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?

Just finished

9. The Sign of Four Arthur Conan Doyle. Good, quick paced Sherlock book. Hard to look past the blatant racism and assumption that all women are about to faint, but I guess it's what white men thought and wrote at the time.

It's another uni text so I can't write any more than that in case I include it in my assignment.

@DecumusScotti I'd highly recommend The Familiars I was hooked! Interesting female characters and I love stuff about witchy stuff. Also the Pendle witch stuff is true and the characters are named after real people. I think I was drawn solely to the book because the lead character was called Fleetwood 😂 I want more stuff like this though!

1. All The Birds in the Sky - Charlie Jane Anders
2. This is going to hurt - Adam Kay
3. Eleanor Oliphant is completely fine - Gail Honeyman
4. Monsters - Emerald Fennell
5. Shroud for a nightingale - P.D. James
6. The Familiars - Stacy Halls

I'm currently listening to Michelle Obama's autobiography on audible and really enjoying it but I'm just very slow at listening!
I've also just started another non-fiction. Lifers by Geoffrey Wansell about Britain's most notorious murderers on death row. Not the best late night ready and some of it is hard to read but I couldn't put it down last night!

6. Anna - Niccolo Ammaniti

Apocalyptic dystopia, only children left. Haunting, sad.

pepe not Korean /Arabic but I really enjoyed Perfume by Patrick Süskind o.v. in German
I love Isabel Allende but I then saw your sister is a Spanish speaker. I still love her earlier books though...

I’ve given up on Riddly Walker for now - it needs a sustained reading session which i haven’t got at the moment.

Instead, I’ve just read:

11. Alias Grace - Margaret Atwood
Don’t know how I’ve not read this before! I loved the historical details, the ambiguity of Grace and question of insanity and how it was viewed.

6. All The Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr. A thread favourite, I'm not sure why it took me so long to get round to it but I'm joining the almost universal chorus of praise. If I had to be picky I'd say the gemstone with magical properties storyline was faintly ridiculous, but could see that it was a useful device to add peril for our 'damsel in distress' and her family. And the whistle stop tour of the years after the war meant that, whilst we learn the fates of certain protagonists, the book finished with a whimper rather than the bang it should have gone out on, but overall this was excellent story telling. Unusually for a dual perspective book I was equally caught up in both narratives and really cared about the characters, though I didn't feel I was having my emotions manipulated, terrible events are told in a factual way, there is no over egging of the pudding. As with all well written books that deal with war you are left feeling that the stupidity, greed and barbarism of man knows no bounds and it seems we never learn from our mistakes. Doerr demonstrates brilliantly how 'The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing.' But makes us question whether we, in the same circumstances, would have had the courage to make a stand, particularly when we are shown the fate of those who do. This is definitely going to be one of my stand out books of 2019.

1. Becoming by Michelle Obama. I loved it, actually. It's not a challenging read and it's ghostwritten half to death, but every now and then there is a phrase clearly directly from the lady's mouth that made me laugh or cry. 'I owned an unsettling amount of wool' was one of my favourites.

A quick hello. Am finding, 'My Family and Other Animals' a little less riveting than I remembered it. I like the family stuff but am rather bored of the endless pages of description of insects etc.

remus I read it for the first time as an adult and was underwhelmed yet it is a childhood favourite of many people so I guessed I came to it too late.

Thank you for this thread ....

Shepherd’s Hut -
Seven Deaths of Evyln Hardcastle
This Is Going to Hurt
Professor Chandra finds his Bliss
The Hunting Party
The Only Story

Hi knacktoflying which was your favourite book of those? How did you get on with 7 Deaths Of EH it's split opinion on here!

Skirmish, what a wonderful review of The Fortnight in September . I loved this book too.

I was ill in bed for most of the weekend, so I've finished four more books:

12. Why Mummy Swears- Gill Sims I found this almost as funny as the first book: I’m looking forward to the third instalment. I’m sure this must already have been mentioned on MN, but why is Jane 11 years old at the start of Year 6 and 12 when she leaves primary school?

13. In the Days of Rain- Rebecca Stott Thank you to whoever recommended this upthread. It was a very well written and interesting account of life in the Plymouth Brethren.

14. Trilby- George de Maurier Classic novel about a life model and her three artist friends who all live in the Latin Quarter of Paris. She meets a Svengali figure (literally: that is his name) who uses mysterious methods to teach her to sing. The book was slightly hard work at times (especially the frequent lapses into French) but the ending was satisfying and I’m really glad I read it.

15. Not Your Average Nurse- Maggie Groff This had been on my Kindle for a while (my ex is a male nurse, and it was cheap). It was more interesting than I expected, as the author had some fascinating nursing posts, including spells at Selfridges, at a home for retired nuns, and Sydney Opera House.

OK. After some back and forth on WhatsApp with my sister and some heated debate about the rules of Foreign Literature Bookclub (they are her rules, not mine, I merely pointed out that two of her suggestions were written before 1945...) we've agreed on the following books. Thank you to everyone who made suggestions - I've taken those I haven't read and put them in the mix. Any suggestions for the last two slots very welcome - we can't do Spanish writers, and I'd prefer to avoid French language novels as I read a reasonable amount of French fiction and it doesn't seem particularly exotic as a result. The more exotic the better - we're not fussy about genre, we just want good novels!

January - The Three Body Problem by Cixin Liu (Chinese)
February - Under the Glacier by Halldór Laxness (Icelandic)
March - The Door by Magda Szabó (Hungarian)
April - Please Look After Mother by Shin Kyung-Sook (Korean)
May - The Housekeeper and the Professor by Yoko Ogawa (Japanese)
June - Women Who Blow on Knots by Ece Temelkuran (Turkish)
July - The Glass Bead Game by Hermann Hesse (German)
August - An Egyptian Novel by Orly Castel-Bloom (Hebrew)
September - Fall of the Stone City by Ismail Kadare (Albanian)
October - Maidenhair by Mikhail Shishkin (Russian)

Fab review Skirmish of The Fortnight in September

New thread: www.mumsnet.com/Talk/what_were_reading/3505747-50-Book-Challenge-2019-Part-Three?watched=1

Thanks terpsichore it’s lovely isn’t it? And thanks scribbly

Desmondashankerchief

I enjoyed ‘Professor Chandra ‘ and ‘this is going to hurt’ ... the gentle humour was great.

Can’t really say I was a fan of Seven Deaths - it was an original idea but just such unlikeable characters ...

BOOK 7 THE BOLTER by Frances Osborne. The life of Idina Sackville. Didn’t,t enjoy this book of a wealthy, entitled woman but did aptly sum up life for the white community in 1930,s Africa.

BOOK 8 THE WISH CHILD by Catherine Chidgey . Beautiful and haunting book set in World war2 Nazi Germany seen through the eyes of 2 children.
BOOK 9 THE TATTOOIST OF AUSCHWITZ, another brilliant true life book. Harrowing but truly a rewarding read.
BOOK 10 PORTRAIT IN SEPIA by ISABEL AlLENDE, My 2nd Allende book, set in 1880,s Chile, the fictional story of the del Valle family including Aurora. Set in sanfrancisco and chile and I really enjoyed this sweeping family drama.
BOoK 11 is going to be. THE FORGETTING TIME by Sharon Guskin