50 Book Challenge 2019 Part One

[southeastdweller]

Welcome to the first thread of the 50 Book Challenge for this year.

The challenge is to read fifty books (or more!) in 2019, though reading fifty isn't mandatory. Any type of book can count, and please try to let us all know your thoughts on what you've read.

Who's in for this year?

@SatsukiKusakabe if florid isn’t your style, Far From the Madding Crowd is, well, memorably florid. Like srsly. BUT it is a goody, I thought. And yes, Bathsheba.

@Piggywaspushed - that’s true, Alec is a great villain. But it’s so bleak....

I love Swallows we used to pretend we were the children when we put the boat on the lake at home. Re-read as an adult and still loved it.

Have added The Salt path to my reading list, we live on the coast path either near the end or near the beginning depending in which way you do it. A friend o mines MIL walked it two years ago raising money for charity after her son died of an overdose. When we ran a B&B we also had an older in their very late 60's possibly American couple who flew over for a week every year to walk it picking up where they left off the year before,

If you watch the 1970's version of Madding Crowd that's my friends fathers sheep going over the cliff at Scratchy Bottom

boldlygoingsomewhere and others who like Shirley Jackson - I found her short story The Lottery online in the summer - posting here if anyone would like to read it. I understand it's very famous in the US but I had never come across it before.

sites.middlebury.edu/individualandthesociety/files/2010/09/jackson_lottery.pdf

Glad to see the love for The Thousand Autumns Of Jacob de Zoet - it's just beautiful. If you like Mitchell with more modest magic realism, the Black Swan Green is also excellent - an 80s, home counties coming of age tale with only the merest hint of other worldliness.

After you’ve read a few David Mitchell’s you need to google the graphic which shows all the character crossings-over across the books.

Welsh I was listening to R4 one afternoon once while pottering around the kitchen and absent-mindedly thinking 'that's nice'-type thoughts....until the story I was half-paying attention to suddenly became horrific.

That was my first introduction to The Lottery

I've had a biography of Shirley Jackson on my wishlist for ages and like an idiot I didn't ask for it for Christmas....why not? I ask myself now. She had a very unhappy life I'm afraid.

FiveGoMad - I read The Salt Path last year and loved it. They're such a courageous couple. I found it quite an emotional read and yet really inspirational.

We had a holiday last year at Combe Martin where the coastal path runs along the north coast of Devon, and it's extremely tough hilly walking country.

Just to say, I have been having a problem with my kindle not downloading books - it's the latest paperwhite version - and eventually spoke to Amazon via online chat this afternoon; there is a new version of the software out which needs to be downloaded to the PC and transferred by USB cable.

I don't know if it applies to other Kindles but you can check here
www.amazon.co.uk/gp/help/customer/display.html?tag=mumsnetforum-21&nodeId=202109170

Dot I'm struggling with Mythos , there's something about it that I don't like and I can't put my finger on it. I usually love Mr Fry. I have Heroes lined up too and at the moment I don't think I'll get there. I want to like it, but I don't.

Also a Swallows and Amazons fan. I went through an Arthur Ransome phase as a child and loved most of his books, but not Coot Club. I reread Swallowdale on a camping trip to the Lakes last summer and still loved it. I had a fairly free range childhood and it wasn't unknown for a gang of us to disappear for the day with a picnic on bikes or with a dinghy.

I don't think anyone who didn't read Sweet Valley High really missed out. I read those and a godawful series about Cheerleaders because they were plentiful in the library. Quickly moved on to Point Horror as a gateway to Stephen King/Dean Koontz/Patricia Cornwell and never looked back. I never did the fantasy thing in my teens and came to LOTR late (just before the films) and Pratchett shortly before his death. Could never get into Douglas Adams though.

Pepe I ended up with the audio of The Odyssey that you recommended on the last thread and am having a marvellous time being tossed across the seas at the mercy of the gods.

I wonder if some of us who didn't read Sweet Valley High are just a bit too old? I think they were published 1984 or so onwards in the UK - I was turning 15 & starting to read adult thrillers/romances. I sold lots of them at my Saturday job in a bookshop though!

I was a massive Swallows & Amazons fan though - loved the whole series (could never decide whether I identified with Titty or Nancy - with the odd side swerve into Dorothea). Fortunately dd also liked them a lot, so I didn't have to disown her

Yes used to love Point Horror. I read another series as well about a group of teen girls in an orphanage or care home that I’ve never been able to track down.

I read plenty of the Sweet Valley High and Cheerleaders books, my local library was well stocked with those. I’d agree that anyone who didn’t read them didn’t miss out on much though.

I used to love the Point Horror books as well.

I would like to join this year. I got some great recommendations from last year's thread. Last year's highlights were Blitzed - Drugs in Nazi Germany, The Stone Diaries, This Thing of Darkness, Tale of Two Cities and The Mars Room. *
*
I couldn't get on with Milkman or Reservoir 13 however.

My first book of 2019 is American Pastoral by Phillip Roth. It's on audiobook and I'm loving the narration. It's very funny and moving but complex in its analysis of the characters and their inner workings - I think I might have struggled with the hard copy.

I'm going to try and read more American classics this year if anyone has other recommendations?

Are the Point Horror books good, thy bypassed me but my DD wants to read Stephen King and I think at 12 she may be slightly too young

Hello! Can I join you? First timer here.

First book of the year is I Feel Bad About My Neck by Nora Ephron
Enjoying it as it's funny and easy to read

I used to enjoy them at that age - Caroline B Cooney and RL Stine I seem to remember being my favourite authors.

I was reading PH at slightly younger than your dd and was probably into Stephen King far too early - I’m much more reserved about what my kids have access to, however!

Hi wildthing and other newcomers I liked the Nora Ephron too last year.

Satsuki thank you, may get a couple and see how she goes with them. I was an avid Stephen King and James Herbert reader from about this age so I feel a bit hypocritical not letting her read them.

1 The Santa Klaus Murder. First published in 1936 this has been reprinted as part of the British Library Crime Classics series. I loved this, I really enjoy whodunnits from between the wars and just after and this didn't fail me. Well crafted plot and genuinely didn't have a clue who the murderer was until nearing the end.

I’m pretty sure that I was reading Point Horror books at 12. From what I recall, I’d guess they were aimed at the younger teenage readers.

Sorry author was Mavis Dorito Hay

I read ,This is Going to Hurt in one sitting in September. Fascinating and depressing (especially when I read the author is a bit of a twat irl)

Those sheep going off the cliff in the 70s FFtMC traumatised me for weeks as a child.

I used my audible credits on LOTR and Sherlock Holmes read by Stephen Fry. I have hard copies of LOTR and read them in the 90s when suffering from glandular fever and want to read them again but realistically know I won't. So Audible seemed a good compromise.

I too didn’t get into the sweet valley high series, though I was born in the 80s so around the right age. I remember the awful tv show though. I was more into the babysitters cluband point horror at that age

FiveGoMad I loved them at the time as they were just hitting the shops as I started secondary. I think I was either Y8 or 9 when I read my first King and started using the adult section of the library with my Mum's tickets. I used to scare myself silly.

I haven't read any PH since though so I can't say whether they stand up in this day and age. I remember loving Christopher Pike around then too and then moved to Anne Rice. I seem to think they were a lot more tame than King.