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.

Me too (Jean Brodie) though I remember liking it as a teen though that might have been because of the TV series.

Funny that Judith Krantz was mentioned up thread because I had an urge to read some hing of hers again and the copy of Princess Daisy I ordered off Amazon turned up today. Loved it as a teenager and read several times. It will probably be awful won’t it?

I need to update my list but currently reading The Punishment She Deserves by Elizabeth George, the latest Inspector Lynley. In which Lynley hardly appears and which is mostly about his sidekick Havers and his boss, Isabelle Ardery. I do enjoy the books in this series but they are vastly over long and the author has a habit of abbreviating words in speech which I find irritating and unnecessary.

I need

Chessie I also felt the same as you about Jean Brodie.

Best I am the Judith Krantz mention-er upthread and last year I bought a new copy of I'll Take Manhattan expecting it to be fairly terrible but no... I still loved it! Yes it's very much of its time but she certainly knew how to spin a yarn. Good luck with Princess Daisy, I haven't read that one so I can't wait to hear your review

Oh and I'm a fellow Jean Brodie refusenik. I thought it might be because I'd had to read it at school but no, I was just as baffled reading it again as an adult.

I'll be the one who comes on and says I like The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie , although tbh I prefer The Girls of Slender Means .

I'm a big Muriel Spark fan generally.

I still liked Jean Brodie when I re-read a few years ago. Clearly in the minority here!

31. The Siege by Helen Dunmore. Set in the siege of Leningrad, Anna is trying to keep her family alive as the German blockade tightens. The author writes powerfully about the physical and mental effects of slow starvation on a city full of people.

This is my book of the year so far. Incredible.

High quality kindle deals of the day today - The Underground Railway and The Poisonwood Bible are excellent, although the former in particular is harrowing - not a pool lounger read. I haven't A Fine Balance, but I believe some on here liked it a lot.

Just me and MuseumOfHam for Miss Brodie then

Just finished 46: Milkman - Anna Burns - a read that demands close attention, but worth it. Often very funny, and written with a joyous and inventive use of language that I enjoyed hugely, but overall I found it utterly chilling.

The terrifying reality of day-to-day life in the environment the narrator describes - as a young woman, as someone trying their utmost not to be caught up in the political situation of the Troubles, as a person with a mind and an intelligence having to conceal those things for fear of being singled out in any way by one faction or another (though conspicuously failing), and above all as someone with the need for endless analysing of every single tiny detail to reckon its likely consequences - had me reading with my heart in my mouth pretty much continuously.

The sexism was jaw-dropping too, incidental to everything else. What dark, dark times.

Miss Brodie - I read it too young and it wasn't what I was expecting. I do remember being impressed by the flash forward technique though, which I hadn't previously encountered.

23. Thin Air by Richard Morgan

Whoa. This was good!

I have been following the author of Takeshi Kovacs novels (e.g. Altered Carbon that was recently made into a TV series), and read all his books except the fantasy rubbish, and I have been waiting for the price to drop on this book to snap it up.

The story takes place on Mars, finally colonized and loosely under Earth control but with corrupt management and factions working for independence. We follow Veil, a disgraced "overrider" (it takes a while to learn what that is) who is genetically engineered and otherwise enhanced for superior strength and tactical greatness. When the Earth sends an audit team and Veil is tasked as guide/bodyguard to one of them, a conspiracy and great threat is slowly uncovered.

The story was good but the worldbuilding was excellent. The author has imagined in minute detail what a pioneer society would be like on the "frontier" of space, and the technology that could accompany us there. I'm not a big fan of military plots and long fight scenes but this author does those well, too.

Recommended. (As are the author's Takeshi Kovacs books)

Jean Brodie is actually my favourite book. I think it is perfect.

I haven't read Brodie in ages but was very affected by Spark and Bainbridge as a teen. I loved the old film and Maggie Smith. I prefer The Girls of Slender Means as a book. I may have mentioned this before but I have (had) a letter from Spark written not long before she died. When I was on Mat Leave it was taken down off display and binned!!

Just finished Alias Grace. It was as I expected : unreliable narrator, possible lunacy, ambiguity and sexual desires. I did like it though and that is definitely more than I can say for Hag-Seed which I hated and Handmaid's Tale which I found dull and so depressing.Now when anyone compares an unreliable murderess tale to Atwood, I can nod sagely at last!

A Fine Balance is wonderful, one of my favourite books ever. But so very sad in parts - only read on sunlounger if you're happy weeping like a baby in public.

It's beautiful and worth every penny of £1.19

They didn’t Piggy?! Oh that’s bad. I would have been furious.

Aaaargh, I have so many books TBR on my Kindle that I really can't justify buying another but am VERY tempted by what's on offer today.

The Poisonwood Bible is one of my favourite books.

Now, should I succumb to A Fine Balance or The Underground Railroad???

Finished off a few in the last few days.

Under the Skin by Michel Faber
The book is vastly different to the film of the same title. I really enjoyed it. The author builds up the plot very well to reveal the reason behind the protagonist's actions as the story develops. There is a lot of discussion of the protagonist's boobs but as it is genuinely important to the plot and characterization I think that's just fine.

Half a King by Joe Abercrombie
Rightful king gets betrayed by family and gathers a group of misfits to get his throne back. Classic fantasy plot. This was pretty good but I don't think it's one of his best books to be honest. By the end it just left me a little bit flat and I had to push through the last couple of chapters which is never a good sign.

The Raven Tower by Ann Leckie
I believe this is her first fantasy having previously written SF. I really loved this. The worldbuilding is superb with a wonderfully complex and interesting set of laws based around the doings of big and small god's and how they work alongside humans. I listened this on audiobook and the reader was fabulous which is always a bonus.

76. The Book of Lost Things - John Connolly David loses his mother aged 12 and has to come to terms with his father remarrying, moving home and a new baby brother against the backdrop of WW2 starting. He retreats into his books and soon they start talking to him. He develops fainting fits and he gets lost in a fantasy world, drawn in by the crooked man.

This opened beautifully, the first few paragraphs were a joy to read and I had really high hopes for it, but sadly it devolved into a mediocre fairy story for adults with some pretty dark and twisted parts. Supposed to be a loss of innocence/coming of age type theme, but was gruesome and unnecessary in places. The writing was simplistic as though written for children, but the content was far from suitable. Sadly grim and not Grimm. I really had to battle through to the end and I'm baffled that I didn't abandon it.

I like to try and read books fairly blind without knowing too much about them, but if I feel like I've missed a trick somewhere I'll look it up afterwards to see what others thought/ what the hell was going on. I loved the end of this review about it that I found in The Guardian

• The result is less a novel in any genre than a catalogue, a dispiritingly detailed outline for something Connolly might like to write, if he only had the time, or the talent, or a decent editor. Quite.

I have also got Philip Pullman's Grimm Tales from the library and this has really put me off wanting to read it.

Fortuna that's my preferred method too. Go in as ignorant as possible, take the book on its own merits, then read the reviews.

I got utterly caught out with The Luminaries, where I failed to spot the structure which underlies the whole thing, and just thought it was a bit rambling and repetitive.

22. How I live now - Meg Rosoff
I read this as it's a common denominator on both of my DDs' summer reading lists and I'd never heard of it. I will be recommending my 12 year old steers clear of it (too harrowing) but I look forward to discussing it with my 14 year old if I can convince her it's worth her time and effort. (Blessed with 2 dyslexic and pretty reluctant readers!)
There's plenty to consider as Daisy, the 15-year-old anorexic protagonist, arrives from the States to stay with her British aunt and cousins in the countryside. War breaks out, romantic relationships are formed and children are left to fend for themselves in violent and uncertain times. Would recommend for teens (I believe it has won plenty of prizes).

19. Never Greener – Ruth Jones. This is a mediocre chick-lit novel from the Gavin and Stacey actress and writer about two old flames and what happens when they rekindle their former relationship. This would have been so much better without the dull padding and extraneous characters.

20. A Better Me – Gary Barlow. The second memoir from the Take That front man, this is an enjoyable read and quite insightful on his complicated relationship with food, which I can identify with.

21. Spring – Ali Smith. I hated How to Be Both, thought Winter was mediocre, but I was taken in by the Sunday Times review of this book which said Spring was the most coherent of her seasonal quartet of books. This might be the most boring book I've read so far this year and as usual with her, style over substance. I'm grateful I didn't buy it.

PowerBadgers DH has just read Under the Skin and loved it. He was very taken with the film, too, but said exactly the same as you - they're completely different.

I'm on my Kindle and find it really hard to read mumsnet on it, so apologies for not naming people who've said anything I'm now about to comment on!

Book of Lost Things Read this when it first came out and been really looking forward to it but thought it was very poor. I think the writer also writes crime books and the series was really cheap on kindle few years ago. I read the first and it was utter drivel.

I ended up really disliking A Fine Balance because the unrelenting misery ended up getting ridiculous and became comedic rather than pathetic. I found myself trying to guess what terrible thing the writer might do next - "Hmm. Shall I go for a flood? A plague of locusts? Wipe a few characters out in a bout of cholera? An amputation? Blindness? Decisions...decisions... "

I enjoyed the *Alias Grace " review. Was it you, Piggy? I'm with you on the Attwood not doing it for me thinking. I hope she meets a few nice men before she dies, because it might actually mean she writes a few decent novels, instead of just going in with a shovel to bash the same old drum.

"Hmm. Shall I go for a flood? A plague of locusts? Wipe a few characters out in a bout of cholera? An amputation? Blindness? Decisions...decisions... "

I hate misery lit nearly as much as I hate chic lit.