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?

Loving all the Kate Atkinson chat. I'm about to begin Behind the Scenes at the Museum which will be my first Atkinson read. Where do you all rate that one?? (no spoilers, please!!)

*18. The chalk pit by Elly Griffiths

The archaeologist* Dr Ruth Galloway continues to help the police solve crimes in Norfolk. This time the mystery centres round underground tunnels and the homeless.

I really enjoyed this one. The returning cast are lovely. Though this one was ruined for me a bit on Twitter. Love the acknowledgements where she thanks the police for sending her on a speed awareness course.

Behind the Scenes is one of my favourite books. My favourite KA by a long way. Think that's why Life After Life left me cold : it's more po-faced.

terpsichore, obviously you are a spy. Only a spy denies being a spy.

piggy 👀

I DNF Life After Life, bowing out on page 123. There was nothing wrong with it per se but there were much more interesting books jostling for my attention at the time and I wasn't that taken with it. It has since been seen in the library book sale, even they don't want it.

I'm in a proper reading funk at the moment and can't settle much with anything in print. I have just abandoned AS Byatt's Possession for the second time this year. I've tried both print and audiobook for it and it isn't for me. Started A Dance to The Music of Time (audio) this morning on a 2 hour dog walk and captivated already.

I have eventually finished

51. The Silence of the Girls by Pat Barker
    Much reviewed already. I enjoyed it, but it took place on the beach that Madeline Miller already built. I may have spent too much time in Troy this year.

52. Death of a Scholar (Matthew Bartholomew #20) by Susanna Gregory (audiobook)
    More medieval murder mystery shenanigans in C14th Cambridge. I had felt like these had gone of the boil for the last few but this one was back on form. Only 3 left in the series.

Also reading The Turn of Midnight albeit very slowly.

I’ve liked everything KA has written with the exception of Human Croquet and Transcription. It was just dull sorry. Looking forward to the new Jackson Brodie though.

Behind The Scenes At The Museum is brilliant - though it’s 20 years since I read it.

Behind The Scenes At The Museum is fabulous. There’s a version on audible read by Susan Jameson and the narration is so good.

I liked Behind the Scenes and the first couple of JBs. Other than that, I'm not a fan of Kate A.

Hot me with your really gripping historical crime/mystery reads, please, all! I'm really struggling and need a page turner.

Kate Atkinson said that last year that A God in Ruins is her best book and from the seven of hers I've read, I'd agree. I wasn't that keen on Transcription - I thought there was a lack of interest in her characters on her part in that book. I'm reading Started Early, Took My Dog and really enjoying it so far.

Behind the Scenes is also my favourite KA by a long chalk. It really resonated with a lot of things in my own life. I've read the Brodie's, they were kind of fun at first. Life after Life was decent but I didn't rate A God in Ruins as much. I find her unrelaiable in terms of whether Ill enjoy her books.

I’ve read two Kate Atkinsons (Life After Life and Behind the Scenes at the Museum) and didn’t get on with either of them. I really don’t know why, as it’s the sort of thing that should be right up my street, but somehow they just didn’t work for me. After that I gave up on her.

A few update sfrom me long overdue. Here is the first:
21. Asylum by Marcus Low.

Very disappointing. Our unrelaible narrator (...zzz...) is kept with a bunch of other men in hospital quarantine in South Africa. They have a fungal lung infection and have been removed from the population. Is their Dr poisoning/illegally doping them and is what our narrator writing down i down in his diary true? (I didn't care). There is a chance of a breakout, will he go too?
Really hyped book billed as a brilliantly realsied vision of a dystopian future but it just struck me as snippets from someone sensibly being treated until they are non infectious, a bit like TB sanatoriums 70 years ago.

22. MIracle Creek by Angie KIm. Loved this. A really unusual story that presents as a routine who dunnit? A Korean couple have opened a "Miracle Submarine" treatment pod , a pressurised oxygen chamber in a small American town offering treatment to anyone who can pay. They have some regular clients, mainly people with disabled children. During their "dive" disaster strikes and the pod catches fire, killing a child and maiming soem of the other clients and the cowners teenage daughter. The mother of the dead child is on trial but are the other players in the tragedy as innocent as they appear. It deals with the immigrant experience, dealing with autism, power imbalances in relationships. I was really surprised and delighted by this one, a page turner for me.

23 The Dreamers by Karen Thompson Walker. I liked this although the ending for me was a bit flawed and at least one storyline could have been edited. A university student in a campus town falls "asleep" and can't be woken and soon other students and town residents are also "infected". The writing was quite beguiling in this, matching the theme. I was a bit ill when I read this and the gentle stories and narrative were just the ticket.

24 The Winters a modern update/take on Rebecca. Why do I do this to myself, all the other Rebecca spin offs I've read have been pants and this was even more insulting to the the original if possible than those. I felt I had to finish it as I was given an adavnce copy for review. Utter tripe.

Sorry for the typos, inadvertently pressed post.

Anyone managed to read Bright Air Black by David Vann?

Retelling of Medea story. Jason and the Argonauts. Sentence fragments, present tense. I'll throw this sentence in to baffle you, random reference to Egyptian gods.

Bath abets my reading. Warm water, can't reach other book.

Only 20 pages in, parody irresistible.

1. The Overstory Richard Powers. Four stories about trees and their relationship to their human planters/guardians. Okay. Not sure what all the hype was about?

1. I Who have never known Men by Jacqueline Harpman.

A mid 1990's sci fi/speculative fiction book by a Belgian author. I 'm not sure if I actually liked this book but it drew me in and kept me page turning. It didn't really deliver answers but it has stayed with me. If anyone else has read it, what do you think it was about ? The futility of life?

Anyway, our narrator is a teenage girl who was locked up as a toddler with 39 other older women in a cage in a bunker. The perimeter is controlled night and day by 3 guards who never speak or interact with the women except to use their razor sharp precision whip lash on any woman who makes a noise, laughs, touches another, or attempts suicide etc. The women's night and day are controlled by the dimming and raising of the electric light. Their only tasks are to boil the meagre food rations and repair their threadbare tunics. There is no privacy. the latrines are not covered. One day a siren goes off just as the gate to their cage is being opened to pass in the food ration. The guards scarper and the women tentatively ascend to the surface to explore what has become of the world.
Well worth a read.

27. The Colour of Bee Larkham's Murder Why has Bee Larkham disappeared and what was she up to with her teenage boy tutees. Is her next door neighbour a murderer as he thinks he is? Our protagonist has kinesthesia and boy does the writer over egg it. It actually really gets in the way of the narrative. Not for me.

28. A Stranger City Linda Grant. Disparate stories about residents in one of the grimier parts of London (in the near future post Brexit) that start to interconnect more as the narrative unfolds, linked by the opening investigation into the drowning of an unknown and unclaimed woman. Struggled with this at first but quite enjoyed it as it unfolded.

29.We Must be Brave by Frances Liardet. Started really well but then the narrative went pear shaped and the characters became unvbelivable (for me). A toddler is found by a young recently married woman on a bus evacuating Southampton residents from the Blitz to safety in her country village. The toddler's mother is found to have died and the young woman is desperate to keep the girl. However, the child's estranged father appears on the scene.

Behind The Scenes was one if my favourite books, though it’s so long since I read it - definitely due a reread. I love the Jackson Brodies too, particularly the first which has really stayed with me despite the subsequent ones becoming a bit of a blur. I struggled a little with Life After Life but thought A God In Ruins was incredible, if not exactly enjoyable in the way Behind The Scenes and the JBs are. I liked Transcription well enough - remember feeling it was dragging a bit then suddenly being drawn in.

There’s the two of hers I just think of as ‘the weird, not great ones’ - Emotionally Weird was one I think? And Human Croquet? Am I making that up/attributing another author’s books to KA? I could google but would mean opening another window and inevitably losing what I’ve typed so far. One of them had Aberdeen and then maybe an island and a wrecked old house and a mother with whom the protagonist had a strained relationship?

This is why I can’t join a book club despite my love of books, and never get any bookish/well read ‘Brownie points’ at dinner parties (well I don’t go to any dinner parties so that too) - other people can discuss their reading eloquently touching on plots, themes, character development etc etc whereas almost as soon as I’ve finished something it’s gone and all I can offer is ‘yeah I loved that book - wasn’t it something about a rabbit or maybe a horse?’

Anyway, just finished 27. Becoming - Michelle Obama
I listened to this on audible and really enjoyed it overall, I found myself tearing up a lot more than I expected.

I thought Human Croquet was appalling.

An easy and quick read to notch up another one on the list, as I'm conscious of falling behind:

28: The Temptation of Forgiveness - Donna Leon

These Brunetti novels are like old friends now, but so similar they all rather blur into each other. Brunetti seems to spend most of his time strolling around Venice, dropping into cafes for pastries and glasses of wine, doing a bit of light detective work, and going home for lunch to eat wife Paola's delicious food. Then he reads some heavyweight literature (Sophocles' Antigone in this instance) and muses on how its timeless lessons relate to his latest case. Job done.

All the same I can't help enjoying each instalment that comes out. This is book no. 27 in the series and I was just checking that it's the latest...only to discover that a new one was published last month. Another to add to the ever-expanding wishlist, then.

almost as soon as I’ve finished something it’s gone and all I can offer is ‘yeah I loved that book - wasn’t it something about a rabbit or maybe a horse?’

This is me too. And a reason why I haven't read more KA, because I can't remember which ones I've read, and I don't want to read the Jackson Brodies out of order but every time I start one it seems vaguely familiar and I think I've read it before.

I've read loads of books in my lifetime but fail to impress anyone ever with my well-read knowledgeableness, as I forget everything about the books within a few days.

I’m normally ok at remembering plots but I have that problem with the Jackson Brodie novels. I know I enjoyed them at the time but can’t work out which ones I’ve read and which I’ve missed.

I remember Life AFter Live but didn’t love it as much as some people. Think it was around the same time as many other WW2 novels and I got a bit sick of that time period.

Popping in to bookmark. Have nsmechange, I was Haven'tGotAllDay. Been awol with work, family weddings and Sharon Penman.

Catching up now!

I've been awol too but have been reading as well as busy with applications for jobs.
I've got two books on the go, both about Alzheimers - Sally Hepworth's The Things we keep and Eric Gill's An absent mind. Sally's book is about a person with early onset alzheimers and the other is about an elderly person with alzheimers.

I’m another who often forgets plots. Particularly psychological thrillers - I read loads and they all blend together in my mind unless they’re particularly good.

Alias both Human Croquet And Emotionally Weird are by Kate Atkinson. I liked Human Croquet but not Emotionally Weird - that’s the one with the Scottish island house or something that you were describing. It’s the only one of Atkinson’s books I haven’t enjoyed.

79. Hope for the Best by Jodi Taylor

Latest in the St Mary’s series. More of the same - travelling round the timeline causing chaos and getting into trouble.