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 wasn't keen on The Heart's Invisible Furies, Best and Satsuki. I didn't post a review as I gave up at page 200. It started quite well, but went downhill from there. And it was 700 pages long. I found it heavy handed and caricatured. Not for me.

Just started This Thing of Darkness. Feel strangely nervous...

Hope you like it, Splother. There's a special corner of -Hell- Mumsnet reserved for people who don't, but we don't talk to them.

Strikeout fail.

Caricatured is exactly right Indigosalt.

Intrigued at the sound of his mother, Remus. One to add to the list. Hadn’t realised it was as late as 1979.

71. The Years She Stole by Jonathan Harvey

I really like Harvey’s writing - it’s a bit chicklit (it was a book by him that prompted the discussion on the last thread about whether a man can write chicklit!) but not all about boy meets girl etc. In this one, Rachel’s mother has died and she learns something shocking when she clears her house out. In the late 1970s, Shirley meets a married man on holiday. Needless to say, their lives intertwine. The twist needs a bit of suspension of disbelief, but I enjoyed it although it’s not the best of his I’ve read.

best your dm sounds amazing

Perhaps it was you saying you’d given up indigoI was thinking of.

splother no need to be nervous, we shan’t judge you much

21. A Month in the Country JL Carr WW1 veteran spends a month uncovering a medieval wall painting in a country church. This wasn't at all what I was expecting. From previous reviews, I'd imagined a gentle story of friendship and recovery. Which it is ... But it's also a clear-eyed, amused but also rather melancholy picture of a small village - a child dying of consumption, a vicar in a post-WW1 world that could use a bit of Christianity, but won't ask for it, a wife stuck with a difficult husband in a huge and isolated house in a forest, a cheerfully comic set of Methodists. It's exceptionally written, incredibly evocative and rather melancholy while still hopeful about the world's power to surprise and comfort. There's a lot going on in here. The stuff about the wall painting was particularly fascinating. And it's very short!

Cheerful that sounds excellent,
On to my list it goes

I'm reading Heart's Invisible Furies at the moment at breakneck speed as it's due back at the library. You do have to suspend disbelief, especially in the first part of the novel, but it has grown on me and I have to say some parts are very funny indeed. It's not great literature, but it's actually quite sweet.

Also:
39. Dis Mem Ber - Joyce Carol Oates
Rather lacklustre supernatural and disturbing shortish stories. Such a shame as her other short story collection is very good indeed. Not sure what went wrong here but these were very flat somehow.

40. The Aspern Papers & The Turn of the Screw - Henry James
I loved both of these, particularly the Aspern Papers with its Venetian setting and its intrigue. I also found The Turn of the Screw to be genuinely creepy and unsettling. They're both only 100 pages long and I wished they were longer novels as you can't beat a good bit of Henry James when he gets going.

17. Career of Evil - Robert Galbraith

I almost wish I didn't know that this was really J.K. Rowling as it gives me all kinds of unfair prejudices (which is presumably why she used the pseudonym in the first place).

I really like these books, there's a good pace to them. In this one, private investigator Cormoran Strike's partner/secretary Robyn is sent a dismembered leg, which then leads to them both becoming embroiled in a murder investigation. However, it soon becomes very personal and they both find it hard not to become too involved.

There's also an ongoing subplot around their feelings for each other and Robyn's relationship with her fiance. I'm in two minds about this piece - it does make the characters more interesting, but at the same time it's a bit of a distraction from the main plot. Will be interesting to see how this proceeds - there's only three books in the series so far, and this third one felt a bit like the end of a mini-series. However, I think there's a fourth book coming, so clearly the money became too good to refuse!

Cheerful, in a fit of exasperation I once chose A Month in the Country as my local book club pick because I was so fed up with everyone moaning that they couldn’t read anything long. Luckily everyone liked it. I dread to think what would happen if I told them we were reading This Thing of Darkness next

Hello, I'd like to join in. I've been keeping a note to see if I could last the pace, which I clearly can't, but I've changed my mind about whether I care.

I think I'll try A Month in the Country - I've read A Season in Sinji, which was excellent - there is maybe a parallel with the interesting stuff about the wall-painting as that is full of interesting stuff about cricket.

Here's my list

1. The Loved One, Evelyn Waugh
2. The Big Bazoohley, Peter Carey (children's, but was in our holiday rental at New Year)
3. How To stop Time, Matt Haig
4. His Bloody Project Graeme Macrae Burnet
5. The Goldfinch Donna Tartt
6. The Seven Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle Stuart Turton
7. Built, Roma Agrawal
8. Worth Dying For, Lee Child
9. Neuromancer, William Gibson

10. Reservoir 13, John McGregor

I thought the John McGregor was really disappointing. The writing style with all the short sentences just felt relentless and I didn't realise in time that it was up to me to remember who all these people were, because events in their lives were not going to coalesce into a story in any traditional sense. It's probably part of why I've joined the thread, to see if anyone else has any thoughts?

YesILikeItToo welcome! The pace and number of books read matter not, just as long as you enjoy sharing the chat about them.

Book 32: The Fire Court by Andrew Taylor

The sequel to the Ashes of London, this book took me a while to finish as its a monster of a hardback so couldn't take it around with me.
I enjoyed this more than the first one and it focuses around the Fire Court which has been established about how to rebuild after the fire. A murder occurs and Marwood is back to discover what has happened. It dragged a bit in the middle but overall went along at a good pace. New characters are introduced and the female characters in particular are well drawn. I liked the fact that there is no obvious romantic element to the story. Its rather characters each trying to survive in their own world and way.
It is set up for another installment in the Shardlake style but it is more about the characters than the mystery so differs in that respect.

Oh and I know its not a book but I really recommend West Cork on Audible. Its the summary of a 3 year investigation into a murder case in West Cork. So well done and absolutely fascinating without being exploitative (which i dislike about a lot of true crime stuff). I recommend it if anyone likes audio series.

Hello ILikeItToo, I'm a lightweight too, but also decided I didn't care because I love reading other people's reviews and recommendations, plus I'm reading FAR more than I used to and that's all down to this thread!

58. Get Off The Unicorn, Anne McCaffrey

Short story collection of some of McCaffrey's earliest work. Includes the original short stories that formed the backbone of The Rowan and Damia, amongst others. Some interesting works from the feminist point of view, written in the late 60s/early 70s during the Women's Lib movement - particularly one about a woman who chooses to bear a gay man's child, which is chilling in its portrayal of woman-as-vessel, especially in its description of the emotional work the woman is putting in to prevent uncontrolled rages in the man.

59. The Green Mile, Stephen King.

Comfort reading - despite the subject matter!

60. The Claiming of Sleeping Beauty, Anne Rice writing as AN Roquelaure
61. Beauty's Punishment, Anne Rice

Ahem. I dithered about admitting that I'd been reading these, but what the hell! I first encountered these books aged 19 when I picked one up in the English bookshop in Paris (Shakespeare's, on the Rive Gauche). I picked it up and read the first few pages with my eyes nearly popping out of my head and hastily put it back, mortified. I didn't dare buy it! I have looked for it on Kindle a couple of times in the past few years but I think it's only recently been published electronically. So this was the climax of 15 years' worth of curiosity! Beauty is awakened by the Prince in a much more fundamental way than the original fairy tale ending, and is carried off to his castle to be a sex slave. There was a lot of buttock paddling - so much so that I got a bit bored of descriptions of smacking. As we're in a fairy tale fantasy, there are no tricky issues about consent or attempting to present a hero that wouldn't look like a rapist to modern eyes. No explanation for why the royal sex slaves aren't getting pregnant or diseased right left and centre either. At the end of the first book, Beauty is banished to the village, along with her latest lover. Book 2 features much buggery of the male prince slaves and much discussion of the right way to submit. I was getting really bored of them all being smacked by the end of that one.

Ellis I've just read India Knight's column in the Sunday Times magazine about West Cork. She is utterly hooked. It does sound rather fascinating.

Well I managed to get to the end of Cloud Atlas but I suspect it was because I was travelling last week and read about 300 pages in one go. I also read some threads on the 'What we are reading' forum on MN and found Cote's superb analysis - without which, I suspect I would have given up. Her analysis was so thorough that I felt compelled to read the whole book. The thing that struck me most about the book is how long it took me to read a few bloody pages. I'd feel as if I'd read four lengthy chapters only to discover that I'd gone from just page 212 to page 216!!!!

I have Mitchell's Black Swan Green on my bookshelf but I may save that for a future rainy day

Not one of my favourite reads but I am in awe of the man who wrote it.

I loved A Month In the Country and such a beautifully presented book too.

I love JL Carr's books - my favourites are A Day in Summer and What Hetty Did. I remember reading the latter when it first came out & I was 18, and being amazed at how an elderly man captured so perfectly what it felt like to be a teenage girl. (TBF, I'm not sure JLC was that elderly in 1988, but he used to come into the bookshop where I worked, & teenage me definitely filed him in that category )

Welcome yesILikeittoo.
Terpsichore is your book group mine?!? This is a recurring theme which sets my teeth on edge.
Emgee I gave up on Cloud Atlas and struggled to the end of Bone Clocks.
Black Swan Green however is a very different type of book and I really rated it.

About 100 pages into This things of Darkness and really enjoying it. Phew!!! Not that I dare say anything else!

Just finished 24. The code of the Woosters by PG Wodehouse . Has an Aunt, an antique, a policeman's helmet and several newts. What's not to like. Now reading Swing time by Zadie Smith

Toomuch ooops, might have accidentally outed myself I doubt it, though. There are all sorts of weird strictures in place, not just 'nothing too long'. Dh and I have to grit our teeth, smile and nod. But it's immensely frustrating.