50 Book Challenge 2018 Part Six

[southeastdweller]

Welcome to the sixth 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, the fourth one here, and the fifth one here.

How're you getting on so far?

Hound big comfort book-buyer too, sure we've most of us had awful Mondays so feel for you, hope it gets better/goes fast

Scribbly, I have a soft spot for Dracula - it's so melodramatic and full of derring do! I didn't study it but my sister did and I remember her taking a book out of the uni library called something like Lesbian Themes in Dracula - think it revolved around Mina and Lucy's relationship and all the 'unclean' bits.

89. A Ghost in the Machine, Caroline Graham

Final Midsomer Murder. Very light on action and Inspector Barnaby for the first couple of hundred pages - meandering storyline featuring a really annoying girl called Polly. I was really hoping that when the murder finally happened that it would be Polly who was killed. Bit of a weird plot involving war machines and mediums.

Hound, hope your day improves sharpish!

TooExtra I would dearly love some analysis of Lucy's three suitors (+ Van Helsing) all donating blood to her, all without a hint of cross matching too. There's symbolism there I reckon, but is it ^sexual?
^
Love to hear all the mood enhancing book buying. This thread is a nightmare (?collective noun) of literature enablers.

Was the other book about Alzheimer's you read the biography of Iris Murdoch written by her husband Yule? I havent read it but your description sounds like the film Iris.

Des no it wasn’t. I wish I could remember but it was years ago I read it and I didn’t then keep lists of what I read.

Desdemona Have you read Keeper by Andrea Gillies brilliant, accessible book about looking after someone with Alzheimer's, it won an award for politics and for medical writing.

Yule meant to add this to other post. Have you seen the film of Still Alice, haven't read the book so can't compare but thought it was excellent, has Julianne Moore as Alice. I got it from the library, but sure it's online somewhere.

Dot no I haven’t seen the film but I imagine it would translate very well to film and I imagine Julienne Moore would do a good job in the role. I tend to get my books from charity shops so it’s just whatever catches my eye rather than being on the look out for a specific book. It means that I can read some great books I otherwise might not have chosen or noticed but equally I do sometimes grit my teeth to finish a book I didn’t really enjoy. I’d never heard of the film before the book and I’m only aware of the film because there was a picture of julienne Moore in the front cover!

Yule I get a lot from the library but with the funding cuts it's a lot harder these days. I buy a lot of second-hand books too, the Oxfam and the British Heart Foundation bookshops are really great for finding stuff, often end up kicking myself because I find things I've shelled out full price for. But like you also often find really interesting stuff particularly as I like vintage fiction. I think it's why I don't read much recent fiction so many are hyped but not that good, and books are so expensive now, I hate buying things I end up sending straight to charity.

Keeper the book I mentioned on Alzheimer's was something I bought browsing in a second-hand bookshop, hadn't heard of it before.

I feel lucky that my local library is still pretty good, although there can be a bit of a waiting list for some titles. I was going through the Sunday Times' recommended summer reads, and counted up that I'd got 9 from the library previously with 2 pending.

Have read a couple of crime books by Elly Griffiths set in 1950s Brighton, The Zigzag Girl and The Blood Card, with The Vanishing Box lined up next. They're good fun, although the Big Reveal tends to slip out of my brain almost immediately after reading.

Also read The Book of Woe: the DSM and the Unmaking of Psychiatry, by Gary Greenberg, which sets out the controversy about the last revision of the Diagnostic Manual. I'm interested in his basic point - that these mental diseases are artificial constructs that try to slot suffering into neat categories that don't necessarily have real external validity. It also makes some telling points about the influence of insurance companies when medical treatment is paid-for - you're diagnosed with X because the insurance companies will pay for treatment for X. Like Freud, he's not persuaded that treating problems of the mind is a job for medical doctors at all (he is a psychoanalyst himself). However, the book gets a bit bogged down in the ins and outs of every committee meeting and conference - I think it would have been a better book if this element had been reduced.

I have the maximum 20 library books out and some others pending collection, so I have to knock off a few quicker reads to get things moving.

Bibliomania I love the summer reading lists, I saw the Sunday Times's one too, I also look up the American ones as often they have books that will be out in UK later. The Washington Post has good ones as does New York Times. I hadn't noticed the other Elly Griffiths series, but I read the early Ruth Galloway ones and enjoyed them. Have you seen she has a stand-alone one coming in November? It's about someone who teaches gothic fiction, so liked the sound of it, love books that refer to other books!

That upcoming Elly Griffiths one sounds great, Dottie. I love books about books too - my current library haul includes The catalogue of shipwrecked books : young Columbus and the quest for a universal library by Edward Wilson-Lee, The librarian, by Sally Vickers and The house of fiction : from Pemberley to Brideshead, great British houses in literature and life by Phyllis Richardson. No idea how good they are, but I will report back in due course.

I have the Zigzag Girl to read and also like the sound of the new Ellie Griffiths.

In fact so many books on here I want to read, I need to make a list.

Museum, splother,hound, hope your woes resolve themselves soon.

Chillie - I've read Boneland and found it very odd. Not sure what he was trying to achieve with it, but, for me, it didn't really work.

Hound - I hate to break it to you, but I don't think This Thing of Darkness will turn out to be a cheery sort of book.

Thank you all for your kind words.

Remus, it's less about the content, and more about the joy of knowing a new book is winging its way to me. Which is probably a good thing, given what everyone has said about This Thing of Darkness!

You will love it. If not, I'll a) swap your copy for a brand new different book and b) eat my hat!

Just done a search to find my review of Boneland.

It was book 114 in 2014 on a thread in which Cote and I are both dissing Wolf Hall - nothing much has changed then!

Here's the review:
On the surface this looks as if it ought to be a children's book, but it isn't. It's the follow up to his hugely popular "Weirdstone of Brisingamen" and its sequel which were published in the 1960s.

I expected to love it but, in fact, I absolutely hated it. I've been reading it on and off for weeks (and it is very short) but kept putting it down for something better. Finally finished it last night in desperation caused by a bout of insomnia.

It's trying to be mythical and poetic and other-worldly and ethereal and Hughes-like. In fact, it's wearing and irritating and repetitive and stupid. I was interested in the human character, Colin, but the attempts to parallel his life and his issues with all the mythical crap were laboured and ineffective. I felt cheated and cross when I'd finished it and I most heartily urge you all to stay well away from it.

Not the worst book I've read this year (that award is like to stay with Khaled Hosseini and the abominable, "And the Mountains Echoed") but even worse than Morrissey's autobiography and that, to quote the great Bananarama, is really saying something.

Goodness, there's so many good reviews on here! I've only got 2 new ones to add and neither are particularly good.

30 The Break - Marian Keyes - not my thing, a book club choice. A woman's DH decides he's going to go off on a 6 month back packing 'break', and obviously has to have a break from their relationship too and it be ok for him to shag about. Our heroine of the story is supposed to be a kick ass PR woman, yet is a weak little lamb at this. It's very shit.

31. The Fourteenth Letter - Claire Evans - set in the late 19th Century, various stories come together: a young woman is murdered at her engagement party, an American female criminal is being paid to watch a house. A slightly helpless trainee solicitor tries to make himself more important and stumbles in a mess. It's all a bit silly and too long.

Hound book buying is definitely the way to go!

Oh Lord remus, you have just reminded me how truly awful that Morrissey book was...

but I quite liked And The Mountains Echoed

Sorry to hear about the various woes - I hope they resolve themselves quickly. Agree that book-buying can be excellent balm for the troubled soul (well, that's my excuse. There have been phases when I've come back from every excursion out of the house with a book ).

In fact, my strike rate has slowed down disastrously but I've just come back to note 44: The Fields Beneath - Gillian Tindall

I'm a sucker for books about London, and I'm keen on history: Gillian Tindall is is an expert in both, so makes an ever-reliable choice. In this book she explores the history of the area we know today as Kentish Town, once the country refuge of wealthy Elizabethans, and later still a place to take the waters, believe it or not. It's where the author lives, or did when she wrote the book. One for slightly specialist tastes, I suppose, but I found it fascinating.

101. Islander: A Journey Round Our Archipelago by Patrick Barkham

Sounded really interesting but didn’t do it for me. The author visits some of the small islands which form part of the UK and its crown dependencies. I enjoyed the chapters on Alderney and the Scillies but struggled to get through the rest. Not sure why as it’s the kind of thing I usually enjoy.

Remus I completely agree with your review. I did get into Boneland a bit more as it progressed, but when I started reading it I was wondering what the hell was going on. It was a bit of a word salad which didn't make a lot of sense. I was half expecting it to turn out that Colin had murdered Susan as a child at one point, which I don't think is where Garner meant to take me.