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?

Finished book number 2 last night. I'm not even sure I should count it (but I'm going to): Learning German Through Storytelling: Mord am Morgen by André Klein. It's a 'Krimi' specifically written for language learners - so very short with simplified grammar and vocabulary. All the elements of a police procedural are there but in a condensed version. I quite enjoyed it but I think a lot of my enjoyment was down to actually reading a book in German and understanding some of it.
I think it was still slightly above my level - I had to look up quite a bit but I liked it enough to want to read some more of the series.

Still reading my five pages a day of The Ambassadors.

And I've just started Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier which I wasn't planning to read at all but I found the 1979 BBC adaptation on Youtube last week and watched it all. I suddenly realised that, although I'd seen the film numerous times and a couple of television versions, I'd never actually read it. So I thought I should.

2 I Let You Go - Clare Macintosh

Absurd, boring, cliche-ridden and grim. Macintosh's talent for creating a novel that fails to develop any of its two dimensional characters or create a believable plot, whilst simultaneously richly (and what at times felt like lovingly) describe domestic abuse is really quite something to behold. It’s saving graces were that it was cheap and mercifully short. I will eviscerate it at Book Club tonight and then try to bleach the whole sorry six hours reading from my memory.

EllisIsland- looks like the next one is Nancy and Louisa investigating but the focus might be slightly more on Pamela (should be interesting to see what she dies/says about Diana and Unity!)

I have put this in my wish list ready for Christmas!!!
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Bright-Young-Dead-Mitford-Murders/dp/0751567205#productDescriptionsecondaryyviewdivv1515568487436

Teufelsrad i read Snowblind last year and was a bit meh about it, I read Butterflies in November as well which is also set in Iceland and was so much better, not crime, very hard to describe but it involves a woman, a goose and a road trip round the coast, it is fiction

Anna - Rebecca is another one of favourite books.

I keep seeing The Mitford Mysteries mentioned in here. I find the Mitford Sisters fascinating and have read quite a few biographies, including wonderful collections of their letters. However some how this is not appealing at all.

Toomuchsplother I feel the same way!

I read The Mitford Mysteries last year and really didn’t like it - I don’t think the author captured Nancy or her parents at all well (based on frequent rereadings of The Pursuit of Love/Love in a Cold Climate, anyway!).

1. The Common Years, Jilly Cooper.

Diary of 10 years of walks on Putney & Barnes Commons. This was actually quite sobering - I love Jilly, but I got really annoyed by her wetness and inability to train her dogs. She has to get two dogs put down because she can’t control them and they are killing cats and smaller dogs. She says that muzzling a dog/keeping it on a lead all the time/not letting it out to roam the streets is much crueler than putting it down. I don’t agree with that - you could let a muzzled dog off for plenty of exercise! Either that or she could have womanned up and actually trained them. It’s like reading about the most irritating aspects of Taggie. Her husband Leo comes across as a bully throughout, as well. On the plus side, her nature writing is beautiful (although by the tenth spring it was getting a bit repetitive). I still love Jilly but I want to give her a good shake!

Oh, and I’m pretty sure Leo was knocking off at least one nanny.

TooExtraImmatureCheddar My mum just finished reading The Common Years and said the exact same thing about Leo!

BellBookandCandle Thanks for that. Will add to my ever growing wish list as well

Toomuchsplother Have you read the book of letters the Mitford sisters wrote to each other? The name of it escapes me but I enjoyed that so much. The Mitford mysteries for me is a light fun read but its definitely not the same as anything written by them as themselves.

lastqueenofscotland It took me so long to read Middlemarch. I first read it at uni and didn't really get the subtle humour , but I reread it after I read Zadie Smith's essay on why she loves Middlemarch and I really enjoyed it then. A long read though!

Teufelsrad I went to a talk by the author of Snowblind at the Edinburgh Book Festival a couple of years ago. Interesting guy; he was originally a lawyer but also a translator of English crime novels - mainly Agatha Christie I think - into Icelandic. After doing many translations he thought why not give it a go himself?

I agree with you that Snowblind was rather flawed, however I'll give him another chance as I think he has potential as a crime writer.

Agree that Butterflies in November is worth a read.

Oh, and re Middlemarch, I intended to revisit it last year but didn't find the time. I read it three times between 1980/1981 for my English Lit degree, and loved it, so I'm really hoping I'll feel the same next time round.

Ellisisland yes I have read that but a long time ago. Fascinating stuff. I don't actually have a copy and it is one of those I would love to own.

4. The Hundreth Man by J.A.Kerley - first in a series of detectives books set in Mobile. I share a kindle account with family and FIL has bought the whole range so am working my way through while I'm ill with a cold and not fancying anything taxing! I'm enjoying the characters and the setting.
5. so I'm currently reading The Death Collectors, which is the second in the series - about the weird people who buy stuff connected to nasty murders and serial killers, while people who were linked to a Manson-esque murderer years ago are being picked off one by one.

Lincoln In The Bardo - been "umm-ing" and "Arr-ing" over this one BUT just got the hardback in a charity shop for £1 so decision made.

Will add it to my ever growing "TR pile"

Small Island flowing along nicely though...

splother - I feel the same about the Mitford books, I've read a lot about them and somehow have no desire to read the fiction based on them.

1. The Dry by Jane Harper. I enjoyed this one and didn't guess 'who-dunnit'. I think it captured the nuances of country Australian beautifully and it wasn't gory - I find some crime novels difficult because of the focus on blood and guts!

Not sure where to go next! One (!) of my book clubs is very into psychological thriller chick-lit (if that's a genre), so I have When you disappeared to read but it's not really my kind of thing.

Toomuchsplother I'm really enjoying it so far and getting on quite fast. Of course having seen the film and tv version, it's all pretty familiar.

Sonnet that was the bargain of the year in my humble opinion!

I really have to put myself on a book buying ban. I was out for a mere half hour(at most) today, not including appointment time, and I managed to buy 10 books from charity shops. The majority of the shops had a rather poor selection but that's still 10 more than I should have bought.

I got...
Warm Bodies by Isaac Marion
The Parasites by Daphne du Maurier
I'll Never Be Young Again by Daphne du Maurier
The Ashes of London by Andrew Taylor
Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell by Susanna Clarke
The Other Mrs Walker by Mary Paulson-Ellis
House of Stone by Christina Lamb
The Poison Tree by Erin Kelly
The Chase by Candida Clark
and The Wind In The Willows by Kenneth Grahame. A children's book but although I read a lot of Children's classics as a child, this was one that I never got around to.

Lucky you Sonnet, at getting Lincoln in The Bardo for that price.

I think he has potential too, Highlandcoo, so I'm going to try the next book in the series.

weebarra I really enjoyed The Dry as well. The way the book captured the heat, the drought and the tensions brewing. I also am not very good with blood and guts. I think you may have coined a new genre. I think it describes that type of book pretty well.

Just finished my second book of the year The Secret Diary of Hendrik Groen, 83¼ Years Old Hendrik Groen writes a diary documenting the ups and downs of the care home where his lives. This book starts out really well and the first quarter of the book I raced through, chuckling as I read. It all went a bit downhill from there with the final quarter feeling tedious and repetitive and a slog to get through.

I have now started The Other Mrs Walker

One book had fallen out in the hall, so that was actually 11 books. The 11th being Commonwealth by Anne Patchett.

wind in the willows was one of my absolute favourites, and I still reread some passages of description, so beautifully written, children’s book or not! You’ve all done so well at charity shops, I never find anything, it’s all Maeve Binchy whenevever I go in. (No offence to fans of Maeve!)

FiveGoMadInDorset Thank you for the recommendation. I'll add to it my wish list because I'd love to read more Icelandic fiction.

Sasuiki I have to wade through a lot of Maeve and Catherine Cookson too, also Fifty Bloody Shades of Grey, and I don't know how many copies of Victoria Hislop's The Island I've seen, but there's a lot of charity shops around so between them all I usually find something. Like I've said before it's usually feast or famine. The majority of shops had very little today.

There was one glorious occasion when a now defunct charity shop allowed me to enter the backroom and browse the hundreds of books at my leisure, instead of the few shelves they had on display. It's never happened again though, in spite of fluttering my eyelashes and smiling winsomely.

Finished 4. The Good Daughter by Karin Slaughter almost exactly as expected from this type of thriller probably best read on a plane. Some chapters were repeated to tell the story from a second view point but these were too long And repetitive. Also I felt that if anyone had actually sat and talked with the suspect for more than 5mins they would have got the whole story anyway.

Started two epic books.

5Pillars of the Earth by Ken Follet it has been on my kindle for years and the reviews on this thread have encouraged me to finally read it.

6Bone by Jeff Smith The complete epic in one volume. A graphic novel over 1300 pages long. After being run out of Boneville, the three Bone cousins are separated and lost in a vast uncharted desert. One by one, they find their way into a deep forested valley with wonderful and terrifying creatures. It will be the longest-but funniest- year of their lives.