50 Book Challenge 2018 Part Five

[southeastdweller]

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?

Just finished 25. Swing Time by Zadie Smith This was good in parts and I thought the way it depicted race and fame was very good. The constant yo-yo time frame got on my nerves rather, especially as the chapters were short. I'm a bit allergic when things get too literary so maybe that's just me.
Now onto Memoirs of a Madman by Gustave Flaubert.

33 Why I'm No Longer Talking To White People About Race by Reni Eddo-Lodge
Much reviewed on this thread. I also found it a really worthwhile read, and I was also particularly interested in the discussion of intersectionality which I thought was excellent.

and 34 Radicals: Outsiders Changing the World by Jamie Bartlett, listened to on Audible

This is by the same author as The Dark Net, which I really enjoyed a while back & was billed as an exploration of radical thinking in the age of Trump and Brexit. He examines a number of radical movements, from Transhumanism, through right wing anti-Islam political movements, the Italian 5-star movement, a new age eco-village to climate activism.

Sadly I didn't think it was as good as The Dark Net - the very wide spread of subjects covered made it a bit bitty. It also wasn't helped by the fact that I've kicked around in the radical left / activist groups for much of my life, and I thought he'd ended up with quite a surface & partial view, which didn't give me confidence for the other sections. However, I thought his closing chapter on the importance of the expression of radical ideas - even where you disagree with them - was very good and well argued, just a shame the rest of the book didn't live up to it.

I've just started The Secret Barrister next on audible, which looks interesting - anyone else read it?

Two books finished this week weekend. Love a bank holiday!

26. Just What Kind of Mother Are You - Paula Daly

Lisa was supposed to be looking after her friends child. But she forgot. Now the girl is missing. Can Lisa find her and fix everything?

This was quite a good book and kept me interested. Didn’t see the plot twist coming to be honest and suspected everyone else first I think.

27. Elizabeth is Missing - Emma Healey

Maud is suffering from dementia. She doesn’t know much but does know that her friend Elizabeth is missing. But can she get anyone to believe her?

I thoroughly enjoyed this one. Picked it up at the library not expecting to like it but to get their issues up. The mix of present and past and the occasional funny or sad side of dementia was a refreshing change from all the thrillers I seem to read.

33. The Spark by Kristine Barnett

I loved this book. Barnett’s son Jacob was diagnosed with autism when he was 2, with grim prognosises for his future - his parents were told that he would probably never be able to talk or read. Barnett writes about how, by encouraging Jacob to follow his passions, and with a lot of hard work along the way, he defied expectations to develop into a Maths and science prodigy who started university aged 9. The

Clearly Jacob is an exceptional case. But Barnett strongly believes that for all children following a child’s passions (or their “spark”) will help them to unlock their potential and help them to achieve more.

34. The Girl Before by JP Delaney

Psychological thriller. Jane gets the chance to live in a stunning minimalist technological wonder house, provided she agrees to abide by a list of exacting rules.
(Over 200 rules! Including no books, and Jane wonders “who wouldn’t want to live in a house like this?” I’m sure no one on this thread will be surprised to hear me say that a property where books are banned would most definitely not be at the top of my list of desirable properties)

But it’s not long before she discovers that a previous tenant, Emma, died in the house, and Jane starts to wonder if someone has got away with murder...

Switches between Jane and Emma’s point of view. An entertaining quick read.

64. Window Wall, Melanie Rawn. Book 4 of Glass Thorns series.

This one was not so good. Very slow start - the last 3 books were filled with references to Cade having to be careful not to block out emotions, but lo and behold, the beginning of this book features Cade doing just that, and it seems he's been doing it for the last 2 years. The explanation for this didn't seem realistic, seeing as the resolution was very easily achieved - why did someone not do that 2 years ago? As a series, there are an awful lot of loose threads hanging to be resolved in the final book - surely at least some of them could have been resolved earlier? Either that or books 3 & 4 could have been amalgamated into one so it didn't feel like two whole books pass since certain plot elements were introduced with nothing happening to advance them.

I am currently feeling a bit bereft, mind you. Not sure what I'll pick up next. I ought to finish Anna Karenina but it's a weighty tome to lug around so I haven't brought it for the commute. I've downloaded a Mercedes Lackey but the first few pages aren't really grabbing me. I'm also not sure where to start with her stuff - she's written so much and a lot of it seems to be interlinked, but as a new reader I'm not sure whether to go back to her very earliest stuff or not. Sometimes those aren't so good - or sometimes the earliest stuff is best and the later ones are dross (looking at you, Anne McCaffrey). The very early stuff is only available in paperback as far as I can see. I know someone on these threads was reading Mercedes Lackey - any advice on a place to start?

I hope everyone had a lovely bank holiday weekend. On Sunday I spent an hour reading in a hammock. It was amazing!

As a result of much lounging I finished 43. The Idiot - Elif Batuman and I know I'm going against the grain here but I enjoyed this very much. There's not much plot but I just liked the way Selin was written and the way she describes things and gets things wrong or overthinks. There were some lovely phrases too and all in all it reminded me of what it was like to be a student at University in the 1990s, when you're not sure about things and are trying to make sense of your place in the world.

24. No Fixed Address Susin Nielsen Young teen book. Twelve-year-old Felix and his mum are living in a van. At first it's fun. Then it isn't. I liked this a lot. It's well-written and, what is rarer, Nielsen has really thought about the practicalities of living without toilets, showers, access to an electricity hook up and - later - a regular source of income. The book doesn't shy away from the darker side of Felix's situation, but it's also funny, very sweet, and told with a very light touch. His Hermionesque sort-of girlfriend is hilarious. If your kid liked Wonder, they'll probably like this (and it doesn't have the hideous "disabled people are so inspiring for existing!" ending). I got a proof copy through work - not out until October.

Also, the person that had the book before me from the library left a book mark in it of an obscure place in the South of France that I have often visited as a child with my parents and this made me feel oddly happy about reading it

32. Gillespie and I.Undeterred by remus , I ploughed ahead and read this. All 600 pages took me two and a half days (I read more in the sunshine!)

I really liked this book. I like unreliable narrator books anyway, but the relish Harris clearly has in creating a voice is clear. And her humorous touches were fabulous, especially at the beginning. Some reviewers call this 'chilling'. I didn't find it chilling - more grimly diverting. It reminds me of another writer's style and I just can't put my finger on it. Another one with a potentially batty old woman who therefore gets way with, who knows what... maybe Elizabeth Is Missing? And it's what that other Scottish author is trying to pull off in that book about the green dress and the orange(clementine peel) in The Other Mrs Walker but doesn't quite manage.

I'd read another book by Harris, definitely. Eventually, I found a readable book which also has literary qualities. Daisy Goodwin comments on it being Booker worthy but I don't think this book won any awards.

This and Almond For A Parrot are my standouts thus far.

Another Waitrose book next : The Fourteenth Letter.

74. Five Children On The Western Front by Kate Saunders

A sequel to Five Children And It by E Nesbit. I did enjoy this, although obviously it’s a children’s book so I’m not the target audience. I think it did a good job of introducing some aspects of the war, although most of it was at a remove (the title is misleading as only a couple of the children, now grown up, are actually at the Front!). However, the Psammead was rather annoying in this one. I read this because DD read it and wanted to talk about it.

75. The Corpse Bridge by Stephen Booth

Run of the mill murder/detective book. Story didn’t really engage me and I didn’t like the main detective characters - it’s number 14 in a series featuring the same detectives and I haven’t read any others, so I think I was missing a lot of the back story. Don’t think I would bother reading any more of the series.

TooExtraImmatureCheddar, re Mercedes Lackey I'd say the earlier books are the best. Avoid anything co-authored and anything post about 1994. Which ones do you have?
But - I hate saying this, but I'm not that sure that she stands up to a first read these days. I still re-read the Last Herald Mage series (Magic's Pawn is the first) and the Arrows series, and still love them, but I think as much for nostalgia reasons as anything else. Back then of course she was one of the first mainstream fantasy authors writing LGB characters, and also one of the few writing from a left sensibility, and therefore it was very easy to overlook her flaws. (She's also the queen of emotion dumped on the page, and hence the perfect read for teenagers )

Sadik, I randomly chose the first in a newer series because it was available on Kindle for £1.39. Foundation, published in 2007, which makes it well outside of your pre-1994 timescale! Sounds like I might be better buying a copy of the first Arrows book and seeing how I get on. I know what you mean about some writing not standing the test of time unless you have that rosy glow of nostalgia to blind you to its flaws.

The Handmaid's Tale - Margaret Atwood

Ah, the bliss of having a meeting that required a six hour round trip, all by train. I'd forgotten how nice it was to have the time to properly read, rather than just five minutes before falling asleep in bed.

Anyway, this is a dystopian novel, about a world where women have very restricted roles, and in the case of the main character, her role is to bear children for other women. It's not a cheery novel in any way, but it did draw me in, and despite not being generally a fan of this genre, I did enjoy reading it.

Now to finish Bookworm. If I'm honest, I'm enjoying the nostalgia more than the writing, but will withhold judgement until I've finished.

Piggy
Glad you enjoyed it. I doubt I'll bother with another of hers! :)

Sadik, I haven't read the Secret Barrister book but have recently started to follow him/her on Twitter after their insightful writing about the Alfie Evans case, and imagine that the book will be a good read. Look forward to reading your review.

41. Beyond the Bright Sea, Lauren Wolk

Another one from the Carnegie shortlist. This is a children's book rather than YA, and is a lovely gentle book about where we come from and what it means to belong to a family. 12-year-old Crow has lived all her life on an isolated island off the Massachusetts coast, after she washed ashore in a boat as a newborn baby. She starts to question where she came from and this leads to discoveries about herself, about the people who love her, and about where she lives. A charming book for thoughtful older children or young teens.

42. The Children Act, Ian McEwan

I know lots of people find IM annoying but am not quite sure why. Certainly I found aspects of this book annoying, although it was very readable (and quite short). The central character is a 60-year-old female high court judge working in family law, dealing with morally tangled cases concerning children and their welfare. A crisis in her personal life collides with a particularly affecting case, and I guess the idea of the book is to explore how the two parts of her life interact.

McEwan does a not-bad job of writing as an older woman, but it's not quite convincing enough, especially at some key points where you just think "Why? Why on earth is she doing THAT?". She is an incredibly self-contained character, and while this ties in with her judicious nature, it makes for some very frustrating scenes where she has this great long internal monologue and says nothing to the people she is interacting with. I know that emotional inarticulacy is a theme in McEwan (at least in the ones of his that I've read) but for me, this just annoyed the hell out of me. I kept wanting to shout "JUST TALK TO HIM WILL YOU" into the pages.

The stuff about the workings of the family court was good though, and all very much based on real life. I think I need to read a non-fictional account of family law instead.

34. Lillian Boxfish Takes a Walk by Kathleen Rooney

An 85-year-old woman walks the dangerous streets of New York alone in the final hours of 1984, looking back on her life as the highest-earning woman in advertising (working for Macy's department store) fifty years earlier, and all that followed when she had to give up her job, and a crucial part of her identity, on having a baby.

The book alternates chapters between New Year's Eve 1984, and the younger years of Lillian Boxfish, a strong, eccentric, independent, but also vulnerable character, who was a poet as well as an advertising copywriter through the roaring twenties and the depression of the 1930s, on into the war years and beyond.

Apparently the character of Lillian Boxfish was inspired by an actual woman, Margaret Fishback, who was a high-profile ad-woman and poet in New York of the 1930s.

There are obvious nods in this book to other well-known fictional women who walked city streets (e.g. Mrs Dalloway) but Lillian Boxfish is an original character in her own right.

An excellent read, and one which I think would appeal to many of you on this thread so I was astounded to see that according to a brief search earlier, no one else on Mumsnet has read this book. I find that hard to believe, but if it is true, then it should change immediately. Read this book!

As a further recommendation, the UK edition was published by Daunt Books, as in the small chain of brilliant travel-focused bookshops in London, and they always seem to have very good taste in their selection of books.

Piggy having enjoyed Gillespie and I I urge you to seek out The Observations by the same author. It's even better.

And yes, there might be an element of it being a Scottish thing with the narrative voice in both books. There's a dry humour in The Observations that I really liked.

It's on my list now coo. Thanks

Keith I love the way you start your review with a breezy not sure why people find Ian McEwen books annoying, then end up shouting in frustration WITH THE CAPS LOCK ON. Hmm, maybe there's your answer, and he certainly has that effect on me.

23. Daughter of Eden by Chris Beckett I have truly adored this sci-fi world building trilogy. Although there is a big jump in time between books one and two, this final one is set just a few years after the events of book two, and, without giving any spoilers, really unites and makes sense of the whole story arc. It wasn't perfect in every way, and I wished some aspects had been explored in more detail. I could forgive its faults due to the many strengths, including great believable female characters, and above all the fantastically imaginative creation of the planet Eden itself.

I do like Atonement but the rest of McEwan's books leave me cold. He can't write women well.

I threw Atonement across the room.

20. Bookworm - Lucy Mangan

Now I've finished this, I stand by what I said earlier. As a piece of nostalgia, it's wonderful - just makes me want to go and re-read all the books from my childhood (although I did this with the Chalet School and by the time I'd bought the whole series, I was several hundreds of pounds poorer, so maybe not...)

However, I just didn't gel with the style of writing. Maybe I'm not a proper bookworm, but it just felt very pretentious - I loved these books as a child but because I loved the stories, not because I was able to appreciate the different layers of the characters (at least not knowingly). I also think Lucy Mangan is guilty of using the thesaurus function on her computer too much, but that may be personal taste.

Now to decide which childhood classics I can justify buying for DS so that I can read them myself. Wonder if he'd like Antonia Forest...?

Yes museum I thought that was funny too you’re on the road to finding out why, keith. McEwan is a technically proficient writer, but uses his powers for evil instead of good. For example, after reading On Chesil Beach, I actually unlearned what sex was. He has no subtlety, he is always hammering home some big theme, and can’t help putting a crazy plot device in just to see if he can write his way into making sense of it. The whole “letter” premise that Atonement spins on is utterly utterly ridiculous and unreal before you get to anything else. I don’t know about women, but all of his characters aren’t terribly well written to me, I’ve rarely slipped into thinking any of them are people.

I am not a McEwan fan, the worst for me is Enduring Love. Atonement is also dire but The Cement Garden is good, though somewhat disturbing.