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?

Agree the Snow Child is definitely on the twee side. I did read it all the way through, but only because a friend lent it to me.

I was also underwhelmed by The Road which I didn't think did anything that King hadn't already done better, but even The Road is substantially better than No Country.

The Snow Child is twee. Did not finish.

I shan’t bother then remus.

Thanks, Cheerful, for confirming my fear. Will give it a miss. What the heck am I going to read now though?

Thanks for the new thread. My list stands at:

1. Paul Cartledge - The Spartans
2. Rae Beth - The Hedge Witch's Way
3. Terry Pratchett - Mort
4. Phil Rickman - Mean Spirit
5. MJ Carter - The Printer's Coffin
6. Karen Maitland - The Raven's Head
7. Bernard Knight - The Sanctuary Seeker
8. Rachael Weiss - The Thing About Prague
9. Neil Oliver - Master of Shadows

10. James Bennett - Chasing Embers 11. SJ Parris - Conspiracy 12. Ian Rankin - Even Dogs in the Wild 13. Terry Pratchett - Night Watch 14. Mary Beard - Pompeii 15. Sarah Lotz - The Three 16. Phil Rickman - The Cold Calling 17. Robert Graves - The White Goddess 18. Phil Rickman - December 19. Kate Mosse - The Taxidermist's Daughter 20. Matt Haig - Reasons to Stay Alive 21. Jasper Fforde - Shades of Grey 22. Wilke Collins - The Woman in White 23. Benedict Jacka - Bound 24. Lee Child - Night School 25. Ed Halliwell - Into the Heart of Mindfulness 26. Bernard Cornwell - The Winter King 27. Sarah Perry - The Essex Serpent 28. Ruth Whippman - The Pursuit of Happiness 29. Bernard Cornwell - Enemy of God 30. Nina George - The Little Paris Bookshop 31. Michael Howard - Mysteries of the Runes 32. Bernard Cornwell - Excalibur 33. Saroo Brierley - Lion 34. Kate Morton - The Secret Keeper 35. HP Lovecraft - The Whisperer in Darkness 36. George RR Martin - A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms 37. Alfred Watkins - The Old Straight Track 38. Richard Matheson - I Am Legend 39. Alexandre Dumas - The Count of Monte Cristo 40. Daphne Du Maurier - Jamaica Inn 41. Llewellyn's 2017 Witches' Companion 42. Deborah Rodriguez - The Little Coffee Shop of Kabul 43. Samuel Richardson - Clarissa or, The History of a Young Lady 44. Sophie Hannah - The Monogram Murders 45. Naomi Novik - Black Powder War 46. Ian Rankin - Rather Be The Devil 47. Frances Hardinge - The Lie Tree 48. Naomi Novik - Empire of Ivory 49. Ben Aaronovitch - The Hanging Tree 50. Naomi Novik - Victory of Eagles 51. Jonathan Haidt - The Happiness Hypothesis 52. David Mitchell - Cloud Atlas 53. Charlaine Harris - Shakespeare's Landlord 54. Kate Summerscale - The Wicked Boy 55. Lars Kepler - Stalker 56. Charlaine Harris - Shakespeare’s Trollop 57. Jo Nesbo - Midnight Sun 58. Kate Mosse - The Mistletoe Bride & Other Haunting Tales 59. Lucy Tobin - Ausperity 60. Sophie Hannah - Closed Casket 61. Derren Brown - Happy 62. Alice Roberts - The Celts 63. Karen Maitland - The Vanishing Witch 64. Michael Wood - In The Footsteps of Alexander the Great 65. Lucinda Riley - The Seven Sisters 66. MJ Carter - The Devil’s Feast 67. Naomi Novik - Tongues of Serpents 68. Jim Butcher - The Aeronaut’s Windlass 69. Lord Dunsany - Two Bottles of Relish 70. Jostein Gaarder - The Castle in the Pyrenees 71. Robert Holdstock - Merlin’s Wood 72. Phil Rickman - All of a Winter’s Night 73. David Rankine & Sorita D’Este - The Isles of the Many Gods 74. VE Schwab - A Darker Shade of Magic 75. Ronald Hutton - The Witch 76. Pierce Brown - Red Rising 77. Kim Newman - Professor Moriarty: The Hound of the D’Urbervilles 78. Charlaine Harris - Shakespeare’s Counselor 79. Charles Moore - Margaret Thatcher the Authorised Biography vol. 1: Not For Turning 80. Pierce Brown - Golden Son 81. Adrian Tchaikovsky - The Tiger and the Wolf

And I've just finished:
82. Pierce Brown - Morning Star
Final book in the Red Rising trilogy in which the war to free the colours from the tyranny of Gold continues, venturing across space as it does so. This has been a brilliant series and it seems that there will be another trilogy to follow, so I will look forward to those.

89 Living Nonviolent Communication: Practical Tools to Connect and Communicate Skillfully in Every Situation by Marshall Rosenberg

A compilation of six short books taking the principles of nonviolent communication and applying them to different areas of life (including parenting, relationships, dealing with conflict).

Having kicked around intentional communities / co-ops / autonomous spaces for the last 20+ years I've run into plenty of approaches to conflict resolution, consensus decision making, improving interpersonal skills et al. I've found nonviolent communication to be one of the more useful for me.

The author is always very American in tone, which can be difficult from a British perspective (stop telling us how amazing your approach is and what wonderful results it's had - just get on with explaining it already) but if you can ignore that the underlying messages are simple and useful.

This compilation definitely isn't the place to start if you've not run into NVC before (Nonviolent Communication: A language of Life is good), but it's a useful resource - I've got lots of notes and highlights all over it in my phone for referring back to.

Thanks for the new thread.

Bringing the list over with the latest additions. I've definitely slowed down, but hoping I can still get to 50 by the end of the year.

1. Dictator by Robert Harris
2. Conclave by Robert Harris
3. Mistress of the Art of Death by Ariana Franklin
4. Murder As a Fine Art by David Morrell
5. Longbourn by Jo Baker
6. The Poison Tree by Erin Kelly
7. The Owl Killers – Karen Maitland
8. When she was good by Laura Lippman
9. Company of Liars by Karen Maitland

10. Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn 11. The Stranger’s Child by Alan Hollinghurst 12. The Nightingale by Kristen Hannah 13. Lord of the Flies by William Golding 14. The Book Thief by Markus Zusak 15. His Bloody Project by Graeme Macrae Burnet 16. The Help by Kathryn Stockett 17. The Plague by C. C. Humphreys 18. Saints of the Shadow Bible by Ian Rankin 19. Flowers in the Attic by Virginia Andrews 20. Flight Behaviour by Barbara Kingsolver 21. The Burning Air by Erin Kelly 22. Even Dogs In The Wild by Ian Rankin 23. The Testament of Mary by Colm Toibin 24. Dissolution by CJ Sansom 25. The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath 26. The Fall by Simon Mawer 27. Never Let Me Go by Ishiguro Kazuo 28. The Ides of April by Lindsey Davis 29. Alone in Berlin by Hans Fallada 30. The Gallow’s Curse by Karen Maitland 31. City of Thieves by David Benioff 32. All Quiet on the Western Front by Erich Maria Remarque 33. Lady Susan by Jane Austen 34. I am Malala by Malala Yousafzai 35. The Girl Who Fell From the Sky by Simon Mawer 36. A Conspiracy of Violence by Susanna Gregory 37. Not so Quiet by Helen Zenna Smith 38. Dark Fire by CJ Sansom 39. Sovereign by CJ Sansom 40. The Spy by Paulo Coehlo 41. The Cuckoo’s Calling by Robert Galbraith 42. The Panopticon by Jenni Fagan 43. A Plague on Both your Houses by Susanna Gregory

44. Ariel by Sylvia Plath. I went for the restored edition as recommended and have been dipping in and out of it since I read The Bell Jar. I don't read much poetry and find I can't sit and read a whole book at once, I have to do a few poems at a time and let them roll round my head.

45. An Unholy Alliance by Susanna Gregory. Second in the series that sees Matthew called in to investigate when a string of prostitute murders leads to satanic cults operating in medieval Cambridge. These are simple reads but they don't give it away too easily.

77. The Ivy Tree, Mary Stewart

I missed MWYT? when everyone else was reading it, but picked this up instead. My first Mary Stewart so nothing to compare it to so far.

A young Canadian woman, Mary, is approached by a man who mistakes her for his long-disappeared cousin, Annabel. When he realises his mistake, he recruits her into a plot in which Mary will pose as Annabel and "return" to the family estate in order to get his elderly great-Uncle to change his will.

From the beginning it's obvious that all of the characters are slippery, none of them are quite telling the truth, and they all know rather more than they are letting on. The story twists and turns quite a few times, and Stewart is very clever in hiding her clues - they're all there but she drops them subtly and you're never quite sure what's significant. She writes with impressive deftness, although the story itself is rather Gothic and very silly.

The pacing was a bit off at times - it moved ever so slowly in some places then suddenly jumped to high drama. A good entertaining read nonetheless - I'll probably splash out a couple more 99ps and get some of her others :)

Sorry I meant to add a thank you for the Jackie Kay recommendations above. I also saw that she's done some work inspired by The Broons - will have to search that out!

Just popped back on here to mark my place on the new thread, only to find the two recommendations by Cote in the Kindle sale ... sigh, my poor TBR, but how can I miss Emperor of all Maladies and No Country for Old Men at those prices

Mine so far this year ...

1. The Skeleton Cupboard: stories from a clinical psychologist by Tanya Byron
2. All Quiet on the Western Front by Erich Maria Remarque
3. Where the Eagle Landed: Mystery of the German Invasion of Britain, 1940 by Peter Haining
4. The Sellout by Paul Beatty
5. A Journal of the Plague Year by Daniel Defoe
6. The Great St Mary’s Day Out & My Name is Markham by Jodi Taylor
7. Golden Hill by Francis Spufford
8. Straight by Dick Francis
9. The Universe vs Alex Woods by Gavin Extence

10. The Essex Serpent by Sarah Perry 11. Ink in the Blood by Hilary Mantel 12. Bitch in a Bonnet: Reclaiming Jane Austen from the Stiffs, the Snobs, the Simps and the Saps Volume 1 by Robert Rodi 13. The Improbability of Love by Hannah Rothschild 14. My Antonia by Willa Cather 15. The Leaving of Things by Jay Antani 16. Upstairs at the White House: My Life with the First Ladies by J B West 17. For Kicks by Dick Francis 18. Aunty Ida’s Full Service Mental Institution by Isa-Lee Wolf 19. Purity by Jonathan Franzen 20. The Invisible Library by Genevieve Cogman 21. And the Rest is History by Jodi Taylor 22. Artic Summer by Damon Galgut 23. Gorky Park by Martin Cruz Smith 24. War Brides by Helen Bryan 25. The Girl Next Door by Ruth Rendell 26. The American Boy by Andrew Taylor 27. Absolute Friends by John Le Carre 28. The Opposite of Loneliness: Essays and Stories by Marina Keegan 29. Barkskins by Annie Proulx 30. Second Wind by Dick Francis 31. Miracles of Life by J G Ballard 32. The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas 33. A Place of Greater Safety by Hilary Mantel 34. Faithful by Alice Hoffman 35. Eligible: A Modern Retelling of Pride & Prejudice by Curtis Sittingfield 36. This Must Be the Place by Maggie O’Farrell 37. Lion: A Long Way Home by Saroo Brierley 38. Murder on the Orient Express by Agatha Christie 39. The Sport of Kings by C E Morgan 40. The Trouble with Goats and Sheep by Joanna Cannon 41. The Danger by Dick Francis 42. The Gargoyle by Andrew Davidson 43. We Should All Be Feminists by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie 44. A Perfect Storm by Jodi Taylor 45. No Turning Back by Lauren Greene 46. The Shipping News by Annie Proulx 47. Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe 48. This is Going to Hurt: Secret Diaries of a Junior Doctor by Adam Kay 49. Dark Matter: a ghost story by Michelle Paver 50. Orphan Train by Christina Baker Kline 51. Smokescreen by Dick Francis 52. Guards! Guards! by Terry Pratchett 53. Madam, will you talk? by Mary Stewart 54. The Unseen by Roy Jacobsen 55. The Break by Marian Keyes

Reads since I last updated ...
56. Assassin’s Arrangement: a Victorian novelette by Jette Harris - rubbish, was really disappointed in it as was recommended by a writer I like.
57. Rat Race by Dick Francis - old, reliable, re-read
58. Ready Player One by Ernest Cline - chosen from my list for book club from recommendations on here. I rather enjoyed it - and forgave it its YA-ness - until the final gate, when I found the gaming detail just too much. Ended with 3/5 stars, because of that.

Thanks for the new thread southeast and I am also looking forward to Cote's review of Brideshead with a degree of trepedition and enthusiasm ...

I bet you all love No Country just to spite me!

Keith - MWYT is so much better than The Ivy Tree. Silly but knowingly silly. I thought Ivy took itself a bit too seriously in comparison.

Marking place. No updates, currently enjoying some strange times In Patagonia with Bruce Chatwin and wondering why I have never heard of Jackie Kay .

30. Man with a seagull on his head by Harriet Page. Another one off the not the booker shortlist. An isolated man is hit on the head by a seagull on the beach. He then starts obsessively painting the woman’s face who was standing near him. The story is about him, the woman and the art collecting family he moves in with. I really enjoyed this short book. There were some delicious sentences. It was quite a gentle read and I found it relaxing but intriguing.

Jackie Kay is a wonderfully talented woman. Her debut novel Trumpet is delicious. She was in a long term relationship with Carol Ann Duffy for many years I believe. Slightly irrelevant but possibly interesting fact!
110. H is for Hawk - Helen MacDonald have had this on my Kindle for an age, but never seemed to ‘get into it’. A story of a woman trying to come to terms with her fathers’ sudden and unexpected death, by training a Goshawk. Runs her story parallel to the story of tortured author White (whose first name escapes me now!). This device is semi successful, I found myself skim reading the passages about White and his tortured soul.
The book is a personal and often moving account of grief which I think many will find lots to relate to. I liked it but didn’t love it. May it was a case that I read it at the wrong time. My life is currently jam packed and stressful. I could have done with something lighter and more engaging.

Red Rising is £0.99 on the Kindle

Don't miss it if you haven't read it already.

Ah, RMC, I did wonder whether the "Carol Ann" who JK refers to was the Carol Ann! I envied her hanging out with Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie as well :)

78. The Little Book of Hygge: The Danish Way to Live Well, Meik Wiking

Darn, I was looking forward to this book setting me up for a cosy and mindful existence as the winter nights draw in. Sadly, it was a disappointment. The writer is apparently the CEO of the Happiness Research Institute in Copenhagen but he doesn't write like an academic (which makes me wonder what, exactly, the Happiness Research Institute) is. There's a lot of (occasionally funny) waffle and repetition, and little pictures of socks and unscientific graphs. I learned that Danish people use lots of candles, and that cake is hygge. Oh, and that social equality and a welfare state make people happier, but that's not just a hygge thing, is it?

Bah. If anyone wants me, I'll be curled up in a photogenic oversized jumper, eating cinnamon buns in a window seat.

A note of caution though Re: Red Rising since it is liked and recommended a lot here by the majority - don’t necessarily buy all 3 in the series at once thinking you’ll love them, because you may in fact turn out to be one of the few who think it’s terrible and have lasting Kindle-clicker’s remorse when you barely finish the first one. I may know someone this happened to 😐

The Red Rising series is one of the few works of fiction that Cote and I both loved, so maybe worth taking a chance on!

Currently slogging through The Romanovs and have reached the start of Catherine the Great's reign. Cannot keep up with all the courtiers, lovers, generals etc. Finding it an interesting read although a lot goes over my head (read: constant stream of courtiers, lovers, generals etc). It's not as 'easy' a read as the Stalin book as it's so detailed and I know next to nothing about Russian history circa C16th - C18th. They are a gruesome lot though - thankfully Catherine seems a more civilised monarch - there are fewer impalements, death by spike up the bum and other such 'delights'.

Relatives visiting, 2 week half-term, weekends away etc... means I haven't been here for ages, but I have enjoyed a good skim read through your posts. Just putting it out there that I enjoyed The Snow Child and I loved No Country for Old Men, and the film is amazing but utterly terrifying.

I can't actually remember where I left off but here are my most recent reads:

40. Maggot Moon by Sally Gardner - clever, well-written YA dystopian novel. I liked it, didn't love it.

41. A Brief History of Anyone Who ever lived by Adam Rutherford, the scientist who hangs about on R4 a lot. He is a geneticist and this is a very accessible and for the most part enjoyable book about human genetics. I zoned out in a few bits but for the most part it was engaging and the science bits were light enough for me to follow.

42. Career of Evil by Robert Galbraith - audio book. Cormoran Strike number 3. God this was long, a few hours too long. Quite a good story but WAY too much detail for me, every murder lead is followed up to the nth degree and the characters' private lives are examined microscopically. In my final hours of listening I wished there was some way of skim listening to an audiobook.

43. The Knife of Never Letting Go by Patrick Ness - part 1 of the Chaos Walking trilogy. Yet more YA dystopia. I would have loved it when I was 15, now not so much. The hero is a complete PITA.

44. Dracula by Bram Stoker - I read this almost 25 years ago and loved it then. This time I enjoyed it but less so. The first quarter of the book is pretty great but there are many pages that lag and we get morally upright characters droning on and on about faith and love and duty (and pseudo-science) - yawn. I think Stoker would have done well to have a lot more Dracula in a book called Dracula.

It didn't cross my mind to keep a list of the books I've read until I saw this thread. I have been working my way through our collection of Frederick Forsyth books the last few months. Just finished The Cobra so need to choose another one now.

Frederick Forsyth is a brilliant author and his books never disappoint.

"Knife Of Never Letting Go: Yet more YA dystopia. I would have loved it when I was 15, now not so much. The hero is a complete PITA"

You are too kind. This was my review.

CoteDAzur Mon 29-Feb-16 10:00:47
14. The Knife Of Never Letting Go by Patrick Ness

No use sugar-coating it: This was crap. I don't know how it compares to what people usually read as YA but it was shockingly stupid, dull, and badly written with a 200-word vocabulary, featuring what must be the dumbest and least inspiring protagonist in the history of literature. I can't even call it a coming-of-age story because he was as gormless at the end as in the beginning. Gah.

Don't even get me started about the pathetic excuse for a story. People who can't be bothered to worldbuild should not try to write sci-fi imo. Why couldn't he set his story at any point of the world's history when people have settled at another continent island, for example? Complete rubbish.

Welcome slywright

I really enjoyed Forsyth's autobiography, called The Outsider: My Life In Intrigue, and would like to recommend it to you. This was my review:

CoteDAzur Sun 16-Jul-17 10:22:36

31. The Outsider: My Life In Intrigue by Frederick Forsyth

I loved this! I started it as I went to bed the other night, thinking it will bore me to sleep in a few pages as most autobiographies do (at least until they get going). Tough luck. I stayed up until 2 AM, totally engaged shock

I didn't know much about FF except that he wrote The Day Of the Jackal and a few other spy books. It turns out that he is a RAF pilot, Reuters reporter out of East Berlin before the Wall came down, journalist who brought to light the starving children in Nigeria, and part-time spy for the MI6.

This isn't an autobiography as much as it is a testimonial to the places, pivotal events, and sometimes tragedies that the author has been witness to. There are huge sections on East Berlin and Germany under Communism, Middle East, and various places in Africa including a comprehensive guide to Nigeria's civil war.

And the writing is exactly how I like it - smart, lucid, witty, and with no cheap heartstring-tugging gimmicks.

150. Fathomless Riches: Or How I Went From Pop To Pulpit by Richard Coles

Bought this cheap as a Kindle deal. I enjoyed the middle section, when he was in the Communards, but the end section dragged a bit.

151. Four Dreamers And Emily by Stevie Davies

Humorous novel about four Emily Bronte obsessives who meet up at a conference in Haworth. All a bit silly but good fun!