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?

All Quiet is magnificent.

I gave up on Victorians Undone - thought the writing style was excruciatingly dull.

Did Charles Darwin's beard have something interesting in it? Like an exotic finch or a nest of moths?

I don’t think moths nest do they? What do moths do? (and did they do it in Charles Darwin's beard?)

It’s straight forward butterfly stuff. I knew that.

Scribbly- His beard was just a beard and he grew it because he had severe facial eczema apparently! As Remus said dull!
I nearly gave up too but after DNF-ing The Idiot I couldn't bring myself too. Need to stop being so anal about finishing books.
Basically the book was an excuse for the author to write some of the stuff she knew about Victorians, none of it groundbreaking or in-depth, and loosely hang it all on 'body parts'. Not very successful.

Severe facial eczema?! Is that all? How very disappointing.
I read a great graphic novel last year called The Gigantic Beard That Was Evil. Now that was an interesting beard (sadly fictional).

All Quiet is excellent.

28. The Descent of Man by Grayson Perry.

I think it is very difficult to write a book like this as I often feel authors end up ranting (Animal by Sara Pascoe) at me. But Grayson Perry has such a lovely way with words. I particularly liked the start, challenging the reader to think about their own stance in gender. I’m not sure I entirely agree that it is all conditioning (or nurture) as I think nature has its own place (who knows to what degree) in determining behaviour. But I can see that in order to change it is useful to think it is mostly nurture to blame. I also didn’t agree entirely with the clothes section, it felt stereotypical to me and both my DH and DF do not fit into his categories.

Overall, though, I like the sentiments and roll on positive discrimination! I’ve asked my DH to read it too and will be interested to know his opinion.

Just popping in to say that Conclave, which I enjoyed and reviewed on the last thread, is now a quid on the Kindle Daily Deal, and IMO worth it.

Have bought Conclave- thanks Turn.
67. Little Fires Everywhere - Celeste Ng Read this in a couple of days and busy days at that. It was surprisingly compelling reading, found myself grabbing it and reading whenever. Set in Shaker , a middle class American Philanthropic town. A planned community populated by liberal minds, where the author actually grew up. The arrival of Mia, an artist and Pearl her teenage daughter turns the world of the Richardson's on its head. This essentially an examination of motherhood in all its forms. It covers surrogacy, abortion, adoption, infertility, working parents, single parents. It examines how to raise a child and the mistakes we make and the possible consequences. Usually a book so filled with 'issues' would set my teeth on edge but actually this is skilfully managed by Ng. There is a wide cast of characters and at no point did I feel topics were shoehorned into the narrative to make a point. A really successful book.

I toyed with buying Conclave but decided that a surfeit of priests would probably annoy me.

Have bought the Heyer though, as I 'think' that's one I've not read.

Did you finish Scandal, Remus?

Given up on The Heart’s Invisible Furies at 35%. Just lost the will to read any more about characters I didn’t care for.

Tempted by Conclave.

Got about two percent of Scandal left, South. Have really enjoyed it. Have been trying to ignore it and stretch it out, but will definitely finish/review tonight.

Conclave is great. I was glad it turned out to be the book it was (trying to avoid spoilers!) rather than the book I expected. I love a papal conclave at the best of times, and coupled with a really pacy well told story meant I really enjoyed it.

25. Lullaby - Leila Slimani

Had to give up on Ant and Dec for now and went with this. Was very intrigued by a book with the first line “the baby is dead” and I’m really not sure it lived up to the hype. It managed to keep me reading and guessing but I was very disappointed with the ending

Yes Conclave was better than I expected too. No wanking in sight, remus

36. The Missing, CL Taylor
Mediocre formulaic psychological thriller. A teenage boy has gone missing. The story is told from the POV of his mother, six months after his disappearance, as she tries to work out what has happened to him. Ticks all the usual boxes - unreliable female narrator with fragile mental health, family with numerous dark secrets, annoying characters who form unlikely but obsessive hypotheses about what other characters might have done or thought rather than just asking them.

37. Passenger to Frankfurt, Agatha Christie
I was away last week and picked this up from a free book shelf hoping for a skilful but cosy mystery. Sadly, this is not this book - not at all. This turns out to be a rather bizarre thriller that Christie wrote to mark her 80th birthday. It's sort of a spy book but not quite - it opens promisingly with some actual plot but derails into a very odd global conspiracy/neo Nazism/youth revolt tale through which strange characters drop in and out never to be seen again. I have to admit that I started to skip large chunks of the tedious dialogue (there seem to be a LOT of meetings) which may be why the ending didn't make any sense - however, looking at the Goodreads reviews, no-one else seems to have understood what was going on either. Avoid, especially if you don't want to read Christie writing very nastily about fat people.

38. History of Wolves, Emily Fridlund
Enjoyed this a lot. It's a beautifully written coming of age story about a teenage girl growing up in rural isolation in the Great Lakes. Lovely, heart-breaking writing about nature, and loneliness, and trying to fit in to a world which you don't yet understand properly. There are two main plotlines - one concerning a family who move to the area with a young child, a child who the narrator tells you in the first chapter is going to die. How, and when, and why that happens unravels very slowly throughout the book. There's a parallel story which is more slippery and makes less sense on the surface but the two of them mesh together to bring into painfully clear focus the raw teenage emotions of the main character - the love, the frustration, the bewilderment, the guilt.. Definitely worth a read, if just for the descriptions of rural Minnesota.

best you and the last unfavourable review have saved me from that I was looking out for it but unsure.

satsuki did some one else dislike it too? I thought it was universally loved on here.

I think so, I can’t remember who now sorry it was pages ago! I wasn’t sure because I disliked Striped Pyjamas but it was so universally liked I put it on the list anyway. I’m sure I read a good lukewarm review on here that made me think twice because when I saw yours itconfirmed I wasnt going to bother.

Just finished 28. Frankenstein.

I read this for two reasons . Firstly, it's on y guilty never to have read it list and, secondly, apparently DS2 will be doing it for GCSE (lucky him). I found it simple enough but not what I would call thrilling. So much weeping and wailing. I felt sorry for the monster but am assuming the ambiguities are intentional. I don't think it has the intellectual power of Jekyll and Hyde, nor does it have the entertainment value of a good Dickens. However, I can see why it has stuck around on GCSE exams : all that pathetic fallacy and multiple narrative devices!

It was OK : cannot see why it would be so many people's favourite book, though, must be honest. Mercifully short

Book 50
A Very English Scandal – John Preston
I thoroughly enjoyed this tale of sex, lies and murder at the heart of the British government. Prior to this, I’d never even heard of Jeremy Thorpe (Yes - I am clearly a cultural vacuum) and I had no idea how it would all turn out. I must admit that I found the last few pages a bit of an anti-climax, but otherwise this was one of this year’s stand-outs so far and a good one for my number 50!

I don't think it has the intellectual power of Jekyll and Hyde, nor does it have the entertainment value of a good Dickens. True, but she was still a teenager when she wrote it, whereas Stevenson was twice her age when he wrote Jekyll & Hyde.

Remus I remember the Jeremy Thorpe scandal vividly because I remember DM going to a fancy dress party dressed as him and carrying a frying pan and half a dozen eggs. I must have been a teenager because I was mortified.

Ha! According to the book, the eggs were usually boiled, not fried, Best His mother sounded very strange indeed.