50 Book Challenge 2018 Part Four

[southeastdweller]

Welcome to the fourth 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, the second one here and the third one here.

How're you getting on so far?

41. Blood of Tyrants, Naomi Novik.

Mainly shite. Amnesia plotline where the main character can't remember the events of the previous 7 books - just sod off. When his memory suddenly returns the book moves to Russia just in time for the Battle of Borodino/retreat from Moscow. I felt this portion was skimmed over - there was much emphasis on supply for the armies, so it was blinkingly obvious that something dramatic was going to have to happen to their supply lines, even if you didn't already know that Napoleon was defeated mainly by supply issues (plus the sheer numbers of Russian serfs available as cannon fodder and the Russian winter setting in). There's only one book to go in the series and I haven't downloaded it yet. I will read it but I'm not gripped any more.

Thanks for your thoughts on Lincoln In The Bardo 50 bookers I think I'll look out for it at the library rather than battling with the audio version.

41. All Change by Elizabeth Jane Howard Book 5 in The Cazalet Chronicles. This is the weakest in the series but I still love it.

Thanks for the new thread, South.

Here is my list so far (highlights in bold):

1. The House of Shattered Wings by Aliette De Bodard.
2. My Name is Lucy Barton by Elizabeth Strout.
3. Burial Rites by Hannah Kent.

4. Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe.

1. In Other Rooms, Other Wonders by Daniyal Mueenuddin.

6. The Outrun by Amy Liptrot.

1. The Story of the Lost Child (Book 4 of the Neapolitan novels) by Elena Ferrante.
2. The Lunatic Cafe (Anita Blake novel 4) by Laurell K.Hamilton.

9. The Three Body Project by Cixin Liu. 10. All Quiet on the Western Front by Erich Maria Remarque. 11. Small Island by Andrea Levy. 12. The Invisible Guardian by Dolores Redondo. 13. The Antidote by Oliver Burkeman. 14. The Places In Between by Rory Stewart. 15. The Furthest Station by Ben Aaronovitch. 16. The War on Women by Sue Lloyd-Roberts. 17. A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens. Audible narration by Simon Callow. 18. World of Trouble (The Last Policeman Book 3) by Ben H.Winters.

Currently listening to Killers of the Flower Moon and reading SPQR on my Kindle.

46.Behind the Scenes at the Museum - Kate Atkinson Only really discovered Kate Atkinson this year. Loved Life after Life and A God in Ruins. This one was great too. She does family life through the ages so well. Was a book I was desperate to go back to but also trying to savour it.
Just started Eleanor Oliphant, not really feeling it at the moment but it's early days.

Satsuki
Fifty shades of tartan - I think I love you! This made me laugh so much, after a not very fun day.

31: Venetia – Georgette Heyer –
Typical Heyer and not one of her best. I liked the hero and heroine (both refreshingly unconventional), but there was an awful lot of padding.

Bringing my list over:

1. A Mindfulness Guide for the Frazzled by Ruby Wax
2. The Power by Naomi Alderman
3. Conversations with Friends by Sally Rooney
4. The Dark Circle, Linda Grant
5. Good Me, Bad Me, Ali Land
6. My Name is Lucy Barton, Elizabeth Strout
7. Exit West, Mohson Hamid
8. We Should All Be Feminists, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
9. The Dry, Jane Harper

10. Them: Adventures with Extremists: Secret Rulers of the World by Jon Ronson 11. Women and Power: A Manifesto by Mary Beard 12. Listening to Brahms, Rosemary Allen 13. The Observations, Jane Harris 14. Lincoln in the Bardo, George Saunders 15. Night Waking, Sarah Moss 16. The Girl on the Landing, Paul Torday 17. The Hate U Give, Angie Thomas 18. My Antonia, Willa Cather 19. The Pure In Heart, Susan Hill 20. The State of Grace, Rachael Lucas 21. Hush, Eishes Chayil

I feel like I've read some great books so far this year :) I really did love Lincoln but it is quite strange and experimental - I can't really imagine how it would work as an audiobook. I'd definitely recommend giving it another go in tangible book form.

I picked up A Discovery of Witches in a charity shop last week - anyone read it? It kept coming up on my Goodreads so I thought I would give it a try. It turns out to be the most awful Harry-Potter-meets-50-Shades drivel about a witch and a vampire with oodles of sexual tension and horrendously sexist characterisation, YET STRANGELY COMPELLING. It's kind of like eating Pringles - you know it's rubbish and you should stop but you just can't..... I'm quite looking forward to curling up in bed tonight and finding out what ridiculous plot twist is coming next and how the masterful vampire will curb his animalistic appetites to protect the naïve but feisty young witch.....

PS Thank you to South for the new thread as always

Thank you for the new thread Southeast. Bringing my list over, with highlights in bold

1. All the Light We Cannot See - Anthony Doerr
2. Closely Watched Trains - Bohumil Hrabal
3. Women and Power: A Manifesto – Mary Beard
4. The Road Home – Rose Tremain
5. No is Not Enough: Defeating the New Shock Politics – Naomi Klein
6. Home Fire – Kamila Shamsie
7. The Blackwater Lightship – Colm Toibin
8. Talking to My Daughter About the Economy: A Brief History of Capitalism – Yanis Varoufakis
9. Eleanor Oliphant Is Completely Fine – Gail Honeyman
10. Thin Air – Michelle Paver
11. The Beet Queen – Louise Erdrich
12. Fugitive Pieces – Anne Michaels
13. Testosterone Rex: Unmaking the Myths of Our Gendered Minds – Cordelia Fine
14. Gillespie and I – Jane Harris
15. Run – Ann Patchett
16. Men Explain Things To Me: and Other Essays – Rebecca Solnit
17. Sugar Money – Jane Harris

Have almost finished Elmet by Fiona Mozley which I'm really enjoying. It's really quite unlike anything I've read before, and in a good way. Will post a review shortly.

Continuing slowly...
6. The Unmumsy Mum Diary by Sarah Turner
A gift that I wasn't very excited by, this had sat on my shelf for nearly a year before I picked it up in a bit of a huff because I was so busy at work that I knew I needed something light that I could dip in and out of for a couple of weeks...and it was perfect. It made me laugh and feel better about feeling overwhelmed, just the right kind of book at the right moment for me.
7. Career of Evil by Robert Galbraith
Listened on Audible, these are well narrated. I enjoyed this more than Silkworm which was a bit gruesome and grotesque for me. I enjoyed the plot and have grown to like Cormoran and Robin. Nice to have a wee trip out of London to my part of Scotland too. Will look out for the next in the series when it comes out.
Currently reading Things a Bright Girl Can Do and listening to Hillbilly Elegy.

11. A Spoonful of Murder Robin Stevens Latest in the Murder Most Unladylike series - Hazel and Daisy head to Hong Kong and investigate a kidnapping/murder. Kids' murder mystery. I enjoyed this - I've always thought Hazel's Chineseness is one of the weaker points in the series, so it was great to see it properly researched/explored here. They do leap to conclusions a bit - I feel like this series needs a Charles Parker to come up with mundane explanations for everything sometimes. But these are nitpicks - this is a very competent and well-researched series, and would recommend to anyone with kids the right age.

Keith have you got to the yoga scene yet in A Discovery of Witches? I laughed at loud at how absolutely absurd it was, beyond dreadful. Lusty looks with improbable poses balancing on just the ear iirc. All hail Audible's return policy, it went straight back for a refund after that scene.

I loved the audible version of Lincoln in the Bardo. Offerman and Sedaris were perfect in their roles. Didn’t mind the ‘Op. cit.’ sections being read out either. After a while they became like the clunkety clunk white noise of a train.

Thanks for the thread, south.

Shipping over my list (most enjoyed in bold):

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 14. What Dark Clouds Hide - Anne Holt 15. Into Thin Air - Jon Krakauer (NF) 16: A Life of my Own - Claire Tomalin (NF) 17: The Strange Last Voyage of Donald Crowhurst - Nicholas Tomalin & Ron Hall (NF) 18: A Life in the Day - Hunter Davies (NF) 19: Adult Onset - Ann-Marie MacDonald 20: Doctor's Children - Josephine Elder 21: A Life in Questions - Jeremy Paxman (NF)

And just finished 22: An Academic Question - Barbara Pym

A bit of an outlier, this, as its narrator is a young married woman with a small daughter, ie not Pym's usual type of central character - it was written during the years when she was trying unsuccessfully to get published again, and actually didn’t make it into print until 1986. However, some familiar themes emerge - a slightly eccentric group of self-absorbed people in a small community (a provincial university in this case); a minor scandal over research papers; some agonising over possible affairs - and I ended up enjoying it, though not quite as much as Excellent Women or No Fond Return of Love.

18 - white trash a 400 year history of class in america
I've read a lot of non fiction of late and this blew me away. Stunningly and emotivelt written

23. When I Hit You: Or, A Portrait of the Writer as a Young Wife by Meena Kandasamy.

This short novel is an unnamed woman's account of her marriage to an abusive man. The author examines why the woman enters this marriage, following heartbreak from a previous relationship and marrying quickly this (also unnamed) man, seduced by his intellect and passion for politics.
In sometimes difficult to read unflinching detail she goes on to describe how he systematically goes about isolating her from her previous life and commences on a strategy to break her physically, psychologically, socially and politically. The book contains scenes of marital rape, physical and psychological abuse.

The book starts by letting us know she has escaped the marriage so it’s no spoiler that the end chapters focus on her life immediately following her leaving her husband, her reflections on how her experience have affected her, and the manner in which society then reacts to her as an abused woman.

It is set in modern India and Kandasamy is able to highlight, via a series of phone calls with the woman's parents, how another layer of entrapment ensues from societal expectations of how women should behave in a marriage. Her parents, despite being told about the abuse urge her to stay. “All change is slow. A marriage is not magic. You will have to give him time. He will come around.”

This is a tough grim read but contains some beautiful and extremely intelligent writing. The author challenges you yto think about any assumptions you might have about why women end up and then stay in abusive relationships. Glad that I've read it and pleased that it’s been longlisted for the Women's Prize.

16. Murder in Mink - Evelyn James - I have done my usual thing of starting a book, getting bored of it, so going reading a light and fluffy thing on the kindle in between.... Another of our 1920s lady detective books. This time she's invited to a wedding of a distant cousin, only to have the wedding intrupted by his wife, who is then murdered, couple of side mysteries going on too. WW1 effects on the 1920s still continues to be a big theme. A nice cosy murder mystery.

Now to go back to one of the various books I've got on the go, or give up and find something to get my teeth into.

Scribbly great review, have put When I hit you on my list.

And I have downloaded it as it is only 99p on Kindle.

@ remus

Yes Good review scribbly - I was in an abusive relationship as a teen so usually steer clear of those narratives, while being pleased they are out there iyswim.

42. The Marlows and the Traitor, Antonia Forest.

I was lucky enough to get this on Ebay for £7.50 - think they mostly seem to start at £25! Raced through it in an evening and it stands up brilliantly to the other Marlow novels. It's a clever thriller - every piece of information in it is used, every character has a role, every piece of seemingly inconsequential dialogue turns out to be relevant. I like properly crafted books! Sadly I think I may be stalled with Antonia Forest due to the price of most of the books - Peter's Room is going to be republished this year but goodness knows when I'll be able to find copies of the others!

Now back to Temeraire. Goodreads isn't encouraging about the quality of the last one either, but once it's done I can heave a sigh of relief!

Finished 11) The couple next door by Shari Lapena. Thought it was awful! Unlikely story, terrible twists and characterisations and written in such a way a ten year old could read it. Can't see why it was so popular!

12. The First Fifteen Lives of Harry August by Claire North.
    Harry is an ouroboran, a person who lives their life and on death returns to re-live the same life but with the memory of the previous life/lives intact (think groundhog day but for a lifetime). It describes the various lives and professions he tries and how he sets out on a mission (over multiple lives) to track down a ouroboran who is messing with the natural time line of development which will bring forward the end of the world.

I found it a fascinating concept - what would we do if in his situation? Would we live purely hedonistic lives like some of his counterparts do, or search for a greater meaning like others? Would we value life more or less if we were 800+ years old? Which actions lead to large changes and which are inconsequential in the grand scheme?

There was a fair amount of philosophical ponderings and scientific detail regarding the meaning of life, quantum theory etc, which although important for motivations in the story, went over my head a bit so I skimmed those parts!

Would recommend.

splother will be keen to hear what you think about When I Hit You. The writing style she uses is interesting. There is one chapter full of letters which read like prose poetry.

Satsuki, totally understandable why you’d want to avoid

Thanks for the new thread, south.

Bringing my list over:

1. Someone to Hold by Mary Balogh
2. The Sixth Extinction by James Rollins
3. Sky Key by James Frey
4. Red Sister by Mark Lawrence
5. The Reproductive System by John Sladek
6. Malice by Keigo Higashino
7. Invasion of the Tearling by Erika Johansen
8. Death Comes to Pemberley by P.D. James
9. The Atlantis Plague by A. G. Riddle

10. Salvation of a Saint by Keigo Higashino 11. Disclaimer by Renee Knight 12. Walk by Shoto Radford 13. Accidents Happen by Louise Millar 14. Departure by A.G.Riddle 15. Angel of Storms by Trudi Canavan 16. Anxiety for Beginners by Eleanor Morgan 17. Exposure by Aga Lesiewicz 18. The Left Hand of God by Paul Hoffman

19. The Power by Naomi Alderman

All around the world, women are discovering that they have the power to inflict pain and death with a flick of the fingers, and so are now inherently stronger than men.
The day of the girls has arrived - but where will it end?

I really enjoyed reading this. Intriguing and thought provoking.