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.

Any recommendations from the kindle summer sale. I picked up Elly Griffiths stand-alone The stranger diaries for 99p.

Anyone got a link for the Kindle summer sale? I am struggling to find it. I know that sounds daft, but it's true!!
Not that I need anymore books

Summer sale - www.amazon.co.uk/Kindle-Book-Deals-Summer-Sale/b?node=9313129031&tag=mumsnetforu03-21&ie=UTF8

-May-
31) Vox by Christina Dalcher
32) City of Thieves by David Benioff
33) Murder in Mind (Hillary Greene #16) by Faith Martin
dnf The House by the River by Lena Manta
34) An American Princess by Annet van der Zijl
35) Hillary's Final Case (Hillary Greene #17) by Faith Martin
36) Twelve Red Herrings by Jeffery Archer
37) Gentle Sleep Book by Sarah Ockwell Smith
38) Closed Circles (Sandham Murders 2) by Vivica Sten
39) A Fatal Mistake by Faith Martin
40) Educated by Tara Westover
41) The Seven Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle by Stuart Turton
42) Daisy Jones and the Six by Taylor Jenkins Reed
-June----
Dnf :The Wandering Earth by Cixin Liu
43) Sleep by CL Taylor
44) The Palace of Lost Memories (After The Rift Book 0) by C. J. Archer
45) The Last by Hanna Jameson
Dnf The Corset by Laura Purcell
46) Transcription by Kate Atkinson
47) The Lost Man by Jane Harper

Second part of the books I've read so far this year. Great ones are in bold. Awful ones are in italics

Thanks to the readers on this thread for many great recommendations

Thanks Southeast

119. The Bronte Cabinet by Deborah Lutz

Exploring aspects of the Bronte’s lives by taking objects they owned and using those to look at their hobbies and lifestyles. Interesting although if you have already read a lot about the Bronte’s you probably won’t learn anything new about them. However Lutz also explains how things fitted into wider society at the time which I found interesting.

26. Melmoth by Sarah Perry (audiobook)
A multi-layered novel in which Melmoth, a ghostly figure dating back to the time of the crucifixion, stalks those haunted by loneliness and suffering. The most complete narrative is of Helen, a British woman in self-imposed exile in Prague. There she meets an academic, Karel, who has put together a dossier of original sources of Melmoth’s likely appearances through history, which make up further narrative strands. Gorgeously written (and gorgeously read by Emilia Fox), this had a similarly delicious gothic atmosphere as The Essex Serpent. However I didn’t feel that the structure worked brilliantly, and it left me wanting more exploration particularly of the modern day Prague characters and their relationships.

27. The Daughter of Time by Josephine Tey
Inspector Grant is laid up in hospital with a broken leg. To ease his bored he begins to read about Richard III and the fate of the Princes in the Tower. He begins to piece together various bits of evidence that begin to suggest that perhaps Richard was not responsible for their disappearance after all. I enjoy Tudor/Plantagenet history, and detective fiction, so thought this would be right up my street. I was bored to be honest – not enough history to show anything new, and not detectivey enough to succeed on that front through. I might get my 12 year old to read it though, as they’re covering historial bias at the moment, and it would probably serve as a good introduction there.

Summer sale is disappointing. I've never seen so many books I have no desire to read.

Read Queenie, by Candice Carty-Williams. A young black woman casts a caustic eye over hook-up culture and the joys or otherwise of family ties in London. It's been likened to Bridget Jones, but I found it much bleaker, more like Fleabag in its portrayal of a damaged young woman having grim sex as a kind of self-harm. Also like Fleabag, I wouldn't say I found it funny, but it was quite compelling in its own way, with a distinctive voice.

Also read In the Dark and No Way Out by Cara Hunter, books two and three in her Oxford-set police procedural series. The second one was fine, with the compulsory twist at least shedding a new light on events. I disliked the third: the twist was fairly pointless and there was a gratuitous scene late in the book when a young boy woke up in his burning house and it was all pretty horrible.

Finally, This Secret Garden, Oxford Revisited, by Justin Cartwright Non-fiction in which the writer recounts his fondness for the city, or rather the university. Sentence by sentence and paragraph by paragraph it's all fine, but it doesn't really add up to much overall. Some anecdotes about his wide-eyed arrival as a young colonial, Some Academics I Have Known, Whither the Tutorial System? and some fairly superficial musing on the challenges of widening participation beyond social elites.

Yes, the summer sale isn't great (and I agree, it's almost impossible to find, so thanks for the link upthread), but I did come across Patrick deWitt's latest, French Exit, for a little over £1.

30. Finders Keepers by Belinda Bauer. Police procedural set in Exmoor, where children are being snatched from their cars. This was okay. I didn't find the detectives (Reynolds and Rice) particularly engaging.

Warlight : Michael Ondaatje. I think someone else reviewed this a while back. It's a really delicately written, almost ethereal book (Blake Morrison called it 'crepuscular' which I rather like) about the underworld of the war and its aftermath, carried on in 'warlight'. The motif of light is used throughout the book but there are also themes of memory, deception, love, childhood and abandonment. Ondaatje's style is quite similar to McEwan's , Atkinson's (in her war books) and , perhaps Faulks. But I would say I preferred this to Atkinson : it's subtler and less plot driven and I am not a fan of Faulks (breasts everywhere!). Ondaatje uses dialogue more sparingly than McEwan but has that same playing with truth and reality thematic concern. I never could get through The English Patient, even though I adore the film, but did like Anil's Ghost. This was not as interesting but an easier read.

The Passage is 99p in the summer sale. The best of the series, imho, and worth a read.

Also Wild Swans is £1.99. I thought it was really badly written and boring, but lots of people, including my dp, have loved it.

I liked Wild Swans. But I was at an impressionable age and biased because she was at my uni.

How's your reading slough of despond Remus? You might like warlight : it passes your well written test.

I loved wild swans when I read it in my teens. Might still have a copy around somewhere.

There are a couple of Robertson Davies in the sale - I’ve not read this particular ones, they seem to be collected essays and a book of ghost stories but RD is a fabulous writer in general.

I also saw The Bookshop by Penelope Fitzgerald. But yes, slim pickings.

I don't know if I dare try Warlight, Piggy, because The English Patient made me want to pluck my own eyeballs out in boredom. I liked your review though, so maybe it's something I'll try at some point.

I'm reading Bernie Gunther and a silly steam punk thing at the moment. The latter is making me laugh, and the former will probably be finished by tonight or tomorrow night - I actually want to pick it up, which is more than I've had with most books for a good while.

I read somebody on another thread saying that the menopause is making her struggle with reading. I hadn't made this connection before - any thoughts, anyone?

Remus I don't know about the menopause but I know that when my mental health is bad I can't read books. It's rubbish.

50 pages into Big Sky and Atkinson has mentioned figging Mumsnet three times.!

I read Warlight on the first thread of the year. It is beautifully written, but dull to the point of turgid in places. I wouldn't recommend for a lost reading mojo TBH.

36. The Hangman’s Daughter Oliver Potzch Bit of a cheat to say I read this as I skimmed the last 40% or so just to see how it wrapped up. The premise was really promising but I don’t think the delivery lived up to it. Also the whole ‘the X’s female relative’ thing was particularly annoying as the daughter in question here wasn’t even the main focus or really that well drawn as a character.

I must like turgid...!

I get what you mean but it isn't very long at least. A Lot of it is like looking through thing sin the dark or in a fog. That's the metaphor, I guess.

I was yearning for something literary after reading a fair amount of crap.

43. Back Story - David Mitchell (the comedian one) on Audible

Made up of memoir, ranty bits and a guided walk from Kilburn to Shepherd's Bush, you'll enjoy this if you think David Mitchell is funny. My favourite bit was his description of people with supposed wheat intolerances, 'who mistake the normal symptoms of daily life - feeling sluggish after meals, tired in the morning, hungry before breakfast and generally not as though they want to leap around like someone in an advert - for there being something wrong with them.' The description of how he got together with his wife, Victoria Coren, is also very touching.

Now reading a historical adventure/mystery called The Tournament, in which I'm pleased to report young women not only have breasts but spend considerable time adjusting them to best advantage.

There has been an uplit book written recently . Typical title : got a man's name in it. The name is Indian and I can't find it through vague googling or Amazon. It is actually supposed to be a good read.

Can anyone help??