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?

I think An Almond might well feature in my top ten of the year, unless I find some real belters soon!

Sorry Piggy 😢. Did they give you some decent feedback?

Remus, I didn’t think Burnet meant HBP to be a detective story (I think he intended literary historical), but I felt as he borrowed so much from the genre, that he should have had a pay off- otherwise why frame the story like that? It is what I think of as trying to be too clever!

43. Confusion by Elizabeth Jane Howard I am enjoying these, although so far the sequels have not met the promise of the first- while she did start with too many POV characters (we had two pages from Phyllis the housemaid and then no more!), it does become more of its type as it focuses mainly on the younger girls and their experiences of the war. She also starts telling (rather than showing) us about some of the other characters relationships, which I found a shame- the tortured politeness between Hugo and Sybil was a great charm of the first book, and though she references it several times in the sequels, we haven’t seen it again. Still, I believe I have 2 more to go, so will withhold judgement for now (and am certainly enjoying!).

someone local eats Wotsits and then licks their fingers when turning pages, sadly we share taste in a number of books and get tired of orange-smeared pages!

Yes tanaqui, I actually did. I got some feedback for another one a few weeks ago where they said I came across as a bit aggressive which was pretty upsetting. the people yesterday said I was warm and approachable at least!

80. A Piano In The Pyrenees by Tony Hawk

Listened to this on audible. Lighthearted book about him buying a house in France, getting to know the villagers and the pitfalls of trying to build a swimming pool. I enjoyed it.

Sorry about the job Piggy.

noodle not as bad as the blood I found on one library mystery story.

Piggy - If any consolation, you definitely don't come over as aggressive here. I am cross on your behalf!

Tanaqui - It's a fair while since I read it, but I thought it was far more about playing with readers in terms of potential sympathy and then broadening the lens, as it were, than it was about borrowing from detective genre. You've made me want to read it again.

Thanks remus. We had to pretend to chair a meeting and I will admit the mansplaining candidate was getting on my nerves. I think I asked him to focus on what we had in front of us . Oops! I think I may have been a bit... direct...stupid interview task!

At least I can get back to reading my books now!!

Sorry about your interview piggy. But managing to be aggressively warm and approachable is quite a feat! I was going to echo remus that you come across very much the latter on here.

73. The Ghost - Robert Harris Very late to the party with this one. Thriller type about a Ghost writer who has been drafted in to help an ex- Prime Minister write his memoirs. Focuses heavily on the 'war on terror' and is the Prime Minister and his wife are clearly drawn from the Blairs.
I enjoyed this, was just what I needed. Pleased I have found Robert Harris.

This is probably a very dull review but just haven't got the energy to be more entertaining- sorry!!

Re: His Bloody Project It really didn't cross my mind that this a detective novel. But then I like it when authors try new things and mess about with genres. I like to imagine all the book sellers and librarians getting annoyed about difficult to catalogue books. Don't work very well with boxes me!

On the subject of liquid on books, I spilt a whole mug of (cold) tea on a girl's exercise book, poetry anthology and her copy of A Christmas Carol last week. Mortified. It's just as well it wasn't the extremely anal girl who rewrites everything in her book if it's at all messy. She would have shouted at me she also ticks every page with a red pen and writes her own comments

Catching up with a few updates.

19. The Cows by Dawn O’Porter A MN book club read. I quite enjoyed this although and although I didn't particularly relate to any of the characters I was quite compelled by their interwoven stories.
20. The Awkward Age by Francesca Segal Another MN book club read, I think there is a webchat coming up soon. A story of inter-generational conflict and of issues resulting from a blended family. Some cliches but well-written and I enjoyed it.
21. How to be Human by Ruby Wax I found this quite hard to get through. I liked the idea of it but found it a bit repetitive . Maybe mindfulness is not really my thing?
22. Victoria by Daisy Godwin. Written by the writer of the ITV drama. I found it an interesting read as it was able to describe better some of the emotions that the Young Victoria must have felt when she was adapting to her new role as Queen. In particular I think it dealt well with the difficult relationship she had with her mother.
23. Girl A by My Story Recommended by others on last year's thread this is the true story of 'Girl A', the main witness in the trial of the Rochdale sex ring. I'd obviously read a lot of the press at the time and watched the TV dramatisation: 'Three Girls' but this was a pretty tough read as you can really relate to the desperation that she felt when the police and social services repeatedly failed to help her.
    Currently half-way through The Lie of the Land by Amanda Craig and really enjoying it. I read 'A Vicious Circle' a long time ago and had forgotten how great Amanda Craig is at describing human relationships.

Piggy we used to think that our English teacher was using stains on our essays as her unique marking scheme. Chocolate was fairly normal. A coffee ring was not a good sign, probably accompanied by a "see me to talk about this" type comment. One classmate found a circle of red wine at the top of their work...we took this to be very bad news indeed.

clueless

noodle not as bad as the blood I found on one library mystery story.

Bleugh. I think that edges out the wotsit dust for revoltingness. I used to be a librarian and there was an amazing blog for 'weird things librarians have found in books', but I can't find it now. I think my favourite was a rasher of streaky bacon being used as a bookmark; also a flattened cadbury's creme egg. (How???)

Piggy I am cheering for you taking on the mansplaining candidate.

I've just bought some lovely new things cheap on kindle - Invincible Summer for 99p which sounds like a good holiday read, Reservoir 13 for 1.49 although I'm probably the only person on this thread that hasn't read it yet and The Rise and Fall of D.O.D.O for 1.99 which sounds weird and wonderful. I'm ignoring the fact that I definitely didn't need to buy more books as I currently have 9 library books out and a TBR list that gets longer by the day...

Wotsit smears are worse than blood. At least with blood you can imagine a thrilling reason why they are there. With the orange smears you’ve got nothing apart from a slovenly wotsit guzzler. Grim.

22. The Living Mountain - Nan Shepherd

Often cited by Robert Macfarlane, who provides the introduction to the edition, this is a slim masterpiece exploring our relationship with the mountains. Unlike Mountains Of The Mind it is purely local in scale, based on her years of exploration in the Cairngorms. The language is vibrant, immediate but not overly showy, and if you're a mountain-lover like myself it will make you want to get to your nearest peaks as quickly as possible (sadly not easy for me, as I live in one of the flattest parts of the country!)

Dottie I had noticed that many of your choices were more bang up to the minute than most of us on this thread. Now totally understand you have a pretty powerful driver for that - stay one step ahead of Wotsit smearer.

25. H is for Hawk by Helen Macdonald Autobiography and biography tangled together. Helen works through her grief following her father's death by buying and training a goshawk. This is interspersed with the attempts of the author TH White, a strange and tortured soul, to do the same thing several decades previously. This is beautifully written in quite literary prose, and at times I nearly forgot, particularly the passages of Helen and her bird together, that this was not fiction. I was very moved by this and am still thinking about it a few days after finishing it.

Urgh that wotsit detail makes me feel a bit queasy dottie!

I get most of my books from library too but must admit I'm the culprit who dips them in the bath when I nod off and leaves the bottom of pages crumpley. Not as bad as wotsits though....

Thanks Noodle for the heads up on cheap Reservoir 13. I thought I was the only one who hadn't read it.

Also if anyone is interested, I have started a new book swap thread - please sign up if you fancy some swapping over the summer: www.mumsnet.com/Talk/mn_book_swap_clubs/3258352-Summer-Book-Swap

A couple more to add to my list:

24. Burial Rites by Hannah Kent. This is based on the true story of Agnes Magnusdottir, who has been sentenced to death for her part in a murder and is being looked after by a local family (due to the lack of suitable jails in 19th century Iceland). It is a good book, but highly reminiscent of Margaret Atwood's Alias Grace in terms of the way that the story unfolds. I think I would have enjoyed it more if I hadn't read the latter recently.

25. The End We Start From by Megan Hunter. A dystopian novel set in the UK in the near future when London floods. The nameless woman protagonist has just had a baby when the disaster strikes, so fleeing the floods is interspersed with caring for her newborn. I liked this but I didn't love it. The writing style (of brief, impersonal paragraphs) didn't quite work for me. It's described on the back as "Virginia Woolf does cli-fi" (I had to google cli-fi - a book about climate change, apparently) and I can kind of see what the reviewer means, but Hunter is a poor relation of Woolf tbh. Not that that is a problem in itself (after all, most authors are), but putting something like that in the blurb is setting it up for disappointment!

29 The End Of the World Running Club
Not actually about a running club. Enjoyed it more than I thought I might 20 pages in. Not my usual thing though.

Virgin suicides is next on the pile

48.) Odd Girl Out: An Autistic Woman in a Neurotypical World, by Laura James -- The author was diagnosed with autism as an adult after a lifetime of masking her symptoms and learning to fit in, as women and girls with autism often do. Fascinating and very moving account, which touches on her childhood, how the condition has affected her relationship with her husband, depression and anxiety, executive functioning and Brexit.

49.) Day Four, Sarah Lotz -- Four days into a cruise, a liner is struck by an electrical malfunction, leaving the ship dead in the water. Gradually it becomes clear no one is coming to rescue them. Tensions mount, sickness spreads, and people begin to panic.

I'm a sucker for horror/thrillers set on ships (Deep Rising, Ghost Ship, Virus), and was excited to read this, but found it a bit disappointing overall.

It's the follow-up (not quite a sequel?) to The Three, which is currently 99p on Kindle. In an unprecedented turn of events, I'm going to hold off and get it from the library instead. I do sort of want to read it, because I did enjoy this, but ehhh. I don't know.

It reminded me a lot of Under the Dome, -- the same mounting panic, and a similar sort of WTFery about the ending, but it felt messy, and I'm not sure all the elements were handled as well as they could have been, with plot points that could have been used to build conflict just... sort of fizzling out. And the supernatural elements were a bit crap and pointless.

The jacket blurb misrepresented the plot as well, making reference to people 'falling ill from a mysterious flu.' Nope, that's just the blurb trying to make it sound more interesting than it really is, because that 'mysterious flu'? It. Was. Just. Noro. Which, granted, is horrible when the toilets aren't working and you're having to crap in plastic bags (this book is not one for people who aren't keen on lots of references to bodily waste, btw), but isn't terribly mysterious. Irritating, since this was so clearly an instance of the jacket copy writer trying to make a plot point more interesting than it actually is. I kept waiting for it to turn out to be some super-strain of virus and for the book to turn into The Stand set on a cruise ship. Sadly, that was not to be.

Enjoyable on the whole. I'm glad it was a library book. I'll certainly read a sequel if one appears and I'll track down the first book.

~~

Next up book number 5: This Thing of Darkness. Haven't started it yet but I'm actually quite excited. Is there anyone on here who read it and didn't think much of it, or are you just too scared of being lynched?

(Apologies for the essay. I do like to blather on)

42. Jean M. Auel - The Clan of the Cave Bear

The first in a series set in prehistoric times, but it didn't really grab me enough to want to read more. Ayla is orphaned aged 5 when her mother is killed in an earthquake. She wanders aimlessly and nearly dies from an infection after an animal attack, but she is found and healed by Iza, the medicine woman of a Clan of Neanderthal. Ayla herself is an Other (Cro-Magnon) but as she grows she is slowly accepted by the Clan and learns their ways. Looked after by Iza and Creb, the holy man of the tribe, she makes an enemy of Broud who will one day be leader of the group. It's a slow moving sort of story, imagining the life of Neanderthal and although it was imaginative and an unusual period to choose it didn't really do it for me.