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?

@AliasGrape I loved Any a human Heart it sounds a lot like the John Boyne that everyone’s raving about at the moment. One of my absolute favourites of recent years.

Oh. crap! He was WANKING. The vicar was WANKING. Although I haven't got an awful lot of patience for walking vicars in literature either, tbh.

Hope you're feeling okay.

floraloctopus I think Harry Thompson also wrote scripts for or directed Have I Got News For You.

Good man

He hardly wanked at all and it was very tastefully and tidily done iirc. You are too harsh on the vicar Remus. Poor man was on another planet, feeling sad and had needs. I loved that book.

I’m tempted to start my Christmas copy of This Thing so I can be in the second wave. Scared I will throw it on the Simply Can’t Be Arsed Pile of rejects, alongside all the others. Bleak House is in amongst the carnage , all I’m in the mood for now is Westeros and non self-pleasuring monks building a cathedral (listening to Pillars of the Earth ) and only just tolerating that.

I also bought Thing yesterday. I haven’t bothered previously as the description didn’t appeal to me, but for 99p I thought I would give it a go based on the reviews here! However, I am also nervous I won’t enjoy it and will be ejected from the thread.....

I thought I would read loads over the Easter break (teacher), but hardly picked up a book at all as I ended up with a really full house.
Back with it now though, really trying to do more reading and less trash TV.

26. Mortal Engines by Philip Reeve
I really enjoyed this, it reminded me of the fantasy/dystopian fiction books I used to read prolifically as a teenager back in the 1980s. it was an interesting plot about a distant future when the world is largely destroyed and cities have been converted into massive moving bulks on wheels that trundle around the land trying to catch and devour smaller towns. Tom lives in London and he is an Apprentice for the Guild of Historians. His hero is Valentine, the head Historian and he is secretly in love with his daughter Katherine. One day a strange scarred assassin tries to kill Valentine and in the fight that ensues, Tom is pushed out of London and finds himself on the bare earth with the assassin and London is disappearing in the distance. It's the start of a fairly typical quest type story, some great characters and a storyline that largely keeps moving well. Well worth a read.

Thanks remus. You wouldn’t want anyone to think you were against vicars taking exercise, though that would make for a boring read in itself.

@ “tastefully done” scribbly. I’m terribly in the mood for Game of thrones too, but they’re all on my Kindle

Looking forward to all the forthcoming reviews of This Thing second wave - let’s hope you all make it to the right opinion

Am a fan of Mortal Engines. Has anybody seen the film yet? Do I want to?

I haven't seen the film but I have read the book. I can't say I'd enjoy the book if I read it now because I had to study it when I did children's literature at university. It is a good book though - exactly the wrong sort to study.

I'm reading The things we keep by Sally Hepworth at the moment, it's about a young man and woman in residential care who have early onset dementia. It's well worth reading IMO. Also on the go, but getting read slower because of TTWK being my priority is An absent mind about an elderly man with dementia. It's also good but might get put back on the TBR pile because I want to start This Thing

As we're all keen on the Darwin book maybe The Invention of Nature about Alexander Humboldt will be popular - ereader tells me it is 99p today.

Satsuki have you got the kindle app on your phone or tablet? It’s not the same but at least it’s a way in.

36: Pompei by Robert Harris – Not the best book I’ve ever read, by a long way, but a decent enough novel about Vesuvius erupting, with a bit of mystery and feminism thrown in for good measure. Not a patch on Fatherland but okay.

Finished my 24th book which was Dear Mrs Bird by AJ Pearce. I knew this was UpLit before I read it and did swear off this genre after The Music Shop and The Lido but then caved. This one is actually rather charming. It is all written in a Jolly Hockey Stick fashion which would grate on many. A bit Girls Of Slender Means without any of Muriel Spark's acidity or irony. But it's not dreadful : it's actually rather funny (Gosh! I do now sound So Dreadfully Like the heroine) in parts at the beginning and the (slight spoiler) air raid descriptions are fairly affecting.

There is a battleaxe called Mrs Bird who TALKS VERY LOUDLY about the War Effort. I couldn't help but wonder if Pearce based this slightly on Katie Fforde who she lists as a friend in her thanks section. I once had the misfortune of sitting on a neighbouring table to Katie Fforde at dinner one night in a hotel. Goodness, the woman can -and does- talk. Very very very loudly.

Some of you will hate this book. It passed the time for me, especially as I was not in the frame of mind for a heavy read.

Thanks @Palegreenstars - I’ve added it to my basket.

Still unwell and in bed so I’ve read a couple of easyfun ones to cheer me up:

29. Classic Scrapes James Acaster - I’m a fan of Acaster’s stand up and have had this on my kindle a while. Comedy books tend to underwhelm me but I did enjoy this one and it made me smile a lot and laugh out loud at least once.

30. Black Sheep Georgette Heyer - as I posted yesterday I wasn’t sure if I’d read this Heyer or not, turns out I had but it was an entertaining reread.

Hello @Baloonphobia

Scribbly - I hope you enjoy Pillars of the Earth ; it was my first ever kindle purchase and I loved it. There are some wonderful, and some repulsive, characters.

@ritzbiscuits I have also bought How to Own the Room as I am likely to be involved in more and more presentations to 25+ people at a time.

53. The Last Hours by Minette Walkers Enjoyable sequel to The Turn of Midnight, the plague appears to have passed so the survivors in the moated enclave need to think of the future and some set out to see what has happened in the rest of the area. Completely implausible story for the period of history, but it didn't ruin my enjoyment of it. She spins a good story.

54-6. A Dance to the Music of Time (First Movement) by Anthony Powell (audiobooks)
A Question of Upbringing/ A Buyer's Market/ The Acceptance World

Starting at the tail end of school they follow the life of Jenkins and the ebb and flow of people who meander in and out of his life over the years, capturing the changing society of the inter-war years. Essentially nothing really happens in them, but that nothing is told in such a charming and insightful way that I am hooked. The writing is marvellous and the narrator really does them justice.

I didn't get these in time to start in January so playing catch up rather than waiting for next year. I'll see how I get on with the next two and decide if I want to wait a bit between each or plough straight through all off them. I'm really enjoying them so far.

Just before I started these I was halfway through My Man Jeeves and now I feel like I can't go back as the writing in a DTTMOT blows Wodehouse out of the water. I appreciate they are not meant to be comparable, but I can't help it and the contrast is stark. I am not a fan of the Reggie Pepper stories mixed in. Is it worth persevering/ trying a different Wodehouse or giving up until another time? The quality of Powell's writing is ruining me for anybody else.

typo - should be Minette Walters

I fell off the thread a couple of months ago, but still lurk..
Therefore bought This Thing of Darkness yesterday & have started it today & am 10% into it & am so enjoying it - am telling DH to shut up & go away so I can read it in peace. So well written & so exciting....... off to bed & my kindle now!

I keep falling off this thread, but I've finished reading:

19 - Dancing at Lughnasa by Brian Friel
20 - Reading & Studying Literature - The Twentieth Century - this is an OU textbook, but it counts because I read it.

Both were for uni so I can't review them, but I give the play 4/5 and the textbook 3.5/5.

80. Tangerine by Christine Mangan

I was looking forward to this but was disappointed. It’s set in Tangier in the 1950s. Alice has just moved there with her new husband, but then her friend from college turns up. There’s clearly a back story and we gradually find out what it is.

There were a lot of things about this that disappointed me. Firstly, Alice is as wet and dull as dishwater. It’s hard to care about her. Secondly, her husband is horrible but there’s never any explanation of how they met or why Alice chose to marry him. They’ve been married less than a year so it’s unlikely that he’s simply turned horrible since they married - but even if he had you would expect that to be explained somewhere. It’s not and therefore the reason for their marriage is (to me) an unexplained plot hole. The events that happened between the friends at college were odd and the relationship between them wasn’t built up properly. The ending was just ridiculous. I did like the Tangier setting, but the writing is very dismissive of the Africans living there and I think she could have done more to make the setting come alive.

27. The Subtle Knife Phillip Pullman. A reread in preparation for tackling The Book of Dust. Loved it. I listened to the audio book which had a great full cast.

28. The Lady In the Van by Alan Bennett. Asweet novella about Bennett’s interaction with a lady who lives in a van in his drive way. Visceral.

Due to library and book club deadlines I currently have 3 beasties on the go (The Seven Deaths of Evelyn Hard Castle, Fall of Giants and Catch 22) which is stressing me out a little bit as I feel like I’m not making progress but can’t decide anything to give up!

Mog I'm having a bit of an up and down time of it with Pillars of the Earth if I'm honest. I’ve read it before, years ago and absolutely loved it. This time round I'm listening to it, the narrator to give him his dues is doing a fantastic job. I was inspired to re-read it again after the Notre Dame fire and hearing a brief interview by Follett who is somewhat the cathedrals nut. The chapter in the book when the original cathedral's roof caught fire, destroying the entire building was an eerie experience, the similarities between the book and ND uncanny.
I'm enjoying very much the sections discussing the rebuilding, and all the politics too.
I'm struggling with Follett writing women characters though. A recent rape scene was unbelievably badly written, to the point where I nearly gave up on the whole thing altogether. However the story kind of romps along nicely, dragging you out any desire to think about the writing too hard. And that’s probably the kind of book I need to be listening to at the moment, something plot heavy.

Chessie I felt the same as you about Tangerine, overall found it very disappointing.

Interesting Kindle daily deal today, in that it’s all four of Thomas Harris’s Hannibal Lector books. The first two, Red Dragon and Silence of the Lambs, are excellent, Hannibal is ‘ehhh, but might be worth reading once,’ and Hannibal Rising is execrable, and reads like a badly written tie-in with the film. And the film was dreadful.

There are also five Evely Waugh's: Vile Bodies, Brideshead, Scoop, Decline & Fall & A Handful of Dust.

I still bear the scars from the end of a holiday (pre-Kindle) where all that was left to read was Hannibal Rising.

Which of the Evelyn Waugh’s would people recommend? I’ve read Brideshead and The Sword of Honour books but none of the others.