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?

Oh & I'm clearly in the slow reading corner of the 50-bookers too

Forgot to greet all the regulars and newcomers

140. Storm Front, The Dresden Files, Jim Butcher.

My first foray into Butcher's work and I wasn't entirely sold. I just felt a little bit (whisper it) bored of urban fantasy. It is weird, because usually I love it! There just seems to be a glut of magical investigators out there (Kate Daniels, Mercy Briggs, that Parasol Protectorates series, the Lisa Tuttle detectives, that Chloe Neill vampire series, Rivers of London, Kim Harrison etc etc) at the moment and I think I've scunnered myself. Plus, Harry was a bit annoyingly sexist for me to really warm to him. Is it worth continuing? Does it get unusual/original (and stop making reference to keeping mouse scampers in jars)?

In a similar vein, I started and then put down A Darker Shade of Magic because it didn't seem particularly fresh and exciting and the staccato style was pissing me off. Also, I picked up 3 grammatical errors in the first two or three chapters (I can't remember them all, but one was the use of 'leant' when it should have been 'lent'. To lend, not to lean!) and that just seemed sloppy. To round it all off, my mental image of the Dane twins was as Tuffnut and Ruffnut from How To Train Your Dragon, and I really don't think that's what the author was going for!

cheers biblio - I had no idea they did returns for ebooks. I'm new to this kindle business and clearly have much to learn.

Marking place. Nothing to report, except I want to read The Dry at some point. Read and liked the sample a while back.

Stitches, I don't have a problem with Kant's philosophy but I just don't understand what the author is trying to do. Is he trying to pull a David Mitchell with separate-but-somehow-connected stories, in different styles, in different centuries?

I was pretty OK with it until the last 50 or so pages where it's been all about the sexual abuse of a young boy. I don't want to read about that stuff. At all

84. Sovereign - C.J.Sansom. I struggled with this. I loved the first couple of Shardlakes and tore through them but this one was a slow burn. It recounts the great Progress to York of Henry VIII and Catherine Howard and it's brilliant in capturing the atmosphere of the time (especially the leg Remus). But it just didn't engage me, too many characters and I had no idea what the plot was. It took until 75% before it suddenly gripped me and I couldn't put it down. The horrors of Henry's reign are vividly painted and the scenes in the Tower are just terrifying. I've bought the fourth one.

Didn't help thought that I had a few bouts of insomnia and kept breaking off to read some soothing chick-lit

85. and 86 Something by Cathy Kelly. Followed the usual of formula of three or four interlocking stories all with happy endings set in rural Irealand. I've read a few now and they all merge into one but great when you need something not too taxing at 3am.

86. Map Addict - Mike Parker About Maps. Was ok.

Ireland. I proof read that post too.

Revelation was faster moving than Sovereign I think best. More akin to Dark Fire pace-wise. Sov does end very strongly though, but you have to put up with a lot of "progress" to get there!

I was swinging towards The Thing Itself but having just read cotes update might swerve it.

Cote, such subject matter is generally a hard no for me, too.

Cote, I haven't read any David Mitchell (is Cloud Atlas the one with the separate-but-connected stories?), but yes, the stories are connected.

I think it'd be possible to skip the rest of the story you're talking about and still follow the present day parts of the book.

Another one for the slow readers group!

47. The Paying Guests Sarah Waters - I enjoyed this. It's 1922 in London. Genteel Frances and her mother are forced to take in lodgers of the 'clerk class' , the young men of the family having died in the war, and the father also dying after mismanaging the family finances to the extent that Frances and her mother are left in a very precarious position. Rather slow start but some beautiful writing, full of underlying tension and building into a convincing love story which you are just waiting for the fall out the whole time - and when it comes the tension really ratchets up and I found myself very invested, with shifting sympathies and lots of conflicting feelings. The final resolution was a little drawn out.

Cheerful, I totally agree about Fielding. Her work is very sharp, but it's too often dismissed.

128. Broken Heart by Tim Weaver

Book 7 in the David Raker series. Raker is a private investigator who looks for missing people. The case in this book is linked to Hollywood and film making. I really enjoyed it and had to stay up to get to the end last night.

88. Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl - watching the film last week (Johnny Depp version, not a patch on Gene Wilder IMHO). Prompted a discussion with DCs when I said I'd never read any Dahl. How I escaped it I don't know. DH liked him so he read the books to them along with the Harry Potters. I'm the right age to have read him as a child but didn't remember ever doing so. Anyway, they insisted I read it.

All very familiar having seen the films but suddenly when I got to the part about the elevator going in different directions I realised why I've been having recurring nightmares dreams all my life about being trapped in lifts going in all sorts of directions. The film has never triggered this reaction so I think I must have read it as a child. It was the precise words in the book. Unnerved me a bit.

I agree about Helen Fielding too. Th first Bridget Jones Book is genius.

32 Dare Me by Megan Abbott A Mumsnet giveaway and it has been reviewed earlier on this thread. A tale of friendship and rivalry on a High School cheerleading team. Initially I got a flashback to my teenage 'Sweet Valley High' books but the themes are definitely more adult and Abbott's writing style kept me wanting to read until the end.

33. Rosy is My Relative by Gerald Durrell I'd bought three of Durrell's books in a set and this is the second one I've read. Durrell is a great story teller and I enjoyed this a lot. Adrian Rookwhistle inherits an elephant with a taste for alcohol and the book details their adventures together.

Just off to the cinema to see 'It'.

142. Nerve, Dick Francis. Re-read. I've been reading this slowly over about a week whenever DS nicks my phone so I can't get at my Kindle app. All Dick Francis heroes are the same - calm and phlegmatic, resolute - someone gets nicknamed 'Tungsten Carbide' (not in this one), which has always struck me as a good descriptor for them all (although a ridiculously improbable nickname). Despite that, they're still good yarns.

I've just seen that a much read book on this thread Lincoln in the Bardo has made the shortlist for the Man Booker prize. Whilst I found the ending disappointing I can understand why as it is a very clever book.

Yes, whatever its faults, Lincoln is just so different from anything else out there.

The dry is radio 4 book at bedtime at the moment. I think they're doing an Australian season.

Cheddar, I am pretty sure the captive prince started off as fanfic, or the author came from fanfic.

I am so with you in being unable to find good urban fantasy at the moment- for me nothing beats 8 Days of Luke, but for a plcurrently popular genre, especially with all the superhero TV and film stuff, the books are woeful.

I love a Dick Francis, but I don't remember anyone being nicknamed Tungsten Carbide- but it would indeed suit them all! (And in a near link back to the caprice prince, I just read an entertaining To The Hilt slash fic!

I am not responding Sation 11 wars! (Although I was under the impression it was meant to be YA and I gather it wasn't, which might explain why I kept visualising the main female character as 18 rather than 28). I quite liked the central conceit but felt she didn't quite pull it off, especially as Jared never re-intersected. But I did enjoy it, it was very easy to read).

Re-opening not responding, sorry!

And apologies for all the typos and missing brackets, mning on old phone.