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?

Sorry, that was book 2 not book 3!

Hello, I'm a bit late but would love to join in and would really like to make it to 50 books in 2019. My first read has been Prisoners of Geography by Tim Marshall. I found the short chapters quite easy to digest and there was just the right level of detail. By the end I felt like I'd been on a whistle stop tour around the globe. I can imagine dipping back into this book through the year, prompted by news events. I'm now onto book two, which is Milkman. I don't mind the experimental style, but I'm as yet undecided about this one. I'm certainly not hooked!

Blimey this thread moves fast! Not sure it's worth me posting but I will for now:
Book 1: let's stay together by Jane Butterworth. A book about marital issues.

Book 2: a life's work: on becoming a mother by Rachel Cusk. An amazing book. Beautifully written (I always love books that contain words I don't know) and I could relate to so much of what she wrote. Highly recommend for anyone who has struggled with motherhood and identity.

I did a lot of reading today...

Wow this thread is moving fast! It has taken me almost two hours to catch up and add to my WTR list

I am around 80% of the way through Fire and Blood - GRRM and will review when done. Just posting now so as not to drop off the thread.

If anyone would like to link up on Goodreads, my username over there is JasperJones.

I'd like to join please! Some great recommendations here I've added to my extensive tbr list!

Just finished Michelle Obama Becoming - I found it a very warm, human book and I was pleased she didn't pull her punches when it came to her views on Trump!

6. Ghost Wall - Sarah Moss Another quite short book but it was brilliant. I read Night waking last year but I think this is better. The story of Silvie and her parents who are on a Iron Age re-enactment break. Her father is a frustrated amateur historian, taking out his shortcomings on his wife and daughter. There is a real air of menace throughout the book, and a focus on power balance between men and women. It examines how abusive relationships work, how people turn a blind eye and how group mentality clouds our view of morality. There is a real Lord of the flies feel to the latter part. For a short book this was incredible and there was so much to discuss.
I will definitely be reading more of Moss's work. Her subject matter and style is quite dark and brooding. Reminds me a bit of Hannah Kent.

Great review toomuch. Have added to my tbr list.

My late contribution to the GOT book debate about two days ago is that the rumour I heard is that GRRM was not allowed to publish the last book before the series had come out so that there wouldn't be any spoilers.

2 The Seven Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle by Stuart Turton

Not sure where to start with this one, as @DesdemonasHandkerchief said in her review a spreadsheet would have been useful, it was a bit mind-blowing and confusing at times with the constant changing if hosts and their deaths. I did trundle through it quite quickly as my feelings were if I stopped then I would forget what had happened. It was a bot convoluted at the end and I don't think how it could have been made shorter. Not a bad book but not a great one. May hang on to it to re-read at some stage to try and get my head round it a bit more.

Seven Deaths won the Costa first novel prize yesterday. Now up against Normal People in the final. I have it (seven deaths) on Audible to listen to but am now a bit concerned that without a ‘flick back to remind myself who is who’ facility that I'm going to find it bewildering.

Re Princess Bride for kids, don’t forget the torture scene. I did forget the torture scene and blithely bought it for a birthday party sleepover several years ago and then had to leap across the room for an urgent pause and fast forward in a room full of little girls with faces like

The Princess Bride is my all-time favourite film. So happy to see all the love for it, and the book on here.
For those who are interested, Cary Elwes wrote a memoir of his time making the film, called As You Wish. It's very good.

4. Bad Feminist, Roxanne Gay
I like the title concept, which affirms that you can identify as a feminist while acknowledging we're all a bundle of contradictions, and it doesn't stop you from sneakily liking a song with objectionable lyrics, say. It's slightly misleading as a title, as this is mainly a ragbag of various social commentary pieces and reviews published elsewhere, mostly looking at race and gender (although Scrabble features too). I enjoyed the takedown of the Fifty Shades books, and the films The Help and Django Unchained, but overall I'm not sure she contributes many new insights and I think this is already starting to date.

Currently enjoying 5. The Long Shadow, by Celia Fremlin, which is a mordant little comedy about a newly-widowed woman. But is he really gone? And who is accusing her of killing him? And how on earth can she get rid of all the people who've descended on her to stay?

I really wanted to love Seven Deaths but agree it got far too complicated in the second half. It would be a disaster as an audio book for me at least, as I find I miss details when slightly distracted that I don’t when I read.

The Language of Kindness by Christie Watson is the daily deal on audible today. Has anyone read it and what did you think of it? I came across it when I was looking at This is Going to Hurt and thought it looked interesting but would like a recommendation before adding another book to my TBR (or to be listened to) pile. TIA

I read The Language of Kindness and I thought it was excellent. She's not aiming to be funny in the same way as This is Going to Hurt (although there's a bit of humour in there) but it is compassionate and thought-provoking. I really enjoyed it.

3: The Child That Books Built - Francis Spufford

Having missed out on Bookworm when it was a Kindle 99p deal (still annoyed) I thought I'd assuage my tbr guilt a bit with this. A short book but a very rich one. Spufford doesn't actually talk a great deal about his childhood, although perhaps it's enough to know how deeply the whole family was affected by his younger sister's life-threatening medical condition (which, sadly, caused her death in her early 20's).

To some extent, Francis escaped into books. I'm closer in age to him than to Lucy Mangan so we probably had a more similar reading experience (especially with the Narnia books), but he was a great SF reader in later adolescence, which passed me by. In fact there's comparatively little analysis of specific books here - apart from quite an extended and very interesting passage on Laura Ingalls Wilder - but a fair bit of philosophy and child psychology. It's not a light read; however, I felt it repaid careful attention and I'd recommend it as a more scholarly approach to what drives us as to love books in childhood.

I like the sound of the Spufford terpsichore I enjoyed his novel. I too missed Bookworm which didn’t bother me until I started reading all the wonderful, nostalgic reviews on the thread. I was a teen sci fi reader too.

@scribbly I once accidentally freeze framed the screen instead of fast forwarding at a particularly horrible bit of a Jurassic Park III so the kids saw a skeleton flying out of trees towards them for far longer than if I had just let it play. He had nightmares for a full week. I am ultra careful now!

I'll join in.
Ive finished The Island House and am onto A Polished Gem.
The Island house was very good. A mixture of modern archeology and ancient druids.

I'm still getting through The Seven Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle (like, it seems, half this thread!) but thought people might like to know that Meg Wolitzer's The Wife is 99p on the Kindle Daily Deals today.

Terpsichore, thank you for the review - I had forgotten I owned this book and read it years ago. Definitely going to the top of my TBR pile as I remember enjoying it very much.

7. The Secrets of Married Women by Carol Mason
I think has been reviewed on this thread already but I found this quite enjoyable until the last chapter which for some reason annoyed me a bit. Mason writes well and I like that it isn’t all sweetness and lack of realism in this book that you get from so many chick lit books about mundane marriages and affairs. A nice read though and I’d read hers again.

Finished no. 2, which I'd stopped reading to read my Christmas presents.

1. The Land of Green Ginger Winifred Holtby

Joanna has always dreamed of travel. But instead she finds herself married to a bitter consumptive on a failing farm in the Yorkshire Dales. When a Hungarian translator comes to stay with them, he falls in love with her. What happens next ... ... Is not what anyone expects. Bit torn on this one. On the one hand, I wasn't really in the mood for the misery of Joanna's life. On the other, I really enjoyed the fact that everyone (including the reader) is sure they know where this is going, and Joanna is cheerfully unaware and just ploughs on doing her thing. Similarly everyone expects her to be a tragic figure, and she's determined to suck as much joy from life as possible. I didn't love it, but I found I couldn't hate it either.

Book 4 - Mothering Sunday by Graham Swift

This was quite a short novella, the main character narrating it as she remembered events unfolding on one day in 1924. She is an old woman, in her 90s, a renowned novelist, reflecting upon her youth when she was working as a maid in service and having an affair with the young heir to a neighbouring family.

All told, it was an enjoyable read, rather wistful in tone but maybe some of her recollections of events were not entirely reliable or accurate.

I'm reading very slowly though my book The Core is 800+ pages.

I'm picking up great recommendations here and thanks for the heads up on kindle daily deal Welshwabbit

I had considered not reading any books which have a murdered woman as the main plot point. It seems like there's a lot of violence against women in books right now (or always?)

Terpsichore I read some Pamela Hansford Johnson years ago and know what you mean about the humourless style. You can appreciate the good writing but I seem to recall that The Unspeakable Skipton was supposed to be a comedy yet I can't remember cracking my face. By contrast, Anthony Powell From a view to a Death was written earlier I think yet dates hardly at all and certain scenes are LOL. I am not sure what a "tuft hunter" (a reference to the ne'er do well anti-hero) is but think it must be a gold-digger.
Gave up with Seven Deaths of E Hardcastle.
I have never seen Princess Bride or read it but will put it on my list. RIchard Osman on Pointless revealed it is his favourite film and as he also chose one of my favourites TOwards the end of the Morning by Michael Frayn on "A good read" I might rely on his critical view.

Interesting to hear your view about PHJ, Pencil. I was trying to work out what was wrong with it and realised that although she tries, I think, for what she might imagine is 'amusing', there was just no lightness of touch at all. Playfulness is a sorely-needed quality sometimes!

I did enjoy Towards the End of the Morning though. Couldn't be less like PHJ!