50 Book Challenge 2019 Part Two

[southeastdweller]

Welcome to the second 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, it's not too late to join, and please try to let us all know your thoughts on what you've read.

The first thread of the year is here.

What are you reading?

I struggled with the Tom Bombadil bits too but I do love LOTR for the way Tolkien created a story in the grand tradition of heroic epics. The thought he put into all the different languages is amazing.

I never realised there was a connection with LOTR and the war. I started reading it a good few years ago but didn't finish it. Can't remember why so may pick it up again. I've also downloaded The tattooist of Auschwitz which i think will be my next read once I've finished The Handmaid's Tale

Anyone else admitting to skipping/skimming the songs in LOTR? I can't bear songs in books.

Sadik, I nearly swerved Michelle Obama on Audible (the “does this book need me to read it?” question held me back) but she reads it beautifully and it’s great if a little safe at times. She’s fascinating on race and gender and the election of Trump hits you every bit as hard second time round.
Also on Audible and outstanding - Endurance by Albert Lansing is the account of Shackleton’s expedition which I saw reviewed above, and The Vanity Fair Diaries are just mostly good fun, if you like that sort of thing.

Oh of course welsh I don’t blame you! I read them as a child and a teen and enjoyed them so want to go back to see what I think as an adult and that has ignited my interest again. I like Meg’s idea of revisiting favourites and have been doing it at a slower more piecemeal pace.

Oh Elijah Wood! Yes, not a fan either. I liked the Hobbit book too but haven’t brought myself to watch the movies as 3 seems excessive, and any Martin Freeman is excessive.

I loved The Hobbit as a child but I read a boyfriend’s copy of LOTR years ago and had to return it before finishing (because he dumped me). Only had a couple of chapters to go - I’ve still never finished it.

God am I the only one who hates LOTR? I've not actually managed to finish it. After Frodo thre the ring into Mount Doom there were another 150 pages. I decided I've had enough and put it down.

But then I also don't love the GRRM Game of thrones books. Struggled through A Storm of Swords as it was on the Hugo list for 2001 but no more.

I do like fantasy though both of these work well on film and TV. I just have a problem with the authors style.

(Also not happy with the Hugo winner that year it didn't have my vote).

I watched the movie version of The Hobbit.

IMO stretching it out into a trilogy was definitely excessive.

Thank you for the recommendation of the Backlist podcast. I’ve just listened to the LOTR one and really enjoyed it.

Just updating with my latest reads:

1. Christmas Pudding - Nancy Mitford

I bought her on Kindle before Christmas when she was in the daily deal and am trying to stick to reading things I already have. Whilst it’s called Christmas Pudding it’s not that focussed on Christmas. Starts with a list of people and during the book they gradually all come together. Some characters previously appeared in Highland Fling but it’s not a sequel as such. Entertaining frivolity with some annoying characters and others who are much more fun. An easy read but not a must read.

1. Hangover Square - Patrick Hamilton

This is set in 1939 just before the outbreak of war. It follows George who is a good man but aimless, has fallen in with a bad crowd and fallen in love with Netta. Netta is part of the bad crowd and uses George when it suits her. George also suffers from episodes where he almost becomes detached from himself from time to time and once he adjusts during these episodes he sees Netta and her friends for the unpleasant people they are and resolves to finish with them but this resolve disappears when his episode ends. The book moves between George’s different states. It’s quite depressing but the characters are very believable. I didn’t love it but thought it was very good.

1. The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde

Embarrassingly never read this until now. Very short. I suspect everyone knows the plot! Would have been great to read not knowing how it unfolds. Very good.

Sticking with my TBR pile but not yet decided what’s next!

My list so far
Still no outstanding reads yet this year unfortunately

1. Normal People by Sally Rooney
2. The Core by Peter V Brett
3. Murder never misses by Faith Martin (a Hillary Greene detective novel. I love Hillary Greene!)
4. The Wife by Meg Wolitzer
5. Cactus by Sarah Haywood. Fine, easy read. 6)A Fatal Obsession by Faith Martin. Enjoyable detective story set in the 50s. F. M. always has two cases that end up to be linked but I couldn't figure out whodunnit! And I've started 7) Unsheltered by Barbara Kingsolver. I've read the first few chapters

Sadik - The Stopping Places has been added to my Wish List. Ta!

Sadik if you use your audible credit on Poverty Safari I agree that being read by the author would be a plus point, having been to a talk by him last year. The book was one of my standout reads of last year.

The Hobbit films are abominations.

Just checking in, RL continues to be pretty shitty so hoping for inspiration and solace here!
Have to hold my hand up and say I have failed with both Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit.

I can't bear songs in books.

I'm the same, also recipes and things like that.

Don’t read Heartburn brizzledrizzle

Inspired by The Hobbit chat on the last thread I'm listening to my favourite Nicol Williamson version again. I listened to this hundreds of times as a sickly wheezing child stuck on a children’s ward for weeks at a time every winter. To say it’s the most important book in my life is an understatement. Middle Earth and Williamson's voice helped me escape hours of lonely boredom and breathlessness waiting for my next nebuliser. His voice is my Gandalf, Bilbo, Thorin and Gollum. Revisiting it again has had brought me great joy, and the odd self indulgent little cry.

We do not speak of the films in this house.

Dh and I are due to finish LoTR with the audiobook of The Return of the King on our next long car journey. As Meg says “It's like meeting with a much loved, familiar old friend.”

Williamson speaks rather than sings the songs in his recording of The Hobbit accompanied by a harp, so it sounds like poetry.
It’s available on Amazon Music, or here for free.
It’s an abridged version (imagine my shock and delight when I discovered the actual real book had more Hobbit in it) but is still truly wonderful.

CoteDAzur, at the moment, I can only think of The New Grove High Renaissance Masters and Music in the Renaissance by Howard Mayer Brown. If you like Medieval music too, then Hildegard of Bingen: A Visionary Life by Sabina Flanagan is very good. Or in a different vein, Musicophilia: Tales of Music and the Brain by Oliver Sacks is an excellent book, especially the chapter about a musician/musicologist who had terrible amnesia caused by a devastating brain infection but could still play the piano and organ brilliantly and was still able to sightread just as accurately as before.

I have now finished

1. Why Mummy Drinks- Gil Sims

which I'm sure will have been discussed a great deal on here. I found it very funny, and very Mumsnet! Is Why Mummy Swears just as good?

I am very relieved to have now finished:

6. The Winter Isles - Antonia Senior

I think my gripes with this tale of twelfth-century Gaelic-Norse warrior Somerled were mostly stylistic. I was hoping for an Uhtred-style raiding and rogering romp, but instead Senior takes a more detached approach, showing snap-shots of Somerled's life year by year rather than giving a flowing narrative. This makes it hard to get involved in the story, and even harder to get a strong sense of the political context in which the raiding (and, to be fair, rogering) is taking place. Some awkward turns of phrase (you don't 'lengthen' your shoulders, you broaden them) and a switch to present tense narration in the second half didn't help. Somerled and the love of his life are alleged to have a great passion, but mostly express this to each other through endless banal philosophical witterings.

While I found it a slog to get through, I did like:

• The portrayal of the harshness of women's lives at this period, how they were at the mercy of men's political manoeuvrings, and how they did all the work while the men sat about waiting for it to be raiding season again.
• The vivid descriptions of the Highlands and Islands setting.
• The sense of Christianity being utterly enmeshed in the worldview even of hardened warriors.

The last chapter had the line, 'Lord Jesus. Sometimes life seems like one long fucking funeral.' Well, maybe not the whole of life, but it pretty much encapsulates how I felt grinding my way through this book.

Delighted to return to so much LOTR chat! I agree that The Hobbit is crap by comparison, in fact I've only read that twice compared to probably 8-10 times for the trilogy. Think I tried the Silmarillion once and gave up.

I do really enjoy the LOTR films (hello, Viggo Mortenson/Sean Bean/Orlando Bloom), but watched the first Hobbit film and thought it was truly terrible so never got to parts two and three.

Thanks for the heads up satsuki