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?

tangential

I'm with Cote in hesitating to lend books I love. I'll happily give away books I wasn't that keen on, but if I want a book back, I do find myself fretting about its return.

Without having read E L James, I have the impression that words generally do fail her, or vice versa.

Re Agatha Christie's Murder in Mesopotamia, I did a British Museum free tour of the Middle Eastern antiquities, and was told that her account is a very recognisable account of the archaeological dig in Iraq that her second husband undertook.

Sometimes I would finish all of mine and have to read DH's awful books .

Quelle horreur!

I'm another one who doesn't lend books easily. I worry about them coming back in a bad state or not coming back at all. I do quite happy get rid of books I did not enjoy though.

I have read many Agatha Christie's and I think my favourites are And Then There Was Non and Why Didn't They Ask Evans. The only one I really didn't enjoy was Endless Night but that might have been because I read something with a very similar plot twist just before it so it felt a bit samey.

I'm very selective about which books I lend and who I lend them to. I'm still disappointed that someone borrowed my copy of the Shipping News and didn't return it some years ago.

I keep toying with getting a Kindle as I can really see the usefulness of them particularly when on holiday. But then I look at the pile of unread books in the house and think 'I'll do it when I've read those' Which never happens of course because I keep adding to it

bibliomania that tour sounds as if it must have been very interesting. I might have to dig out some of my Agatha Christies and have a re-read.

Remus I'd agree with you about A Place Called WInter, I felt the bits at Bethel were very weak indeed and the parts on the land describing the work and the interactions between people there were the strongest. I really got bired for the first of the book as it seemed like an elaborate set up designed to eventually place him where he needed to be. I wish that bit had been shorter and more time could have been spent on the 'working the land' bit as that was what I thought the whole book was about when I bought it!
I liked Harry a lot and was moved by the basis in fact and the photograph at the very end of the real Harry. But I did want to shake him at times.

1. Rillington Place (Uncovered Editions)
2. An Evil Cradling: Brian Keenan.
3. John Profumo and Christine Keeler (Uncovered Editions)
4. The Secret Agent: Joseph Conrad
5. The Watergate Affair (Uncovered Editions)
6. The Russian Revolution (Uncovered Editions)
7. The Assassination of John F Kennedy (Uncovered Editions)
8. Falling Awake: Alice Oswald.
9. All the Presidents' Men: Bernstein and Woodward. R
10. Dr Thorne: Trollope (audiobook)
11. Framley Parsonage: Trollope (audiobook)
12. Saplings: Noel Streatfeild.
13. A Murder of Quality: John le Carré.
14. All the light we cannot see: Anthony Doerr.
15. Some rain must fall: Karl Ove Knausgård.
16. The Way of Wyrd: Brian Bates
17. The Small House at Allington (audiobook)
18. The Dark Forest: Liu Cixin. I read The Three Body Problem last year and it would probably have been better to read this hot on the heels of that as I found myself having forgotten lots about the sophons and the Trisolarans. But very interesting even if the sciencey stuff is over my head. Have moved straight on to Death's End so I don't lose any advantage I currently have.
19. Say Something Back by Denise Riley: this collection includes her very beautiful long poem about the death of her son, A Part Song. I think she's a very deft poet though I found some of them too 'difficult' for me.

Next up is The Way of Wyrd by Brian Bates that I've been lent.

I got a Kindle for my birthday last year and bloody love it. I had a giddy period downloading free classics and out of print books from Gutenberg.
Also, I live in a tiny two up two down and it's full of books. So there's that.
I have a couple of friends with similar reading taste to me, which is nice, as we lend a lot of good books to each other. But I also love my library. Particularly the Library Reserves, which are full of out of print hardbacks from the fifties which I can order in for a pound. One of my favourite things about it is how often one of these books will already be out to some other weirdo with a fondness for 1940s children's literature. Which I love.

ontopofthesunset I was briefly acquainted with Denise Riley a long time ago, won't say how, but she is a lovely person as well as a wonderful - if, yes, at times very difficult! - poet.

Thanks for very helpful review - I am waiting for the dark forest at the library, going to order death's end as well so I can read them both in succession, as I worry I'll lose the thread too.

the thing about lending books reminded me - if I buy a new book, I want to be the first to read it while it is pristine. I remember once my sister reading something from my pile, and being when I got upset because I hadn't read it yet. Please tell me I am not the only one!

I wrote a long, very emotional post about being glad Kindles didn't exist when I was a teenager or I suspect my reading would have been a lot more limited but then thought better of it. Count yourselves lucky.

No 32. Dark Fire - C.J.Sansom - Shardlake 2. Excellent. Full of period detail and better that the first Shardlake.

DM has been nagging me to read these for years. Not sure why I was so resistant really.

25 Being Mortal: Illness, Medicine and What Matters in the End, by Atul Gawande
Much reviewed on here, I can only add that I found this really excellent; thoughtful and well written. It feels very relevant to me as I'm in my late 40s with elderly parents, my DM recently decided to refuse chemo for cancer (fingers crossed she is still well atm) and my DF has had two eye operations both risking pretty much total sight loss, so we've been having a lot of the sort of conversations that Dr Gawande describes. (Much more with my DM than my DF - perhaps culturally it's easier for women - or perhaps it's just because of family history.)

fascicle yes I notice things like that too. In one of the Shardlakes the word 'stink' came up so often it felt like every other word and though I enjoyed it as a whole it was so irritating. It didn't happen as much in book 4, so he had obviously located the Febreze. The other thing that winds me up is the use of dead metaphors - like a bottle of beer said to be "sweating" - it has lost all its freshness so why put it in?

best I'm sure we would have enjoyed it and nodded along. I'm glad I didn't have a Kindle then, too, but then I have a real appreciation of books as a physical presence I'm one of those page-sniffers cote was talking about

You are making me think back to pre-kindle holidays. DH prides himself on packing light, which always meant he didn't have enough books, so by about day 5 he'd be eyeing up my books before they were even out of my hands. I remember towards the end of one holiday he declared he didn't want to come down to the pool because the only reading matter left available to him was my copy of Women's Running magazine, which he didn't want to read in public, so sat and stoically read on the balcony. Kindle has solved all that.

It's been a long time since a read a Rebus book, but it has stuck in mind that people 'inhaled noisily' with great frequency.

1. Amsterdam - Ian McEwan
2. The Noise of Time - Julian Barnes

3.The Finkler Question - Howard Jacobson

1. The Handmaid's Tale - Margaret Atwood
2. Saturday - Ian McEwan
3. The Vegetarian - Han Kang
4. The Passion - Jeanette Winterson
5. There but for the - Ali Smith
6. The Sellout - Paul Beatty

10. Swing Time - Zadie Smith 11. T2 Trainspotting - Irvine Welsh 12. The Days of Abandonment - Elena Ferrante 13. Sexing the Cherry - Jeanette Winterson 14. Calon - Owen Shears 15. Amadeus - Peter Shaffer (tr Ken Owen) 16. The Heart Goes Last - Margaret Atwood 17. Macbeth - William Shakespeare (tr Gwyn Thomas) 18. My Brilliant Friend - Elena Ferrante 19. The Shadow of Nanteos - Jane Blank 20. Do No Harm - Henry Marsh 21. Hag-Seed - Margaret Atwood 22. The Story of Hedd Wyn The Poet of the Black Chair - Alan Llwyd: This was quite interesting. I went to an exhibition about Hedd Wyn and realised I'd forgotten lots that I'd learnt about him at A Level so this book was to fill in those gaps. 23. The Summer Book - Tove Jansson: I wanted to love this book but found it lacking. Beautifully written just didn't engage with it at all.

Now reading The Blind Assassin by Margaret Atwood which I love already after 30 pages.

Bringing over my list with updates. No highlights so far:

1. Even Dogs in the Wild - Ian Banks
2. Cheer up Love - Susan Calman
3. The Noise of Time - Julian Barnes
4. I'll Have What She's Having - Rebecca Harrington
5. Leap In - Alexandra Hemingsley
6. The Goldfish Boy - Lisa Thompson
7. Wishful Drinking - Carrie Fisher
8. The Liar's Chair - Rebecca Whitney
9. Shockaholic - Carrie Fisher

And this week I finished Chavs: The Demonisation of the Working Class, by Owen Jones. Tabloid-y non-fiction exploring why and how the working class in the U.K have been victimised. Unfortunately this book is undermined by an almost complete lack of objectivity, much repetition, and the writing isn't as intelligently put across as I expected. However, I have his next book, The Establishment, on my tbr pile and I gather that is more weighty and analytical.

I once went on a three-week walking holiday - including long train journeys there and back - with seven friends and was a bit to discover I was one of only two of us who'd packed a book. Even DH - who usually takes more books than me - was too worried about how heavy his rucksack would be halfway up a mountain.
Anyway, on the train home, he got so bored with nothing to read that he insisted on me chopping up my book so he could read the bit I'd already read. (It wasn't really a holiday with much reading time as it turned out, as we'd arrive in the next mountain hut and fall asleep. And we were in France, so he couldn't buy a book at the station.) Anyway, since he's a much faster reader than me, my book ended up in several pieces by the time we got home ...
Not really sure what the point of that story was now I've got to the end ...

Oh yeah. Insist your partner packs enough books, or it could be dangerous to reading matter.

It was more about books being less readily available because everyone else had Kindles IYSWIM. I probably wouldn't have got my mitts on Lady Chatterley's Lover at 14 had DM had a Kindle in 1977.

Phoenix - Thanks for that. I hadn't realised that A Place Called Winter was inspired by a real person.

Yes best - I was saying to dh the other day that it's good for the kids to have books on display they can get intrigued by and pick up. They are only little but already get books down and look at the covers. I read a load of classic sci fi, western novels and Danielle Steel (!) that I wouldn't have come across otherwise if my parents hadn't had them on a shelf.

Cheerful

I remember finding The Joy of Sex on my parents' bookshelf

14. Wishful Drinking by Carrie Fisher. I picked this up for 99p after it was reviewed on here, and I'm glad I did as it's well worth a read. As others have said, she manages to write in an entertaining manner about some very traumatic events.