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?

Palegreenstars I really enjoyed that book and didn't really think about the lack of coke or other drugs included in the story. It never crossed my mind!

Personally, I think the inclusion of that would have detracted from its overall message. I feel it was very much written as 'alcohol free' literature and it my case it was one of the books that helped me stop drinking for good, which I'm eternally grateful for.

I can understand if you were reading it more generally that you may have felt a dimension was missing.

Sounds like you had a similar experience with The Chalk Man as me, Pepe. We had it as a reading club choice last year and I gave up after about seventy five pages as I just did not care about any of the characters :$

I’m late to the party but would like to give this a go . I will report back when I decide what my first book will be.

Just marking my place on the second thread, nearly finished book 3.

I've just started reading Ruth Goodman's How to Behave Badly in Renaissance Britain

That looks good, I've added it (and others of hers) to my wish list.

Forgot to say, I am currently reading I'd rather be reading by Anne Bogel. It's a short read (presumably the author would rather be reading than writing!) , it's a good read.

Book 5 ended up being an audible book The Word is Murder by Anthony Horowitz

Hmm, the opening chapter describes a woman going into an undertakers to arrange her own funeral and 6 hours later she was murdered. A murder to be solved by Horowitz and Hawthorne, an ex detective and now police consultant.

Although a work of fiction Horowitz is the narrator and is helping solve the above murder and then write a book about it with Hawthorne? confused yet? I was at first but then settled down into it and its not so complex a murder case with many twists and turns I can input invoices to pay at work but I did not guess the murderer. It really is a crossover off fact and fiction with Horowitz talking about books that he has written, due to write, meetings with producers and directors but all weaved in a work of fiction. I think Mr Horowitz is a frustrated private investigator. This is the first in the series and it engaged me enough to get the next one as I have an audible credit if my children haven't nabbed it first.

Thanks for the new thread South.

My books so far:

1. Fire and Blood - George RR Martin

2. The Book of Death - Anonymous (Book four in the Bourbon Kid series)

This is a completely bonkers, supernatural gunslinging riot of a book in the style of Quentin Tarantino with a pinch of Guy Ritchie. I read that the author imagined this series in a western setting which comes across really well. Instead of cowboys vs Indians, we have the Bourbon Kid (a serial killing anti-hero who made a deal with the devil) and his various sidekicks attempting to rid the grotty, crime ridden town of Santa Mondega from the undead.

There are vampires, mummified vampires, werewolves, zombies, monks, inept and corrupt policemen, and cursed jewellery. The story is fast paced, the dialogue is blunt and gritty, with some fantastic deliveries by the main characters.

Highbrow literature this is not, but it is certainly memorable and good fun.

And now moving onto an altogether different sort of beast:

3. Jurassic Park - Michael Crichton

Keith, I missed your review on Bitter Orange - did you like it?

I did, a lot. It's not flawless - she has three parallel narratives going on, each in a different time period, and I thought the seams showed a bit. However, everything else was great - setting, characters and plot. Set a classic story of repression and possible ghosts in an abandoned country house during a long hot 1960s summer and you can't go wrong I reckon.

Thanks, Keith, it’s in the library and on my list for the future..

@ritzbiscuits that’s fantastic. I don’t doubt it will help a ton of people and I’ll recommend it loads. I think I was probably looking for another book and the people I know that resemble Catherine at her worst probably needed an extra section.

The Long Earth by Terry Pratchett & Stephen Baxter is 99p at the moment, I've wanted to read it for some time:

"1916: the Western Front. Private Percy Blakeney wakes up. He is lying on fresh spring grass. He can hear birdsong, and the wind in the leaves in the trees. Where has the mud, blood and blasted landscape of No Man's Land gone?

2015: Madison, Wisconsin. Cop Monica Jansson is exploring the burned-out home of a reclusive (some said mad, others dangerous) scientist when she finds a curious gadget - a box containing some wiring, a three-way switch and a...potato. It is the prototype of an invention that will change the way Mankind views his world for ever.

And that is an understatement if ever there was one..."

1. Bookworm by Lucy Mangan
2. The Cactus by Sarah Haywood

A woman in her forties faces various challenges after her mother dies. She is quite set in her ways and isolated. A battle with her brother ensues.

I enjoyed this. It is sold as for people that liked Eleanor Oliphant and the Rosie project. It was a tad predictable but that can be nice sometimes. I liked how the writer occasionally had reveals “off camera” and let us know what happened later. It took a while for me to get into the book but once I had I read quickly. I’ll look out for the author’s next book.

4. The Mistake I Made by Paula Daly

Roz is in serious financial trouble. Her ex-husband left her with loads of debt, her physiotherapist business went under, and she’s having to explain to her young son why bailiffs have taken all their furniture.
And then the husband of one of Roz’s sisters friends offers Roz a substantial sum of money if she’ll spend the night with him. Enough money to make a substantial dent in Roz’s debt.

Unsurprisingly , things don’t work out as smoothly as Roz hopes.

Overall fairly mediocre.

10. My Sister’s Keeper by Jodi Picoult

This was a bit ‘meh’ for me. 13 year old Anna filed a lawsuit against her parents asking for medical emancipation so she does not have to donate parts of herself to held her older sister who is diagnosed with a rare type of leukaemia. Anna was conceived in the lab for this very purpose.

I didn’t really like any of the characters in this story. The mother was just irritating from start to finish to be honest. The two daughters were quite 2 dimensional. And the other characters I really didn’t care about. The sub plot lines were weak and uninspired. The ending is weak and felt a bit too neatly tied up. I wouldn’t recommend it I don’t think. Shame as the storyline had potential.

I hated the ending of My Sister’s Keeper. It ruined the whole book IMO.

I felt it was a very frustrating ending but it would be massively spoilery for me to go into just why I felt like throwing the book across the room into the bin because of the ending.

6 The Fallen by David Baldacci

Two FBI agents on holiday get caught up in murder in a small town which is plagued by drugs. Baldacci focuses on what is plaguing America is the high use of prescription drugs and the increasing use of fentanyl, a drug commonly used in end of life care, but is increasingly being used as the drug of choice because of its potency. The town in question was a thriving town but all the coal mines and textile mills are now shut with the descendent of the towns founder living in poverty in the old house on the hill. A lot of implausibility, some mad guesses and off course a brilliant detective but an easy and quick read in the line of
Lee Child. I haven't read any of his for a while and it's good to see he doesn't seem to be falling in the trap of writing weaker books as a series moves on.

Thank you for the new thread.
My list so far:

1 Family History by Vita Sackville West
2 The Aspern Papers by Henry James
3 To Have and Have Not by Ernest Hemingway
4 A Patchwork Planet by Anne Tyler

5 The Accidental Tourist by Anne Tyler
Another Anne Tyler, this one I first read after the film came out. I did remember the basic plot but not all the subplots. She writes so well. Macon's marriage has broken up after the death of their only child. At the start he is descending into a breakdown - it is so well written - but things look up for him.

6 The Household Spirit by Tod Wodicka
This was a book which is set in similar territory to Anne Tyler's books but reading it straight after the previous two books it merely highlighted her skills as a novelist. This was OK, but I wasn't convinced by the main plot. And it was over long and could have done with editing. The main female character is described as being people's second best friend at school never a best friend. We then get several pages proving this point, full names of characters who won't appear in the book again and have no relevance to the plot. Tyler would have probably summarised the whole thing in one paragraph. This was a random library choice, glad I didn't spend any money on it.

7 Third Girl by Agatha Christie
Set in the swinging Sixties, Norma is the Third Girl in a flat share and tells Hercule Poirot that she has murdered someone then leaves before explaining anything else. There is no body. So has she murdered someone or not? Enjoyable read, various red herrings as usual and a good twist at the end.

I agree @StitchesInTime. I had read brief reviews that said they were disappointed with the ending but I didn’t want to spoil it so didn’t read it fully. Have to say I was disappointed too

Read the last few pages before work of:

1. July’s People by Nadine Gordimer.

South Africa during apartheid (pub 1981). The Bam family escape the rioting and violence in their city with the help of their black servant July, who takes them to his village.

Loved this book, have read her before and was glad to stumble on her again. Not a long book, she gets a lot of meaning and feeling into few words.

1. Tombland - CJ Sansom

Like many others I'd been waiting for this one for a while! Shardlake is asked to quietly investigate the murder of the wife of the Lady Elizabeth's distant Boleyn cousins, who, inconveniently happened to have visited Hatfield to fruitlessly ask for help just before her death. Shardlake goes to Norfolk and begins to investigate but is overtaken by the events of the Peasants' revolt of 1549. I enjoyed this but the experience was marred by the fact that I know how the rebellion ends. I didn't work out the murderer. I also liked it for the depiction of a young man probably with ADHD or ASC, which you don't see often in books where that isn't the central premise.

1. My Sister The Serial Killer by Oyinkan Braithwaite
2. The ABC Murders by Agatha Christie

Inspired by having watched the series over Christmas, this Poirot murder mystery was just what I needed for a it of light relief from exams.

I’m now reading Herland by Charlotte Gilman Perkins and very much enjoying it.

1. Conversations with Friends by Sally Rooney

Two university students get caught up in the lives of an older couple.

I really wanted to give this up after 100 pages (1/3 of the way through) as I was irritated by it. In fact I was rolling my eyes so much it was a miracle I could follow what was on the page. As it has been generally so highly praised I decided to stick with it thinking it must surely get better. It didn't. However on reflection I realised what was irritating me was the memory of 2 people exactly like this in my circle at college. And thus I have decided that Rooney is actually very good at portraying the pretentious faux-intellectual contrived wankery of some students the flawed results of a difficult upbringing struggling to find their place in the world. She really isn't far off the mark. I just wish she had done against a better backdrop than a rather tedious affair. One to read for the character portrayal as there isn't a plot to be seen.

I'm also glad I didn't live anywhere near a performance poetry venue as my 2 would have been all over it. And one of them even grew up to be a university lecturer. Bravo Rooney, bravo.

Just finished #6 The Rise and Fall of Becky Sharp a modern retelling of Vanity Fair. Unlike some updates this followed the original pretty closely and wasn't bad. Mumsnet even got a mention. Wonder if the author is on here?

Next book I've started is #7 All Things Wise and Wonderful: The Classic Memoirs of a Yorkshire Country Vet I'm rereading all the James Herriot books. Enjoyed them when they were first released and it's nice to revisit. I also read them after dad so they make me think of him.

weebarra I haven't read any Shardlake yet but the first in my booklog so will have to promote it.

Fortuna, I agree with your review and I did give up on Conversations with Friends about halfway through. I can't understand why it's had so much love.