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50 Book Challenge 2018 Part Three

999 replies

southeastdweller · 05/02/2018 17:36

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?

OP posts:
HoundOfTheBasketballs · 06/02/2018 10:02

I believe the sailing book has been made into a film, Remus, with Colin Firth playing the lead.

Bringing my list across:

  1. King and Maxwell by David Baldacci
  2. How to stop time by Tom Haig
  3. My Name is Leon by Kit de Waal

And bloody finally...

4. The Man Who Mistook His Wife For A Hat by Oliver Sacks
This has been a struggle. I would say a labour of love, but it turns out I didn't love it. Sacks was a neurologist in New York in the 60s and 70s. This is a series of case studies of his patients. And they are fascinating. But Sacks is a neurologist, not a writer. I ended up skimming my way through a lot of the second half because the language is so clinical. I'm glad I read it, but I'm glad it's over and I can move onto something a bit more fun!

EmGee · 06/02/2018 11:31
  1. The Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kingsolver. It's taken me a while to plough through this 600-page tome. I was slow to get into it - while I enjoyed actually reading it, I didn't get too excited about picking it up. However, I thought it was a superb book by the end. It's about evangelical Baptist minister, Nathan Price, who takes his family to the Congo in the fifties with the aim of converting the locals. It is narrated by each of the four daughters (aged between 16 and 5) and their mother, Orleanna. The family have everything you can possibly imagine flung at them during their time in Kilanga village - it's almost biblical (the irony). I'm normally quite good at getting rid of books once finished but I am going to keep this as one day I would like to reread it.
FiveGoMadInDorset · 06/02/2018 12:57

Thank you for the new thread. Here is my list

  1. Old Filth - Jane Gardam
  2. Hollow City - Ransom Riggs
  3. The One from the Other - Philip Kerr
  4. D is for Deadbeat - Sue Grafton
  5. The Last Hours - Minette Walters
  6. Summertime, All the Cats Are Bored (Gilles Sebag #1) - Philippe Georget
7 The Cornish Coast Murder - John Bude 8 Eleanor Elephant is Completely Fine 9 The Disappeared - Kristina Ohlsson

I have given up saying what I am reading next as have a few on the go at the moment

KeithLeMonde · 06/02/2018 13:17

12. Listening to Brahms by Rosemary Allen

I don't know how I heard about this book but it's been on my TBR pile for ages. I finally found a copy on a charity bookshelf and it turns out that it's self published.

Wherever I first heard of it, it was the premise that pulled me in. The book is set in 1989, and the protagonist Meg and her family are gathering for Christmas. The news is dominated by the fall of the Berlin wall and the revolution in Romania. This, along with the discover of some old photos and a diary, takes Meg back to the 1950s, when she stayed in rural Germany as part of a school exchange - and when something happened that changed her life.

Sadly, the book failed to live up to my expectations (and I still think that the above is a fabulous set-up for a novel). It switches between the present day (boring, sub-Joanna Trollope middle-class family politics and an unconvincing love interest) and 1950s Germany (atmospheric, but a sadly wasted opportunity as very little is made of such a wonderful and rich setting). The life-changing event, when you finally discover it, is ridiculously trivial in comparison to some of the personal and political stories that are glanced over then abandoned (she has minor characters who have been reluctant Hitler youth members, who have hidden Jewish children from the Nazis, and whose families have been torn apart by the partition of Germany). This could have been a really good book, such a shame.

highlandcoo · 06/02/2018 13:55

Terpsichore, I've put The Victorian House on my wish-list; thanks for the recommendation. Looks very interesting.

FiveGoMad, what did you think of Old Filth? I picked it up in an Oxfam bookshop at the weekend, together with the other two in the trilogy, for £6 Smile

Terpsichore · 06/02/2018 14:22

Just planting a flag with my list so far. All in bold so they're easy to see, but that’s no reflection of endorsement!

1. Van Gogh's Ear - Bernadette Murphy (non-fiction)
2. Sleeping in the Ground - Peter Robinson
3. No Fond Return of Love - Barbara Pym
4. What She Ate - Laura Shapiro (non-fiction)
5. The Home-Maker - Dorothy Canfield Fisher
6. The Blackest Streets - Sarah Wise (non-fiction)
7. Searching for Caleb - Anne Tyler
8. Two Kinds of Truth - Michael Connolly
9. The Party - Elizabeth Day
10. Sunday Morning Coming Down - Nicci French
11. A Very English Scandal - John Preston (non-fiction)
12. The Time Traveller's Guide to Restoration Britain - Ian Mortimer
(Non-fiction)
13. Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day - Winifred Watson

I’ve done quite well so far as there haven’t been any massive clunkers, only a couple of slight disappointments, but time will tell....5 non-fictions to date, 3 genre novels (crime fiction - my guilty weakness), two Persephones.

Not sure what's up next but I might succumb to a quick Scandi crime I snaffled from the charity shop yesterday, then find something more literary Grin

Frogletmamma · 06/02/2018 14:40

blatent place marking

Ellisisland · 06/02/2018 15:16

Book 17 The Godfather- Mario Puzo
Watched the movie again the other night so downloaded the book on kindle and holy hell is it trashy! But still entertaining Smile Essentially the story is the same as the films but with more focus on the sex lives of the minor characters and the sons. The essential story line is interesting and the parallels of the mafia and America itself are there but I really didn't need 3 paragraphs on how great Sonny is in bed and how large he is.
A case of the movie is definitely better than the book.

CorvusUmbranox · 06/02/2018 17:05

Porting over my list.

1.) Gossip From the Forest, Sara Maitland
2.) Ritual, Adam Nevill
3.) The Penny Heart, Martine Bailey
4.) Norse Mythology, Neil Gaiman
5.) The Elder Scrolls: Skyrim Library Volume 1: Histories
6.) The Fishermen, Chigozie Obioma
7.) The History of the English Puppet Theatre, by George Speaight
8.) The Year of Reading Dangerously, by Andy Miller
9.) Republic of Thieves, by Scott Lynch
10.) Women & Power: A Manifesto, by Mary Beard
11.) Wychwood, by George Mann

and finally:

12.) Sleeping Beauties, by Stephen King and Owen King -- All the women and girls in the world are being affected by a strange virus: when they fall asleep, they fall into a deep coma and a strange filmy moth-like cocoon grows around them. If that cocoon is damaged they go into an uncontrollable rage, attacking everyone around them, then fall back asleep. While the women remaining awake dose themselves with speed, caffeine and coke in a battle to stay awake, the men kick the fuck off. Meanwhile the sleeping women awake in another world.

Another solid 'meh' on this one, although so soon after reading Mary Beard's Women & Power it was interesting to draw parallels between the novel Herland referenced there and the all-women world in this. But it was too freaking long, I didn't give a damn about most of the characters (WTF was with the drug-addict doctor? Hmm), and I skimmed most of the battle for the women's prison because it. Was. So. Fucking. Boring. And I found the Evie bits pointless and dull too, although the prison bits (before the agonisingly dull battle) were okay.

It reminded me pretty strongly of a cross between Under the Dome, and Lisey's Story, neither of which were SK's best works, with some feminism mixed in.

If it had been tighter, with a smaller focus, with Evie being handled differently (or not at all, tbh) and less of the talking animals (again, WTF? Hmm), it might have been pretty decent. There were some interesting ideas here. As it was, meh meh meh.

Am currently rereading Adam Nevill's Last Days, which I know is brilliant.

bibliomania · 06/02/2018 17:09

Currently reading Outlandish Knight, by Minoo Dinshaw, a life of Steven Runciman. Not sure why, as I had only ever vaguely heard of SR (a historian) and had no particular wish to read about him. The title and the ecstatic reviewers on the blurb pulled me in, but I'm still not sure if I can commit to 600 pages or so.

FortunaMajor · 06/02/2018 17:10

Piggy lest I start another war or a several page bun-fight, let's just say no Brodie was not literature in its prime for me.

There are a few books that are better off not named round here. Grin It's not just me.

Due to a mis-spent youth, I have failed to read many classics written in English and therefore have great expectations of them (Dickens is also shit not to my liking). I am often left sadly disappointed that these great lauded books fail to live up to the hype, or are boring, or I've really missed something. AND SOME ARE SIMPLY BADLY WRITTEN!!!!!!

Piggywaspushed · 06/02/2018 17:13

Oh really fortuna ?? I am sometimes clueless about the ways of MN...

To be fair, I prefer Girls of Slender Means.

My A level class once wrote to Spark in the style of Girls ... and, bless her, she replied in the same style.

I bet that letter is worth something and I have bloody well lost it.

Piggywaspushed · 06/02/2018 17:14

Someone on another thread did just tell me I would start a fight with a lamp post ! Shock

Piggywaspushed · 06/02/2018 17:17

satsuki I also like Lord of the Flies ... shhhhhh.... [clue in the username, after all]

I have learnt from MN that it is not OK to like Of Mice and Men, which I adore.

Teresainwirral · 06/02/2018 17:35

I'm in.

BestIsWest · 06/02/2018 17:41

Lord of The Flies was my book of the year last year - it’s brilliant.

Not finding anything brilliant at the moment. Have lost my reading mojo.

Teresainwirral · 06/02/2018 17:41

Read so far.
1 Film stars don't die in Liverpool. Peter Turner.

  1. Divine secrets of the Ya Ya sisterhood. Rebecca Wells.
  2. Agatha Raisin and the Live Hell. M C Beaton.
  3. N or M. Agatha Christie.

Currently reading
Why mummy drinks. Gill Sims and
Six Foot Six. Kit de Waal

SatsukiKusakabe · 06/02/2018 19:29

Yes piggy your name was what made me remember it, probably. Sorry fortuna I’ll stop teasing you. Everyone’s entitled to their own opinion and to be wrong

This moved so quickly I lost the thread of a couple of things but just wanted to say to exexpat I generally do like Japanese culture and writing and things set there, as well as Studio Ghibli of course Smile I’m trying to read more from different authors as I probably got a bit stuck on Murakami so open to suggestions.

Also crampton sad to hear that about C J Sansom. I looked it up and it seems an ongoing, but treatable, condition. Hope he makes a good recovery.

FortunaMajor · 06/02/2018 19:35

Piggy Everybody likes Lord of the Flies. I was disappointed.

I'm happy for people to like whatever they like, so long as they don't insist that I like it too.

I studied Literature in four bloody languages against my will for many years. I had some teachers who would consider if you didn't enjoy a book then you must be too stupid to understand it. You were expected to like it 'because it's a classic'.

I then went on to avoid classics for a very long time and would now like to catch up. I still have a 'classics must be amazing' stick that I beat myself with and all to often now I read something and think, 'Oh, was that it?'

And none of you can keep me in detention until I change my mind Grin

p.s. I bear no ill will to any Literature teachers
^p.p.s. I do expect Satsuki to pay for my therapy bills.

FiveGoMadInDorset · 06/02/2018 19:38

highlandcoo I really enjoyed it, he reminded me a lot of various friends of my parents, a combination of a fair few, the next two are in my wish list

RemusLupinsBiggestGroupie · 06/02/2018 19:54

Lord of the Flies - one of my top ten novels ever.
Of Mice and Men - the Mary Poppins of novellas - practically perfect in every way
Donald Crowhurst film with Colin Firth - saw the trailer but think I'll be staying well away from it!

SatsukiKusakabe · 06/02/2018 20:00

Get in line behind my kids, fortuna

Piggywaspushed · 06/02/2018 20:00

The Mary Poppins of novellas : I love that

Bastard Gove took that (and Mockingbird) off the GCSE spec.

Fairenuff · 06/02/2018 20:09

Not doing the 50 book challenge but always looking for recommendations so thought I would pop one in.

Just finished Good Me Bad Me by Ali Land

Easy reading but difficult topic - a dark page-turner if anyone is interested in something like that.

RemusLupinsBiggestGroupie · 06/02/2018 20:09

Gah. Don't remind me of that odious little fuckwit. I like to pretend he doesn't exist.

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