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?

Scribbly yes, that holiday bit ground my gears too. Having had 4 DC myself my DH would swallow his teeth if I suggested that!! She does remind me of some I know though and I think I might give this as a Xmas present to see if she recognises herself!!

Corvus
I agree re Rochester. I just couldn't believe in the cruelty, based on the depiction of him in 'Jane Eyre'. For me, that meant Sea just didn't work - I just felt that she had an axe to grind and assassinated Rochester's character to do so, with no real basis from the original model.

corvus I agree with that too, and I am quite clear eyed about Rochester

exexpat I was really disappointed by the Elkin too, I'd been really looking forward to it, but it didn't seem to hold my interest and ended up skimming most of it. If you like the idea behind the book have you read Jessa Crispin's 'The Dead Ladies Project'? The structure and concept behind the book are very similar to Elkin's but it was, for me, a much more satisfying read, and it inspired me to do a lot of reading/re-reading around the authors she covers. Similarly Kate Zambreno's 'Heroines' which is a little more academic but beautifully written and passionate about the writers she covers.

Orangecake I'd add Nelly Bly '10 Days in a mad-house' Nelly was a journalist who in the 1880s went undercover in an 'asylum'; it's a fascinating account and she was clearly an intrepid woman; Janet Hobhouse 'The Furies' a supposedly semi-autobiographical account of dealing with life after your mother has committed suicide, I thought it was a really powerful novel; Lisa Appignanesi's 'Mad, Bad and Sad' which is an examination of how women with mental health issues have been treated, includes discussion of women such as Virginia Woolf and Sylvia Plath; also was fascinated by Asti (Siri's sister) Hustvedt's account of women with 'hysteria' 'Medical Muses: Hysteria in Nineteenth-Century Paris'.

There's also Kate Summerscale's The Wicked Boy which has a section about Victorian mental health care/ asylums.

I really must read Wide Sargasso Sea.

Just finished The Fourteenth Letter by Claire Evans. Oh dear oh dear oh dear. Oh dear. Oh. Dear.

This is risible. Terrible dialogue. Terrible, silly plot. I kid you not , a character escapes death at least 8 times. And it's 1881, and she is a black American on the run , from Arizona and called Savannah...It's like a story my year 10s would write.

Here's a line of dialogue:
'Let Mildred and my aunt go; it's me you want! They have done nothing!'

It claims serious themes such as eugenics and Darwinism, and includes a long historical note at the end.

Savannah is like a Doctor Who assistant : it reads in fact a bit like one of those weird and annoying Dr Who Victorian episodes, crossed with the Da Vinci Code (yes, that bad) crossed with what Phillip Pullman would do if he wrote (badly) for adults.

Still, if you want lots of cliffhangers (at least twice per chapter), unpleasant rape and incest plots and reveals that really aren't very surprising (or revealing) you might enjoy it!

So awful, it's bizarrely good.

Maybe it's me : Amazon reviewers rather like it!

On another note, for those of you who are following my random number generator , Mermaid has come up! At last!!

Oh , I missed the long expositions where every baddie reveals exactly what they are up to (whilst grinning madly of course)

Hi all. Still chugging along but slowed during a Shetland book which I enjoyed but warm weather made me feel the need to get out rather than sit and read.

I am currently reading the the tattooist of Auschwitz for a book group and I wanted to share just how much I am hating it. I hate and loathe it. It is written like by a child presenting it for a piece of school work. An earnest and very bright child but still. I have no idea if it has been reviewed elsewhere I am afraid but I wanted to share just how much I am hating it

Oh and piggys comment reminds me that every baddy in this book has a “sick grin”

Great review, Piggy.

Interestingly, my author is a commissioning person at the Beeb. It did feel like she was imagining it as a TV programme.

dottierichardson - thanks for the recommendations. I have just looked up The Dead Ladies Project, and it looks very much like my sort of thing, so I have added it to my (ridiculously long) wish-list.

Not that I am meant to be buying any more books at the moment - I have been trying to organise/reorganise/cull some of my books this week, and am realising just how many unread books I have around the house, and how many of them I do still want to read. I could probably read at my current rate for several years without buying any new books, but that would mean not going to any bookshops, and I cannot deny myself one of my greatest pleasures.

Also, a tip/warning, depending on whether you are trying to cut down on book-buying: you can find some serious bargains in the second-hand book rooms at National Trust houses. The other week I found a mint Persephone edition of The Exiles Return by Elisabeth de Waal (grandmother of Edmund de Waal, of Hare With The Amber Eyes fame) for £1.! And a hardback (also mint condition) of The Evenings by Gerard Reve for £1.50. Now, why is it I have so many piles of unread books around the house...

40. Naomi Novik - Blood of Tyrants

Turns out the library had the last two of the series in stock, so I picked up both of them on Saturday. This one bgins in Japan where a shipwreck has separated Captain Will Laurence from his dragon Temeraire, and left Laurence with amnesia as well. Japan is a powder keg and highly suspicious of foreigners, and Temeraire's attempts to find his captain may cause it to ignite. Britain really could do without another enemy as Napoleon is overrunning Spain, but Laurence and Temeraire must negotiate both Japan and China as well as Laurence's memory loss in order to bring new allies to join the fray once news arrives of Napoleon's invasion of Russia.

I gave up on Temeraire around book 5 I think Chilli- has anything new actually happened? It started to feel like I was reading the same book over and over again!

I must stop being enticed by all the recs here- I have a huge tbr pile and I may be moving to Sweden so they can’t all come with me so I must crack on with them!

41. Uniquely Human by Barry Prizant. I really enjoyed this autism book- some useful thoughts on teaching and relating to students with autism. However, I imagine if you had more knowledge of autism than me you might find it a bit superficial and stuff you knew already.

Just to chip in on the 'books about mental health' theme, an interesting non-fiction one I came across last year-ish was Sarah Wise's Inconvenient People, a history of confinement and asylums. Obvs the treatment of mental health was a completely unregulated sphere in the 18th and 19th centuries, so people were routinely locked up, often on the say-so of deeply unscrupulous relatives. Actual abduction by the henchmen of supposed 'Mad-doctors' was common. It was an eye-opening and alarming read.

Two great nature writing books on the Kindle Daily Deal today by John Lewis Stempel and Robert Macfarlane. I’ve read them both and would definitely recommend them if you like nature/environment writing. They’re the best nature writers around IMHO.

19. The Burgess Boys, by Elizabeth Strout. Another story focused on the complexities of family relationships and small town living. The eponymous Burgess boys, Jim and Bob, are lawyers from Shirley Falls, Maine now living a more high-flying life in New York. They are called back to their hometown by their sister, whose teenage son has been charged with a hate crime against the newly arrived community of Somali refugees (he threw a pigs head into their mosque). Both the brothers are in the midst of mid-life crises, rooted in a childhood trauma which gradually comes to light as the novel progresses.

This is my third Elizabeth Strout in a row (following Anything is Possible and Amy and Isabelle). I might have overdosed somewhat, as I didn't like this quite as much as the others. It was the same feel and style, so it was still enjoyable. But I didn't feel as grabbed by it as I did by some of the others. The central story was fine, and it was very well written, as usual. She writes women better than men, I think, and maybe that was an issue - although there were chapters told from the perspectives of the women characters, the story was for the most part carried by Bob, and I just didn't find him compelling enough. Jim, who was the 'golden child' of the family, was loathsome and annoying - that was the point, of course, but I still wanted to shake everyone when they were fawning all over him. I wasn't too sure about the sections narrated by the Somali characters - Strout is particularly strong on the WASP/working class white community stuff, and I thought that she was on slightly shakier ground when she was addressing race. I listened to the book on Audible, and this might have been an issue with the narrator, who put on a strong accent in these sections, and that always feels a bit tricky.

All in all, it's a good book, and I suppose timely - very much connected with Islamophobia and politics of race and migration in Obama's America. It just fell a bit flat, for me. Though as I said - this is probably due to Strout overdose.

I've downloaded The Mermaid and Mr Hancock, and find it interesting so far, and can see why it's dividing opinion a bit here. Definitely an Essex Serpent type of book.

23. Lilian Boxfish Goes For A Walk - Loosely based on the life of Margret Fishback, who was a 1930's poet and copy writer, this was available on BorrowBox audio and I remember it being mentioned favourably on here so gave it a go. It's well written and 'Lilian' has a nice turn of phrase but it wasn't for me. Lilian Boxfish has a relatively eventful walk and a relatively eventful life, that she divulges in alternate chapters, but sadly neither were eventful enough to produce a book capable of maintaining my interest. The characters introduced, other than Lilian herself, were thumb-nail sketches and I didn't care enough about what happened to them. More proof if I needed it that I prefer plot driven novels.

24. Reader I Married Him - A collection of short stories inspired by the famous line from Jane Eyre, as always with a short story collection some were better than others but there were no stinkers. Overall I think I preferred the stories more directly inspired by Jane Eyre, Helen Dunmore's retelling from Grace Poole's perspective was masterly, turning everything you thought you knew about JE on it's head and recasting Jane as a sly manipulator: "I know what she is...She has come here hunting. I have seen how she devours red meat when she thinks herself alone.'
    Other favourites were The Orphan Exchange by Audrey Niffenger which relocates Lowood to a sort of alternative reality with a 'Never Let Me Go' type twist.
    And The Mirror which, with some basis in the original fiction given his cruelty and manipulation of Jane with the whole Blanche Ingram affair, casts Mr Rochester as a serial Gaslighter. Lionel Shriver's The Self Seeding Sycamore, which is only inspired by the line rather than the book (it transpires she's not actually read it!) is also very good.

Thank you for all the recommendations. I will check them out!

Thanks, Whippetwoman. I bought the Robert McFarlane.

I have just received the notification from my library that my copy of Lilian Boxfish is available to borrow. Will be interested to see if I enjoy it after your review Desdemona.

My Circe book hangover continues unabated. I've DNFd four audiobooks already this week and can’t even be arsed to read crap fantasy, my usual go-to cure. Lilian on her walk is not filling me with hope if lusty magicians can’t raise any interest.

Just to add that I gave up on The Mermaid and Mrs Hancock. To me, it smacked too much of its genesis, with the kind of prose you can tell was endlessly laboured over in creative writing seminars. I got a few chapters in, it was due back at the library, and I just couldn't be bothered.

I hope you enjoy Lillian Boxfish, Scribbly lots of people seem to, I think I'm not 'deep' enough for books of that nature I've got Essex Serpent and Lincoln in The Bardo on my TBR pile but I'd lay a pound to a penny they leave my cold!