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.

I'm afraid I have been missing in action recently, as it has taken me the best part of a month to read

29. The Moonstone by Wilkie Collins

And not because I didn't like it. I really did. Gabriel Betteredge might be one of my all time favourite characters.
I struggled to pick it up and put it down again without losing the thread of the story. I got very bogged down about halfway through and had to really push on to the end to find out who and how it was done. The last 50 pages flew by though.
I've read somewhere that it was originally written to be published episodically a la Dickens. That might be a reason I struggled a bit with it.
Anyway, it was great, but now it's over and I can move on to reading lots of other things I want to read, including about a fortnights worth of this thread!!

Burnt Shadows Is on Kindle daily deals today. Definitely worth a read

Satsuki I'm reading White Teeth atm, was it the diabetic retinopathy/tears of blood that gave you the

100 book milestone! That's already considerably more than in the last few years - I think it must be the impact of this thread and possibly better book selection than usual. I have read relatively few shockers this year, looking back at the list.

100 The Dark Net by Jamie Bartlett
This wasn’t the book I thought I had bought (I meant to buy Dark Money. And it probably suffers from being written in 2014 - an exploration of the dark side of the internet should probably cover election meddling and terrorism. But it was interesting, enlightening and pretty scary stuff nonetheless.

101 Longbourn by Jo Baker
Pride and Prejudice from the servants’ perspective. Although actually this was far more subtle and well done than that. The characters we know are just a back drop to a story that works really well in its own right and is much grittier, and engaging (I am not the most enormous Austen fan if I am honest) than its source material.

102 Bird Box by Josh Malerman
This was properly scary. People start dying when they see...something outside. So people stay inside and try to survive as best they can. This was an odd story picked up on a whim in a second hand bookshop and not what I usually read but I really did find it quite hard to put down. It had real tension and lots left to think about at the end.

scribbly I’d forgotten about that! It was a long time ago that I read it but I was actually thinking of the but where one of the characters realises her boyfriend has joined Jehovah’s Witnesses when she sees him wearing a cross, when one of the things that separates JWs from other mainstream Christian religions is that they don’t use the cross in worship and are in fact actively against wearing symbols and have discouraged this for a long time, so it was a nonsensical way of illustrating his conversion.

Satsuki, ah that’s interesting, that completely passed me by (v interesting btw, I did not know that). Medical inaccuracies or hyperbole are the worst for dragging me out of a story. A tears of blood casual question at breakfast resulted in a 15 minute lecture by dh on the changes elicited to the retina during various stages of diabetes. Followed up by a linked research article from him for elevenses. Lovely.

I haven't posted in ages because it has tken me so long to read Dark Water by Elizabeth Lowry. This was recommended in the ST in their historical fiction round up. It's a gothic style affair, set in 19th centruy New Enlgand , with echoes of Moby Dick (that was abd sign as I bloody hate Moby Dick). It is about insanity (and those bits are interesting) but not much happens and there is a lot of talking. The reveal at the end is not really a reveal. The narrator is unreliable and very unlikeable (deliberately). His treatment of women is interesting. A great concept, really well written but all rather intense and hard to read, on the whole.
The beginning is set at sea and I thought, it being the nineteenth centruy and in South America, it might be a bit like This Thing Of Darkness, even down to its similar title. But no. Harry Thompson's book deals with similar themes but is so totally superior.

Scribbly off to read my September chapters of Bleak House !

White Teeth is still a great book, though!! I find the conversion to Islam bits very prescient.

I think she did some things well in it, but I don’t think it is a great book, it has too many flaws, engaging as it is at times, and I can’t help thinking what else she got so wrong. As a fiction writer she makes too many missteps for me generally I’m afraid.

I didn’t have the knowledge of diabetic retinopathy I do now scribbly when I read it but just looked up that passage and it’s a bit mind boggling altogether.

Oh, well I like it:( I do hate the rest of her books, though. They lack charm.

I love the bit that says WE GAVE YOU A NAME LIKE MAJID something something something AND YOU WANT TO BE CALLED MARK SMITH?

Makes me chuckle. It was used as an unseen this year for A Level Lit and a boy got shushed in the exam room for snorting.

not cocaine obviously

Pepe
I'm a Janeite and detested Longbourn!

Yes it is funny and you are right about its prescience in its subjects. Also agree that charm is one of the things missing for me with her writing too

Yikes. I have just recommended it to a friend who feels the same way about Austen as you, Remus. Why is she going to hate it?!

I quite enjoyed it when I read it but I don’t ever feel I’d want to reread it iyswim.

It's a book club choice. I got such a shock when I started reading it, having never read any Zadie Smith before I was expecting gritty and urban, possibly a bit experimental (no idea why) and it’s, well, not. Have on several occasions got a strong whiff of Sue Townsend. Quite enjoying it though, despite the diabetic retinopathy misstep. Bet it will get the thumbs up from my bookclub.

I've taught it several times at A Level. Students normally like it but its structure and reliance on contextual knowledge are challenges. Some book clubs might find that a bit much.

Pepe - This was my review:
"I detested it. Mostly it was boring and, at times, it was absolutely bloody ridiculous (Mr Hill, for those who have read it, and Mr Bennet, and Wickham). I thought it was almost as bad as, 'And the Mountains Echoed' which, as anybody who read the threads last year will probably remember, I thought was astonishingly awful."

Now, I can't remember much about it other than that most of my reading of it was pretty much me willing it all to be over.

Hi, I love reading your musings. I probably won't make the 50 mark but I've just finished my 20th.

20: Frederica by Georgette Heyer

My first Heyer, and I have been saving it to be read at the right moment, but I was a little disappointed. To be honest I didn't think that the plot really picked up the pace until 2/3 through. Loved the characters though.

Pepe, I have to say I found The Dark Net a much easier/more engaging read than Dark Money - the latter is absolutely worth reading (and one of those books everyone probably should read) but I found it a bit of a slog.
Flitting between books at the moment - the new Jasper Fforde is irritating me rather, his style is always verging on the twee, but falls over the edge too much here for me. Got another Malcolm Gladwell (What the Dog Saw) on e-book loan from the library but it's a collection of articles and very mixed in quality. As a result I've just started a steampunk anthology which is another e-book loan.

Following recommendations on this thread, book 41 was The Heart's Invisible Furies by John Boyne. A great sweeping, flawed, sentimental Irish epic, with changes through the past 70 or so years - principally the treatment of homosexuality - seen through the eyes of the central character, Cyril Avery. I absolutely loved it and cried through the last few pages on my commute this morning. I particularly liked the way the writing manipulated my attitude towards Cyril - just at the point I was getting really angry with him, the time and mood shifted and it was almost as though several years had passed in my own head too, and I'd come to terms with what he'd done. I agree with some reviews I've read that the humour got a little too brash and seemed out of place at times, but it really didn't spoil my enjoyment of the book.

After all that human warmth I need something chilling so am going to read You Let Me In by Lucy Clarke, which is on a 99p Kindle deal at the moment.

Sidling back in since, I’ve been away from the thread for a while. Still reading though.

Currently finishing up Ladder of Years by Anne Tyler, which I’m enjoying a lot.

And speaking of Anne Tyler, today Amazon are selling quite a few of her books on Kindle for 99p, as part of a new daily deal, which so far seems to be proving even more dangerous than their previous daily deal.

(I quite enjoyed Longbourne)

83. Troubles, JG Farrell

It's 1919 and Brendan Archer, an English soldier, arrives in rural Ireland to find the woman he formed a rather uncertain attachment with during the war. The book tells the story of his entanglement with Angela's family, the dilapidated grand hotel they run, and the restless shifting politics in the community around them.

This was an interesting book about an interesting time, but for me it was way, way too long at almost 500 pages. Very little happens. There are pages and pages of description of people walking around the hotel, or having pointless conversations about trivia, or feeding animals, or playing cards. As in The Siege of Krishnapur, this skilfully builds a tense and claustrophobic atmosphere but I'm sorry to say I got bored. If it had been half the length I would probably have loved it.

Corvus thanks for the heads up re the Anne Tyler Kindle deals. I was very restrained and only chose 2 ;) A spool of blue thread and Back when we were grown ups
I can thoroughly recommend The Accidental Tourist and The beginner's goodbye which are also at 99p.

I bought them all except for A Spool of Blue Thread, and that was only because I already have it. I really need to stay away from the Kindle deals page.

88: Because of the Lockwoods – Dorothy Whipple

My first DW book and, other than the final few pages which descended into melodrama, I really loved it. The Lockwoods are positively Austenian in their awfulness, lording it over the ‘genteel but poor’ Hunter family. We know from the start that Mr Lockwood is A Very Bad Man who has done A Very Bad Thing, and so we’re waiting for his comeuppance throughout. In the meantime, there’s a really sweet love story developing for a nicely feisty young Hunter girl. Glorious – will definitely read more from Dorothy!