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 may add it to my enormous Amazon shopping list...

DH has ticked me off for spending £30 a week on books.

Circe is next... oh this old thing? I have had it for ages! No, darling DH , it most certainly is not new. I can't believe you haven't seen me with it before...

Dottierichardson I know very little of the detail of the NYC case, other than that the diminished responsibility (or US equivalent) plea was rejected. I did hear Slimani say on R4 that the nanny was named Louise after Louise Woodward, so perhaps wrongly assumed its factual basis was composite. I'm aware Lullaby has has universally glowing reviews other than mine, but I felt that ultimately there was too much recounting of events and too little exploration of Louise's psychological state, illness-driven or otherwise.

Piggy I gave myself a good talking to when I realised I had over 70 books unread on the Kindle and probably 40 'real life books'. Was definitely not going to buy anymore this year. Went to Waterstones on Saturday to 'buy a present' and you know the rest...

Oh dear!

I actually took a list to Waterstones and came out empty handed!! they didn't have any of them!

17 Notes to my Mother-in-Law by Phyllida Law.

Hm. I didn’t think the mechanics of this worked well, she collects notes written to the deaf granny who lives in the family home. It seems, though, that there are more interesting stories hidden behind all this. My charity shop copy smells of the perfume of the target audience.

£30 a week?! Get thee to a library!

(I am currently number 20 out of 20 waiting for Circe, but still)

I must admit I like buying books!

Our library is v small and rarely open...

I do get some of my books from the school library!

Oh I love buying books, but have to restrict myself to secondhand or library for budget often at the moment - you carry on I’d do the same

I buy far too many books. I really should go back to our library and see if it has improved since I was last there. The children’s section was good but the adult one was terrible. My TBR pile is huge and grows faster than I can shrink it.

61 - Valley of the Dolls by Jacqueline Susann

I'm going to be kind about this because I actually quite enjoyed it, despite the terrible stereotypes and slightly rambling plot. Three women navigate their way though the New York and LA celebrity landscape of the 1950s, getting through the day with ever increasing amounts of tranquillisers.

62 - A Constant Princess by Phillipa Gregory

Unutterably tedious account of Catherine of Aragon's childhood and early womanhood, with an immense amount of supposition thrown in. I quite like good historical fiction but this was terribly slow moving and badly written. I found the central conceit - that Catherine lied about the consummation of her marriage to Arthur to be able to marry Henry after his death - a possibly interesting way to tell her story but my god, it was laboured and tiresome.

63 - The Only Story by Julian Barnes

This was such a relief after Ms Gregory. Paul is a teenager on holiday from university when he falls in love with an older woman at the tennis club. The story follows their relationship, told in the first person, then the second person, then the third. I thought this was excellent - beautiful elegant prose, well observed and thoughtful. And the shifting narration as the story evolves meant our understanding as a reader changes with it. Made me think about love and why we stay in love with someone. It's been ages since I read any Julian Barnes - I'm very tempted to go and seek out more.

52. The Unseen World by Liz Moore.

I went into this book with some fear that it might piss me off as much as Three Things About Elsie did as it features a mystery hidden by dementia. Happy to report that Liz Moore has an excellent job conveying the cognitive deterioration associated with Alzheimer’s disease and not just used it as a convenient tool to add drama and suspense.

Ada Sibelius is Home schooled by her father David, a genius computer programmer in charge of a lab focused on creating an AI that will pass the Turing Test. At the start of the novel it becomes apparent that David's memory has started to fail him and eventually Ada comes to realise that he can no longer care for her. When she is taken in by one of his university colleagues Ada discovers that her father's life has been a lie and her only way of discovering the truth is in the programming he has spent his life devoted to.

I very nearly loved this book. The description of David's decline is beautifully rendered and the fear I felt for Ada as she realises how alone she is in the world without her father was akin to how I felt for Theo in The Goldfinch. This is partly a coming of age book, as well as a mystery, and the descriptions of Ada starting formal education aged thirteen were painful to read. I really worried for this poor child who had spent her whole life surrounded by academics and computer geeks and was suddenly thrown into an alien environment where what bag you carry your books in actually matters.
Solving the mystery of David's past was rushed and fell a little flat for me. I could have completely done without the AI/virtual reality aspects but for those readers who liked Ready Player One and Snow Crash this is a very human story about how the beginnings of these virtual worlds might have begun.
An overall enjoyable, page turning read.

81. The Shell seekers - Rosamunde Pilcher This was recommended to me by someone who had also enjoyed the Cazalet Chronicles. It was inferior in everyday. Cozy without any of the clever character building or empathy that Elizabeth Jane Howard excels at. Very twee, cliches and hopelessly predicable. So many 5 star reviews on Goodreads, claiming it is in 'their top 10'.

23. Modern Nature - Derek Jarman

My run of fantastic books continues with this which is in equal parts fascinating, moving and blackly funny. Jarman's diary is ostensibly about the garden at his cottage in the bleak setting of Dungeness, but in the wake of his HIV diagnosis (at that time a death sentence) he writes about his lonely childhood, his experiences in the art world, his sexuality (and the loss of many friends to AIDS), and his work with an incredible honesty and clarity.

Haven't been on in a while due to real life getting in the way (inconvenient)but have done quite a lot of reading. I won't bring my whole list over but picking up where I left off;

37. Bad Feminist by Roxanne Gay
    A collection of essays on the authors feminism and trying to be a 'good' feminist. Some of these are deeply personal, for example dealing with her gang rape as a 14 year old. Others are more academic. Overall this is a really good collection and is more about what it means to be a person trying to live up ideals in a world that is not idyllic.

38. So You've Been Publicly Shamed by Jon Ronson
    I highly recommend this. In the age of shaming on the internet and videos going viral, Ronson explores what it is to be at the heart of one of these public shamings and what it says about those who join in. Really fascinating and has definitely made me think about the way we deal with people who have made mistakes online in a different way.

39. Leonardo Da Vinci by Walter Issacson
    This is a monster of a hardback and so in depth yet I raced through it. All the chapters are quite short and he also breaks it up by talking about pieces of work in turn, so although a very large book, it doesn't feel like a slog to get through. Completely fascinating and oddly inspiring as well. Da Vinci was so curious about the world he often started projects and never finished them because his attention was caught by something else.

40. Painter to the King by Amy Sackville
    This has had amazing reviews and yet, I didn't really enjoy it. It is written beautifully and in a very literary and unique style, but nothing happens. I mean really, nothing happens. No plot at all. I know it is based on real events so there is limited scope for adding anything, but I got to the end and thought, is that it? I think there will be people who love this book, so I will stand by to be corrected! I am not against limited plot and experimental language (I loved Lincoln in the Bardo for example) but this just left me cold.

41. Death in Ten Minutes by Fern Riddell
    The story of the suffragette Kitty Marion and also about how the violence of the suffragette campaign has been largely washed out of history. This is a really good read and comes across as a very fair representation as well. The author doesn't hold back with the failures in leadership of the suffragette movement by the Pankhursts and is also blunt about the level of damage and cost to innocent lives many of the bombings caused. It is a very good warning against revisionist history as well as she also talks about how sexual liberation was part of the conversation at the time for a lot of suffragettes, yet that has also been largely removed from their official history.

42. The Poet X - Elizabeth Acevedo
    This is a YA book, told in poetry verse. I loved it. Its very simply a story of a young girl from a strictly religious home trying to find a way to express herself coming to terms with her body, her sexual feelings and finding her voice. The style of it all being in poetry form, works really well and I found it very moving. Was in tears by the end.

I am all out of books! I finished the towering pile by my bed so will be trawling back through the thread for some recommendations.

"My charity shop copy smells of the perfume of the target audience"

Review of the week.

I'd better update before I fall off this thread. Not sure I've got everything on here but it's my best guess going back through Kindle and book piles:

26). A River in Darkness – one man’s escape from from North Korea: Masaji Ishikawa. Interesting story but not very well written. Bit of misery memoir with noodles.
27) A Boy Made of Blocks - Keith Stuart. Soppy nonsense. A kind of chick lit approach to autism and how healing happens.
28) Why I’m no longer talking to white people about race: Reni Eddo-Lodge. Really interesting read if a little inconsistent. She's a young woman with a great message and voice, but her writing skills and substantiation need honing which I'm sure will come with time.
29) A London Child of the 1870s Molly Hughes: I loved all the Molly Hughes books, got the first one with a Persephone voucher and then had to buy and borrow the rest. Fascinating light touch account of what must have been a pretty tough life at times. Also, although Molly was a very forward-thinking, independent and quite remarkable woman in many ways, her attitude to men is fascinating - they know so much, etc, and unintelligent women can glorify themselves by marrying an intelligent man (I paraphrase). Lots of great stuff about early girls' schools and the drive to train teachers.
30) A London Girl of the 1880s Molly Hughes
31) A London Home of the 1890s: Molly Hughes
32) A London family between the wars: Molly Hughes
33) The Faber Book of Reportage: various. Long. Lots of war and death.
34) The Woman in White: Wilkie Collins. Had to reread this after the TV adaptation and enjoyed it enormously.

35) Reservoir 13: Jon McGregor. I liked this and liked what he was trying to do. I particularly enjoyed the hypnotic effect of all the short descriptive sentences piling up and the equal weight given to the animals and the plants. Even though I knew that the story was not resolved (like life), I did still feel a little disappointed. I have enough non-resolution in real life and my narrative drive when reading fiction still leaves me wanting an ending.
36) Conversations with Friends: Sally Rooney. I found this compulsively readable but at the end felt kind of cheated. Was that all? Again, the narrative drive led me to expect much more plot, many more reasons for behaviours. The characters were rather overdone and, again, there was insufficient explanation for certain things. She's a good writer though and I'm sure will get better with maturity.
37) Master and Commander (audio): Patrick O’Brian.Well, this was dull, but I know a lot more about focsles and top gallants and stunsails than I ever wanted to.
38) Drinks with Dead Poets: Glyn Maxwell. I have no idea what this was trying to be. Part novel, part riff on great poets of the past, part 'aren't I clever social commentary on academic types'. Much of it just didn't make sense and ultimately I didn't care much.
39) The Second Sex: Simone de Beauvoir: This was actually a shortened version with key extracts published by Vintage. Very interesting in the light of current thinking and gender critical debates etc.

About to read A God in Ruins and currently on audibook about 20 hours into 48 hours of The Recognitions by William Gaddis - audio was the only affordable way to get this. Heavy listening.

Sorry a bit late to respond dottie but just to add to Sadik's post (thanks for the short story tip!), I enjoyed the first Ann Leckie enough to read all 3 in the trilogy but probably wouldn't read them again if that makes sense? Whereas I think I would read The Dispossessed again and get more out of it the second time. Different types of book.

The books on which the Expanse series are based are total pulp entertainment - not high brow at all - but I love the whole concept of that universe they have created and the harder sci fi that it depicts.

My fav sci fi novels of all time (to date - there is obviously loads I've never read!) is probably Dan Simmons Hyperion series. I actually hope they never film it (there are occasionally rumours of producers attempting it).

Wow, I've been off this thread for a week and it's taken me most of the morning to read everything and catch up! So much interesting reading has occurred, so many great reviews, so many books to add to my tbr pile. This should not happen as I have over 300 unread books on my Kindle and numerous unread books at home

Does anyone else ever wish that everyone would stop publishing books for a couple of years to give them a chance to catch up?

I have finally read 48. In Cold Blood - Truman Capote which I found fascinating as I never read "true crime' and this is a classic of the genre.

49. A Line Made by Walking - Sara Baume
I'm all for books in which nothing much happens and internal monologues are rife, but this was a bit too much even for me. A young Irish art student suffers a nervous breakdown and spends a long summer recovering in her deceased grandmother's empty cottage. She is obsessed by using photographs, paintings and sculptures to describe her feelings/situations and this aspect I enjoyed - there's a list of the art she describes at the back, which is useful.

50. How to Get in to the Twin Palms - Karolina Waclawiak
Short novel about Polish and Russian immigrants in LA. It's visceral and crazy and quite unpleasant in many ways, as the young woman at the centre of the novel, whose real name we never learn, is unhappy and her life is unraveling, allowing her to get into uncomfortable situations. Very unusual but I like novels about cities and rootlessness and the American dream/belonging, which is essentially what this book is about.

51. The Go-Between - L.P Hartley
A classic, which I had never read. I'm glad I have made the effort as it's a slow build and burn of a book set in an English country house over one very hot summer and told from the perspective of 12 year old Leo, who acts as an initially unwitting 'go between' for two lovers from very different class backgrounds. It did remind me of Lady Chatterley's Lover and that's not a bad thing (for me). Very good on the whole.

52. Orfeo - Richard Powers
This was a long old haul of a novel which I struggled through. I think if you like classical music and descriptions of listening to classical music and composing it, for many, many MANY pages, then this is the book for you. I liked the concept of the story which, was is, oddly, an elderly composer on the run from the police, looking back on his life, but my word, I found this a struggle to finish.

And rest...

And then there were none was on TV not that long ago. Charles Dance plays the murderer. DH watched it and said it was quite good.

Picnic at Hanging Rock - the ending STILL bugs me years after watching the film. Where the hell did they all go once they disappeared into the rock????

Whippet I loved the Go-Between when I read it many years ago. May be due a re-read!

Whippetwoman Yes I do! I once worked out how many books I would be able to read in my lifetime and it is not nearly enough - they need to slow down and then I can catch up. Or just publish books I really like, so I don't waste any precious reading time on things I end up hating. Not too much to ask

The Go Between was one of my favourites as a teenager. It does have echoes of Lady C. Great story of the impact of betrayal and lost innocence.

The Go-Between is one of my all-time favourites as well, but I've never read Lady Chatterley. Will stick that one on my wish list!

I’d never heard of The Go Between before! Going to look it up now.

I’ve reserved Burial Rites at the library and got my email today to say it was in, so I’m looking forward to reading it based on the good reviews on here.

27. Snow Falling on Cedars - David Guterson Felt weird reading this, the snowstorm felt physically palpable whilst meanwhile sweltering. A great book, old and I’m sure many on here have already read it but in case you haven’t I really do recommend. I struggled a little with the slower pace/flashback structure - I always do because I’m impatient and find myself mentally shouting ‘I WANT TO KNOW WHAT HAPPENS WITH THE TRISL WHY ARE YOU TELLING ME EXACTLY WHAT SOMEONES LIVING ROOM LOOKED LIKE 12 YEARS AGO??!!’ But of course it’s always that much more satisfying for all that.

I loved The Go Between too but actually I love the Eustace and Hilda trilogy more. When I moved abroad and could only take some books, that was in my top 10 (along with all the Updike Rabbit books and Possession, for those naysayers on here).

I liked Snow Fallng on Cedars too, but I read it back to back with Miss Smillas Feeling for Snow and now sometimes muddle then up- but where is the time to reread?!

Dottie, bit late, but yes I totally agree with you re GWTW.

Anyone whose local library isn’t great, have you tried Overdrive? App that gives you access to the ebooks held by your county. Patchy content in mine, but very very useful.

48. Hand in Glove by Ngaio Marsh. Not one of her best, IMO, but fine for a holiday read (I am still going through them in order and I am told the later ones are not the best, so am braced for disappointment- keen to “collect the set” now though).

Thinking of collecting the set, did anyone else read those long long American teenage serieses- Cheerleaders, Jake Finds Out, and others I can’t recall. I’d still love to get a whole set of some of them!