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?

Evelyn Waughs.
Apostrophe shamed

Decline & Fall is very, very, funny. I haven't read Scoop or A Handful of Dust but DH has them in hard copies.

Scoop is very funny. I'll have a look at Decline and Fall as I haven't read that one.

Agree that Decline and Fall is hilarious. Scoop is fun, and A Handful of Dust is excellent but very depressing.

Vile Bodies is funny too.

yes Evelyn is always worth a look but couldn't warm to him as a fanatical Catholic and also tormented his children with the promise of a banana shortly after the war and then ate it himself.

The Catholicism in Brideshead is wearing. The first third of so is wonderful though.

And the 1981 TV series of Brideshead, with Jeremy Irons and Anthony Andrews was really good.

One of the very few (IMO) adaptations of a book to the screen that really worked.

(The other two are , for me, The Go Between & Day of the Jackal.)

Sorry for the digression - that would make a topic in itself.

There was an adaptation of Brideshead a few years ago with that very pretty man who was also in 'A Very English Scandal'. I seem to remember it being good, and how being brilliant.

him

British, not English.

Finally finished 10. My Brilliant Friend. Enjoyed it but found it a bit of a slog, I was constantly forgetting who was who; doesn't suit my ability to only read in small chunks. On the up side, I'm going to seek out Volume 2, after I've had a break.

Moving onto a completely different book 11. The Year of Living Danishly. We are going to Denmark on holiday next month (Lego trips ahoy!), so looking forward to learning more about the culture.

Hello! Embarrassingly, I have missed almost this entire thread- I will have to wallow in a big catch up later. Life has been getting in the way of mumsnetting, but I have been reading.

26. Dead Lions by Mick Herron. Sequel to Slow Horses, nice competent spy thriller.
27. Penhallow by Georgette Heyer. I had read this as a teenager when I first fell in love with Heyer, but had buried it deep in my memory - it's crap. Don't read it!
28. The Hearts Invisible Furies by John Boyne. I remember lots of you reading this- the writing is loey but I felt it didn't need both the 7 year cycle structure, and the repeated coincidental meetings (is there a word for that as a literary device?); one or the other would have sufficed.

Apologies, accidentally hit post!
28) Close to Home by Cara Hunter. Recommended here, it was very readable but I found the hero's back story to be just too tragic for me. Also, the ending should have been cued in a bit more as regards motive!
29) Black Swan by Nicolas Taleb. Non fiction and not my usual thing (it's about the unknown unknown, trading, and statistics), I kept reading, transfixed by the author's voice- he may be intelligence, successful and interesting but omg he comes across as an arse! Definitely an interesting experience!
30) Grave Mistake by Ngaio Marsh. One of her better written ones, this flows very nicely, except when I got to the end the "why" seemed very lightly pencilled in and I was expecting something else to happen (reading on overdrive, so harder to tell you are at the end- that has caught me a couple of times on the kindle and I this k might indicate a poorly paced book).

I like your review of Black Swan Tanaqui - I absolutely agree, the core concept is brilliant (and was incredibly timely when it was published in 2007 - especially as he was putting the key ideas forward well before that) but good god he's annoying.

I remember being incensed by the ending of Hannibal and I agree that Hannibal Rising is the weakest of the four.

I have just finished a re-read: 14. Before They are Hanged – Joe Abercrombie

In this second instalment of the trilogy, the action really picks up and builds on the excellent world – and character-building of the first book. There are three separate, but equally engaging story arcs; a war in The North; political intrigue in the south and a quest to obtain a magical weapon from the edge of the known world.

I often find with fantasy works that there is a less interesting sub-plot or character group that just get in the way, and I race through these bits until I can get back to the ‘proper’ bits. Not so with these books.

Despite many the characters being rather unpleasant (dissociative psychopath warrior, hate filled ex-slave, numerous entitled noblemen, tortured-turned-torturer), they each mature and grow on their various journeys, becoming more and more likeable in the process.

31. Paragon Walk Anne Perry Number 3 in the Charlotte and Thomas Pitt series I started this year, and I think by far the weakest so far. I was compelled to keep reading to the end, so there must be something I liked, but can’t rightly tell you what right now! When I posted about the first book, another poster and I’m really sorry I can’t think who it was, mentioned preferring the William Monk series by the same author - I think I may switch to those instead.

34. Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston

A bit like Cold Comfort Farm (although completely unlike it in every other way), I picked this up on the Kindle Daily Deal because it's one of those books that features in all the 100 books you should read lists that I have, er, never read. I didn't know what it was about either, so had no expectations. Turns out it's the story of Janie, a black American brought up by her grandmother to marry someone who can keep her financially - and that's essentially the peak of her ambition. Having married in accordance with the plan, Jamie swiftly realises this doesn't work for her, and her subsequent life story is a really intriguing tale of female emancipation that doesn't all work out but is at least done on her terms.

Much of the book is written in phonetic dialogue which I found hard at first but you get into it. The non-speech writing is poetic - apparently the book was written in a very short period in Haiti, and it has an intensity to it. Alice Walker was hugely influential in getting the book and Hurston back to literary prominence after it was out of print for years and I could see its influence on The Color Purple, which I studied for A level English. Very glad I read this. It was not at all what I expected.

Annnd I'm off!
1. In the forest by Edna O'Brien I'm sorry I started it as I found it quite upsetting but that was probably because I have a child of a similar age, I'm very pregnant and I live very close to where the original crimes took place. I remember being very frightened as a child while they were happening. I was afraid to leave the house. Anywho, something lighter next!

20 Wrecked by Joe Ide

Number 3 in the detective series IQ. More traditional detecting than in number 2, the preternatural Holmesian sensitivity of IQ is deployed a couple of times. But lots of cruel violence, which I didn't really enjoy.

21 The Italian Teacher by Tom Rachman

22 Huntingtower by John Buchan

Having looked for this for ages in second hand bookshops I found it hiding in plain sight on my bookshelves, as the first story in a collection called "The Adventures of Dickson McCunn". I was surprised at how Scottish the language was, I'd be interested to know if other readers were able to make much sense of these! Retired Glasgow grocer drawn in to utterly random rammy on remote Aryshire coast. By half way through I was thinking it would have made a better film, but by the end the charm of the Gorbals Die-Hards, an ersatz scout-troup from the slums, had me thinking I might read on to the next volume where things are even more improbably set in a fictional foreign state.

#71 I've finished The Things we keep by Sally Hepworth.
Anna moves into a residential care home because of early onset dementia, another resident is also young and they become friends. The author tells the story of their friendship and the complications that occur because of it. At the same time, Eve is working at the home following the break up of her marriage and we learn a bit about her life and that of her daughter Clem and how they cope with it. Eve comes across as a little foolish and irritating but she means well. The author has handled the subject of dementia well.

#70 Understanding the British: a hilarious guide from apologising to Wimbledon by Adam Fletcher. A quick read, amusing but not laugh out loud funny.

I'm glad it wasn't just me Sadik!

I came on to ask about Brideshead Revisted and see it was being discussed only yesterday!

I’ve enjoyed Decline and Fall and A Handful of Dust but not quite as much as Brideshead.....can anyone recommend books they think are similar?

I absolutely LOVED Huntingtower.

37: The House at Vesper Sands - Paraic O'Donnell

The Grauniad raved about this and it was cheap on Kindle and claiming to be Wilkie Collins-esque, so I thought I’d give it a go. It’s decent enough but not brilliant. Funny in places and, yes, it’s got touches of Collins, although nowhere near as clever. There were a couple of plot-holes which should have been picked up at the editing stage, and the ending is clearly setting things up for a sequel, but it was diverting enough.

WelshWabbit that is certainly the first (and I suspect will be the last) review of Their Eyes Were Watching God that starts "A bit like Cold Comfort Farm..."

I was a little disappointed by the next bit of your review - after that opening I was just waiting to see how you brought the two together