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?

[StitchesInTime]

Tanaqui - i’ve got no idea about Mark Lawrence and Riven I’m afraid.

The author biography at the back of Red Sister says that “Mark is married, with four children, and lives in Bristol.”, but it unaccountably fails to mention whether his wife is a mumsnetter

[whippetwoman]

Satsuki ha yes. In the book he plays a flute, so does spend a fair bit of the novel ‘getting his rod out’. He also plays a piccolo, so perhaps his rod isn’t as impressive as we are led to believe...

[mamapants]

1.Norse Mythology - Neil Gaiman
2.North and South - Gaskell
3.one damned thing after another by Jodi Taylor

1. The Book of Dust - Phillip Pullman
   
2. The Lady of the Rivers by Phillippa Gregory
   

Think this was a present some years ago and I've finally got round to reading it. I really enjoyed this. I've never read any Phillippa Gregory books before and thought they might be a bit dry but this was riveting from start to finish. Tells the story of Jacquetta (mother to the White Queen) and the War of the Roses. Am quite keen to read these chronologically now.

[Murine]

I really like The Secret Garden, Iris1 it's a real comfort read for me!

The Last Hours sounds really interesting, I'll put that on my never ending wish list FiveGoMad.

[BadBuddha]

Marking my place, though I've not caught up with the end of the last thread yet!

1. Live Your Best Day Ever - Anne-Marie Faiola
2. Golden Age by James Maxwell

[noodlezoodle]

I'm also doing the Popsugar reading challenge .

2. In a Dark, Dark Wood, by Ruth Ware. I may be the last person in the world to read this, I think it was really popular last year or the year before - but I really enjoyed it. A crime/thriller about a woman who is invited to the hen party of a friend she hasn't seen for 10 years. We know from the start that something terrible happens, and the rest of the story unravels what happened and why. You definitely have to suspend some disbelief but it cracks along at a good pace and I enjoyed the writing.

Next up is Logical Family by Armistead Maupin.

[shhhfastasleep]

3. Fallout- Sara Paretsky. I've been saving this for ages because I love Sara Paretsky's VI Warshawski P.I. I felt I needed her company in my life at the moment and, so far, I'm not disappointed.

[TheTurnOfTheScrew]

4. What A Carve Up! by Jonathan Coe. Struggling novelist Michael receives a well paying commission to write a warts and all biography of Britain's most horrific aristocratic family, the Winshaws. The family features an investment banker, an arms dealer, a Tory MP, a tabloid journalist and a battery farmer amongst its figures of 1980s excess. The more Michael researches, the more he discovers how his own life has been shaped by the assorted Winshaws.

This was fun and pacey, the satire effective without being hammered home too hard. I felt Michael could have been a more rounded character to make a better foil for the caricatures that were the Winshaws. I found the gothic horror ending a bit nuts though, however clever it was.

[mamapants]

1. Dream Hunters by Neil Gaiman
   

This was a present and the novella is an accompaniment to The Sandman comic book series which I haven't read. I probably wouldn't have picked this up myself because of this but it can be read as a standalone story. Beautifully illustrated and beautifully told, this is a fable of Gaiman's own making of a Buddhist monk, a badger and a fox. It really is a beautiful story and quite haunting. Really enjoyed this. A very quick read but well worth it and a beautiful book to have in the house.

[Passmethecrisps]

1. Our Endless Numbered Days - Clare Fuller
   

I think this was reviewed frequently on last year’s threads so I am coming a bit late to this.

Peggy is a young girl growing up in London with her concert pianist mother and survivalist father.
One summer Peggy’s father leads them both to a cabin deep in the woods of Germany and tells Peggy that the rest of the world population has gone.
The story then follows their survival and how their relationship with each other and their situation changes.

A dark but extremely compelling story.

[mamapants]

I was thinking of doing the popsugar challenge after hearing so many of you talking about it. Think I'm not going to do it this year as I am trying to read through the unread books in my house before buying new.
Anybody read much William Burroughs?
DP seems to have a lot of his books and I've never read any, thinking of giving them a go.

[mamapants]

Might check for our endless numbered days at the library.

[SatsukiKusakabe]

mamapants william burroughs an acquired taste - Naked Lunch probably the most well known. I took a literature class once with a group of 7 or 8 mature students who were all horrified by it. It was a difficult discussion day...

[plus3]

Feel like I am book stalking Toomuchsplother

3) Fingers in the sparkle jar a memoir - Chris Packham
I thought this was a vivid, raw, heartbreakingly sad, yet fantastically detailed book. Missed his documentary on BBC but knew that he had been diagnosed late with Asperger’s. (But that is never mentioned) I liked the 3rd person stance, the time line does jump around a lot but you settle into it very quickly.
Hugely emotive, has made me quite sad yet uplifted. Another to recommend to everyone.

[ChessieFL]

1. Mrs de Winter by Susan Hill
   

This is a sequel to Rebecca. It has had mixed reviews on goodreads, but I liked it. I think she’s done a really good job at capturing du Maurier’s style and the characters. I can’t say much about the plot without spoiling Rebecca for those who haven’t read it, but not much happens for a while then there’s some coincidences where you need to suspend belief a bit, but overall I thought it was a good attempt at telling what happened next. Not a patch on the original Rebecca though, of course!

Coincidentally, having just read Rebecca then the above book, I went to a second hand book sale yesterday and found The Rebecca Notebook and Other Memories by Daphne du Maurier, which includes her original notes when she first thought of the story, an epilogue which was never used, and her thoughts looking back at the book, plus some other non-Rebecca related writing. Am reading this now!

[AnnaMagdalenaGluck]

Coincidentally, coming just after Chessie's post but I finished Rebecca (book no. 3) last night.
For some reason I had never got around to reading it before. I really enjoyed it and have been thinking about it all morning.

I'm really bad at saying what I think about books until I've had plenty of time to consider. I may come back with more of my thoughts later.

Next book is To the Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf

[TooExtraImmatureCheddar]

Trying to bring my list over - copying from Excel so I hope it works!

1 Night Study Maria V Snyder
2 Dawn Study Maria V Snyder
3 The Dark Tower Stephen King
4 The Common Years Jilly Cooper
5 War For The Oaks Emma Bull
6 The Falcon Emma Bull
7 The Handmaid's Tale Margaret Atwood
8 The Lost Plot Genevieve Cogman

[TooExtraImmatureCheddar]

Grr, why did it lose the spaces?

[Ontopofthesunset]

I'm reading "Naked Lunch" at the moment, having never actually read any William Burroughs. It is, in the words of many, 'difficult'. It's a series of surreal drug-induced dream-like scenes, all of which involve lots of erections and spurting jism and many of which are very violent too. It's not very long but it is quite tricky. I'm about two-thirds of the way through and getting a bit bored by all the languidly masturbating boys and the pervading musty smell of penetrated anuses.

[TooExtraImmatureCheddar]

1 Night Study Maria V Snyder

[Toomuchsplother]

Plus3 isn't it an amazing book? As for boom stalking, will be interested to see where we both go next!

Ontopofthesunset - I'm about two-thirds of the way through and getting a bit bored by all the languidly masturbating boys and the pervading musty smell of penetrated anuses.
** Think I might give this one a miss!!

[plus3]

Going to revisit Wuthering Heights ...haven’t read since my teens & loved it. Am going on a bit of a Bronte fest - will read Jane Eyre & The Tenant of Wildfell Hall this year as DH gave me these beauties for Christmas

[Teufelsrad]

I'm envious, Plus. They're gorgeous. You have one of my favourite ever books on that shelf too 'The English Patient'. I might have to reread that this year.

I'm currently reading Jane Eyre. It's slow going but I'm only 160 pages in, so lots of plot still to come.

[annandale]

4 The Book of Night Women by Marlon James
Whoof. Took me a while to read it, I had a break and read number 3 in between. Really involving, brutal story of a woman, a slave, at the turn of the nineteenth century in Jamaica. My book club read A History of Seven Killings a while back, we all thought it was brilliantly written but none of us finished it. The dialogue of the white characters is clumsy and alien but I'll pay him the compliment of believing that's deliberate. This one will stay with me a long time. The colonialist, racist past and present in Britain oozes back on the tide.

[highlandcoo]

The Book of Night Women sounds interesting, annandale. I've had it on my bookshelves for quite a while now. Could be a good follow-up to The Underground Railroad and Homegoing, both of which I really enjoyed.

Going off-topic a bit, but I had lunch in Brydekirk in a pub overlooking the river Annan yesterday. Not sure if that has anything to do with your name