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.

I hesitate to post this after the erudite discussions of Bach and Huysmans but....what the heck

45: Nine Perfect Strangers - Liane Moriarty

I was after something light and undemanding to carry me through a stressful period and this did the job well. As the title says, nine people gather at Tranquillum House for a retreat that promises to address their various problems - relationship issues, weight worries, life stresses. But things unfold in unexpected ways.

This was a bit of a curve-ball, actually. Funny and quite insightful but also quite...scary at points. I enjoyed it more than the previous LM book I read. Also: Breast watch. One impressively-enhanced pair. One ‘gaping chasm of cleavage’ belonging to a 50-something romance writer. But LM is much cleverer about this than Mr Follett, and the owners of said pairs are not defined by them. However, it’s the first time I’ve been able to contribute to this topic so I wanted to mention it

Ha! Terpischore I read Nine Perfect Strangers on holiday recently. I had no idea where it was going. I was describing it to the DCs and they refined it was very similar to the plot for a well known horror film.

Refined = reckoned

I really enjoyed Big Little Lies by Liane Moriarty, terpsichore. Have added Nine Perfect Strangers to the holiday reading list.

The Left Hand of Darkness by Ursula K. Le Guin
A lone human emissary to an alien planet called Winter which lives up to its name. He is trying to convince them to sign up to an intergalactic civilization when he ends up imprisoned. He is rescued by an exiled prime minister and they commence an 800 mile trek across glaciers to return to safety.

This is one of those classics I have been meaning to read for years and finally I picked it up in the library and devoured it in a couple of days. It is superb and I loved every minute of it. The world building is fabulous and the two main characters are just wonderful. Woven thought-out is an interesting examination of sexuality and gender that makes the book worth a read on its own. I would very much recommend to anyone else who hasn't got around to reading this.

I have juts finished Big Sky. It was what one would expect from a Jackson Brodie novel . I am not sure When Will There Be Good News? will ever be surpassed in the series. I was a bit distracted by some typos / errors (eg Anguilla changed to Aguila a few lines later) and what seemed to be grammatical errors. The horror! I also thought there were too may characters. I lost track of who Mrs Trotter was (and Gary and Kirsty...) and then she popped up again. And I must admit I found the plot clichéd. I won't say why as others will read : but it is definitely an overused one at present.

But- despite all that - a good page turner. Honest!

A few books to add since I last updated:

33. The Kindly Ones - Anthony Powell

This is Book 6 in A Dance to the Music of Time series and was slightly different in that it did not carry on chronologically from the previous book. We went back to Nick's childhood and I initially found this quite off putting but it was essentially to introduce characters who then appeared when time moved back to the chronology. Not my favourite for this reason. Was worried Widmerpool might not appear but thankfully he did. Now on the eve of Second World War.

34. Case Histories (Jackson Brodie) - Kate Atkinson

This was very different from Life After Life and A God in Ruins (my only other Kate Atkinson reads). I didn't like it initially but warmed to it as the story moved on. I think partially it was because it was not quite what I was expecting from her. Liked it enough to read another in the series.

35. Warlight - Michael Ondaatje

This book is opens in the immediate aftermath of the Second World War and then leaps forward in time. It's about a boy (and his sister - but the boy is the main protagonist) who are left by their parents in the care of an acquaintance in the family home whilst the parents are abroad for work. The boy becomes involved in various shady dealings through a friend of the acquaintance and becomes friends with a motley assortment of people who become his new family. The second half of the book is the boy as an adult looking back at his childhood, his mother's role and absence, the reason for her absence and family relationships. The two halves of the book felt like separate stories and it wasn't a winner for me.

36. The Covent Garden Ladies - Hallie Rubenhold

I read this having read her book about the victims of Jack the Ripper. This book follows three individuals: an unsuccessful writer, a waiter/pimp and a prostitute/madam in eighteenth century London to tell the story of prostitution at that time. A really interesting read and very good social commentary on the period. Recommended.

37. The Seven Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle - Stuart Turton

I know lots have read this and it has divided readers. I enjoyed it, although I may have got slightly muddled at times - feel I need to read it again now I know how it works and ends!

15 - Class - Jenny Colgan

Picked up on another thread describing it as 'Mallory Towers' for adults, centred on following a new teacher and two students in their first year at Downey House for Girls. Ok, this was 'frothy' and nothing serious but I really enjoyed it! If like me, you enjoyed boarding school books as a child, this is a fun, light-hearted read. Happy to find it in my local library and I zipped through it. I've requested the next in the series, so that can't be bad!

Now read back to see what everyone else has read and see that Piggy gave a much better summary and review of Warlight than me.

Fortuna you have ruined my summer holiday! I had been saving A Column of Fire for my pool lounger in a few weeks having read the previous Kingsbridge novels last summer. I am not sure I can face it now after reading about boob bingo and on hearing that it’s not in Kingsbridge....

20. Olive Kitteridge – Elizabeth Strout
There has been a lot of love for this book on this thread since last year and I concur wholeheartedly. I’ve been crazily busy and reading has taken a serious backseat but every time I picked up this book I was delighted to delve into various parts of Kitteridge’s life. At the very beginning I was concerned that these were a series of short stories (not my fave) but I should have trusted in your fantastic reviews! In each chapter we discover another stage of Olive’s life and another facet to her personality. Each chapter tells a story and so this was also ideal for my rather irregular reading pattern of late. Strout makes the mundane come to life in a quite beautiful way. Current disastrous relationship situations all around me in real life led me to shed a tear in the final chapter of the book.
I fear I’ve started with Strout’s best work… say it ain’t so!!??!! What should I read next?

44. The Tournament - Matthew Reilly

This wins the stinker of the year prize so far, hands down. Aged 13, the future Elizabeth I attends a chess tournament in Constantinople with her tutor, Roger Ascham, and they end up solving a series of murders. It's a silly premise, but the writing was competent and flowing enough so I settled down for a so-bad-it's-good read.

It turned out to be so bad it was bad.

As Reilly explains in the interview at the back of the novel, this was an attempt to show why Elizabeth remained a virgin throughout her life. His way of doing this is via an extremely regressive virgin/whore dichotomy. Elizabeth has a 17-year-old travelling companion called Elsie who seeks casual sex with strangers at every opportunity (don't even get me started on the likelihood of any 17-year-old acting like Elsie does, let alone in the religious atmosphere and birth-control-free zone of the 16th century). Elsie's pursuit of pleasure means that in the end, very graphically, she gets what's coming to her. Elizabeth on the other hand remains a virgin and is rewarded by becoming the greatest queen England has ever seen.

Boobwatch: Elsie is unsurprisingly gifted in this department. She also manages to 'extend my breasts skyward' during one racy scene. I couldn't do that even when I was 17. Elizabeth is, of course, flat as a board. This is a world where moral character is inversely proportional to bounciness of bosom.

In short, don't touch this book with someone else's barge pole.

TimeforaGandT there's some of it set in Kingsbridge and it was actually an ok read. I was a little unkind in my review. Please try to enjoy it. No pressure to play bingo, but you may find it hard not to yell out breasts every few pages.

Hadn't realised my list of things to update had got so long, apologies for the screed!

16. Still Midnight, by Denise Mina. Recommended I think on this thread a while ago. Police procedural set in Glasgow with a really interesting main character, detective Alex Morrow. I always enjoy a story with a grouchy woman detective at the helm and this was no exception. Will read more in this series.

17. The Stranger Diaries, by Elly Griffiths. Standalone "modern gothic mystery" from Elly Griffiths. I love the Ruth Galloway books so I knew I was in safe hands with this book and I was right - it's undemanding but I found it really well written and highly enjoyable.

18. A Fatal Inversion, by Barbara Vine. Oh dear, so disappointing. I read this when the TV series came out, which is probably over 20 years ago, and really enjoyed it at the time, plus I love Barbara Vine novels so I was looking forward to a great re-read. The plot was still compelling but I was pretty shocked by the casual racism (much talk of the 'fatalism of orientals' referring to an Anglo-Indian character) - I'm assuming this was intended to colour our views of the characters thinking this way but it was so jarring and heavy handed that I don't think you'd get away with publishing a book with this kind of writing today.

19. Daisy Jones and The Six, by Taylor Jenkins Reid. I know this has divided opinion on this thread but I thoroughly enjoyed it as a light read while I was travelling and I read it in a couple of sittings. Didn't notice the frequent boobwatch incidents; perhaps if I read it for the first time now I would!

20. I'm Not With the Band: A Writer's Life Lost in Music, by Sylvia Patterson. Autobiography by a music writer who began her career at Smash Hits, my very favourite childhood magazine. Lots of top pop gossip interspersed with much darker writing about Patterson's childhood with her alcoholic mother, and musing on the shrinking world of magazines and music writing. The change in tone as she switches between these topics occasionally made me a bit dizzy but I still found this to be a thoroughly enjoyable read.

21. The Henchmen of Zenda, by KJ Charles. Definitely recommended on here - thank you to whoever shared it, it was a thoroughly entertaining romp and I greatly enjoyed it, although I hadn't realised that it had some quite explicit passages, the first of which occurred when I was reading it on a plane. Had to hastily put my kindle away in case I offended any fellow passengers (although I suppose if they are reading over your shoulder they do so at their own risk).

22. Ordinary People, by Diana Evans. I loved this. The reviews on Goodreads are very middling and people seem quite baffled that not a lot happens, but I thought it was an incredibly finely drawn portrait of two relationships, including how marriage, children and aging change things. I also loved the South London setting. Very well done, and I can see why it was nominated for the Women's Prize for Fiction.

The Black Painting by Neil Olson

I picked this up randomly in the library so didn't have any particularly high hopes for it but it really should have been better than it was. It had a missing painting, dead body, creepy old family house everyone is scared to return to, and generally mad and bad rich folks. Oh and a rugged PI type just for good measure. Unfortunately even with all this going for it it somehow managed to just be generally rubbish. The writing was meh, the characters were frightful cutouts of the most tedious sort and the ending was so painfully predictable I had guessed the location of the missing painting and the accidental killer by about chapter three.

On the bright side I got some "big tanned boobs" for boob watch and even at one point some "heroic breasts". However, defining women by their boobs was not enough for our gallant author, oh no, he also managed to ensure we knew the main female character's exact weight within the first chapter because it was vitally important we knew straight away that she is super skinny and remains so no matter how much she eats.

PowerBadgers That really bugs me too - must we really know someone’s weight, or how lithe they are, or how glossy their hair is? Or how heroic their breasts are? I really couldn’t care less and it adds nothing to the story. Why do they think we care?

On a slightly more positive (and boob free!) note, I’m currently reading The Science of Storytelling by Will Storr, which a fascinating look into human psychology and how it shapes our storytelling. Interesting whether you’re an aspiring writer or not. There were many parts where I thought “Ah, that explains Brexit!”

And The Mandibles, A family, 2029 - 2047 by Lionel Shriver, which is also fantastic. A family awaiting a large inheritance instead face a catastrophic economic meltdown. Love her writing style and also a fan of anything dystopian, so this is ticking all the boxes for me so far. It was also recommended on one of these threads earlier in the year, so thank you to whoever did that!

21. The Butterfly Tattoo – Philip Pullman Clunky, clichéd YA novel. Pretty unbelievable plot coupled with substandard writing. Those with goldfish spans of attention will appreciate the (let’s-just-recap-plenty-of-perfectly-easy-to-assimilate-information-because-we’ve moved-on-a-chapter-and-you-might-have-forgotten-everything) interjections. Otherwise, move on and find something more interesting to read.

73. A Grave Concern - Susanna Gregory (Bartholomew Chronicles #22) You know the drill - medieval monks, murder, intrigue etc etc. Only one left in the series so you won't have me banging on about them for that much longer.

I have just abandoned The New Achilles by Christian Cameron at 100 pages in. Set in Ancient Greece this is the start of a series about Philopoemen, a hero to rival the legend of Achilles. This is a very blokey book written by a rubber sworder battle re-enactor who has obviously undertaken extensive research into every last type of soldier, his every last piece of clothing and battle dress and has shoe horned this into every last sentence of a very long battle scene with the greek words for each item in a long glossary. I am happy to know that a foot solder with helmet and sword ran down a hill. I do not need to know that his shield was made of x and weighed this and was that wide and curved by exactly how much, or that his neighbour had an older style a foot wider and x heavier. Or that the hill was one of a pair -

"conical, like a young woman's breasts, and behind the hills ran a ridge that was taller than either, like a woman's shoulders above her breasts".

Just no. This was on the new books shelf at the library and I was feeling bad that I've had this out for ages on several renewals as I hadn't got round to it. Now I realise I've been saving everyone else from it. A public service really.

Fortuna you seem to be plagued by authors obsessed with breasts! Thank you for your reassurance on A Column of Fire. I tend to lower my literary standards on a pool lounger so it sounds as if I should give it a chance.

Fell off the thread in a major way because my husband was away for 2 weeks and I was working and doing all the childcare - plus I got completely bogged down in book #45 and it took me an absolute age to finish. So...

45. Woman on the Edge of Time by Marge Piercy

I bought this because it was recommended as a classic of feminist SF (not by my husband, of which more later) but I just couldn't get into it. I did finish it but it was a real struggle.

It's the story of Consuelo (Connie) Ramos, a Mexican- American woman who is held - it seems unjustly - in a psychiatric unit after beating up her niece's husband/pimp. She "catches" Luciente, a "sender" from the future, who can come into her world and bring her to the future. Through Luciente she learns about and experiences a utopian world which contrasts strongly with her own. She also at one point experiences an alternative dystopian future.

Parts of this were really well written and engaging/frightening (especially the parts in the psychiatric unit) and I liked the concept. I also liked the characterisation. But a lot of the description of the future utopia was clunky explication and I found the ending impenetrable and a total let-down. It wasn't what happened as such, more the complete lack of explanation of the future story. I don't mind an ambiguous ending (was it/wasn't it all in her mind) but the wholesale abandonment of the alternative story here really annoyed me.

Boobwatch: I remember a couple of breasts, one in particular revealed by an asymmetric outfit, but they were feminist breasts so I don't think they count.

My husband (a big SF fan) has recommended Sheri S. Tepper as a good feminist SF writer. Anyone on here a fan? I would like to give one more book a go before deciding SF is not for me!

Now I realise I've been saving everyone else from it. A public service really.
Thanks for taking one for the team, Fortuna.

No SF recommendations from me, I'm afraid welsh. I'll occasionally dip in a toe at the softer end, but Iain M Banks nearly finished me off. A wacka wacka wacka, beep beep bloop. The vast entity glides through space, distance suns reflecting from its sides. Bingly bingly bong.

Finished In the Days of Rain, by Rebecca Stott. I really enjoyed the parts relating to her father, but was less enthralled by the parts dealing with the divisions in the religious sect they belonged to and then left.

I have just read the following sentence in Acceptance:
"The waves came in small and half curling like the froth of malformed questions."
WTF Jeff Vandermeer? WTAF?
I should just give up but I find it impossible to give up on a book, so I'm going to moan on here instead and be miserable as I drag myself through it page by incomprehensible page.

I have taken nearly a month 'off' the thread and have spent the last couple of hours catching up and enjoying all the breast talk - thanks everyone!

@RemusLupinsBiggestGroupie I definitely think menopause (or peri-menopause in my case) versus reading is a "thing", since my mood swings and anxiety, after 30 years of horrendous PMT that I thought couldn't get any worse, are now peaking at levels where some weeks netflix under the duvet is all that is bearable. But also I must confess to having got a bit stalled in This Thing of Darkness and being too ashamed to admit this terrible fact to the thread. Thankfully Darwin and Fitzroy have now reached the Galapagos and the pace is picking up again so I am hopeful that I shall be released from the thread naughty step before too long.

Thank you all too for the excellent recommendations - my tbr list is now bigger than the biggest, bounciest, skyward pointing bosoms imaginable

my tbr list is now bigger than the biggest, bounciest, skyward pointing bosoms imaginable

grim, I did find myself stalling a bit with This Thing of Darkness. I thought it was worth the read, but I'll confess to not finding a complete page-turner.

whippet, what did prose ever do to Vandermeer that he should abuse it so?

Welshwabbit I’ve read a few Sheri S. Tepper books. They also tend to have strong ecological themes running along with the feminism.
Out of the ones I’ve read I liked Beauty and The Fresco the most.

54. Ammonite by Nicola Griffith

Centuries ago, on the colony planet Jeep, a deadly virus struck the colony, killing all the men, and forever changing the surviving women (who are still having babies despite the lack of men).
Now, the planet has been rediscovered, and the surviving members of the company team sent there have been abandoned for fear of spreading the virus to other worlds. Marghe, an anthropologist, has been sent to Jeep to test a new vaccine, but as she learns more about Jeep and it’s inhabitants, she finds herself changing.

I enjoyed reading this, and following Marghe as she travels through Jeep, trying to find her place in this new world as an outsider.

55. Black and White by Jackie Kessler and Caitlin Kittredge

A superhero novel. It’s set in a future where some people are born with superpowers, and are trained in a superhero academy for a life of heroing.
It’s told between 2 viewpoints, hero Jet and villain Iridium, who were once best friends at the academy. For years the two have been at odds with each other, but now a looming evil threatens them and their world, if they can’t find a way to work together.

A lightweight easy read.