50 Book Challenge 2017 Part Seven

[southeastdweller]

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

What are you reading?

TooExtra SO glad you liked We Have Always Lived in the Castle. I am definitely going to read some more Shirley Jackson once I've made more of a dent in my current to-read pile.

I would like to thank Cote for the Daemon recommendation. Thoroughly enjoyed it.

And the Rotherweird recommendation from earlier in the thread - not sure who gets the credit for that one.

Passme, when I have that experience with a book it's sometimes simply because I'm not in the mood for that type of book. I usually put it aside and read something else. Most of the time I'll return to it at a later date and find it easier to read.

CBW now read Daemon's sequel Freedom

Cote - just bought Freedom and will settle down to read it this afternoon. Was browsing the thread first to pick up further suggestions. Thanks everyone for your contributions.

Come back to tell us what you think. It's all about to turn upside down!

132. Soulless, Gail Carrigen. Someone recommended this upthread as light and silly werewolf/vampire faux-Victoriana steampunk-lit, which it is, but it is the perfect Fri night cheerful bodice-ripper read. Really enjoyed it, apart from the bit where the hero spits disgusting black blood out (having fought monsters while in werewolf form) and then sweeps our heroine into a clinch, with tongue specified. Eww!

PassMeTheCrisps, if you aren't enjoying it, stop! Life's too short.

passme STOP READING IT. Consider yourself told. Looking back a lot of my reading "droughts" can be attributed to boring books. Tell yourself you'll finish it another time; you may, you may not.

Welcome newcomers

tooextra and turn I picked up The Haunting of Hill House on from a second hand bookshop on holiday and am saving it for when the nights draw in. I enjoyed Castle but got a bit frustrated with it, liked it enough to try another.

Also got Hotel New Hampshire as Irving was mentioned a bit on here - didn't much enjoy the first chapter - worth persevering?

Thanks chaps. I have loads of great stuff on my kindle and bought another couple of things from my wish list today to spur me along.

The same happened last time I read a Rankin book with a new baby - that one took me a year to finish

I will pick something else and move on

I'd stick with Hotel New Hampshire Satsuki . I loved it and I think we have fairly similar tastes? The setting changes after the opening and other topics are introduced. It must be 20(+?) years since I read it and I can still remember so much about it, which is more than I can say for some books I've read this year. Hoping to forget this one soon:

45. The Silver Swan by Benjamin Black Second mystery for 1950s Dublin pathologist Quirke. Woeful plotting, including the main character inexplicably making dodgy professional decisions, and hateful characters with horrible sleazy attitudes. This is John Banville writing under a pen name, and the only saving grace was the descriptive language, but on the basis of this he should stick with the boring literary works. There is a whole series of these books but I'm out. I read books one and two on my dad's kindle, and there aren't any more on there, suggesting he was out at this point too.

Rush Oh! By Shirley Barrett I really loved this! Set in Australia before the First World War, this follows the fortunes of a whaling community over a season, told from the point of view of the eldest daughter of the family who own the whaling station, Mary. It is based on the true story of a group of orcas who used to assist the whalers in that area over a number of years, and the fictionalised account of the family is interspersed with real newspaper accounts and historical detail from the time. It is rich with incident, and is wonderfully descriptive of both the danger and drudgery of the whaling industry. Mary's voice is funny and delightfully unselfconscious, and the domestic tale which she weaves in the background becomes a delicious social comedy, with entertaining characters and beautifully written witty dialogue, that I've enjoyed as much as anything I've read. I could have happily swum through a further 400 pages of it. It captures the sadness of a time passing into history, whilst acknowledging the cruelty and violence on which it was predicated, and the need for progress; the personal losses and disappointments of Mary that wink through the main fabric of the tale sharpen the wistful tone without sinking it into sentimentality. This was a real gem with lots of things I like.

Brave New World by Aldous Huxley I think I may have read this in my teens but couldn't remember and so picked it up when it was on daily deal. Sorry to say, and I may well be going against the grain here, but I thought it was awful, poorly written, and shallow. It does not stand up against other similarly regarded works of dystopian fiction, eg 1984, by a long shot. I can only assume the ideas were so original at the time it was published that it made an impact which elevated it to greater status than its execution would suggest it deserved. As a reader you are not led through a fully realised brave new world, where you experience ideas subtly as you move along the story - there is no story, and you are just told about how it all works in the most superficial and dull manner, with cardboard characters to piss you off along the way. There is no tension, or suspense, or much of anything to keep you going to the ridiculous denouement. The written equivalent of the "soma" it is so pleased to have invented, but less enjoyable, it provoked zero thoughts.

Thanks museum that's good to know, I'll keep on. @ he should stick with the boring literary works

Satsuki - They are supposed to be like cardboard cutouts though! It's a while since I read it, so have forgotten a lot of it, but I remember really enjoying it. There is no 'brave new world' and it's supposed to be shallow.

Yes but assume that I've understood all that - it wasn't very well done or written IMO. The characters and world are supposed to be shallow, yes, but the book should be able to convey that without itself being shallow; create a dull world without being dull. I appreciate its innovation for the time it was written, but judging simply on the experience of reading it now, it wasn't very rewarding. I reread 1984 fairly recently and still came away thinking it was a great book. The quality of the writing just wasn't there and there was an awful lot of telling and not showing which just wasn't enjoyable. I prefer to gradually get a sense of the new world (I used this to mean the fictional world) I'm being introduced to, rather than being given a tour guide.

Sorry if I sounded patronising - I certainly didn't intend to. As I said, I haven't read it for ages so can't really remember enough to have a proper conversation about it.

66. The Devil's Feast by MJ Carter

Captain William Avery is asked to conduct discreet investigations at the Reform Club after a fellow guest, on a night Avery joined a select group for a private dinner hosted by the extraordinary chef Alexis Soyer, died suddenly and painfully. Avery soon discovers that the kitchen is a hotbed of rivalries and with a huge banquest planned which will be the cover for political maneuverings of global significance, the matter must be resolved rapidly. But his mentor Jeremiah Blake has disappeared and Avery has grave doubts of being able to solve the crime on his own.

Third in the Blake and Avery series and I think the writing and story telling are much improved on the first, which was a decent tale but seemed to be slightly lacking in the execution.

Oh no, and sorry if I sounded chippy - just trying to get across that aside from whatever value it has for originality and prescience etc, I didn't find it that well executed and on a pure reading enjoyment level it wasn't that great for me. It's boring to keep comparing to 1984 but it's all I have to mind at the moment - there are lines of that which will stick in my mind forever - there was no moment when I savoured a sentence in this. Perhaps you can come to some things too late.

I'm a big 'Tempest' fan too, so that might have coloured my reading more positively.

76 Kings Rising CS Pacat
Final book in the Captive Prince trilogy - got a bit bogged down in the middle, but otherwise an excellent end to the series.

Animal Farm. Still relevant today. Ideals get compromised by the lust for power. Hypocrisy, greed, lies, rewriting history, propaganda. Not the best writing in the world but stimulating ideas.

97. Exit West - Mohsin Hamid
Story of a refugee couple. Has a touch of magic realism in the form of doors that open to other countries allowing escape. Very much like in Underground Railroad I suspect that this is clever device by the author to focus on the feelings and changes of the characters when they arrive in the different places, rather than getting bogged down writing about difficult journeys. Still can't decide if I think that is brilliant or lazy writing.
This gave a really interesting perspective on the realities of fleeing countries in chaos and becoming refugees. But like Boldly further up thread I was disappointed with it. It felt like a light touch, loads of promise, some undoubtedly skilled writing but undeveloped. I too lost momentum about half way through. Neither of the characters 'spoke to me'. I know we have long debates before about whether you have to like a character for a book to be successful but in this instance I truly think that connecting with the characters was key. I would perhaps go so far as to say I found the characters one dimensional.

85) The last wolf : the hidden springs of Englishness, Robert Winder

Non-fiction about how historical developments are rooted in the physical environment (being on an island meant wolves could be eliminating and large-scale sheep-farming undertaken; this wealth meant individuals had the capital to invest in the industrial revolution etc etc). Also, more tenuously, how the physical environment has shaped the English character - not convinced by this part at all. Ended up being a bit like a tourist office leaflet - oh, the English are stoic due to the rain, ha ha.

Overall I was a bit disappointed in this - I read his book "Bloody Foreigners" a good decade ago and still remember some of the stories he told, but this is much more forgettable. I did like the bit about the Victorians taking refuge from the dizzying pace of change in a Gothic dream of the Middle Ages; he points out that we're doing the same thing now by a mental retreat to the cloisters of Hogwarts, or the medieval style battles of Lord of the Rings/Game of Thrones. Not a bad read, but I can't wholeheartedly recommend.

133. Changeless
134. Blameless, Gail Carrigen's Parasol Protectorate series.

Gone off these a bit - they don't stand up well to being read in quick succession! Characters went a bit too far in the OTT caricature stakes. Shame, because the first one was silly-but-funny. Books 2 and 3 are just silly. Next!

I want to read The Haunting of Hill House too, Satsuki! Will keep an eye out for it.

50. The Friend - Dorothy Koomson

Book number 50 complete. Cece moves with her family to a new town. In the school playground she meets some new friends.. but what are they hiding? And could one of them be responsible for the attempted murder of another mother?

This was an enjoyable read. Few little twists but reminded me a little of Liane Moriarty's Big Little Lies with the school dynamics etc.

Now to get on with my pile of library books.