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?

remus I thought that was just the way she speaks! That one did seem an odd bit of casting to me to how I imagined the character. I’m going to look out for it.

Keith Agree with your review of the Hate U Give. It is a book that has stayed with me after finishing. I will see if I can find the podcast of the the interview with the author.

12 The Snow Girl by Eowyn Ivey This is based on the Russian fairy tale the Snow Maiden in which an elderly couple build a snow child one afternoon. Next morning the snow child has disappeared and all that remains are some faint footprints leading to the forest. This was a very easy to read and in some ways a very simple book but the characterisation and strong sense of place really gripped me and I became totally lost in the story. This was a book club read so I did not have high expectations but it very pleasantly suprised.

Following recommendations on this thread I am now reading A Very English Scandal. About a third of the way through and I am torn between enjoying it and being horrified by some of the events.

21. Autumn Term, Antonia Forest

Re-read to see if it grabbed me the same way as Falconer's Lure and End of Term did. Not quite - good school story but not quite hitting the same stride as her later work. Much more interesting when you've read some later books, though!

22. An Almond For A Parrot, Wray Delancy

I think someone upthread characterised this as the naughty book - lots of sex, lots of flowery description of sex, lots of maypoles awaiting garlanding. It was very funny in places, but with a darker undertone relating to the perils of the sex trade and the rights of men in that time compared with women. I really enjoyed it, anyway! (Is it just me or is 'Shades of Sarah Waters' on a book cover code for 'features lesbian sex'?)

23. Sal, Mick Kitson

This was really good. Debut novel by a Scottish teacher, which will be published in March. My sister works for the publisher and I read an advance copy. Sal is a 13 year old Scottish girl who has used the internet to learn survival techniques so she can escape from her abusive stepfather. She and her 10 year old sister run away from home and set up camp in the last wilderness in Britain - Galloway Forest Park. It's written in the first person and draws on plenty of survival detail and the Scottish vernacular for added richness. I hesitate to recommend books to Cote, but I really think you might like this. Sal doesn't do feeeelings - she doesn't understand why her teachers keep asking her how she feels. She's a very logical creature - there's a question about how logic intersects with accepted morality over some of her actions (trying not to give spoilers!).

24. Truthwitch, Susan Dennard.

Re-read because I remember really liking the focus on sisterhood rather than romance - but this time around the hero annoyed the crap out of me. When will authors stop writing male leads who spend the whole time fuming and then exploding? Not. Sexy. The first time we meet him he's being really obnoxious at a dinner party. He did not live up to his supposed role at all. I'll probably still read the second book (which I think is published later this year) but I hope the author has bucked up her ideas regarding men by then.

20. The Quality of Silence by Rosamund Lupton. Bought this on a kindle offer having enjoyed her other two. Took a while to get into but was an enjoyable enough thriller. Yasmin and her ten year old daughter travel across Alaska looking for her presumed dead husband. Nice descriptions of the Alaskan wilderness.

Just catching up on the thread...

15. The House of Mirth - Edith Wharton
Edith Wharton is one of the classic authors I have never read, and this book sort of fell into my hands (in a 'help yourself' pile at an evening class) so it seemed a good one to start with. Fascinating but frustrating to see many of the same themes Jane Austen dealt with (women trapped by class, upbringing and finances into having to find a husband in order to survive) but in a more recognisably modern setting (New York at the very end of the 19th century) and without the obligatory happy ending.

16. The Vanishing Box - Elly Griffiths
Crime novel set in a variety theatre in the 1950s; I think this is about the third in a series - I haven't read the previous ones, and it might have been better if I had (there were quite a few references to previous events and character developments) but it was an enjoyable easy read all the same.

17. Rosalie Blum - Camille Jourdy
Graphic novel, in French. Reminded me a lot of Posy Simmonds (Gemma Bovery and that sort of thing). I gather it was turned into a film, and I can imagine it making quite a good film in the quirky Amelie-style genre. Lonely hairdresser (male) sees an older woman he thinks he recognises but can't place, so starts following (stalking...) her; she realises he is doing this, so gets her niece to follow/stalk him in return, with unpredictable results. Lots of quirky (yes, that word again) characters, but still somehow true to life.

One of my aims this year is to read a few more books in other languages; my French is a bit rusty but was adequate to read this without a dictionary and it was probably a good thing in that it made me read it much more slowly and take more of the visuals in than I do when I read a graphic novel in English.

Currently reading Black and British: a forgotten history by David Olusoga plus about to start Addlands by Tom Bullough.

Don't suppose anyone has a link to the Dickens read along? Can't find it and think it was starting fairly soon.

It was scribblygum who posted it many pages back.

I saved the picture of the chapters if that's any use?

cheddar that was me re Wary Delaney! I deem to have persuaded quite a few others to read it!

And yes, I agree that 'Sarah Waters' is code... !

Yes to the Sarah Waters code. I think An Almond for a Parrot is much better than anything Waters has written though. I really hope Delaney writes more for adults.

I prefer her too. Lighter in tone and more engrossing. I find Waters hard work.

15. The Happy Prisoner by Monica Dickens

A man comes back to his family home an invalid, having lost his leg and wounded his heart muscle. From his sick bed he sees in detail the trials and tribulations of those around him, and finds himself in a state of detached, content fascination with the relationships of others. In turn, he provides a stable presence in the home, as his mother, sisters, brothers-in-law, ex-flames, all come to him to make sense of their complicated lives. In the middle of all this activity, he himself develops a symbiotic connection with his young stoic nurse as she attends to his every physical need while maintaining an emotional distance that lasts until, well, the end of the book
This is well written and the characters extremely well drawn. I found it a bit overlong, with dull stretches in the middle, as the pen portraits ranged over a few too many peripheral characters. There were so many witty lines though and well observed sketches and dialogue. Bob glanced at his wife, who was looking more than ever as if she had just come up through a trapdoor in a green magnesium flash It ended in a bit of a rush, with perhaps too little of its time spent fleshing out the main characters, but I enjoyed it as a meandering read, and found myself quite ensconced in the world created. Although there’s a bit of casual domestic violence hinted at in a few of these old novels, amongst the cosy teas and charming domestic detail, suggestions of taking women in hand, giving them a good shake, that it’s what they want and need and will respond to slip in here and there, so quite interesting. I need a bit of a change from charming domesticity now but still full of ill and don’t know what I fancy.

22 Night Waking by Sarah Moss
This was an odd book. It took a while to get through even though it skips along and is entirely accessible. The plot, such as it was, took forever to unspool and which was set in the past and told through letters and the occasional newspaper cutting. The present day narrative was compelling as an account of the exhaustion of early motherhood but I did really want the protagonist to stop moping around and just get on with tidying up and writing her book. I thought Tidal Zone by the same author was much better and tighter.

23 Quantum Mechanics by Jim Al-Khalili
(Very) short and simple introduction. My 11 year old also enjoyed it, though I think it’s fair to say neither of us qualifies as an expert after reading this!

Book 22 This is a story of a harry marriage by Ann Patchett

This collection of essays and non fiction writing was really enjoyable and well written.
The title comes from one story about her divorce and following successful marriage, but the whole collection is more about the marriage between art and life and how the two intersect. The highlights for me where her recollections of trying out for the LAPD, when one of her books met with protests at a southern US university and opening her bookstore.
Highly intelligent and well written as well as quite funny.

Happy Marriage not harry!

Thanks piggy I have managed to find it and bookmarked it this time. Although am thinking of doing a chapter a week instead just seems a bit simpler to split without leaving too long a gap between reading.
21. Good Omens by Pratchett and Gaiman.
This felt a bit too jokey at times, I just kept picturing too men chuckling to themselves as they wrote it. The start and end are strong but a bit too long for the actual story I think. DP is a fan of Pratchett and I'm a fan of Gaiman and we both thought it wasn't as good as their individual books. Interestingly in the interview at the end it turns out the bits I enjoyed most were written by Pratchett so maybe I should give him another go one day.

25. Proof, Dick Francis.

Re-read. Light crime involving wine and whisky fraud. Dick Francis is good at the crime parts but terrible at relationships - the hero in this one has just lost his wife and spends a lot of time crying out to her in his empty house. Those bits were over the top and schmaltzy. Much more realistic focus on his relationship with his father and his new father-figure friend - the dead wife bits weren't adding anything.

I reckon Dick Francis’s publishers must have had a clause insisting on a manly heterosexual relationship in each book, as some of the hero’s love lives do seem like an add on. Particularly in To The Hilt, where there is a great new relationship with a PI, but the hero quickly shags his ex-wife! On the other hand I do like the couple who do the Times crossword in bed!

A lot of Dick Francis's women are totally pointless - I actually rather like Emily in To The Hilt because she seems a bit more developed. The ones where the hero meets a woman during the book are generally a bit character-free. One that stands out is the one about two brothers where the older one is an Olympic rifle shooter (whatever the term is! Marksman?) and the wife steals a baby - their relationship is like scorched earth. Both women in that (Sarah and Cassie) are better drawn than a lot of DF women. Fecking Sid Halley starting a relationship with the girl who'd been hit by a firework and then in the next book she's vanished and he's dating a leggy redhead annoys me too. Clearly DF had decided there was no further mileage in a damaged girlfriend.

I won't add these to my total, as I skimmed a fair amount:

*The Seven Sisters
The Storm Sister
The Shadow Sister

• all by Lucinda Riley*

I was mildly intrigued by the set-up - mysterious millionaire adopts six baby girls from various locations around the world. They are now grown up and he has died and left them clues as to their background. Each book follows one of the sisters as she uncovers her past. I was vaguely expecting something a bit supernatural (DD's obsessed with Charmed at the moment, which may have influenced me), but they're really romances. Modern heroine follows clue, meets strangely attractive man who helps her unravel the mystery, and we're plunged back over a century into the life of a female predecessor who threw off her corsets and fell for a man she shouldn't. Cue lots of picturesque misery and babies of secret parentage before she finds happiness in the arms of the man she loves. Then modern-day heroine looks into the eyes of the man who helped her and realises that she too has found love.

16 a brief history of seven killings
This also really slowed me down! I really like doing it but equally feel like I never had a flaming clue what was going on?!

19: Adult Onset - Ann-Marie MacDonald

Mary Rose MacKinnon, 48-year-old author of two successful YA fantasy novels, spends a week single-handedly looking after her two small children while her wife, theatre-director Hilary, is away in Calgary overseeing the previews of a new production. While juggling with the chaos of domestic life, Mary Rose is also struggling with her relationship with her own parents, her mother Dolly (possibly on the cusp of Alzheimer’s) and father Duncan. It gradually becomes clear that Mary Rose's childhood illness - painful bone cysts - might perhaps not have arisen entirely out of the blue.

An interesting, challenging and often wryly funny novel from this Canadian writer - I had it on my wish list for ages, had totally forgotten why (must have read a review), and finally spotted it in a charity shop but couldn’t recall anything about it. At the outset it gives every sign of being a standard domestic novel but gets surprisingly dark and covers some tough themes. It certainly doesn’t sugar-coat the absolute grind of caring for small children, and the way past events can surface and be replayed in the present, with potentially painful consequences (I'm trying to be elliptical in case anyone else ever fancies reading this - which is probably unlikely!).

Ellisisland - I couldn't believe the opposition to Ann Patchett's book at the college, with all the parents saying that it would corrupt their adult children. It also seems strange for the whole freshman year to be assigned the same book whatever subject they're studying, but I suppose they don't specialize so early in the US.

Finished At the edge of the orchard by Tracy Chevalier . Found the plot a bit unbelievable which was a shame as the historical detail was great and the description of the plant seeking and the apple trees fascinating. The black swamp sounds like a horrendous place but apparently people did settle there. Racked up £1.20 in library fines but reckon it was worth it. Back to GoT

Ghosts I know - it beggars belief that a book about a close female friendship could incur such ire. I think all students are given the book to read so that that the uni can lure the "big name author" to give a talk and Q and A on it. I think even science students have to take and pass some humanities courses as part of a core curriculum in the first year.

Frogletmamma I read At The Edge of the Orchard about 2 years ago so some details of the plot are sketchy now in my mind but I totally agree with your assessment. It was very interesting in parts and the black swamp sounded horrendous to try and homestead in but the plot went off in odd ways that were unbelievable. Another book that could have done with the editor giving the author some honest feedback. There was a superb book in there .

25. At the Existentialist Cafe by Sarah Bakewell. I was intrigued by a review of this upthread, and I found it very interesting; although I think I would have got more out of it if I had known a little more beforehand (I do know very little about philosophy!). She did a very good job of making me realise how recent some of the philosophers I had heard of (Sartre, de Beauvoir and Camus) were, and how they were placed in twentieth century history.