50 Book Challenge 2018 Part Three

[southeastdweller]

Welcome to the third 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 and the second one here.

What are you reading?

Sorry, that was number 29.

9. Little Girl Left behind by Sheena Harrison

An autobiography of someone who suffered horrific child abuse at the hands of her family after her mother left her behind to live in America. Very sad and horrendous to think nothing was ever done to help her. The book was well written.

Yes as much as I loved the library, it’s now gutting to me that I don’t actually own any of my favourite childhood reads, especially as I would like my children to read them, and often have to Google to even remember what they were.

11. You Play the Girl by Carina Chocano

This is really a collection of essays about the representation of women in popular culture, threaded through with the author’s own experiences and reaction to the image of “the girl” in movies and tv (the author was a critic). Some of this was quite interesting, especially in how the social background related to portrayals of women in media. It was an entertaining enough read, and though she has obviously done her research, it felt more lightweight and less scholarly than I would have liked. Too much was based on her own impressions - I mean yes Knocked Up was shit and a bit sexist, I thought so too... and? It didn’t go deep enough, and was lacking in genuinely original insights. Pretty Woman apparently a terrible and unrealistic portrayal of modern womanhood - well, duh? Also no one needs a whole chapter delineating the plot of Frozen and telling us what we’d missed in terms of sexism. There were jewels of information scattered throughout that made it feel worthwhile, but otherwise it was disappointing. I found the writing style too informal to the point of being poorly written - phrases like “that was totally a thing then” and “super-scary” were typical, and sentences were often unwieldy and badly put together, in some cases defying sense. This could have been an interesting book but it fell short, and left me feeling frustrated with the level of intellectual engagement with the material. There was a page where she quotes Mary Beard, and refers to Jane Austen being on the “one-pound note”, which is a small failure of research for someone not in the U.K., but kind of summed up the way in which the whole book skimmed the surface of some interesting ideas, not quite getting it right, and it made me want to read Mary Beard’s thoughts instead. I have a similar book on similar subject matter on my tbr by Hadley Freeman, hoping it hits the spot.

I loved Judy Blume- read a Fudge book in the Cahms waiting room last year, still very funny!

Remus, you forgot parental problems- death, divorce and secret adoption!

Would love to go to the Persephone shop, but I must read my to read pile!

22. Swing, brother, swing by Ngaio Marsh. Another good but not spectacular whodunnit, and I am now definitely going to pause these!

Oh, I missed the last page- Satsuki, I have bought a few books I remembered fondly but never owned (and have always kept an eye out in charity shops), it is very satisfying and I would recommend- although of course they don’t always stand up to rereading, but somehow it is satisfying to possess them.

oh hello, I lost you all as lack of reading drive meant you all moved on to thread 3 without me noticing!

Finished another couple:
8 Another Man's Poison - Ann Cleeves - a difficult old woman accuses the local big estate owner (who also happens to be an MP with cabinet aspirations) of using illegal poison on his estate to kill preditors, which also killed her cats. Next day she's found dead. Very, very slow, dull for a Cleeves and took me far too long to read because I just couldn't care.

9. The Twelve - Justin Cronin - second in series about modern day vampires (so created via a US Miltary experiment gone wrong). Jumps between more characters surviving in 'year zero', and then 90+ years after it first happened and humans are trying to hold on. Good follow on to the first book and decently believable characters in between the action sequences.

I think I need some good book recommendations to get my reading mojo back. Will go back on the last few pages and see if I find any inspiration.

Yes - divorce should definitely have been in there. Also teachers having affairs with students, animal cruelty and white slavery.

Coffee - you could read the third in the trilogy, which I've forgotten the title of. Personally, I wouldn't bother though. I liked The Passage and The Twelve but thought the third was dreadful.

1. Bach à Son Temps by Gilles Cantagrel

This was an interesting book with plenty of documents, letters, maps, pictures, and even anecdotes about J S Bach's life, music, and world. I learned some interesting tidbits and pictures of the museum pieces (documents, sheet music, letters, contracts, etc) were fascinating. Only if you are interested in J S Bach, obviously.

34. Burial Rites - Hannah Kent Enjoyed The Good People by this author last year and I think this is better. Based on a true story of a woman sentenced to death for a triple murder. Set in early 1800's Iceland it is a powerful novel. Kent skilfully projects the hard and bleak life of the period. The final pages are stunning and heartbreaking.

Totally agree that Burial Rites is better. More subtle and spare.

Laid up at the moment so relying on some old trashy novels.

1. Spellbound - Jane Green
2. Life swap - Jane Green

Not bad if you're wanting something simple to read. Quite vacuous but just what I needed.

Book 18 -Feel Free:Essays by Zadie Smith
These are essays that were originally published primarily in the New York Times or New Yorker magazine.
As with all essay collections some are more enjoyable than others. My favourites were the ones about her family and her father. Particularly there is one where she talks about the moments in adulthood where something about your childhood finally makes sense. She gives the example of her mother keeping plants in the bathroom and her brothers teasing her that it was like a greenhouse. Then adult Zadie travels to Jamaica and sees the same plants and realised her mother must have been homesick when they were growing up in London.
She is also great on motherhood and there is a lovely passage about her standing with her newborn baby at 4am looking at a billboard out of her window and spotting another woman doing the same thing.
The stand out for me was Fences, an essay on Brexit which captured everything I have thought but been unable to express as eloquently as she does.

Overall really enjoyable and she writes so intelligently that it’s a joy to read.

Re Burial Rites it's a double murder not a triple!! Got carried away there.
Spot on Remus

I've completely forgotten who was murdered, so didn't notice!

It was that guy and the other one. toomuchsplother it was set in Iceland, not Midsomer

That’s a good idea tanaqui - as much as I like a general browse in a second hand book shop, nothing quite beats going in with a mission.

Evening all...
7) This is going to Hurt Adam Kay a junior dr’s diaries journelling his descent from medicine. I work in a PICU so lots of it hit home & was funny, and but also very inappropriate - he was clearly burning out. I suspect (despite obviously being very clever) medicine probably shouldn’t have been his 1st career choice...anyway I enjoyed it

8. The watchmaker of Filigree Street I liked this but not blown away (ha!) apparently part of a trilogy, of which I won’t be continuing with. Historical fiction with a bit of fantasy, I liked the relationship between the watchmaker & clerk but generally underwhelming.

Satsuki . Took me a moment to catch on there! Have to admit I went back and checked I hadn't done some weird autocorrect typing thing in my post!! In my defence I am trapped in a car with people who are insistently singing along to The Greatest Showman!!

1. Both Flesh And Not - David Foster Wallace

A fascinating and satisfying collection of essays by DFW (sadly missed author of the mighty Infinite Jest). Taking in subjects from tennis and Wittgenstein to maths and Terminator 2, they're the work of an extraordinary mind/pen and a joy to read.

1. Excellent Women - Barbara Pym. Loved this -brilliantly observed. Had gone off stories about middle class women in the pre and postwar years (read too many Persephone Books) but this really drew me in. Loved that a potential suitor was called Everard Bone (naughty Miss Pym). I can just imagine Mildred's flat with her "shared bathroom", parents furniture and big locknit knickers hanging up dripping and her not very interesting meals. Good observations about how women service men who aren't really very deserving. Who knew that an envelope sealed with egg white can't be steamed open?

Glad you liked 'Excellent Women', Kikashi. It was one of our local book club choices recently, and highly enjoyed by all. There's something very subversive about Barbara Pym's writing, despite all the veneer of church-going and good deeds.

12. Based on a True Story - Delphine de Vigan

This is a story about an author who meets a woman who infiltrates her life. Is she trying to replace her?

I found this difficult to get involved with and just wanted to get through it as fast as possible. It’s a translation from French which may have added to it. Or it could just be that it was a library book in large text format and I found that off putting. The ending also left me disappointed. But that’s another library book ticked off. Two more and I can start reading my own books!

15. Dissolution, CJ Sansom.

Shardlake No 1! Read with interest following rave reviews on here. So far, good storytelling but nothing spectacular, although I am reliably informed that changes with book 2. Which I have already downloaded.

Just realised that book 2 won an Ellis Peters award for crime writing - I was thinking of Cadfael all the way through Dissolution! That and Pillars of the Earth. My highbrow sources of monkish knowledge!

I also have to confess to not working out that Thomas Cromwell and Oliver Cromwell were not the same person for some time, despite knowing perfectly well that Oliver Cromwell did not live in the time of Henry VIII.

Remus - thank you, I'm not sure I can face lugging about another 700+ book for a week, and I'm on a budget this month so only getting books from the library (or 99p on the Kindle), so another additional request, nothing heavy to carry !

Burial Rites sounds temping, however it's on my 'book club' list for later in the year and I've learned I struggle to join in the conversation if it's too long between reading the book and book club meeting, so resisting that one until the month of that book club meeting !

TooExtra - I'd sort of forgotten the Shardlake series! I've read the first 3 of them, might have a little look in the library later, although they are quite heavy books too...

Excellent Woman has now gone on my list, thank you Kikashi !