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 Keeper is definitely a 'holiday read'. Which is a euphemism for shit- and not minding to leave it behind to help out with the luggage allowance.

I just found mermaid frothy, if you excuse the pun! I think I missed the 'issues'. I can see what they were but I didn't find them very foregrounded. I just still feel really underwhelmed. But at least something - sort of - happens , unlike the Essex Serpent and The Miniaturist, both books I wanted to throw at someone when I got to the end.

Thanks toomuchsplother and RemusLupinsBiggestGroupie, it's good to know that the second half is different anyway (better or not, depending on your view).

Piggywaspushed, I agree that it is frothy. For me, it is both too superficial AND too deep, which is weird. I think maybe that it's kind of playing at being deep, but maybe there's nothing behind the fancy prose. All fur coat and that.

I shall continue. I'm hoping to be finished it by next weekend. Maybe I should have stuck with more Elizabeth Strout!

badb I’m not enjoying Mermaid at all, and finding it not very well written and annoying. It is not like Essex Serpent at all, which wore its historical setting a lot more lightly, and was just a lot better written. This is making me cringe in places. But I’m sort of persevering.

It doesn’t have the obvious intelligence of Serpent, which was about a lot of things without needing to do a lot.

This is all mouth and no trousers.

22. The Devil in The Marshalsea by Antonia Hodgson.
Fallen gentleman Tom Hawkins' penchant for wine, women and gambling finally catches up with him, and he is admitted into the debtors' prison, where a murder has recently taken place. Tom's survival depends on discovering whodunnit.

I liked a some aspects of this. The setting was really atmospheric, and I enjoyed the grizzly minutiae of Marshalsea life. I wasn't previously aware that Marshalsea was less of a prison, and more of a ghetto, with men and women accommodated together, and its own shops, taverns and church. Some prisoners were even allowed leave in the daytime.

However, the story was only ok, and the characters were pretty standard sub-Dickensian Pious Vicar/Cockney Hardman/Tart with a Heart stereotypes. It was mildly diverting, but I'm not planning to read the subsequent novels following Hawkins' further adventures.

I thought Essex Serpent did so much more than Mermaid. Sure, there wasn't an awful lot of plot, but the writing was really powerful, and it dug down into the Victorian world and its fears/values well.
Mermaid, on the other hand, could have been set anywhere/any place because it hasn't built on its time/place setting at all - we're told when/where but really not shown it. It lacks depth/soul which Serpent had in abundance, I thought.

Anyone else going to watch A Very English Scandal tonight?

Confused by all the comparisons between Mermaid and Serpent. They are very different types of books in terms of tone and plot. I enjoyed both of them very much but think it’s weird to put size them up against one another, unless the comparison is for enjoyment of hyped historical fiction (with attractive cover designs).
If you’re going to compare Mermaid to anything then surely Sarah Waters' novels are a better match than Perry's more gothic style.

I suppose I started it scribbly and, yes, basically I am comparing hyped historical novels by female authors and with lovely covers!

I think it might be the strange creatures in the water thing, too...

scribbly if you go back to badb’s original post she talks of something that bothered her in one but not in the other. My comment and remus’s comments were both on how unlike they are, the same as yours, but in response to badb feeling like something worked in one but not the other.

We were not randomly putting them against each other! They do both have a historical setting so not that extreme a disparity in one sense.

Am removing The Mermaid and Mrs Hancock from my “I’d like to read” list after reading so many of you say it wasn’t all that. And checking in to say there are five Stephen King novels for 99p each on the Kindle Daily Deal today. 11/12/63 is an absolutely fantastic book, and well worth reading. The others are all ones I’ve not read (Insomnia, Cujo, Lisey’s Story and Hearts in Atlantis) so I’ve bought those (apart from Cujo - scary dogs are...scary!).

So interesting to see different opinions on novels. Mermaid remains one of my stand outs for the year. It isn't complicated and certainly isn't perfect but it was fun. I could feel the characters bursting off the page . It has divided opinion but actually as a first novel by a young author I felt it was pretty damn good. Pepe I would still recommend it.
Aside from being a historical novel with a mythical creature in the title, it has very little in common with Serpent. They do both have beautiful covers though. Serpent is undoubtedly deeper in both character and theme. And Serpent divided opinion too.

Scribbly, I mentioned The Essex Serpent primarily because I read it very recently, and so it was what immediately leapt to mind. I should have made that clearer. I do think they cover similar territory, though I appreciate the historical setting is not exactly the same. But they do also both have themes around the supernatural, modernity, urbanisation, position of women etc. But it was mainly the world-building I was referring to - the historical setting felt alive to me in Perry’s novel, in a way that it doesn’t in this one.

Oh dear, I'm falling rather behind if I want to get to 50 this year.

13. Theft by Finding; Diaries 1977-2002, by David Sedaris Mixed feelings about this one, and it took me ages to finish - the first half is pretty hard going and fairly depressing. I like David Sedaris but wouldn't describe myself as an uber-fan; however I do really love reading diaries. I found myself getting much more interested when he moves to Chicago and his writing career gets going. I would recommend this if you really love him, but don't feel bad about skim reading the first few years! Having said all that I will probably read the next volume as well.

14. The Past, by Tessa Hadley Oh I really loved this. I live overseas and was feeling quite homesick, and this is an extremely English book - exactly what I wanted. Fairly short on plot, very long on lush descriptions of nature and beautifully understated characterisation. Essentially a mix of a family saga and a country house novel, and for me very well done. My first Tessa Hadley but I will certainly read more of her work. Lots of angry reviews on Goodreads from people appalled at the slow story and lack of quotation marks for dialogue, neither of which bothered me in the slightest.

A couple more to add from me.

37. Jane and Prudence - Barbara Pym
I loved this. In fact I love BP the more I read of her. Scatty, undomesticated, tactless Jane is happily married to a vicar. Their move to a country parish brings her into the orbit of a whole new cast of characters, about whose lives she's immediately and voraciously curious. Meanwhile her younger friend Prudence - elegant, poised and always beautifully dressed - wastes her intellect in a dull dead-end job, manufacturing a crush on her drab boss. The lives of both women are about to change in unexpected ways. A delight if you're inclined towards Pym's mischievous, miniaturist ways.

And then 38. Darkness Falls from the Air - Nigel Balchin

After really enjoying The Small Back Room (review upthread somewhere), I sought out this other wartime novel by Balchin, set in (and written during) the London Blitz. Bill Sarratt works in some unspecified Civil Service capacity to do with business and the war effort - Balchin is cleverly vague about detail but writes acutely about the office politics involved, which drive Sarratt to despair (Balchin was an industrial psychologist and clearly knew his stuff). At home, his wife Marcia is having an affair with a writer, Stephen, whose melodramatic behaviour disgusts the logical, uber-capable Sarratt. The strain of the raids on London and the drama of the on-off affair begin to take their toll. This was packed with zinging one-liners, many of which are best imagined in the voices of Noel Coward characters ('Happy, darling?') or perhaps Mr Cholmondeley-Warner (' I say! it's most awfully queer') - but it's a terrific read. A great piece of contemporary reportage on the Blitz too.

78. Sunday Morning Coming Down by Nicci French

Book 7 in the series about psychotherapist Frieda Klein. This is more of the same - the police inexplicably do whatever Frieda tells them to do despite complaining about her level of interference! I think there’s only one more to go in this series so looking forward to seeing how they end it.

79. Victoria Wood: Comedy Genius - Her Life And Work by Chris Foote Wood

Biography written by her brother. I was expecting lots of family insights but there were none. Her brother is 13 years older so was only around for the earliest years and it’s clear they weren’t really close in later life. Also the writing is terrible - lots of repetition, sometimes even in the same paragraph, and it jumps around in time. It’s like he just wrote down everything he could think of as it came into his head and didn’t bother to read through it again before it was published! Having said that, I still enjoyed reading it as it was about Victoria Wood who I think was fabulous, and I did like the excerpts from her dad’s diary.

A quick aside - I am looking for holiday reading for my Kindle, and note that The Dry is on daily deal today. Worth a quid? Holiday suitable?

Well I didn't mind The Dry . And holiday is where I read it!

It was a bit clichéd in places and didn't end as well as it started but I would say it was a atypical, untaxing holiday read.

That should definitely say typical, not atypical!!

That’s a shame, chessie, I loved Victoria Wood too,

I didn’t enjoy The Dry but I don’t tend to go for crime usually anyway. It’s probably worth it for a 99p holiday read if you like that sort of thing though.

Have finished another three novels - #26 - Capital by John Lanchester set on a fictional street in South London during the financial crisis. At first, I thought some of the characters had stepped straight out of the Daily Mash (notably the banker's wife Arabella) but it was a lot more subtle than that. Very funny and enjoyable. #27 - the much-read Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine by Gail Honeyman - started off being reminded of The Rosie Project, but became much darker. I enjoyed it even if it stretched credibility at times. #28 Big Brother by Lionel Shriver about a morbidly obese man who comes to stay with his younger sister, who doesn't recognise him when she picks him up from the airport. I thought his ensuing weight loss seemed too good to be true until I got to the end...now I have started something completely different - #29 How to Build Houses And Save the Countryside by Shaun Spiers.