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?

I felt the same way about Vox, stripeyeyes. Set-up was chillingly realised, but the second half was so unconvincing. And I felt that too many aspects of the plot seemed designed purely to make the author’s life easier (if that makes any sense). Like the timeline of the development of the cure - doing it over a longer period would have required more effort from the author, and every time the characters are in need an ally, up one pops. It felt like lazy writing to me.

36. First Love by Gwendoline Riley this was nominated for some prize or other & features a woman whose childhood was marred by a bullying father and passive yet self-absorbed mother who did, however, eventually leave the father. The narrator inevitably has problems sustaining healthy adult relationships & ends up with a classic narcissist/abuser. This sounds quite grim but has some good mordantly funny moments e.g. the mother confessing she can't be bothered to make a proper meal in the evening and just has crisps or Bombay mix.

37 Late in the day - Tessa Hadley this was in the Top Ten one week only section of the library. Despite swingeing cuts affecting other areas, my library seems to keep getting the new books in and I suspect that the librarians sometimes order books they want to read themselves. It is in what used to be described as a "disadvantaged area" so I don't know who reads some of the books I do as a lot of the patrons would struggle with The Sun. Anyhoo - another literary women's type novel about relationships. Not my favourite Tess Hadley but I was drawn in by the character of Lydia who manages to get by on her looks and general persona of intrigue in order to pursue a life of idleness, enabled by marrying a rich man. She literally does nothing except please herself; even outsourcing care of her daughter to a nanny. Wonder where I went wrong.
38 Still life with breadcrumbs Anna Quindlan - Rebecca is an out-of-fashion photographer who moves to live cheaply in the country outside New York and meets a younger handyman with a happy ending. Easy reading & I could easily read others but sense they get a bit samey. Not as effortless as Anne Tyler but in that vein.
39 Cyril Hare Detective Stories after all that feminine angst, I wanted something different. However, these are all very similar stories based on some legal point (the author was a judge) & not quite what I wanted - which is something like Agatha Christie/Ruth Rendell at their best with no sentimental romance (Agatha) or person with an incredible psychological defect (Ruth). Onwards and upwards.

14. Slaughterhouse Five by Kurt Vonnegut.

Audible with narration by James Franco. What an odd book! Anti-war satire, fractured minds, time travel - I thought it was great.

I also bought A Month in the Country for 99p. Bargain!

Scribbly - "21. Evening in the Palace of Reason by James Gaines.... Oh thank goodness. A book I actually enjoyed. Many, many thanks to Cote for the recommendation. This was fantastic.... An absolutely fascinating read. An opportunity for me to thank all the contributors to this thread. Sometimes books get recommended on here, books that are trendy or flashy or on a prize list, books that you’d probably never hear of otherwise, but nevertheless are wonderful and life changing. I've always loved Bach's music but never understood why. I do now and I also have his A Musical Offering in my life, which I didn’t have before. "

I'm so glad to hear that you loved this book and felt it touch your life I'm a big fan of J S Bach and he is of course an absolute freaking genius, but this book is about so much more - it is about the great upheaval in the world during his lifetime, about the clash of worldviews and the victory of rationalist viewpoint that brought about the reign of the individual, Frederick the Great, who he was, why he did what he did, etc.

I felt exactly like you about the impact of the 50-Book threads on my life after reading This Thing Of Darkness and I am happy to have contributed here in the same way

Bit of a crime binge coming up...

17. The Hunting Party by Lucy Foley

Not very popular on this or previous threads, this one. A group of university friends go to a remote lochside lodge for New Year. Predictably, all sorts of dodgy revelations come out and someone ends up dead. I quite enjoyed it. I liked the revelations about the five narrators, although the remaining characters were cardboard cut out. The evocation of the loch setting was pretty good. I guessed whodunnit well before the end and thought there were a couple of obvious clues. Nothing earth shattering but it rattled along.

18. After the Crash by Michel Bussi

I preferred this French bestseller though. A baby is found near the wreckage of an aeroplane, the only survivor. But there were
two babies on board. Which one is she? Some nice twisty turny plotting although the writing was pretty clunky in places - although that may be the fault of the translation. Again, I guessed the central mystery if not all of the details, but there were enough other things to think about to mean that didn't matter too much. Worth a read if you like this sort of thing. I might try to read one of his in French next to see how much of it I can understand!

1. Total Control by David Baldacci

Another fast-moving thriller by Baldacci with a slightly dubious plot. Slightly better than Jack Reacher books for entertainment purposes, although that's not saying much.

1. The Door Into Summer by Robert Heinlein

Although published in 1957, this was actually a really decent and interesting SF story. An inventor/engineer who invents a line of household robots gets cheated out of his patents & company by his fiancée and business partner, so decides to go into cold sleep to wake up 50 years later.

The author was an engineer and this shines through every page. His description of how a robot would be built and how its "brain" could work is very interesting, especially given that he wrote it all decades before the advent of what would recognise as a computer.

I had a Heinlein phase in my teens but somehow missed this book. I'm glad to have finally read it

1. Call For The Dead by John Le Carré (Smiley #1)

This was the beginning of George Smiley, who appeared quite a few times in later years, notably in The Spy Who Came In From The Cold and Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy. I liked this book - interesting story, told in an atmospheric, nearly personal way.

However, the story is about a time (1960) that is technologically so far removed from our own that it may as well have been about aliens on a different planet. Smiley realises that the suicide is a murder because the guy requested an 8:30 AM call from the phone exchange? A what? Why? And he calls this phone exchange place and they find a girl there who recognised the deceased when he called. Etc etc.

The story also sounds very odd, like who would post a theatre coat ticket to someone else? If you don't get your box from the theatre that night or the day after, would someone not open it up to see what it is and whether it should be kept or not?

Still, I liked it. Le Carré's is good when he writes about this period imho. It's when he tries to write about espionage in the 21st Century that it's painfully obvious he knows nothing about the technology it all depends on now.

cote yes you used to be able to use the telephone exchange to ask for alarm calls, odd as it seems now. Makes for an atmospheric book title too We were watching some old episodes of Friends from the 90s and, ok the plots are often daft by nature anyway, but it’s amazing how many of them would not have been able to occur the way they did if smartphones were a thing. Pagers and answering machines, lost messages and notice boards are integral to so many of them.

terpsichore sounds like you need to make suggestions for future podcasts. I was so delighted when I find a featured one in the library Return of the Soldier recently. But I also find I enjoy the ones I haven’t read or have no intention of following up just as much I’m looking forward to Penelope Fitzgerald next week and I’m going to try and read ahead for once.

Sorry my grammar gave up somewhat in that last post.

Cote yes I agree I think Gaines made a really clever decision to juxtapose the lives of Bach and Frederick in Evening in the Palace of Reason. He could have gone for the straight single biography but I think learning about Frederick’s life really helps understand the political and cultural context in which Bach was writing his music. It was such an easy and enjoyable non-fiction read too, unlike the biography of Florence Nightingale I’m crawling through at the moment which is dry impenetrable stodge.

Cote - I'm so glad I discovered a battered old copy of This Thing of Darkness in a charity shop all those years ago, and that it's been able to spread so far due to these threads. I wish I could find another book that could have such wide-ranging impact, but I'm really struggling this year.

21: Cloudstreet – Tim Winton

This comes up a lot on lists of great Australian novels. Unfortunately, I didn’t find it a great Australian novel. It had lots to recommend it – some interesting characters and some sections of lovely, lyrical writing – but for much it, I thought it was really missing much evocation of place, which is my main reason for wanting to read great Australian novels! It also got rather clumsy at times, in terms of hinting what was going to happen at the end, and it could have been quite a lot shorter without losing much if anything. So, overall verdict is ambivalent.

I compensated with a couple of children's books but didn't count them, as I've read them so many times.

So finished #21 Shadow of Night the second book in the Discovery of Witches series. Enjoyable fluff. Suffered a bit from middle book syndrome. The story moved on but nothing was resolved. Also not a good book to jump into if you haven’t read the first.

Moved onto #22 A Nest of Vipers this is the 21st Inspector Montalbano book. I enjoy this series. (And the Italian TV adaptation). Good murder mysteries in the Sicilian sun. Light politics in the background. A quick read. Each stands alone but if you read in order the relationships between the main characters develop and make more sense.

And finally just started the next Rockton book #23 A Watcher in the Woods. Shaping up to an enjoyable addition to this series.

20. The Outcasts of Time - Ian Mortimer

Book-club read - probably would have given up on it otherwise.

14th-century stonemason John of Wrayment is afflicted by plague and given the choice of living out his last six days in his own time or travelling forward in time 99 years on each of his remaining days (so ending up in 1942), searching for a way to redeem his soul.

Mortimer is the author of the Time Traveller's Guides to Medieval England / Elizabethan England etc. While he clearly knows his stuff, The Outcasts of Time doesn't function well well as a novel and is mostly a vehicle for sharing information about each successive age. It's the sort of 'info-dumping' historical fiction in which the characters have unlikely conversations telling each other about the current state of the world. There's little to connect the different time periods plot-wise, other than the presence of the distinctly average John.

It's readable because Mortimer writes very fluidly, but can't say I would recommend it.

Yes you’re really letting the side down remus - I’m waiting for my next favourite book

It is amazing when you think of how many people read it on here, plus I know I passed it on to at least two people and recommended it elsewhere, not to mention when you take into account lurkers. Quite a knock-on effect to that charity shop trip.

10. Finn Family Moomintroll by Tove Jansson

I got this childhood favourite to read to my ds, unfortunately after the first chapter he was so enthralled that he insisted on reading it to himself so I had to sneak it away and finish it while he was at school. I found it just delightful to revisit, and as an adult saw more of the philosophies of life which underpin the different characters and their actions and personalities. Though the characters are odd and not of the real world, they each demonstrate qualities that a child could recognise and perhaps identify with. There is no judgement passed between being the kind of person who makes up another bed for a random stranger, the kind who loves a party, or the kind who just needs to go off and wander; a person who loves material things and a person who likes to be alone with their thoughts. The writing is lovely and brings the mysterious landscape to life and the jokes hold up well. My ds really enjoyed it too and loved the cover and drawings in the new edition, and, like the Hemulen, wants to begin a collection.

11. A Question of Upbringing by Anthony Powell

I’m not going to review this too hard as it is a whole sequence I need to get a bit further into it I think to pass judgement. It was slow going for the first chunk, there’s no denying it, but once I got into it I found myself enjoying the humour and intensely observed characterisations, and towards the end made note of several quotes that made an impression on me. I’ll be reading the second later this month.

I am currently reading How Steeple Sinderby Wanderers won the FA Cup, another JL Carr and I’m really enjoying it, with the slight hiccup of a cracked Paperwhite screen which has slowed me down somewhat. I know many here will shudder at this. I am bearing it as best I can.

Welsh I really liked After the Crash. A great page turner. I have another waiting on my shelf, Black Water Lilies.

Sorry, Skirmish.

Note to self - must try harder.

I've just bought another Patricia Wentworth and another Alistair MacLean, so it's unlikely either of these will be everybody's stand out of the year!

Didn’t someone on these threads actually know J L Carr?

Haven't updated in a while and realise I didn't bold my favourites last time so starting again from the beginning!-

1. The Essex Serpent- Sarah Perry
2. The Mars Room- Rachel Kushner
3. Let Me Lie- Clare Mackintosh
4. Aquarium- David Vann
5. I See You- Clare Mackintosh
6. I Am, I Am, I Am- Maggie O’Farrell
7. Everything Under- Daisy Johnson
8. Manhattan Beach- Jennifer Egan
9. My Name is Lucy Barton- Elizabeth Strout

10. Do Not Say We Have Nothing- Madeleine Thien 11. Have Mercy on Us All- Fred Vargas 12. Commonwealth- Ann Patchett 13. Eileen- Otessa Moshfegh 14. The Woman Upstairs- Claire Messud 15. The Child’s Child- Barbara Vine 16. The Shore- Sara Taylor 17. Mothers- Chris Power 18. The Story of a Marriage- Andrew Sean Greer 19. This is Going to Hurt- Adam Kay 20. Anything is Possible- Elizabeth Strout 21. The Dinner- Herman Koch 22. All the Conspirators- Christopher Isherwood 23. Land's Edge- Tim Winton 24. Days Without End- Sebastian Barry 25. Hot Milk- Deborah Levy 26. The Burgess Boys- Elizabeth Strout 27. The Children Act- Ian McEwan 28. Sugar Money- Jane Harris 29. Wallis in Love- Andrew Morton 30. Anatomy of a Scandal- Sarah Vaughan 31. History of Wolves- Emma Fridlund 32. Lincoln in the Bardo- George Saunders 33. Instructions for a Heatwave- Maggie O'Farrell 34. Olive Kitteridge- Elizabeth Strout 35. Old School- Tobias Wolff 36. Seating Arrangements- Maggie Shipstead 37. A Far Cry from Kensington- Muriel Spark 38. The Girl in the Red Coat- Kate Hamer 39. Bad Dreams- Tessa Hadley 40. The Wonder- Emma Donoghue 41. The End of Eddy- Edouard Louis 42. This is Where it Ends- Marieke Nijkamp 43. Take Nothing With You- Patrick Gale 44. Normal People- Sally Rooney 45. Santaland Diaries- David Sedaris 46. Eyrie- Tim Winton

Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass
I had vague recollections of studying this at university. I couldn’t remember much from it and have really enjoyed revisiting it. And to be honest, knowing what I was like when I was a uni, I probably only skimmed it.
This is the story of Fredrick and his life as a slave in the early 1800’s in Maryland. Some parts are quite hard to read but I really liked his use of language and descriptions.

Sorry that was book 24 as well. Forgot that bit

32 Brief Answers to the Big Questions by Stephen Hawking
A series of essays about physics and technology. The early ones are not entirely straightforward if you aren't a physicist (I'm not) though Hawking's prose is clear and punchy. The later ones are easier to follow as he moves out of his area of expertise into AI and space travel (to be fair he is qualified to talk authoritatively about both of those!). The intro and epilogue by Eddie Redmayne and Lucy Hawking respectively are immensely moving, and his humour and humanity come through in everything he writes. So much of my reading this year has been fiction, so this made a refreshing change of pace and topic.