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?

[StitchesInTime]

66. What Could Possibly Go Wrong? by Jodi Taylor

6th in the series of the adventures of St Mary’s time travelling historians. Max is the Training Officer training up new historians in this one.

Easy reading and all very much the same in tone as the rest of the series.

[SatsukiKusakabe]

Just dropped off so clinging back on with my fingertips

[Tanaqui]

42. Death in the Stocks by Georgette Heyer. Heyer is no Agatha Christie when it comes to crime writing, but this passes the time well enough.

[Ontopofthesunset]

Aagh! I posted a long update and then somehow lost it all. Haven't updated for a while and it's not helped by the fact that my old Kindle was a minor victim of Typhoon Lan in Japan last week - drowned in a very soggy backpack in a very soggy city. Thank heavens for Kindle on iPhone which helped me through the rest of the trip.

62) The Adventure of English: Melvyn Bragg. Well, I should have liked this (I love trivia about language development, loan words etc) but it was very boring and just seemed to be long lists of words.
63) All Quiet on the Western Front: Erich Maria Remarque. Thanks to the many people on this thread who recommended this. I thought this was great, a poignant and well-told WW1 story from a German viewpoint.
64) Voodoo Histories: David Aaronovitch. This was recommended on a thread about conspiracies as a good investigation of why people believe conspiracy theories. It was OK as far as it went but I didn't find it very insightful.
65) The Executioner's Song: Norman Mailer. This was chilling and gripping. Not read any other Mailer, though I understand this is very different from his usual style, but it was an interesting blend of reportage, narrative viewpoints and real letters. I had a vague idea of Gary Gilmore's case from my childhood but realised what a watershed it was in some ways for the death penalty.
66) American Gods: Neil Gaiman. Wow, another book I really enjoyed. Lots of plot, myth, Gods and a cunning central conceit. Have recommended it to my 16 year old son.
67) Ready Player One: Ernest Cline. This was on a Kindle deal and has been much recommended on here. The 80s references were fun and the plot was nippy enough, but it's very YA in language ("a wave of nausea swept over me" is typical), quest-style and there's even a cringemaking love story. It passed a couple of hours of a long plane journey but I think I'd have enjoyed it more if I had been a teenage boy.
68) Hiroshima: John Hersey. This is the book that was originally an article that filled the entire August 31st 1946 issue of The New Yorker. The book has an update on the 6 individuals whose stories are told which was added 40 years later. Grim and just as relevant now.
69) Pale Fire: Vladimir Nabokov. This was such a joy to read, though having finished I'm not sure what I feel about it. For those who don't know (and I didn't), the book is supposedly a 999 line poem by a famous American poet John Shade with a commentary on the poem by a friend and fellow professor. The actual plot takes place mainly in the commentary, and it becomes clear that the friend is the ultimate unreliable narrator. The Foreword and Index form part of the narrative too and everything is cross-referred to everything else. It is supremely metafictional and very satisfying in its cleverness.

I have just got a copy of an extraordinarily long book called Reclaiming History: The Assassination of John F Kennedy by someone called Vincent Bugliosi (over 1500 pages). It is far too large to leave my bedroom so I will be reading it over the course of a few months.

[Sadik]

88 Things Can Only Get Worse: Twenty confusing years in the life of a Labour supporter - by John O'Farrell

To be honest, I only finished this so that I could be rude about it on here, rather than ranting at my dad about it (he took it out of the library then passed it on to me because the print was too small).

I enjoyed J O'F's previous book 'Things Can Only Get Better' about growing up as a lefty in the 70s & 80s - lots of jokes and taking the piss out of himself. Sadly I found this one intensely annoying - in the intervening years he appears to have lost any wider viewpoint than that of a London-lefty-guardian-media type. The particular low point for me was his crack about people wanting parliamentary candidates to be local (the politest bit of this section is 'surely what matters is policy not people') when he was parachuted in as a candidate for Eastleigh in Hampshire. Writing off everyone who wants their MP to have firsthand knowledge/ understanding of local problems and issues as ignorant bigots is pretty typical of his approach to most of the world outside his little bubble as far as I can see.

[southeastdweller]

47. help - Simon Amstell. Memoir from the actor/writer, this was more candid than other books of this ilk but at less than 200 pages he doesn't go far enough.
    
    I'm now reading The Examined Life, a book about a psychoanalyist's sessions with his patients, which is quite interesting so far.

[noodlezoodle]

Cherrypi I like the sound of The Threat Level Remains Severe, snapped it up on Kindle as it sounds like a bargain for 1.09!

I'm a bit behind on my updates so I'm afraid this is a bit of a beast of a post.

30. 84, Charing Cross Road, by Helene Hanff This is one of my favourite books. My edition also has the Duchess of Bloomsbury in it, and I find the whole thing to be completely delightful, but I'd forgotten how emotional some of it makes me feel. Recommended to anyone who hasn't read it before, and Helene Hanff sounds like a hoot.

31. The Lost City of Z, by David Grann. I described this as a right rollicking read on Goodreads. There are two threads to this book; the first about the life and expeditions of explorer Percy Fawcett, and the second about the author's search to follow Fawcett into the Amazonian rainforest where he was last seen alive. I'm a sucker for a good exploration story, so this was right up my alley.

32. The Thrilling Adventures of Lovelace and Babbage, by Sydney Padua. This was my first graphic novel, and made more complicated to read by the plethora of footnotes and endnotes. Once I'd worked out how to actually read it, I really enjoyed it. Most of the book is set in an alternate universe, but you also learn a huge amount about the real Lovelace and Babbage through the foot and endnotes. Some of these really made me laugh out loud - very entertaining.

33. Lab Girl, by Hope Jahren. I think this has been reviewed before on this thread but I can't remember the verdict! I loved it although found it frustrating in parts. It's the memoir of a scientist, interspersed with information and stories about plants and trees. She writes beautifully and very exactingly, and I had no complaints about any of what she included - where I became frustrated was in what wasn't said. She clearly has a very complicated relationship with her mother, but although she talks plainly about the impact this has had on her, it wasn't entirely clear to me what the problems were. Similarly she talks very vividly for part of a chapter about her mental health problems, but they are otherwise barely mentioned. We also hear a lot about her struggles for funding her work and her lack of success, so it's a bit of a surprise to find out she's actually a highly renowned and award winning scientist. The last couple of chapters are obviously written from a more 'secure' place in her career, but there's no mention earlier in the book about winning awards. So, I felt a bit frustrated by this book, but I still highly recommend it.

34. Good Kings, Bad Kings by Susan Nussbaum. Oof. This was really well done. It's a book narrated by several different characters, all of who live or work at ILLC, a residential home in Southside Chicago for teenagers with disabilities. The characters are really well drawn and the story draws you in and along, but there are certain parts that are very hard to read. I also thought it ended very abruptly, which I found a bit jarring. This book should be depressing, but it's so well done and has so many funny moments that I didn't find it to be.

These all fulfilled categories for the Popsugar reading challenge - I'm going to have a bit of a break now and read the new Michael Connolly. I love him (and Harry Bosch) so I'm intrigued to see how he gets on writing a woman protagonist.

[MuseumOfHam]

I really liked The Examined Life , southeast .

55. Lincoln in the Bardo by George Saunders Such a refreshing read, the novelty of the idea and the style carried me through this. Because it was such a flight of fancy, it maybe didn't move me as much as a novel about the death of a child should have done. I really liked the multiple accounts of the same event, which all slightly contradicted each other, but ultimately it didn't matter, as the outcome was the same.

56. The Aquariums of Pyongyang by Kang Chol-Hwan An early account by a defector from North Korea, who had spent 10 years in a prison camp, due to his family background. This made quite tough reading, and the author had clearly been shaped by his experiences. Quite chilling to see how consistently inflexible the regime has been, as this account tallies in many details with much more recent ones.

57. Miracles of Life by JG Ballard His autobiography. Thanks Cote for flagging this up when it was cheap on kindle, but in fact I got it out of the library. Your mention had made me think about Empire of the Sun and want to know more about the reality behind that. This was very much a book of two halves, and the first half gave you exactly that, his childhood in Shanghai and incarceration in a Japanese camp, told in a sparse but beautifully descriptive manner. The second half dealt with his subsequent life in England, and was recounted in the manner of someone who knew he didn't have much time left, as Ballard was terminally ill when he wrote this. A simple and economic account cut back to the bare bones of what he considered to be important, chief amongst which shone out as his love for his children. Enjoyed this.

58. The Janus Stone by Elly Griffiths Second in forensic archaeology crime mystery series. Enjoyable quick read, with a likeable main female protagonist. The author clearly does her archaeology research, and is determined to get it all into the book, which makes it feel like her characters are spouting an undergrad archaeology lecture at times, but it's all interesting, and relevant to the plot. I guessed whodunnit really early on, as I also did with book one of this series, but it didn't really detract, and I quite like to feel smug from time to time

[ChessieFL]

148. Bounce: Mozart, Federer, Picasso, Beckham, and the Science of Success by Matthew Syed
     
     Wish I’d read this when I was younger. T basically says that there’s no such thing as talent, it all comes down to firstly having access to lessons/good teacher/instrument/sports facilities etc. and then practice. Lots of examples where groups were studied and those who were the best had simply practiced more than the others. Also looks into the psychology whereby people praised for talent then did less well than those praised for hard work. Arguably nothing ground breaking here, but I still found it all fascinating and love the idea that if I could just find 3 hours a day I could be brilliant at something by the time I’m 50!!
     
     
149. All The Missing Girls by Megan Miranda
     
     This was terrible and I had to force myself to finish it. 10 years ago Nic’s best friend disappears, and her dad who had dementia suddenly mentions seeing her so Nic has to go back to her hometown. Shortly after her arrival another woman disappears. From here the story is told backwards, leading back to the woman’s disappearance. Unfortunately this just didn’t work and characters didn’t behave how they should. I also didn’t care about any of the characters. Don’t bother with this one.

[CoteDAzur]

Do I want to read Brideshead Revisited? It’s Kindle Daily Deal for 99p today.

[CoteDAzur]

“there’s no such thing as talent, it all comes down to firstly having access to lessons/good teacher/instrument/sports facilities etc. and then practice”

All that is crucial in the making of a Mozart or Bach, for sure, but any instrument teacher will tell you that there IS such a thing as talent. There are children (or adults, even) who pick up any instrument and start playing it. There are professional musicians who have had access to every opportunity from an early age but will never write extraordinary melodies.

Having said that, it’s astonishing how quickly you progress in an instrument when you practice it for +2 hours/day. Perhaps what the author wanted to say was that lots of practice makes you better in fields that need muscle memory & eye-hand coordination (sport, music).

[CoteDAzur]

Museum I’m glad that you enjoyed J G Ballard’s autobiography I read a lot of his books in my 20s & 30s, and pictured him as a bit of a druggie nutcase. It was a surprise & revelation to find that he was widowed young and raised 3 children in his own. I wasn’t aware that Empire Of The Sun was so closely autobiographical, either.

I love his writing style and thought his observations of the human condition in various situations were fascinating. I’m thinking in particular of that cocktail in an art gallery where wrecks of car crashes were displayed and people went nuts through the course of the evening.

[CoteDAzur]

Sorry I’m spamming the thread but I have one more comment to post

Tanaqui my thoughts in Seveneves were similar to yours. I also wasn’t a fan of the last third and thought it should have been a sequel. Here’s my review:

20. Seveneves by Neal Stephenson

This was a truly epic apocalyptic & post-apocalyptic story of about 900 pages that starts with the moon suddenly breaking up in the sky. People first marvel at the couple of odd-shaped pieces of the moon the stay more or less together. Then they figure out that all-out apocalypse awaits the Earth and start planning for the future of mankind, scrambling to gather provisions for the select few who they hope will survive the apocalypse.

The author being Neal Stephenson, every little detail is calculated, problems are figured out, and Seveneves reads much like The Martian (without the juvenile narrator, Remus ). I loved the 1st and 2nd parts of the book where preparations are under way, then catastrophe strikes, and then what remains of the human race tries to survive amid natural disasters and political infighting. 3rd part of the book that takes place 5000 years in the future was a bit less sound and left me a bit . Imho, 1st & 2nd parts should have been the book and 3rd part should have been the sequel.

Still, this was a fantastic book, an instant classic that (at least for me) all future apocalyptic/post-apocalyptic books will be measured against. I heartily recommend it to anyone who likes this genre, as well as all fans of The Martian.

[TheTurnOfTheScrew]

Cote, YES - you do want to read Brideshead. I have no updates but came on just to shout about it being on the daily deal. So beautifully written,

[slightlyglittermaned]

Re: the talent argument, it's worth looking at Peak by K. Anders Ericsson and Robert Pool. Anders Ericsson did much of the original research in this area and it gives a much more nuanced picture. Yes, it comes down to practice, but not just any practice - it is effectiveness at building the right mental representations & feedback that helps improve skill, not just muscle-based skill either but any skill. The research has been much quoted by others but often missing some salient points (Gladwell popularising 10,000 hours for instance).

[Cedar03]

55 Jeeves and the Feudal Spirit by P G Wodehouse
Jolly good read. Plot is much like others - Bertie needs to steal a necklace and avoid getting engaged to the ghastly Florence.

56 We the Drowned by Carston Jensen
Hard to describe this book - sailors from Marstal in Denmark and their adventures from 1840s to 1940s sort of sums it up. Brilliantly written. It is about 700 pages long so quite daunting to start but it soon had me gripped. Definitely recommend this one. It is one of my highlights of the year.

57 Death of a Hussy by M C Beaton
I don't expect much from these books which are a light diversion but the plot in this one was a pile of nonsense. Woman who used to work as high class prostitute invites 4 old flames - who really loved her - to visit then announces that she wants to get married, has lots of money and will probably die soon as has a heart condition. All completely unlikely and I guessed who the murderer was very early on. Not one of her best.

58 Kinsey and Me by Sue Grafton
A book of short stories. The 'Kinsey' ones are her heroine from her full length books 'A is for Alibi' and so on. These were good - some better than others but what you'd expect if you've read the other books. The 'Me' ones were very different and are autobiographical and deal with her relationship with her parents. Her mother was an alcoholic who spent her life lying on the sofa. This part was quite painful to read. An odd mixture together but a good read over all.

[CoteDAzur]

Yes, great, but will I enjoy it?

It looks like a lot of personal drama in a family setting. And the author is a woman

[CheerfulMuddler]

It's mostly about shagging, the upper classes (most famously the upper classes at Oxford, though it spans about fifteen years), and the angst of being Catholic and gay/in love with a married man/woman. And difficult mothers.

Evelyn Waugh is a man though, you'll be pleased to hear. It's a very male book.

[SatsukiKusakabe]

This is my review cote.

50. Brideshead Revisited, Evelyn Waugh A classic that I had somehow missed up to this point, despite having read others by Waugh. At times amusing, more often sad, always beautifully written.

Not the most informative I've ever written I'm afraid!

It looks at the small scale of the changing fortunes and mores of a wealthy family to reflect the changes in society, and the decline of the old certainties in the wake of devastating upheavals (the World Wars) and discusses sexuality, faith, loyalty, history and decay.

I have enjoyed others by Waugh more than this one. 3 more things - it is short, I think it is one remus likes, and Jeremy Irons was in the original BBC adaptation

[SatsukiKusakabe]

And yes, written by a man, all from a male perspective.

[SatsukiKusakabe]

I agree with you about talent btw cote. Try having a sibling to whom art and music comes as easily as breathing, it very quickly convinces you of the existence of talent, trust me on this

[DesdemonasHandkerchief]

Another vote for Brideshead Revisited.
I read it after watching the BBC series, which was a very faithful adaptation. If you’ve seen that and didn’t enjoy it you wouldn’t enjoy the book.
I particularly enjoyed the early Oxford part with Sebastian dazzling Charles during the Aloysius years.
I found the later turn of events sad and frustrating but always interesting and thought provoking.
Deserves its place amoung the classics.
In fact I’m tempted to buy it just so I have a digital copy as I read the library book many moons ago.

[SatsukiKusakabe]

It's funny desdemona I got a bit frustrated with all the faffing about at Oxford, but enjoyed the Catholic introspection that came toward the end

[southeastdweller]

I’ll do another thread when I get home in about an hour