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?

"cote I wrote that review you hated. 🙂"

I didn't hate your review. I found it puzzling, as you seemed to dislike the book The Luminaries because characters talk to each other in it . This was exactly what DD told me about the film Spy Game (R Redford & Brad Pitt) we watched together the other day - "dull, it's just people talking". She's 13 and that was presumably an action movie so I'm not surprised by her reaction but you're not and this is a book and not an action movie, which is why I thought it was an odd criticism.

"I would also like to know what you consider ‘Women’s Lit’ to be."

The books with glittery, pink, or purple covers and titles like Toilet Cleaner's Daughter or The Girl Who Did Blah Blah. They are about women and their feeeeliiiiiiiings about everything. The kind of books favored by people who feel that a book becomes more interesting when a female character appears in it.

"So is it Ali Smith, or Jeanette Winterson or Margaret Atwood or Donna Tartt or aren’t their books beautifully crafted enough?"

I loved Donna Tartt's The Goldfinch (see review below) and hated the one book of Margaret Atwood's that I've read, but that was because it was crap, not because it was "women's lit" - people who don't understand & respect SF shouldn't pretend they can write it. I don't know who the other two are.

CoteDAzur.......... 26/11/2014 21:07
52. The Goldfinch - Donna Tartt
Just one word to describe this book: Sublime. It tells the coming-of-age story of a teenage boy who survives the terrorist attack in a museum that kills his mother. It is about loss, specifically losing what you anchor your life on - mother, father, best friend, fiancé, or the painting that takes the place of all of them. It is about the fragility of beauty as well as all we put our trust in. The wonder of any beauty surviving in this world of random disasters.
And yet it is not a dark and gloomy story. There is hope, happiness, and achievement in it.
Iheartily recommend this book to everyone here.

Sadik, so exciting to 'meet' another Edward Eager fan The Time Garden was another favourite. My original copies are lost in the mists of time (not sure if my mother cleared them out or I decided I no longer needed them, strange you can't pinpoint at the time the books that will stay the distance) but the first thing I did when Amazon became 'a thing' was look Eager up (I was so pleased to see him listed I can't tell you after years of fruitlessly searching charity and second hand book stores) and order a complete set of his children's books. Sadly my own children never really shared my enthusiasm, but I may dig them out and reread at some point this year along with a Just William book or two.

I didn’t particularly enjoy The Luminaries- I didn’t feel the characters had sufficiently distinctive voice/presence. Concept was interesting though.

1. Slow Horses by Mick Herron. I think Cote recommended this one (it took me ages to get to the top of the Overdrive waiting list!). In the meantime somehow I had got it into my head that it was a comedy/pastiche type thing and I spent the first few chapters rather puzzled by the fact it wasn’t funny! However then someone gets kidnapped, I realised it was a “proper” thriller/crime novel/detective story (someone please give me the right name for the genre!) and I really enjoyed it. Would recommend to anyone who likes Micheal Connelly/ Lee Child and that sort of thing.

Tanaqui - It wasn't me who recommended Slow Horses but I'll check it out. It sounds interesting.

I'd love to join in with this. I'm getting back into reading in a massive way, after ending a frustrating relationship with a chronic non-reader (in an entire year, all my ex read was the first chapter of High Fidelity and nothing else!). I usually read about 80 books each year- so far this year, I've read:

Bird Box- Josh Malerman. I enjoyed both the book and the film. I wasn't as bothered by the plot holes as some people were- I managed to suspend my disbelief.

Film Stars Don't Die in Liverpool- Peter Turner. I quite enjoyed this (it was a bit different to the film in places).

I usually read a lot of non-fiction, particularly books about music, but I'm trying to read more fiction this year. Novels which have been adapted into films may feature quite heavily.

I usually have a few books on the go (mostly on the Kindle). At the moment I'm concentrating on The Road by Cormac McCarthy, which I'm enjoying- it's not as depressing as I feared.

1. Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn The book that inspired the rise of the psychological thriller genre a few years ago, which is when everyone else read it. A woman goes missing on her fifth wedding anniversary, and, narrated alternately by the husband and wife, we slowly piece together what happened. I'm a big fan of the subtly unreliable narrator trope, but these two may as well have been waving flags saying 'I'm an unreliable narrator. Watch out! There's going to be a Twist That Will Leave You Breathless.' It was well written and I admired the plotting and building of tension, but it was too long and the characters too unlikable to deliver the punch it should have done.

1. Slade House by David Mitchell This was outstanding. It could be read as a standalone tale of the supernatural, and would work perfectly well. However, it is tied in to the whole universe set up in Bone Clocks etc. Every nine years a gate appears in an alley, and those for whom the gate opens enter the grounds of the mysterious Slade House. The book starts with the gate 's opening in the 1970s, and we follow it through five iterations, ending in 2015, each becoming more strange, but each time giving the reader more insight into what forces are at work here. Beautifully written, intelligent, internally and externally (with his other books) consistent and complex. I hope i haven't peaked at book 3!

I loved the Languedoc series Hound - I thunk I may be due a re-read

The Beast sounds interesting exexpat. Can’t wait to get through my pile of already owned books and start buying again!

I spotted The Woman in the Window in Waterstones yesterday SouthEast and thought it looked a good read. I wasn’t buying honestly, just looking whilst I killed time before meeting a friend - I think it’s the only time I’ve ever spent time in Waterstones and come out empty-handed

I read On Black Hill last year Whippetwoman and loved it!

Interesting to see Crazy Rich Asians on here as DD1 currently reading (and enjoying) it.

book 4: An Almond for a Parrot by Wray Delaney
I didn’t realise until after I had read this that it was actually written by Sally Gardner. Not really sure that’s relevant or that it would have changed my opinion of the book. I picked up this book cheap on kindle being a Sarah Waters fan. I won’t review it as I gather it’s been reviewed on last year’s thread a few times. Just to say I found this a rollickingly good read and finished it over three evenings.

I stated book 5 last night History of Wolves by Emily Fridlund

I also have a non fiction on the go too. Estates by Lynsey Hanley
The story of Britain's Housing Estates through the prism of her own experience.

I read On the Black Hill back in the 1980's (I'm old) & loved it & have reread it several times since. It's my favourite of all his books.

4 Mornings in Jenin by Susan Abulhawa

Picked this up as a 99p deal on Kindle, and am glad I did. A multi-generational account of Palestine, and in particular life in the Jenin refugee camp, from pre 1948 to 2003. I knew very little about the events over this period in Palestine and although this is clearly an account told purely from the Palestinian perspective it has made me interested in reading more. The story focuses on Amal, a child who grew up in the camp and then went to school on a scholarship in Jerusalem, before moving to America to study at university. But it also weaves in the story of her father and grandfather, her mother, her friend Huda, her brother Yousef and her lost brother Ismael, who is brought up as an Israeli by an Israeli family. The evocation of the pre-war Palestine is perhaps the most effective part of the book for me. I found the descriptions of the conflict very moving but was also conscious that the account was one-sided. The fact that so many atrocities were visited on a single family across the course of many battles made the account a little far-fetched for me, although I understand the dramatic impetus for it in the context of this book. Overall definitely worth reading.

In The Luminaries there are deliberately several uniform male characters because they each represent a different astrological sign or planetary body and behave accordingly in their movements and actions, each moving on the plot in some way, and the (female) author in this case can say something about women’s roles in a man’s world without multiple female characters - one is the Sun and everything revolves around her, another is Venus and has an ironic twist on those attributes traditionally associated with that symbolically etc. The form and the content is completely intertwined, so it comes back to whether you enjoy that in itself or not. I think she set herself a difficult task and overall did a good job of executing it but it won’t be everyone’s cup of tea.

I'll be interested to read your review of Estates, Sonnet - that along with Poverty Safari are on my wishlist to read

I really liked The Luminaries. Satsuki has done a far better job of explaining its premise than I could. I actually only found all of that out after I read it and keep saying I will go back and read it with that in mind. I would rather read an author who tries a new idea , style or format, than one that churns out a substandard proven formula. I don't object to reading books with exclusively or mainly male or female characters. I do object to stereotypical representations, of either sex. Which incidentally is what happened in Snap. Her female characters were weak and one dimensional in every sense. Getting more annoyed about that book as I keep thinking about it!

I think Slow Horses would be a thriller, Tanaqui. I thought there was an overall joke, which was that they didn’t after all defy their label - contrary to a ‘normal’ story arc, it really was true that they were pretty slow as horses.

Having read that synopsis of The Luminaries I think I'm going to read it again. I half enjoyed it but got lost. Have started John Grisham's The Reckoning, another light read for now, still have a fuzzy brain after virus and can't concentrate on much.

ChessieFL, thanks for posting that list. I never knew there was a culinary travel award - I feel like I may have come home

*2. House of Leaves - Mark Z. Danielewski.
*
Took me a while to finish my second book of the year. This one was weird and disorienting. I'm glad I read it although I'm not convinced I got the most out of it at times.

5: American Bloomsbury - Susan Cheever

A quickish non-fiction read which, as I'm reminded by the price-tag on the cover, I picked up cheap on a trip to Boston a few years ago. For some now-unknown reason I didn't find time to visit Concord, Massachusetts, which is the place Susan Cheever (daughter of John) writes about here, and specifically about its famous 19thc residents - Thoreau, Emerson, the Alcotts, Hawthorne et al.

This is an odd book - a series of very short chapters, written in a rather overblown style (Thoreau comes out of it sounding like Molesworth's despised Fotherington-tomas, all 'hello clouds! Hello sky!!'), but as a primer on the Transcendentalists it did offer a useful grounding. Interesting though to learn that the fabled Walden pond was actually just feet away from the Fitchburg railway. And poor old Louisa-May Alcott, saddled with a total fruitloop of a father (I use the term advisedly) and living a pretty miserable, poverty-stricken life while he touted the family from pillar to post with each new crazy whim. I'd like to read a decent biography of her now.

8. The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett

I picked this up as it was free on prime and every time I see it on one of those book lists I think to myself I should read that. The story is of Mary, the spoilt orphan who has come from India to live with her isolated uncle. There she discovers mysteries about the house and garden and meets friends along the way, including her uncles son who appears on the brink of death.

I enjoyed the first half of the book, though it isn’t a page turner. The characters are interesting and the descriptions are vivid and well written. However by the second half I found it quite dull and had to force myself to finish it.

Satsuki, that's interesting about the characters in The Luminaries being deliberately uniform. I read it on Kindle, and despite having a good degree in English Lit, the entire astrology thing passed me by completely, leaving me a little bewildered by the choice the Booker judges had made. I should really re-read now that I get it, as it does sound clever, and interesting, but TBH I can't face it.

boldlygoingsomewhere (great name) I enjoyed Ready Player One too, didn't like Armada so much though.

Just finished #4 Provenance really enjoyed it. It's set in the same universe as her Ancillary series but looking at some of the other human and alien cultures. Its set on a much smaller scale but I think no less good for that. It's a bit of a coming of age story exploring family, friendship and belonging.

Next up #5 Romes Scared Flame it's the eighth book in his Vespasian series. I've enjoyed the others which have a similar feel to I Claudius so hoping this will be a good read.

Sadik I started Poverty Safari yesterday and am already halfway through it. Very readable so far. Will post a full review on completion!

On the Black Hill - Bruce Chatwin
Ready Player one and Estate are now on my wish list - I only buy 99p books so they might be there a while.

I was going to recommend a book that might be interesting for people who like Estate but I can't find it anywhere. It's a book where the author travels through the concrete estates of England (I think it's only England) and was quite interesting. I can't for the life of me remember the name.

keith it only really clicked for me half way through and I thought I would get a paper copy and reread but haven’t been that bothered! 2 characters represent sun/moon and they swap positions towards the end, and the chapters follow the moon phases so get smaller by increments. I found it all quite involving and enjoyed the symmetry of fortune telling as a metaphor as they were trying to find their fortune. But yes the characters weren’t memorable in the usual way, they act more as ciphers I suppose so it didn’t bother me, but there was rather too much sitting around smoking stuff

I feel similarly about Cloud Atlas; I don’t particularly remember or hold dear specific characters, but enjoyed the broad canvas and the satisfying way it all fit together.