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?

HI guys 🖑 happy to be here ☺

Book (11 or 12 I think...) finished.
It was What Alice forgot by Liane Moriarty.

It was OK. Nothing earth shattering but I did like the way it made think about how things can be perceived differently by different people.

Current book is Morning Star by Pierce Brown.
It's the 3rd in the Red rising trilogy and it's living up to the previous two books. I'm only 87 pages (16%) in but I have high hopes for this.

Slightly off topic (sorry) but with regards to audio books, how do you all listen to them?
Is it purely through audible?

I like the idea of them but not sure I can justify the cost, especially when I have approximately *10,000 000 books waiting to be read :/

• A slight exaggeration but you get my point 😂

Rory If you’re in the U.K most boroughs let you borrow audiobooks via library membership.

25. Homegoing – Yaa Gyasi

Sweeping and panoramic tale of two sisters, eight generations of their descendants and the horrifying reverberations of the slave trade on Ghana’s Gold Coast and the USA. Sounds ambitious? It is. Let me add at this stage that this novel is only 300 pages long.

I felt this was a great premise, however I found the reading experience a bit disappointing. It felt more like a series of loosely connected stories than a novel. The first two chapters IMO are the strongest. Half-sisters Effia and Esi are introduced; the former marries a White Slave Trader, while the latter is sold into slavery and taken to the cotton plantations of Alabama. I wanted to know so much more about them than the writer revealed, but in chapters 3 and 4 she moves swiftly on to the stories of Effia’s son and Esi’s daughter. Ultimately, I felt a bit short changed. For me, there was just too much crammed into each short chapter and as a result I couldn’t connect with the characters.

Thanks South. I'll look into that .

I borrow library ebooks using the Overdrive app.

There’s a fair number of audiobooks available on there from my library that I could borrow if I was into audiobooks.

15. Bookworm: A Memoir of Childhood Reading Lucy Mangan Sometimes the right book comes along at exactly the right time, and Bookworm was that book for me. It's basically a memoir of Mangan's childhood through the (many, many) books she read. It's not as thoughtful or as nuanced as Francis Spufford's The Child That Books Built, which has a similar conceit, but it's much wittier and far more enjoyable. If, like many of us on this thread, you were born in Britain in the seventies or eighties, and spent your childhood devouring Enid Blyton (alpha-male Ju, dickless Dick, poor Anne, proto-feminist/Sapphic role model George and her loyal, rabbit-loving dog Timmy, as Mangan explains), Sweet Valley High (Twins! The same! Yet so different! And lavaliers!), Philippa Pearce, Roald Dahl and various Puffin Classics, this is probably the book for you. There's nothing massively insightful here, but it's hughly enjoyable; like an evening in the pub with a rather ranty and passionate children's book enthusiast. You get a rant about the wrongness of Twilight, another about the injustice of Antonia Forest being out of print when she's so wonderful and so on. (The histories and asides on the authors and how the books came to be written are also great.) Mangan is apparently also a Mumsnet addict, so if you're reading this, Lucy, thank you. It's been a rough old week in the Muddler household (now all over, thank God), and your book was the perfect antidote to a lot of real life shit.

Finally done some reading this month.
30. And Then There Were None by Agatha Christie.
My first ever Christie read, hard to judge really as I had just watched the BBC adaptation so I knew what was coming. Enjoyed it though, but I had hoped we'd get to know the characters more than in the program but there wasn't really anything extra there.

Bookworm sounds lovely. I've also read The Child That Books Built but thought it just okay - definitely a bit lacking in personality/humour.

Finally finished a couple of books I started before going on holiday and only taking the kindle with me.

28. Wide Sargasso Sea - Jean Rhys
I have been meaning to read this for years, finally got round to it and am glad I did. For anyone who doesn't know, it's the story of the first Mrs Rochester, i.e. the mad woman in the attic in Jane Eyre, told by a novelist with Caribbean roots. You could read it without having read Jane Eyre, as it is psychologically gripping and has wonderful descriptions of the lush but threatening landscape of the island Antoinette/Bertha grows up on, the social fractures after the abolition of slavery and so on. But really it is best read in conjunction with Jane Eyre to get the full contrast between the portrayal of Bertha in Jane Eyre (mad, almost semi-human - possibly because of the madness or possibly because of the hint of a mixed racial background) and the full, humanising portrait of her in Wide Sargasso Sea.

I found it particularly interesting because I was reading it at the same time as
29. Black and British: A Forgotten History by David Olusoga
which spends a lot of time covering the British involvement in the slave trade, and its colonial legacy in both Africa and the Caribbean, and the change in attitudes to race over the centuries. This was a very worth-while read, though at times I wished it had had better editing, as there was a lot of repetition and some poor English, and I also would have liked a bit more on post-war black British history, which only formed a very small proportion of the book. I know it was based on a TV series, which I did not see, so I presume it was limited by what the series covered.

30. Shadow Dance by Angela Carter
This was Carter's first novel, published in the mid-60s. She was a skilled writer even then, and some of the descriptive writing in this is amazing, but I can't say I particularly enjoyed this, mainly because of the at times gruesome nature of the plot. I read quite a bit of her work in the 80s, when Virago started publishing it, and remember liking it a lot then, so I may go back to some of her later books.

Remus/Cheerful - I have also read The Child That Books Built and recommended it to a number of people, but somehow Bookworm has not appealed to me so far. Maybe because I am closer in age to Francis Spufford than Lucy Mangan, and my reading tastes were more similar to his?

Just finished book 12.

I chose The Toymakers by Robert Dinsdale. Now I am not at all adverse to a bit of magic in my reading. I very much enjoyed The Miniaturist and The Labarynth amongst others. The problem with this book though was, frankly, a lack of magic in the magic. We hear of clockwork animals who perform incredible things and people say all the time how magical it is but the whole thing just left me absolutely flat. Towards the end I found myself eye rolling and tutting and the heavy metaphor and religious undertones and overtones.

That’s the last time I choose a book because it has come up as an advert on Facebook!

Glad you said that passmethecrisps my old book group still has me in their distribution list and that was one they read recently and praised. Was about to add to my tbr pile.

Can see I may find it anticlimactic. Cheers for the heads up!

I think basically if you liked her Guardian Family columns about books, you'll probably like this. If you didn't, I'd give it a miss.

33. David Lagercrantz - The Girl Who Takes an Eye for an Eye

Salander is temporarily confined to the secure unit of a women's prison, a unit where a particularly violent gang is threatening and attacking othe prisoners. As she looks out for another particularly vulnerable prisoner, she is also investigating some information about her own past provided by her former guardian, Holger Palmgren. Setting Mikael Blomkvist on the trail as well, the two of them uncover a sinister experiment on children which those involved are still determined to keep concealed.

I do like the fact that Salander and Blomkvist are continuing as characters, and I did enjoy the book, but Larsson's original trilogy was still so much better and far more complex.

63. Wildflower Hill - Kimberly Freeman book club read. Family mystery saga set in Tasmania Granddaughter is clearing out Grandmother's house and is trying to piece together / uncover a family secret. Readable, very much in the style of Kate Morton. Lightweight and petters out towards the very predictable ending.

clara, ha! I'd never have made that connection. Separated by a common language, eh? I do hope you enjoy the book, lack of veg notwithstanding.

CheerfulMuddler - I might have to read the Lucy Mangan book. I read Francis Spufford's one when it first came out, but this sounds like it might be written in the style of her columns, which I used to enjoy. I have fond memories of childhood reading in the 80s/early 90s. Some I can still remember in great detail, others I can't remember much about at all. I've tried to introduce my son to some of the classics I liked (Famous Five (updated more PC version), Swallows and Amazons, Tom's Midnight Garden) to no avail so far, but he's only 7 so hopefully still time.

14. Fingersmith - Sarah Waters

For some reason I thought I hadn't read this, and then realised I had once I was a few chapters in. Fortunately I couldn't remember the plot so didn't really matter. For anyone that hasn't read it, it's a story of a young thief, who gets a job as a lady's maid in order to gain a share in her inheritance - but with a few twists along the way.

I really enjoyed this - I like the style of writing and the plot moves along at a good speed. Yes, there's a lesbian aspect to it, but despite what DH thought (Sarah Waters's reputation precedes her!), it's not Victorian porn, just a good story.

ghosts my ds is 6 and loves The Secret Seven, and he enjoyed me reading him the first Famous Five but in general I think they are better for a year or two’s time as they’re a lot denser. So yes, wouldn’t write them them off yet necessarily. I just read Charlotte’s Web to him and he enjoyed that. For himself it’s all about Diary of a Wimpy Kid at the moment.

Book 28 The Girls by Emma Cline

Based on the Manson cult this tells the story of a young who becomes obsessed with one of The Girls and joins the cult for the summer before the murders. Although this isn’t directly Manson it is obvious that is what it is based on (the leader is a guy called Russell but other details are the same)

Despite that, it’s really not about the cult or murders at all rather it’s about being a teenage girl, discovering sexuality, power and how girls relate to each other. In that I think it is brilliant. There are some passages which describe being a teenage girl so perfectly I almost cringed with recognition and it is a good 20 years since I was that age. I think some of the reviews have focused too much on the fact it doesn’t explore more of the motivation behind what happens but for me that’s almost beside the point. It’s about that moment in a girls life when you are mentally a child but look like a woman. Loved it and would recommend.

For kids books my DS is 6 and loves me reading the How to Train Your Dragon books to him and then he is reading Captain Underpants books himself.

I have a few books to read next and still reading Ashes of Fire but as it’s a hardback it’s hard to carry round with me.

33.) The Fire Child, by SK Tremayne Follow-up to The Ice Twins which I enjoyed. The set-up is pure Rebecca poor young woman marries an older, wealthier man, who whisks her away to his sprawling Cornish house, which seems to be haunted by the ghost of his beautiful, brilliant wife, who died under mysterious circumstances. It's so clearly Rebecca that the lack of ironic references to the DuMaurier novel actually felt a little bit weird, like in zombie films when no one seems to know WTF zombies are or how to kill them.

Added into the mix is the 8-year old step son, traumatised by the loss of his mother, who seems just as haunted by his mother's presence as the main character and seems to have inherited the family's gift for seeing the future.

I'm very mixed on this. It gripped me, and I enjoyed it very much until the end, whereupon the whole thing fell apart like a... well, like a zombie that's been hanging about in a well for a bit too long. The ending felt weak, the twist unlikely, and it needed a whole lot more time and effort spent hammering the ending into shape. It felt like the author got it to a certain draft, and decided 'fuck it, that'll do' when actually it needed quite a bit more work, and certain plot-points were barely dealt with. It felt half-baked.

But I found the descriptions of Cornwall and the mining fascinating and very evocative, even though it played little part in the plot and was really just background.

~~

Currently reading Bernard Cornwall's Death of Kings, which I am, frankly, a bit annoyed by (although I'm really enjoying it). There is nothing on the cover or the inside pages to say it's the 6th in a series, and for some reason I picked it up in the library thinking it was the 1st. Reading it, it's clear it's a later entry into a series, and now I'm torn whether I should put it down and cycle back to the beginning or if I should carry on. Probably the latter -- I am enjoying it, and the narrator's a likeable bastard.

But I've noticed lately that publishers of fantasy novels (which this isn't, but bear with me) these days don't always bother putting that a novel is part of a trilogy or its place in that trilogy, on the cover, and it pisses me right the fuck off. I shouldn't have to flick to the inside pages to confirm that it is indeed the second book in a trilogy so I should read x first instead, when the books clearly aren't standalone. It's annoying. And I wonder if it's Amazon's influence...

Anyway, apologies for the long semi-tangential rant. It's really not Bernard Cornwell's fault. Probably.

CheerfulMuddler, I am glad you enjoyed Bookworm. It's a very friendly, warm hearted book and just what I needed and wanted after some depressing real life crap and some less than cheery reading. I've lent my copy to my sister but will definitely re-read it, and also plan on digging out some of my childhood books next time I visit my parents.

I'm currently reading Jane and the unpleasantness at Scargrave Manor by Stephanie Barron.

So far I'm really enjoying, rare to find good (essentially Jane Austen) fan fiction. My mum bought it for me for Christmas last year so I thought I would give it a whirl.