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?

1. The Horse Dancer - Jojo Moyes

A 14-year-old girl is being coached in dressage by her French grandfather - in a scruffy urban stables and park in London, not where you would expect to see someone doing a levade. She ends up running away with her horse to France, chased by her foster parents. I enjoyed this, partly because I ride (although not dressage, and haven't got my own horse) and got into it more as it went on. The characters, both human and equine, were well-drawn.

Yes agree toomuch

Satsuki I think those successful children's writers are the rare people who truly haven't forgotten what it is like to be a child.

1. Restoration by Rose Tremain (audiobook).

Follows the life of Robert Merivel who starts the book as a medical student in London during the reign of Charles II. The story is told in first person as Merivel retells his life of entering into the King's favour and a position at court, becoming first the physician to his Majesty's dogs and then his cuckold as husband to one of the Kings mistresses. He is sent to live in great luxury to a great home in Norfolk where surrounded by everything he could possibly ever want fucks it all up by doing the one thing the King has forbidden him to do. Punishment ensues.
The second part of the book is his life restating again, returning to medicine, neglected relationships and his purpose in life.

I enjoyed this very much. The narrator was superb and the character of Merivel although insufferable and exasperating is a real joy, full of wit and pathos. I wanted much more from the story while he is at the asylum and felt that this part of the book and his insights into mental illness felt unfinished, although I see that audible has immediately recommended a follow up to this one, so maybe Tremain returns to this topic again and Robert is able to reach some more satisfactory conclusions.
Would definitely recommend as an audiobook for those wanting to listen to something that will lift the spirits.

"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?"

Err... Is it not?

I remember windsurfing as a teenager so I don't need to read a book telling me about the wind on my salty skin, feet in the water, completely silence except for the waves etc.

Similarly, I remember very well what it felt like to be small and dependent, misunderstanding most adult conversations as had no frame of reference for them, wanting approval, admiring my mother, aunts, and all women really, who looked like mysterious creatures with special powers. I understand what it is to be a child because I remember being one, through my memories.

Am I misunderstanding something?

Book 12: Lincoln in the Bardo by George Saunders

Mentionned a lot here already so won’t go over the plot. I liked this but I can completely understand why some people wouldn’t. The various voices are really well done and I liked the unique style of it. I quite like non linear books and also anything to do with death and the human condition (I’m great fun at parties) so those elements I liked. I think I will reread this at some point as I read it in bits, waiting at school gates etc and I think this is the kind of book that needs to be read in longer sittings.
Overall I enjoyed it but I’m not sure I would recommend it to others as I can see a lot of people hating it as well

Cote no maybe you may be one of those people I love, who has very specific memories which encompass emotion as well as a time and place. This really isn't my experience with everyone. Lots of people can tell you where they were and what was happening but not how it made them feel. The loss of the child's perspective is a huge problem in my opinion particularly in education and social care. I will put my soap box away, as aware we are straying far from the realms of books.

12. The Extra Woman: How Marjorie Hillis Led a Generation of Women to Live Alone and Like It, by Joanna Scutts

Non-fiction book about a mid-twentieth century American female writer who wrote advice books for women on how to live elegant and interesting lives without being married. Like Betty Friedan before her, she points out the change from the 1930s image of independent women (think Katherine Hepburn) to the 1950s image of domesticity. It's a lively enough read, though it feels a bit padded. I cherish the description of Helen Gurley Brown's recommended 2-day diet:

• breakfast: an egg and a glass of white wine
• lunch: two eggs and two glasses of wine
• dinner: steak and the rest of the bottle.

Weightwatchers, eat your heart out.

9. A Song for Issy Bradley - Carys Bray
Not great, not dreadful (though very sad) and I read it quickly. It's about the aftermath of the death of the youngest child in a Mormon family in the UK, told from the perspectives of the different family members. It was the Mormon element that kept me reading actually, as it's a community that I know very little about. The characterisation didn't work for me very well; didn't ring true and was perhaps too black and white (good Mormon/bad mormon) but on the whole this was ok. I'm not really selling this. Perhaps it was a bit too "creative writing course' style for me. I hope that makes sense!

I've been reading My Absolute Darling for weeks now - a little bit here and there. Great writing but difficult to read for some reason. I never want to pick it up.

Cote, I rather enjoyed Sharp Objects too.

biblio I’m allergic to eggs but wonder if I could adapt it...

Whippetwoman I read a song for Issy Bradley a couple of years ago. I think my reaction was similar to yours at the time but it had stayed with me. Which is not something I can say for all books.

Whippet - I couldn't get on with A Song for Issy Bradley at all. It looked like the kind of book I would enjoy, but I just found myself getting more and more irritated by the Mormons, which I know sounds very bad, but they were portrayed often in a way which made it easy to dislike them rather than understand and sympathise.

I haven't posted properly for ages and, in fact, had fallen off the Threads I'm On. This hasn't been a good week, reading-wise. I've been ill most of it and have struggled through one non-fiction book:-

1. The Life-Changing Magic of Not Giving a Fuck by Can't Remember and can't be bothered to look it up either. Tedious. I get the point - drop the stuff that makes you waste time and you don't enjoy doing, don't bother with all the useless meetings, the invitations to second cousin twice removed's godchild's sister's wedding etc - you don't have to care.

She wittered on for far too long. It was something that could have been said in a bullet-pointed blog entry, but that wouldn't have made her much money.

Currently reading The Reservoir Tapes by Jon McGregor. I'm on a waiting list for Resevoir 13 but this turned up first. It's good, and I'm looking forward to getting hold of Reservoir 13.

And, also reading some rip off of a Horrid Henry book by someone who can't be bothered to think of their own stories, with DS. He's enjoying it, but I'm not and won't bother recording it on here. It's shite.

Satsuki, I'm sure a handful of cashews would substitute very nicely. I'm tempted although I don't think my employers would be impressed.

Toomuch - Interesting. Thank you for this insight.

I had no idea that having many detailed early-childhood memories recalling emotions as well as time & place is so rare.

Popping in to say I'm quite enjoying The Nix so far, and agree that it could be compared to King in its evocation of the world of childhood. Since I've just watched the new It film again (yours to buy on DVD now, folks) I think I'm probably even more conscious of it (or It).

Book 7 The Muse

Now this I really liked. It's ages since I have read a gripping well written book. I don't like The Miniaturist much but this is more modern in style.

As someone who has holidayed in Spain, I found the - to us very much untaught and hidden - details of the Spanish Civil War in Malaga fascinating. I liked the double time frame too. And the multiple connecting threads. I found the stuff about Odelle's race a bit forced and unconvincing though (although I am all for more books with non white protagonists). I did see the ending a mile off but that's an affliction of mine with all books and films!

I wasn't moved to tears or anything - the characters are all too flawed but I did enjoy it. And it has a proper ending which I wasn't expecting from Burton.

Random number generator ahs picked The Secret History for my next book. It is not looking kindly on me having never picked out one of the short ones!!!

Toomuch, regarding The Neapolitan quartet, the first book builds slowly and it’s my least favourite of all four, but I still liked it and I hope you enjoy them too.

I think lots of people forget what it’s like to be a child. My DH has hardly any memories of childhood. I’ve got some but certainly none from before the age of 5. My brother was born when I was 4.5 and I have no memory of it at all! My childhood memories are more of time and place rather than emotions, as Toomuch pointed out. I remember my emotions as a teenager vividly, but from childhood, not much.

Amazon tells me that Sharp Objects is being made into an HBO mini-series with Amy Adams.

Sorry not to be able to corroborate your theory, Satsuki, but I was an early, avid reader and have few vivid early childhood memories.

11. Arrows of the Queen by Mercedes Lackey

I can't actually decide whether these are meant to be children's or possibly YA books or not. They are very lightweight fantasy, quite short, and pretty simplistic. Certainly the heroine in this trilogy and the hero of the first trilogy I read are quite young at the start of their stories but the amount of sex (implied rather than described in this one, but more overt in the first set) suggests the intended audience is probably not children.

Anyway, this one centres on a 13-year-old girl from a regimented society where women are intended only to be wives or in religious orders and are of no value. When told that she is to be married, Talia runs away and encounters a Companion, a mystical horse-like creature that Choses its human counterpart who then trains as a Herald. The Heralds are the protectors of the Queen and kingdom of Valdemar and each of them has a Gift which is almost but not quite like magic. Talia is Chosen by Rolan and taken by him to be trained at the Collegium, discovering that because she is partnered with Rolan she automatically is given a high position in the court of the Queen. In the course of her training as a Herald she comes to learn her own Gifts but also that there is treachery in the court and she is the only one who can search it out.

Piggywaspushed I have said before that I have tried and failed with The Secret History. I will try again just to get the thing off my Kindle!

22. All Quiet on the Western Front - Erich Maria Remarque- just wow. Don't think I have the word to review this stunning novel. Written by an ex soldier who served in WW1. Brutal, honest and heartbreaking. I know I am late to the party with this one but it was worth the wait.

*toomuch^ I suspect I will struggle too but it's one of those books I feel I ought to have read...

I think I liked The Little Stranger/ Friend or whatever it's called but can't remember anything about it! Suspect style over substance!

I am proud to say I have read All Quiet in both German and English and seen the film! I used to teach it but, no thanks to Gove and co , such luxuries of choice no longer exist.

Gove and co

1. (I think!) Michael Connelly - The Wrong Side of Goodbye

I've read all his Harry Bosch/Mickey Haller books. This one is about a rapist and an inheritance, it was a bit rubbish.

Book number 9 Night shift by Stephen King.

One of his early short story collections and a really decent read. None of the stories are as good as survivor type which may be the best short story ever written, but bar one, the stories are good old fashioned horror stories without too much navel-gazing or 'deeper meaning'.

Also enjoying nix - well worth a quid I think. Whilst I agree that the writer captures childhood very well ala King, he also reminds me of someone else who I can't put my finger on.