50 Book Challenge 2017 Part Six

[southeastdweller]

Welcome to the sixth 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, the fourth one here, and the fifth one here.

What are you reading?

I got 16% into On The Road and gave up in disgust. Posturing sexist arsehole. It was a book club book but I just couldn't keep reading.

Yes, and meandering, dull and self-absorbed if we're going into detail!

39. Ragdoll - Daniel Cole

A body is found stitched together with multiple victims body parts. Pictures released to the press along with a list of victims and dates they will be killed. Can the killer be stopped in time to save them?

This was an enjoyable read for the subject matter and I'm looking forward to more books from the author.

Now onto The Handmaid's Tale - Margaret Atwood which I'm looking forward to!

65. The Chalk Pit, Elly Griffiths
The latest in a crime fiction series. The archaeology bit is shoehorned in fairly awkwardly - it's one of the series' selling points, but the author is now struggling to come up with new scenarios. Still, I like the characters and read it more as an update on their lives, although keeping up with all the childbearing is a full-time job.

66. The Land of Green Ginger, Winifred Holtby.
Cheddar, thank you so much for your review of this one - I absolutely loved it! Young woman in 1920s Yorkshire dreams of freedom, but is stuck on farm, nursing ailing husband. Sounds dour, but it's done with a light touch and humour and a sense that life is there to be grasped. A delight.

Just realised made a mistake with my count. Confusion was book 71.
72. Reconstructing Amelia - Kimberly McCreight.
Another book group book and another one I suspect the rest will love and I hated.
Basic premise of the story is that Kate's daughter has apparently committed suicide by jumping off the roof of her posh NYC school after being accused of cheating. Kate is trying to prove she didn't.
It was poorly written, unbelievable and full of what I perceived as inaccuracies. I can suspend disbelief with the best of them but I can't cope with sloppy writing and plot lines that can be picked apart by a five year old.
I won't bore you with the details!
On a positive note it does raise some interesting questions about how much we know about our teenagers lives, particularly in the digital/ social media age. It also made me think about academic pressure on teenagers. However the author doesn't respond to these issues or develop the themes further, just sticks them out there in a very 'Jeremy Kyle' type way.
This is a long review for an awful book, however I can't just rock up to book group and say I hated it again!! I needed to sound out why.

RMC re book group hates...mine has chosen some atrocious ones this year Animal by Sarah Pascoe and The Secret Lives of the Amir Sisters to name 2 I hated but others loved!

Just purchased "The Land of Green Ginger" - thank you for the prompt. I enjoyed "South Riding" a couple of years ago!

I'm currently enjoying "Vera" and still fond of Eleanor (although not had much time to listen)

Sonnet - I've got Animal on my list, is it really dire?

On the Road = dullsville. I gave up on it.

I hated On The Road. Awful narrator, nothing happened, read like he'd got high and sat up all night scribbling random crap until he crashed, then thought "fuck it" and sent it to his editor. Who went "yeah, whatever, beatnik, innit?" and published it anyway.
And generations of creative writing tutors have suffered the consequences.

"Tristan, you've just handed in fifteen pages of waffly, plotless crap."
"No, right, but, like, On the Road, right."
"On the Road was attempting to capture the spirit of a generation. You are capturing the spirit of someone who thinks not using commas compensates for not having anything to say or a plot."

"Beatnik, innit" for quote of the week.

at Cheerful (very appropriately!). On the subject of waffly, plotless crap, I see you On The Road and I raise you Zen And The Art of Motorcycle Maintenance (also a book club gem).

I shall save my pennies then. OTOH, tempted to download a sample just to see how bad it is.

Ha ha cheerful.

However, I quite enjoyed Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance. I read it on a Greek island and felt extremely chilled so maybe that helped.

I'm still haunted by the scene where they agree to deliver someone else's car, trash it, and then just hand it over and are like, "Whatever" and walk away. Like, WHO DOES THAT AND THINKS IT'S OKAY?

1. Bee Wilson, 'this is not a diet book'
2. Harry Potter & the chamber of secrets (with DC)
3. Jennifer Weiner, 'all fall down'
4. Lauren Sandler, 'one and only'
5. Rene and Goscinny, the Nicholas Book (children's book)
6. Katja Rowell, fussy eating book
7. Nicola Yoon, 'everything everything' (YA book)
8. JD Robb, 'echoes in death'
9. JD Vance, 'Hillbilly elegy'
10. Jonathan Kellerman, Heartbreak Hotel
11. Haemin Sunim, The things you can see only when you slow down
12. Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie We should all be feminists
13. Sarah A. Denzil Silent Child
14. Anna Bell The bucket list to mend a broken heart
15. Elin Hilderbrand The Rumor
16. William Styron Sophie's choice
17. Diane Ackerman the Zookeeper's wife
18. Leap in: A woman, some waves and the will to swim by Alexandra Heminsley
19. Αύγουστος Κορτώ Μικρό χρονικό τρέλλας
20. The breakdown B. A. Paris 21) Floating: A life regained by Joe Minihane

As you may be able to spot, there's a theme developing in my list--swimming memoirs. I currently, in fact, have 3-4 more on the go. Journalist Joe Minihane's Floating (number 21 on my list this year) describes the journey of the author retracing the swimming 'steps' of Roger Deakin. Deakin famously set out to explore and swim at the UK wild swimming spots (lakes / reservoirs / rivers / sea / lidos) within one year. It's a real classic in the genre. So Minihane, with a mundane office job (albeit freelance) & some anxiety to conquer, sets off to follow Deakin's footsteps, travelling across the UK, swimming (with wetsuit & without / with friends or alone).

Have to say, much as I love reading swimming memoirs (and love swimming itself with a passion), this was not a good example in the genre. At best, it will inspire you to try out the swimming spots Minihane describes. But at worst, this is (unsurprisingly) a poor 'remake', in a way, of the far superior Waterlog which by the way I wholeheartedly recommend.

Sorry, I haven't updated for a while haven't been reading much.

33. Masquerade - Laura Lam - 3rd of the pantomine triology. Relatively good finish to the story, although it suffers from the YA problem of not having very fully thought out adults in it.

34. Holding - Graham Norton - I wasn't expecting much from this but it's actually very good! Some bones are discovered on a Irish farm near a small village. The land had belonged to a man who got on a bus and disappeared 30 years before, after his fiancee and the girl who had a crush on him had a fight in the street. Local policeman is very out of his depth. Lovey and gentle 'murder mystery' but with believable characters.

I tried to read Zen etc when I was much younger, and couldn't manage it even then, when I was desperate to be cool and had a much higher beatnik bullshit threshold.

34. Lifeless by Mark Billingham Well written police procedural featuring maverick London cop Tom Thorne, this time investigating murders in the homeless community that seem to be linked to soldiers who served together in the first Gulf war. I got pretty involved in this, thought I'd worked out who dunnit, but was completely wrong, which meant the reveal genuinely lived up to the description of 'thriller'. My dad had three of this series on his kindle, and I've now read all three. I would definitely pick up more of these.

I have now read the first chapter of Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell twice and hated it both times. Started it a couple of weeks ago and put it aside, then when I picked it up again couldn't remember anything about it other than I hated it, so had to start again. Jeez, it's dull and annoying.

Jonathan Strange and Mr Norell was one I abandoned a few years ago and never felt the need to go back to it. Don't bother. Life is too short for books that don't interest you.

Has anyone got any recommendations from July's Kindle deals? I can't see anything worth reading.

I've been a bit in the reading doldrums, too. I'm about halfway through The Summer Tree, Guy Gavriel Kay, but it's annoying me a lot. I see the author was employed by Christopher Tolkien to help pull together JRR's works - that is NOT licence to blatantly plagiarise Tolkien and have a king of dwarves who must look in the Crystal Lake surrounded by mountains called things like Silvertine. Furthermore, I'm 43% in and so far none of the characters are grabbing me. It is so 80s - they're all called Kevin, Dave and Jennifer, and the girls have been left in the castle while the boys go off for a spot of rape and pillage. It reminds me a lot of Stephen Donaldson as well (what was that book about falling through mirrors? It was a lot better than this!), and also, Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure where they go back to medieval times and rescue some babes. The women in this book are about as deep as the babes in Bill and Ted.

I loved JS & Mr N - great story, fantastic worldbuilding, solid, literary, witty prose that is properly funny in places. My favourite character was the Raven King who appeared mostly in the background information provided in the footnotes.

I read this book slowly, savoured the story & prose, soaked & wallowed in the atmosphere, and properly grieved when it ended. Then waited a few years to forget it a bit so that I could reread it with pleasure. It was just as pleasurable the 2nd time.

I don't even like fantasy in general and magic stories in particular. Never felt the need to read Harry Potter or that book about the Ring.

To each their own and all that but you don't know what you missed

Invisible interested to here your views on Holding. I bought this on a whim and was fully expecting it to be a bit crap. Will let you know!

JS & Mr N can be a bit marmite but I loved it, especially the Raven King and have read it 3 times.

Have just read The Vinyl Detective by Andrew Catrmel, a good light murder mystery with a likeable protagonist. Thought the name was vaguely familiar and he turns out to have collaborated with Ben Aaronovitch.

I've tried with JS and MN several times but so dull and I can't get on with the wittery tone. It just all seemed too irredeemably daft to me and I couldn't get absorbed in it. I really wanted to though, hence more than one attempt.