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?

Sounds like quite a few people here have full on lives at the moment. I am joining the ‘new job’ gang!
I have managed to finish 104. Anatomy of a soldier. Mainly because I have completed neglected the house work today. I needed to finish this for book club on Tuesday. I have an irrational annoyance when people turn up and say ‘ I have come but I haven’t read the book!’ So I was determined not to be that person.
This is the story of a young Captain who is wounded in Afghanistan. The story is told from the point of view of 45 inanimate objects caught up in the action, surrounding context and his subsequent rehabilitation. The author Harry Parker has served in both Iraq and Afghanistan so the book is technically very well written. The concept works well and there is a good balance of points of view.

62. The Disciple by Stephen Lloyd Jones

Loner Edward Schwinn stumbles upon a fatal crash scene on a storm battered road, and rescues a heavily pregnant woman. A baby girl is born soon afterwards, a baby girl being hunted by a powerful and deadly force, and it's up to Edward to protect her until she's able to fulfil her destiny.

Good reading, lots of action (some of it on the gory side), believable characters. It took me a while to work out which side we were meant to be on, as the details of what the girl's purpose is aren't revealed until fairly late on in the book.

141. Question Time by Mark Mason

I loved this! Mason travels round the country visiting different quizzes. It's full of questions and trivia, which, being a big trivia and quiz fan, I loved!

58. When it’s Real - Erin Watt

YA book about a pop star who hires a “normal” fake girlfriend to recreate his image. Perfect holiday read and a bit happier than the usual murderers etc

RMC I thought the concept of Anatomy of a Soldier was superb but, for me, it didn't quite work overall.

Book 97
Call of the Kiwi - Sarah Lark
The end of the trilogy. This was better than book two, although again there were many, many more pages of sex and good girls suffering at the hand of bed men. There was a section at Gallipoli, which I enjoyed, and a section in a storm that I also liked. It was nice too, to see how things came together at the end and there was far less in this one on the character I hated in the second one. Overall, these didn’t live up to the promise of the first half of the first book, unfortunately.

Remus it funny I have been thinking about the book a lot this morning. I did enjoy it but the more I think about it the more I feel like there is something missing. I just can’t put my finger on it. Maybe it is the lack of sustained emotion. The plot is by nature fragmented which fits with the war/ trauma/ chaos theme but on reflection I think the book is poorer for the fact that nothing is truly developed. The reaction of the soldier to his injuries seems rather muted in places.
Still think it was worth a read though

Sadik I watched Hidden Figures last night, it was really good. I must be feeling fragile at the moment because I was on the verge of tears all the way through. It was a lovely film.

RMC Just dug out my review - totally agree!
The story is told from the perspective of objects connected to Parker – the bomb that injures him, his mother’s handbag when she visits him in hospital, his prosthetic legs etc. It’s a clever idea and I was particularly interested in the sections in the hospital. My problem with it is that the perspective of the objects removes a lot of the emotional contact for the reader, so it all feels a bit too dispassionate, and you don’t really get anything in terms of character development or character relationships. I’m glad I finished it but still think it would have worked better as a short story or novella, rather than a novel.

I enjoyed Hidden figures (the book) and would like to see the film- glad it was good!

35. When She Was Bad by Tammy Cohen. This was reviewed by Chessie upthread and sounded like I would enjoy it- and I did! It's very much of its genre, but nicely done and enough possible twists that you don't feel it was totally obvious.

Remus. Great minds! Also agree that the hospital pieces were the most interesting to me.

51. I finished Emily Climbs for the prompt ‘a book you loved as a child’ on the reading challenge. I didn’t love it so much as an adult, but it was a nice nostalgic indulgence.

I’m still working on Americanah and trying to summon the enthusiasm to get going on A Place of Greater Safety by Hilary Mantel. I want to read it but it’s just loooong and I feel like I want to read something light and fun at the moment.

I was also quite weepy in places in Hidden Figures Satsuki

35. Moonrise Sarah Crossan Verse YA novel about a boy who's brother is on Death Row and the two months before his scheduled execution. Powerful writing and obviously very well-researched. I would have liked a bit more ambiguity - it's a story about Why Death Row Is Bad, and I think I would have preferred a messier version of that story. (Though like Crossan, the whole thing seems fairly clearly loopy to me.) It does what it does very well though, and makes some very compelling points.

46. Daemon - Daniel Suarez
47. Freedom TM - Daniel Suarez

Read these after Cote's recommendation. Really enjoyed them - loved the tech details and the premise. One of the characters was a bit 2D villain for my liking but it didn't detract from the overall story.

Interesting exploration on the power of corporations and plutocrats and how our freedom is illusionary.

Recommended for Sci-Fi fans who would enjoy exploring where existing technology could take us.

Has anyone read any of the Guardian Not the Booker Prize books? Several of the shortlist are pretty cheap on Kindle - I've just bought Not Thomas (on the basis of the comments, rather than the actual review)

Sadik I've been tempted by the Not the Booker list in years gone by, but am staying away from read-a-longs atm due to the state of my TBR, but I may have to take a sneaky peak of that one now ...

My recent reads are:
50. Smokescreen by Dick Francis - a re-read. Not a favourite one, but enjoyable in all the usual comfortable ways.

51. Guards! Guards! by Terry Pratchett - my second Pratchett (other than those he's co-written) and it was fun and clever. I don't know if all the versions had the language puns in italics, as I found that a tad annoying which somewhat reduced my enjoyment of the read.

52. Madam, will you talk? by Mary Stewart - enjoyable easy read, what I needed at the time.

53. The Unseen by Roy Jacobsen - book club selection telling the tale of island life in Norway back in the day. Lots of stuff unsaid, very subtle. I rather liked it.

54. The Break by Marian Keyes - Herself at her best. Hugh decides he needs a 6 month break from his wife Amy and the rest of the family after not recovering from the death of his father and close friend. But he expects to be allowed other women too ...

Just had a most interesting conversation about Commander Crabb after reading Himself the review above and have ended up buying another version of the tale. Hopefully he'll read it first as my TBR is already over-challenged and over-challenging.

Still struggling with my accelerated training training course, but the Poncetastic Thread here has also impacted in my absence ...

Am reading Jeeves & Wooster. Such joy.

Someone mentioned earlier that there’s a new Vera out so I was straight on to it.

142. Time And Time Again by Ben Elton

If you could go back in time and change something, what would it be? High discovers a way to do just that, and goes back to try and stop the Great War from happening. I am a sucker for time travel so really enjoyed this.

Hugh not High!!

boldly - I'm glad that you enjoyed Daemon and its sequel. Aren't they great? I loved how your perspective completely shifts between the 1st and the 2nd books, and the author's novel approach to economics, politics, and the way out of the world's socioeconomic dilemmas (basically).

83 Paladin of Souls by Lois McMaster Bujold

Fantasy - sequel to The Curse of Chalion reviewed above. I enjoyed this a great deal, makes a nice change in particular to have a middle aged woman as the heroine of a high fantasy novel. Thanks for recommending the series TooExtraImmatureCheddar

Thanks Sadik. I've downloaded Man with a seagull on his head and the threat level remains severe. Interesting that it was an all female final shortlist. Don't think I've seen that before.

56. A Gentleman in Moscow by Amor Towles. His second book - the first was the wonderful Rules of Civility. Took me a while to get into this book but half way through it all just clicked and I finished it thinking 'Wow - what a writer'.

The book recounts the 'house arrest' (in the Metropol Hotel in Moscow) of the protagonist, Count Rostov in the early 1920s. The book weaves history, literature, poetry, politics and human relationships together to make a wonderful tale that takes the reader from the early 20s to the post-Stalin Kruschev era. Very well written but extremely readable. Wonderful characterisation. I look forward to his next book!

Joyless, if you want the Crabb book I am happy to pop it into the post for you?

74. Mrs Robinson's Disgrace by Kate Summerscale
By the author who wrote Suspicions of Mr Whicher, this similarly takes a high-profile story from the Victorian era and pulls out both what it tells us about that time and also interesting observations about how those ideas/institutions have developed between then and now.

Mrs Robinson was one of the parties in one of the earliest civil divorce cases in the UK. She was lonely, unhappily married and had a bit of an eye for younger men, all of which she wrote about at length in her diary. Following her husband's discovery of said diary, he took her to court (hoping to separate her from both her children and her money), and commentary on her private life and morals were splashed in great detail over the papers.

A fascinating story of how women and marriage were viewed by the Victorian establishment, and how the courts of the time treated women and family law.