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?

Bringing the list over...still reading, and enjoying Brazaville Beach by William Boyd. Now it’s half term I have half a chance of finishing it.

1 Everything I Never Told You Celeste Ng
2 Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine Gail Honeyman
3 Women and Power Mary Beard
4 Where’d You Go Bernadette Maria Semple
5 This is Going to Hurt Adam Kay
6 The Essex Serpent
7 Midwinter Break Bernard MacLaverty

Have just been reading some goodreads reviews and there are several poor ratings because people have purchased it expecting magical realism when in reality it’s a work of historical fiction.

I noticed this too. Do people not read the blurb on the book? Also is that really fair to give the author a poor review because you made a mistake?

17 How to talk so teens listen and listen so teens talk by Adele Faber and Elaine Mazlisch - this was a super quick read as I skipped a lot of the case studies. It distils down to a handful of easy to remember principles which so far have been paying dividends and making me a little less shouty. Not sure it’s going to work long term on my oldest teen who looked at me suspiciously and asked why I’d started acting weirdly. The younger one is oblivious and we seem to be getting somewhere. So overall it’s a perfectly good and sensible approach to parenting older children that doesn’t take up too much time to read if it isn’t for you.

Interesting. I haven’t had The Mermaid and Mrs Hancock on my list (until now) because I assumed from the title that it wasn’t my type of book, so I can sort of understand the puzzled reviewers who did the opposite. Of course we should read the blurb, but having said that, the author made a deliberate decision to use a title that she must have realised may be misleading, so I don’t think she should be completely surprised by any confusion?

I know there has been enough newspaper and booktube reviews about it for folk to find out what sort of book it is before paying the hardback copy price.

I tend to completely ignore the booktube ratings anyway these days. The fact that Jane Eyre has an average rating of 4.1 and Justin Bieber: Just Getting Started by Justin Bieber has 4.62 says it all really.

Tarahumara, the Mermaid is critical to the plot, it’s difficult to explain without giving major spoilers, but it’s not a book about a Mermaid. Just as Murder in the Orient Express isn’t a book about a train.

When you finish the book you understand why she's given it that title.

I wonder why my autocorrect capitalises Mermaid? It's most emphatic about it.

I’m sure you’re right Scribbly. I’m just saying it’s inevitable that people do judge a book by its cover (or in this case, its title).

I’ve noticed that too recently (random capitalisations)!

Tarahumara yes a title should grab your attention but I always read the blurb on the book to find out more. As Scribbly says the Mermaid is important but not in a fantasy sense.

I just wonder if in this case the author went for an attention grabbing title over one which was more relevant to the book genre.

It’s dificult, having read it, to imagine another title without the word Mermaid in it. I think there would be an equal measure of disgruntlement if you thought you were buying a book of pure historical fiction only to find an element of fantasy within it. Hermes Gowar I think has chosen mermaids (oooh not capitalised, weird), rather than another fantastical creature because of they are a literary trope.

Is it a bit like the Essex Serpent isn’t about a Serpent as such?

18. winter of the world Ken Follett. It follows the second world war from a few diffrent view points. I loved this, it was an audio book and at 37 hours it took a while to get through. I loved the first one too and I'm looking forward to the 3rd one. You could see how he was setting up characters for the next book.

I'm moving on to the 4th outlander book drums of autumn, another long audio book at just under 45 hours.

IN An Almond for a Parrot neither the parrot nor the almond matter at all. Not one little bit!

8. Ethan Frome by Edith Wharton
Ethan Frome is a poor Massachusetts farmer who's in a loveless marriage out of a sense of duty to his wife, who cared for Frome's dying mother. His heart is captured by his wife's cousin Mattie, who comes to stay with the couple to help out in return for her keep.

This was really compelling, with the story unfolding beautifully. The longing between Ethan and Mattie was beautiful and touching. Bloody bleak though - everything from the desolate winter landscapes, the farm's economic prospects, the doomed love. I can't say I enjoyed it, but it was haunting and moving.

Re Mermaid I suppose the bottom line is I think it is unfair to review a book based on your own expectations rather than the craft of the author.

I've fallen way behind because I wasn't well. It must have been bad when I couldn't read! I listened to a couple of audiobooks, if that counts. They were Noah's Compass by Anne Tyler, which was beautiful. The main character is assaulted on his first night in a new apartment and struggles to cope with the fact that he can't remember anything about it. I loved it. The other audiobook, by total coincidence, had a vaguely similar theme in that one of the characters suffered a head injury. It was My Husband the Stranger by Rebecca Done. I wanted something that wasn't too taxing and thought this was a suspense novel, but I'm not sure what it was. It didn't work as an exploration of someone who is living with a brain trauma and there weren't enough twists for it to keep my interest as a suspense/psychological thriller. Oh well, finishing The Little Friend at last, now that I feel like reading again.

I'm still cross with The End of the World Running Club for hardly having any running in it (and other reasons) and Behind the Scenes at the Museum for not actually being about a museum (and other reasons), so maybe I should skip this mermaid book. However I do seem to be able to forgive books I like if their title is not a literal description of their content. No poundshop spotting of lions and elephants from the back of a jeep occurs in my next read:

1. Poverty Safari by Darren McGarvey His own personal story of growing up in a poor and dysfunctional family in the Gorbals, how it affected his own behaviours and choices, how how became politicised, and how those views changed to encompass people in poverty taking responsibility to help themselves. This is interspersed with a more general narrative on why people in deprived areas are angry about their situation, and with their perception of the middle class do-gooders whose own livelihood depends on the continued existence of poor people to run initiatives for. I'm going to hear the author speak this week, which I think will be very interesting. Fun fact for Scottish 50 bookers, it suddenly clicked from something he mentions about half way through the book that his auntie is Rosie Kane, which sent me off down a little internet nostalgia wormhole of Scottish early 2000s socialist political fun and bonkersness - Tommy Sheridan trial etc.

1. A Death at Fountains Abbey by Antonia Hodgson Book 3 following the rakish Thomas Hawkins, dispatched to Yorkshire in 1728 when threats are made against the former Chancellor of the Exchequer responsible for the South Sea Bubble. Easy to read, pacy and well researched historical thriller. Characterisation has improved throughout this series. I'm enjoying these and hope she writes some more.

Book 17
From Here to Eternity – Caitlin Doughty
Doughty owns a funeral home in America and is interested in the rituals, beliefs and dignity of ‘a good death’. Her previous book, Smoke Gets in Your Eyes is a superb look at cremation, and in this one she travels the world meeting people involved in both high and low tech rituals around death – from sky burials, to Mexican day of the dead, to light up Buddhas in Japan. What’s in here is interesting, but I found that there wasn’t really enough content and that her interjections about the different ways of saying goodbye to the dead were all rather repetitive. Would highly recommend Smoke but this one, not so much.

Have just been reading some goodreads reviews and there are several poor ratings because people have purchased it expecting magical realism when in reality it’s a work of historical fiction.

From the blurbs I've read I was expecting a real mermaid. It does look like a great book though, and I've added it to my TBR list.

Just picked up Cormac McCarthy's Borderland Trilogy in a charity shop.

And am currently reading The Owl Killers by Karen Maitland, a historical novel set in mediaeval times, about an all female community at odds with the pagan superstitions of the nearby village. Good, but yet another reread.

Jut finished the song of Achilles by Madeleine Miller This got better as it went on and the ending was quite moving, This is 13. 14 is The Hairy Bikers the autobiography. I just love their pies!

16. The Goldfinch by Donna Tartt Wow I loved this. I can't do this book justice. A hauntingly beautiful coming of age novel. Theo and Boris will stay with me for a long time. I know others have found parts of this or all of this boring but I was gripped through all 860 odd pages. I really felt for Theo and found his story touching, magical and full of despair. I loved how we glimpsed truths about him through others words that aren't even touched on by him as the narrator. I loved and believed in all the characters. I felt like I could have just started the book again as soon as I finished. Comparisons have rightly been made with Dickens and there is very much a feel of Great Expectations in this as well as some similarities in plot. I've read it compared with David Copperfield as well but I haven't read that so can't comment. I also haven't read Tartt's other novels so can't compare.

Loved the HP references too, especially the mirror which was beautifully done.
Looking forward to the upcoming movie now and hoping they do it justice. A bit disappointed by the casting of Mrs Barbour seems a bit of an obvious choice and not sure she's going to pull off the complex character.

9 Arcadia by Iain Pears

This appears at first to be a strange mixture of quite science-y sci-fi looking at the nature of time, pastoral fantasy, and a third strand set in our world in the 1960s. As the novel progresses, these three strands interlock. I enjoyed this a great deal, it's a pretty easy read with a good story that rattles along, but had enough meat to it to keep me thinking. I'll definitely look out for other books by the same author.

Well, isn't the random book generator an odd beast? I have nearly finished Homegoing and was pondering the comparisons made with Toni Morrison. I wonder whether every black female writer is compared with her to be honest?

So the random generator has just thrown up... Toni Morrison! The only one I haven't read : 'God Help The Child' .