50 Book Challenge 2019 Part Five

[southeastdweller]

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

Place marking as a lurker - I kept up for a couple of months but life & bloody cancer (not mine, but close family x 2) has got in the way.

Am now over 50% through This Thing of Darkness & am just entranced & educated by it. It was only 200 years ago & how different was life then, how much knowledge about the world we take for granted now was just supposition then. How easily we forget what a conundrum science was then.

Thank you for these threads, Southeast - I haven't kept up with logging my books but feel OK to post & have read some amazing things I might have missed otherwise.

Thanks for the new thread Southeast!

My list so far:

1. Little Fires Everywhere - Celeste Ng
2. Animal - Sara Pascoe
3. The Bull from the Sea - Mary Renault
4. Women and Power - Mary Beard
5. Our Magnificent Bastard Tongue - John McWhorter
6. The Winter Isles - Antonia Senior
7. Dynasties: the Rise and Fall of Animal Families - Stephen Moss
8. A History of the World In 21 Women - Jenni Murray
9. The Monogram Murders - Sophie Hannah
10. This is Going to Hurt - Adam Kay
11. Adventures of a Young Naturalist - David Attenborough
12. In Your Defence - Sarah Langford
13. Did You See Melody? - Sophie Hannah
14. A History of Britain in 21 Women - Jenni Murray
15. All That Remains: a Life in Death - Sue Black
16. Bridget Jones’s Baby - Helen Fielding
17. A Hat Full of Sky - Terry Pratchett
18. The Ark Before Noah - Irving Finkel
19. Dear Mrs Bird - A.J. Pearce
20. The Outcasts of Time - Ian Mortimer
21. Burning Bright - Helen Dunmore
22. Unnatural Causes - Richard Shepherd
23. The Silence of the Girls - Pat Barker
24. Brooklyn - Colm Tóibín
25. I Contain Multitudes - Ed Yong
26. Closed Casket - Sophie Hannah
27. Slade House - David Mitchell
28. The Gentle Discipline Book - Sarah Ockwell-Smith
29. Educated - Tara Westover

And recently finished:
30. How Not to be a Boy - Robert Webb (Audible)
Autobiography of the Peep Show star focusing on his early life and the psychological damage done by toxic masculinity, particularly as represented by his father. Very funny but also very sad, it's an interesting take on how the patriarchy is bad news for boys as well as girls.

31. Bright Air Black - David Vann
Retelling of the story of Medea, in the form of a present-tense prose poem, placed in a late Bronze Age historical context. It's Medea's stream of consciousness, almost all in sentence fragments. If you didn't already know the story, I don't think you'd have a clue what was going on (but when a writer's operating at this level of literary pretentiousness, this probably doesn't bother them).

At first I thought this was going to be unbearable, and if it wasn't a book club read, I probably would have given up early on. Particularly as the first half is mostly a very detailed description of a sea voyage, which is about my least favourite novelistic event.

But once Medea and Jason arrive in Iolcus, the pace really picks up and you get into the flow of the language, which is very sharp, vivid and visual. The tension builds because you want to see how the violent tragedies of Medea's life, which you know are coming, will play out.

In mythology, Medea is more divine than human, and so her elemental violent rage makes a kind of mythic sense. But here she is fully human, the magic isn't real and I'm not sure that her motivations really work. The book opens with her kneeling in the remains of her brother (who she's killed and chopped up herself, naturally), but we are never really shown how she got to this point, how her love for Jason inspired this outlandish fratricidal act.

Overall, this had a savage poetic beauty and gives an interesting consideration of ancient religion and kingship, I'm glad I read it, but I'm not as pleased with this novel as it is with itself.

Thread 5 already! Averaging 1 a month this year! Would be good to keep that up and have 12 by Xmas. No pressure guys! Off to bed but will move my list across tomorrow. Sleep well all.

Hi all. My reading year so far remains pretty dire and my list is now spread across two laptops so I won't copy it over. Just finished Black Sheep which was essentially Georgette Heyer by numbers. It was okay but far from her best, with no surprises and a very silly ending.

Thanks very much for the new thread, southeast , and for the continued pleasure of the ongoing conversations.

My reading so far:

1. The West Pier - Patrick Hamilton

2: The Last Resort - Pamela Hansford Johnson 3: The Child That Books Built - Francis Spufford 4: Dark Sacred Night - Michael Connelly 5: American Bloomsbury - Susan Cheever 6: A Party in San Niccolò - Christobel Kent

1. Lady Rose and Mrs Memmary - Ruby Ferguson
2. The Dark Room at Longwood - Jean-Paul Kauffmann
3. Brother of the More Famous Jack - Barbara Trapido

10: Barrow's Boys - Fergus Fleming 11. The Harpole Report - J. L. Carr 12. Their Finest Hour and a Half - Lissa Evans 13: Leadon Hill - Richmal Crompton 14: Deep South - Paul Theroux 15: A Ghost at the Table - Suzanne Berne 16: A Girl in Winter - Philip Larkin 17: An Unsuitable Attachment - Barbara Pym 18: After the Crash - Michel Bussi 19: Seduction: Sex, Lies and Stardom in Howard Hughes's Hollywood - Karina Longworth 20: Murder by the Book - Claire Harman 21: The Crime Writer - Jill Dawson 22: Mrs Frensham Describes a Circle - Richmal Crompton 23: Man at the Helm - Nina Stibbe 24: The Cut-Out Girl - Bart Van Es 25: The Year of Reading Dangerously - Andy Miller 26: The Big Necessity - Rose George 27: Transcription - Kate Atkinson 28: The Temptation of Forgiveness - Donna Leon 29: Normal People - Sally Rooney

I've almost finished something else, so review to follow shortly, I hope. I'm also putting off the moment when I have to commit fully to my next book club read, Moby Dick - though I'm relieved to note a couple of positive recent write-ups on here. And I have read the first 30 pages without finding it as turgid as I remember when I last read it. Admittedly that was when I was a teenager so it may have improved since

Thank you for the thread, and thank you everyone for top notch book chat.

My list below, with highlights in bold. One thing I’ve noticed since I joined the 50 Book threads is that the variety and quality of what I read has improved. It’s definitely made me more thoughtful about choosing books and encouraged me to try books I may not have done otherwise.

1 Severance by Ling Ma
2 China Rich Girlfriend by Kevin Kwan
3 Conundrum by Jan Morris
4 I'll Be There For You by Kelsey Miller
5 A Short History of England by Simon Jenkins
6 The Penguin Lessons by Tom Michell
7 Lethal White by Robert Galbraith
8 To Throw Away Unopened by Viv Albertine
9 The Child That Books Built by Francis Spufford
10 Get Out Of My Life But First Take Me And Alex Into Town by Tony Wolf and Suzanne Franks
11 The SCUM Manifesto by Valerie Solanas
12 The Chalk Man by CJ Tudor
13 I Find That Offensive by Claire Fox
14 My Life with Bob by Pamela Paul
15 Becoming by Michelle Obama
16 Rich People Problems by Kevin Kwan
17 Fifty Things That Made The Modern Economy by Tim Harford
18 The Three-Body Problem by Cixin Liu
19 The Wife by Meg Wolitzer
20 The Growing Summer by Noel Streatfield
21 Ex Libris by Anne Fadiman
22 Middle England by Jonathan Coe
23 Harriet by Jilly Cooper
24 Under the Glacier by Haldor Laxness
25 A Question of Upbringing by Anthony Powell
26 A Buyer's Market by Anthony Powell
27 The Bible For Grownups by Simon Loveday
28 Neuromancer by William Gibson
29 The Silence of the Girls by Pat Barker
30 The Year of Magical Thinking by Joan Didion
31 The Door by Magda Szabó
32 Brief Answers to the Big Questions by Stephen Hawking
33 L’Assomoir by Emile Zola
34 If On A Winter’s Night A Traveller by Italo Calvino
35 The Heart's Invisible Furies by John Boyne
36 The Lover’s Dictionary by David Levithan
37 Rum Punch by Elmore Leonard
38 Five Giants by Nicholas Timmins
39 The Genius in my Basement by Alexander Masters
40 Another Planet by Tracey Thorn
41 The Acceptance World by Anthony Powell
42 How to be Right by James O'Brian
43 Fall Out by Tim Shipman
44 Ordinary People by Diana Evans
45 NOS4A2 by Joe Hill
46 At Lady Molly's by Anthony Powell
47 They Were Sisters by Dorothy Whipple
48 The Cut Out Girl by Bart van Es
49 Inventing Ourselves by Sarah-Jayne Blakemore
50 Everything I Know About Love by Dolly Alderton
51 Unnatural Causes by Richard Shepherd
52 Moby Dick by Herman Melville
53 Please Look After Mother by Kyung-Sook Shin
54 The Henchmen of Zenda by KJ Charles

And after nearly five months of intermittent reading, here’s the big one. For what it’s worth I think reading this piecemeal certainly helped me get to the end but I lost a lot of the detail as a result. Next time, it’s all or nothing...

55 Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallace
It’s going to take me a while to digest this one, and it’s hard to know where to start reviewing it.

There is so much going on, so many set pieces, cross references, vignettes, digressions, jokes, different narrative voices - I think it would be almost impossible to get a true sense of it with only one reading. It’s entirely frustrating if you like clear narratives and explicit endings. It’s 981 pages of dense text plus 100 plus pages of even denser footnotes. The end of the story is (sort of) at the start, and the structure loops (broadly) across a period of seven years, going back and forth in time. The years are named not numbered so the reader doesn’t know how the chronology works for a sizeable chunk of the novel until a footnote clarifies things.

Broadly speaking (although I don’t know how important the plot really is) the US has entered a period in the near future where everything is commercialised and a massive toxic landfill site has been put near the Canadian border. I think giant feral hamsters may be involved. The founder of an elite tennis academy in Boston was also a film maker before he killed himself and made a film so insanely addictive that anyone seeing it is no longer able to do anything apart from watch it until they die. His family still rattle round the tennis academy - one son is a highly gifted tennis player with a hyper-large vocabulary, one has significant birth defects and makes movies like his dad and the other is (I think) an American football player. Meanwhile, Québécois terrorists including a radical faction of wheelchair activists are trying to find the film so they can flood the US with copies and bring down the enemy state. Meanwhile, close to the academy is a halfway house where residents attend AA meetings, NA meetings, and reflect on their lives. All sorts of other stuff happens, often with no obvious link to anything else.

Tennis, kids’ games, substance and other addiction, separatist politics, end of days capitalism, instant gratification, family relationships, maths... I don’t think that does justice to the themes but it’s a start. A lot of the book has nothing to do with the plot - he introduces minor characters who are irrelevant but we spend pages inside their head, he wanders off into detailed descriptions of bathroom doors and alternatives to sunscreen. It is like a massive anthology of weirdness.

Some of it was horrifying, some of it was very very funny, some of it really sad, and some of it was downright confusing. It deserves its status as a cult novel and I see why it has the reputation it does for being one of those books few people finish (and maybe those two things are connected). And it’s unquestionably imperfect in so many ways and it makes the reader work really hard to keep track. But it is surprisingly readable for all its length and messiness and show-off-iness, and a lot of it is deeply entertaining. I expect I will go back and reread it in a year or so, at which point much will become clear.

Thank you for the new list southeastdweller

Here is my 2019 list so far:
Books 2019

1. A Spell of Winter – Helen Dunmore
2. Timon of Athens – William Shakespeare
3. The Water Cure - Sophie Mackintosh
4. My Year of Rest and Relaxation – Otessa Moshfegh
5. The Sun and Her Flowers – Rupi Kaur
6. On the Black Hill – Bruce Chatwin
7. The Blackwater Lightship – Colm Toibin
8. Florida Lauren Groff
9. A Death in the Family – Karl Ove Knausgaard
10. At Last – Edward St Aubyn
11. Less – Andrew Sean Greer
12. Tell the Wolves I’m Home – Carol Rifka Brunt
13. Tomorrow – Elizabeth Taylor
14. Ghost Wall – Sarah Moss
15. From the Land of the Moon – Milena Agus
16. The Nature of Winter – Jim Crumley
17. Insomniac City: New York, Oliver Sacks and Me – Bill Hayes
18. Bookworm – Lucy Mangan
19. Justine – Lawrence Durrell
20. Between the World and Me – Ta-Hehisi Coates
21. The Lucky Ones – Julia Pachico
22. Last Bus to Woodstock – Colin Dexter
23. Wolf Winter – Cecelia Ekback
24. From a Low and Quiet Sea – Donal Ryan
25. Visitation – Jenny Erpenbeck
26. Waiting for the Last Bus – Richard Holloway
27. An Isolated Incident – Emily Maguire
28. The Taming of the Shrew – William Shakespeare
29. Darling Days: A Memoir – io Tillett-Wright
30. Howl’s Moving Castle – Diana Wynne Jones
31. Friday Night Lights – H.G Bissinger
32. History of Wolves – Emily Fridland
33. Diary of a Bookseller – Shaun Bythell
34. Father and Son – Edmund Gosse
35. Fish Have No Feet – Jon Kalman Stefansson
36. Doctor Brodie’s Report – Jorge Luis Borges
37. Amy and Isabelle – Elizabeth Strout
38. As You Like It – William Shakespeare
39. The Grand Babylon Hotel – Arnold Bennett
40. Notes to Self – Emilie Pine
41. I Feel Bad About My Neck – Nora Ephron
42. Of Wolves and Men – Barry Lopez
43. Landfill – Tim Dee

And my most recent read
44. The Laura’s – Sara Taylor
A YA type coming of age novel Alex's mother pulls him/her (we never know if Alex is male or female) out of bed one night after another argument with Alex's father and they leave the family home on a road-trip all around the USA to sort out unresolved issues from the mother's past. Unfortunately, the character of the mother is extremely irritating and the whole thing is just deeply implausible.

Thanks for the new thread southeast.

Love your review of Infinite Jest Pepe. Sadly the Very Long Book I've just made it through wasn't anywhere near as interesting.

22. Wild Swans by Jung Chang How can a non-fiction book that tells the story of 20th century China through the lives of three women from the same family be boring? By being written in the most turgid and hackneyed prose imaginable, and having no filter for which details might be interesting and which are definitely not. Also, I got the feeling that despite trying very hard to be objective, the author found it hard to see things from anything but her own view and situation. This should have been a great book, and the ground it covered was enough to ensure that it wasn't a terrible book. I was convinced I had read it as a teen, but soon realised I hadn't, plus it was only published in 1991. So what the hell did I read in the 1980s that was a long non-fiction book on daily life in China, quite possibly focussing on women's lives, that was much better than this?

Yes, I meant to add, great review Pepe, very interesting.
Am also laughing at the review of Wild Swans. I have had a copy of Wild Swans sitting accusingly on my bookshelf for many, many years now.

Thanks for the new thread Southeast.

My list so far.

1 Across the Nightingale Floor: Tales of the Otori Book 1
2 Jane Austin at Home
3 The House of Unexpected Sisters
4 Provenance
5 Romes Sacred Flame
6 The Rise and Fall of Becky Sharp
7 All Things Wise and Wonderful: The Classic Memoirs of a Yorkshire Country Vet
8 The Moscow Sleepers
9 Summerland
10 Dissolution
11 Bird Box
12 The Definitive Biography of Freddie Mercury
13 Elantris
14 Six Wakes
15 Crazy Rich Asians
16 Dominion
17 The Hanging Tree
18 1984
19 24 Hours in Ancient Rome: A Day in the Life of the People Who Lived There
20 Blood on the Tracks: Railway Mysteries
21 Shadow of Night
22 A Nest of Vipers
23 Watcher in the Woods
24 Dark Fire
25 Stronger, Faster and More Beautiful
26 The Marble Collector
27 Hardcore Twenty-Four
28 The Blade Itself
29 The Lord God Made Them All
30 Grass for His Pillow
31 Black Powder War
32 Agatha Raisin and The Dead Ringer
33 The Cruel Prince
34 The Lost Sisters
35 The Wicked King
36 Trail of Lightning
37 The Book of Life
38 Chernobyl: History of a Tragedy
39 Artemis
40 The Extinction Trials
41 The Extinction Trials : Exile
42 The Extinction Trials : Rebel
43 Vox
44 La Belle Sauvage

Thank you for the new thread! Still continuing to read nonsense urban fantasy alongside everything else, which probably inflates my total. In the middle of Vox, which I am loving but which is also making me angry!
1. Queen of Shadows - Sarah J Maas
2. The Panopticon - Jenni Fagan
3. Empire of storms - Sarah J Maas
4. Tower of Glass
5. The Power - Naomi Alderman
6. The Woman in Black - Susan Hill
7. Catriona Macpherson - A Step so grave
8. The Mangle Street Murders - MRC Kasasian
9. Diamond Fire - Ilona Andrews
10. Sourdough - Robin Sloan
11. Omens - Kelley Armstrong
12. Visions - Kelley Armstrong
13. Anna Burns - Milkman
14. Sometimes I lie
15. Watcher in the Woods - Kelley Armstrong
16. The Wife Between Us - Greer Hendricks and Sarah Pekkanen
17. Side Jobs - Jim Butcher
18. Betrayal - Kelley Armstrong
19. The furthest station - Ben Aaronovitch
20. Penhallow - Georgette Heyer
21. The Nonesuch - Georgette Heyer
22. The fire court - Andrew Taylor
23. The king’s evil - Andrew Taylor
24. A bird in the hand - Anne Cleeves
25. Lady of Quality - GH
26. Simon the Coldheart - GH
27. The Bookworm - Lucy Mangan
28. 1/2 term at Trebizon
29. Bitten - Kelley Armstrong
30. Force of nature - Jane Harper

Thanks for the thread, southeast and congrats to Pepe for climbing the Everest that is Infinite Jest.

Thanks for the new thread, southeast! I’ve not posted for such a long time but here is my list so far this year:

1. My Sister The Serial Killer by Oyinkan Braithwaite
2. The ABC Murders by Agatha Christie
3. Herland by Charlotte Perkins Gilman
4. This Is Going to Hurt by Adam Kay
5. The Little Coffee Shop of Kabul by Deborah Rodriguez
6. Confessions of a Barrister by Russell Winnock
7. Origin by Dan Brown
8. She Stoops to Conquer by Oliver Goldsmith
9. Science-ish: the Science behind the movies by Rick Edwards

10. The Death and Life of Red Henley by Philip Wilding 11. The Girl Next Door by Phoebe Morgan 12. And Then You’re Dead: The Worlds Most Interesting ways to Die by Cody Cassidy 13. Silhouette In Scarlet by Elisabeth Peters 14. Kayak the Kwanza by Oscar Scafidi 15. The True History of the Elephant Man by Michael Howell 16. I Found You by Lisa Jewell 17. Family Values by Wendy Cope 18. The Italian Teacher by Tom Rachman 19. The Night Circus by Erin Morgernstern 20. Swan Song by Kelleigh Greenberg-Jephcott 21. Unnatural Causes by Richard Shepherd 22. Sick Notes by Tony Copperfield 23. The Salt Path by Raynor Winn 24. Reaching Down the Rabbit Hole by Allan H. Ropper 25. Jog On by Bella Mackie 26. The Girls by Emma Cline

I’m currently reading my first Val McDermid novel, The Mermaids Singing and am enjoying it so far.

Yes yes and YES to Wild Swans. I read it when it came out and hated every word and every person in it.

Again, the old (totally invented by me) maxim springs to mind. Just because anyone can write, doesn't mean they should. And an interesting context/life/person's story does not automatically make for good reading.

Well I'm on number 2. Conclave by Robert Harris. Nothing too taxing. I'm due to have DD next week so I've been spending a lot of time in hospital waiting rooms. This was perfect for that.

Thank you for the new thread southeast. Bringing my list across:

1. The Hunting Party - Lucy Foley
2. Men without Women - Huraki Murakami

3. The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society - Mary Ann Schaffer

1. How Hard Can It Be? - Allison Pearson
2. Christmas Pudding - Nancy Mitford
3. Hangover Square - Patrick Hamilton
4. The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde - Robert Louis Stevenson

8. Any Human Heart - William Boyd 9. A Gentleman in Moscow - Amor Towles 10. Testament of Youth - Vera Brittain 11. The Mysterious Affair at Styles - Agatha Christie 12. Harriet - Jilly Cooper 13. A Buyer’s Market - Anthony Powell 14. Charity Girl - Georgette Heyer 15. New Boy - Tracy Chevalier 16. The Acceptance World - Anthony Powell 17. Our Man in Havana - Graham Greene 18. Here Be Dragons - Sharon Penman 19. Venetia - Georgette Heyer 20. The Five: The Untold Lives of the Women Killed by Jack the Ripper - Hallie Rubenhold 21. At Lady Molly's - Anthony Powell 22 The Suspect - Fiona Barton 23. Bath Tangle - Georgette Heyer 24. My name is Lucy Barton - Elizabeth Strout 25. 4.50 from Paddington - Agatha Christie 26. The Age of Innocence - Edith Wharton

Currently reading The Rules of Civility - Amor Towles

I read Wild Swans for the first time last year and whilst I didn't particularly warm to the narrator, I did find the book fascinating as I knew so little about the subject - but certainly not an easy read.

Thank you for the new thread southeast

Splother well done with the blog, it is intelligent and eloquent and deserves the praise. I've really enjoyed reading it.

In a real book funk at the moment and have abandoned some historical fiction books that I was wading through with no joy. Hoping my new library love will get me back into the mood. I only live a few doors down from my local library, but I have been visiting another in the borough as I was bored of looking at the same books over and over again and I am too tight to pay the 90p per book to have them brought over. I've been like a kid in a sweet shop today and discovered the lending limit noise on the self service machine. Computer said no, so I had to put 3 back. Big variety to choose from and can't decide which to start first.

The list...

1. The Odyssey - Homer (trans. - Emily Wilson)
2. Bookworm: A Memoir of Childhood Reading - Lucy Mangan
3. The Song of Achilles - Madeline Miller
4. Eleanor of Aquitaine: - the Wrath of God, Queen of England - Alison Weir
5. Picnic at Hanging Rock - Joan Lindsay
6. Too Much Happiness - Alice Munro
7. The Last Hours - Minette Walters
8. Conversations with Friends - Sally Rooney
9. The Woman in Cabin 10 - Ruth Ware

10. A Killer of Pilgrims - Susanna Gregory 11. Beloved - Toni Morrison 12. Lullaby - Leila Slimani 13. Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll 14. A Dog’s Purpose - W. Bruce Cameron 15. Commonwealth - Ann Patchett 16. Frenchman’s Creek - Daphne du Maurier 17. Mutiny on the Bounty - John Boyne 18. The Secret History - Donna Tartt 19. Lamentation - CJ Sansom 20. Mystery in the Minster - Susanna Gregory 21. Witches Abroad – Terry Pratchett 22. Wolf Hall – Hilary Mantel 23. The Secret Adversary – Agatha Christie 24. Planet of the Apes – Pierre Boulle 25. Circe – Madeline Miller 26. Atonement – Ian McEwan 27. Partners in Crime – Agatha Christie 28. The Good People – Hannah Kent 29. The Salt Path – Raynor Winn 30. Murder by the Book – Susanna Gregory 31. Jane Eyre – Charlotte Bronte 32. Wide Sargasso Sea – Jean Rhys 33. Reaper Man – Terry Pratchett 34. Reader I Married Him – Tracy Chevalier 35. From Doon with Death (Insp Wexford #1) – Ruth Rendell 36. Shadow of Night – Deborah Harkness 37. The Last Detective (Peter Diamond #1) - Peter Lovesey 38. The Lost Words by Robert Macfarlane 39. The Book of Life – Deborah Harkness 40. The Lost Abbott – Susanna Gregory 41. Displaced - Malala Yousafsai & Liz Welch 42. Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine - Gail Honeyman 43. A Place of Greater Safety – Hilary Mantel 44. House of Names – Colm Tóibín 45. Autumn – Ali Smith 46. Fruit of the Drunken Tree - Ingrid Rojas Contreras 47. The River – Peter Heller 48. Birdcage Walk - Helen Dunmore 49. Danny the Champion of the World – Roald Dahl 50. Madame Bovary – Gustave Flaubert 51. Death of a Scholar (Matthew Bartholomew #20) – Susanna Gregory 52. The Silence of the Girls – Pat Barker 53. A Question of Upbringing – Anthony Powell 54. The Turn of Midnight – Minette Walters 55. A Buyer’s Market – Anthony Powell 56. The Acceptance World – Anthony Powell

Latest read
57. At Lady Molly’s (A Dance to the Music of Time #4) – Anthony Powell
More inter-war society shenanigans. Really getting into these now. Starting to worry that I am the Widmerpool of my friendship group. I tend to pop up unexpectedly in unfortunate outfits.

My list carried over:

1.The Woman in the Window- AJ Flynn

1. Good Friday- Lynda La Plante
2. I invited her in- Adele Parks
3. A Very British Christmas Rhodri Marsden
4. The Darkest Secret- Alex Manford
5. You Let Me In Lucy Clarke
6. Things Can Only Get Worse Jon O'Farrell
7. A Fatal Inversion- Barbara Vine

10 Take Me With You When You Go- Stephanie Allen Early 11. Always a Pilgrim -can't remember author, some gung ho ex-army type 12 Watching You- Lisa Jewell 13. The Angel's Game- Carlos Ruiz Zafon 14. The Rumour- Lesley Kara 15. When Christ and his Saints Slept Sharon Penman 16. The Best Friend- Shalini Bolland 17. Close to Home Cara Hunter 18.Bookworm 19. The Lost Words 20. In This House of Brede Rumer Godden 21. No Way Out Cara Hunter 22 A Caribbean Mystery Agatha Christie 23 A Pocketful of Rye- Agatha Christie 24. The Suspect Fiona Barton 25. Never Alone Elizabeth Haynes

Currently reading Agatha Christie They do it with mirrors. Was going to be The Mirror Crack'd but then I realised that after Orient Express, Then there were none and Murder on the Nile it's the one I remember the most- from the Elizabeth Taylor TV film version.

Starting to worry that I am the Widmerpool of my friendship group. I tend to pop up unexpectedly in unfortunate outfits.

Oh Fortuna, I love that!

Thank you for the new thread, southeast.

50.) Foundryside, by Robert Jackson Bennett — I’m pleased that this happened to be my fiftieth book, because oh my god I loved it. It’s the first, and so far the only, book in The Founders Trilogy, a fantasy series set in the city of Tevanne, which is ruled by four merchant houses that effectively act as separate civilised city states, while the rest of the city is given over to lawless slums. Sancia is a thief and former slave who is able with some effort and pain to sense the layout of buildings, traps and locks, a useful thing for a thief. And there’s a complicated magic system too, involving scrivings, a system of sigils, which, when inscribed on objects, compels them to act in certain ways.

I game a bit, and my favourite games are generally the ones that involve a certain amount of stealth and thiefyness. I’d be fascinated to know where RJB got his inspiration from because I recognised some elements from a couple of my favourite games, namely Elder Scrolls: Oblivion, Dishonored, and the granddaddy of them all, and the games that singlehandedly invented stealth gameplay, the wonderful Thief trilogy. It all works very well, is fast-paced and entertaining, and even if the writing wasn’t absolutely stunningly brilliant, oh damn, it was so much fun.

51.) Agatha Raisin and the Walkers of Dembley, by MC Beaton — Agatha and her sexy neighbour James (who’s a bit of a dick, if I’m honest — when’s she going to get together with Bill, that’s what I want to know) go undercover as a married couple to investigate the murder of a militant rambler, obsessed with rights of way. They’re sort of addictive, these books, even if they are utter nonsense.

52.) Murder in the Caribbean, by Robert Thorogood — the fourth in the Death in Paradise spin off novels, featuring DI Richard Poole. The team investigate a boat explosion, which they soon link to a jewellery heist, and realise there may be more murders to come.

Unfortunately I think this was the weakest so far. The other books are all locked room mysteries, which I think was a selling point, both of the books so far and the TV series from series 2 onwards. This wasn’t a locked room mystery, and unfortunately I found the identity of the killer/killers so screamingly obvious that at first I thought it had to be a double bluff. Sadly not. The subplot wasn’t as substantial as in previous books either, so a bit of a disappointment all round. Still, it’s always nice to see Richard up and about again.

Just transferring my list over

1.Insomnia, Stephen King

1. The missing girl, Jenny Quintana
2. The backpacking housewife,
3. Close to home,Cara Hunter
4. The woman who kept everything, Jane gilley
5. The handmaid’s tale, Margaret Atwood
6. Her last day, t r ragan
7. Deadly recall , T R Tagan
8. The unit, Ninni Holmqvist

10. Vox, Christina dalcher 11. Carrie Stephen King 12. The tattooist of Auschwitz heather Morris 13. The Power, Naomi alderman 14. The lido, Libby Page

Just to confess that I though Wild Swans was wonderful when I read it several times in the 90's ---- and also to say that Andrea Levy's The Long Song is on the Kindle daily deal today and it's well worth a read.

ditto Desdemona (although I only read it once!!)
and double ditto for The Long Song - fantastic book. I have 3 books on the go at the moment, one of which is also an Andrea Levy book Fruit of the Lemon.
We have friends visiting this weekend so I doubt I'll get much reading done!

Thanks for the new thread southeast
Here's my 2019 list so far:
1. Featherboy – Nicky Singer

1. Three Cups of tea - Greg Mortenson & David Oliver Relin

3. Bookworm: A memoir of childhood reading – Lucy Mangan 4. Leap In – Alexandra Heminsly 5. Half of a yellow sun – Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

1. Fasting & Feasting – Anita Desai
2. The Millstone – Margaret Drabble

8. A Midsummer Night’s Dream – Shakespeare

1. After You – Jojo Moyes

10. The Bean Trees – Barbara Kingsolver 11. Normal People – Sally Rooney 12. Becoming – Michelle Obama 13. Conversations with Friends – Sally Rooney 14. Return to the little Coffee Shop of Kabul – Deborah Rodriguez