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?

43. The child in time - Ian McEwan. This one has been on my to read pile for a long time. Recommended by my MIL who usually has impeccable taste in books. Have such a hit and miss track record with McEwan. Enjoyed Atonement and Enduring Love. Have hated pretty much everything else I have read by him - Nutshell was a real low point. I remember trying to read this years ago when my DC1 was very young. Couldn't get pass the description of the child going missing. Read it really because I was sick of it winking at me from the pile by my bed. I know I am waffling and not reviewing but to be honest I still can't decide whether I enjoyed it or not!

Bringing my list over:

1. Christmas Days - Jeanette Winterson
2. Fate of the Tearling - Erika Johansen

3. The Dark Net - Jamie Bartlett 4. The North Water - Ian McGuire

1. The Wine of Angels - Phil Rickman
2. Midwinter of the Spirit - Merrily Watkins
3. The God Instinct - Jesse Bering
4. The Edge of the World - Michael Pye

9. Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell 10. His Bloody Project - Graeme Macrae Burnet 11. Kingmaker: Winter Pilgrims - Toby Clements 12. Kingmaker: Divided Souls - Toby Clements 13. The Female Man - Joanna Russ 14. The Midnight Queen - Sylvia Hunter 15. The End We Start From - Megan Hunter 16. Testosterone Rex - Cordelia Fine 17. The Outcasts of Time - Ian Mortimer 18. It Didn't Start With You - Mark Wolynn 19. Pillars of the Earth - Ken Follet 20. The Power - Naomi Alderman

Just finished 21. Nobody Told Me - Hollie McNish. This is a series of poems/prose written by Hollie when she first found she was pregnant until her daughter turned 2. This is a truly wonderful collection charting pregnancy and early motherhood and encompassing all the topsy-turvy feelings. I loved reading this. There were so many points where I was nodding along with Hollie. I feel like I want to give this to all mothers, especially those who still have young children. Amazing!

*quick correction - from pregnancy till her daughter turns 3.

Best - That bookshop looks really cool!

Bringing my list over with favourites in bold and disappointments in italics.

1. City of Mirrors – Justin Cronin.
2. Hideous Creatures – S.E. Lister.
3. The Dark Net – Jamie Bartlett.
4. A Calculated Life – Anne Charnock.
5. 1984 – George Orwell.
6. Angel – L.J. Ross.
7. Under Heaven –Guy Gavriel Kay.
8. End of the World Running Club – A.J. Walker.
9. Made in America: Am Informal History of English Language in the United States – Bill Bryson.
10. Mr Penumbra’s 24-Hour Bookshop – Robin Sloan.
11. Betrayal: The Crisis in the Catholic Church: The findings of the investigation that inspired the major motion picture Spotlight – The Investigative Staff of the Boston Globe.
12. Reconstructing Amelia – Kimberly McCreight
13. The Wolves of London (Obsidan Heart – Book 1) – Mark Morris
14. Vigilante- Kerry Wilkinson.
15. Rosemary’s Baby – Ira Levin.
16. Prisoners of Geography – Tim Marshall.
17. A Commonplace Killing –Siân Busby.
18. Snowblind – Ragnar Jónasson.
19. Cloud Atlas – David Mitchell.
20. High Force – L.J. Ross.
21. Lock In – John Scalzi.

Ooh boldly I've been wanting to read that for ages, but my library has a massive waiting list. Maybe I shall just buy a copy.

Book 38
South Riding by Winifred Holtby
Hmm. Mixed feelings about this one. It’s set in a Yorkshire town in the 1930s, and revolves around a combination of town council business and the personal stories of those the council business will impact on. In places, it’s excellent – some really moving descriptions of a farmer in decline, for example. There’s echoes of both Hardy and Steinbeck in some of the strongest sections. But overall I found it far too long, rather repeptitive and relentlessly depressing.

Updating my list.

Swimming Home - Deborah Levy - Well, what an odd book. I only read it because it was in the holiday apartment we rented in Nice for the last fortnight. Either put there by the owners because the book is set in Nice/Antibes or abandoned there by a previous holiday renter. Either way, it was such a waste of my time. A British family (writer dad, journo mum, angsty teen and another couple approaching bankruptcy) rent a villa in Antibes for summer and are gate-crashed by a red-haired (her hair colour is mentioned ad nauseum) volatile girl called Kitty Finch.
Every single character is ridiculously unlikable and two-dimensional. They create their own issues, and then wallow in it and refuse help. Kitty Finch was obviously mentally ill and needed professional help, and the only character who recognised this and tried to help (a neighbour) was painted as a nosy old bat! I cannot understand why it was shortlisted for a Booker Prize! The only plus point is that it was short.

The Improbability Of Love - Hannah Rothschild - Another meh of a book. This wasn't as bad as the previous one - at least the characters were three-dimensional and had lives that felt real. I enjoyed the peek into the art world, and the hysteria that can be whipped up around certain pieces/artists. I just felt the book was "very good" rather than "excellent", which is what I would expect from any book that has been shortlisted for an award.

Basically I'm going through a "meh" phase with books. I'd almost prefer having a bad book so I could at least have a good old-fashioned rant like altered

18. Black Ice by Becca Fitzpatrick

In an attempt to impress her ex-boyfriend, Britt talks her best friend into a hiking trip in the mountains during their spring break holiday.
Things start to go wrong when they drive into a snowstorm on the way to their cabin, and abandon their car to search for shelter in the dark. And then when the cabin they seek shelter in turns out to be occupied by a pair of young men on the run from the police, Britt finds herself in a desperate struggle for survival, and not knowing who she can trust.

It's okay, a diverting enough read, although a bit predictable. It was on the adult shelves in the library but not sure if it's meant to be a young adult book.

I abandoned Swimming Home about a quarter of the way through a few years ago, PoeticLE, I see it doesn't improve with perseverance!

16. Fell Jenn Ashworth
A woman goes back to the falling-down house she lived in as a child. In doing so she awakens the spirits of her parents, who tell the story of the summer of 1963 when her mother was dying and her father brought charismatic healer Timothy Richardson to try and save her.

My English teacher used to say trashy books were like hamburgers and literature was like a good steak dinner.

This book is more like eating a blackbird or a quail; you think there's nothing there, but the more you pick and pick at it, the more bits of hidden meat you find clinging to the bones.

On the surface, nothing happens. Tim arrives. Netty gets sicker. Future-Annette gets pissed. But there's a lot going on in this book. About how serious illness affects a whole family, particularly children. About hope. About insiders and outsiders. About Grange-over-sands. About magic and how one thing can be something and another, both at the same time.

And it's very well-written - beautiful is the wrong word for something that's all bones and tendons and viscera but ... Yeah. I liked it.

33. The Betrayal of Trust, Susan Hill.

Another Simon Serailler. Background theme to this one is the sordidness of assisted death clinics. I gather that each instalment combines a whodunit, an update on the relationships, jobs, finances and hobbies of the central characters, and an Issue of the Day. Formulaic, but it's a formula that does draw you in.

This book is like eating a blackbird

Another review you would only get on this thread

Cheerful . I like the sound of Fell. Not many books I know of set in Grange-over-sands. Like a bit of local interest. Will add to the ever growing to read list.

If anyone likes light-ish sci-fi, Gemsigns by Stephanie Saulter is 99p on Kindle atm. (Cote, don't read it, you'll hate it.)

RMC It is very set in Grange-over-Sands. It's practically another character! Lots about the bay, and the quicksand, and the lido, and a bit about the fells ...

Cheerful might read it before we do our cross bay walk then!

Ooh, ooh, ooh, I must read Fell. I was on a writing weekend in Grange-over-Sands last May and walked around the bay several times. Can't say I really got to know Grange but I already know of Jenn Ashworth in that she is a friend of a friend on Facebook and so I often see her comments on threads (all writery stuff).

I love the sound of Fell. Very interesting premise. The review certainly sells it to me!

Thanks Sadik I wasn't planning to

Cheerful you sell Fell very well, that's one of the best reviews I've ever read on here (or anywhere). However, one of the top reviews on Amazon basically says 'if you liked The Loney you'll like this. I HATED the Loney. So I'm undecided...maybe I'll just appreciate your review and skip the actual book.

I must be reading a different review than everyone else re Fell, and am not terribly inspired to read a book that is "trashy" and feels like "eating a blackbird"

There really isn't much plot, so if that's a problem for you, be aware. And it's about a woman dying of cancer, so there's that.

There's a surprising amount of hope in there though, given the subject matter. It's a very ... noticing book. She's obviously spent ages researching all sorts of odd things from 1960s cancer treatment to Saville Row tailors to the changing face of Morecambe Bay to tree surgeons ... It's a book that's interested in all sorts of minutia, which I liked.

It's definitely not 'trashy'!

I stand by my blackbird comment though. Baked by Netty in a pie with lots of mash, while Tim tells you a story about the history of blackbird-eating which you aren't sure is real or not, and Annette can't work out whether this is supposed to be a dish to set before a king or a gypsy's dinner.
And Ashworth knows it's both.