50 Book Challenge 2018 Part One

[southeastdweller]

Welcome to the first thread of the 50 Book Challenge for this year.

The challenge is to read fifty books (or more!) in 2018, though reading fifty isn't mandatory. Any type of book can count, please try to let us all know your thoughts on what you've read.

Who's in for this year?

Thanks carbuncle and indigo that’s useful.

Teufelsrad what Dickens have you not read yet? I was never keen aside from Great Expectations but Tale of Two Cities turned him around for me and I ended up reading quite a lot for study later on and enjoyed more than I thought I would.

and I've also started to listen to winter of the world. Loved the first one, but its 30 odd hours long so it will probably take a couple of months to listen too.

First book down 1. Golden Hill - Francis Spufford. Set in New York in1746 a young stranger arrives with a fortune in his pocket. Much speculation ensues. Interesting to read about the infancy of the city. It is a place I have visited a few times and we have family there.
On the whole I enjoyed the book. Some of the writing was breathtaking, particularly some descriptions and the dialogue. I am a big fan of believable and witty dialogue! There was also a fair amount of humour in the story. However my one reservation is at times the author just seem to become too caught up in his own cleverness and would lapse into a chunk of prose that I just found dull and sometimes impenetrable. Luckily they were usually short lived but I could see how they might block the flow of an otherwise good story.

Regarding Atwood I have a real soft spot for The Handmaids Tale. Annoyed that they are making a season 2 of the TV series as for me the whole point of the book is that we don't know what happens.
Have read others of hers, Alias Grace, Cats Eye stand out from memory. Was underwhelmed by The Heart Goes Last. Was hoping to read Hagseed later this year.

I've still to read quite a number of Dickens' novels. I do love him though. One of my fondest and earliest book related memories is reading through my host's collection of Dickens, at a party I was attending. I read The Pickwick Papers that evening.(I was much more fond of books than parties as a child, and I still am.)

I may try A Tale of Two Cities soon.

I have Golden Hill sitting beside me right now, Toomuchsplother I've been considering making a start on it for months. It doesn't especially appeal at the moment, but perhaps I should try it.

Splother - Agree entirely re Golden Hill.

Teufelsrad - Just bought Whatever Happened to Baby Jane which sounds right up my street. I've never seen the film, so know very little about it.

I hope you enjoy it, Remus.

I'm half in. I was thrilled to reach 52 last year, but am only going for 26 this year. I knit too and want to spend more time on that.

I was disappointed with The Penelopiad, I loved the idea of it, but thought her execution didn't meet the potential. I found Handmaid brilliant, thought Alias Grace was good and abandoned The Blind Assassin very early on. I wasn't in the mood for it at the time. Worth going back to?

I'm a sucker for a series so I'm plodding on with a few of the ones that I started last year. Shardlake, Flavia Albia and Matthew Bartholomew. I'll alternate with classics, "should have" reads and anything that sets the thread on fire.

I'm off work for a fortnight, full of cold and camped on the sofa with a book, so I could well get a head start.

Yes exactly right on Golden Hill toomuchsplother. Definitely worth a read I would say teufel, it is entertaining, and with you very much on books over parties. My ds is only 6 but has already started taking a book with him when we go out places “just in case”

Yes, Golden Hill definitely worth a read. Some sections are absolutely fantastic, but it needed more ruthless editing.

I think I'll read it a little later in the month. I think it's too soon after Great Expectations for another historical epic and that I need something that's more of a contrast.

I think I love your DS, Satsuki.

I'd like to join.
Are there rules? How many books do you average a week?

My first book is Lord of the Flies.
I think I'm the only person in the world who's never read it, so that's my first challenge.
I'm starting tonight.

1. Lord of the Flies - William Golding

So do we list them when we start them or when we finish?!

At the ripe old age of 51 I have recently formed the opinion that my reading time is too precious to waste on a book that hasn't grabbed me, so if I'm not enjoying it by page 75 it gets dumped! I think that's a fair crack of the whip.

1 Old Filth by Jane Gardam

Loved this, been meaning to read for ages, Old Filth is a lawyer and judge, one of the Raj Orphans. The books jumps around between Filth in retirement and the story of his life with some shocking revelations along the way, from the foster parents in Wales to his Aunts. Not a long book and reads well at a good pace and kept wanting to read it which is an added bonus.

That sounds like something I'd like fivegomad is it fiction?

1. Crooked Letter, Crooked Letter - *Tom Franklin ✅
2. The Pants of Perspective - Anna McNuff Reading
3. The Unicorn - Iris Murdoch Reading

Yes, also didn't realise that there are two others but this is the first one.

We generally chat about what we’re reading as we go, then list and review when finished. No rules as such, some read far more than 50, some less, don’t count those you don’t finish but can discuss them. If you want to talk more in depth about a book - including spoilers - then people have in the past started a separate thread.

teufel he is a sweetheart. Never realised quite how exciting it would be to see him learn to read, chuckling away at his Beano annual in a world of his own. Magic.

Would love to join as I was a long time lurker on the last thread but only found it in October but it encouraged me to read 17 books between Oct and Dec. Meant I read 20 for the year.

I've just finished my first book of 2018 which was Love Warrior by Glennon Doyle, true story about recovering from addiction, it was really emotional and I enjoyed it. I'm now starting The Calligrapher by Edward Docx.

I'm going for a book a week (I'm a fast reader and my plan is to read every evening before bed) so I'm in

1. The Dry by Jane Harper - work book club’s first read of the year. This isn’t my usual kind of thing, I don’t read a lot of crime novels. The crime aspect seems alright, in that I didn’t guess whodunnit before it was revealed! I was much more impressed by the articulation of the main character’s journey from small backwoods town to city-slicker and then what happens when he re-appears in the small town many years later. It’s a journey I’ve made, and I’d guess the author has too. The odd feeling of meeting a school friend working in a store in the same town, twenty years later, made me think “Yes, that’s exactly right”.

Next book will probably be non-fiction. My first goal for the start of the year is to read the twelve library books I have on loan - some interesting non-fiction among them.

I used to love reading but have got very lazy with the old concentration. So this challenge will hopefully get me back on track.

Next book is Under the Fog by Tibor Fischer about two Hungarian basketball players between the end of the Second World War and the 1956 revolution. Came across it in a book shop in London it was shortlisted for the 1993 Booker Prize

I just finished book Number 4. The Land Where Lemons Grow by Helena Atlee. I'll quote the synopsis.
"This is a portrait of Italy unlike any other, a heady blend of travel, history, art and food that takes us from Lake Garda's lemon houses through the gardens of Tuscan villas to Calabria's scented bergamot groves and a Sicilian marmalade kitchen, from top to bottom of the land where lemons grow."

I rather enjoyed this. It's a relatively short book at just 208 pages
excluding the notes and index but it's very information dense.
I love books about food and enjoy learning about history via a specific object or item, and there's little that you won't know about citrus fruit after reading this, though you also learn much of Italy's history. You'll certainly want to visit Italy after reading it, and though I'm not much of a fruit fan it's left me craving citrus.