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 need to feel the characters behaviour is realistic"

I do too, and would imagine do most people except fans of Station 11 and On The Beach

I'm not a fan of excessive, heartstrung-tugging, exaggerated feeeeeeeliiinnnnnnngs (... oh wow wow, feeeelinnnngss) in books. Normal human feelings and reactions are of course to be expected in a book.

We can't have a debate today. I'm wallpapering and now my keyboard is sticky.

Look at the use of religion to control the masses in previous centuries. People often blindly believe.

I also started picking apart what is the point of education, how the UK system is a one size fits none, it limits social mobility etc. People are generally kept in their place and often don't know better to challenge it.
And as for self destructive behaviour, one lad did have 3 puddings!

Happy (belated) birthday TheTurnOfTheScrew

Hope you enjoy your kindle!

And Never Let Me Go ....
I'm on the finding it annoyingly unbelievable side. No mention of a single one of them rebelling against their fate, or behaving in self destructive ways, and not even an attempt to explain it away. And that's before you think about the science behind organ transplants and tissue compatibility.

Never Let Me Go is neither blackbird, nor steak, nor risotto. It's a lump of overdone pastry with insufficient filling to make it taste of anything.

Book 40
Our Endless Numbered Days by Claire Fuller
A YA novel which I only bought because it was 99p on Kindle yesterday and I needed a book. So glad I did, because I really, really enjoyed it. A father, obsessed with surviving after a world disaster, takes his young daughter far into the woods, telling her it’s a bushcraft holiday. Then, after a storm, he tells her that the rest of the world has gone – it’s only the two of them left. We know from the start that this isn’t true, because the girl, now about 17, is back in London with her mother. What we don’t know for much of the book is what has happened to her father, and how she got back. Whilst I guessed the ‘twists’ well in advance, this didn’t spoil my enjoyment of this rather sweet little book, with its echoes of Little House on the Prairie and Room (but much better than the latter).

Fortuna yes, people may often blindly believe in religion etc, but off hand, I can't think of a single religion that tells it's believers that they'll be literally carved into pieces and killed for the greater good, there's no getting out of it, and that they should cooperate and let this happen.

"Look at the use of religion to control the masses in previous centuries. People often blindly believe."

Yes, sure, let's look at the massive effort put into relentless religious conditioning that starts at birth and continues through the faithful's life. The book, the stories, the weekly conditioning sessions (Mass) in churches, continues use of litanies (prayer), etc.

None of the is in evidence in Never Let Me Go. Nothing. Nada. Kids are told they will one day be slaughtered and will die painful, early deaths for the benefit of others and they practically go "Oh, OK then"

Brave New World had brainwashing from birth through recordings played every night as children slept. 1984 had brainwashing, language control, even thought control. Never Let Me Go had... a huge gaping hole where the plot was supposed to be.

I seem to be reading more slowly this year. Not sure why, maybe it's because I've got Clarissa on the go as well, which will take most of the year.

Anyway, list as it currently stands:

1. The Spartans by Paul Cartledge
2. The Hedge Witch's Way by Rae Beth
3. Mort by Terry Pratchett
4. Mean Spirit by Phil Rickman
5. The Printer's Coffin by MJ Carter
6. The Raven's Head by Karen Maitland
7. The Sanctuary Seeker by Bernard Knight
8. The Thing About Prague by Rachael Weiss
9. Master of Shadows by Neil Oliver

10. Chasing Embers by James Bennett 11. Conspiracy by SJ Parris 12. Even Dogs in the Wild by Iain Rankin 13. Night Watch by Terry Pratchett 14. Pompeii by Mary Beard 15. The Three by Sarah Lotz 16. The Cold Calling by Phil Rickman 17. The White Goddess by Robert Graves 18. December by Phil Rickman 19. The Taxidermist's Daughter by Kate Mosse 20. Reasons To Stay Alive by Matt Haig 21. Shades of Grey by Jasper Fforde 22. The Woman in White by Wilke Collins 23. Bound by Benedict Jacka 24. Night School by Lee Child

This week I've also finished:

25. Into The Heart of Mindfulness by Ed Halliwell
    Part memoir, part instructional manual on mindfulness. I'm glad for Halliwell that he has found something so meaningful and helpful to him given the issues he sets out from earlier in his life, but I didn't really find this doing anything for me.

26. The Winter King by Bernard Cornwell
    First in the Warlord Chronicles, which is Cornwell's approach to the King Arthur legend. The three are possibly my favourites of his books. This one deals with battles between British kingdoms in the face of the Saxon threat, Arthur as protector of the throne of Dumnonia for his nephew, the infant king Mordred, and Arthur's marriage to Guinevere.

16. Night School by Lee Child (Jack Reacher #21)

JR is my sort of beach read, and this was a one of the better ones. Instead of the usual 'helping a poor guy/girl in need' sort of plot, this was about stopping terrorists and preventing a global catastrophe which no doubt will be turned into a movie at some point.

Bringing my list over:

1. The North Water by Ian McGuire
2. The Snowden Files: Inside Story Of The World's Most Wanted Man by Luke Harding
3. The Virgin Suicides by Jeffrey Eugenides
4. The Cambridge Companion to Handel by Donald Burrows
5. Revelation by C. J. Sansom (Shardlake #4)
6. The Mask Of Dimitrios by Eric Ambler
7. The Ladybird Book Of Mid-Life Crisis
8. The Schirmer Inheritance by Eric Ambler
9. The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgkin Burnett

10. Mindplayers by Pat Cadigan 11. The Dark Net by Jamie Bartlett 12. Wolf Of The Plains by Conn Iggulden 13. The Day Of The Jackal by Frederick Forsyth 14. The Odessa Files by Frederick Forsyth 15. Heartstone by C. J. Sansom

Cazelet CHronicle fans- help please.

I'm 20% into the first one (The Light Years) and I'm really struggling. I'm listening on Audible, and I don't know if it's the narrator or what, but I cannot figure out who is who. I'm not even sure of the names of some, because the name is said once and then is referred to only as "he" or "she" for the next umpteen pages. One is called Filly or Lily (not sure which), one is pregnant with twins (that might be Filly /Lily) but might be someone else. One of the men is having an affair, but not sure if that is Filly/Lily's husband or someone else. There's a boy at boarding school but not sure who he belongs to. There is a maid, and a girl called Louise and another called Polly, but not sure who their parents are. There's another branch of the family whose mother has died in childbirth and he has remarried a bright young thing called Zoe, but don't know his name. Neville maybe.

I think I'm being thick.

I googled, and keeping reading references to a marvellous family tree, but cannot find the actual tree for move nor money, just references to it.

Is it me? Keep going and I'll sort them out eventually? Or switch to Kindle for this one?

Or give up altogether ?

fatowl I read the first one and found it really dull and I couldn't keep track of people for the reason they all seemed so similar. And I kept track of a half a dozen Rostovs in War and Peace! It was a non finisher for me.

Yep, I've managed War and Peace, Anna Karenina and several Ken Follets with a cast of 50+, but this is mystifying me.

Just seen you've been listening to it - I read it on Kindle btw and still struggled to care who was who

Finger now hovering over the Audible refund button, might give it another half hour or so.

Just a list of the names would help me out a bit.

It's disappointing as so many people say they love them and it's their comfort read. I was looking forward to it.
Think I'll return to Harry Potter as my comfort read

If you are 20% the way through a book and it hasnt 'grabbed' you and you don't need to read it (book club/study etc) then why waste your precious time on it?

fatowl I'm out at the moment, but I'll take a photo of the family tree for you when I'm back home. It does help. Can't quite imagine it working on Audible for the reasons you say.

I liked Never Let Me Go. I agree the not running away should have been lampshaded a bit, but that was one of the things I liked actually. The children had been brought up in a place that didn't tell them how to run away - they literally had no understanding of how they'd live or work in the real world. They had no role models or story of how it would work, the way slaves in America had.

It's hard to run away even when you have a plan or somewhere to go to. It wouldn't have been hard to microchip them or something, but I think it's a deliberate choice not to. He's interested in stories - the story they tell about the gallery, about the falling-in-love getout. If they had a plausible running-away story, I think they'd use it. They don't.

It's no more implausible than soldiers on the western front walking to their deaths or women performing fgm on their children. I agree that there must have been exceptions somewhere, but i think the book is about those who don't run. I think that's the whole point of it, actually.

Fat owl I loved the books but I read them as a paperback and think there was a bit of thumbing back and forth to remember who everyone was to begin with. Kindle I find is hard for that - probably just me. And imagine I might have been lost on audio books too.

Re : Never Let Me Go. I read it many years ago. Can remember the basic premise of the book but can't say it last a lasting impression and can't remember having any strong feelings either way. So I guess for me that means it's crisps; quite tasty at the time, filled a gap, but forgettable.

I'm reading Past Mortems by Carla Valentine, it's about death and what happens behind the scenes at the mortuary during an autopsy, it's her autobiography as a APT and Technical Curator at the medical museum she works at.

I'm really loving non-fiction books at the moment!

I tried reading the first Cazelet and thought it was dreadful. Definitely not for me.

Cheerful - re Never Let Me Go:

"The children had been brought up in a place that didn't tell them how to run away"

So? Nobody needs to be actually told that they should run away from harm, let alone how they should run away. Surely the meaning of "run away" is to somehow get far away, or even stay close but hide. Animals run away from harm. Hell, even insects run away from harm and I really doubt they learn that in an insect school on "how to run away from certain death"

"It's hard to run away even when you have a plan or somewhere to go to."

Not harder than certain and painful death by missing multiple organs, I presume. Run, hide, figure it all out later. No gentle little school whose only claim to 'conditioning' is 'not telling them how to run' (what? ) is going to undo the 'fight or flight' reflex chiselled into all animals over millennia.

"It wouldn't have been hard to microchip them or something"

And then no sane human would stop until that microchip is removed, even if that means losing a limb in the process.

"It's no more implausible than soldiers on the western front walking to their deaths or women performing fgm on their children."

Soldiers go to their death either because they believe they are helping defend their country, fight for their way of life, etc or they know for a fact that they will be shot if they turn back. And yet many soldiers desert in every war.

FGM has nothing to do with voluntarily walking like sheep to one's own death.

"I agree that there must have been exceptions somewhere, but i think the book is about those who don't run."

There are no clones who run. If there are, why do we not know about them? Why is there no mention of anything of that sort in the book?

I find it quite pathetic that the book is so full of holes, so inconsistent and weak, that the reader has to try to come up with stories to make up for the author's laziness.

Cheerful - I didn't expect the people in Never let me go to run away, but was surprised that they obeyed the rules about protected their bodies, didn't drink/do drugs/shag about with people from the 'real world'/eat yummy crap food until they were morbidly obese. To live in such a fucked up way and not be tempted by drink and drugs seemed oddly not explored. I'd expect them to all be off their faces. And perhaps they were engineered to be obedient, but there was no explaination of that, there didn't seem to be warnings about reprocussions if they did 'ruin' themselves, if they couldn't be used what would happen? Would they be 'put down' or just left to do their own thing? Would it be a death sentence or a reprieve to drink until your liver is close to being pickled? They were just told not to, no "or else XYZ" - there was nothing in it for them to behave.

We do live in world where we have seen mass cult suicide, nazi Germany and North Korea.

Not to mention trump

All of which I find far more incredible than events in never let me go

Fgm absutely in same mind set. Not to mention suttee.

Inca practice of human sacrifice anyone?

And that's just the stuff that occurs to me off the top of my head.

As for running away, you need somewhere to go.

The industrial schools here in Ireland, not to mention the magdalen laundries were horrific institutions but I don't believe running away was common as the culture of the time agreed those people should be there. Mostly it was your own family that put you in.

I think it's a great book personally.

Anyone interested in Never let me Go I've just noticed it's one of the titles in the Audible BOGOF offer this week

"We do live in world where we have seen mass cult suicide, nazi Germany and North Korea. Not to mention trump"

There is a lot of systematic brain washing going on in cults, where people actually end up believing that apocalypse is coming and they are better off going to promised land or whatever. They kill themselves because they believe it to be the better/least painful choice. And you can't very well just say "Bye" to cults & leave them, either. There is no such brainwashing in Never Let Me Go.

Nazi Germany, Trump, FGM etc have nothing to do with the inexplicable loss of the instinct to stay alive.

"As for running away, you need somewhere to go"

ANYWHERE would do. Run away to a desert island, go to the hills and live in caves, whatever. Nobody can tell them from people who are not cloned, so why not just go to some other city or another country? Get a fake ID, change your name, hair colour, whatever. Criminals do it all the time, so why shouldn't they?

I would do anything, go anywhere to escape looming death. Are you saying you wouldn't, unless a destination is nicely presented to you?

The Cazalets