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?

Oh, I hadn't heard of Chronicle of Youth (added to wishlist!)

Sadik- yes, I read all of them, and also some letters collection between Vera B and Winifred Holtby. I must have got them from the library though, as I only have ToY as my own.
I think I'll move ToY back to my reread shelf- it is a few years now since I read it.

I once belonged to an online spin off from Babycentre and we all recommended a book for someone else to read based on what they wouldn't normally. I gave my recipient ToY and she loathed it. I was given a Terry Pratchett and didn't get beyond the first 10 pages so we abandoned what seemed like a bright idea doomed to failure!

That's hilarious, I'm imagining you with your swapped books and both

Yes sadik I feel the same way. I’m going to try my best to work through what I’ve got waiting and dig into old favourites more too. I’ve been extending it to film as well and trying to rewatch things I’ve enjoyed, which I used to do a lot, now barely ever.

this one is a real oddity *The Bad Quarto by Jill Paton Walsh". Crime fiction featuring Imogen Quy (in my mind I pronounce it to rhyme with "why") who is something of a superior Cambridge college nurse; not quite a doctor but for some reason also a fellow of the college but with an insufferable air of patronage about her and all her dealings with others. She is also apparently under 40 but has found love with an old bloke of 70 odd. There is something off-key with the language & Imogen's conversation with others - her friend has to "split" as she is having her hair done (when did you hear anyone say that outside a crap spoof 1960s film?) If I hadn't checked the date of publication (2007) I would have been struggling to know when this was written but I think the author is getting on a bit & I seem to recognise her name from children's books of my distant youth. In any event Imo solves the risibly plotted crime and will no doubt go on to others. there are apparently 3 others available but I don't think I'll bother.

also Amazon emailed offering me a last chance £2 credit against selected Kindle rubbish but given that someone upthread returned a 99p book, I decided not to incur the extra 98p required for a purchase of a 2nd rate self-published vanity project. Also the picture of Sibel Hodge (of whom I know nothing) seemed to show her image reflected in the back of a spoon which put me off. Onwards & upwards to book 6

Happy New Year. I'd like to join again, I pitched in half-way through the year last year and got some great ideas for reading. I read 39 books last year. To start 2019 I've picked off some unashamedly low hanging fruit arising from Christmas presents to me and others:

1. finished Past Tense by Lee Child. A good Reacher by my standards, the unpleasantness wasn't off the scale (see Make Me) and the backstory about his father mentioned on the back cover wasn't too intrusive. I think too much back story would break the spell...

1. Micromastery by Robert Twigger (Subtitled 39 Little Skills to Help you Find Happiness.) Barely anything to read at all - there are a few cheerful self-help style passages about mastering small skills in differing disciplines as a way to polymathic success and as a counter to pessimism and then 39 sets of instructions about how to pull off tricks as diverse as chopping a log, rolling a canoe, making sushi and running a con using the three card trick.

3 The Legend of Sally Jones by Jakob Wegelius. Shortest and easiest of all, not just a children's book but a notably short one at that. It's the first time my daughter has recommended a book to me, though, so I read it. It's a short story, really, a prequel to a lengthy novel that I am reading aloud to her at the moment. Explains why Sally Jones the gorilla came to be so dextrous and talented and the basis of her friendship with the engineer who is so central to events in the novel. Packed with cool pictures by the author himself, I wondered even if they contained some hidden puzzles. Perhaps he just really likes drawing numbering and lettering.

So many people have mentioned Lucy Mangan’s Memoir of Childhood Reading, so I’ve just put a reservation on it at my library. Very excited about this, but really, I have too many books on my ‘want to read’ list already! I shouldn’t be adding more.

3. A Little Princess by Frances Hodgeson Burnett - didn't like it, give me wilful, ornery Mary and her garden over perfect Sara any day.

4. All The Lonely People by David Owen - I was looking forward to this one as I'd had a preview and met the author last year, but overall I'm disappointed in the end result. It's uneven - parts are well written and parts just skate over digging into anything really meaty about teenage life on the internet. Moralising and clunky expressions at times that mean you pop out and hear the writer being Earnest Dad ratgerctyan Tue voice of the character.

1. Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress by Dai Sijie.

Two teenage boys are sent to a mountainous region of China for re-education during the Chinese Cultural Revolution. Both boys are from the city, with professional parents who have all been denounced as class enemies with beatings and public humiliations. They work in the mines and in the rice fields, and along the way become acquainted with another city boy, Four Eyes, also being re-educated.

They both fall in love with the seamstress's daughter, the region's great beauty, and travel across the mountains to visit her regularly when they get the chance between their labours. After numerous high jinks they discover that Four Eyes has a hidden suitcase of foreign novels, and they convince him to let them borrow Balzac's Ursule Mirouet. To two culture starved city boys this book is manna from heaven, and it sets in chain a series of events that they never expected.

This was a quick charming read, translated from French, which at times was laugh-out-loud funny. I also cringed at the descriptions of mountain dentistry! The horrors of the Cultural Revolution were treated lightly, so don't read it to learn much about that period of Chinese history. It is apparently semi-autobiographical, as the author himself was re-educated in the early 70s in the mountains.

I recommend it for when you need a lighter read, and will seek out the movie adaptation for comparative purposes!

1. Deceived Wisdom: Why What You Thought Was Right Is Wrong by David Bradley

Fairly short book debunking some things that are ‘common knowledge’ such as carrots help you see in the dark and urine helps jellyfish stings. Didn’t go into masses of detail but there are links to his website where you can apparently find out more. Quite interesting!

1. Vox by Christina Dalcher

Dystopian fiction where women are limited to 100 words per day and forbidden from working. I found this quite bleak and harrowing at times and the ending was a little contrived but still a recommended read for anyone who enjoys this genre.

Wow this thread is moving fast

Well, it’s been mentioned a lot lately so ....

1. Bookworm A Memoir of Childhood Reading Lucy Mangan

This was the only book I got for Christmas (seriously it’s like people don’t even know me!) and it was perfect. I’m only slightly younger than Mangan and our reading experiences/tastes clearly overlapped a lot, especially as she gets older/ further on in the book. So it was nice and nostalgic to revisit some old favourites, and the snippets about the authors and history of children’s publishing were interesting. Maybe because I’m still fighting the lurgy and also very due on and hormonal, but I actually got tearful in places. My childhood was a bit shit in lots of ways (though it’s all relative isn’t it and I was lucky in other ways) and I remember the escape and comfort that books provided, the way I’d read basically ANYTHING including the back of the cereal box, being thought odd at school and withdrawing to hide in a book. She captured that really well I thought.

1. Three Cups of Tea by Greg Mortenson & David Oliver Relin

Sadly I don't remember where I got this book from but it was not at all what I expected! Mountaineer turned humanitarian Greg Mortenson has become a leading light in providing schools for children of Pakistan and Afghanistan, and a fervent advocate for the education of girls and the empowerment of women. The actual writing style may be pretty hit and miss but this remains an inspiring read. I believe it was published in 2006 so I'm left wondering what Mr Mortenson, with his seemingly boundless energy, has achieved since then.

Last weekend before work starts proper and I am trying to make the most of reading time.
4. Courage Calls to Courage Everywhere - Jeannette Winterson very slim volume written to commemorate 100 years still woman got the vote. This was recommended by Kindle after I finished Rise Up Woman. Readable and well written as you would expect from Winterson. Nothing earth shatteringly new though. She does include Emmeline Parkhurst's Freedom or Death speech which was fascinating

5. Admissions: A life in Brain Surgery - Henry Marsh I read his first book a couple of years ago. A consultant Neurosurgeon with many years of experience, he writes well. There is an arrogance about him but I think it is probably an arrogance that is required in his profession and it is balanced by empathy and understanding. I suspect he was not an easy man to work for and with but probably a very reassuring presence for patients. He is reflective on his patients and often regretful about the limits of the system he worked within and his own abilities. He also details his work in Nepal and compares the NHS to the paid for health care, where unscrupulous surgeons will operate on hopeless cases for inflated fees.

Just finished #3 The House of Unexpected Sisters the not quite the latest No1 Ladies' Detective Agency book. Definately a cozy crime novel. I enjoy the feeling of place which is evoked and the gentle humanity of the series.

Debating whats up next I think I'll read #4 Provenance which I downloaded last year when it was nominated for a Hugo. Its set in the same universe as her very popular Ancillary trilogy which I enjoyed so looking forward to it and not sure why I haven't got to it before.

I'm also trying not to buy more books for a while and have made a rule that I will not buy another book until I have read 10 of the unread books on my shelf. I have a lot of unread books on my shelf at the moment.

I've read two books I thought were really good. They are 3. The Water Cure by Sophie Mackintosh and 4. My Year of Rest and Relaxation by Ottessa Moshfegh.
The former is a rather sinister and uncomfortable read, possibly set in the future or in a dystopian world but you're not really ever sure. It focuses on three sisters who live in isolation on what seems to be an island; they are told the mainland is infected and that men are poisonous and are subjected to a number of unpleasant therapies or 'cures' by their parents. I'm not really selling this but it was a very strange and claustrophobic novel. It was on the Booker long list for
2018.

The Moshfegh was just excellent - it's been reviewed on here before and it's strange how a book about a woman who takes tranquillisers and tries to sleep for a year could be so compelling. Her relationship with her friend best friend Reva ends up being incredibly touching. I really rated this but could see how others could equally loathe it!

I'd like to join too, please. I sort of trailed off towards the end of last year, starting and not finishing a load of books, so I've got a couple of half-read books to finish off.

For the Point Horror enthusiasts, [waves] there was a recent thread on Chat about them, through which I discovered this blog that recaps them in all their frankly rather crap glory. I loved them at the time, but on this evidence they, er, may not have been quite as good as I remember.

rsvpordie.blogspot.com/

My first two reads this year:

1.) Winter, by Ali Smith The second in a seasonal themed planned quartet of novels. I haven't read the first yet Autumn -- although I have it somewhere, but I think they're standalone. Once I got past the first (awful) section, I found it very readable, but it is a bit all over the place, bouncing from subject to subject without really concentrating on any one thing. I did enjoy it, even if I'm not entirely sure what on earth I just read.

2.) The City and the City, by China Mieville -- Bit of a controversial one on here. Oh god, I loved this. So. Much. Just the central idea, and how the cities operate, and how simultaneously simple and utterly batshit it was. It is, for those who don't know, a police procedural mystery set in the separate cities of Beszel and Ul Qoma, which are entirely different countries that happen to occupy the same space. I read it after watching the adaptation with David Morrissey, and although I did prefer some of the changes they made (changing the sex of his counterpart in Ul Qoma, what happened with Corwi, giving Borlu more of a backstory), the novel is still ingenious and completely enthralling.

~~

I'm halfway through Dracula and the second Cadfael novel, but have also just started Meddling Kids, by Edgar Cantero, which is... odd: Scooby Doo and the Famous Five, apparently with a touch of Lovecraft mixed in. I'm enjoying it so far, although I'm not entirely sure what the hell I'm reading. The references to the previous mysteries they've solved are delightful, though: pure Scooby Doo.

WhippetWoman, I loved The Water Cure. I’ve seen some comparisons to Shirley Jackson (to We have always Lived in the Castle presumably) and I can see it. It was one of those books that’s almost hypnotic.

And Rotherweird was an odd one, Sadik. I wanted to like it more but I struggled a bit with the style. It reminded me quite a bit of Jeff VanderMeer’s Ambergris New Weird stuff, which I couldn’t get on with either, but I love the idea behind the setting so much... it makes me a bit sad that the writing didn’t grab me more.

I need to catch up but just popping in with book 2 The Cows by Dawn o'Porter. Am I the only person who didn't enjoy it? I found the plot and characters pretty contrived, the language rather generic (lots of padding to the kitchen and so on) and just didn't get the fuss, even though something about it made me want to!

1. Bookworm: A Memoir of Childhood Reading by Lucy Mangan

A joyful trip down memory lane. We had a lot of books in common. I've spent the afternoon in the spare room where my childhood books live just visiting for a while and thinking of when I read then. Lovely.

Oh Fortuna I’m reading Bookworm too & loving it! I held off on reading it sooner as afraid it would tarnish my childhood reading but it’s lovely & like you, bringing back fond memories 😊

Think I might have to cave and buy Bookworm. I have some book tokens...
I like whippet's idea of 10 books out for 1 in.

Whippet - that's a really good plan. I think I set my bar too high at 25 books from the unread shelf before I buy a new book. It's unrealistic. 10 is doable.

I also suspended my Audible account to catch up, but I think I shall cancel it.

I'm also making myself check the library's ebooks before buying any more 99p deals.

2: The Last Resort - Pamela Hansford Johnson

A few weeks before Christmas I bought three of PHJ's novels, several of which have been reprinted in a new edition. Nobody much reads her now, although she produced a steady stream of novels from the 1930's onwards and was one half of a famous literary couple (she was married to C. P. Snow from 1950).

I have to say this novel, published in her heyday in 1956, was a mighty peculiar book - set mostly in an unnamed south coast resort town where the narrator, novelist Christine, interacts with Celia, her 30-something friend who lives for part of the year with her terrible parents (rude, intolerant father and infuriating mother) in a stultifyingly old-fashioned hotel. Celia is having an affair with Eric, a married architect whose wife is dying of a lingering disease. Also on the scene is Eric's business partner, Junius, who's clearly gay but never quite described as such - obviously it was still illegal at the time so PHJ resorts to describing the flamboyant decor of his house, hoping we'll pick up the heavy hints. Eventually the wife dies, the love affair withers, Eric marries a young heiress and Celia (to everyone's horror) gets hitched to Junius.

The whole thing was fantastically over-written, and without a single trace of humour. I now can't help re-imagining it as written by Barbara Pym; on reflection it would be not a bad plot for her, and she'd make something wonderful out of it. Alas, not the case with the book as it actually is.