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?

Hello Rory 👋 I post here but also have the 25 book on my watch list, not sure I'll make 50 either! But I'm doing better this year because of this thread, although I'm not sure me choosing books for their brevity is really in the spirit of things

I really didn't like A God in Ruins, EmGee. I can see what she's trying to do, but I just hated Viola so much, and it didn't have nearly enough bluebell woods and sexy ploughmen for me. I know it's only supposed to be one of Teddy's possible lives, in the same way Ursula has pretty good lives and pretty shit ones, but that didn't mean I had to like it.
I expect part of the problem is that in my head Life After Life is a comfort book, whereas in Atkinson's head it's a book about serious issues, and A God in Ruins is a chance to explore some of those themes further. Which, you know, it does, very well. It just wasn't the sequel I wanted.

Emgee I have been reading it to my nearly 6 yo and he's loving it.
Not sure how old Scribbly's children are but I think she said they didn't want to read it with her.

13. Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire (book 4).
Started this weeks ago with ds1 (10) and have been reading ahead. Quite a slow start I found, but I think that’s true of every one of these I’ve read.
Harry returns to Hogwart for his fourth year, so he and his friends are now 14. Instead of the Quidditch cup there’s a Triwizard tournament between Hogwarts and 2 other wizard schools. But you have to be 17 to enter.
I liked the bits where Hermione is beginning to show an interest in boys but the boys are oblivious and have no interest in talking to their dates.

14. The Secret Seven on the trail by Enid Blyton
Read this to ds2 (7) and he loved it. Quite fast moving and hardly dated (apart from the kids being left alone and unsupervised but I’m not sure how old they are supposed to be)

My dds are 12 and 14 Really it was all a fanciful Scottish dream that they would permit me reading fairy tales to them. Age 6 to 8 should be fine though EmGee.

Thanks Cheerful for your comment. Nice bit of Greek tragedy not up your street also?

Actually kind of tempted by that one too. But as I said upthread, I don't have much brain for literachore at the moment. Currently tearing my way through Bookworm, which is about perfect.

Fair enough. Of the three Sophocles plays I've read Oedipus Rex has been the most enjoyable, in terms of ultimate epic dysfunctional families and fuck ups. Seriously East Enders is like Last of the Summer Wine in comparison. They are surprisingly easy and quick to read. Antigone is good to read alongside Kamila Shamsie's Home Fire, and Electra (or The Orestia by Aeschylus which is sitting on my TBR shelf) alongside Colm Toibin's House of Names. I have been really surprised by how much I enjoyed reading them*

*I didn’t read them in Greek

I read Oedipus at university*, though it didn't capture my heart the way Homer did, I seem to remember quite liking it. I think I need to make my peace with the fact that life with a two year old and a job isn't the best time to be trying to read great works of literature and, you know, this too shall pass.

*Also not in Greek.

Or the core message in Oedipus of, you know, not killing your father, sleeping with your mother and then stabbing your eyes out with a brooch are actually upon close reflection strangely and beautifully relevant to working full time while parenting a two year old in 2018.
Those themes run deep.

16. The Marrow Thieves, by Cherie Dimaline: speculative YA fiction, set in a near future in which climate change catastrophes have ravaged North America and left the majority of the population unable dream. Indigenous people, who retain the ability to dream, are being hunted in order to harvest their bone marrow, which will be used to cure non-dreamers' illness. Frenchie, a young Métis boy (who is mostly a teen during the book), is separated from his family and is eventually taken in by his found family, lead by Miigwans and the elder Minerva. Their harrowing journey to the North puts them in the path of Recruiters and other perils in search of some form of home.

This book is harrowing. Harrowing, and excellent. Dimaline rightly insists on making plain the horrors of the Residential Schools in Canada, and the international trauma they continue to cause. She also explores responsibilities to self, found family, and a greater cause. I'm already planning to return to this novel soon.

Scribbly

I think it’s also an illustration of the dangers of putting too much faith in fortune tellers.

The whole sorry mess would never have happened if Oedipus and his father hadn’t gone off to get those self fulfilling prophecies from the oracle.

I won't say there aren't days ...

Stitches I concur. Avoiding sketchy oracles also important universal and timeless point.

Vanderly when I read the first line of your review I thought 'wow they are running out of plotlines for YA dystopia if we're going to have a bunch of folk at the end of the world fighting over courgettes' but then read the rest of your review and book actually sounds pretty intriguiing. Have added to the List.

Fighting over courgettes
haha that made me laugh so much clarabellski

16. Wonder. A childrens/YA novel which I'd heard bits of being read to a Year 5 class (9 and 10 year olds) and wanted to read for myself. It's about August a boy with a genetic condition which has badly affected his face. He doesn't dwell on his looks other than to say what ever you're imaging it's definitely worse. We do get a description of August in a chapter narrated by his sister and she leaves the reader in no doubt as to the severity of August's deformity and the reaction it induces in people. She describes strangers as being 'so shocked when they saw him. Horrified. Sickened. Scared' There are many mentions of the staring, side long glances and swift looking away that he deals with daily.
    When his parents decide it is time for August to enter mainstream education rather than being homeschooled it is a traumatic transition, and we see through August's eyes, and those around him, his daily struggles for acceptance.
    This is a lovely book that encourages tolerance, it's predominant message is laid out early on by one of August's teachers in his monthly precept 'When given the choice of being right or being kind, choose kind.' It should really be required reading on the curriculum as it gets across the message of inclusion far more effectively than any PHSE classes. Admittedly it's simplified, given the target market, and shamelessly tugs at the heartstrings, but despite knowing I was being manipulated I was crying 'proper tears' by the uplifting ending. Definitely recommended for those who are looking for a book to read to older primary school children.

17. Nelly Dean by Alison Case. Not exactly a re telling but more a parallel story to Wuthering Heights which gives the housekeeper Nelly Dean her own back story and continues her narrative separately to the protagonists in WH. I really enjoyed this, I listened on Audio Book and the slightly childish, gushing narrator was a bit grating at first but I soon got used to it. Initially I was waiting for the references to Cathy, Heathcliff et al but before long I was swept up in Nelly's own story. A couple of plot points/reveals were massively telegraphed but all in all a good read.

An American friend has splashed out on a 3 month gift subscription to Audible for me, in my innocence I thought this would mean as many books as I could read in 3 months but no , unfortunately her $52 only buys one Audible book a month for 3 months. I've used the first one on Nelly Dean, can anyone recommend some great Audible books? I'd like books that are enhanced by the hearing, with great narration, I know Burial Rights was recommended up thread on Audible but I've already read a paper version of that. Long books would be good so I can get her money's worth 😊

62. The trick to time - Kit De Waal this was reviewed up thread by scribbly and is another from Women's Prize long list . I enjoyed this far more than I expected. It is a sympathetic look at the issue of stillbirth and it's far reaching effects. This was, as Scribbly said, sentimental in places but actually it worked, and that is coming from someone who usually runs a mile from sentimental. A quiet but meaningful book that felt just the right length, and worthy of it's place on the long list.

43: The Guns of Navarone – Alistair Maclean – Loved this! Thanks so much for the rec, Scribbly. I’d never have contemplated reading a Maclean book without your review. It was essentially a kids’ adventure book but for adults, full of plucky heroes, evil villains, manly comradery and villains who die far more easily than heroes, uncannily. All very good fun.

Again, with bold:
43: The Guns of Navarone – Alistair Maclean

Very annoyingly, I wrote and (thought I'd) posted but....apparently not. So here's the lost post again, as well as I can remember it

Two relatively light reads after a couple of serious books:

30: Closed Circles - Viveca Sten. The second in her Sandhamn Murders series. A very relaxing read and not one to tax the brains of any locked-room mystery aficionados, but I'm getting rather fond of these undemanding novels set in the beautiful Swedish archipelago and hoping BBC4 will show the adaptation, which I've discovered has been made by Swedish TV, so I can have a proper nosey round some of the lovely houses myself

and

31: A Glass of Blessings - Barbara Pym. My Pym love-affair continues, and I really did enjoy this book. Wilmet is young, beautiful and childless, married to Rodney and comfortably well-off. Her time is spent clothes-shopping, having lunch, and indulging her insatiable curiosity about the lives of the clergy at her local church. What might seem a rather unpromising basis for a novel becomes a quietly mischievous comedy of manners. What a clever and observant writer Pym was.

27 We are Legion, We are Bob by Dennis Taylor, listened to on audio

Software engineer Bob Johannson has paid to have his corpse frozen in a bid for immortality. He wakes up in the future to find a theocratic government in power in the US. They have annexed 'corpsicles' declaring their human rights void, he has been uploaded to a computer, and is intended for a future in government service as the controlling AI in an interstellar probe.

This started well, light sci-fi with lots of geeky jokes and enough substance in Bob's interaction with his human 'mentor' to be very pleasing. Unfortunately it became sprawling and un-directed once he goes into space, and some parts were really dire. I did listen to the end, but wouldn't bother with the sequel.

32. Ali Shaw - The Trees

Overnight, the world becomes covered with trees. They sprout up out of nowhere and destroy roads, buildings, towns - and people. Adrien Thomas, a perpetual loser filled with self-loathing, finds himself journeying into the unknown with two strangers - Hannah, who feels excitement and awe in the new world, and her teenage son Seb, who until now has spent most of his life in front of a computer screen. Hannah and Seb are seeking her brother while Adrien is reluctantly seeking his wife, who was on a business trip in Ireland when the trees came. Meeting up along the way with a teenage Japanese girl who had been on a school trip to England, the four of them slowly learn about themselves and how to survive in a completely changed world.

It's a pretty good book, although I did keep wondering at how few people they ran into on the journey.

24. First One Missing - Tammy Cohen

A group of mums meet. They have one thing in common. Their daughters were murdered. A club no one wants to join. When another victim is found they all come together to find out who has taken their girls and stop them striking again.

This book had me gripped till the very end! Just what I needed to distract from real life at the moment. Another book ticked off the TBR pile.

Desdemona My tip is to think of actors whose voices you like and search audible for them to see if they have narrated anything you like the sound of. For example Simon Callow has narrated a couple of Dickens novels and they meet your criteria of being long! I’ve also recently enjoyed Rebecca read by Anna Massey, and some of the Kate Atkinson books read by Susan Jameson.