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?

I agree the story itself isn’t that emotionally engaging, I probably wouldn’t be compelled to reread it but I didn’t find it overlong because I was enjoying the structural element and each chapter was an extra piece to add to the pattern. If you’re not jazzed by that side of things I can see how it wouldn’t be that compelling.

I am reading Beware of Pity by Stefan Zweig which I nearly bought in a second hand bookshop a couple of months ago until I saw it cost £5 So I ordered from the library and so far it has been worth the wait, a very simple premise but so well written I’m really sucked in.

6. Jog on, by Bella Mackie
Woman writes about how she improved her mental health by taking up running. Nothing wrong with the book, but there are quite a few books like this out there already, and this didn't bring much new to the table. Might encourage someone to give it a whirl, which is a good thing. (I may be bitter because she talks repeatedly about how slowly she runs, and how she deliberately slowed down even further, to the point where she was taking a shocking 7.5 mins to run a km. Yes that's still faster than me).

I just read an article with her yesterday about that book bibliomania. I am currently on an enforced running break (indefinitely) due to a disobedient hip and as I too run for my mental health I found it a bit depressing because, as you point out, it’s such a pervasive narrative at the moment, that I felt quite down about the fact that I can’t replace it with anything. Can someone write a book about how some low impact exertions saved them please? Thanks.

Well Alexandra Heminsley followed her book Running like a Girl with Leap In, about wild swimming, if that's any good! (She was undergoing fertility treatment so wanted to change her exercise). I think there are quite a few books about wild swimming. Aqua aerobics, probably less so.

I probably would enjoy that but yes realistically need something like Bounce! How getting into the chlorine with Maureen saved my life or Zip! Taking on the challenge of getting into a wetsuit and then leaving it there

Cycling Satsuki? (currently can't even do that as have an inner ear infection & zero balance :( :( shoulder injury & ongoing problems with arthritic hip have currently knocked out swimming and running for me)

Loving the book titles, you've just created a whole new awesome genre

Scotti i read Meddling kids last year. I wanted to love it but i didn't. I felt it dragged on and wasn't as funny as i had expected/wanted.

Guns, Germs and Steel is brilliant, brizzle, although it might be harder to read on Kindle.

Yes, I think you're right Biblio. I only read kindle books (small house, not enough space) nowadays so I'll give it a try.

I'm reading Nicholas Crane's The Making of the British Landscape on Kindle, and it's taken me forever to get to the Bronze Age.

That's now on my wish list, thank you.

I've also got Leap - I love swimming so hope to read that this year.

Yes cycling would probably be the thing - I find running so easy in terms of planning routes and going whatever the weather whereas I find that trickier on the bike and have lost my nerve a bit from only doing easy quiet rides with the children. I’m sorry you are having problems too - it’s so frustrating.

Agree running is much easier in winter weather - I'm crossing all my fingers and toes for my ears to sort themselves out, and in the meanwhile trying to appreciate the extra reading time. I have a couple of really straightforward circular routes I do on the bike if I just need to destress and not think - but I'm lucky to be in a very rural area which does make it easier.

Nordic walking? One of the many research papers I read last year had that up there near the top for excellent cardiovascular exercise with a strengthening component.

1. Daniel O'Malley - Stiletto

Sequel to The Rook in which, after centuries of rivalry, two secret and otherwordly organisations are on the verge of joining forces. The Checquy, a British organisation of humans with supernatural powers, are in discussions with the Grafters, who specialise in advanced technological surgeries on themselves to create the ultimate soldiers, surgeons and superhumans. These organisations have been enemies for centuries, so Rook Myfanwy Thomas has a delicate task on her hands to prevent negotiations collapsing into war. A task made more difficult as a wave of gruesome atrocities sweep the country, and Thomas has to find the culprits before old suspicions and paranoia spiral out of control.

I'd agree that Guns Germs and Steel is well worth reading, maybe also though reading some of the critiques by anthropologists of his approach alongside it - he writes so well that it's easy to be carried along wholesale. (My favourite history of agriculture book is The Living Fields by Jack Harlan, but unless you have access to a library copy it's outrageously expensive even 2nd hand.)

I walk almost daily for my mental health, go to work on the other two days for mental health as well, I love my plug in and zone out job with lovely people.

I got my first blind date with a book book today, and spookily was on my wish list to buy, A Kiss Before Dying

Pepe - I always think that JK Rowling's novels would be so much better in the hands of Raymond Chandler! I'm also getting really irritated by all the stupid names.

Yes, Remus, agree Raymond Chandler would do a great job.
Have finished it now and yes the names were deeply annoying as was the vast amount of exposition at the end in a v implausible setting. And the whole hospital scene was entirely unnecessary and not needed for the plot. You’ve saved me writing a review - don’t want to spoil it for you!
I do really like Robin and Strike though, so suspect I will continue on with future novels.

4. The heart's invisible furies - John Boyne. I think this has been read by many of you and I must go back to read what you thought. I loved it. I was drawn in from the first page. The monstrous caricatures that I eventually grew to like and sympathise with. It reminded me of Maeve Binchy and the way she wove characters in and out of the storylines of other characters. Has anyone read any thing else by him?

5. Burial rites - Hannah Kent. Again, I think this has been much read by many of you; I thoroughly enjoyed it. I loved the way she described the bleakness of the period, the claustrophobic lives of the villagers and the landscape of Iceland. Also appreciated the amount of research she seems to have engaged in to develop the book. Both of these books made me cry (I am a soft touch) and captivated me from the beginning.

Satsuki I definitely found that cycling helped me to stay sane when I couldn't run. It does depend on where you live and whether you have safe places to ride, but it scratched that itch I had to get out in the fresh air and follow my nose for a bit. If it's wet or windy then a big coat and go for a walk.

Thanks for the book recommendation, Terpsichore - it looks interesting. And nice celeb interaction, Murine !

I did enjoy The Secret Barrister but it was quite dense - I found that I had to keep putting it down and thinking about what I had read otherwise it would slide straight out of my brain again.

Thanks all for suggestions - it’s made me feel better that I will find something. I have got some country lanes nearby but need to work out where I’m going (I can get lost in an elevator) and then will be fine. I walk a lot as part of daily life but feel like I need something more vigorous too.

Sadik the critiques by anthropologists of his approach alongside it - he writes so well that it's easy to be carried along wholesale

It'll be good practice for the critical thinking needed for my masters dissertation then

I'll look out for some suitable books, thanks for the tip.

Finally... I'm able to join in having just completed the 700 page behemoth that is

*1. Labryinth - Kate Mosse
*
My dad lent me all three of her Languedoc books about eight years ago, and I've just got round to reading the first one now!
Despite its excessive length I did enjoy it. I do like a Holy Grail treasure hunt type affair and I also liked the fact that the protagonist in both the timelines (I also liked the timeslip element) was a woman.
The second one is just as long and I can't face another doorstop just yet so I'll try something a bit smaller for the time being.

I'm also keen to read Leap In at some point, I have a bit of a girl crush on Alexandra Heminsley.

3 Arlington Park - Rachel Cusk
Clearly meant to be a modern Mrs Dalloway - follows the lives of a number of people over the course of one day, and most of them gather at the house of one of the characters for a party at the end of the day. In this case, all the protagonists are mothers with children at the same primary school (I happen to know precisely which one this is a thinly fictionalised version of, and some of the women who feature in the book were not at all happy about it...), and all are oppressed and worn down by marriage and motherhood in various ways. For example, one character, a high school teacher, looks at all the promising girls in her school and thinks: "And what was it all for? [...] Sooner or later they would meet a man and it would all be stolen from them. That girl with her chemistry textbooks would meet a man and little by little he would murder her."

I have a lot of sympathy for the subject matter (which I believe Cusk dealt with in an openly non-fiction format in A Life's Work, which I confess I have not read), and there is no disputing that she is a talented writer, but most of the characters make you want to give them a good shake, and the amount of detailed description in an overblown literary style is just excessive -- long paragraphs describing the contents of a fashion shop in a mall etc. Some of the characterisation is also stunningly cliched and heavy-handed, e.g. there is a couple clearly portrayed as racist in the course of several conversations, so we do not need to have it hammered home with the description of an appallingly racist antique in their home.

I suppose I could say that it's a good but definitely flawed and rather one-sided contribution to the literature of motherhood.

4 The Beast - Alexander Starritt

Another novel with a very thinly-fictionalised setting, in this case the Daily Mail newsroom, in particular the subeditors' desk. Very true to life, according to my informants. If it hadn't been published shortly before he joined the staff, I could easily have believed that one particular character was actually based on someone I know.

This is a very dark comedy, in the Scoop tradition, and shows what can/does happen when ignorance, prejudice, rumour and panic are combined with a news-publishing schedule and a large circulation. Worth reading if you don't mind being further depressed about the state of the British newspaper industry, and/or you want to find out what it is really like in a newsroom in the grip of a big story and a tight deadline.

And now I have finished those two, that means it is time to start on Infinite Jest. Wish me luck, I may be some time...

(but I will be popping back on the thread(s) to see what everyone else is up to, and I may read a few shorter things in parallel, if only because the paperback copy I bought back in 1997 is over 1,000 pages long and not something I can pop in my bag to read on the train)