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?

Popping on to say Middlemarch - why have I never picked this up before? It's been in my house for 12 years and I have never even peeped into it. Loving it! It's making me really focus - the sentence structure is properly Victorianly convoluted so every time I start accidentally skimming I have to go back and read it properly to make sure I got the sense correct, but I like that.

40. The Rosie Effect by Graeme Simsion

Sequel to The Rosie Project. Don and Rosie are now living in New York City, and have been married for 10 months, all going well, when Rosie announces that she's pregnant. Don struggles to adapt to this unexpected news, which leads to lots of problems.

I was a bit disappointed with this. I really enjoyed The Rosie Project, but I found Don a lot more annoying in this book. Don's friends, too. Given that they surely know how socially incompetent Don is, there's some seriously questionable "help" and advice coming from them. Rosie doesn't get very much page time either.

I think maybe I'd have found it more entertaining if the possible consequences of Don's behaviour were less serious.

67. Rambling on the Road to Rome by Peter Francis Browne.
Does what it says on the tin - man walks from France to Italy. Not the best of its type.

68. Mastering the Art of Soviet Cooking, by Anja von Bremzen
Really enjoyed this. Memoir of Soviet childhood - how do you deal with the cognitive dissonance when you have feel affectionate nostalgia for things you also feel political horror about? Weaves in family and political history, and a touching account of her relationship with her mother.

I enjoyed Rosie all right but had next one on my shelf for ages and haven't picked up. Didn't feel there would be much more it, looks like he's stretched it a bit thin maybe.

Middlemarch is wonderful. Will reread soon. Every sentence is a little gem

40. The Handmaid's Tale - Margaret Atwood

Book number 40 complete! Very much discussed and I was encouraged to read it after starting the tv series but I don't feel this impacted in my enjoyment of the book if that's the right word. It is quite terrifying how much of it resonates and makes you think how easy it would be for some things to happen such as having no access to money nowadays!

Definitely would recommend this to everyone!

Book 30 The Circle by David Eggers. Been reviewed on here no doubt on one of the threads i missed!
I really wanted to be captivated by this story but I wasn't. For me, it over promised and under delivered. I enjoyed the start but my enjoyment just petered out and I just wanted to finish it.

Book 31 Vinegar Girl by Ann Tyler. I picked this up in a charity shop as I am a fan of hers. I have since found out it is part of the "Hogarth Shakespeare Project". Now, given I did not get on with any of the Jane Austin re-writes a few years ago the jury's out with this one

My list:

1. Ruby by Cynthia Bond
2. Whispers Underground by Ben Aaronovitch
3. Dear Ijeawele by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
4. The Island at the End of Everything by Kiran Millwood Hargrave
5. Monster Love by Carol Topolski
6. The Girl with All the Gifts by MR Carey
7. The Time Traveller's Guide to Restoration Britain by Ian Mortimer
8. Auschwitz and After by Charlotte Delbo

1. Skulduggery Pleasant: Resurrection by Derek Landy

Great continuation to the series, introducing several new very promising and exciting villains, with some really touching moments. New teen protagonist Omen Darkly was very likeable and funny. The tone was definitely sadder than previous books, but given Valkyrie's current frame of mind, it was an entirely necessary shift in tone. The amount of set up needed did impact the enjoyability slightly in places though.

10. Enduring Love by Ian McEwan
    I really enjoyed this. It took me a bit of time to get into the plot, but the writing quality was so good I persevered until it really got going. I loved how McEwan made me doubt Joe increasingly as time went by, I thought he was going slightly mad by restaurant scene aftermath. I liked the focus on what was and wasn't rational as well.

11. Born a Crime by Trevor Noah
    My favourite book of the year so far, this was simply fantastic. Trevor Noah is the South African comedian who presents the Daily Show in the US, but his memoir has nothing to do with his career. Instead it's about his childhood and early adulthood, growing up a restless boy and young man in a world surrounded by poverty and violence, in the final years and aftermath of Apartheid. His mother is a towering figure, deeply religious, unconventional in many ways and absolutely determined to give her son the opportunities she never had. His birth during Apartheid was a crime - his mother is black and his father white - and he was kept hidden for the first few years of his life. From being thrown from a moving bus by his mother during a kidnap attempt, to ending up in jail for a week, from hustling in Alex township to the life of his mother, from discussion of race to domestic violence, the book is an amazing achievement. I wholeheartedly recommend to anyone who wants to read a memoir and also anyone who doesn't

12. Narconomics: How to Run a Drug Cartel by Tom Wainwright
    Another good read! I'm on a real roll here. In Narconomics, Wainwright analyses how drug cartels work by comparing them to legitimate big business. In chapters dealing with 'Why merger is better than murder', Offshoring, Franchising, diversification and the impact of online drug markets etc, he investigates how drug cartels operate, and (focussing on four big mistakes) provides a convincing argument on why the 'War on Drugs' is doomed to failure and why we must try new approaches.

Finished Alan Bennett's Keeping On Keeping On, which I enjoyed overall but probably two Bennett books in succession is a bit much. (Which reminds me of my favourite diary entry in the book:
"18 October. Robert Hanks, the radio critic of the Independent, remarks that personally he can have too much of Alan Bennett. I wonder how he thinks I feel.")
There's some wry smiles but he can come across as a bit of a grumpy old man and there's a few too many church visits and descriptions of same for my taste.
He's more of a liberal leftie than me so I often find myself disagreeing with his politics, never more so than when he defends the likes of Chris Langham: "Repellent though child pornography is, I don’t find Mr Langham’s conduct especially repugnant and am only grateful when I read about such cases that my own inclinations don’t take me down that route. I don’t know Chris Langham but I find the policy of targeting such high-profile figures deplorable, the relish with which they are pursued in the tabloid press chilling. I hope Mr Langham gets a short sentence and that he will not become the pariah the authorities would like, and that the BBC, not these days noted for its courage, will shortly re-employ him. R. does not agree and unusually we argue fiercely over this."
He's an intelligent man surely he realises that people like Chris Langham create the demand for pictures of children being abused which perpetuates the abuse. Similarly he defends potential terrorists who have in their possession bomb making hand books for example by saying 'looking is not doing'.
On to The Seige now, a 99p Amazon Kindle Daily Deal bargain but the nice weather means I'm spending more time in the garden than with a book in my hand so even my paltry 25 book target is increasingly under threat!

Some great books here - have just added Mastering the Art of Soviet Cooking, Born a Crime and Narconomics to my tbr list!

60 Release by Patrick Ness

Rather sweet little YA novel following a day in the life of Adam, a gay American teenager with evangelical Christian parents. A friend lent it to me a while ago, and it just hit the spot after a few pretty full-on books.

Apparantly it's inspired by Woolf's Mrs Dalloway and also Forever by Judy Blume, neither of which I've read - I think I'll look out a copy of the former (might skip Forever ) having read this one.

47. The Lie Tree by Frances Hardinge

14-year-old Faith moves to the island of Vane with her llittle brother Howard and her parents, the stern (and emotionally abusive, I would say) Rev Erasmus Sunderley, a respected natural scientist as well as priest, and his flighty wife Myrtle. The move is sudden and is the result of a scandal about to overcome Sunderley over his fossilised discoveries. He has been invited as an expert to join a dig on the island, but he is also concealing another secret in the form of a plant that feeds off lies, the fruit of which reveals hidden secrets. When Sunderley is found dead in mysterious circumstances Faith is determined to get to the bottom of what happened, but she finds that lies can take on a life of their own.

This is children's/young adults fiction but the concept of the story appealed which is why I picked it up. Suitably creepy.

He's an intelligent man surely he realises that people like Chris Langham create the demand for pictures of children being abused which perpetuates the abuse

Maybe he does. But he's not saying in that extract whether he does or doesn't, he's saying that looking at pictures of children being abused isn't the same as abusing them, which it isn't. And I agree with him that the fervour that the press went after Chris Langham was OTT, and also with his views, in other sections of the book, on the pigs police.

Meg - Thanks for thinking of me. Am pretty sure I've read it (is it the one with some great photographs?).

Chillie - I was frustrated by The Lie Tree. Thought it had promise but didn't entirely deliver, and seem to remember thinking that the ending was all rather silly.

Finally caught up on this year's threads and I think I might have to read Howard's End is on the Landing. I've owned it for ages and never quite got round to it but I think I might have to go for it. Not sure whether I will like it or hate it but it sounds like a fully Marmite experience. Thanks to you all I read about the Norwich bookshop debacle and I'm starting to think she could pick a fight in an empty room.

Maximilian - Enduring Love is one of McEwan better ones. I have a love hate relationship with his books.

76. The wonder - Emma Donahue
Well the subject matter wasn't exactly uplifting- warped Catholicism, anorexia, purgatory, abuse, poverty and incest. Not to mention family photos with corpses. This was fairly well written part from one or two unbelievably plot drivers. Only little things but these seem to irritate me more and more these days. However the whole thing just left me cold.
Have just embarked on The Romanovs. I may be some time

I was also very disappointed by The Lie Tree. I loved her earlier novels - Fly by Night / Twilight Robbery and A Face Like Glass, and it just felt very ordinary in comparison.

Fly by Night in particular reads like the bastard child of Black Hearts in Battersea and Volpone - I think Mosca Mye and Eponymous Clent are two of my favourite (anti)-heroes ever. They're pretty dense as childrens' books though, and I can't help but wonder if the author was asked to simplify/tone things down a bit and in the process lost a lot of what made her books interesting.

Max, have just ordered Born a Crime from the library. Sounds intriguing.

I've pre-ordered the new Catherine Fox book, Realms of Glory - should come to my kindle Thursday of next week. Can't wait. I'm sad she's not better known. Her stories are set in an unfashionable milieu, the Anglican clergy, but she's funny and irreverent and her characters are immensely appealing. This is the third of a trilogy, and I can't wait to find out how it all works out. Am expecting sex and jokes and revelation of divine love.

Have been flicking through a few books and finding it hard to engage. Abandoned The Rector's Daughter by L. M. Mayor and The Discovery of France by Graham Robb. I'm paddling in the shallow end of Rebecca West's Black Lamb, Grey Falcon, liking it, but unsure if I'm ready to commit.

I agree about the glory of Middlemarch. For anyone who likes people reflecting on books, you might enjoy The Road to Middlemarch by Rebecca Mead, which is her account of how the book has been interwoven with her own life experiences.

Just bought acts & Omissions bibliomania - it appeals..and great for my holiday next week

just had a spending spree and added the following to my holiday reading list:
The Unseen - Roy Jacobsen
The Evil Seed - Joanne Harris
The Underground Railroad - Colson Whitehead
The Power - Naomi Alderman

Thanks everyone!

Oh, I hope you like it Sonnet!

28. How We'll Live On Mars by Stephen L. Petranek

This book on the details of the plan to colonisé Mars was short, to-the-point, and full of fascinating information. Not surprisingly, there is a lot in there about Elon Musk but not just his vision. I would definitely recommend it to anyone interested in the subject.

Just seen Child 44 + sequels are 99p on todays Kindle deal. I think I remember people discussing them on here, but Search is playing up - are they worth reading?

RMC123 It's the first of his books I've read. I'm thinking of getting The Children Act next, what did you think of it if you've read it?

Sadik - Child 44 is really worthwhile, although I thought the ending was a bit meh. The one sequel I read wasn't good at all.

Thanks Cote - I'll get it but not the sequels. I've caught up a bit now so reckon one more on my tbr list is ok