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?

Agree that the ending of The Dry was a disappointment. I liked it up until that point though. Can't be doing with stupid and convenient coincidences, which is why I will never read another Kate Atkinson book too.

Book 8
The Thornbirds – I enjoyed this. On the whole it wasn’t too Goddish, and there were no wanking vicars. I liked the descriptions of Australia, and I liked the ending. There were enough characters who were sufficiently well developed to keep my interest, and the balance between conflicted vicars and characters who were not conflicted vicars was in my favour. I thought some of the internal monologues (vicars and non-vicars, all conflicted) were a bit tedious and I thought a couple of characters were introduced solely in order to die, but on the whole it was all good fun in the bush (not a euphemism, although it sometimes was fun in that bush too).

Remus I have The Thornbirds on my kindle to read and after that review I think it will move closer to the top of the TBR list!

@ all good fun in the bush.

15. Good Wives by Louisa May Alcott

Didn’t enjoy this as much as Little Women - while it was good to revisit the characters this was even more preachy and I was disappointed that it didn’t feature more about Meg and Beth. I’ll still read the next couple in the series when I get chance though.

Everyone has their go-to genre for a quick and easy read. Mine is urban fantasy with an ass-kicking lead female and a little romance on the side. Not too much of the bush and rod action though, thank you very much.. 😉😉 I don’t really like most “chick-lit” but you never know what unexpected discovery is around the corner. To my surprise, I really liked The Time Traveller’s Wife when I read it over 10 years ago (my DSis brought it in holiday and I had nothing else to read) and that I would class as chick-lit. Not sure what I would think of it now as I think your book likes and loves can change over time.

Updating with my recent reads:

7. The Story of the Lost Child by Elena Ferrante.

The last in the Neapolitan novels. Told in the first person (by Elena) this follows Elena Greco and Lila Cerulla from their thirties into old age, in their roles as mothers, partners, earners. The first person viewpoint is fascinating; I found myself wondering what the characters would be like from someone else’s perspective.

As usual the characters and settings come alive in her writing with a fitting ending. Not my favourite of the four (I preferred the second and third books) I still raced through it, eager to see where the story would lead. I have loved reading this quartet of books.

8. The Lunatic Cafe (Anita Blake novel 4) by Laurell K.Hamilton.

Fourth book in this urban fantasy series. Shapeshifters, werewolves, vampires and Anita Blake, kicking ass and solving crime.

Shakeit my MIL has recommend the Elena Ferrante books to me this evening. Adding them to the list!

I must be the only person in the world who
couldn’t make any headway with Elena Ferrante. I was bored and couldn’t finish the first book. Everyone I know has loved them all!

1. Hot Milk by Deborah Levy

I don’t know what to make of this, which perhaps means it is better than my initial reaction suggests. A woman and her mother go to Spain to seek a cure for the mother’s undefined illness. There’s heat, sex, jellyfish, introspection and various odd behaviours. I enjoyed the writing but couldn’t get hold of the central character or what was making her behave the way she did. It was one of those books where the ecstatic reviews all over the cover and inside (“mesmerising”, “unmissable”, “hypnotic”) made me constantly wonder what I was missing and if perhaps I am just irredeemably stupid when it comes to appreciating great literature. Perhaps one of the quotes - “lavish, cryptic innuendo”- sums it up. I had no idea what was going on for much of the time but it was all very elegantly and elaborately done.

Satsuki - Wind Of Willows might have the best description of a river that in the history of the printed word, but it's still a story about Mr. Toad, Badger, Ratty, and Mole

Jack Reacher books have some of the most braindead prose I have ever read, but at least they are written for people at or close to my age, featuring adult humansThis might not be important to some people, but it is to me

Yes exactly - we look for different things, I’m not a big reader for plot so that is why I can enjoy a well written children’s book if I don’t want to be taxed, even if the bad guys are weasels and I know they’re wrong ‘uns from the start

And Mr Toad is an archetypal character - I know someone just like him, and everyone knows what you mean when you call them Mr Toad, and it comes from a children’s book. I often snarl “canary coloured carts” when I’m in a rage and children are present, it’s very useful.

I’m not really enjoying The Dry at all, finding it very dull. And no badgers in it! Liking, and nearly finished Burial Rites though. Feel like something cheerful next.

6. Malice by Keigo Higashino

Crime fiction. The body of acclaimed novelist Kunihiko Hidaka is found in his locked office within his locked house by his wife and his friend , Nonoguchi, both of whom seem to have solid alibis. Or do they...
When police detective Kyochiro Kaga gets suspicious about Nonoguchi’s statement and starts investigating him, he begins to uncover a twisty and puzzling tale full of secrets and betrayals.

An entertaining page turner.

Pepe I hated Hot milk. Thought it was just too clever for it's own good. Seemed full of 'symbolism and meaning' but I couldn't be bothered to work it all out. Will see if I can find my review.

pepe here is my very short review!

91. Hot Milk - Deborah Levy . Too clever for it's own good. All sorts of metaphors and parallels but I just could not be bothered to try and understand them. Was bored rigid from about 50 pages in. Wish I wasn't so OCD about finishing books , came very close to abandoning it a number of time

That seems fair! I wasn’t bored, exactly, but it was definitely one of those “I’m considerably more clever than you” books. I just can’t see the point.

"Understanding the way a child's mind works and understanding a child's point of view"

Do some people need to read children's books to understand how children's minds work?

I'm genuinely surprised. Don't you remember being a child?

Cote as someone who has worked with children all her life I can tell you lots of people don't remember what it is like to be a child. It is very very sad.

1. Sharp Objects by Gillian Flynn

I really liked this 1st book by a woman author Suspense was developed well, writing was quite good, heartstrings not tugged despite tragedy and trauma, characters all damaged in their own way, and the self-harm angle was done just the right way, too. I'm very pleasantly surprised.

Our protagonist is a woman who goes back to her home town to cover the story of two girls abducted and killed in the same way. She has to face her estranged family, and the trauma of having lost her sister to a strange and protracted illness as a child, which got her started on cutting words into her body that left permanent scars all over.

I would recommend this to everyone here. It is a FAR superior book to Gone Girl.

21. Birdcage Walk - Helen Dunmore I enjoyed this but it wasn't a stand out for me. Story of a young wife in Bristol at the time of the French Revolution. She has been brought up by a forward thinking, radical mother. Her husband is a self made man, building beautiful but risky properties in Bristol. He harbours a dark secret.
There was lots of potential here for this to be a really compelling dark tale, along the lines of Rebecca. It seemed a bit underdeveloped and rushed to me. The conclusion was all too convenient as well.

Toomuch - That's hard to believe for me. I have so many memories of early childhood, in a home we moved out of before I was 5, for example. Overhearing my parents talking about having to be careful with money and worrying myself sick about how we would survive (unnecessarily). Dreaming my parents were both dead and crying in the corridor at night, not daring to go into their room in case they really weren't there. Both of these memories are from before I was 3. Then DB was born and I "packed" a bag in a fit of jealousy and tried to run away. I was 5.

I really don't need to read children's books to remember how children think. Let me know if I can read a book to remember what I ate yesterday, though

Cote, whereas I have hardly any memories from before I was about four, but can remember being nine very very vividly.
Brains are odd.

Cote thanks for the Flynn recommendation. I read Gone Girl and while I quite liked it I wasn’t overwhelmed so hadn’t bothered with any of her others. I still don’t think I’ll rush out to buy it but will pick it up in the library or a charity shop if I see it!

That’s interesting - my memories start from being 4. I remember moving into our first house (lived with Granny before that). DH, in the other hand, remembers nothing before the age of 8. My personal theory is that that was when he was sent to prep school and he blocked his earlier memories in his homesickness.

I have lots of vivid memories from toddlerhood and up, whereas my husband only has scraps before the age of about 8. I was an early reader and he was later. I’ve wondered whether developing that ability has any bearing on retaining memory (speculation based on a sample of two ) Some of my preschool memories are based on getting certain books out of the library, and reading the letter that said I was going to School.

My first vivid memory is of around the time my sister was born, I was three. Then there is a big gap. But is having personal memories the same as really having an understanding of what it is like to be a child? How a child thinks, feels and processes? I often deal with families in crisis and we are constantly reminding the parents to look at something from a child's perspective. It's amazing how often we forget to do that.

6. Burial Rites by Hannah Kent A lot of people have already read this by now I think. It is the story of a woman sentenced to execution in rural Iceland in 1829, and is an imagining of her last days, and the events that led to her imprisonment, based on real historical evidence and documents. She waits out her last days with the family of the District Commissioner, visited by a young vicar who hopes to secure her confession and repentance, and bring her to God before her death. It is as bleak as it sounds! But well written, and though slow to begin with I found myself quite engrossed as it went on. There is some lovely poetic writing which evokes the unforgiving landscape and unforgiving society really well, and it is a slow, claustrophobic tale that builds gradually and inevitably. It reminded me a lot of His Bloody Project, perhaps without the quite the same vitality, but a good, original historical fiction nonetheless.

I want something lighter now so think I am going to start Mariana by Monica Dickens, and hope it fits the bill.