50 Book Challenge 2018 Part Eight

[southeastdweller]

Welcome to the eighth (and probably final) 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 and please try to let us all know your thoughts on what you've read.The lurkers among you are also very welcome to come out of the woodwork and share with us 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, the sixth one here and the seventh one here.

How have you got on this year?

I’m a little worried I will get lots of military history, but I’m quite keen on the occasional random read. I think I am going to go for it as my 2018 reading challenge - that plus a Ulysses read along with a colleague!

D’oh. 2019, that should say.

It’s taken a long time to read The Overstory by Richard Powers. One of those longish books where it’s all very readable, but nothing is really driving you through it. The trees are the stars, the writing about trees really would change the way you see them if, like me, you only know a standard amount about trees.

Thanks, Cote. I'll check out The Abominable. I just wish Dan S would rein himself in a bit. His Franklin one had such promise, but just didn't need to be so long.

Speaking of which:
98: Breathe – Dominick Donald

Another book that had a lot of promise but was far too long. This was a Kindle deal a few days ago and The Grauniad liked it so I bought it. It’s got a very likeable central character – ex military in WW2 and now a probationary copper in early 50s London. He’s investigating the deaths of mostly older people who die at home during bouts of smog, but as far as the force are concerned, there’s no case. Meanwhile a man called Christie, who lives in Rillington Place, is also on the sidelines. And somebody has also tried to kill a rather mysterious Lithuanian. And our copper has got a new wife who is behaving rather oddly too.

It was okay – but the central character spends about 30% of the novel having nightmares about the war, another 30% or so being shagged senseless by his new wife, and a lot of the rest of the action is written in awful sentence fragments with insufficient paragraphing. When none of those three things were happening, I liked it!

Pepe, more years ago then I care to admit, I went to see a touring production of The Aspern Papers with an aged Cathleen Nesbitt playing Juliana Bordereau. In fact she was using a wheelchair in RL which I guess worked for the purposes of the plot.

What I didn't realise at the time was that she'd made her stage debut in 1910 and as a very young woman had been engaged to Rupert Brooke. I really wish I'd been more aware that I was watching one of the great actresses of the 20thc in what must have been one of her last performances.

So, er, hi. Have fallen off the thread - partly because life has been busy and hard and I've been mindlessly phone scrolling/sleeping instead of reading, partly because I've been reading several big non-fiction books I've not managed to finish, and partly because the thought of catching up with several months of thread filled me with terror.
However, I do read more when I've got you guys to check in with, so I have sat myself down and caught up. Phew! Here are the paltry three books I've managed to finish in the last couple of months.
36. The Other Half of Happiness Alisha Malik
Sequel to Sofia Khan is not Obliged, which I haven't read but was apparently a Muslim Bridget Jones. All the BJ trimmings are there - clueless single woman in her thirties, overbearing mother, 'found' family of close friends, comic mishaps etc.
This book is what happens after Sofia finds love. It's refreshing to read a comic Muslim love story with no fundamentalism and Malik is an enjoyable writer. However, good God, this woman is bad at being in a relationship! Even worse than Bridget is. Spent a lot of the book wanting to shake everyone and tell them to just have a bloody conversation ffs.
37. Monsters Sharon Dogar
Appropriately enough - a YA novel about Mary Shelley and her step sister Claire Claremont (they both ran away with polyamorist Shelley aged sixteen). Novelisation of their lives from about fourteen to twenty. This didn't read like a YA book at all - in that time period they have four babies between them, for one thing. However, it's utterly fascinating if you don't know the story around the creation of Frankenstein. I don't think I had quite enough brain for it, so it took me a long time to finish. It was well done though, would be a nice introduction to the basic story, and there's a lot to think about in there, although it didn't quite come alive for me as a reader. Read a proof copy, not sure when it's out.
38. The Methuen Drama Book of Suffrage Plays ed. Naomi Paxton
Collection of plays either written to promote women's suffrage or about early feminist themes.
As ever with collections this was rather mixed, but the best ones were excellent. My favourites were Which? in which a woman has to decide between keeping house for her father or running a hospital in India and The Twelve Pound Look, a JM Barrie play about a woman who leaves her awful husband as soon as she manages to earn twelve pounds as a typist. Probably only worth it if you're interested in early twentieth century feminist writing though.

49. If They Knew by Joanne Sefton

One I picked up a bit randomly - it's by a friend of a friend and I saw it on a Kindle deal. Enjoyed it much more than I was expecting to. Nothing massively original- the plot is based on the main character, Helen's, mother and secrets in her past which emerge slowly through multiple narratives moving back and forth through time. I liked Helen as a character and found the story compelling - for me, it was one of those novels you race to finish. It was perhaps tied up a little too safely, although it feels churlish to protest about that because it was what I wanted from the story - but sometimes it's good to be challenged.

Now I have to decide which book to read as my 50th!

73: Snap - Belinda Bauer

12-year-old Jack, his sister Joy and baby Merry are told by their pregnant mother to wait in the car on the hard shoulder while she goes to phone for help. But she never comes back. Jack has to grow up fast and take over responsibility for his family. But can he ever do what he really dreams of doing, and find the person who killed his mother?

Quick read to try and boot myself into action again. I enjoyed this on the whole, and it certainly slipped down very easily (though I'm pretty flabbergasted that it made it on to the Booker longlist). As crime writing goes it was very assured, although there was one whopping great big element of the plot that - to me - really didn't convince, and was shown up even more by the neatness with which everything else slotted together. However, I happily let myself be carried along with it, while keeping a mental awareness of the unlikeliness of that one thing. So, I suppose, a qualified thumbs-up for this one.

Hello Cheerful, good to see you back!

If anyone hasn't read it, Testament of Youth is on Kindle Daily Deal today.

(Interestingly I looked and her later book, Testament of Experience, is not only not on Kindle but looks to be out of print, which I think is a real shame. )

I have finished skimming reading Blood Brothers today. I mainly read this because DS is doing it for GCSE and I am a control freak and don't like not to have read what he is studying!

I am not a massive Russell fan (although I have a soft spot for Our Day Out). I found this heavy handed, and also too trite. There is foreshadowing and there is telgraphing your end! It's rather superficial and unliterary for a GCSE set text, too, which surprises me what with Gove's purge. But DS is enjoying it, so that's the main thing!

I detest 'Blood Brothers'.

I thought Blood Brothers was a musical, not a book Is it for studying in English lit, or Drama???

It's aply (with songs) . It's an English Lit set text (I think it is also done for GCSE drama with some exam boards)

that should say a play

Ah - had always thought of it as a musical. We're in Wales, so different set texts (DD would probably say you should be grateful not to have to teach/study Hedd Wyn though Remus...)

It is a musical really. It doesn't really deserve to be on the spec , in all honestly, alongside texts such as Lord of The Flies , Animal Farm or even An Inspector Calls. But , that aside, the play version of Curious Incident is also on there. Now, I loved the play when I saw it, but I have issues with a text being set that has been adapted from a novel for purely dramatic purposes. That's like studying the play of To Kill A Mockingbird when a great novel exists already...

Agree with all of those points, Piggy.

Dd1 also studying Blood Brothers for GCSE. She went and saw it with the school last week and said it was “pretty good” but “sad at the end” , then followed a prolonged blow by blow account of her trapped wind and the etiquette of farting in the theatre so I'm unsure how much of an impression the play made tbh.
[money well spent]

It does seem an odd choice piggy. I remember doing Equus in 6th form but I can’t recall studying plays other than Shakespeare for GCSE.

Enjoying Armistice very much Piggy. Very apt reading for today. I concur Anti-War is excellent. Isn’t the Japanese character for war interesting?

I think DD also studied A Taste of Honey (which I also read at school a million years ago in O level days) though can't recall if it was for GCSE.

Yup Taste of Honey is still on there!

I didn't look that closley scribbly. I have lent it to a friend now but will wrestle it off her and have a look. This is the same friend who still has my Suffragette book and my Muriel Spark, so what was I thinking???

farting in the theatre !