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?

Glad you enjoyed it Remus.

Desdemona by favourite narrator is Juliet Stevenson. Listened to her read North and South by Elizabeth Gaskell last year which was just wonderful. Have also listened to her narrating The Paying Guests by Sarah Waters, and The Mermaid and Mrs Hancock by Imogen Hermes Gowar, both of which are great to listen to.

I agree re Juliet Stevenson. I didn't rate The Paying Guests but loved her narration. Jenny Agutter narrating I Capture the Castle is fab. Another long listen with a great narrator is Wolf Hall read by Simon Slater.

Just catching up my list here with all the Easter holiday reading! Enjoying everyone's recommendations, my TBR list is getting out of hand.

19. Adventures in Darkness by Tom Sullivan

A short and easy memoir about the summer a blind boy of 11 decides to stand up for himself and refuse to return to blind school. I enjoy these coming of age tales when you can find out what happens to the author when they grow up, and how these moments of childhood can turn out in hindsight to be very pivotal. I have passed this to my 12 year old son to see what he thinks.

20. Jude the Obscure by Thomas Hardy

My favourite Hardy so far, although it was a tough old slog at times. Even though I knew about the dramatic scene with the 'too menny', Hardy's writing still creates such a mood that it cannot be anything but truly shocking. A great book to demonstrate there is nothing more debilitating than unfulfilled ambitions .....

Just started The Woman in White by Wilkie Collins. Been reading for a couple of weeks now and still only 9% on my Kindle. I may be some time .....

1. Why Mummy Drinks by Gill Sims.
2. Ancillary Justice by Ann Leckie
3. Ancillary Sword by Ann Leckie.

4 Ancillary Mercy by Ann Leckie.

1. Eleanor Oliphant Is Completely Fine by Gail Honeyman.
2. "Blink" Malcolm Gladwell.
3. "Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance" by Robert Pirsig.
4. "Persepolis RIsing" by James SA Corey.
5. “Guernica” by Dave Boling.

10. “Harvest” by Tess Gerritsen. 11. "Grit" by Angela Duckworth. Social science book about grit - what it is, how to grow it. Felt I had more questions than answers after reading this. From my position of privilege it is easy to see how I could become a person of grit and 'succeed' in life but not everyone can be Bill Gates and the book largely glosses over how luck and opportunity have a part to play in where people end up in life. I wouldn't want to recommend this book to a person who has only ever known a deep environment of multigenerational poverty and suggest it might change their life.

18 (I think, I haven't been recording very well)
The Children of Green Knowe by Lucy M Boston

So yes, technically this is a children’s book. I first read it aged about 10 and picked it up again this week when looking for something comforting to read. Seven-year-old Tolly, whose mother is dead and whose father is living in the far east with his new wife, receives an unexpected invitation from his great-grandmother to go and live with her at her house, Green Knowe. But as well as his mysterious, twinkly Granny, also living in the ancient manor house are the ghosts of children who were happy there centuries ago.

This is such a beautiful, atmospheric book, as much about the house as the people in it. The descriptions of Green Knowe - surrounded by flood water when Tolly first arrives - are fabulous. The friendly, benign ghosts are introduced gradually so while Tolly starts out “alone as usual”, soon he’s hanging out with children from hundreds of years ago as well as Green Knowe’s various wildlife. I found it very touching in parts – lonely Tolly longs so much for company – and finds it in his Granny, who’s painted as his sort of co-conspirator – as well as the ghosts. Magical, warm, beautiful. Loved it all over again.

On to A Gentleman In Moscow next... it's been on my TBR pile for ages.

panda took me about a day to read Woman in White once the story pulled me in - it’s a page turner once it gets going!

I have a stack of books from the library but frustratingly little time to read. Kids are all out of routine and I’m not getting any evenings after spending all day supposedly wearing them out

*8. The Heart's Invisible Furies
*
I read this after noticing that quite a few on here had read it and liked it. Overall, I really loved it. It was a page turner, a beautiful and painfully poignant portrait of life as a gay Irish man. There were flaws which I could not ignore - well I felt they were flaws. Too many coincidences - I get the whole artistic licence thing and keeping a plot line running, but I found them intrusive at times. There was quite a lot of humour, most of which worked well, but occasionally characters became overblown caricatures. It was definitely worth reading though.

15. Anything is Possible by Elizabeth Strout. More of a series of loosely connected short stories than a novel, with each story picking up the narrative of a character briefly mentioned in a previous one, although they do not necessarily know each other. All of the stories focus on the characters reflecting on their small-town lives and upbringings (most of the characters have a connection to a small, rural town in the US mid-west).

I really, really liked this book. It was beautifully written, with an attention to tiny, seemingly insignificant moments and observations that in fact absolutely captured the essence of a person. Apart from the small-town framework that linked the stories, all of the stories featured some kind of reflection on their childhood or early adult experiences, and how that continues to shape their lives in the present. Initially, I was afraid this was going to be filled with revelations of deeply traumatic childhoods of physical and sexual abuse. But actually, although certainly there were deep traumas in some of the characters' histories (and presents), the book focused more on small moments than on big events, those little hurts that cut more deeply than they would appear to merit and stay with us in a strange way as we mature. I found it incredibly moving.

Highly recommended. Best book I've read since Celeste Ng, and I've purchased another of her novels on the back of it.

I listened to this on Audible, and the narrator (Kimberley Farr) was excellent, with great nuance to her voice as she read each of the characters' stories.

panda, when I was 16 we went on a family holiday (week on a canal narrowboat) that involved a drive to the place where you picked up the boat. I took The Woman in White as my holiday read. I finished it in the car on the way there! It just seized me with an unstoppable vengeance. I can still remember the cover of that Penguin edition - a wonderful Atkinson Grimshaw print.

Thank god for iPads and the kindle app. Nowadays I go nowhere without having approx 57 books on there at least

Woman in white is one of my favourites. Another one for the reread list!

Thank you ChessieFL, I think that's a great tip re going for a voice you know you like because the narrator can make or break an Audible book. I will definitely look at the Simon Callow narrated Dickens books. I was slightly put off by the fact that those books are in the public domain so I can read them on my Kindle foc, but having listened to, and loved, A Christmas Carol on Audible (Amazon Prime did it as a freebie at Christmas) I think it definitely adds another dimension of enjoyment to hear them read well.
Rebecca is another fantastic recommend because I've got that on my TBR list after all the love for it on here.
Scribblygum & MuseumOfHam Juliette Stevenson has a lovely voice and I noticed she's done a narration of Wuthering Heights which is definitely in my top 10 books so an audible version of that is one I'd return to again and again.
Museum I've read I Capture The Castle and I have the Audible version of Wolf Hall, which I agree is a wonderful narration and made the story so much easier to follow. Maybe an Audible version of Bring Up The Bodies would be a good shout.
Thanks for your recommends, I feel spoilt for choice now. I feel an Audible subscription may be on my birthday list!

I love The Woman in White, especially the Count.

44: Berlin’s Third Sex - Magnus Hirschfeld – Published in 1904, this is a look at ‘Gay Berlin’ before the heydays of the Weimar Republic. It was okay, not as good as I’d hoped. On the positive side, the fact that this fairly sensitive and mostly non-judgmental study was written at all at the time is pretty incredible. On the down-side, it lacked cohesion and ended abruptly. I’m glad I bought it (ten whole English pounds!), the cover is brilliant here but I thought it would be/do more than it does.

Desdemonas have you listened to My Cousin Rachel on audible? Recommend that one - I think it was reviewed on the last thread. Read by Jonathan Pryce, v enjoyable.

Thanks Parkin - I've just asked my husband for an Audible subscription for my birthday so I'm going to make a note of all these great recommendations and work my way through them!

A Game of Thrones, by George RR Martin - rereading this for about the fourth time with the intention of reading through the whole series so far. In the past I've never got further than A Feast for Crows.

Rereading this is a bit like sinking into a warm bath. Granted the bath isn't filled with water, but blood, and it's also filled with severed body parts, but still... A comforting read.

Next up I'm about to start The Fire Child by SK Tremayne, the follow up to The Ice Twins which I seem to remember enjoying.

@corvus warm blood bath

terpischore I have a similar strong memory of reading Woman in White - I started it in bed one morning. We were meant to be going out to lunch, which got pushed to dinner, which ended up being takeaway as I’d forgotten to get dressed and dh gave up

Desdemona Bring up the Bodies is done by a different narrator, confusingly also called Simon, and though he reads it well, it just somehow didn't give me the same warm fuzzies as Wolf Hall on audible.

Oh that is a shame 😒 I thought Simon Slater did a wonderful 'I Cromwell' voice.

17. The Last Tudor by Philippa Gregory
Retelling of the life of Lady Jane Grey, and the fate of her sisters Katherine and Mary after Jane's death. I enjoyed the focus on some of the Tudor Period's less well-known women. Pacey and dramatic, nice easy escapist read.

23. My Name Is Leon by Kit de Waal. As recommended by other readers on here. Very enjoyable read. It's written from the perspective of a 9 year-old boy who is in foster care. Likeable characters with big hearts beneath rough exteriors.

29. Love Bites by Elena Kaufman a short story collection I read for free with pigeonhole, after a shaky start (the first story is just plain weird and it's metaphors lost on me!) this was a really enjoyable read, original, poignant and thought provoking.
30. My Cousin Rachel by Daphne du Maurier I'm so glad I listened to the recommendations on here, this was so good! What a story, I couldn't stop reading this. I might even prefer it to Rebecca (which I love, so that's high praise).
31. The Vanishing Act of Esme Lennox by Maggie O'Farrell I discovered the author at last (several friends had recommended her but I'd never got around to reading any of her books!) after enjoying I Am, I Am, I Am. This is a heartbreaking story of a woman seemingly vanished from a family's history. I don't want to give too much away as it would spoil the way the book enables the reader to gradually piece together what has caused Esme's disappearance from her family, by revealing to us Esme's and her sister Kitty's memories of their childhood. Would definitely recommend.

I've now got A Boy In Winter on the go which is beautifully written.

OOOh I just saw there is a new Woman in White adaptation on the BBC starting April 22! I've read steadily for the last two hours .... definitely hooked!

Number 26 : The Travelling Cat Chronicles by Hiro Arikawa.

I read this mainly on the plane to and from Italy so it's a quick read! What a lovely, quiet, tender, delicate little book this is. It has apparently been a surprise international bestseller and is due to be made into a film in Japan. You don't need to be a cat lover but it might help.

Warning : tissues required.

not sure why the bold didn't work there. Hey h.

hey ho, even. Would blame jetlag but Pisa is a 2 hr flight.