50 Book Challenge Part Five

[southeastdweller]

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

What are you reading?

Should read "wouldn't need to be..."

Slightly. Yes I mind about that. But that's an issue of a book being a poorly written, regardless what genre it has been labelled as. A book full of inaccuracies is just annoying but I don't see that a genre issue. That is a different thing to what Cote was arguing; which is that there a strict set of rules surrounding a certain genre. Rules linked to time, place and content and if you break those the book is not a certain genre.

Slightly, I found the Shardlake book I read difficult as I couldn't accept the style of the language as historically correct- though I have no problem with Georgette Heyer! I guess we all have our personal preferences.

Book 42
Grey Mask by Patricia Wentworth
Continuing the Golden Age of crime thing, after the Tey. I really enjoyed this. It was a good mix of light and frothy laughs and some reasonably (for the time) sinister stuff and I liked the way she made me worry that one or other of the people I liked might actually prove to be the baddy. The ending was a bit preposterous, but that was fine because this was essentially Scooby Doo for adults with posh people, and cartoonish villains. I’d definitely read another of hers.

Also - have just caught up with the thread.

Would everybody like a little lie down for awhile now? It's all getting a bit pedantic and repetitive. I reckon you all need to relax in a semi-darkened room, with just enough light to read Pollyanna by.

Have to agree with Remus. Charlotte's Web would be my pick. Nothing wrong with a bit of relaxing kiddie fiction now and then!

Remus, Southeast DD is reading Goodnight Mr Tom. One of my favourite ever books, and I found another of Michelle Magorian's in charity shop on Saturday that I have never read Just Henry. It's waiting for me when I have finished The Hare with Amber eyes, which has improved dramatically!

And I have never read Pollyanna - am I missing out? Or have I missed the boat?

RMC - Goodnight Mr Tom is exquisite. Unfortunately Henry nowhere near as good imvho.

And Pollyanna is saccharine cutesy-ness and probably best avoided by any sane reader. I surprised myself by loving it, but I must have just caught it at a moment when I needed cuteness.

I always go for Anne of Green Gables when I need a nostalgic sentimental saccharine injection. Or The Secret Garden.

The lion, the witch and wardrobe is my go to book. Had the pleasure of teaching it last year. In the middle of the term we had an outdoor Ed day where by fluke it snowed. Spent the whole day pretending we were in Narnia. Even had a tame robin that followed us around it was actually magical.

Agree that Goodnight Mister Tom is far better than Just Henry.

Saffy's Angel for me when I need a kids' book to cheer me up. Love that book. (It's not saccharine in the least, but it is very funny.)

I want to be in RMC's class.

Remus - Did you really bring up Pollyanna? You're just pushing my buttons now

I've finished book 40 tonight, The Siege by Helen Dunmore, which I doubt I can do justice in a review, thankyou for recommending this to me PoeticLE, I thought it was wonderful.
I've found it one of those books after which you don't quite feel ready to pick up another book to begin afterwards.
Beautifully written, stark and gripping novel set in besieged Leningrad in 1941, it closely follows one families fight for survival during the first winter. I knew very little about this part of history and want to learn more, as well as adding almost all of Helen Dunmore's other books to my wish list!

I'm about to sleep and have a full day at work tomorrow so won't be continuing this genre debate (although I can see that you all want me to ) but about this:

"Cote was arguing; which is that there a strict set of rules surrounding a certain genre. "

Is that what you call a "definition"?

A book (1) about the future which (2) talks about a new technology and (3) how it changes society in that future is science-fiction. That is the very definition of sci-fi. It's 1984, on all three points: A book about the future that talks about the state exerting near-perfect and constant control over every citizen through constant surveillance with "tele screens" and how that has changed society.

This isn't me being "rigid" or whatever - just telling you what sci-fi means, as someone who has been reading a lot of it for the past 30 years.

Just look it up. It is no secret that 1984 is science fiction.

And on that note, everyone have a good night

I'm reading Gorky Park at the moment and really enjoying it, by the way. It was Kindle Deal of the Day recently and I'm glad that I snapped it up.

17. The Hate U Give Angie Thomas
Latest big YA novel. Starr lives in an area notorious for drugs and gang violence, but attends a private, mostly-white school. She struggles to reconcile the two sides of her life until she's a witness to a police shooting which kills a friend.

Thoughtful and nuanced story about the Black Lives Matter movement, gang culture and police brutality from a writer who grew up in a similar neighbourhood. I didn't love it as much as my Twitter feed seems to, partly because it's quite straightforwardly-written, partly because I'm an uptight Englishwoman and all that American earnestness makes me uncomfortable. (Prom is the best night of her life. Her parents are her one true pairing. Has she never heard of teenage cynicism?)

Shamefully, this is my first book this year written by a non-white author.

Oh, and the U is because the title is a Tupac quote, not, as I assumed, to make a nice Twitter hashtag.

Have been resisting getting involved in this debate, and am not about to start now, but wondered if any of you had read Isaac Asimov on 1984?

www.newworker.org/ncptrory/1984.htm

It's an interesting read. But he's blistering on its claims to be science fiction.

I read a lot of Asimov as a teenager, including many of his non-fiction essay collections. There was a time when all I read was Asimov, Clarke, and Heinlein.

He criticizes 1984 for doing a bad job of predicting the future, which is why he says "it is bad SF, if SF at all" and "Orwell didn't have the SF knack of foreseeing a plausible future". Of course Asimov died in 1992 so was lucky not to see how the world changed in the last 25 years, making many of Orwell's predictions like Newspeak and Doublethink become reality.

Asimov focuses instead on what he sees as technological impossibilities, like "multiple people needed to watch 1 person at all times, so everyone can't be watched". Whenever he write this review, it appears computers and automatic surveillance was not yet a possibility. We now know that Orwell's description of constant surveillance capabilities was not unrealistic, at all.

I love Hilary McKay Cheerful- did you know she was an Elinor Brent Dyer fan?

Pollyanna is one of my childhood favourites, so I'm not listening to any dissing!

Am well stuck into the next Gordon Ferris!

Murine and Poetic - I enjoyed The Lie based on your recs on this thread and will try and get hold of The Siege. Sounds a fascinating read.

13. The Spy who Came in From the Cold by John Le Carre

Leamas is a long-serving British agent working in 1960s Berlin. He is jaded and cynical at the loss of many agents. He is given the opportunity to get out, but only after one final assignment, where he is to convince the East Germans that he is a defector. However the true nature of his assignment is kept from him.

A cracking read. Dark, lean and tense. Great reflection on the morality of British espionage. Unexpected but utterly believable plot twist at the end. Best read this year. This was my first Le Carre, and I’d be keen for recommendations for which of his others to read.