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?

[bibliomania]

44. Real Tigers, by Mick Herron
Another in the series of London-set spy thrillers, set amongst the failed spies of Slough House. Most of the skullduggery arises from personal ambition (climb that career ladder!) rather than good old-fashioned rule-the-world ambition. There's a politician based on Boris Johnson, clearly loathed by the author. Enjoying these. I've finished the series about from the last one, for which I'm at the end of a long waitlist at the library.

[SatsukiKusakabe]

20. The Portable Veblen by Elizabeth Mackenzie

I quite enjoyed this. The premise was the engagement of a young couple who ostensibly are not too much alike, exploring the possibilities of their future together by untangling the complex family relationships that have been the making of their respective personalities. It also looks at the tension between nature and commerce, progress and simple humanity. The protagonist’s childhood fascination with squirrels reasserts itself as a coping mechanism in times of anxiety, adding a surreal layer to the narrative, which is at times comically enjoyable and at others, slightly tiresome. It was a likeable book and well written with a satisfying ending, and I’ve found myself thinking about it quite a bit since. However, there were elements I disliked and found stretched credulity (even on its own terms) so fell short rather on the whole. I’ve been struggling to find moments to read lately and it was very easy to go on with and I liked coming back to the story and characters, so ultimately it wasn’t bad at all.

I’m now reading Excellent Women by Barbara Pym - my first Pym, and finding it mildly amusing, much in the manner of Miss Pettigrew but it hasn’t got going yet.

Is anyone else watching Woman in White on the BBC?

[SatsukiKusakabe]

I’m also reading The Guns of Navarone on Kindle but keep falling asleep after a few lines so have learned nothing so far except I would have been useless on the mission.

[whippetwoman]

35. Anything is Possible - Elizabeth Strout
Well-reviewed upthread by badb and I agree that this is indeed a very good read. Each chapter is a moment in time from the life of a person living in and around an imaginary town, or about their friends or relations living elsewhere and the stories sometimes interweave and crossover. She writes so lucidly about people and as a result, some of the chapters are incredibly touching. Each one could be a (very good) novel in its own right.

36. Exit West - Moshin Hamid
This is the story of refugees and young lovers Nadia and Saeed. They escape their war-torn country through a series of doors that open up directly into other parts of the world. This is really a story about what it means to belong, about identity and the search to find your place in a disrupted world. I liked this but didn't love it, though it was well written. It just didn't engage me enough.

37. Sweet Days of Discipline - Fleur Jaeggy
Novella set in a boarding school in Switzerland in the 1950s from the point of view of an adolescent girl musing on the claustrophobia of school life and her passionate friendships with other girls. This is a strange, slightly unsettling book, a lot of very short sentences and no particular plot but (it seemed to me) to be a good translation by Tim Parks.

[TheTurnOfTheScrew]

19. The Girl on the Landing by Paul Torday
Michael and Elizabeth are a very upper middle class couple enduring a rather dull marriage. During a weekend staying with friends in Ireland Michael is captivated by a picture owned by his hosts, with a detail featuring a girl in a green dress. His hosts are mystified, insisting this is a landscape painting with no human figures. From then on Michael's behaviour begins to change. NB I am going to give away all the of the plot to give this the full slagging off it deserves, so look away now if this is on your to-read pile.

This was lazy and ludicrous. The main characters poorly drawn. Elizabeth appears utterly blank, other than being a bit of a gold-digger, as there's no clear reason she married Michael other than for his country estate, and so I felt nothing for her as the story unfolded.

Turns of Michael has a history of psychosis, and has defaulted from his treatment. Oh, and he's murdered oodles of people in the past when unwell. His doctors know, but somehow didn't think the police might be interested. The few people that do know about his past are very worried about him, but yet unconcerned about meeting with him alone on isolated country lanes. The narrative starts off alternating between Michael and Elizabeth, but as his mental state deteriorates this evidently proves a bit too much like hard work for the author and Elizabeth takes over entirely.The "is it illness, or is there something supernatural going on?" theme felt really half-baked as well. Just didn't see the point of this one.

[TooExtraImmatureCheddar]

Fell off the thread during Easter holidays - have been reading trash due to exhausting small children. I can't remember everything - will add in others if they come back to me.

52. Lisey's Story, Stephen King. Lisey is the wife of a famous author who was haunted by childhood monsters and had a really fucked up family/childhood. After his death, Lisey begins to find her way into hidden memories of what exactly happened - plus obligatory King helping of horror and monsters, human and otherwise. This one is a bit patchy. The story itself is gripping - particularly Scott's childhood and his brother and father - but Lisey herself seems a bit undeveloped. Why is she so drawn to a very fucked-up man? Why is there no exploration of how she felt about agreeing to have no children? Why has she no life of her own apart from being 'writer's wife'? With no kids and no job, what exactly did she do with her life? I wanted to slap her for accepting Scott and his 'blood bool'. The book is supposedly exploring sisterhood with Lisey and Amanda, and it is really not about that and much more about Scott and his father and brother.

53. House of Green Turf, Ellis Peters. More escapist 1960s genteel crime. Too many italics.

54. Too Say Nothing of the Dog, Connie Willis. Rollicking time-travel romp. Easy and enjoyable.

55. Harnessing Peacocks, Mary Wesley. Hebe is a part time cook, part-time prostitute trying to pay her illegitimate child through public school. Similar feel to Jilly Cooper in many ways, although less funny. Very class-ridden and affairs are a way of life.

DS is jumping on my head so I'm going to post this before he deletes it by accident.

[TooExtraImmatureCheddar]

56. Frostbitten, Kelley Armstrong. Re-read. One of the Women of the Otherworld series. Elena and Clay head off to Alaska in search of various other werewolves for various reasons. Bit of retroengineering here of Elena's relationship with Clay to make it fit more with current ideas regarding consent! Elena and Clay shag like bunnies endlessly while chasing down renegade werewolves. Light read but suffering from too much tell and not enough show.
    
    
57. Damia, Anne McCaffrey. Re-read. Book 2 in the Tower and the Hive series, which I devoured in my early 20s and have reread a lot, despite its flaws. Erm. I always had problems with this one - liked The Rowan much better, and all the books about Damia's children were terrible. This one features the Rowan's third child, Damia, and focusses strongly on Afra - the first third of so retells The Rowan from his point of view. There's a lot of men protecting Rowan from herself in this, following with the same men, by and large, hiding stuff from Damia for her own good. Damia herself is mainly unlikeable. For all this, I still keep re-reading Anne McCaffrey.

[TooExtraImmatureCheddar]

I'm slowly making my way through Anna Karenina but I keep putting it down for easier stuff when I'm tired, which has been most of the time recently.

[CorvusUmbranox]

36.) The Land of the Green Man: A Journey through the Supernatural Landscapes of the British Isles, by Carolyne Larrington - Non-fiction book about the folktales and mythology of the British Isles. Really enjoyed this. It wasn't quite as in depth as I was hoping for, but for sheer readability I couldn't fault it. There's a lot of references to books like Harry Potter and game of Theones, Alan Garner etc, which might have come across as shallow, actually is handled very well indeed, illuminating both the myths and how folklore has been used in more recent works - how JK Rowling adapted the brownie folklore into house elves for example. A very enjoyable read.

Now reading The Break by Marian Keyes. Okay so far although perhaps a little slow and repetitive at only 20% in.

[DesdemonasHandkerchief]

18. The Light Between Oceans. Really didn't enjoy this much, a sub Nicholas Sparks type weepy about a Lighthouse keeper and his wife. The unhappily childless couple chance upon a seemingly abandoned baby and her dead father and decide it would be a good idea to bury the father (without alerting the authorities) adopt the child and assume the mother is dead ...... what could possibly go wrong?
    To be fair the male protagonist does go through some angst and soul searching about their actions but I didn't really care about any of them enough to care and so the relentless heart string tugging left me dry eyed and eager to finish up and move on!
    
    
19. When You Hit Me I wasn't keen on the authors poetic prose, and it was a bit meta for me. However it's an important message and it's a powerful book that will stay with me. Hopefully women in similar situations will find it empowering. Not billed as a biographical piece, for legal reasons as far as I can tell, because the story seems to follow exactly the authors experience. The main character/author stays with her abusive husband for four months despite knowing almost from the off that he was controlling and his mental and physical abuse quickly spirals out of control once he's got a ring on her finger and moved her away from her support network. It goes some way to explain why women stay in relationships like this one and demonstrates that confident, intelligent, independent women can fall prey to abusive men as well as vulnerable ones. Not an easy read.
    
    Still reading the short story collection Reader I Married Him which is nice to dip into and out of for light relief from the visceral and disturbing, but definitely page turning, North Water.

[ScribblyGum]

44. Tangerine by Christine Mangan
    Audiobook narrated by Laurel Lefkow and Lucy Scott
    
    Psychological thriller set in 1950s Morocco. The book is narrated by two pov characters, Lucy and Alice, and shuttles back and forth from their time as room mates in an exclusive ladies finishing school in the States (where Something Bad Happened), and Tangiers where Alice has moved to with her new husband John. Lucy appears uninvited at Alice's door one day and their claustrophobic and toxic relationship is reignited.
    Mangan does a good job of setting the scene of the expat lifestyle in Tangiers in the 1950s. It was interesting and enjoyable to have a story set in this stifling and exotic city. George Clooney has bought the film rights to the book (apparently with Scarlett Johansson starring) and I bet it will be a visually stunning film.
    The writing is pretty good. She's better at descriptions than dialogue but overall the style keeps a reasonable tension going throughout the novel.
    Sadly the plot doesn’t match up to the setting or the writing. It’s pretty bog standard predictable stuff and I can’t say I felt particularly psychologically thrilled at any point. It will undoubtably be compared with The Talented Mr Ripley and unfortunately comes off as the flimsier ladies version. Bet it will be on a load of Women's Magazines recommended summer holiday reads lists though, and do well from that. It’s definitely that sort of novel.

[ScribblyGum]

Interesting to see the Women's Prize for Fiction shortlist today.

Happy to see Home Fire, When I Hit You, The Mermaid and Mrs Hancock and Sing Unburied Sing there. Sight is an understandable choice even though I didn’t enjoy it much.
A for The Idiot though.

[southeastdweller]

Thank God Eleanor Oliphant isn’t on the shortlist.

[Toomuchsplother]

Scribbly your reaction is pretty much the same as mine to the Women's Prize. Must read Sight although from various reviews and synopsis I think it is going to annoy me.
Can believe The Idiot made it on.
Really pleased that Mermaid did and Eleanor and Elsie didn't.

[ScribblyGum]

Me too splother.

[Piggywaspushed]

Still not read mermaid as it STILL has not been randomly selected. I keep looking at it longingly.

I didn't know non UK writers were featured in this prize. Not a fan of Ward personally.

[ScribblyGum]

Can you never stray from the random generator's choice Piggy? Or can you fix the system? It’s a really enjoyable read.

[Piggywaspushed]

I can't stray scribbly . That would be sacrilege! I shall wait with dignity. Probably it won't come up until it's gone into paperback and then I'll feel financially diddled, too.

[ScribblyGum]

What's the worst that could happen though? It’s not like your books are going off are they? G'wan, just press pause on the generator for a moment and let a lovely new hardback in. It’s so beautiful to look at too. It’s SAD you have left it on the shelf.

[Piggywaspushed]

Oh... moral dilemma... oh.... the angst!!

I shall think about that all the way to a new thread!

[RemusLupinsBiggestGroupie]

I really want to read Mermaid - waiting for the price to come down on Kindle. I liked the sample.

I tried watching The Woman in White last night, but must admit that it didn't do much for me. Didn't warm to the golden curls actor at all.

[SatsukiKusakabe]

No I was excited about it but found it a bit dull and thought the casting off. Hope it picks up, though, it might.

[southeastdweller]

New thread here