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?

Satsuki It wasn't that I disliked The Great Gatsby, I enjoyed it, but I had had so many people rave about it that I was expecting something life changing and it wasn't. It was a good book, but it wasn't great. I also did it as an audiobook and wonder if that changed my perspective on it, hearing it rather than processing when reading. It just wasn't a book that punched me in the gut. For me a great book causes a reaction and stays with you for days because you can't stop thinking about it. With TGG it was more, that was nice, NEXT!

Can I join in please? Although starting 4 months late I doubt I'll do 50 unless I could my children's books. I used to read loads but have lost my way a bit so I could do with a challenge like this.

My, rather small, list so far is:

1. everything that remains - Joshua fields milburn
2. time and time again - Ben Elton
3. 84 Charing Cross Road - Helene Hanff
4. the duchess of Bloomsbury - Helene Hanff

Currently reading neither here nor there by Bill Bryson

Welcome itsa - yes, children's books count!

Thanks for the new thread, South..

Bringing my list over:

1. The Story of a New Name (Book 2 of Neopolitan Novels) by Elena Ferrante.
2. Grief is the Thing with Feathers by Max Porter.

1. Beauty by Robin McKinley.
2. Prisoners of Geography by Tim Marshall.

5. The Last Policeman: A Novel (The Last Policeman Book I) by Ben H.Winters. 6. Red Rising by Pierce Brown.

1. Breakfast at Tiffany's by Truman Capote.
2. Any Human Heart by William Boyd.
3. The Pure in Heart (Simon Serailler Book 2) by Susan Hill.

10. Joyland by Stephen King. 11. Jerusalem:The Biography by Simon Sebag Montefiore. 12. How to Meditate: A Practical Guide to making Friends with your Mind by Pema Chödrön. 13. Lord of the Flies by William Golding. 14. Palestine by Joe Sacco. 15. Steelheart (Reckoners Book 1) by Brendon Sanderson. 16. The Girls by Emma Cline. 17. The Hanging Shed by Gordon Ferris. 18. I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou. 19. Mindfulness: A practical guide to finding peace in a frantic world by Mark Williams and Danny Penman. 20. The Hanging Tree (Peter Grant series, Book 6) by Ben Aaronovitch. 21. Stasiland by Anna Funder. 22. Indemnity Only (VI Warshawski Book 1) by Sara Paretsky. 23. The Vegetarian by Han Kang. 24. The Wild Ways (Book 2 in the Enchantment Emporium series) by Tanya Huff. 25. The Magician by Raymond E Feist.

The latest being:

26. Homegoing by Yaa Gyasi.

A wave to Convivial! Will be interested to know what you think of it.

The story starts in Africa and splits two half sisters and follows their subsequent families to the present day. Quite like a family tree with each chapter the tale of the next generation, based in The Ivory Coast, Ghana and America. I found the change of character/perspective a bit jolting, in that you didn't stay with any one character for very long till you are on to the next skipping 20-30 years each time. I'm a bit partial to longer character development. And sometimes I felt that issues were shoe-horned in, and the characters developed around them but maybe I'm just being picky and, really, overall it was fine, in the 'quite like' pile of this year.

I am currently listening to The Sellout, bringing up similar themes as Homegoing but in a very different way.

Added the Grayson Perry book to my wish list, thanks Remus. As have The Bell Jar and The Silent Woman. Love having some books to look forward to! 😄

Sorry about that.
Anyway, currently reading Fell by Jenn Ashworth, which is a slow burner, but very well done.

Er ... Not sure what happened there. Thought I'd posted half a post, but don't seem to have done. Anyway, my list is:

1. The Light Years Elizabeth Jane Howard
2. Marking Time Elizabeth Jane Howard
3. Peter's Room Antonia Forest
4. Run Away Home Antonia Forest
5. The Thursday Kidnapping Antonia Forest
6. Pride and Prejudice Jane Austen
7. Cheerful Weather for the Wedding Julia Strachey
8. Good Evening, Mrs Craven Mollie Panter-Downes
9. Unpublished manuscript

10. An Episode of Sparrows Rumer Godden 11. Confusion Elizabeth Jane Howard 12. Private, Keep Out! Gwen Grant 13. Hillbilly Elegy JD Vance 14. Nurture Shock Po Bronson and Ashley Merryman 15. Grass in Piccadilly Noel Streatfeild

And I've laid Orwell and his teapots aside for now to read Fell.

I know what you mean fortuna I was only teasing a bit. For me it is the quality of the writing and what he does stylistically and with symbols that makes it a work of art - I should think a bit of that is perhaps lost in an audio version, but we all look for different things. I'm looking forward to reading some more Steinbeck this year and expecting great things from East of Eden so hope I don't have the same experience as you with Gatsby and find it a let down

Just read the sample of Lincoln in the Bardo and hooked, but argh so expensive!

34 The Descent of Man by Grayson Perry
Reviewed by Remus above. I really enjoyed the first half of this, I was a little disappointed in that I felt that he didn't develop his arguments as much as he might have done, but overall very good. Parts of the later chapters did bring this old Jacky Fleming postcard from the 80s very much to mind :

Oh no, Satsuki, you're not having a good time. What a shame!
I treated myself to Lincoln in the Bardo as I loved his short stories and I couldn't resist. Twas a bit of a splurge though.

Sadik - I'd forgotten all about Jacky Fleming. I used to have lots of postcards of her cartoons on my walls at uni!

She's still around & drawing, Remus ( and all her old postcards are on her website :) ).

Thanks, Sadik. V fond memories of the chocolate mousse one!

My list:

My list so far:

1. Only Daughter by Anna Snoekstra
2. Viral by Helen Fitzgerald
3. The Last One by Alexandra Oliva
4. The Atlantis Gene by A.G. Riddle
5. Good Me Bad Me by Ali Land
6. The Rest of Us Just Live Here by Patrick Ness
7. ADHD Nation by Alan Schwarz
8. The World's Worst Children by David Walliams
9. Starborn by Lucy Hounsom

10. The Girl on the Train by Paula Hawkins 11. Allegiant by Veronica Roth 12. Bridget Jones's Baby by Helen Fielding 13. The Great Zoo of China by Matthew Reilly 14. Finders Keepers by Stephen King 15. Spark Joy by Marie Kondo

16. The Silence of Ghosts by Jonathan Aycliffe

Ghost story mostly set in World War 2. The first and last few chapters are set in the present day, but these don't add much to the story. Especially the bit where Octavia's ghost appears to the narrator in the opening chapters.

Dominic Lancaster, recovering from the loss of his leg at the sea battle of Narvik, is evacuated with his deaf 10 yr old sister Octavia to the family home by Ullswater in the Lake District. Sinister presences are soon felt, dead ghost children make friends with Octavia, and Octavia's health begins to decline (no surprise there, having seen her ghost at the beginning of the book).

The beginning and middle of the book were quite good. But the ending was unsatisfying. An anticlimactic and unconvincing showdown with the menacing presence, and lots of loose ends left unresolved and dangling.

17. A Dream of Ice by Gillian Anderson and Jeff Rovin

This is book 2 of their Earthend Saga. I read book 1 last year. Book 2 was a lot more frustrating.

Child psychologist Caitlin now has exciting new powers after uncovering a mystical link to the ancient lost civilisation of Galderkhaan in book 1. But now her young son is being threatened by Galderkhaan spirits, and she's being watched. Meanwhile, in Antarctica, Mikel, a researcher for a mysterious organisation, finds the ancient Galderkhaan city remarkably well preserved under the ice (book 1 has the city being seemingly obliterated by volcanic activity. Not much sign of that here). Mikel estimates at one point that the city was destroyed some 30,000 years ago.

My suspension of disbelief just wasn't up to this book.
We have the way Caitlin can manipulate energy, heal the sick, etc by striking various poses.
We have an amazing super linguist who can pull together a Galderkhaan vocabulary and talk knowledgeably about their culture based on, ooooh, a whole 3 short videos of possessed people talking in this long lost language.
We have magic stone tablets of magicness that levitate, literally melt brains, act as a telepathic database of souls, and the best explanation of them is along the lines of they work because of unimaginably ancient beings from the cosmic plane that no one's ever seen. Not to mention the amazingly intact city, with amazingly intact infrastructure, that lots of the magic stones are in.
We have trapped ghost souls trying to pull Caitlin back in time so that she can stop Galderkhaan being destroyed, lots of fretting from present day people about how this would wipe out our present, and not once does anyone even mention the possibility of time paradoxes (the famous grandfather paradox particularly springing to mind here).

Anyway. I wouldn't recommend anyone spending any money on this.

Thanks for new thread!

13. Behind her eyes by Sarah Pinborough. Started out promisingly as a psychological thriller involving a married couple and a single woman. Different narrators added nicely to the tension but this book was always going to be all about the ending. I won't give it away but suffice to say it was extremely unsatisfying. Don't bother.

My list - not a great year for reading so far. I think I peaked too early, as the first two substantially better than nearly everything else I've read thus far.

1: The Essex Serpent – Sarah Perry
2: Fatherland Robert Harris
3: Stasi Child – David Young
4: Golden Hill – Francis Spufford
5: American Gods – Neil Gaiman
6: The House by the Lake – Thomas Harding
7: 84 Charing Cross Road – Helene Hanff
8: The Duchess of Bloomsbury Street – Helene Hanff
9: Magpie Murders – Anthony Horowitz
10: Warm Bodies – Isaac Marion
11: Ashes of London – Andrew Taylor
12: Left for Dead – Beck Weathers
13: The Burning World – Isaac Marion
14: Age of Wonder: How the Romantic Generation Discovered the Beauty and Terror of Science By Richard Holmes
15: Ghosts of Everest: The Search for Mallory and Irvine – Jochen Hemmleb
16: An Astronaut’s Guide to Life on Earth – Chris Hadfield
17: Measuring the World – Daniel Kehlmann
18: The North Water - Ian McGuire
19: Berlin: Portrait of a City - Taschen
20: It Stephen King
21: On her Majesty’s Secret Service – Ian Fleming
22: White Boots – Noel Streatfeild
23: A Place Called Winter – Patrick Gale
24: The Painted Dragon – Katherine Woodfine
25: Black Plumes – Margory Allingham
26: The Nine Tailors – Dorothy L Sayers
27: Plague 99 – Jean Ure
28: Black Out – John Lawton
29: The Companion Guide to Berlin – Brian Ladd
30: Sex and Punishment: Four Thousand Years of Judging Desire - Eric Berkowitz
31: The Seven Dials Mystery – Agatha Christie
32: One – Sarah Crossan
33: The Secret Diary of Adrian Mole
34: The Growing Pains of Adrian Mole
35: Friday’s Child – Georgette Heyer
36: The Grand Sophy – Georgette Heyer
37: The Descent of Man – Grayson Perry

Thank you for setting us up south! My list so far:

1 Evil Under the Sun by Agatha Christie
2 Stark by Ben Elton
3 Call the Midwife by Jennifer Worth
4 Capricorn One by Ron Goulart
5 Starship Troopers by Robert Heinlein
6 The ADHD Effect on Marriage by Melissa Orlov
7 The Long Dark Teatime of the Soul by Douglas Adams
8 Only You Can Save Mankind by Terry Pratchett
9 4.50 from Paddington by Agatha Christie
10 The Sherlock Chronicles
11 A Passage to India by EM Forster
12 Ready Player One by Ernest Cline
13 The Queen of Distraction by Terry Matlen

Just finished reading:
14 The Hunt for Red October by Tom Clancy. This was a reread after a gap of about 20 years. I read it in the first place having seen the film, which I love. I prefer the film. The book is far more convoluted with more politics (which is good), lots of technical details (which get a bit much & may well be nonsense) and characters that just appear from nowhere and disappear just as fast! I still enjoyed the story but it could have done with some serious editing especially among the Russians in Moscow who I lost track of!

On to Cloud Atlas!

Realised I'm way way behind on reviews, given that I now have 31 books in my Kindle 2017 collection and the last review was something like #16, so am going to group them by genre:

Regency romances - Georgette Heyer
Friday's Child
The Convenient Marriage
Venetia
Regency romances all previously reviewed on these threads so am going to cop out of a proper review.

Mil-SF/Space opera
Elizabeth Moon
The Serrano Legacy Omnibus One
The Serrano Connection Omnibus Two
These are actually 3 novels each, mainly following the two main characters from the first book - Heris Serrano, a former Space Service officer who resigned in disgrace shortly before the start of the series, and her new boss Lady Cecilia, though we see other character viewpoints throughout the series. Elizabeth Moon's series books tend to be focused around uber-competent miltary women - this series also has plenty of underestimated but secretly uber-competent old non-military upper class ladies too. Political intrigue, space battles, and fox hunting (that's mostly in the first book though).

Marko Kloos, Fields of Fire
Book 5 of the Frontlines military SF series. Hard to review this one in detail w/o spoilers - set in the 22nd century, Earth is overcrowded and short of food. The majority of the population are coralled into crime-ridden "welfare tenements" - essentially whole cities where the inhabitants get housing and an increasingly meagre food allowance but can only leave by joining the military. The Earth and its colony planets are under attack by aliens. The main character progresses over the series from enthusiastic recruit desperate to get out of the welfare tenements to jaded veteran.

Bizarre Lovecraft meets British Civil Service SF
Charles Stross, The Laundry Files
The Atrocity Archives
The Jennifer Morgue
The Fuller Memorandum
The Apocalypse Codex
plus novellas Down on the Farm and Equoid
Near future SF based around the idea that the British Government has an agency (The Laundry) devoted to occult threats. Funny, and fast paced - I steered clear of these for a long while because I really can't stomach gory horror. There are indeed some very dark parts in here, and I might have skimmed very hastily past certain sections. I found the tech bits surprisingly nostalgic - I always wanted a Palm Treo but could never afford one.

Miri e, you seem to have the same taste in books as me- have you read The Gustav Sonata?

Murine

MiL SF??? Reminds me that I should dig out my copy of the first Serrano trilogy though, Glitter - I read the first two novels when I was given it, but never got to the third one.

Book 7, Me Talk Pretty One Day by David Sedaris

I've been a big fan of David Sedaris since I was given Holidays on Ice as a Christmas present in high school, so I was looking forward to reading this. I did enjoy it, though I think it would be better as a book to dip in and out of, as the subject matter of the stories is very diverse and not particularly connected in the same way that the stories collected in Holidays on Ice were arranged around a single theme. By reading this book all in one go, I began to feel weighed down by Sedaris's relentless focus on himself. I am being a bit unreasonable perhaps, as this is what Sedaris does, but I felt glad to have finished by the end nonetheless.

Now on book 8, Wilbur Smith's The Seventh Scroll and already in a rage.

British Civil Service Sci-fi sounds fun, slightly, think I'll give it a go sometime!

Major rant warning.

I think I need to stop reading The Seventh Scroll before I self-combust.

Does anyone else get pissed off by crap naming of characters?

I am no expert, but surely when writing characters and placing extreme/borderline offensive emphasis on their "bloodline" you would choose names for your characters that actually are used in the group that they are supposed to belong to? For example, if you were going to say how only Coptic Christians are real Egyptians and everyone else is an Arab invader, then you probably wouldn't give your male character an Iraqi/Syrian name and your female protagonist a male Muslim name, right? Then a monk has a Hindu name, and another Egyptian character is called Nahoot. Nahoot I tell you. I could cry.

Ah I just posted on the other thread.... is everyone here now? Here's my list so far:

Books 2017

1. It -Stephen King
2. Swing Time -Zadie Smith
3. Pandemonium – Daryl Gregory
4. The Mirror Crack’d from Side to side – Agatha Christie
5. The Murder of Roger Ackroyd -Agatha Christie
6. The Essex Serpent – Sarah Perry
7. How to be Both – Ali Smith
8. The Way of Kings – Brandon Sanderson
9. The Word for World is Forest - Ursula Le Guin
10. The Merchant’s House – Kate Ellis
11. Commonwealth – Ann Patchett
12. The Year of our War - Steph Swainston
13. No Present like Time – Steph Swainston
14. Wishful Drinking – Carrie Fisher
15. Wolf Winter – Cecilia Ekback
16. To Kill A Mocking Bird -Harper Lee
17. Go Set A Watchman
18. The Passage – Justin Cronin
19. The Twelve – Justin Cronin
20. A Day in the Death of dorothea Cassidy – Ann Cleeves
21. The Deaths – Mark Lawson
22. The Humans – Matt Haig
23. The Power – Naomi Alderson
24. Breakfast at Tiffany’s - Truman Capote

Not a bad hit rate at 9 out of 24, but 4 of those are rereads so should really be 5