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?

I finally get around to adding my list. I have slowed down massively, mostly thanks to work getting in the way. I need to win the lottery so I can spend my days reading!

1 The Woman Who Stole My Life by Marian Keyes
2 The Ice Princess by Camilla Lackberg
3 Kitchens of the Great Midwest by J Ryan Stradal
4 Cheer Up Love by Susan Calman
5 Beswitched by Kate Saunders
6 Someone Else's Skin by Sarah Hilary
7 Wifework by Susan Maushart
8 The Year of Reading Dangerously by Andy Miller
9 The Pillars of the Earth by Ken Follett
10 The Adventurous Seven: Their Hazardous Undertaking - Bessie Marchant
11 No Kiss for Mother - Tomi Ungerer
12 Detour from Normal - Ken Dickson
13 The Dark Net - Jamie Bartlett
14 Whisper My Secret - JB Rowley
15 The Skeleton Cupboard - Tanya Byron
16 Scars Upon My Heart - ed. by Catherine Reilly
17 The Prisoner of Zenda - Anthony Hope
18 The Hiroshima Maidens- Rodney Barker
19 Gods and Warriors - Michelle Paver
20 Strictly Murder - Lynda Wilcox
21 The Last Romanov Icon - Carlos Mundy and Marie Stravlo
22 The Burning Shadow - Michelle Paver
23 Pollyanna - Eleanor H Porter
24 12 Years A Slave - Solomon Northup
25 Skeletons In The Closet - Jennifer L Hart
26 All Quiet on the Western Front - Erich Remarque
27 Noble Beginnings - C T Ryan
28 Elizabeth Hobart of Exeter Hall - Jean Baird
29 The Handmaid's Tale - Margaret Atwood A reread. Terrifying in the current world.
30 Through the Barricades - Denise Deegan Not a bad take on the Easter Uprising, if still rather romanticised.
31 What Katy Did - Susan Coolidge Thus and the next one were sheer nostalgia. I read them in my long-distant youth and fancied a reread.
32 What Katy Did at School - Susan Coolidge
33 Murder 101 - Faye Kellermann I really like Kellermann's books, much more than Jonathan Kellermann, who I find cynically over-invested in sadism and violence. Faye's books have humanity, as well as being well written and researched.

Currently I have three books on the go. Oh, and an audible. Will be back with proper reviews when I am not marking an enormous pile of uni scripts!

boldly - Welcome to the fascinating world of Neal Stephenson I really enjoyed Seveneves last year, although I thought the last 3rd was slightly weaker than the rest and should have been a (better thought-out) sequel.

If you would like to go on to read some more of his books, you have Anathem (very brainhurty) and Cryptonomicon (somewhat brainhurty) on one side of the spectrum and Snow Crash on the other (not brainhurty, but brilliant story all the same). I also rate The Diamond Age very highly, especially re social and cultural commentary and thoughts on raising children.

I have to warn you, though: Once you start reading Neal Stephenson, you will be a SF snob who sniggers at the likes of Station 11

Cote, mixed feelings about Snowcrash.

I think in hindsight I would have enjoyed the book more if I'd read it rather than listened to it. Not that the narrator did a bad job, just because the way the book is structured (? If all his writing is like this). Episodes of action or at least the plot being propelled forwards followed by what felt like huge info dumps which I don't think, for me personally, work in an audio context. I felt exactly the same way listening to The Name Of the Rose last year. Moments of exhilaration followed by what seemed like endless minutes of information which are impossible to skim as a listener, and ultimately left me feeling frustrated. I wonder if I'd had a physical copy of the book in front of me I could or would have read the book differently. Possibly skimming and then flicking back to the librarian sections later when some piece of information became pertinent and I wanted to read through it again.
Not sure. It did make me think about which books I chose to read and which I choose to listen to, and taking more care of the choice in the future.

He has to be congratulated though for the opening scene of the pizza delivery. I've never come across such clever world building written in a sitting on the edge of your seat/action set piece style. Not going to forget that scene in a hurry.

My list so far:

1. The Year Of Living Dangerously 2. The Complete David Bowie by Nicholas Pegg 3. Submarine 4. Cold Comfort Farm 5. The Life Changing Magic Of Tidying 6. A Man Called Ove Quite enjoyed A Man Called Ove, a book that concerns itself with what seems to be at first sight an irredeemably grumpy, unpleasant old man. But as his life is told in flashbacks you see that he has hidden depths and a well hidden heart of gold. His life is, quite literally, saved by his neighbours who slowly come to see the good in him and he in them. It's sentimental, and I did feel my heart strings being unceremoniously tugged at, but I was involved with the characters and was therefore quite happy to give way to the occasional tear! Now reading number 7 Hideous Kinky, a book I have been meaning to read for years, due to the fantastic title if nothing else, it's mildly diverting but not rocking my world so far.

49. The Northern Clemency - Philip Hensher Picked this up in a charity shop. Was draw to it as it was set in Sheffield where we have family ties. Also began in the year I was born. It is 700 + pages of a family saga covering two 'normal families' . The story picks them up in 1974, 1984, and 1996/7. The writing is convincing and there were some laugh out loud moments. The book meanders rather than races and nothing groundbreaking happens, just the ups and downs of family life and how our earliest experience can affect us later on. I never felt I wanted to give up on it but I never felt an amazing pull towards it either.

Scribbly - that's interesting. I've got SnowCrash on Audible, and gave up a little way in. I thought it was just that it had dated badly, but I think you're right, it just doesn't suit audio.

40 The Black Gryphon by Mercedes Lackey. Very average fantasy novel, definitely not one of her best.

Thanks for the recommendations, Cote. I am intrigued to read more by him. I think my main issue is that my technical/scientific knowledge is basic - I last did any science over 20 years ago! Philosophy, linguistics and history are my strong points. Perhaps, I'm always going to find the more technical descriptions a bit challenging but it won't stop me trying more even if it does fry my brain.

Book 47
Endless Night by Agatha Christie
This was just dreadful. It started as rather silly and clichéd, then got silly and dull, and then got utterly preposterous. I absolutely hated it. Has anybody else read this travesty of a novel? And now I've finished it, I have a feeling |I may have read it before and been equally alarmed by how terrible it was. Either that, or I've read another book that was similarly ridiculous.

boldly - You must read Snow Crash, especially if you have a background in linguistics. That book has the most astonishing ideas & plot, based to a large extent on language and its effects on the brain.

Just caught up with the thread. I've succumbed to peer pressure and bought The City and the City. Only £1.29 on kindle and nothing to do with the abs, oh no.

15. Different Class by Joanne Harris
Roy Straitely has been teaching at an old-fashioned independent school for over 30 years and is nearing retirement. He is struggling to come to terms with a number of changes made by the new Head. The new Head is a former pupil at the school who was involved in a serious scandal there in the earlier days of Straitley's career, which had life-changing consequences for one of Straitely's closest friends. He is certain that the new Head is involved in a serious of worrying events that begin to unfold.

This is the second book Harris has written featuring Straitley (the first was Gentlemen and Players), who is a really sympathetic and recognisable (if flawed) character. The psychological drama is tense and the conclusion thought-provoking. However, Harris used a very similar structure in Gentlemen and Players. In both the narrative switching between Straitley and an unnamed second narrator, with the result that the twist was far easier to work out this time round.

urgh - shonky bolding

www.versobooks.com/events?edition_id=2443&page=1
China Mieville has a UK book tour for his latest book in the Russian Revolution - anyone read it yet?

Ooh Into Thin Air by Jon Krakauer is 99p today in the kindle daily deal, looking forward to reading this.

Into Thin Air is fantastic.

Just don't read it when on a skiing trip like me an idiot

28. Cut - Hibo Wardere

This was a read recommended by a colleague. Hibo tells the story of her own experience with FGM at the age of six and the problems she has afterwards. She then goes on to highlight the problems throughout the world and the education required.

It's fair to say I didn't know much about this before reading but it opened my eyes to it and made me squirm with the details of the procedures.

Matilda saw Cut on Kindle deals yesterday and was interested. Will download it.

Well, I seem to have got a bit stuck reading What's Bred in the Bone, which is the first of the Cornish Trilogy by Robertson Davies. I've seen the series recommended here, and when I read the first few chapters I thought I was going to love it (university setting, mystery manuscripts, super-brainy female student secretly in love with aloof professor). But I've got a few more chapters under my belt now and I'm finding it all a bit tiresome - the troublemaking alcoholic ex-monk is really getting on my tits and as for the mad gypsy mother and the scientist classifying the human race by the content of their excrement.....

Can anyone convince me that it's worth keeping going? I don't think I will give up now I've got this far in but let's just say it has some hard work to do to get a positive review from me :)

Sorry I can't remember who posted above about Jeanette Winterson. I am ashamed to say I'd read Oranges, when it was on the telly and everyone read it, and I'd never gone back to her. She was on the telly in the 90s being a bit pretentious and shouty and I thought "no thanks". Last year I read Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal and it was beautiful. Flawed, yes, but so human and so wonderfully written. Gut Symmetries has gone onto the TBR list.

Oh, and I also bought Ordinary Grace for 99p as I am a sheep - bah bah.

RMC I would say it's definitely worth a read just to learn more about it. I was slightly horrified to hear that the victorians performed similar for a while to stop excessive masturbation in women and tries it for a cure for epilepsy. They don't teach that when you learn about victorians at school!

Into Thin Air is excellent, even though I've recently decided that Jon Krakauer falls into my 'arrogant tossers' list, at least in part. That doesn't come across in the book though - 99p is an absolute bargain for it!

Have you read Into the Wild too, Cote and Remus? I spotted it in a charity shop last week but my tantrumming 3yo thwarted my shopping attempts, I may pick it up tomorrow!

Into The Wild was very disappointing: A very long-winded, repetitive, ultimately less-than-enlightening account of a young man's very ill-prepared attempt to live off the land in Alaska, within 120 days of which he managed to kill himself of starvation. I had high hopes for this book because I had loved the author's book Into Thin Air, his personal account of the 1997 Mt Everest disaster, but its only truly interesting part was where he talks about his own climb of The Thumb.

What I got from this book was that Chris McCandless was an affable idiot, and that I must get the DC's youthful energies channeled into some relatively safe sport or hobby before the end of their schooling, lest they find some exciting, romantic, creative, and possibly delusional way to quickly kill themselves.

I liked Into the Wild too, although not as good as Thin Air.

'Affable idiot' exactly right.

Matilda they certainly don't!! Will give it a go.
50. The Light Years - Elizabeth Jane Howard . Have read this many times and listened to it on Audible this time,inspired by Fatowl. I know it divides opinion but always love coming back to these books.
51. Her Perfect Life Sam Hepburn
Alright thriller , read in super quick time and has the obligatory twist at the end which I had half worked out. Reviews on the blurb compared to Gone Girl and Girl on the Train. Falls way short .