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?

99. If this is a Man - Primo Levi and 100. The Truce - Primo Levi . The personal story of Primo Levi who was an Italian Jew held in Auschwitz from 1944 to 1945. He was one of the 800 sick inmates who were left behind in the abandoned camp when the Germans fled as the Russians arrived. Out of the 800, 500 died in the 10 day period between the retreat and the liberation of the camp. A further 200 next in the next week. Out of the 600 + Italian Jews that Levi was rounded up with in 1944 only 3 survived the experience.
The books were recommended to me by a friend. They are some of his stand out books for their description of life in the camp and the journey back to Italy after liberation. But also for their commentary on how such experiences strip back a human being and what elements of human nature survive, what are lost and what are changed forever.
I found it a truly amazing set of books, but it was challenging to read on mainly levels. Emotionally it was expectedly harrowing but it also challenged my own preconceived ideas about life in the camp and the behaviour of the prisoners. Due to the subject matter it required my 100% attention, no skim reading allowed and they belong to that rare set of books where every word matters. On a practical level there was also quite a lot of vocab from different languages dotted throughout the text which weren't always directly translated. This reflected the experience of the author but it also made it more challenging to follow at times.
These books will stay with me forever.

Book 92
Thunder on the Right - Mary Stewart
Didn’t like this one, I’m afraid. A girl goes to France to visit her cousin, who is debating taking orders in a French convent. Is told cousin arrived at convent and promptly died. Decides nuns are lying, as they put blue flowers on grave, claiming cousin said they were her favourites, but cousin was colour blind, so girl decides cousin can’t be dead and there’s a big mystery. Meanwhile, girl is also oblivious-ish to fact that not quite so burningly dark and handsome hero as usual is in love with her. And that’s when it starts getting even sillier.

134. F is for Fugitive by Sue Grafton

Book 6 in the alphabet series featuring female private investigator Kinsey Millhone. Written in the late 1980s so dated now (she's almost finished the series, Y has just been published!). A couple of loose ends that weren't tied up properly but entertaining enough read. I like Kinsey so looking forward to seeing where the series takes her.

53. A trip to the stars by Nicholas Christopher. Brilliant book - couldn't put it down. Multi-layered, full of interesting characters and themes weaving through the narrative - astrology, art, music, Zuni folklore, vampires, war (Vietnam), arachnology and so on and so forth. Ten year old Loren and his young aunt are separated during a visit to the Planetarium in NYC. Fifteen years later (with a rather large amount of coincidences I must add) they finally meet up again. This is the kind of book I end up reading long after I should have turned the light out!

81. Days Without End by Sebastian Barry Beautifully written, I loved this. Thomas McNulty, an Irish immigrant turned US soldier, fights in the Indian Wars and Civil Wars enduring dreadful, brutal battles and hardships. The lyrical writing is full of stunning description such as during a tense moment "the horses stamp a bit in the margin of the road and huff out big flosses of steam and go huff the way a horse is ordained by God to do"

101. Harry Potter and the Philosopher 's stone. Read lots of times before this has been my 'comfort book'. Listened to it on Audible whilst running and driving to work. JK Rowling can weave a great story and it's been nice to have an escape over the past few weeks.

Murine pleased you liked Days without End. It has been one of my stand out books of the year. I was really disappointed when it didn't make the ManBooker list. I know others haven't been so impressed with it.

39. The Road To Wigan Pier - George Orwell

Shortly before the outbreak of WW2, Orwell went on a journalistic assignment to study the lives of impoverished working-class families in the north. This is the result - a two-part book that in the first half describes the brutal conditions (almost unimaginable only 70 years later) in which manual workers (mostly miners) lived and worked ; and in the second half looks more closely at the economic and social conditions prevalent at the time, how they contribute to the exploitation of the working class, how socialism could provide an alternative, and the dangers of fascism (then threatening to overrun Europe).

It's a fascinating, compassionate and insightful read, even though the world has changed so much since it was written.

135. What If? Serious Scientific Answers To Absurd Hypothetical Questions by Randall Munroe

As the title says! Good fun although some of the science/maths in the answers was a bit over my head.

The new Kindle monthly sale has a pretty good selection. My rec's:

A Life Like Other People's - Alan Bennett
Eileen - Ottessa Moshfegh
The Help - Kathryn Stockett
The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold

I've just read The Dry by Jane Harper. Brilliant murder mystery set in rural Australia.

56. When She was Bad - Tammy Cohen

Yet another library read but I’m surprisingly impressed with this one. A group of office workers in harmony until a new boss arrives and pits them against one another. Interlinked with the story of a neglected child and the analysis of her behaviour you spend the book trying to find the link between the two. I for one had it wrong a good few times! Thoroughly worth reading for once and not just hyped up!

I've not had a proper look at the Kindle monthly deals, but I've picked up The Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson for two quid, having loved We Have Always Lived In The Castle.

Book 93
The Ivy Tree - Mary Stewart
Well, I definitely read the best Stewart first. This one was too long, and quite irritating. A woman turns up in a village, looking like but claiming not to be, somebody who left in vaguely mysterious circumstances nine years ago. She then agrees to pretend to be said woman, in order to gain inheritance for handsome but clearly psychopathic man and his dull and weird sister. You then get hundreds of pages of is she or isn’t she really the woman she says she isn’t but is pretending to be, and is handsome man going to turn out to be the one she’ll fall for or even more of a psychopath that he first seems. Bits of this were okay, but it was mostly irritating.

I've bought In the Land of the Long White Cloud (19th century New Zealand saga thing)
and
The Last Days of Hitler

I've bought Freakonomics, The Modigliani mystery by Ken Follet and contemplating Anthony Powell's A Dance To The Music Of Time vol 1* which I think I've read but not certain.

Just bought Dispatches too.

I wasn't keen on much at all in the deals this time - have already got the Shirley Jackson - but will say for anyone who is interested in US social history, Ralph Ellison's Invisible Man is regarded as a modern classic and a seminal work in the way it addresses racial identity in pre-civil rights movement America. It's a challenging read but it was a bestseller in its day. A few years since I've read it, but a cursory glance at the international news tells me it's probably still depressingly relevant.

Best - will be interested to hear your review of Freakonomics. I expected to be right up my street but was not that impressed.

Interesting selection in the monthly deals..... Lots of politics and social history plus some classic novels by ground-breaking black authors.

I have bought: Dance to the music of time (been on my list for ages, so thrilled to snap that up!), Algorithms to Live By: The Computer Science of Human Decisions and Them: Adventures with Extremists

Considering a few others, although £1.99 seems to be the standard price these days - not so many decent books available for 99p - and TBH at that price I start to think I should just use the library more. I'm seriously considering the Harriet Harman after I heard her on the radio (less annoying than she was when speechifying, and spoke fascinatingly about what it's really like to be a woman MP). Also The End of the World Running Club and Eileen - both on my list, but both £1.99.

Longitute and Freakomics are both great if there's anyone out there who hasn't read them.

Update: I caved and bought the Harriet Harman

It is Black History Month keith, I've never noticed the influence of that kind of thing on the deals before.

I wonder about Dance to Music of Time it comes up a lot but don't know if I can be bothered with a series...

81 The Marshmallow Test by Walter Mischel

Book exploring various aspects of the psychology of self control/willpower, by the inventor of the famous test where children are left with a marshmallow - with the instruction that if they don't eat it before the tester returns, they will receive two sweets, instead of just the one. 'Success' on the test for pre-schoolers turns out to predict all sorts of things about their future lives.

Definitely interesting (especially for 99p on kindle), though the writing is a bit clunky, and it's a bit of a mish-mash between a self-help text and an academic account of the research. But still plenty of interesting things to think about.

Have just bought Algorithms to Live By - thanks for the pointer Keith - have looked at it before, so nice to get it cheap.

40. The Moon Of Gomrath - Alan Garner

The sequel to The Weirdstone Of Brisingamen, this was another thoroughly enjoyable read featuring elves, wizards, dwarves and ancient magic among the woods and valleys near Macclesfield. Apparently there's a third book in the trilogy but seems from Amazon reviews that it's an adult book (where these are high quality children's fiction) and doesn't share much with the original two, or answer what happened next to the major characters, which is a shame because a lot of plot points were left hanging at the end of this.

Keith stay away from The End of The World Running Club. It's dire. Probably the worst book I read last year.

Missed the Harman. I've had a bit of a crush on her since I met her when I was much younger and she was lovely so I'll look for that,