50 Book Challenge 2017 Part Eight

[southeastdweller]

Welcome to the eighth and final 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 and please try to let us all know your thoughts on what you've read. To anyone who hasn't posted, feel free to de-lurk and share with us what you've read this year.

The first thread of the year is here, the second one here, the third thread here, the fourth one here, the fifth one here, the sixth one here, and the seventh one here.

How have you got on so far this year?

Ooh plays!! Have a big Arthur Miller soft spot. Death of a Salesman and the Crucible.

Did anyone read the best of year round-ups in the papers over the weekend? Absolutely terrible for reducing your tbr pile! Conversations with Friends by Sally Rooney came up a lot so I bought that yesterday, luckily in a charity shop for just £1.50.

105 Oedipus Rex by Sophocles
The one where Oedipus finds out he killed his father and married his mother.

HOLY SHIT! That was totally freaking awesome! If I could have read that whilst simultaneously covering my face with my hands I would have. The sheer drama of the thing, the pathos and the irony and the tingly delicious feeling of knowing from the very start what's going to happen and then watching it all unfold as Oedipus' life falls apart

I plan on using this line to shout at my children
"You are nothing but vexation here. Begone, and give me peace!"

Need to do a big update, but just popping by to say thank you to however recommended the Catherine Fox series. Approaching the end of acts and omissions and Ioving it - so nice to have a new series to read!

Southeastdweller Yeah ... Thought I might give Elizabeth Strout a go, she came up plenty too.

I've just done a comparative essay for my MA on Sophocles' Antigone and Jean Anouilh's Antigone. Good gory stuff.

Ooh, that was me, Rosehip! I don't re-read that much, but I make an exception for Catherine Fox.

Someone mentioned up thread that The Uncommon Reader by Alan Bennett was good, and short, so I looked it up on Overdrive and listened to the Audible version FOC, beautifully read by Mr Bennett himself. Only two and a half hours long, this felt like cheating, but I'm claiming it anyway! I preferred the first half where the Queen gets into reading with Norman as her guide. Generally raised a few wry smiles and one laugh out loud line concerning the Queens penchant for encouraging the prime minister to get into literature alongside her. The first audible book on my list but it was lovely to be getting on with other things and 'reading' at the same time. Pity Overdrive have such a limited selection of audiobooks.

24. Daughters Of The Dragon picked up in a Kindle sale for 99p this uses the fictionalised life story of a Korean woman to tell the historically accurate truth about thousands of Korean, Chinese and a few European women who were either tricked or abducted into forced sexual slavery by the invading Japanese Army during the Second World War. Working as a so called 'Comfort Woman' the protagonist is raped up to 40 times a day, with a queue of soldiers outside her door allocated 10 minute slots. Subject to verbal and physical abuse by her captors and rapists and obviously at risk of STD's. Her life following her escape from this nightmare continues to be difficult not least because the patriarchal Korean society and 'honour' culture considers the comfort women to be to blame for their past. In terms of a novel this was not particularly well written, the voice of the modern day descendant was irritating and the theme of the Dragon comb passed down through generations is repetitive and overplayed. However it did open my eyes to this terrible atrocity. Another case of mans inhumanity to (wo)man knowing no bounds. Japanese estimates put the number of women forced into sexual slavery by their militia at around 20,000 but it is more likely that the number is ten times that amount - 200,000 or more. Approximately three quarters of comfort women died during or shortly after the war, some committed suicide, others died from enforced crude abortions still more were executed by the Japanese military before they shipped out to avoid any future embarrassment concerning the atrocities that had been committed. Of those who did live to tell the tale most were left infertile due to sexual trauma or sexually transmitted diseases. Today the few surviving Korean Comfort Women participate weekly in 'Wednesday Demonstrations': "Every Wednesday at noon, a group of elderly women march on the Japanese embassy in Seoul, South Korea, demanding an apology from the government of Japan. They march in the pouring rain, bitter cold, and stifling humidity that only Seoul can dish out. They have not missed a single Wednesday in over twenty-three years. They are the last of an army of comfort women—women the Japanese military raped and tortured as sex slaves during World War II. They are all more than eighty years old now, and many are in their nineties. The Koreans call them “grandmothers,” a term of great honor and respect. Their ranks are dwindling fast. " from "Daughters of the Dragon" by William Andrews

101. Swimming Lessons by Claire Fuller I really enjoyed this suspenseful and touching novel. Nan and Flora's mother has been missing for 12 years, presumed drowned, but their father begins to see her around the small coastal village. An accident reunites the sisters with their novelist father at their old, book filled home, these scenes are alternated with the letters addressed to him that their mother had hidden in books in the house prior to her disappearance. Im making it sound really twee but it's not!

100 Flight of Magpies by KJ Charles
Book 3 in the Charm of Magpies series. More occult murders and romance - fine, but felt a bit rushed and not up to the first two books in the series.

49. This Is Not A Game: You Don't Get A Second Life by Walter Jon Williams

This a was a good little techno-thriller involving internet, bots, economy (although not brainhurty) and a murder mystery. It is about an online game designer called Dagmar, one of whose close friends gets murdered in a way that suggests her boss and perhaps also herself could be next in line. She soon harnesses the collective intelligence and power of millions of players of her game to solve the murder and put things right.

I'm happy to see that there is a sequel, too

Popping in to mark place. Have four books on the go at the moment, so might be some time in finishing them.

34??? Can't find my last post to check
Forensics:the anatomy of crime by Valley McDermid
Really good overview of the main branches of forensics- fingerprints, dna, fire, poisons etc, and the current developments in each, interspersed with relevant, and really interesting stories demonstrating each area. Expanded my decomposition and arson knowledge

35 the lie of the land by Amanda Craig
Loved hearts and minds, and this follows two minor characters who due to redundancy and crashing property prices duck out of hurry scurry London life for rural devon. I liked the focus on rural politics- sustainability of milk prices, isolation, migrant workers and unaffordable housing, and the harsh reality of living on the land. The story became increasingly flighty - child rape resulting in concealed birth, one sister retrieving sperm and passing to her sister for a unconventional pregnancy, and a medical student running secret blood tests from a stained tissue....
I really enjoyed this, and the serious issues she portrays are actually enhanced by a bit of frivolity in the plot development. The health visitor, married to an infertile farmer was especially thoughtful

36
Your life in my hands by Rachel Clarke
Can't remember if reviewed this. Based on recent junior doctors strike this real junior doctors tells it like it is working in an NHS hospital, and the gossamer thin resources meaning repeated cancelled operations and treatments, and overwhelmed and undersupported doctors who unless resolute and determined face constant challenge to their ability to provide the service they aspire to. Stories of ambulances queuing at a and e for hours are nothing new, but the stories of the medics trying to cope, and the sheer burnout of staff, and near misses with avoidable deaths are tremendously concerning.

Still on acts and omissions- thanks bibliomania - and also the first Ruth Rendell Simisola being sold off by the library

126. Narrowboat Nomads, by Steve Haywood
127. The A-List Family, by Christina Hopkinson
128. The Underground Railroad, by Colin Whitehead

The Underground Railroad has received a lot of attention. It's a harrowing read, as is necessary for a book about slavery, so I interrupted my reading with the first two books as easier reads (non-fiction account about a retired couple meandering around UK waterways and a chicklit book about working for a A-list couple, backstage-at-Hello-magazine type of thing).

I wasn't initially sure that the conceit of a physical railway line to transport runaway slaves would work, but I think it did - it added a note of allegory that allowed each of Cora's destinations to also act as an allegorical representation of a phase in African-American history. It's intensely vivid - you feel what it would be like to be a human in these circumstances. I'll remember this book for a long time.

69. The Couple Next Door by Shari Lapena

Anne and Marco go to their next door neighbours dinner party, leaving their 6 month old baby home alone. They’ve got the baby monitor, they’re popping back to check on the baby every half hour - but when they get home, the baby’s gone.

Fast paced, with lots of suspects, lots of twists. I didn’t like the last chapter though.

161 and 162 A Symphony of Echoes and A Second Chance by Jodi Taylor

Books 2 and 3 in the St Mary’s time travel series. I have read these before a few years ago and currently rereading the series. I do really love this series but it does get a bit weird at the end of Book 3 and into Book 4 (which I’m now reading).

163 and 164 Daffodils and Dry Rot And Frogspawn And Floor Polish by Mary Mackie

The author used to live in a stately home owned by the National Trust as her husband worked there, and these books are tales behind the scenes. Interesting if you like NT places, although they are written/set in the late 1980s and early 1990s so I imagine things are very different now!

Currently reading book 4 in the St Mary’s series and listening to Rebecca on audible, as well as Adrian Mole on audiobook in the car!

*Colson not Colin Whitehead (I now feel vaguely complicit in erasing black identities).

Reading 129. In Search of Mary, by Bee Rowlatt
Journo retraces Mary Wollstonecraft's journeys in Norway and Paris, toting her baby. It helps if you know about Mary Wollstonecraft before reading it, as you won't necessarily learn much from this book. In fact, if you want to know more about MW, read something like Romantic Outlaws, about her life and that of her daughter, Mary Shelley. Read In Search of Mary if you want the musing of a 21st century journalist on whether women can balance children and work. It's not bad for what it is, but mainly it's a shallow travelogue rather than what it wants to be, a profound meditation on feminism and motherhood.

111: The Eagle of the Ninth - Rosemary Sutcliffe

This was okay. It’s a children’s book, which I think I read as a child, but couldn’t remember anything about. It was fine for an easy read, but it didn’t inspire me to read more of them.

My reading has been at a slow crawl since the summer but is finally creeping back up so I thought I would shamefully sneak back in. I will say that having this thread has helped give me a kick to keep going a few times.

1 Evil Under the Sun by Agatha Christie
2 Stark by Ben Elton
3 Call the Midwife by Jennifer Worth
4 Capricorn One by Ron Goulart
5 Starship Troopers by Robert Heinlein
6 The ADHD Effect on Marriage by Melissa Orlov
7 The Long Dark Teatime of the Soul by Douglas Adams
8 Only You Can Save Mankind by Terry Pratchett
9 4.50 from Paddington by Agatha Christie
10 The Sherlock Chronicles
11 A Passage to India by EM Forster
12 Ready Player One by Ernest Cline
13 The Queen of Distraction by Terry Matlen
14 The Hunt for Red October by Tom Clancy
15 Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell
16 The Truth by Terry Pratchett
17 The Present by Spencer Johnson
18 Age of Ultron by
19 The Life of a Scilly Sergeant by Colin Taylor
20 Hiding an Elephant by Kim A Gay
21 Raising Steam by Terry Pratchett

22 The Hobbit by JR Tolkien

Read this when I was about 8 and hadn't touched it since. Finally saw all the movies this year and thought I should reread, especially as I plan to give Lord of the Rings a go sometime. I enjoyed it but it wasn't quite what I was expecting. I lay the fault for that squarely at Peter Jackson's door! A classic adventure story, reminded me of reading Kidnapped actually, and the book is very definitely better!

Jackson's Hobbit films make me furious.

112: 112: Shakespearean Tragedy: Lectures on Hamlet, Othello, King Lear – AC Bradley
Free on Kindle, and highly recommended. I really enjoyed it (and it made me feel quite clever too!). I liked the connections it made between plays, as well as the focus on what tragedy generally entails and how Shakespeare’s raise different questions about the nature of tragedy and the tragic hero. Superb. I will definitely read this again (with lots of Post-It notes!).

I'm just popping back here to say that I'm 10% into American Gods and really enjoying it What did we all think about this book? I certainly hope that it continues as well as it started.

Remus Hey! I love that book!

Haven't read it in years, mind.

Can anyone remember the lovely poem about Mary as a new mother someone posted ages ago on this thread? Have been trying to search back through the thread for it, but can't find it.

Have just had a lovely indulgent time buying actual paper books in an actual bookshop. Which there is actually space for in my tbr shelf thanks to this thread. So thank you.

I read American Gods years ago Cote, but iirc I didn't find it quite as satisfying as I wanted to, but I do often find I prefer Gaimans ideas to his storytelling (and I am enjoying it on TV!). However, it might be partly that I read it because I love Diana Wynne Jones's Eight Days of Luke, which is a similar theme (Gaiman was a friend of hers, lucky man!), and 8 Days is much simpler and more linear (as a children's book), so I might not have properly appreciated American Gods at the time.

I am stuck at the moment, downloaded a KJ Charles as thought from Sadik's rec I would enjoy it (we often seem to like similar things!) but can't quite get into the spirit of it. Any more recs for v short books to inspire time to get that 50? I might try Antigone, but easier would be good!

I read American Gods about a month ago and really enjoyed it. I think I reviewed it briefly on here. I don't know how Gaiman's world-building in this book will stack up against a very strict judge (!) but it worked for me - but then I'm sloppy on things like that. There are lots of characters and moving around so it was quite complicated at times (who was doing what to whom and why) but I liked the structure and the imagination.

50. An Almost Perfect Christmas - Nina Stibbe. Short collection of stories and essays from the Love Nina author about the festive period. Fun but forgettable.

51. Everything I Never Told You - Celeste Ng. Very depressing novel about the aftermath of the death of the eldest daughter in a mixed-race family in set in 60's and 70's America and the events leading up to the tragedy. I found the self-conscious style from the author wearing as the book went on but the comments on casual racism were interesting and I'll read her next book, Little Fires Everywhere.