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?

So very glad to hear that you loved It, Best. I would have had to have requested a conscious uncoupling from you on these boards, otherwise.

Book 89
The Queen’s Man – Rory Clements
A prequel to the John Shakespeare series I reviewed the first three of earlier in the year. This was diverting enough. I like the central character and his sidekick, although neither of them are quite as interesting as Shardlake and the lovely Jack. But in a Shardlake-less world, I guess one has to take one’s historical who-dunnits where one can find them, and these ones are better than lots of the others out there.

Right, off to splurge on King on Kindle. Have read them all, of course, and also own them all - but they will be useful for long train journeys etc.

Gah. Too late - missed the last bit of the thread.

Have bought Christine, anyway.

70. The Castle in the Pyrenees by Jostein Gaarder

As students Solrun and Steinn had an intense relationship in which they felt like the sole members of their own cult. It ended suddenly following an accident on a holiday, where their car hit a woman and they made the decision to drive on. Thirty years later, both married to other people, they run into each other by chance back where the accident happened. This book is told in an email exchange following their unexpected reunion and looks at the world and their relationship from their very different points of view: Steinn the climate scientist grounded in science, and Solrun (a teacher) with a strong and deeply held sense of the spiritual. Bit contrived at times, but I quite enjoy Gaarder's philosophically inclined work, even though it has been years since I last read one of his books.

80 A Mind of Its Own: How Your Brain Distorts and Deceives by Cordelia Fine
Earlier book by CF, (author of the fantastic Delusions of Gender & also of Testosterone Rex which has just won the Royal Society science book prize).

This one is a short easy read - much lighter going than D of G - and very entertaining, rather like Thinking Fast & Slow re-written by a stand up comedian. There's still lots of fascinating stuff in there though about the ways in which our brains work. Recommended, esp as it's available for under 2 quid on kindle atm (as is the really excellent Delusions of Gender). I'm waiting for my birthday in the hopes of being given Testosterone Rex!

Conscious uncoupling

1. The Alchemist

I read it. It was a bit simple. I'm told that's its charm. I kind of ended it and said "hmm. Okay."

It was alright, but I think I need something a little more.

Ooh Sadik thanks for the heads-up on Delusions of Gender!

132. *The Lady In The Tower: The Fall Of Anne Boleyn' by Alison Weir

Non fiction covering the last couple of months of Anne's life. It explains the events of those months well, but it doesn't really tell you much about what Anne was like as a person. It also assumes a reasonable level of background knowledge of Anne's situation. Good if you want to know more about why Anne was executed, but not the book if you want to know more about Anne's while life.

Book 90
Powder and Patch – Georgette Heyer
Utter nonsense. This felt like Heyer had whipped it out in a day by taking paragraphs from all her other novels and sticking them together, without any attempt at plot or characterisation. Pages and pages of it involved nothing more than the hero’s stockings, and most of the other pages were the heroine either crying or being stupid or doing both simultaneously. I hated it.

I think Powder and Patch is the worst Georgette Heyer book I've ever read.

41. The Cuckoo's Calling by Robert Galbraith on audiobook. I quite liked this, but it did feel oh so very slow to go anywhere at times. I picked someone else out as the killer, so she gets bonus points for that.

148. It Shouldn't Happen To A Vet, James Herriot. Do you know, I diagnosed my dog's kidney trouble based on reading James Herriot endlessly as a teenager? (Well, I noticed his urine was a strange dark colour and I knew from James Herriot that this was a Bad Thing and took him to the vet). So they are not only funny, touching, and very well-written, they are also providing a public service of saving dogs' lives!

149. Madam, Will You Talk?, Mary Stewart. Much reviewed upthread - I love it too! I think it's the literary references (the audabe, chansons, troubadours etc) that enrichen (if that's a word!) these books above standard crime fiction. I don't get all of the references but I learn a lot from them. A fair few references to Macbeth in there too. Mary Stewart does this in a much more focused way later - in Nine Coaches Waiting it's Jane Eyre, and in The Ivy Tree it's Brat Farrar.

Despite all the training activity, I've managed to slip in a few quicker reads:

Book 47 : Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe - the african classic about the clash between old style village life in rural Nigeria and British imperialism. But not preachy, simply subtle observation. Can't understand why I took so long to get around to reading this one.

Book 48 : This is Going to Hurt: Secret Diaries of a Junior Doctor by Adam Kay - which I bought after seeing a clip on twitter. Laugh out loud observation of life as a junior doctor, but underlined with a serious message (basically that Jeremy Hunt (& his cohort) is a cunt). Recommended.

Book 49 : Dark Matter: a ghost story by Michelle Paver - I think this must been reviewed on here, as it's not my usual sort of read. Genuinely atmospheric and creepy tale of Artic expedition.

Oops, forgot to embolden things ...

You lot have persuaded me to grab the Mary Stewart book too! Especially as on 99p atm

52. Expo 58 by Jonathan Coe. Quite an enjoyable read with some laugh out loud moments especially in the early chapters. It's 1958 and Thomas Foley, a handsome young civil servant, is sent over to Belgium on a six-month 'sabbatical' to oversee the running of a British pub in the British section of the World Fair, and to report anything suspicious in his dealings with a Russian journalist/spy.

There are a couple of things that stood out for me, the first is how liberating and hedonistic life can be as an expat, and secondly the effects choices we make can impact on our own lives and those who are involved in our lives. The end was particularly poignant in this respect.

Just popping in to share a super quote from the Einstein biography I'm reading. It's an actual headline from the New York Times in Nov 1919:

Stars Not Where They Were Seemed or Were Calculated to be, but Nobody Need Worry

Sorry, extra Were is my error, not the newspaper's!

Free book alert - Turning Blue and These Darkening Days by Benjamin Myers free on Kindle at the moment. I was impressed by his debut Pig Iron (earlier this year or last year, can't remember) so looking forward to checking these out.

35. His Bloody Project by Graeme MacRae Burnet. Murder not-mystery where we get to find out how and why 17 year old Roddy MacRae killed three people in a 19th Century Scottish crofting community.

Loved this, especially Roddy's journal of life in the crofting village leading up to the killings, which was so well done that Roddy became an oddly sympathetic character.

Just catching up- I fancy that Fine book sadik, and the Mary Stewart, but I am trying not to spend money and the library has failed me!

Mustn't linger as have just started Seveneves and think it'll be tight to finish before Overdrive snatches it back- fab so far so thank you Cote!

TooExtra I announced very solemnly to the entire thread that they all needed to read Brat Farrar. They have all so far ignored me. The fools.

38. Arabian Sands - Wilfred Thesinger

Absolutely fascinating account of Thesinger's travels with the Bedouin tribes across the 'Empty Quarter' of Saudi Arabia in the 1940s. It's a compelling boys'-own tale of adventure in a society on the cusp of a cataclysmic change with the arrival of Western oil companies in the Middle East, and a free and dignified, if violent and uncertain, way of life doomed to extinction with the arrival of technology and 'progress'.

I loved Brat Farrar Cheerful- there was a fab tv adaptation (in the 80s I guess) too.

Cheerful, I read Brat Farrar! And all the other Josephine Teys. It was great!

I forgot this one:

150. The Prince and the Pilgrim, Mary Stewart. This is an Arthurian one featuring Morgan Le Fay. It doesn't stand up to her happy post-war crime at all! I think it was pitched for younger readers, but it was very very slow. Part of my issue with it was that I like Morgan Le Fay, damn it, and I don't tend to like books that present her as a bit of a sad case, plotting away against Arthur from a powerless position, ensnaring young knights and blah blah blah. I'd much rather read The Mists of Avalon or (ahem) Night of the Solstice/Heart of Valour by LJ Smith.

Now on The Crystal Cave by Mary Stewart - all about the young Merlin, so far.

57. The Masked Truth by Kelley Armstrong

A therapy weekend for troubled teens turns into a violent bloodbath when masked men burst in to take hostages and demand ransoms. YA but very readable and suspenseful.

58. The Lie by C. L. Taylor

Thriller. Following a holiday from hell which left two of her friends dead, Emma has changed her name to "Jane" and is living a quiet life working in an animal sanctuary, when she receives an anonymous letter from someone who knows who she really is. Someone who seems intent on destroying the new life Emma has built for herself.
Okay but one I struggled to get into.

59. Three Weeks With Lady X

Regency romance. Thorn, the incredibly rich bastard son of a duke, hires Lady Xenobia India to help make him look more marriageable (primarily through house restoration).
Very predictable ending, but it's a fun read getting there.