50 Book Challenge 2018 Part Two

[southeastdweller]

Welcome to the second 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, it’s not too late to join, and please try to let us all know your thoughts on what you've read.

The first thread of the year is here.

What are you reading?

12. The Game, Diana Wynne Jones.

Re-read. Novella reimagining the myths around the Pleiades and the Hesperides - what would have happened if Jupiter had got his comeuppance. Excellent, like everything DWJ wrote!

I’m still reading a goddish Elizabeth Goudge book, but my phone keeps running out of charge so I keep picking up short/children’s books for quick reading while my phone recharges!

Chick lit discussion is interesting! I think I will count the Jonathan Harvey book as chicklit (especially as it has a bright pink cover so clearly men aren’t allowed to read it!). I wouldn’t describe Tony Parsons as a chicklit author, although to be fair I’ve only read one or two of his books and that was years ago.

"chick lit is one of those descriptors that automatically downgrades the content, like "It can't be chick lit, it's good!"... Total nonsense of course... "But his books are good!" comments, like chick lit is automatically trashy. Which is bollocks."

I wouldn't call it trashy, but it is... chick-lit: Superficial, commercial, written for women, about ordinary women's daily lives, their children, their men, their friendships - stuff I have zero interest in committing many hours to reading about. Characters have to be "likable", there has to be some heartstring pulling, possibly some major trauma discussed like child abuse, losing a child, death of a child, etc. All with tear-jerky ploys and cheap tricks, written with a limited vocabulary and no literary aspiration.

Can you tell I'm not a fan of the genre?

I'd rather read dick-lit like Jack Reacher. At least those books have a mystery to be solved that keeps the pages turning, and no blatant heartstring tugging.

It's like children's books - another genre I have no interest in. Is they trashy? No. Do I ever want to read one? Absolutely not.

Some might be better written, more imaginative, about more original subjects than most but they still remain by definition books that are more superficial than those written for adults, with a smaller vocabulary, with far fewer shades of gray.

I understand that everyone except me has their favourites from childhood and that rereading them feels warm and cozy, but (without judging - to each their own) I don't actually understand how adults get mental stimulation or enjoyment from reading something written for the far narrower understanding of their children. (That's fine, as I suspect nobody understands how I read book after book about dead Baroque musicians )

I'm definitely with you on the chick lit cote. I don't have time to read about fluff or people's eyes meeting across a bookstore, followed by a misunderstanding and blah blah.
I think the difference with say Nick Hornby is that his books are generally quite light they don't tend to be as formulaic and romance based. I think that there probably are a few well written chick lit books out there but you'd probably never know as the market is saturated with identikit titles and covers that you could never wade through it all to find the one gem.
Im almost with you on the children's books too, when I've reread favourites from childhood of 'amazing' books I'm generally disappointed as I'm not seeing them through children's eyes anymore. But I can't totally agree with you as I adore his dark materials and the Harry potters

I don’t get on with most chick-lit (Sophie Kinsella makes me want to stick needles in my eyes because her characters are so stupid) but I make an exception for Jilly Cooper. I disagree that reading about women’s daily lives, children, friendships etc are boring, but I agree that reading badly written formulaic shite about girl-meets-man-then-hilarious-misunderstanding-occurs isn’t for me. A lot of chick lit actually offends me (rom com films too) because the women in them behave in such puerile ways.

I will die in a ditch defending re-reading children’s literature, though!

Do you think Jilly Cooper is indeed chick lit? Isn't she too raunchy and funny? I would never call Bridget Jones' Diary chick lit funnily although all the imitators she spawned tend to be. It definitely implies to me a certain lack of literary quality : not just a book written by a woman for women.

I teach film and it's the same with film. When a 17 year old girls says her favourite films are The Notebook or that Me Before You one I want to roll my eyes and have to restrain myself... sorry!!

I was once in a hotel and on the next table to me at dinner was Katie Fforde. I only know this because she kept loudly talking about writing and was pitching a new book so I goggled her later. Awful woman! But she kept talking about her literary style as if to disclaim the froth genre. I decided to read one of her books and failed!

But if anyone does like 'chick lit' it doesn't bother me. It's just not for me and I do think they are churned out on a a cliché conveyor belt

Re men's books : for awhile I am sure they were called Lad Lit. But the equivalent 'masculine' light reading to me is the endless Chris Ryan type book. Macho porn!

And then there are the chick lit 'thrillers' The Girl On The Train/ Bus/ Tram/ Shopping Trolley/ Next Door/ Upstairs/ In The Garden/ Behind You.

Yawn.
I still haven't learned not to buy them!!

Katie ff is a bit of a bugbear of mine, Piggy. I’ve read a few of her books and for a while it became a sort of horrific compulsion, like trying and failing to tear myself away from an ongoing car-crash. I too had to stop!

Just to wade in slightly on the chick lit debate, I reckon it was the advent of ebooks and self-publishing that opened the doors to the massive explosion and consequent race to the bottom in the genre. Every time I look on Kindle books there are dozens and dozens of writers pouring these books out, and they do sell, but there are so many totally formulaic ones.

But I think there are authors marketed as chick lit who actually write well and very intelligently despite ticking some of the required boxes. Anna Maxted, for example, who writes brilliantly about young single women and can be very funny but whose heroines are dealing with eg grief, mental illness, rape - to name a few of the issues in her books. You wouldn’t get that from the covers, I don’t think.

Would you believe that Katie fforde was published by Penguin at one point?

Never in his life had he seen a river before--this sleek, sinuous, full-bodied animal, chasing and chuckling, gripping things with a gurgle and leaving them with a laugh, to fling itself on fresh playmates that shook themselves free, and were caught and held again... By the side of the river he trotted as one trots, when very small, by the side of a man who holds one spell-bound by exciting stories; and when tired at last, he sat on the bank, while the river still chattered on to him, a babbling procession of the best stories in the world, sent from the heart of the earth to be told at last to the insatiable sea.

Wind in the Willows, vs screenshot of Jack Reacher.

Everyone switches off in their own way, but I know which I’d rather read more than once

Anything titled 'The Girl ... that is a book about a woman will instantly get the eye roll nope from me.

Saying that if there was a book called The Girl in the Shopping Trolley that was actually about a female child who did something interesting in a shopping trolley then that I might pick that up to read the blurb.

Me too Satsuki

Re Chick Lit - it's not a genre I enjoy but I have read them. Usually because they have become book club reads or someone has heartily recommended it. I find that when they are book club reads the discussion lasts 10 mins tops as we have nothing to discuss.
I read lots when I was a teenager but then an English teacher recognised what I was reading and recommended something else that I might enjoy. For me they were a bridge into other genres and for that they are useful. I would rather students I taught read Chick Lit than nothing else. When I was very ill after major surgery a few years ago I found concentrating on a book really difficult. Chick lit brought me back to reading by helping me get into the process again. A bit like light exercise when you are injured.
I don't mind reading about day to day life, families etc as long as it is done well. An example that springs to mind is The Food of Love by Amanda Prowse. Chick lit I am sure but a very real, honest and heartbreaking portrait of a family undermined by anorexia.
Re children's literature I feel that adults can gain a lot from it. Nostalgia is a big part but there is more. Understanding the way a child's mind works and understanding a child's point of view - thinking of When Hitler Stole Pink Rabbit - can't be underestimated or undervalued.

1. But You Did Not Come Back - Marceline Loridan-Ivens (author) and‎ Sandra Smith (translator). This is a short memoir from a Holocaust survivor. It's moving in parts but it's too short to be as impactful as it could have been.

1. The Dry - Jane Harper. Crime story set in a small farming community in modern day Australia about the investigation into the murders of two parents and their young son. This was OK and she evoked the setting really well with no flowery description but there should have been more suspense and the ending was a big anti-climax. Also it felt disconcerting to read a book like this where no characters use the F-word. A decent read but I'm in no hurry to read her next.

I'll resist the temptation to get further into the chick lit/children’s books debate (except to say that Tom's Midnight Garden will always have the power to reduce me to tears at the end) and merely note my arrival at double figures

10. Sunday Morning Coming Down - Nicci French

It’s a bit difficult to talk about this in case anyone wants to read the whole lot, but it's the 7th in a series revolving around Frieda Klein, a psychotherapist whose quiet and ordered life is utterly disrupted when she becomes involved in an ongoing chain of murders orchestrated by one person. I can’t really explain or I’ll reveal several significant plot points, so I won’t say much more.
Most people may know that 'Nicci French' is actually a husband-and-wife writing team, and I'm interested in how they do this - and how the voice and style has remained so consistent throughout so many books (they’ve written a number of others before this series). I always enjoy them, as they're 'genre' of a superior order, but I have to confess that some of the earlier books in the series got very complicated and Frieda herself teetered on the edge of getting annoying (maybe they intended this, though). I felt that this book was back on better, surer, ground....although goodness knows, the plot's becoming ever more complex and therefore hard to go along with. I suspect they'll have to wind it up pretty soon: possibly one more book?

I'm putting the crime fiction to one side now, sort of - started ‘ A Very British Scandal', about the Jeremy Thorpe/Norman Scott business, which is already mind-boggling only a couple of pages in.....

I used to read a lot of chick lit in my early 20's but tend to avoid them now and agree with a lot of the other comments up the thread. However, I don't think light books per say are an issue as it is nice to sometimes read something that doesn't take much of an effort.

Piggy I agree with you about chick lit thrillers. I read a lot of them and really shouldn't as they do generally leave me disappointed as my latest book demonstrates.

5 - The Child - Fiona Child - When the body of a baby is found on a building site report Kate Waters sets out to investigate and discovers that all is not as it first appears. A fairly disappointing read. In part the characters were not developed enough to feel strongly about any of them and also all the loose ends were tied up too neatly and conveniently at the end for my liking.

Now to start the Pilgrimage of Harry Fry which I have heard very good things about.

Terpsichore interesting about Nicci French. There is a Popsugar reading prompt on the challenge about a book with 2 authors. This might fit the bill nicely.

Piggy, I don't really class Jilly Cooper as chick-lit but I was trying to think of examples of lighter literature written by women with a predominantly female readership (although I first got into JC by picking up my dad's copy of Appassionata!). Bad example, because I really don't class her stuff in the same way.

8. Quiet by Susan Cain Non-fiction, subtitled "The power of introverts in a world that can't stop talking". This was more in the style of American business/self-help/pop-psychology books than I was expecting, which I found irritating at times, but it was an interesting read and gave me some fresh perspectives on myself, DP and the way we interact with each other and the world.

Yes, you don’t always want challenging and I read a lot of lighter stuff when younger. Now though I don’t have the patience for it and am more likely to read short stories or an article, or watch something decent on tv, than read a fluffy novel these days, but everyone’s got their thing that works for them.

I’m reading The Dry at the moment southeast and finding it a bit of an effort but sort of want to finish it.

On the chick-lit discussion - it's generally not my scene at all, but I have read a few. I agree that Anna Maxted's are more substantive than most (disclaimer: I used to know her years ago, so picked up the books because of that) but she hasn't published any new ones for years - I think she moved into writing more mainstream romance under a pseudonym.

Mostly I just find chick-lit way too stereotyped and predictable, but I suppose it can make relaxing comfort-reading if you don't want to think too hard. Last year for fun I read about half a dozen books set in bookshops, including "How to find love in a bookshop" by Veronica Henry, which was definitely chick-lit - fine if you like that kind of thing, but you could see all the happy-endings coming a mile off. I think one book like that a year is plenty for me.

I read plenty of non-challenging stuff - particularly children's lit/urban fantasy - so I'm not knocking light reading! It's more that the plots/characters in some chick lit tend to be dire and irritate, not soothe.

I tend to find I read crime fiction as a 'lighter' read - although that may not make much sense given the subject matter. It’s all to do with genre and conventions, I think. You know what you’re going to get and that’s absolutely fine if that’s what suits you at that moment. I’ll switch to 'literary' fiction and non-fiction when I need something more challenging.

toomuch, I’d recommend Nicci French if you’re looking for a 2-author novel. Maybe not the Frieda Klein series if you don’t want to commit to 7 books, but they’ve written a lot of other things.

I’m struggling to think offhand of many others with two authors but there must be a good few. The Martin Beck books? Diary of a Nobody? (though Weedon Grossmith drew the illustrations and probably wrote less of the text). The Irish RM?

8. The Devil In The Flesh Basically a semi autobiographical novel written by a teenager who has an affair with a woman who's husband is fighting in the trenches in WW1 Torn between loving it and thinking it's a lesser version of The Age Of Reason

7. The Cornish Coast Murder by John Bude

Published in 1935 this is reminiscent of Agatha Christie but nit as well written. A murder has occurred in a small Cornish village but whodunnit? Was it the niece, the shell shocked WW1 veteran who is stepping out with the niece, the handyman? Its up to the local police aided by the vicar to solve the mystery, and It does keep you guessing until the last chapter which is admirable.

It does help we are having a break at the moment in a beautiful 1920"s house now hotel and I keep wanting someone to drop down dead so that Miss Marple can solve the mystery.

Next up Slow Horses and impulse purchase in Waterstones while waiting to buy something else.