It felt that the booked just stopped. It felt so rushed and ambiguous.

Currently reading The Essex Serpant which I am really enjoying and as said before on this thread I don't want to take my time to enjoy so I am also reading Everything But The Truth.

24. The Essex Serpent: Sarah Perry Enjoyed this, well written, good if slightly over-constructed plot. Stayed up far too late last night to finish it so I was definitely engaged. Slightly irritated by the first chapter of each section being a more 'poetic' present tense narrative, then the shift to the past for the rest of the story. Not quite sure what that achieved. Lots of interesting background detail. Pretty good characterisation, though some of them (Cora and Luke especially) were real 'novel' characters rather than real people characters. Will browse through this thread now to work out what to read next.

Satsuki - I did join the library. I got a book by some woman called Evelyn Waugh and another by a bloke called George Elliot, but, frankly my dear, I prefer the Norwegian leather industry.

Books 33 and 34 The Secret Diary of AM and The Growing Pains
These were 2 for 99p on Kindlle this week, and I was so tired that I thought they’d make perfect light reading for the bus. They did!

43. The Life Changing Magic of not giving a Fck - Sarah Knight*

The asterisk is not mine. Attempts to do for the mind what Kondo does for theWardrobe. Whiled away an hour on the train. She'll probably make a mint from it.

Love Mole Remus. Pity there won't be any more, I feelnI've grown up with him.

I actually think she should have stopped after two or maybe three, Best.

Ah, I liked them, in small doses though.

I did say to dp earlier that it was probably not the best idea to read two in a row!

One every five years maybe.

7 The Ashes of London this took me a shamefully long time to read...it's just as well I only have a modest 20 book challenge this year. Once I found the time to read it I enjoyed this book. Definitely has resonances of Shardlake.

Next up is Anatomy of a Soldier by Harry Parker. I hope to read this one rather more speedily!

I stopped after the first two Moles; I read them as a kid and reread for comfort, never wanted to follow him into adulthood, never felt like it would work the same way.

33. Night Waking by Sarah Moss
    Thankyou for recommending this to me, BestIsWest, I enjoyed it greatly.
    Anna, a historian with a book she needs to finish writing, is living on a remote, otherwise uninhabited Hebridean island with her two sons and ecologist husband who absents himself to count the puffins. She and her eldest son are disturbed to find an infants body buried in the orchard, leading Anna to investigate the islands past.
    This novel is extremely good, Sarah Moss writes so well about family and relationships. I found it quite an uncomfortable read at times, the frustration, PND, and the torturous lack of sleep experienced by Anna are all too familiar to me at the moment, but am very glad I persevered.

34. The One Hundred Year Old Man Who Jumped Out of A Window by Jonas Jonasson a quirky, easy read which is very amusing in parts, I enjoyed this, though I had to be in the right mood for it, it could be seen as irritatingly twee if not!

"I got a book by some woman called Evelyn Waugh and another by a bloke called George Elliot, but, frankly my dear, I prefer the Norwegian leather industry."

No idea what this means. I may have had a few glasses of wine (and a sneaky Aperol Spritz )

1. Bee Wilson, 'this is not a diet book'
2. Harry Potter & the chamber of secrets (with DC)
3. Jennifer Weiner, 'all fall down'
4. Lauren Sandler, 'one and only'
5. Rene and Goscinny, the Nicholas Book (children's book)
6. Katja Rowell, fussy eating book
7. Nicola Yoon, 'everything everything' (YA book)
8. JD Robb, 'echoes in death'
9. JD Vance, 'Hillbilly elegy'
10. Jonathan Kellerman, Heartbreak Hotel
11. Haemin Sunim, The things you can see only when you slow down

So the latest I read was Buddhist Monk's Haemin Sunim's The things you can see only when you slow down. Rather a pleasant little book about mindfulness & being present in the moment, if you enjoy that kind of thing. The book contains a number of chapters on topics such as "rest", "mindfulness", "passion", "relationships" etc. Some of the insights were refreshing to read as a reminder, others were a bit banal and I skipped through. What I really enjoyed actually was the lovely artwork by Youngcheol Lee that accompanies the writing. A book to read in bits & pieces alongside reading something else. Not groundbreaking in any way, but worth taking a look at.

1. Sky Thieves by Dan Walker
2. His Dark Materials by Phillip Pullman
3. Mars Trilogy by Kim Stanley Robinson
4. American Gods by Neil Gaiman
5. Harry Potter by J.K. Rowling (been meaning to read this one for absolute ages!)

5 for now but I have to start somewhere :-)

No idea what this means. I may have had a few glasses of wine (and a sneaky Aperol Spritz )

Remus is speaking Adrian Mole.

bluebell I think you can count the Mars Trilogy as three. And they're pretty big!

Also isn't His Dark Materials a trilogy too? Count 'em! Also hope that Harry Potter is just The Philosopher's Stone and not another 6 books you're doing yourself out of

cote Adrian decides he's an intellectual and joins the library to see where it leads. It leads to misunderstanding and confusion

23. Bound by Benedict Jacka

Follows on directly from the last, but saying too much about that will give away major spoilers for the earlier books. Suffice it to say, diviner/probability mage Alex Verus has been outmanoeuvred and along with his friends is in deep trouble. There's much plotting, a fair amount of violence, and lots of magic as you would expect. I still think Jim Butcher does this better, but I also enjoy Jacka's world.

15. Grass in Piccadilly Noel Streatfeild
Adult Streatfeild. 1946. Lord and Lady Nettel have been forced to sell their country home and convert their Mayfair house into flats. Six very different families - from the Cockney Parkses in the basement to Lord Nettel's fast-living daughter Penny - move in. All six have secrets, stories and sorrows. Can they find a happiness in peacetime?

I enjoyed this, with some qualms. It's biggest strength is its descriptions of post-war Britain - electricity forbidden within certain hours, newsagents rationed per square mile, the different way people who stayed and fought for London feel about it to those who left and returned to find it ruined. Some brilliant contemporary descriptions of the Great Winter of 1947. I also like reading about good people doing their best in difficult circumstances, and different people muddling along together. In real life, i expect everyone would have just nodded Britishly at each other on the stairs, but I liked them all helping each other out.

Qualms - well, Remus is a bit right about her characters. We've got loyal family retainers, loveable Cockneys, a standard-issue child ballet prodigy, a shallow talentless actress and a kind writer father. We also, I am very sorry to say, have a hook-nosed anti-Semitic stereotype of a Jewish refugee, (who eats ham and throws Christmas parties ). His wife is lovely, but it really doesn't excuse it. And a couple of gay men, who also serve no purpose except to provide a side order of homophobia.

It's a shame, because otherwise it would have made a perfect Persephone book.

(Not that I work for Persephone. But it's very much that sort of book.)

Forget books. I have never had an Aperol Spritz. Do I want to?

Ha ha, I was wondering about the aperol spritz. Is it like Febreze?