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?

Yes Twelfth Night Seb and Vi stitches

Oh I want that corvus. Am waiting for paperback. I think it will be a more compassionate version of Adam Kay. The bit in the ST was really good.

The Salt Path sounds excellent biblio . But it's £9.99 on kindle . She won't need to shift too many at that price to reverse her fortunes.

Yeah, I'm very happy. Really wanted a copy. There's a competition to win it running too:

www.mumsnet.com/competitions/2018/win-a-copy-of-the-language-of-kindness-b

Just finished 37 which was the long awaited mermaid and Mrs Hancock. I read it in three sittings and liked it more than Remus and a few others but did not like it as much as the enthusiasts. it's one of those books that is hotly anticipated and much lauded but I felt none of the excitement I did when reading White teeth or Captain Corelli or God of Small Things or Beloved for the first time. In fact, I don't think there are such good novels around these days...

It's a curiosity of a book. Very well written but shimmering and elusive so somewhat dissatisfying to be honest. And so may books these days seem to be about Georgian or Victorian prostitutes that I felt I learnt nothing new!

I wanted to to be more profound, I suppose. It reminded me of The Miniaturist minus the boredom!

Thanks Chilli- I think I would rather have more character development than politics! The language of kindness looks good.

72. I am, I am, I am : Seventeen Brushes with death - Maggie O'Farrell Overwhelmingly feeling after reading this is how unlucky this women is!! Admittedly some of these 'brushes' are slight, but others are significant events. Readable but not a stand out. I always seem to find O'Farrell slightly disappointing.
Did lead to a discussion in our house about how lucky we are to live in an age of modern medicine and would we personally still be alive if we had lived 150 years ago. Conclusion being that chances were neither me of DH would have actually been born as both have parents who had meningitis as children. That aside I would likely have died of an asthma attack in my teenage years, in child birth with DC1, or of postnatal infection with DC2. Cheery conversation!!!

22. You Think It I’ll Say It by Curtis Sittenfeld

Smart, eccentric collection of stories preoccupied with the ways in which people misread others in their attempts to make sense of their own lives. They are separate stories, but they share such thematic links and interesting characters, that I read it like a novel.

Also not really enjoying Mermaid so might begin something else.

22 - 25. The Kingscote stories - Antonia Forest

More nostalgia thanks to Lucy Mangan - and expensive nostalgia at that. I really want the holiday books to complete the collection, but they are really daftly expensive.

Anyway, this series (Autumn Term, End of Term, Cricket Term, Attic Term) follow the Marlow sisters, and in particular twins Nicola and Lawrie, through their time at Kingscote school. But unlike most school stories, the characters have personality - there's emotion, sarcasm and painful honesty, in a way that other school stories don't go deep enough.

Highly recommended and now desperately trying to hold off re-reading the Chalet School as well

23. The Sense of an Ending by Julian Barnes. Tony Webster is in his early 60s and feeling fairly content with how his life has turned out, until an unexpected communication from someone in his past leads him to re-evaluate a relationship from 40 years ago when he was a young man. Can he rely on his own memory of the series of events that took place back then, or has time re-written them to make his own role appear in a more favourable light? An exceptional book - worthy of its Booker prize.

"Very well written but shimmering and elusive so somewhat dissatisfying to be honest."

What is a "shimmering" book?

Was that a typo?

No , it wasn't cote : the language kind of 'shimmers' ; all pretty but nothing really happens.

Finished 15. Three men in a boat by Jerome K, Jerome and Jeremy Lewis

I persevered with this book, sold to me as a hilarious guide to a boat trip down the Thames originally written as a travel guide.

If you thought you were reading a travel guide I think it is quite a funny book however if you think you're reading a hilarious book then it is a disappointment in my opinion. There were some funny parts but mostly not.

59: Reasons to Stay Alive – Matt Haig

This was 99p on Kindle yesterday and I knew when I bought it that I was probably making a mistake. Only did so because I had an hour to kill and nothing to read whilst killing it. The fact that I’ve already finished it shows how little content it had – in fact, a lot of it was basically shopping lists (things that make me feel more depressed, things that make me feel a bit less depressed etc). I thought it was trite, self-indulgent and had very little to say, about depression or anything else really. That’s not to say that it was absolutely awful; it wasn’t – and a few little snippets were quite interesting – but so much of it was written in lists, or in really short, clipped, half sentences and there was so little content, that I’m honestly surprised it was ever published. It felt like reading Twitter, but without the insight and humour that can sometimes be found on there.

I don’t don’t even bother finishing it Remus.

*didn’t

Hitting a bit of a wall in the last week or so, struggling to get much reading done and have started a few things that I just couldn’t face continuing (I’m no longer a pathalogical finisher as I used to be, but still quite unusual for me to give up, but I just haven’t been enjoying anything for a while) so I turned to:

24. Bridget Jones’ Baby Helen Fielding - picked this up at the library as had never read it nor seen the film, despite loving the original Bridget books back as a yoof. Took me all of a couple of hours to read, there were bits that made literally no sense (why would Cleaver have even been at their engagement party??) and although she was meant to be super relatable back in the day Bridget is actually completely stupid and highly irritating. I still really enjoyed it

I’m about 30% of the way into Snow Falling on Cedars which is not very seasonal but is very good, so hopefully a bit of silliness with Bridget has refreshed me enough to get stuck into this properly now.

43. The Light Years by Elisabeth Jane Howard. There was a discussion here on the Cazelets last year, and it really annoyed me that I thought I had read it but couldn’t bring anything to mind! Tbf it was probably 20 years ago, but my book memory is usually good. However, I did remember that I had read it once I started it, and I enjoyed it - am also pretty sure I have read at least one of the sequels! I wonder if the large number of POV character is why no one in particular has stuck in my mind? Anyway it is good, very evocative of a past time (at least it feels evocative, obviously I don’t remember the 1930s!), but there are lovely little details like handkerchiefs tucked in wristwatches and the first disposable sanitary towels! I can see why it is loved.

Alias, Snow Falling on Cedars is a great book.

39 The Henchmen of Zenda by KJ Charles

"My name is Jasper Detchard, and according to Rassendyll's narrative, I am dead. This should give you some idea of his accuracy, since I do not dictate these words to some cabbage-scented medium from beyond the veil."

Detchard - expelled from school, cashiered from the army, and disowned by his family - tells the real story of what happened in Ruritania as Princes Michael and Rupert battled for the throne, and his experiences as one of Black Michael's henchmen.

This is enormous fun, full of double and triple crossing, intrigue, plenty of sword fights, and a bit of romance thrown in (though in line with the original, it is much more swashbuckling adventure than romance).

I'd recommend it to anyone needing some entertaining light relief - you definitely need to have read The Prisoner of Zenda first, but that is also great fun, and available for free on Kindle. (KJ Charles generally writes queer romance, and Henchmen does contain a fair bit of explicit sex, but it's very much in the service of the plot.)

Now just finished The Keeper Of Lost Things. I discovered Ruth Hogan is local to me but had never read or heard about this up to now (we aren't a very literary town!).

This book passed the time and was a very quick read. Bit trite for my tastes. I am sure it is compared to books such as Harold Fry and Major Pettigrew but, despite Hogan frequently telling the reader her characters had tears streaming down their face from laughing, I don't think I laughed at all. Humour is not her thing. Nor is pathos tbh. I should have been warned off it from the fact that the glowing soundbite on the cover is from the DM!

Not terrible, not a stinker , but not as affecting as it thinks it is.

I am struggling quite a bit with The Mermaid and Mrs Hancock. I hate not finishing books, and I'm halfway through it now, so I probably will persevere, but I'm finding it very difficult. Annoyingly, I can't quite articulate why. I am bit irritated by the prose - yes, I get that it is period, but it feels overblown and pretentious. Someone mentioned a few pages back that it seemed a bit 'creative writing seminars', and that kind of gets at it, I think. How many times can one use the word 'lours'? Once or twice, at a push, and not every bloody ten pages.

Also, I've just about had enough with the prostitution. I've just come out of the other side of the mermaid party, which is extreme for sure, but the descriptions of the sex make me feel slightly queasy (also heard frequently: her 'commodity'). Angelica's extended rationalisation of her work on the grounds of 'empowerment' made me ragey. The whole novel feels too self-consciously issue-driven and engaged. But then, so is The Essex Serpent, which is a similar type of novel, and didn't provoke this irritation. Maybe my politics just don't align with this author's.

I guess I'm going to continue with it. Does it get better? Or different maybe?

Badb the second half of Mermaid is different as the characters lives change but not sure the style changes that much. I really liked it but it does seem to be divided opinion.
Piggy I did think that Keeper was an absolute stinker! It gives me the rage thinking about it over a year later, but I think that was because I read it for book club, during a holiday and felt I had wasted my time terribly. And I really resented it!
About 1/3 into Robert Harris - Ghost and really enjoying it.

Badb - I thought the second half was better than the first half, although it never really 'worked' for me. Agree that it's too self consciously issue-driven, and, if anything, that gets worse as it progresses.

Will persevere with Mermaid honestly but am currently reading The Roaring Boy by Edward Marston. Which is a good deal less heavy and I am probably enjoying it more.