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 like the sound of Eleanor Oliphant Scribbky, not least because I knew some Oliphants years ago.

24. The Cold Cold Ground - Adrian Mckinty

Set in Belfast during the troubles of the early 80s it is a police procedural in challenging circumstances. Detective Sean Duffy is a Catholic Peeler sent to Carrickfergus to "keep out of trouble" but finds himself in the middle of what might be Northern Ireland's first serial killer when two homosexual men are found dead.

I really enjoyed this book with the setting adding a very interesting background. In amongst the heat of hunger strikers and riots, police work takes on a whole new level.

Now for a complete change of pace with the The Strange and Beautiful Sorrows of Ava Lavender by Leslye Walton.

Crikey. That was quite the first chapter!

Best the main reason I bought it was because I was intrigued by a protagonist called Eleanor Oliphant.

45. Dead Certain by Adam Mitzner
    A Kindle First free book, I wouldn't bother with this to be honest. Ella, a high flying defence lawyer who leads a secret double life as a singer, meets with her sister Charlotte who shares her news that she has sold her first novel, giving Ella a copy. When Charlotte goes missing, Ella realises that Charlotte's novel predicts her disappearance (we never really find out how she knows this!) and must work out what has happened.
    A page turner, despite unfortunately not being very well written, there are plot holes all over and the manner in which when a scene is relived from another characters viewpoint, all the dialogue is quoted again verbatim so you have to read it twice was irritating.
    The author liked the phrase "he took in a mouthful of air/let out a mouthful of air" a little too much for my liking too, and once you notice it seemed like it was everywhere!

46. The Return by Hisham Matar
    I received a copy from mumsnet for non fiction book of the month. I am very glad I was lucky enough to be drawn as I would probably never have chosen this myself and would have missed an excellent book.
    Beautifully written, Hisham Matar's account of his return to Libya in search of his father is very moving and at times horrifying.It took me a lot longer than usual to finish this as I had to take time to absorb what I had read, I learnt a great deal about Libya and life under Qaddafi's regime and have been doing a fair amount of Internet research to try to fill the evidently substantial gaps in my knowledge.

I'm now reading Apple Tree Yard and will be starting Burial Rites by Hannah Kent tomorrow, looking forward to this one.

Just added Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine by Gail Honeyman to my to read list.

54. The Love Letters of Henry VIII and Anne Boleyn. More of pamphlet than a book but I am counting it (!) because a) I read it and b) it's on Goodreads.

23. The Princess Diarist - Carrie Fisher. Another memoir from the late actress, this time she reveals an affair with Harrison Ford at the time they made Star Wars. Lots of padding out in this book, which isn't as fun and interesting to read as her previous two.

Just started Into the Water by Paula Hawkins.

I really liked the Rosie Project so I have also added Eleanor Oliphant* to my to read list.

Interested to hear what you think of Into the Water South. I have it on reservation at the library but as I am about 60th in the queue I suspect I am in for a bit of a wait.

34 A Year of Marvellous Ways by Sarah Winman - Marvellous is a 90 year old woman who lives in rural Cornwall. She knows she is waiting for something but she doesn't know what. Drake finds himself washed up in her little town and their ensuing friendship is a story of self discovery for the two of them. This book was poetically written but I struggled a bit with the style eg no quotation marks when characters were speaking but it was good to try something a bit different.

35 My Name is Lucy Barton - Elizabeth Strout - The focus of this book is Lucy's short stay in hospital several years prior to the book being written. A visit by her mum leads to reminiscences of a childhood overshadowed by poverty and difficult family relationships in rural Illinois, marriage, divorce, children and her career as a writer. Whilst a short book it is a powerful one and will stay with me for quite a while. I am looking forward to reading Anything is Possible and discovering more about the characters introduced in this book.

36 The Trouble with Goats and Sheep - Set in the summer of the hot summer of 1976 Mrs Creasy has disappeared. Two 10 year old friends (Grace and Millie) decide to find out what has happened. The Avenue where they live is filled with rumour and speculation and it soon becomes clear that the present mystery may be related to events of almost a decade previously. This felt a nostalgic novel and whilst a bit young to remember the 70s I did feel like I was transported back to the era. I really liked the character of Grace, who whilst perceptive wasn't quite as perceptive as she thought and like any 10 year old girl still had a lot to learn about life.

37 The Summer Before the War - Helen Simonson - Beatrix Nash arrives in the idyllic Essex Sussex coastal town of Rye in Summer 1914 to fill the vacant Latin teacher's job. Struggling to come to terms with her own father's death Beatrix is taken under the wing of Agatha Kent, and soon introduced to her two nephews Daniel and Hugh. Just as Beatrix settles into to village life the unthinkable happens and we are soon transported to the battlefields. I enjoyed getting to know the colourful cast of characters in the book and certainly the scenes set in France were very moving but at over 500 pages it was overly long.

38 Behind Closed Doors - B A Paris - To Grace and Jack's friends they have the perfect marriage but could everything not be as it seems. I read this book in little over a day as it really gripped me in a disturbing sort of way. However, I found the ending to be a real let down.

Currently reading My Cousin Rachel by Daphne Du Maurier

Murine, I read The Return earlier this year and really rated it highly. It's beautifully written.

And...I thought I was due an update...

44. The Comet Seekers – Helen Sedgwick
Drippy book centring around a woman who follows comets around and another woman who talks to the ghosts of her past family who only appear when comets are visible. Their lives become linked – it’s slow and over-long and frankly repetitive. I do not recommend.

45. Nocturnal Animals (or Tony & Susan) – Austin Wright
This is a book within a book. Nocturnal Animals is being read by Susan, and has been sent to her by her ex-husband - but why? The Nocturnal Animals part is rather gripping and horrifying but I found the parts about Susan reading the novel were not that engaging. Sort of a page-turner though. Sort of...

46. What We Talk About When We Talk About Love – Raymond Carver
I have read two books this year that play on the title of this classic so thought I should read the real thing. Excellent American short stories, all depressing and full of unlikeable characters who drink a lot, and who somehow find themselves on the margins of society. The title story was the stand-out for me.

47. Ashland and Vine – John Burnside
I found this to be a confused novel about a film student struggling with an alcohol problem who meets an elderly lady who turns her life around in unexpected ways. This is really a novel that examines narratives and storytelling from many different angles whilst somehow failing to deliver on its own narrative. Part of the novel is essentially a lesson in the history of the 60s underground resistance movement.

48. Still Alice – Lisa Genova
Much reviewed novel about a Harvard academic diagnosed with early-onset Alzheimer’s. As you can imagine, this is not a fun read, but her descent into Alzheimer’s is rather well portrayed.

Vistaverde thanks for the heads up about Anything is possible. I enjoyed My name is Lucy Barton but wanted to dig further into the characters

Not read Raymond Carver for a v long time. I've rather gone off short stories, but his are well worth a look.

55. Harm Done
56. Road Rage
57. Simisola
58. Kissing The Gunners Daughter All by Ruth Rendell, More lovely Inspector Wexford.

Remus, I really like short stories. I've read some good ones in the last couple of years, particularly Tenth of December by George Saunders.
I haven't read any other Carver though and want to read more.

32. Into Thin Air - reviewed earlier

33. The City and the City I think I'm on the fence about this one. I thought it was a very interesting idea and worked well as a metaphor for division; the concept of 'unseeing' was easy to understand as a more general social comment. I didn't worry about how Cleavage had occurred because at least Miéville states explicitly that no one knows how it happened. I did wonder about the physical reality of the city (and, yes, people have tried to draw maps which I've looked at online) and what happens at the edge of Beszel (spelled Besel in the Kindle edition) when an area becomes total Ul Qoma. Do the inhabitants just unsee it?

And the plot was weak. The characters were annoying. The denouement was deeply unsatisfactory. The whole Breach explanation was lacking. In addition, he writes sometimes as if he is leafing through a dictionary and wondering what abstruse synonym he can shove in.

34. We were the Mulvaneys I realised a few pages in that I'd read this before but persevered again - skimmed most of it though. Joyce Whatsername has a saccharine style which really grates with me. The family sounded truly ghastly before The Thing. Not my sort of writer.

Book 52
The Three by Sarah Lotz
Bought because it was on offer and reviews said it was a bit like Stephen King and ‘The Passage’. This began really well for me – more like ‘World War Z’ than those previously mentioned, made up of interviews/news reports/Twitter feeds etc. Unfortunately, I didn’t think it anywhere near lived up to its early promise, and by the end I thought it was really stupid. I don’t think she actually knew where to go with it so it became more and more repetitive in terms of lots of insane religious ramblings, before just completely falling to pieces. Assume it was being set up for a sequel, but, if so, I certainly won’t be reading it.

34. Beck, Mal Peet and Meg Rosoff

Another one from the Carnegie shortlist. This book has really divided reviewers - I thought it was beautiful, but very difficult to pigeonhole. Lots of people saying that it's unsuitable for young readers - I agree to some extent but maybe not for the same reasons they have given.

It's the story of a mixed-race orphan, born in 1907 and shipped over to Canada as a teenager for a "new life". His early years are a catalogue of misery and abuse - neglect, physical, sexual. This is described unflinchingly although not at length, and I can see why some people are uneasy about younger readers being given this book by the school library.

The second part of the book deals with Beck's coming of age - both his physical journey across Canada and the emotional journey that takes him from a spiky, silent scarred child into a young man. This story, for me, was realistic and beautiful - it twists and slips out of your grasp. Beck isn't likeable, he doesn't do the right things, the people who he meets are a mixture of good and bad. But slowly he starts to emerge from the trauma of his childhood and the book ends (sorry if spoiler!) with hope. It made me cry, twice.

Oooh - I very excitedly collected Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine from the library a little earlier. Looking forward to starting it after Into the Water (very enjoyable so far).

ontop thanks for your review of The City... I am listening to it on audio at the moment, and enjoying it, with similar fence sitting qualms to yours, but beginning to wish I'd read rather than listened, because I think the semantics and the imagined languages of the two cities are an important part of it, and sometimes as I'm listening I would like to see the names and phrases written down.

I really like Eleanor Oliphant so far. Funny but very sad too.

31. Dear Amy - Helen Callaghan

A young girl, Katie, goes missing and the police are beginning to think she just ran away from home. At the same time an English teacher in her school receives letters from Bethan Avery, a girl kidnapped twenty years previously, asking for help through her agony aunt column. Can she figure out whether Bethan is alive and whether this is connected to Katie's disappearance?

This was an enjoyable read. I hadn't actually guessed the twist to right when it was happening. Maybe a little bit unbelievable but it depends on how powerful you believe the mind to be.

23. Darkness Visible: A Memoir of Madness by William Styron. Mentioned upthread, this is an account of his experience with depression by the author of Sophie's Choice. The writing is incredibly powerful. I've never suffered from depression myself, but family members of mine have, and I think this gave me more of a genuine insight into what they are going through than any other book I've read.

24. The City and the City by China Mieville. A cross between crime thriller and sci fi. I really enjoyed this - well paced and quirky.

25. Running High, Running Low, Running Long by Ben Rolfe. This is a personal account of the author's journey from obesity (as a result of a desk job and too much wining and dining) to ultra marathon running - proper hardcore runs like the Marathon Des Sables in the Sahara Desert. It's written in a nice friendly, chatty style and I enjoyed the first 50-60% but then started to get a bit bored. If you want a book about ultra marathon running (a subject I find curiously compelling, despite never having attempted more than a half marathon myself), this isn't a patch on Born to Run.

59. Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine by Gail Honeyman

I can't better scribbly's review so won't do so. I liked this very much ( though agree that the comedy was over egged a bit and I'd guessed the 'twist'.
It will be a massive hit I think.
A film is in the offing apparently.

So I seem to be the only person on this thread not to have read The City and the City and now there's Oliphants! I can't keep up. I have read a novel by Mrs Oliphant if that counts?

I'm also feeling the peer pressure to buy the Oliphant book!