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.

grrr - just lost long post
Curtis Sittenfeld - Sisterland (57?) - quite engaging saga of dysfunctional family life & whether psychic ability exists. The heroine and her husband are too good to be true & this book could have lost 200 pages as it weighs in at over 500 but I would risk another one by this author.
58 Convenience store woman by Sayaka Murata - boring account of a neuro-atypical/ autistic woman only interesting for the insight into the strangely formal cultural restrictions of Japanese life.
59 Everything you do is wrong - Amanda Coe - wry family saga heavy on the horrors of adolescence. Well-written with some good similes - one character makes her own muesli & is described as sifting it through her fingers like a vegan miser.

60 Easy Cooking by Mary Berry Mary is still churning them out. Some good photography as Mary appears as an elderly dress-up doll in different outfits for Morocco etc.

DNF Susan Hill - THe Comforts of home - a Simon Serrailler case. Read a couple of these some years ago and now know why I didn't carry on with the series. 50 pages in and nothing has happened except for Serrailler losing an arm and mulling over past cases.

33. This Things of Darkness Harry Thompson

Finally finished! I’ll be honest and say I found this a real slog at first, but really enjoyed the second half and then was able to appreciate the detail that went into the whole if that makes sense? Fascinating story and I learned a lot, much of it very sad.

To be fair pencil losing an arm does sound like it might be a big deal. I think I'd be mulling hard if I lost one of mine.

Hi everyone. Hope you had a good half term. We were away and so had plenty of time for reading. And I had some good reads.

#49 Knife Creek the eighth book in the Mike Bowditch Mystery series by Paul Doiron. I am a fan of these. Interesting murder mysteries with rural Maine as a main character (they have such a strong feeing of place). This one starts when a partially buried baby’s body is found. Which is linked to a cold case of a missing girl.

#50 Spinning Silver bought as this has been nominated for this years Hugo’s. I think if I had a vote this would get it. A retelling of Rumpelstiltskin but this is a grown up fairy tale. Three very strong and distinct heroines. I really enjoyed it. (And yeah got to 50).

#51 The Consuming Fire fun space opera from Scalzi continuing his Interdependency series. Snarky and amusing. looking forward to the conclusion.

And now I've started #52 Before They Are Hanged the second in the First Law trilogy. Three distinct stories Glokta in the South defending Dagoska. West in the frozen North facing Bethod. And finally Jezal, Ninefingers, Bayaz, Quai, Longfoot and Ferro journeying in the east. So far it’s turning out to be another good read.

I've given up on This Thing of Darkness - do I get drummed out of the thread? (Though I may come back to it in the winter when I have more reading time - right now it just never hits the top of the list, so have moved on to other things.)

Ok, I HAVE to try This thing of darkness. I'm starting to feel left out .

I didn’t get round to looking at the synopsis of This Thing of Darkness, when I saw the conversation about it being on special offer on kindles.
I haven’t even got round to checking if the library have it in stock.

(Runs away and hides in disgrace)

@BakewellTarts when you reviewed The Blade Itself in an earlier thread I felt the need to revisit the First Law Trilogy and I devoured them all again in quick succession. Easily my favourite fantasy series! Hope you enjoy Before They Are Hanged

43. The Green Road by Anne Enright

I bought this on a Kindle deal (obviously) and immediately afterwards someone on this (well, a previous version of this) thread said they hated it. So I was a bit trepidatious, but I liked it. A family saga told over 25 years, focusing on each member in turn, and culminating in a big reunion at the end. I liked some parts better than others - my favourite was the section about Dan in New York, although I also enjoyed the part about Constance, which I felt captured the feelings of a mother who holds everything together, but who is first in no-one's thoughts. Some lovely writing and I liked the focus at the end on the mother, Rosaleen, who was an infuriating, interesting, real character.

That's good to hear welshwabbit. I bought The Green Road at the same time as you and was equally disappointed to see it was not universally loved! It's still languishing amongst the TBR on my kindle but you may have helped to boot it up the list a little as I definitely like the sound of it from your review :)

Just to say, I'm not even going to attempt This Thing of Darkness. Long accounts of sea voyages usually make me want to hurl myself across the room, never mind the book.

Sadik - I believen there is another thread, on another site, for the likes of you.

I've said it before on here but I really enjoyed The Green Road too.

(Still haven't read TTOD so can't comment. It's on the never-ending tbr pile, though)

43. Bad Blood: Secrets and Lies in a Silicon Valley Startup by John Carreyrou I grabbed this at the station before a long journey because my phone battery was flat (otherwise I might have actually finished TTOD ). Definitely a lucky choice, it's one of my standouts for the year so far.

It's very much in the vein of Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room. Theranos was a 'unicorn' tech start-up, run by 22 year old Stanford dropout Elizabeth Holmes. It aimed to revolutionise the blood testing industry with a home testing machine that would make the whole process quick, painless and cheap. She attracted billions (literally) of investment funds from the great and the good. The only problem was that the tech didn't work, and continued to not work.

Carreyrou is an investigative journalist at the Wall Street Journal - following a tip-off, he started poking around at Theranos and found an unbelievable web of fraud, lies and intimidation. His book is absolutely gripping, and the writing more than lives up to his investigative journalism skills (not always the case with such books).

Re TTOD I hope I haven’t put anyone off! The research and detail is impressive, the depiction of the attitudes of the time and the beginnings of scientific advances we take for granted now (not just evolution) is really interesting, and there are some fantastic and interesting stories in there. I really enjoyed the author’s postscript where we find out what happened to the various real people. But yeah, descriptions of sea voyages and storms etc are not my bag, and the book covers SO MUCH and there are so many characters and different settings and I just found it hard going for those reasons. But ultimately was glad I read it.

Scribblygum - fair point re arm loss haha. There is, however, something off about this detective series - especially given Susan Hill's reputation in other genres. I don't know how she can write in such a turgid way when I have read a few of her recent short novels which are masterly in comparison.

I'd really like to read Bad Blood, too, Sadik - funny you should review it now, I've literally just read a write-up of it in the LRB and it sounded fascinating.

I'd definitely recommend it Terpsichore.

Another Day In The death of America. Goodness, this is a searing work. Gary Younge (black and British, a journalist working in the US towards the end of Obama's tenure) researched all the child victims of gun crime in America in one 24 hour period (his definition of child takes anyone up to the age of 19, and he does explain why). All of the victims were poor, all male, all from fractured families (which actually he passes less commentary on but I noticed), and almost exclusively from ethnic minority backgrounds. It is fair to say Gary is by turn, depressed and then angry. He writes in his afterword that he feels as if he is howling at the moon. He uses his investigative skills very well as some of the families and authorities were less forthcoming. But he dwells on the fact that these deaths went unremarked, barely reported (even though two victims were under 12) and , almost entirely, unpunished. Two of the deaths were accidental , symptomatic of the access to guns in the US by young people who do not know how to handle of them, three or four were gang related. Even the death of the young man which was definitely not gang related (he was walking a friend home after having played a game of UNO at his grandmother's) was initially reported as gang related.

It's all terribly sad : but an excellent read. He contrasts the reportage on Sandy Hook with the way his victims are overlooked. My family are liberal Americans and my DSis is a police officer so I have extra interest. My BiL and his (Mexican, believe it or not!) wife are ardent Trumpists and would probably declare this book Fake News. Or blame the victims.

Well worth a read.

102. The Secret Lives Of Colour by Kassia St Clair

I spotted this in my local bookshop and remembered someone mentioning it upthread. It explains the background and some interesting stories about lots of different colours. It would be of most value and interest to an artist - I am definitely not an artist but still found it really interesting.

36: Where Shall We Run To? - Alan Garner

A very short but intensely-felt and beautifully evoked memoir by the author of The Owl Service etc. Garner grew up in Cheshire, in Alderley Edge, where his family had lived for generations, and this sense of continuity and history is ever-present in the book. His grandparents and great-grandparents were important figures in his childhood, during which he was often ill and spent long periods in hospital. He writes with a directness and simplicity that captures just what it felt like to be a child in a world of adults. A lovely book.

The Winter King by Bernard Cornwall is 99p today - the first of his Arthur trilogy. Would strongly recommend if you like epic historical fiction with a slight hint of magic.

34. The Years She Stole Jonathan Harvey After the weeks it took me to get through TTOD I wanted something I could tear through in a day and this fit the bill. I like Jonathan Harvey, but this tale of a baby being snatched and the long term consequences was not his best. But like I say, I ripped through it nonetheless.

Piggy, that Gary Younge book was one of my absolute stand-outs of last year. I think he's a great writer, he tackles complex subjects in a nuanced way but with enormous heart at the same time. The stories in the book were heartbreaking.

Thank you for the heads up about the Bernard Cornwell, InMyOwn. Sounds well worth the 99p :)

Keith - it's my favourite Cornwall series, and they're the ones he likes best out of all the books he's written too