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50 Book Challenge 2018 Part Five

996 replies

southeastdweller · 23/04/2018 20:29

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

How're you getting on so far?

OP posts:
diamantegal · 04/05/2018 22:27

I've just ordered Bookworm from Amazon, so good to see another positive review. Sounds like I'm exactly the right age bracket and curiosity got the better of me in the end. Should be turning up tomorrow so that's the bank holiday sorted!

Sadik · 04/05/2018 22:59

Hope you enjoy it diamantegal

TooExtraImmatureCheddar · 04/05/2018 23:35

Piggy, I am so sorry that the medical profession chose to obfuscate like that. That is truly shit. Utterly unforgivable.

RemusLupinsBiggestGroupie · 05/05/2018 06:58

Splother - we will have to agree to disagree!

52: Gillespie and I – Jane Harris
I didn’t think much of this at all. Lots of it was just really dull and repetitive. It picked up a bit in the middle with the trial, but then didn’t really seem to go anywhere again. I’m just not sure what it was trying to be/do – it failed as a crime story and it didn’t really succeed as a study of obsession, with a flawed and unreliable narrator. It all just fell a bit flat (scrap that: MOST of it was flat – it didn’t fall) and by the end I thought the writer was boring herself as well. I thought it was, frankly, terrible.

RemusLupinsBiggestGroupie · 05/05/2018 06:59

Only finished it because I had a bout of insomnia but couldn't be bothered to get up and find another book/fetch my Kindle!

Tarahumara · 05/05/2018 07:33

A few more to add to my list:

  1. With the End in Mind by Kathryn Mannix. This was a recommendation from this thread (I think possibly from EllisIsland?) and it's the first book I've ever listened to on Audible. The author is a doctor with many years of experience in palliative care, and this is a collection of stories (based on real life cases) of people very close to the end of their lives. Mannix's main overarching theme is that we should all be more open and honest about death, so that it is considered a natural part of life rather than a terrifying unknown. I agree with her. These stories were compassionate, well written and beautifully narrated by Elizabeth Carling. I really cared about many of the people described, despite the fact that the stories were short and you kind of knew in advance how they were going to end! I shed tears more than once Sad. Very highly recommended.

  2. I Am, I Am, I Am by Maggie O'Farrell. Coincidentally another book about death! This is a very unusual autobiography, in which the author recounts her 17 near-death experiences (some more serious than others) and by doing so, and fleshing out the circumstances around each one, gradually builds up a picture of her life so that by the end you feel as if you 'know' her well. I like Maggie O'Farrell's fiction books (my favourite is After You'd Gone) and I was fascinated by this. Excellent.

  3. Amsterdam by Ian McEwan. Old friends Clive and Vernon meet up at the sad occasion of the funeral of their mutual friend (and, in the past, more than a friend) Molly. Afterwards they return to their days jobs (as a composer and a newspaper editor respectively) but the next couple of weeks are a stressful time for both of them. Classic McEwan, with a characteristically dark ending. I'm a McEwan fan (I know not everyone on this thread is) and I enjoyed this one.

Just started Bookworm and loving it already!

Piggywaspushed · 05/05/2018 08:13

Loving the word obfuscate !

Piggywaspushed · 05/05/2018 08:17

Bookworm is on my shopping list but I'm confused. I think I am Mangan's age, possibly a smidge younger and I definitely did not read Sweet Valley High as a teenager and don't think I was aware of it . There is a possibility that I was being up myself precocious and reading Tess and other stuff instead. I do, however, strongly recall it being on telly in the early 90s and all the 13/14 yos I taught then devouring the books. Perhaps this is all a false memory , but I'd swear blind they were big in the 90s , not 80s!

Sadik · 05/05/2018 08:45

I think it probably depends where you were in the country Piggy whether they happened to be popular at your school? The TV series was later, but I think the books were around from the late 80s onwards (a quick google suggests they were published from 1984).

I definitely remember SVH + Judy Blume being big sellers - and although JB was published earlier, she only seemed to take off where I lived (midlands) again later in the 80s when I was too old for them. (I've still never read Forever, though I must have sold an awful lot of copies in my time!)

StitchesInTime · 05/05/2018 09:25

Thanks for the comments about The City and the City, I think it will stay off my to-read list!
Sounds like the lengths unseeing is taken to will annoy me just as much in the book as they did in the TV adaptation.

And I do understand what you’re saying about unseeing Mina, goodness knows I was unseeing about a dozen chuggers as hard as I could in when I was in town yesterday, but the TV adaptation took it to levels I found hard to swallow (like the gunfire I mentioned before, or the notion that you’re suddenly invisible to someone staring at you because you’ve stepped over an imaginary line in the road).

Sadik · 05/05/2018 09:42

Now I didn't have a problem with the unseeing - I read it as a metaphor both for the way we all 'unsee' things in society, but also particularly for the way that some truths had to be both absolutely known, and never spoken / admitted in the state socialist societies in Eastern Europe. (parallels with the absurdist approach in the Death of Stalin film).

CheerfulMuddler · 05/05/2018 09:45

SVH was definitely still around in the early nineties - that's when I read them. Not sure if new ones were still being published, but there were still whole shelves of them in bookshops.

Piggy and TooExtra, I think we're going to have to disagree on this one. In the middle of a dangerous medical procedure, I want everyone's attention on saving my baby, and afterwards - presuming all goes well - I don't want to be told "Well, it might have gone really badly, but hey, it didn't!" I want to cuddle my baby and salvage what I can of my mythical lovely birth experience (was any greater lie ever told to woman etc etc?)

I've got a couple of friends who had traumatic birth experiences and it really screwed them up. My obstetrician friend was quite interesting about this - she said some doctors love drama, and can actually create trauma where it doesn't have to exist. Her approach is much more the "Well, baby appears to be a bit distressed, so we're going to try and get her out now" method I guess you had - the hope being that patients aren't terrified their baby is going to die and go away with PTSD like my friends did.

Piggywaspushed · 05/05/2018 11:05

cheerful you may not have realised it but my post was light hearted and just intrigued, really!

On a serious note, though, they didn't tell me, or seem to notice themselves, that my chance of having a second similar experience went from 0.1% to about 20%, so that should have been said!

Piggywaspushed · 05/05/2018 11:07

.. and actually it was pretty traumatic so on another serious note afterwards, they could have said,'well that wasn't the way it always is, and that tear was actually a bad one, and that's a lot of blood loss, so please do take it easy'! They did put me in a private sideroom after the birth, though, which was nice! (and in hindsight, code!)

Piggywaspushed · 05/05/2018 11:09

sadi, yes Judy was my bag. My DM is American so I was brought up on Judy Blume from the 1970s really and, at an earlier age, Laura Ingalls Wilder. SVH completely passed me by!

You must read 'Forever' just so you can pop your cherry, as it were...

nowanearlyNicemum · 05/05/2018 11:34

12. The boy in the striped pyjamas - John Boyne

I read this when it first came out thanks to a friend's recommendation. I definitely appreciated it more the first time round. My youngest is reading this at school at the moment so thought I should refresh my memory. Also, as she pointed out to me I have a book by the same author on my TBR pile (Heart's Invisible Furies).

CheerfulMuddler · 05/05/2018 12:25

Ha, completely missed that, Piggy, sorry! And yeah, that might have been useful information ...

RemusLupinsBiggestGroupie · 05/05/2018 12:49

I thought 'unseeing' was an absolutely brilliant concept - I wish I'd thought of it!

Tarahumara · 05/05/2018 13:20

Yes Piggy I agree. Loved Judy Blume and Laura Ingalls Wilder, but Sweet Valley High passed me by completely. Born in 1974 btw.

Piggywaspushed · 05/05/2018 13:26

Just to come back on one thing about your obstetrician friend's entirely sensible sounding methodology cheerful - that isn't what happens in shoulder dystocia, so no time for the jolly practicalities. Everything appears to be perfectly normal, if somewhat painful, and blessedly near its conclusion, with one, maybe two midwives In attendance and an ashen faced DH. Suddenly said midwife slams her hand on panic button that you thought was a call button for you to ask for a bit of light pain relief or some water, and about six burly people enter the room - more people than you ever knew were even on the ward - and yanking , bed collapsing and a fair amount of talking loudly and very fast occurs. Thankfully, that was it for me!

My specific problem was that DS1 clearly knew I was a teacher and felt the need to be born with his hand up rather than meekly folded in front of him! Yes : ouch indeed.

DH actually remembers more about this than me , of course!

Anyway , just finished an altogether more annoying and less interesting book. Review to follow...

Piggywaspushed · 05/05/2018 13:42
  1. When The Adults Change Everything Changes : Paul Dix.

This book is written by he of the now infamous handshake on the way into classrooms approach. Everything about rapidly promoted males with loud voices who leave actual teaching early and then hop form school to school getting rich consulting annoys me anyway, so I was bound not to warm to this book. However, what annoys me is he doesn't really set out a vision. He just sys' this is the way to do it because it's what I do so it must be right' and I don't really think he says what to really do with day to day low level to mid level poor behaviour because he just doesn't believe it will happen if we meet and greet and show 'botheredness'. And I loathe scripts with a passion. A poor trainee reading this would talk in constant scripts and feel they should follow every incident up with a 15 minute meeting with a child, tell the child's mum that she has lost weight (I kid you not) or her hair looks nice... and then , if all else fails, wander the streets of Britain visiting the houses of the worst offenders.

I don't think we would get on because I am a shouter. We do agree on some things. I too don't like endless convoluted sanctions and names on boards. I also don't believe in detentions. But I do think teachers should have back up, where he seems to believe all teachers should deal with their own classroom issues. He does, fair play to him, state the obvious that if SLT were more involved , things would help. And does say that if they chivvied students to lessons in the corridors, fewer of the issues would occur. He seems to be responsible for my SLT's idea that wandering around with a binbag at lunchtime and picking up the rubbish the kids have dropped is somehow a good look for a head.

A few of my SLT have come across his thoughts ( I refuse to believe they have read the book) and interestingly seem to have got to about chapter 3 of his ideas.

An irritatingly smug book. He lost me by repeatedly self promoting himself as a 'teacher wrangler' and by putting excerpts from his own reports at the end of the chapter to prove how naughty he was at school. Oh do fuck off.

On balance, it was a pile of shite Grin

RemusLupinsBiggestGroupie · 05/05/2018 15:08

That handshake thing is the biggest pile of nonsense ever - a ridiculous waste of time.

Sadik · 05/05/2018 15:13

I have always thought one of the worst things about being a teacher (apart from the children - I wasn't much into them even when I was one) must be the endless procession of people telling you how you ought to do your job.

Piggywaspushed · 05/05/2018 15:16

Oh absolutely sadi - and ex teachers are the worst , like ex smokers and ex drinkers, I guess!

That is something that has got much worse in schools , I think. Not sure why. But definitely more people go into teaching now from Teach First type backgrounds who actually want to be education Tsars. they serve their classroom time, bugger off, and tell the rest of us what to do. And make friends in high places while they are at it, so it becomes 'policy'

I need to find an education book that doesn't make me cross!

Sadik · 05/05/2018 15:18

Have you read JL Carr's The Harpole Report? It's very funny, though definitely not a 'how to' book Grin (he was a teacher then headteacher for years)