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.

Adding my thoughts and best wishes for annandale

Thanks terpsichore. I bought the stewart lee book on kindle last night, thanks for recommending it, really enjoying it.

So sorry to hear that, Annandale. When DH died (long time ago now) I hardly read anything for months, only bits of a few 'helpful' books on bereavement that people gave me or recommended. Like you, by the sound of it, I found poetry was actually more helpful.

So very sorry to hear about your loss, Annandale (and yours too, Expat).

Has anybody read *Spufford's "I May Be Some Time"? I enjoyed that. Not read the USSR one yet, but it sounds great.

Sorry to hear about your loss Annandale

51. One Little Lie - Sam Carrington

Deborah’s son was murdered. Alice’s son is a murderer. Deborah would do anything to have her son back. And Alice wants to right the wrongs. But one little lie spirals out of control.

This was quite slow and I felt myself getting distracted and not really wanting to read it. Not as enthralling as I thought it would be or could have been.

I'm so sorry for your loss, Annandale.

79. Joanne M Harris - The Testament of Loki

Sequel to The Gospel of Loki and telling a story of the events after Ragnarok, in which Loki ends up escaping from Dream into the body of a 17-year-old girl in our world via a computer game. He then discovers that he is not the only escapee and will need all his tricks, plans, and some allies if he is to reclaim what was lost.

I really like Harris' spins on the Norse myths and beyond them. If you haven't tried any of them they are well worth investigating.

Annandale may I too offer my condolences for your loss

I loved Golden Hill when I read it last year. Had some great moments of humour and adventure. I think I might even have said something like “Spufford was robbed!”(after he failed to win the Costa) and then I read Days Without End and on reflection decided that maybe he hadn’t been, but he was jolly close.

I liked Golden Hill though some of it I wasn’t keen on - would definitely look forward to reading more by him though.

sending love Annandale

I’m not sure where the stray ‘on’ came from in my post, or maybe On Golden Hill is a different book

Were you thinking of On Golden Pond?

Annandale

I have I May Be Some Time on my shelf, having really enjoyed Golden Hill, I’m bumping it up my list!

65. Reamde by Neal Stephenson

Thriller. Starts off themed around hackers extorting money from MMORPG internet gamers, but soon turns into a more straightforward action thriller with kidnapping and Russian mafia and jihadists and American survivalists.

Entertaining if rather different in style from other Neal Stephenson books I’ve read. It’s also one I’d recommend getting as an ebook because of the enormously cumbersome size of the paper copy.

66. Luckiest Girl Alive by Jessica Knoll

Psychological thriller. Ani is preparing for a perfect marriage to the perfect man, while trying to overcome traumatic events in her past. Events that are the subject of a documentary Ani’s taking part in during the run up to the wedding.

Full of twists and very readable.

67. The Ocean at the End of the Lane by Neil Gaiman

Man returns to childhood home and recalls fantastical events that happened when he was 7.

Okay but not one of Gaiman’s better or more memorable books IMO.

68. Pied Piper by Nevil Shute

A retired Englishman holidaying in the Jura area of France in 1940 finds himself trying to escort a group back to England as the Nazis are invading and occupying France.

Another entertaining read.

Sorry for your loss Annandale. I hope reading helps you through.

I have been reading lots recently, but falling very behind on updating my list on here.

61 In The Darkroom - Susan Faludi
This was a really interesting one. I only knew Faludi as the author of 'Backlash' (major feminist book of the early 90s). This is on the face of it a memoir of her father, a Hungarian Jew, who was a teenager in Budapest during the war, later emigrated to Brazil then the US, and returned to Hungary after the fall of communism. In many ways it is really a book about identity, and how much control we can have over our own identities - how we see ourselves and how others see us. How far is it really possible to reinvent yourself on your own terms?

Over the course of his life, Faludi's father, Steven, was rejected by his parents (but still saved them from death during the war), rejected his own birth name, embraced being Hungarian over being Jewish (but was not allowed to reject his Jewish identity by wider society), tried to become an all-American family man (but was rejected by his wife, and reacted by violently assaulting her new partner), returned to Hungary and tried to become ultra-Hungarian, and in the last decade of his life, rejected his male identity and went to Thailand, to return as Stefanie, a 'real lady'. That final new identity makes it particularly interesting to read in the context of all the current debates around transgenderism, but there is a lot more to it than that.

The title comes from Steven/Stefanie's profession, as a darkroom 'touch-up' specialist, basically doing photoshop before photoshop was invented, and making photographs lie. Highly recommended.

62 Hotel Iris - Yoko Ogawa
I have read and enjoyed a couple of Ogawa's books before (The Diving Pool, The Housekeeper and the Professor) so I was looking forward to this, but found it very hard to see past the relationship at the heart of this book and appreciate the style and simplicity of her writing. This is basically about a fairly extreme BDSM relationship between a vulnerable girl of 17 and a man in his 60s, and I just could not put my discomfort at that to one side.

63 The Librarian - Salley Vickers
A much cosier read after the last one, though not a conventional happy-ending romance. A young woman arrives in a Wiltshire town in the late 1950s to take over and enliven the children's library, but not everyone is happy about that, and local politics combine with difficult relationships to end in (sort of) disaster. Her presence has a lasting impact on some of the local children - the last section of the book is a 50-years-later segment.

64 The Devil's Mask - Christopher Wakling
Lively historical crime fiction, set in Bristol just after the end of the slave trade: young lawyer gets embroiled with dark deeds and dead bodies while investigating customs anomalies in the harbour. A good read, particularly if you know Bristol, and with some heartfelt passages about the need for coffee.

80.) The Muse, by Jessie Burton -- The follow-up to The Miniaturist, which I own but haven't read, and wouldn't necessarily run out to read on the strength of this. I enjoyed it while I was reading, but after finished find myself liking it less the more I think about it. It's dual-narrative, with the story divided between 1960s London and 1930s Spain, and the characters Odelle (an immigrant from Trinidad living in London) and Olive Schloss (a 19 year old painter), with Odelle gradually puzzling out the mystery around the unusually powerful painting left to Odelle's boyfriend Lawrie.

The whole plot hinges on a couple of fairly big coincidences, and I can't tell if one of the twists at the end was supposed to surprise me or not. Nor am I sure how I was supposed to feel about Olive: by the end I found myself actively disliking her because of how jaw-droppingly selfishly she behaved, and I didn't really feel that the story acknowledged that behaviour in any significant way.

Now I'm just starting The City of Brass, by SA Chakraborty, the first in a YA fantasy series set in an alternate version of Cairo. I like it so far, readable, with a likeable protagonist, and the setting looks promising so far.

Annandale

I kept reading 'On Golden Hill' and thinking you all meant 'On Golden Pond' but confused because the plot sounded different!

Just finished 35. Fat Is a Feminist Issue, Susie Orbach I imagine this book was shocking when it was first published. Whilst not shocking any more, is still relevant and I'd love to force all women to read it regardless of size/shape!

Annandale

52. Gone Tomorrow by Lee Child A mid -series Jack Reacher. I'm reading these in no particular order just as I come across them in the library etc. Lee Child says that's ok, I checked. This one is set in New York, which doesn't seem Reacher's natural habitat, I prefer the drifting through small town America type ones. What I do like about this series is that some books are in the third person and some in the first. This one is first person. It doesn't make a huge difference to the style, but it means you only know what Reacher knows, and I like the way he is realistic about his own strengths and weaknesses, e.g he knows that digital technology has left him way, way behind. The action sequences are always very well choreographed and described too. A lot of inferior thrillers leave me thinking 'yeah right, that could never happen', whereas these make me believe and clearly visualise it all, whether it's technically physically possible or not.

@Satsuki I must have been!

Corvus funnily enough I decided not to read The Muse after The Miniaturist was a DNF for me last year. Many people I know IRL loved it though!

I liked The Muse actually even though I didn't like The Miniaturist. The Muse tells more of a story. I do agree with your review though corvus especially the bit about hindsight!

I read The Miniaturist earlier this year and wasn’t that impressed, but I think I already have The Muse on my kindle somewhere so will probably read it at some point.

22. Transcription by Kate Atkinson
    It was ok not her best. I also was confused by the male characters. Loved the setting.

23. Plum by Holly McNish
    A great collection of poetry. Some funny, some poignant. I really enjoyed them. Any recommendations of similar poets?

24. The end we start from by Megan Hunter
    A woman has a baby just as London is flooded and evacuated.
    This a short lyrical book with some great reflections on that newborn stage and breastfeeding. Definitely a page turner. Just using an initial instead of a character name is a bugbear of mine as I get them confused but apart from that I loved it.

I've managed to put a bit of a sprint on and finished two books that have been hanging around for a while - both part of long-running series:

69: Insidious Intent - Val McDermid
In the distant past I've read a good few of these books featuring detective Carol Jordan and profiler Tony Hill; they've been made into a TV series and while I hadn't read the previous book in the sequence, it was easy enough to pick up. This was very readable but terribly cliched and the ending was....err, I won't say more because Val McD adds a note asking people not to give it away, but it didn't really convince me (Sorry Val - you were great on University Challenge )

70: The Waters of Eternal Youth - Donna Leon
I liked this much more, interestingly, perhaps because it's a 'whodunnit' that isn't really pretending to be much of a whodunnit. By this point in the Commissario Brunetti series, the pleasure is in the relationships between the (now well-known) characters, the various musings of Brunetti on all sorts of philosophical aspects of his job and of life, and the delicious food everybody eats throughout. There is a case for him to solve but it's not a massively taxing one.......