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?

Thanks noodle I will try Noah's Ark when I am next buying. I'm not sure how it will be revisiting the Goldmans. I was a bit in love with Jacob, I wanted a chaotic house full of children when I grew up and to be just like them.

Ah, mamapants, Jack is such a good book. I still find lots of phrases from it popping into my head. Might have to re-read!

Toomuch, I’m a Penelope Lively fan. My favourites are Moon Tiger and The Photograph.

22. Mary Beard - Women & Power A Manifesto

Very short book based on two lectures delivered by Mary Beard in 2014 - The Public Voice of Women - and 2017 - Women in Power - looking at the perception of women in general and more specifically about the relationship between women and power. The second is especially good in the way she talks about the way that even when women are in positions of power, or getting towards them, the default remains male. So when there was the possibility that the new appointments as Metropolitan Police Chief, Bishop of London and chair of the BBC Unitary board could all be women it was described in the press as being a power grab by women, because women are the outsiders, this is not where women should be. She then talks about how, instead of women changing or behaving like men to enter into the traditional positions of power, maybe as a society we should be looking at changing the definition of power. An example is the Black Lives Matter movement which has taken off in recent years - but how many people know it was started by three women? So yes, very short book but a lot of ideas are contained in those pages.

Sorry you didn't like it, Sadik. I find her interesting and fun and not too full of herself.

I loathed Longbourne so much. Am a big Beckett fan though. Dilemma...

So far have bought:
Travels in the Third Reich
Venetia by Heyer, which I can't remember if I've read before or not and Masqueraders which I haven't read yet.
Enigma which I hope is as good as Fatherland rather than as disappointing as Munich.

Agh - no 'e' on Longbourn. The shame! And I call myself a Janeite.

Also bought:
Perdido Street Station by same author as The City and The City which regular readers will remember Cote and I having rather different opinions on!

1. The husband's secret by Liane Moriarty

Read this for book group, it not my usual thing. Interconnected story of families in Australia all affected by events which could split them up, can't say much more without giving away the theme. I did quite enjoy it, not so much the story but the characterisation. I quite like the way she writes. 10. A spoil of blue thread by Anne Tyler I loved this! It's been on my shelf for ages. It's one of those books where nothing much happens but it is beautifully written. Set among 3 generations of the Whitshank family in Baltimore.

20. armarda Ernest Cline. Audiobook read by Will Wheaton, who was perfect for this, as he was for ready player one. I loved ready player one, so I was a bit put off by pretty much all the reviews saying this one wasn't as good, and he was badly trying to recreate rp1. I really liked it, one of the best books I have read this year after a bad run of books I didn't like. But I will say he did go a bit overboard on the retro 80's refrences, but I don't think this bothered me as much as some people because most of them I didn't get anyway being born in the 80's. The main character is a gamer, he plays an online game and is in the leader board making him one of the top 10 in the world. Then it turns out the government is using computer games to find and train fighter pilots.

My next audiobook (apart from still batteling on with the 4th outlander book which isn't going so well) is Lianne Moriarty the last aniversary. I have a habit of reading her books hoping I'll like it as much as big little lies. I never do.

I’m snowed in and would be perfect if I was into a book but I don’t fancy anything I’ve got

Might have to reread Emma.

That is unfortunate, Satsuki. Snowed in with a good book would be blissed.

Another fan of Barbara Trapido here (though I didn't love Frankie and Stankie).

Read The woman who fooled the world : Belle Gibson's cancer con, and the darkness at the heart of the wellness industry by Beau Donnelly and Nick Toscano. Australian scandal about someone who became famous on Instagram, claiming to cure her own cancer when she'd never had it. I'd read about it already in The Angry Chef but this fleshes out the details. It's written by journalists in workmanlike prose with rather a lot of graphic information about what it's like to really have incurable cancer, but it's an interesting story.

I'm going to give up on East West Street by Philippe Sands (about the Holocaust and resulting changes in international law to allow prosecutions for genocide and crimes against humanity). It feels like something I should read rather than something I actually want to. Nothing wrong with the early chapters I've read, but not exactly comfortable escapism.

Have started on My History, by Antonia Fraser, which is written in her 80s looking back at her childhood. A less traumatic account of the 1930s and 1940s. How different lives lived at the same time are based on geography and class.

Hi all,

Can I please join this thread..? Always After recommendations from avid like-minded bookworms..

I've just finished Sing, Unburied, Sing by
Jesmyn Ward. So beautiful. It one a huge literary prize last year, so very surprisingly sold for £1.99 for Amazon Kindle..

Just started reading Empire Falls by Richard Russo.. has anyone read this? Won a Pulitzer.

Won, not one!

weebarra I've read the Moriarty book too and had exactly the same thoughts on it.

I used to love Anne Tyler and read all of hers but I picked up the Spool of.. recently and couldn't get in to it. Will give it another try.

I’ve got 'Empire Falls' on my TBR pile, Carnt. Just waiting for the moment to commit, as it’s quite a hefty tome. But I like the sound of Russo as I’m a sucker for small-town US fiction.

I'll be interested to hear what you think of Perdido Street Station Remus - I had very mixed feelings (some fabulous parts, but soooo long!)

Reading Life Moves Pretty Fast by Hadley Freeman as recommended upthread by Satsuki, and really enjoying it so far.

I was snowed in yesterday on World Book Day but didn’t do much reading as I’m reading The Trap - Melanie Raabe and not really into it! Sad cause it would have been a great snow day!

9. The Duchess Of Bloomsbury Street, a lacklustre follow up to 84 Charing Cross Road where Helene Hanff finally gets to visit, her supposedly beloved, London. (Can't help but feel she'd have visited earlier if she was really so enamoured!) She flies over at the expense of her publisher to promote her epistolary work. It details the people she meets and the places she goes. Sadly not all those she corresponded with are still around to tell the tale given the length of time between initial letter and actual visit and it's all a bit inconsequential. I probably wouldn't have bothered with this if it hadn't been included in the edition of 84CCR I bought. Interestingly the publishers didn't even mention DofBS on the cover so I think they realised it wasn't in the same league, but it does have the advantage from their point of view of making 84CCR seem like a more substantial work than it actually is, 84CCR only takes up about a third of the book, however it is the third worth reading.

10. Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine read this in a couple of days and really enjoyed it. Felt very much like the female version of The Rosie Project, if you enjoyed that you'd enjoy this.

11. Miss Pettigrew Lives For A Day, I thought this might be the 1930's original Eleanor Oliphant but unfortunately not. I know it's well liked but it felt (unsurprisingly) dated and left me a bit 'meh', I'd like to see the movie though because the basic premise is interesting.

8. The Waterway girls

9. Marguerite Duras, a life Really good biography of the French author who wrote The Lover and about 50 other books and films. She was born in Vietnam in a poor French colonial family. She moved to France as a young adult and was involved in the Resistance. I had started this back in 2017 but had put in down as it was getting depressing when she was drinking herself to death but when I picked it up again I discovered that she had managed to stop and write several more books and live another 20 years or so. I studied a few of her books at A level and was interested to discover more about her.

10 Women and Power by Mary Beard . Lots of reviews of this already, so I can only add that I was surprised to discover the misogyny in the Greek myths that I’d not really thought about.

27. Shadow Souls
28. Midnight, both LJ Smith, the Vampire Diaries: The Return.

So, I have been glued to these books for the last two days, but they are shit. They are really really shit. I'm still bereft at having finished them. I am angry at the crappy plots and the butchering of beloved characters. I still cried when a certain character died (or maybe not - cliffhanger). I jumped frenziedly into Goodreads and started reading reviews from other fans and discovered that LJ Smith was sacked from writing the Vampire Diaries series (due to her original contract in the 90s which gave away the rights to the books) and there are 6 more books written by ghostwriters. Smith has been rampaging around the internet claiming that this is a travesty and Harper Collins are bastards and she had the next 3 books all mapped out...but, these 3 have been dire. So although I have a lot of sympathy with her, I do think she brought it on herself. It would probably have been fairer for HC to just pull the plug on the series, though.

Just had an email to say that Gaudy Night is waiting for me at the library, so I should now have enough books to keep me quiet for a little while.

Remus Gaudy night is one of my all time favourite books. Enjoy Have now ordered some Ngaio Marsh. Read some about 30 years ago but by now doubt I will remember the plots

There's a lot of pressure on for me to like Gaudy Night. I'm a bit scared!

Just spent an hour catching up with the thread! My TBR list keeps getting longer!

8. the goldfinch
   Much discussed on here. I thought the writing- especially the imagery was outstanding- but did find it could have been a bit shorter and admit to skimming some of the last few pages which did leave me feeling a tad disappointed. Would definitely recommend tho.

9. our endless numbered days
   Sped through this and really enjoyed it. Guessed all the twists (were we meant to?) but that actually made it better for me.

10. Eleanor oliphant is completely fine
    Again, much discussed and seems to be a marmite of a book but I loved it! I thought it was spot on about how we judge people for not 'being normal' without attempting to understand them. Only criticism is her character arc was completed much much quicker than it would be in real life. Hoping there'll be a sequel!

Now to find something as enjoyable as the last three!