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?

Very curious to hear why Remus is so fond of blubber.

There is a touch of blubber in Under a Pole Star as the protagonist's father is a whaler. It’s rather fleeting though.

I have no opinion on blubber, I'm afraid, so on with the list:
42. The Noise of Time by Julian Barnes. Fictionalised autobiography of Shostakovich, and his struggle to balance his art with survival in the Soviet Union under Stalin. Started almost like a thriller, with Shostakovich under direct threat from the powers that be, but lost pace and interest, despite being always well-written. Oddly little focus on the actual music as well.

Checklist of reading interests -
blubber - yes
shagging - no
Arctic/Antarctic setting - yes
going at it hammer and tongs (or tongues?!) in Liverpool - no

I like reading about whaling, unless it's Moby Dick, in which I liked the blubber but not the story.

Julian Barnes - Flaubert's Parrot and Arthur and George both sublime, but agree entirely that a lot of his stuff just hasn't really got it right pace-wise. For me, that means it's not really well-written, even if he knows some words and can put them in an order that seems pretty.

Blubber - yes
shagging - no

TheTurnoftheScrew that’s exactly what I thought about Noise of Time, really disappointing. I’ve still got Arthur and George to read; I keep trying but the print is so small in my copy I keep having to give up.

He does write construct sentences beautifully, but, agree remus.

@“sub-zero shagging”. There is no shagging in Rush Oh I don’t think. Off-screen, maybe. Or I was too innocent to pick up on it.

he does write construct sentences beautifully unlike me!

That really made me laugh. If it's any consolation, I put a load of important letters in the bin today instead of a folder, and then managed to spell my own name wrong.

I put the dustpan in the bin earlier along with the crumbs and spent too long wandering around with the brush trying to find it. See also: pouring milk in the bowl instead of washing up liquid. One of those days

I suspect it will be bedtime very soon!

102 Pattern Recognition by William Gibson

Although I do see what Cote means about pointless plot, I still very much enjoyed this. It's not sci-fi at all, more a very thrill-less techno-thriller. But - it's so very, very stylish that I couldn't help forgiving him. It was written in 2003, set in 2002, and rather than feeling dated, it just feels perfectly of it's time.

I've never really got on with those British Library Crime Novels, but there MUST be some festive Agatha Christie, surely?

45. Invitation to the Waltz Rosamund Lehmann Reviewed by Keith upthread. It's 1920. Olivia is seventeen, and has been invited to her first ball. She knows she's not as pretty as her sister Kate, but even so ... It will be all right, won't it? It took me a while to get into this one, but once the dance started I really began to enjoy it. Sadly, nobody ever invited me to 20s dances in country houses, but this brought back real memories of being a teenager, going to parties where you don't quite know enough people to feel comfortable, being worried the whole time that your clothes are wrong, and being aware of all this drama happening almost off screen that you don't quite understand. I loved all the little sketches of the people she meets. There's also a real sense of her coming into contact with some of her possible futures, which was very well done. Like ... She gets entangled with this truly awful undergraduate and ends up feeling like she has to befriend him ... And you can just imagine them ending up married and it all going horribly wrong. But then she sits out a dance with the son of the house, who is lovely, and you could imagine them ending up together too and living a completely different life. Or - since it's 1920 and men are so scare that they have to drag up a distant connection to bring as a partner - it's possible this wallflower existence is going to be the rest of her life. There's a real sense of her on the edge of something and not knowing where she's going to fall. It's very well observed. Think there are more books about the same family - might have to investigate.

Just gone back and read Keith's review and see she's said something very similar! It is really very good on being a teenager.

Hi everyone,

Another one sloping back in before the end of the year. Checking when I last posted it was in April!! 2017 has been truly awful for me (bereavements and ill health) but I have been reading so here goes:
12. Stay With Me - Ayobami Adebayo
13. Liar Liar - MJ Arlidge
14. Cold Earth - Ann Cleeves
15. Mr Briggs’ Hat - Kate Colquhoun
16. The Mysterious Affair At Styles - Agatha Christie
17. The Siege - Helen Dunmore
18. Birdcage Walk - Helen Dunmore
19. Their Finest Hour - Lisa Evans
20. Story of a New Name - Elena Ferrante
21. Carol - Patricia Highsmith
22. The House By The Lake - Thomas Harding
23. The Humans - Matt Haig
24. Funny Girl - Nick Hornby
25. A Week in Paris - Rachel Hore
26. The Snow Child - Eowyn Ivey
27. Need you Dead - Peter James
28. Hot Milk - Deborah Levy
29. The Couple Next Door - Shari Lapena
30. Bodies of Life - Sarah Moss
31. The Chessman - Peter May
32. A History of Britain in 21 Women - Jenni Murray
33. The Enemy Within - Edward Marston
34. Eileen - Ottessa Malfegh
35. The Silver Locomotive- Edward Marston
36. Stuart- Life Backwards- Alexander Masters
37. The Hypnotists Love Story-Lianne Moriarty
38. A House Full of Daughters-Juliet Nicholson
39. The Bees-Laline Paul
40. Small Great Things-Jodi Piccoult
41. The Essex Serpent-Sarah Perry
42. The Improbability of Love-Hannah Rothschild
43. The Chilbury Ladies Choir - Jennifer Ryan
44. My Name is Lucy Barton - Elizabeth Strout
45. Abide with Me-Elizabeth Strout
46. Restoration-RoseTremain
47. Music & Silence - Rose Tremain
48. Take Six Girls - Laura Thompson
49. House of Mirth - Edith Wharton
50. Oranges are not the only Fruit - Jeanette Winterson
51. How Not to be a Boy - Robert Webb
52. The Underground Railroad - Colson Whitehead

I have posted my highlights of the year on Southeasts other thread.

Love reading the threads and picking up recommendations and hopefully joining in a bit more again next year.

“a very thrill-less techno-thriller”

What did you think of Eileen, whitewine (and anyone else who read it?)

I found it well written in parts but switched off part way through.

reallytired, my review of Eileen was:

Bag o'shite. Eileen appears to be drawn as a common-or-garden sociopath, but is missing any of the superficial charm that normally accompanies this. Seemingly a thriller, but with no thrills, and the ending is preposterous and incongruous.

Does anyone know what day the Kindle Christmas sale starts? Nothing of interest in the monthly deals...

Remus - If it's any consolation, I put a load of important letters in the bin today instead of a folder, and then managed to spell my own name wrong

I took baby DS3 to the library recently to get him his own library card, and managed to forget how to spell both his first and middle names when the librarian asked for his details
There’s nothing particularly unusual or difficult about them either.

103. The Break - Marian Keyes. Ok, warm hearted but faintly irritating. Better than her other recent efforts.

104. The Moon Is Our Nearest Neighbour - Ghillie Basan. Real life tale of Quite posh Turkish/Scottish couple buying a remote cottage in the Scottish highlands with the intention of setting up photography workshops. Relentless stories of being stranded because of cars getting stuck in snow, generators breaking down, unfriendly neighbours, battling against the elements with grim determination etc.

On the other hand you have to admire their determination and the descriptions of Turkish foods are luscious and mouthwatering.

On the whole I rather enjoyed it.

69. The Lucky Ones - Mark Edwards

A serial killer strikes in a small county and all the victims are found smiling. Ben has just returned to the town to care for his sick mother after his marriage broke down with his miserable teenage son in tow. Can they solve the murders before the killer strikes again?

Another kindle unlimited offering which gripped me till the end! Thoroughly enjoyed this one.

Really and The Turn on Eileen I felt pretty much the same as both of you, really rather dull and overrated. Can’t remember it very well which says it all really!

75. Steelheart by Brandon Sanderson

I loved this. Lots of fast paced action. One I’d recommend to anyone who likes superhero fantasy tales. It’s the first in a series but it reads well as a stand alone novel.

A bit over 10 years ago, Calamity came - a bright red light in the sky. Soon after, ordinary men and women started to develop superpowers, and were named Epics. Each Epic has one secret weakness that undoes their abilities (as with Superman and kryptonite). But there’s no superheroes. All the Epics are powerhungry despots, who’ve used their superpowers to become supreme rulers of humanity.

10 years ago, David’s father was murdered before his eyes by Steelheart, the Epic who rules the city once known as Chicago. Since then, David has developed an obsession with vengeance, studying the Epics and planning how to kill Steelheart. And now the Reckoners have come to town - an undercover group of ordinary men and women who are trying to take down the Epics, one at a time, and David wants in....

Stitches - Oops!

My children are adults now - I can spell their names, but struggle to remember what years they were born in!

Empire Games Charles Stross
Apparently there's an earlier series(Merchant Princes), set 17 years before the events in this book, but I didn't find it a problem.
This is an alternate-history science fiction timeline-hopping spy thriller - this is clearly the first part of a trilogy, setting a number of threads going that will presumably play out in the next two books.
Alternate timelines exist, and some individuals "world walkers" have inherited the ability to jump between them. Timeline two is an alternate US that diverged from our own in 2003 and has become a right wing authoritarian surveillance state. They turned Timeline 1 into a smoking nuclear wasteland around 2003 in retaliation for them assassinating the US President. Timeline 4 is a rapidly industrialising world (with some refugees from timeline 1) trying to catch up with the US technologically before the US finds them.

Stross tends to jam so much into his books that it's hard to summarise without writing a bit of an epic. But it all holds together well, it's fast paced, reasonable characterisation, and the worldbuilding & plot are solid. If you like slightly brainhurty fast paced spy thriller science fiction, it's worth checking out. I've discovered that there are three omnibus volumes of the previous series on Kindle so am going to look at those before the next book, Dark State, comes out in Jan.

My DH can never remember what date DS’ Birthday is nor how to spell his first name. It’s a very popular name though tbf he is known by the shortened version.