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?

This thread is bad for me. I have more books on my list to read than ever!
6. Hotel World by Ali Smith. An enjoyable read, inventive and original as ever. Four female characters are connected to the death of a young woman in a hotel. The story is told through the voices of these characters plus the dead woman as a ghost!
I really enjoyed this novel but not as much as other writing by this author (have read lots). The problem was one of the characters who had a really long section. She was horrible- she was meant to be - but I didn’t enjoy being with her for so long. She was more of a caricature of a person than a real rounded character.
The last section of the novel is incredible. I had to read it twice, it was that good.

1. Snap by Belinda Bauer.* I’ve wanted to read this for a while as it was on the Booker longlist last year. It was enjoyable- a good crime novel. I don’t read enough crime, so it was good to explore something different.

Pencilmuseum I thought about avoiding Room but read it in the end and it wasn't harrowing. That said, I was reading The Bunker Diary for some studying I was doing immediately before hand and that was quite harrowing. I've added The Wonder to my wish list.

I've read a few of the Hourly history series as well - Rosa Parks was the most recent one and I have a few others on my kindle. Like you, they didn't add a lot they was new but they were a good summary/basic information.

Inmyownparticularidiom (great username) thanks for the info. re the Graves Greek myths book.

grimupnorthlondon I've added Boy A and The sleep of reason to my wish list - it's getting too long, if such a thing is possible. I joined the no shop thread for this year as well as this thread; you can work out for yourself which one has survived the epic month of January so far!

EmGee thank you

FortunaMajor you have a knack of recommending books I like the look of, thank you from me if not from my bank manager!

My TBR list is ridiculously long.

5. Tony 10 - Declan Lynch Biography with some autobiographical sections of an Irish man who lost everything through gambling. Thought it was a bit naff to start with but actually it’s an interesting story with a happy ending. It’s a very very easy read too. Nothing to write home about but it’s not bad.

8. Big Little Lies by Liane Moriarty

Single mum Jane moves to a new town with her little boy, and meets other parents Madeleine and Celeste on the kindergarten orientation morning.

But an incident between Jane’s son and another child soon spirals with parents spreading rumours and taking sides against each other, all culminating in a disastrous school fundraising night that leaves one parent dead, possibly murdered.

This was a quick and engrossing read.

*3. The Death of the Fronsac - Neal Ascherson
*
The story starts in 1940, with the explosion and sinking of a French warship docked in Greenock, Scotland.
The main narrator is a Polish soldier, who witnesses the explosion and he tells us the story of the fall-out that follows and the effect it has on him and the Scottish family he is lodging with nearby.
This was unexpectedly brilliant. The themes of identity and the places we think of as home were deeply embedded throughout the story. Our narrator Maurycy, or "Major Mike" as he is called by the little girl whose grandmother's house he is staying in, is authentic and complex, as are most of the other characters.
The story is based on true events. The reasons why the ship exploded have never really been identified in the real world, and this book offers an interesting theory, a lot of it based on conversations the author heard as a child growing up in Greenock.
Highly recommended.

tanaqui there’s a Backlisted on Fire and Hemlock by DWJ. (I am not being paid by Backlisted and am not Andy Miller)

5 This Bloody Mary is the Last Thing I Own by Jonathan Rendall

This book is a good example of just how far great writing can take you. It is a short memoir by a boxing journalist. I'm not interested in boxing, and I could barely understand the premise, which is mentioned in all the reviews, which is that boxing has had its day, and he that was there at the last. Nonetheless it was a great read, with interesting stories and a satisfying overall narrative arc about his own interest in the sport.

6 The Seige of Krishnapur by J G Farrell

A MN favourite, I have to agree with the consensus here, this was really, really good. Funny, insightful and with lots to say. Brilliantly ends with a reflection by one of the characters on the inevitable picture that will be painted of the siege's "heroes", sending me straight off for a look at the real thing

13. Alice's Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll Curiously I never read this as a child and I'm surprised we didn't have it in the house (due to being the youngest of five and owning a lot of books between us). Sadly as an adult I found it contained too many songs and poems and I contained too few drugs to truly appreciate it.

thank you from me if not from my bank manager!

If it helps you feel better brizzledrizzle I cut my TBR list on Goodreads down from well over 600 to exactly 400 at new year. It's already crept up to 439 and I'm mostly blaming Satsuki for recommending Backlisted.

Wow Fortuna that's quite a list! Agree that Backlisted is extremely perilous ground. I want a life like Siri Hustvedt who once said in an interview that she considers it her 'job' to read for most of the day and write for the remainder only when she feels ready. Wonder how I could finance doing the reading bit of her 'job' without the literary talent for the writing bit..........

11. Black Widow by Chris Brookmyre

12. Shadow Man by Margaret Kirk

Both fairly ordinary thrillers/crime novels. I have got flu (the real one!) & they have kept me entertained & have been easy to pick up & put down whilst stuck in for the last 5 days or so. I suspect I would have been far more critical of them, especially the Brookmyre, had I read them with all faculties working!

Any recommendations for something easy but gripping to read gratefully received.

Do you like sci-fi magimedi? If so Dogs of War by Adrian Tchaikovsky is a good read & I found it gripping. (It's near future sci-fi set on earth, with genetically modified animal/AI hybrid soldiers.)

1. The Power - Naomi Alderman

Been on my kindle for ages and just got round to reading it. I found it very engrossing although some parts I found hard to read because of the subject matter. It's a book I'll probably be thinking about for a while.

1. The Woman in Black - Susan Hill

Short read, not sure what I was expecting but it was less spooky than I imagined and the ending was quite obvious. I enjoyed it though.

magimedi Hope you feel better soon.

Erin Kelly writes decent thrillers that aren't too taxing. I enjoyed The Poison Tree and The Burning Air

grimupnorth I too should like this job, or a lottery win big enough to allow me to go to a bookshop with a shopping trolley.

Magimedi I feel the only time I can recommend The Meg to anyone is when they have the flu. I think it works really well with delirium. There is a giant dinosaur shark that fights a nuclear submarine and some other terribly badly written impossible nonsense but there’s a MASSIVE SHARK and that somehow made my last serious viral illness a whole lot better.
Also it was a free audiobook from my library so, yeah, free and you don’t even have to hold the book up and there is a big shark.

it contained too many songs and poems and I contained too few drugs to truly appreciate it.

Review of the year!

I will download it Satsuki- are you sure they aren’t paying you (they should!).

8. Grace by Morris Gleitzmann. My class are doing an author study on Gleitzmann and I’ve only ever read one! This is quite a good idea- girl in odd religious sect in Australia, writes using a nice mix of modern and biblical turns of phrase, but I did wonder if any non church going (heathen?!) children would recognise the style. It didn’t quite charm me, but it did flow nicely.

I've just finished:

7. Wuthering Heights - Emily Brontë I can't write too much about this as it's a uni text, and I'm guessing a lot of you will have read it anyway. What I can say though is that I loathed every character, yet enjoyed the book. This isn't a love story though, it's a story of obsession and abuse, despair and jealousy. 4/5

Best reason to read Wuthering Heights is so that you can properly appreciate Spike Milligan’s remarkably detailed comedy version.

YesILikeItToo I will have to check that out!

If you know the book well, I think you’ll be impressed!

I’ve started reading Riddley Walker thanks to the mention on Backlisted. It’s not an easy read as it’s all written in dialect. I’m having to really concentrate.

Just got a £50 book voucher for my birthday so I am off to the nearest giant Waterstones to spend it later as I can't wait and have a massive TBR list carefully nurtured on my phone. It has grown exponentially since listening to Backlisted though. Birthday day-off book shopping

Hope you feel better soon magimedi. Flu is awful.
I'm another one that's always avoided Room! I can't stand things where children are in peril.

Read 11. Less - by Andrew Sean Greer. I thought this was very well-written and I loved the ending, but as the famous Marie Kondo says, it didn't spark joy with me. Less, the protagonist, a 'failing' author, runs away from a relationship and takes up every offer to travel, including teaching abroad and being in the running for a book prize. Actually, thinking about it in retrospect, it is pretty good, just perhaps didn't quite appeal to me. I wasn't sure how I was meant to feel about the character of Less - sympathetic or amused.

Happy Birthday @whippetwoman

The only present I can think of that would be better than a £50 book token is... a £60 book token!

My good reads list is going ontip 700 if I’m not careful