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?

Terpsi - the film is just lovely, too - except for Shirley Henderson's very silly voice.

10. Three Things About Elsie by Joanna Cannon. This is Joanna Cannon's new novel. I really enjoyed The Trouble With Goats and Sheep and I think this one is just as good, if not better. This time she has set her story in a sheltered accommodation, with 84 year old Florence Claybourne as her main character. She is in the early stages of dementia but is troubled by the arrival of a new resident, a man she believed died over 60 years ago. It's a mystery that needs solving but who will help her, let alone believe her.

It did take a while to get going, but was definitely worth it. I really enjoyed it. It is bittersweet and, at times, unbearable sad. Joanna Cannon is a doctor and has practised as a psychiatrist. I felt that does add an extra layer to her writing - it is informed and understanding of human nature.

Two really enjoyable but different books for 9 and 10.

9. Eleanor Oliphant Is Completely Fine – Gail Honeyman
Darker than I expected it to be, but ultimately hopeful. I liked the overall message of the book - that small acts of kindness can be more significant than we'd ever imagine. Funny in places and sharply observed. The 40th birthday party at a golf club for example, with the bad DJ, YMCA dancing and drunken conversations with randoms in the loo queue - I could relate to that. A quick and relatively undemanding read about the importance of compassion.

10. Thin Air – Michelle Paver
I read Dark Matter by the same author a couple of years ago and found it genuinely terrifying. This was just as good, if not better. It's 1935 and a group of friends assemble in Darjeeling before their expedition to conquer Kangchenjunga, the highest peak in the Himalayas. Despite warnings not to follow the route of a previous disastrous expedition years earlier, they press on. Michelle Paver builds the tension relentlessly as Stephen, the medic begins to realise they may not be alone on the mountain. An excellent spine chilling read for dark evenings.

15. Fatherland by Robert Harris Read this for the mumsnet book club. Think this has been reviewed on here a few times already. Fast paced alternative history. Enjoyable read, good characters and cleverly done.

9. Gone - TJ Brearton

A family disappears without a trace and the local defective discovers the government may be involved. Can he find them alive and what are their abductors trying to cover up?

I’m so glad I didn’t purchase this book as it was a slog to get through and I just didn’t enjoy it. Another kindle unlimited book and will definitely be cancelling after my free trial. The books available don’t seem to be worth it!

(1) Witch is When Life Got Complicated by Adele Abbott
(2) Witch is Where It All Began by Adele Abbott
(3) Coming Clean by Kimberly Rae Miller
(4) Die Last by Tony Parsons
(5) Restaurant Babylon by Imogen Edwards Jones
(6) The Sugar Men by Ray Kingfisher
(7) The Hospital by Barbara O'Hare
(8) Fade Out by Rachel Caine
(9) Yellow Crocus by Laila Ibrahim
(10) Into Thin Air by Jon Krakauer
(11) Would You Like Some Magic With That by Annie Salisbury
(12) The Ride Delegate by Annie Salisbury
(13) The Magdalen Laundries by Lisa Michelle Odgaard
(14) Just What Kind of Mother Are You by Paula Daly
(15) Amber Earns Her Ears by Amber Michelle Sewell
(16) Breathe by Sarah Crossan
(17) Kiss of Death by Rachel Caine
(18) Ghost Town by Rachel Caine

Another Morganville vampire one. Have to have another break from them now so starting one of my birthday books, Burial Rites.

Gawd, this thread is moving far too quickly for me to keep pace. Pleased to see people enjoying The Secret History, The Remains of the Day and Miss Pettigrew, as all three are on my regular re-read shelf.

7. 21st Century Yokel by Tom Cox Part memoir, part series of essays on country life, focusing Derbyshire/Notts, Norfolk and Devon, where the author has spent various periods of his life living. Engaging and funny nature writing, drawing from the author's personal life as well as the landscapes. A blend of David Sedaris and James Herriot. Loved it.

Struggling with reading on my Kindle app at the moment - can't use my proper Kindle until Wi-Fi is set up in new house, as right now it won't sync. So I'm alternating between my Goddish Elizabeth Goudge on Kindle, The Phantom of the Opera (very pretty mini hardback edition which unfortunately I lost down the back of the sofa after reading about half, and have only just re-discovered a week later) and Voyager by Diana Gabaldon, which is book 3 in the Outlander series. I read the first 4 Outlander books to death as a student and adored them. I haven't read this one for a fair few years and am struck by the silliness of the storyline, plus repeated rape/near-rape scenes that are supposed to be romantic. I mean, who is raping whom in the Jamie/Geneva scene? She starts off by coercing him into her bed by threats towards his family, but then she panics mid-sex and asks him to take it out and he says no and carries on. That's leaving aside the whole concept of a 16 yo being so enamoured with Jamie that she'd do such a thing in the first place, not to mention how she actually gets her hands on his letters in the first place. Jamie's behaviour vis-a-vis Laoghaire is utterly incomprehensible as well - it was going to come out pretty quickly once you got back to Lallybroch, so why the feck did you just let it play out? I haven't even got to the crocodile/voodoo bits yet!

Blimey! Only just made this thread.

1. Hidden Depths - Ann Cleaves
2. Rather be the Devil - Ian Rankin
3. Our Endless Numbered Days - Clare Fuller
4. I Hear the Sirens in the Street - Adrian McKinty

The second in the Detective Sean Duffy series set in Northern Ireland at the height of the Troubles.

A suitcase is washed up containing the torso of a man. The premise is good - good old Police procedural with the twist of sectarian violence to complicate matters. I find it hard therefore to explain why I found this book so dull.

McKinty seemed desperate to make sure we all had a picture of the era so we got ludicrous descriptions of the fashions (Detective turns up to the scene wearing white jeans) and every single bloody time he drives anywhere we are reminded that he drives a BMW. It gets mentioned about every second page and is exceptionally irritating. Thee are also weird comedic bits where suddenly every copper is hilarious and having great craic.

There were good bits in this. I found it interesting how violence and fear is played down and essentially normalised. I like the descriptions of the different factions and how they interlink.

It reads a bit link he has hopes that it will be televised and actually it wouldn’t make a bad TV series. Sean Duffy is a compelling protagonist and at least on telly I wouldn’t have to read endless references to his damned car.

And it took an age! Which annoys me. I am going to have to be going some to make up for this now

I'm only up to seven books so far! Just finished The Making of the British Landscape - From the Ice Age to the Present by Nicholas Crane - very interesting and readable.

tooextra I quite fancied reading the Outlander books as I'm enjoying the series. Not sure I could cope with my precious Jamie raping people though, I think that would ruin things quite a bit so might avoid these now.
Have just started The Goldfinch so I'll probably be some time. I've also started The War of the Worlds which I'm finding really hard work and a bit tedious. Am sure it was groundbreaking at the time but his style is very boring and the characters aren't very well developed, so finding it a bit of a slog.

I'd better update too before the thread passes me by.

7. The Naked Lunch: William S Burroughs. Mmm. Glad I read it. Not sure I'll be rereading it. No idea how they made a film of it.
8. Steppenwolf: Hermann Hesse. I'm not sure whether I'd read this before. I own it and DH swears he hasn't, so I must have. This is very much a philosophical musing on the nature of the artist and the relationship between the animal and cerebral parts of man. In some strange way, it resembles some of the Ayn Rand thinking I'm encountering in 'Atlas Shrugged' on audiobooks.
9. The Comedians: Graham Greene. Really enjoyed this and it's made me committed to reading more Graham Greene. Good plotting, unobtrusive good English and interesting characters.
10. A Tree Grows in Brooklyn: Betty Smith. Found this cheap on Awesome Books. I've wanted to read it for a long time. Very much what we would now call a young adult novel - coming of age, poverty, a kind of cross between To Kill a Mockingbird and Angela's Ashes, though without the plot of the former and the particularly relentless misery of the latter. I did enjoy it as an easy and interesting read, but it's not a particularly sophisticated book. It's striking because of its honesty.

Currently reading My Name is Red by Orhan Pamuk which is structurally interesting and interesting in terms of the history of religious art and so forth. It suffers though as do all books in translation (IMO) from being rather stilted.

Still listening to Atlas Shrugged on audio - I'm about half way through. Blimey, she does go on.

Mama, sorry - I got a bit carried away there and should have watched out for spoilers. It's a very weird scene - when I first read it I didn't register it as rape at all, because neither of them consider it to be so. It's only re-reading 10 years later when I've learned a lot more about consent that it stands out. I don't think Diana Gabaldon thought it was rape either - she'd certainly never have written Jamie as a rapist consciously!

tooExtra I listened to voyager last year, I didn't enjoy it as much as the other two. I still have number 4 ready to go when I'm finished winter of the world which I'm listening to at the moment. I have heard that it is the least enjoyable if the books, so hopefully I will like number 4 more. But the centuary trillogy is a hard act to follow. I would continue with that next, but they are so long I think I would get sick doing 2 one after the other no matter how much I like them.

I'm a bit uncomfortable with some of the sexual scenes in The Outlander books. The end of the first book was very hurt/comfort (in the sense [[https://fanlore.org/wiki/Hurt/Comfort]] ).

14. Talking as fast as I can, by Lauren Graham
I'm watching The Gilmore Girls with dd, so picked this up in the library on a whim. I'd read a negative view so my expectations weren't high. It's not high quality literature - she's not a great writer and there are no major revelations (although I liked her account of working through your thirties, then looking up and suddenly everyone is married with children. And it's not easy being unwillingly single, but extra-hard when the media and the public are nosy about why). I might resent paying money for it, but as a free read from the library, I thought it was fine.

15. What She Ate, Laura Shapiro
I laughed at the description of Mexican rice as served in the White House under the Roosevelts - rice with bananas and fried eggs. I found this a rather good image for the book as a whole. I liked the individual ingredients, but I don't think they benefited from being put together on the same plate. Having not known anything about Eva Braun, I liked that chapter. I enjoyed Barbara Pym because I'm a devotee. I also liked Helen Gurley Brown. I'm not sure what Dorothy Wordsworth and the Edwardian cook were doing in there. Very bananas among the rice.

Just posted the new thread 📚

I'm in