50 Book Challenge 2019 Part Four

[southeastdweller]

Welcome to the fourth 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, the second one here and the third one here.

How're you getting on so far?

Thanks, Decimus. Just got a couple of those to try.

That’s fantastic, thanks Decumus!

Thanks for the Amateurs in Eden recommendation bibliomania. I’ve read several books about the Durrells but hadn’t heard of that one before so I’ve added it to my wish list!

71. Return to the Secret Garden by Holly Webb

One of DD’s books. As you would guess, it’s a sequel to The Secret Garden. This is set in WW2 and some orphans are evacuated to Misselthwaite Manor. It’s not a patch on the original but not a bad read in its own right.

72. No Way Out by Cara Hunter

This is her third book featuring Detective Inspector Adam Fawley and I’ve enjoyed all of them. In this one, two children have been pulled out of a house fire but there’s no sign of the parents. I couldn’t put this down and didn’t guess where it was going.

Thanks Scotti. Of those, the only one I've read is The Hangman's Daughter - really enjoyed it and went on to read the series. It's not high literature, and the translation's a bit clonky, but it's a fun quick read with a good setting and characters. Anyone recommend any of the others?

The Hangman’s Daughter was the one that particularly caught my eye, so I’m glad to hear it’s worth reading, Ham. I ‘bought’ all nine.

Embarrassingly, I counted up all the books waiting to be read on my Kindle, and discounting the dross and the ones I want to reread, it came to just over 200. I’m pretty sure there’s at least that number of hard copy books in my tbr pile too.

Like so many others before me, I have just read The Cut Out Girl by Bert Van Es, after recommendations on this thread. I was motivated by the fact that I was visiting Auschwitz and it certainly formed a good complement to that trip. I have often wondered what happened to survivors of the war, such as Lien. It is often presented as simple . the war ended and everyone was hapy. This book examines that idea senstively and is a very interesting and affecting read. It would make a wonderful film (in the right hands) and I wonder if anyone has their eyes set on it. It's got a lovely ending , too, which cheered me. Nice to know sometimes real life does.

I was interested to note in the acknowledgements that Katherine Rundell was a student of Bart's and helped him with the book. I assume this is the rather fabulous author of Rooftoppers.

Massive sympathy @AliasGrape, both on being caught without your Kindle in the sun, and having an active DH on holiday, I can identify with both .

I've seen Pet Sematary, and quite enjoyed the major change (not saying what it is in case people want to see the movie and/or read the book).

It's one of my favourite King books (one of the first I read, at a completely age-inappropriate time, and possibly why it's one of my favourites), and was really disappointed by the old movie adaption - I'm glad this one was (in my opinion) better.

I have a DH who does things too (although he does also like sunbathing, to be fair). The best break I went on was his golf break last year where I had several hours of unmolested time for relaxing and reading. Sadly, he seemed to get round the golf course quicker than your average man.

Hug - I'm a huge King fan but really dislike Pet Sematary - and I thought the film was even more ridiculous than the book, although I still quite enjoyed it, for all that!

Thanks for the sympathy thatsnot and piggy ! The weather hasn’t been good enough to just lie on the beach much, so that’s limited my reading time to. Today though we spent several hours of prime reading time ‘just walking as far as’ and ‘just going to look at’ various points of interest I could have seen perfectly well from the distance of a nice cafe with book in hand. Not to worry, there’s the whole flight back to look forward to. He’s not a reader - he’s lugged Bill Bryson’s A Short History of Nearly Everything everywhere but not opened it once I don’t think. I do worry we’re actually deeply incompatible but we persevere

Thanks Decumus definitely checking that out now.

Can I recommend inducing a hangover in your DP alias ? Mine got rather tired and emotional the other day after Spurs victory (ie he stayed up til 1 am drinking 'small Polish beers'). The next day, all he wanted to do was sit on a bench in Krakow with his book

For anyone contemplating one of the free books upthread 👆, I've read the Viveca Sten one, Still Waters . It's an OK, undemanding not-very-crime-y crime novel. Like a Swedish equivalent of the televised Montalbano books...lots of lovely picturesque scenery - it's set on an island - and a handsome hero with love troubles.

Good for holiday reading on the kindle

18. The Guide to Good Mental Health on the Autism Spectrum - Jeanette Purkis et al. This book is pretty good. It's straightforward, has a great layout, was clearly well-researched, and lifts up Autistic voices.

It loses a star for using person first language, and references to functioning labels (including lots of the use of Asperger's). I'm guessing it's more a symptom of when it was written (and possibly done to please the publishers), but as an autistic advocate, I can't give it full marks, and I'd actually be hesitant to recommend it to other autistic people as some would find the language used frustrating and/or triggering.

I love what the book is trying to do though, and have learnt from it. 4/5

10. "Love in the Time of Cholera by Gabriel Garcia Marquez. Massive, massive standout, life-changing book. Tried before but never got far, needed to be older perhaps. Reading it as a widow was truly healing. Funny, emotional, tender to the characters but brutal about the lives they lead. The ending seems like a scorched earth dystopia rather than a romance - Florentino is a terrifying character who reminds me of the killer in The Vanishing.

11. Broadsword calling Danny Boy by Geoff Dyer. Absolutely loved this and laughed so much, but then I always watch When Eagles Dare if it's on telly.

12. "The Handmaids Tale by Margaret Attwood. Yeah, never read it before. Fuck this is good. Still don't want to watch the series but I am so so glad i read it.

There's a lovely article by Robert McFarlane on the Guardian site, about us new book, Underland.

MacFarlane - HIS new book.

Thanks Decumus for the Kindle freebie link - downloading all of those to sample.

And sympathy to those of you on holiday with active DH's. Mine goes to the other extreme and shifts from workaholicism into readaholicism. He's decided to read Dante's Divine Comedy (because it's Easter weekend) and stayed up until 4am finishing the first book, the Inferno. He woke up briefly when I got up to pass on some gruesome details about the various circles of hell but has now gone back to sleep leaving me in peace on the terrace of our cottage with my third cup of coffee and Patrick Leigh Fermor.

Am looking out at the humongous mountain PLF describes climbing over in his book (Mani) to reach the village we are staying in (instead using of the nice easy coast road like us ) - have just googled and realised PLF was about 48 at that time. And he lived until 96 despite smoking 100 a day. So maybe the "let's walk just to there" husbands are a better long term investment than mine :)

Just finished The ABC Murders which I chose to read after watching the (I thought silly) TV adaptation. I found the book superior in every way and perfectly gripping. Quite stylishly written, so I am not even sure why they veered so much from the original in terms of some of the characterisation.

On this topic, I may donate this to my 14 (15 next week, which I refuse to believe) year old DS. Can anyone recommend good Christies to begin with? I read loads myself when young but can't recall which ones were more gripping. I suspect Poirot is better than Marple perhaps for a boy ??

@Piggywaspushed Crooked House was my first at age twelve, and I was hooked from there.

31. The Dark Path by Michelle Sacks

Well, this was a grim read featuring unpleasant, dysfunctional adults and a neglected, abused baby.

Merry and Sam and their baby son Conor live in a cabin in the woods in Sweden, a life which Merry and Sam are determined to portray as idyllic to the outside world, but things start unravelling when Merry’s oldest friend Frank comes for an extended visit.

Although it would all have gone bad sooner or later anyway.

The adults are all unlikable with serious character flaws, and the relationships between them are very dysfunctional. Their negative feelings and behaviour towards the baby is a major plot point, and something which made this a very disturbing read.
I don’t think I’d have started reading it if I’d realised it centred around child abuse (this wasn’t obvious from looking at the back of the book) but it was a gripping read.

29. Bel Canto by Ann Patchett

I started and DNF this several years ago, because I thought it was a terrorist thriller sort of thing and wasn't up for it. How wrong can you be? This book starts with a hostage situation - terrorists in an unnamed South American country storm a birthday party for a Japanese businessman at which a world famous opera singer is performing - but it really isn't a hostage thriller at all. It's about the relationships that develop between the terrorists and hostages and when you are forcibly reminded of how they first came to be doing together, it is devastating. Brilliant. Everything I have read by Ann Patchett has been great. Her three earliest titles are not available on the Kindle so I think I am actually going to have to buy them in paperback.

doing = flung, sorry!

26: The Big Necessity - Rose George

Last year I read Deep Sea and Foreign Going , which explored the little-known world of container ships. This is Rose George's second book, subtitled 'Adventures in the World of Human Waste'. It's absolutely fascinating, sometimes hilarious, often terrifying and very sobering, and takes the reader into the slums of Africa and India (where 'opens defecation' is rife and a huge public health problem) and to Chinese farms where biogas digesters are supplying households with fuel, power and fertiliser for the fields. Along the way she visits Japan, home of the ultra-sophisticated all-singing, all-dancing TOTO Washlet (complete with heated seat and water jets), and America, where sanitation is not as efficient as you might expect it to be.
Full of mind-boggling facts (the death-toll from child diarrhoea worldwide is horrific), this is incredibly readable and you very quickly get over any prudery - as Rose George advises right at the start. A really important book on a vital and rarely-discussed topic, in fact.

Piggy - Definitely Poirot. There's a v silly Halloween one with two boys like the Weasley twins, which might have teen appeal.