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 want to read the Claire Tomalin.

Not read The Pearl. I take it that it’s sad Remus?

65. Educated - Tara Westover. This has been reviewed a lot on here so I won’t say much other than it was a fascinating read if harrowing on occasions.

66 and 67. Blessed are The Pure in Heart and The Risk Of Darkness - Susan Hill*

The second and third Simon Serrailer books. Really they cover a single story so need to be read together. I wasn’t keen on the central crime - it left a lot of unresolved questions and was therefore unsatisfying. What I did like was the domestic lives of the Serrailer family and the little stories about various characters in the story.

Best the latest Simon Serrailer book was published this week. Very tempted to down load it.

I know Toomuch. I read them all years ago so am having a re read in anticipation of the new one. I had thought she’d said there would be no more. Luckily I have a shit memory when it comes to who dunnits!

Have been off thread and avoiding all book reviews while I listened to...
34. Lethal White by Robert Galbraith
And I really enjoyed it! I wanted to form my own opinion, and overall it followed the same style as the others in the series. It opens immediately after the conclusion of the previous book, which got me hooked from the start. I preferred the plot and characters to The Silkworm which was a bit gruesome and grotesque for my taste. There are still repeated descriptions of the bother that Cormoran has with his stump after long days of surveillance. And I started to wonder if there weren't one or two more threads to the main investigation than we really needed. But I had thought that 22 1/2 hours seemed excessive for an audiobook and I never felt it drag as I was enjoying the journey and was absorbed from start to finish - the kind of audiobook that made me offer to do the dishes so I could listen for a little longer! I thought the descriptions of Robyn's relationship with Matthew felt realistic and well written, and will look forward to finding out where the ongoing elements of the series go next.
I've started The Good Father, but it hasn't entirely grabbed me so far. Looking forward to catching up on the thread :)

Sorry best I remember now it was you who brought it to my attention. Shows how bad my memory is, seriously thinking of ditching The Milkman in favour of Simon

The Milkman not grabbing you then TooMuch?

I'm afraid I've been very unproductive lately, but I have managed to finish this:

68: How I Escaped My Certain Fate: The Life and Deaths of a Stand-Up Comedian - Stewart Lee

Comedy is, of course, a very subjective thing, but I thought this was terrific. Lee had been through the bruising experience of directing 'Jerry Springer - The Opera'; seeing it succeed beyond all expectations, and then coping somehow with being targeted by a right-wing Christian pressure group and threatened with prosecution for blasphemy (which, ultimately, didn't happen).

This book details his highs and (very low) lows as he tries to come to terms with the Jerry Springer debacle, as well as deal with a bout of extreme ill-health that hospitalised him, all in amongst developing new material for stand-up shows - while questioning the whole nature of stand-up itself. The book includes transcripts of three complete shows, liberally annotated with footnotes which are as funny, if not sometimes funnier, than the material being quoted (quite often the footnote takes up an entire page).

Lee is a deeply intelligent, articulate and thoughtful person and I was fascinated by this inside look at the meticulous process of crafting comedy. For me, at least, it was also hilarious, and Dh often had to put up with me cackling with laughter as I read this late at night. Rather surprisingly, one of my stand-out reads of the year so far.

I’m about a quarter of the way into The Milkman at the moment, toomuch. The style of writing meant it took me a while to get into. The style is reminding me of Eimear McBride’s A Girl is A Half-formed Thing to some extent. It is surprisingly funny in parts and I’m enjoying it so far.

Just got the Claire Tomalin out of the library. Am looking forward to it after reading such positive reviews.

Murine funny you say that I was thinking that it reminded me of the other The Lesser Bohemians by the same author. I am enjoying it one minute and wanting to throw it against the wall the next. Actually restored to reading some out loud yesterday which helped.

118) The psychology of time travel, by Kate Mascarenhas
I don't usually read SF, but this was at the softer edge. In 1967, four women invent a mechanism to allow time travel. Fifty years later, there is a strange death, drawing another two young women into the mystery. The author's real interest is, as the time travel, what time travel does to your mind, to your perception of yourself and others, and she has a lot of fun with the possibilities. Unlike a lot of SF, it's a very female-led book. Not my normal reading, but I enjoyed it.

119) A baby's bones, by Rebecca Alexander
Treads on the territory of Elly Griffiths' Dr Galloway series - a female archaeologist, pregnant with a married man's baby, ponders sixteenth century skeletons and mysterious happenings in the current day. There's a parallel historical narrative, which usually I don't like (Kate Mosse having putting me off) but this one moves fairly snappily. It kept me turning the pages later than I should have last night.

Spooky biblio as I’ve just read The Psychology Of Time Travel too! I agree with what you have said. It’s told from several points of view and several different time periods, so I did have to stop and think st the start of each chapter who knows what at that point in time, but once I got past that I enjoyed it. I think it might appeal to those who like the St Mary’s series. My only gripe really is that this book had people meeting their future/past selves when everybody knows this would create a major paradox (well, it does in every other time travel story I’ve read or seen!)

58 Outline - Rachel Cusk

First installment of a trilogy. Am aware that the third book Kudos was published this year, so I'm a bit behind the door in this one.

As the reader, you get to listen in to a series of conversations the narrator initiates with the different people she meets on her way to and during her work teaching a writing course in Athens.

Initially I found this frustrating. Just as I became absorbed in one person's story, she jumped quickly to a new seemingly unconnected individual. It also has a rather self-conscious style, which felt like it verged on the overwritten.

However, at about halfway through I began to enjoy it and it felt more cohesive. I wanted to see who she would meet next and find out what they would have to say and I raced through it in a couple of days. I still found the style a bit eccentric, but in an interesting way. It was experimental but still accessible, iyswim. A book of stories within stories, very compact and at points quite thoughtful and profound.

Hello all :)
I was thoroughly enjoying being on these threads but dh died halfway through thread 2. I was only able to read poetry for a while plus the odd book club book. In general the concentration required for finishing a book has been harder to come by, it's too easy to be on my phone just drifting through bits and pieces. I'd like to read more again. DH was always a good reader, he challenged himself and I don't want to get out of the habit of reading.
I've reconstructed what I can remember of my list so far. Haven't got authors for all of them.
1 manhunt peter berger
2 lincoln in the bardo
3 slam nick hornby
4 the book of night women marlon james
5 private eye the first 50 years
6 rose in bloom louisa may alcott
7 visiting mrs nabokov martin amis
8 an old fashioned girl louisa may alcott
9 essex serpent
10 in memoriam candlestick press
11 stressed unstressed jonathan bate
12 the poetry pharmacy william sieghart
13 golden hill francis spufford
14 bookworm lucy mangan
15 the salt path raynor winn
16 the child that books built francis spufford
17 the dry jane harper
18 lucy barton elizabeth strout
19 anything is possible elizabeth strout
20 eleanor oliphant is absolutely fine
21 six minutes in may
22 confessions of a ghostwriter andrew crofts
23 red plenty francis spufford
24 I may be some time francis spufford
25 why I'm no longer talking to white people about race
26 the lie helen dunsmore
27 backroom boys francis spufford
28 the rooster bar john grisham
29 then she was gone lisa jewell
30 churchill and orwell the fight for freedom

31 - very slowly ploughing through Elizabeth 1 by Anne Somerset. I haven't read an Elizabeth biography for a long time, it hasn't surprised me particularly yet but there's lots I didn't remember.

I’m sorry to hear about DH’s death Annandale. I hope slipping back into the thread can help you with your reading goals.

I was looking at your list for points in common with mine and spotted On Golden Hill, which I really loved. Was going to ask if you enjoyed it, but having finished the list I think my question is answered - you went and found three more Francis Spufford to read in quick succession! Would you recommend them to a Golden Hill fan?

So sorry for your loss Annandale and welcome back to the thread.

Oh Annandale, I’m so sorry about your DH I hope that it helps to keep reading.
I’ve had Golden Hill on my Kindle for an age now and really need to read it. I have such a big back-log on my Kindle. It’s shameful.

My most recent reads are:
91. Out of Africa – Karen Blixen
An interesting account of her life as a farmer in Kenya (which starts in 1914) up until the time she has to leave due to what is effectively bankruptcy. She obviously loved living in Africa, writes beautifully of the country and has many adventures with animals and people alike. However, it’s a hard book to stomach in many ways, given the colonial nature of the times and the attitudes to the indigenous populations, despite hers being somewhat more enlightened than others.

92. Transcription – Kate Atkinson
I did actually enjoy this in the end and would have given it 3.5 stars on Goodreads if I could. It’s not perfect and if anything is rather confusing – there are too many male characters introduced too quickly and it’s hard to remember who is who – but on the whole she writes well. It was interesting to learn about the fifth column and the work of MI5 in WW2 – something I’m not familiar with.

93. Life Amongst the Savages – Shirley Jackson
As well as writing such classics at The Haunting of Hill House, Shirley Jackson wrote about the chaos of family life with small children. Many chapters of this book were published in magazines at the time (1950s) and it IS of its time. For example, when she goes into labour, she has a cigarette on the way to the hospital to give birth. There are some very funny and very familiar scenes in this book including everyone waking up in a different bed in the morning due to unsettled children. My mum gave this to me as she thinks my family is similar! Minus the smoking

Welcome back to the thread annandale

annandale

I’m so sorry for your loss annandale. I’m glad you’ve come back to the thread

So sorry, Annandale.

Like the sound of Life Amongst the Savages, whippet

Coincidence, Chessie! Yes, it's a different take on the time travel paradox, but it felt internally consistent so I'm prepared to accept it. Or maybe it wasn't and I'm just too confused to unpick it. Anyway, it felt like a fresh take on things.

Welcome back Annandale . Sorry for your loss

Sorry for your loss Annandale

Thank you all

Yes i absolutely adored On Golden Hill. I think he's one of the best writers i've come across in a long time. And hes the answer to all that nonsense about whether writers can write people different from themselves; of course they can - if they can't, it's a weakness in their writing, not an impossibility in itself.

I loved Golden Hill but the other one of his that blew me awsy was Red Plenty. I have never read anything else like it. It's well researched fictionalisation of peoples lives in the USSR of the late 50s. It's a masterpiece.

@Annandale I’m so sorry for your loss.
I had On Golden Hill on the BorrowBox app from the library but the loan expired before I got round to it, I’m going to go and re-reserve it now I think.

I keep mentioning the popsugar reading challenge I’m doing and did last year. In general I like the challenge of finding books to match the prompts and the way it maybe leads me to pick up things I wouldn’t normally, but I think this year there were more prompts that I really didn’t fancy, and even the ones that were more open ended or that I was interested in, it started to feel a bit more like homework every time I picked up a book! I’ve still got a few prompts to finish off, though think I’ve ticked off all the ones that I found most offputting.

Between that, and also using the library and borrow box app more and more, therefore focusing on those books to read them before I need to return them, it’s been a while since I even looked at the huge backlog to be read on my kindle and actual physical book shelf. Not to mention the audible list I’ve built up with my monthly credits but not listened to as I tended to listen when driving to and from work and I’ve been off for quite a while. You’d think I never needed to buy another book again, and yet I’m sat here browsing the amazon sale selections

Adding the Stewart Lee book to my list @Terpsichore. I’m a fan of his stand up but had no idea he was ever involved in the Jerry Springer opera.

@CluelessMama thanks for the LethalWhite review, I’m looking forward to it.

Just finished 49. The Song of Achilles - Madeline Miller - like Circe this has been reviewed and discussed a few times on the 50 books threads. I think the posts I saw said they preferred Circe and I think I did too, but I did really love this and found it unexpectedly moving in places.