50 Book Challenge 2019 Part Three

[southeastdweller]

Welcome to the third 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 and the second one here.

What are you reading?

Couldn't get into the Narnia books, loved What Katy Did and the Flambards books as well

I am ashamed to admit I have never read Heidi or Swallows and Amazons. However, I loved The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe and have fond memories of the Katy books. I was also a voracious Enid Blyton reader - my favourites were the Faraway Tree books, the Adventure books (Island, Sea, Castle etc) and the Five Find Outers - loved Fatty! I can't work out whether I should try Bookworm or if it will annoy me!

Separately, just finished...
10. Testament of Youth - Vera Brittain - I know lots of you have read it already but it is her story of serving as a VAD in WW1, the loss of men of her generation and her studies at Oxford and her political life after WW1. Whilst I knew she had served as a VAD in WW1, I, embarrassingly, did not realise she had been so active politically. Having said that, I enjoyed (if that is the right word) the war sections more than the post-war politics. Still highly recommended - phenomenal how much she achieved at that period and how forward-thinking she was.

Back to my ever-growing TBR pile - not helped by my continually succumbing to Kindle daily and monthly deals.

I must admit that the children’s books mentioned are so very British. There were so many things I read when I was young that just didn’t make sense or seemed bizarre ...

Updating my list. No stand out reads yet . The ones I definitely don't recommend are (hopefully) in italics

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)
4. The Wife by Meg Wolitzer
5. Cactus by Sarah Haywood.
6. A Fatal Obsession by Faith Martin
7. Unsheltered by Barbara Kingsolver. -February-
8. Murder on the Oxford Canal by Faith Martin (a Hillary Greene detective novel)
9. The Clock maker's daughter by Kate Morton
10. Gray Mountain by John Grisham
11. Believe Me by JP Delaney (Not yet finished)

I loved sci fi as a teenager - invitation to the game, the boy who reversed himself, the eighth colour, intergalactic pig.

I also enjoyed Heidi. Considered it as baby's name but DH said no! And I was a fan of the Famous Five, didn't like the Secret Seven, too many children with the same personality traits. But my favourite detective was Nancy Drew

I loved Swallows and Amazons, Heidi, Narnia and the Ballet Shoes books. I never read Watership Down though.

I also loved Bookworm. And finally - I also loved Splother’s angry review!!

I liked Ballet Shoes and White Boots, also Swish of the curtain by Sarah Greene (I think)

Where did Tim Moore come from for the Up Sticks books then?! Either way, the first one is dire whereas I've enjoyed the Tim Moore books - especially Monopoly

Oh yes, Ballet Shoes was one of my all time favourites. I also loved The Painted Garden - by Noel Streatfield too.

Well writing ' the angry review ' was cathartic, so thank you one and all .
I too enjoyed the Nancy Drew books. Also loved Chalet School and Ann Digby's Trezibon Books.

15. All That Remains: a Life in Death - Sue Black

Thanks to whoever pointed this out as a Kindle Daily Deal a couple of weeks ago! I found this account of Professor Black's life as a forensic anthropologist (reconstructing the identities of the dead from their remains) a fascinating page turner. Probably not for the squeamish though.

Finally, after seemingly endless rounds of winter illnesses, I am bringing my list up-to-date:-

1. Diary of a Bookseller by Shaun Bythell
2. The Dark is Rising by Susan Cooper
3. Wed Wabbit by Lissa Evans
4. Mothering Sunday by Graham Swift
5. How to go Vegan
6. The Bolds In Trouble by Julian Clary
7. Anatomy of a Scandal by Sarah Vaughan
8. My Thoughts Exactly by Lily Allen
9. Convenience Store Woman by Sayaka Murata

10. Space by Philip Ardagh 11. Stephen Fry's Victorian Secrets 12. Five On Kirrin Island Again by Enid Blyton 13. The Secret Seven by Enid Blyton 14. The Mermaid and Mrs Hancock by Imogen Hermes Gowar 15. Autumn by Ali Smith

Currently reading Winter by Ali Smith which I am loving. Very much looking forward to publication of Spring. And my go to kindle book, which has been on the go for a little while, Ma'am, Darling - 99 Glimpses of Princess Margaret by Craig Brown. An interesting, but sometimes a little odd, book. Undecided yet whether his alternative endings and flights of fancy work or are just silly and pointless.

An interesting, but sometimes a little odd, book. Undecided yet whether his alternative endings and flights of fancy work or are just silly and pointless.

That is a highly appropriate description of some of the books I have read recently

23. The Secret Adversary (Tommy & Tuppence #1) by Agatha Christie Audiobook

If Enid Blyton wrote James Bond. Early 1920s a young pair decide they are hard up and bored so put an ad in the paper to have an adventure and accidentally end up on the trail of an evil spy.

Incredibly good fun and very different tone to Marple and Poirot. It rattled along at a thrilling pace with lots of twists and turns. Quite implausible, but forgivable for the pure joy of it. Again meant for dog walking, but I found myself listening when I shouldn't be even though the poor creature is getting dragged through the countryside on ever increasingly long walks.

I just started reading The Truth and Lies of Ella Black by Emily Barr. I'm really loving the book and am captivated it, but something tells me it's going to get very emotional, especially considering the chapter titles.
Also have to start Michel Foucault's Discipline and Punish for one of my courses soon and am not looking forward to that as did not understand Foucault in a previous course I took.

I've started The Lighter Side: An NHS Paramedic's Selection of Humorous Mess Room Tales it's good so far. The same author has written The Dark Side which is the darker side of life as a paramedic, I'm hopefully going to get it on prime reading.

So far I have read

1. How To Stop Time by Matt Haigh
2. Sometimes I Lie by Alice Feeney
3. Killing Eve by Luke Jennings
4. Power by Naomi Alderman
5. Unwanted by Kristina Ohlsson
6. The Haunting Hill by Shirley Jackson - it seems I have been unlucky recently. The Haunting is yet another ok read. Nothing page turning or really creepy. It’s just ok. Shirley Jackson has an interesting writing style which I quite liked. Good thing I am keeping a list for 2019 because I will probably forget this book relatively quickly.

1. The Darkest Secret by Alex Marwood. Let’s see what this brings..

The Haunting of Hillhouse

34. 84 Charing Cross Road and The Duchess Of Bloomsbury Street by Helene Hanff

Technically two separate books, but I’m counting it as one as they’re in the same volume and the first one only took me 40 minutes to read. 84CCR is a series of letters written between the author (in New York) and the bookshop at that address in London. The second book is about her visit to London in 1971, after the book had been published and the bookshop closed down. The letters are lovely to read and give a good sense of the period they covered (1949-1969) with references to food rationing and The Beatles. I didn’t like the author much - she comes across as rather spoiled and demanding - but I loved how excited she was about everything in London in the second book.

10. 10 this will only hurt a little busy phillips

A memoir by the actress Busy Phillips. Known for various tv shows and her love of Instagram stories. I had a very positive image of Busy before reading it and for the most part this persists. She is very open and honest in this and the challenges she faced with body image, relationships and loss were moving. Her rape was very dark and I’m sure a common experience.

However some parts were just so Hollywood, I struggled to relate and found she took things really personally. So many grudges and negative feelings about colleagues and random celebrities.

I’ve just started Marlon James’s Black Leopard, Red Wolf a fantasy epic. I had high hopes but also just read that he was inspired by the Famished Road which I fucking hated (and Rushdie who I love) and the first few chapters are definitely more the former. Hoping it improves.

Oh lordy, I've just finished book 17 which is Bookworm too! I read it as I hurt my back last week and needed something comforting as I tried desperately to find a comfortable position in which to to sit/lie down. No position was comfortable alas.
I agree with everything upthread that has been said about it.

Also read no. 18 Justine by Lawrence Durrell, the first book in the Alexandria Quartet. This is a lavishly descriptive novel that centres on a doomed love affair set in pre-WW2 Alexandria between an English teacher and a married woman. Whilst appreciating the descriptive writing, which is both evocative and very beautiful (if you like that sort of writing - which I do), I found this to be a complex, demanding and rather over-blown read that I had to force myself to pick up. Will leave a gap between this and the next one I feel...

Oh dear, I've fallen off the thread a bit due to Life but have enjoyed catching up. I have two books to update on but will restrain myself to doing one at a time because of the risk of mega-postitis......starting with....

13: Leadon Hill - Richmal Crompton

Last year I bought (in a lucky charity shop find) a whole load of Greyladies paperback reprints of obscure novels by women writers, including Noel Streatfeild writing under one of her noms de plume, and this 1927 adult novel by Richmal Crompton. It's absolutely fascinating and I blasted through it at top speed.
Leadon Hill is an idyllic country village complete with 'naice' inhabitants of impeccable social credentials, but behind the charming facades dwell some of the most unpleasant and twisted people imaginable.
One of the few exceptions is Marcia Faversham, married to John, who lives at ' The Hawthorns' with her three children. Marcia is the voice of sanity and reason, and is well aware that village gossip is orchestrated by the vicious Miss Mitcham. When beautiful, graceful Helen West comes to live in the village, renting the house owned by the Favershams, the rumour mill goes into overdrive and some lives are profoundly affected....

This was absolutely not the book I expected when I started reading it - after a rather fluffy opening it's as though the setting of the William books is suddenly revealed as a seething hotbed of vicious spite, rumour, scandal, insinuation and all-round nastiness. I enjoyed it hugely, though!

Sorry - that wasn't a very short review, either, was it?

Newsflash for remus and a few others. My new Wray Delaney has been despatched. Expecting filth

35. Terms and Conditions: Life In Girls’ Boarding Schools 1939-1979 by Ysenda Maxtone Graham

I recommend this to anyone who read Malory Towers/St Clare’s and wished they could go to boarding school. This is full of real recollections of what it was really like. In the main, it sounds hideous! Freezing cold, terrible food, bullying, uncaring staff, poor teaching and no ambition for girls whatsoever. However, it did seem to be a very good way to make lifelong friends.

I've been wanting to read that for ages Chessie - just looked again on the library catalogue & they've got it in :) :)

Terms and Conditions I read my mother's copy of this (she was at boarding school) and you're right ChessieFL - she still goes on holiday with school friends at the age of 89! It also went a long way to explain how she is.

Wildlife by Richard Ford This was my first Richard Ford which I found in a pile of books on someone's front wall. It's quite a short novel about a 16 year old boy who moves to Montana with his parents. His father loses his job and goes away for a few days to fight a wildfire towards the mountains and while he is gone, his mother starts an affair. I thought it was a beautifully written book but rather bleak and melancholic.