50 Book Challenge 2018 Part Seven

[southeastdweller]

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

Thank you nowanearly. It was just what the doctor ordered. ALS is a form of Motor Neurone Disease. It is an American term and was the condition that triggered the ice bucket challenge a few years ago.

66 Social Engineering: The Science of Human Hacking by Christopher Hadnagy

This looks at the human element of hacking & cybersecurity from the point of view of a penetration tester / security expert. It's really aimed at those looking to go into or develop their skills in the security industry, rather than as a general read, and it's very clunkily written in places (if he had a professional editor, they should be shot). Even so, once you get through the first painfully slow couple of chapters, its absolutely fascinating, even as a lay reader.

Marking place. Reading a not terribly good book at the moment that I picked up in the library. Can't remember either the title or the author, but it's a whodunnit set in a boys' boarding school, with a very annoying woman as the central character. Obviously, you'll all now be waiting with baited breath for the review.

Toomuchsplother, I love Barter Books. My DP was there last week with the kids as his Dad lives in County Durham so they went for a visit and a delicious breakfast in the cafe. It's one of my absolute favourite bookshops. I was very jealous because I had to stay behind for work.
Unfortunately for us it's about a four and a half hour drive to Northumberland so I don't get to go very much!

Remus, can't wait for the update

Hi all

Just finished book 29. This is Going to Hurt by Adam Kay read by a few on here and recommended by my boss.

I did laugh out loud at some of the stuff (Lasagne) but read Keiths review on another thread and agreed with it. Keith though you might be interested in this podcast on the point you made about satire: revisionisthistory.com/episodes/10-the-satire-paradox

thought you might....

I just realized that I've gone through 13 books since the beginning of July and I'm about to finish the 14th It's looking like I might make 50 this year.

Have people seen this? Some people might argue that David Mitchell's books should all be buried in a Norwegian forest...

Remus I saw Margaret Atwood talk about this at this years Hay Festival. it was funny as the interviewer was trying to get some info from her about what the book she had buired was about, and Atwood was not giving anything away!

64. Normal People by Sally rooney

This arrived by amazon at 5pm yesterday. I started reading it immediately and did not put it down until I had finished at 11pm last night. I loved it.

It is similar in style to her first book (Conversation with Friends) in that the dialogue and misunderstandings between what we say and what we mean, are key factor, but the big difference for me is that i really cared about all the characters in this book. They all feel so painfully real.

Its the story of two people, Connell and Marianne, who grow up in a small town in Sligo and their relationship with other through school, and then university in Dublin.

It is one of the most tender and realistic portrayals of love and relationships I have read. It seems to me a celebration of ordinary love. The power and the pain of bumping along through life together, as opposed to any dramatic , overblown love affair.

Its story about hope, redemption, families, abuse, depression, the pain we cause ourselves and others. I loved how each character is completely drawn. Even minor characters from their school days are so well done and there is not one character who is completely good or bad, or who isn't presented with some kind of empathy.

I loved it and would implore everyone to read it. I liked her last book, but this is a huge step up for me and can't wait to see what she does next.

argh spelling errors - sorry

That sounds utterly pointless. Surely a book is most relevant to its own era. Why keep it unprinted for a century?

33. Ark (Flood #2) by Stephen Baxter

Whoa! This was a fantastic sequel to the author's Flood, which I had read and loved back in 1995.

Flood talks about water level rising over several years to catastrophic levels (which I won't specify to avoid spoilers) and the resulting apocalyptic/post-apocalyptic scenario where people fight for high land, do their best to preserve their way of life in an increasingly hostile and shrinking world.

Ark takes the adventure much further, to space Realising that the Earth is doomed, they decide to send colonists to an Earth-like planet many lightyears away. The drive to discover the technology that makes this possible is fascinating and the author's proposed angle is nothing short of brilliant. The education and selection of the people who will be sent on this 'ark', political and psychological games that go into the Ark Project are very well analysed and told in the book. The space journey is brilliant in its detail and realism and the ideas that come out of it are amazing in their clarity and vision.

I highly recommend Ark and indeed its prequel Flood to those of you who have enjoyed Neal Stephenson's Seveneves and/or The Three-Body Problem trilogy of Cixin Liu.

I don't live in an English-speaking country so am always jealous when I read about some of your book-hauls from charity shops.
However... I struck gold today in a 2nd hand English book shop with several books I've been wanting to read for ages - The Red Tent - Anita Diamant, The Little Friend - Donna Tart (never heard of it but LOVED The Goldfinch so much I figure this is probably worth a read), The Snowgoose - thanks to a very recent post on this thread, Tuck Everlasting for my daughter and 3 cups of tea which a friend recommended to me a while back. All for 10 euros. Result!

145. The Durrells Of Corfu by Michael Haag

Reread to remind myself of the actual places in Corfu that they lived in or visited.

146. This Rough Magic by Mary Stewart

Written in the 1960s, I really enjoyed this Corfu set mystery. It is rather dated now and the mystery gets a bit silly, but it has some lovely descriptions of the island and there’s a dolphin as a character which I thought was a good touch!

147. The Party by Lisa Hall

This was not good. Rachel wakes up after a party convinced something bad has happened but she doesn’t know what. The book then flips between the aftermath of the party, with her working out what happened, and the few months leading up to the party. Unfortunately I worked out early on who the villain was and I rarely manage to do that so it shows how obvious it was in this case.

Remus - I think I have read that boys' boarding school mystery, and can remember the twist at the end. Won't give any spoilers, though...

57 The 7th Function of Language - Laurent Binet

This was quite silly and extremely intellectually pretentious in a very French sort of way, but I really enjoyed it.

It's a supposed crime story, set in the French political and academic scene of the early 1980s, based on the (actual) death of Roland Barthes in a road accident, and featuring lots of real people (Francois Mitterrand, Giscard d'Estaing, Jacques Derrida, Michel Foucault and most other French philosophers/semiologists of the time, as well as Umberto Eco and Camille Paglia), some fictional, including the lead detective and his sidekick, a semiologist with a Sherlock Holmes-style ability to analyse people at a glance, plus at least one character borrowed from another writer (Morris Zapp ring any bells, anyone?). There are Bulgarian assassins, mysterious Japanese life savers and a secret debating society where losers also risk digits or more. The plot revolves around the idea that Barthes was killed for a document he was carrying, which held the secret to a powerful new use of language, sought by a number of different parties. The action moves from Paris to Bologna, Venice and Ithaca and back again, and there is another murder along the way, which turns out not to be fictional. It's also all about language and semiology and meta-fiction.

I found myself checking Wikipedia every now and again to confirm whether various characters/plot elements were actually real, as my knowledge of semiology, post-modernism and French politics is limited, and I confess that my first association when I hear the name Derrida is a Scritti Politti song... I would probably have got even more of the in-jokes and references more if I'd been more immersed in all that stuff, but I enjoyed being carried along for the ride.

Laurent Binet... Isn't he the author of that complete and utter waste of time called HhHH? I can't even be bothered to Google.

If so, "quite silly and extremely intellectually pretentious in a very French sort of way" sounds about right.

Does anyone else think of the very very funny children’s book, The Land of Green Ginger, every time it is mentioned above? I got quite confused! Have also muddled Moonfleet and The Moonstone (Moonfleet is good iirc- I read it at school. We also read All Quiet, so it didn’t occur to me that it was obscure!).

Anyway, if you haven’t read The Land Of Green Ginger I would totally recommend it! (By Noel Langley).

Goodness, that Binet book sounds bonkers!

Just bought Lonesome Dove for 99p on the new monthly kindle deal based on a good review from someone on here (apologies I forget who). Absolutely no chance of meeting my end of year reading target if I keep buying these whopper books.

Piggy and Cote - yes, bonkers is a pretty apt description, and yes, he wrote HHhH, though I haven't read it. Definitely not an author to everyone's taste, I am sure.

How funny. I was coming on to say that HHhH is in the Kindle monthly deals today. It caused much contention on here - lots of us loved it, whilst Cote and my dp thought it was dreadful. It sounds as if I'm not clever enough for The 7th Function though.

I've also bought Lonesome Dove (which I always read as Lonesome Dave) plus The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat and a William Ryan one.

Meanwhile, I've finished the Boys' boarding school book, which features a very annoyingly smug female lead, an old witch, a lot of the female lead cackling, lots of moments of the female lead supposedly understanding everything just because of the way somebody speaks, or doesn't speak, or looks, or walks, or whatever, and a couple of toads.

84: Tom Brown’s Body – Gladys Mitchell
Touted as a kind of gleeful combination of Christie and Sayers, this had the racism of Christie, the irritating female of Sayers and the wit and plot interest of neither of them. The least said about it the better. Utter codswallop.

37. Carrie's War - Nina Bawden. I bought a cheap slightly damaged copy of this in an emergency when I had nothing to read before starting a train journey. It's a tale of a brother and sister who're evacuated to Wales in WW2. I didn't really engage with it but as most of you know, it's a children's book so I'm not the target audience anyway.

38. Calypso - David Sedaris. Sedaris is back on form here, with his most recent collection of essays, some hilarious, some heartbreaking. A highlight of my reading year so far.

39. Nevertheless: a memoir - Alec Baldwin. I listened to the audiobook of this, read by the actor himself, which was an odd experience as the tone of his voice is generally emotionless and flat . He has a lot to be angry about but the level of bitterness displayed here about many of his colleagues and his ex-wife, Kim Basinger, coupled with a strong lack of empathy for others left me thinking less of him than what I did before I read the book.

Back to Normal People now by Sally Rooney, which so far is terrific.

I loved HHhH but have to admit I gave up on 7th Function and was a bit disappointed by it. Curiously enough I just saw it on a second hand book stall this very afternoon so was weird to see it being discussed when I popped on here!

I got Nice Work by David Lodge and An Accidental Woman by Jonathan Coe as am catching up with some Brit Lit.

Scribbly and Remus I posted a positive review of Lonesome Dove a couple of weeks back. Hope you both enjoy it as much as I did. Kindle format is probably the best way to read it as the physical book weighs a tonne. Plus you can't go wrong for 99p.