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.

ShakeItOff I'm nodding away at your reviews. Undying was a tough read for me too, I was moved to tears several times.

Holes is a great family holiday car audiobook. We listened to it a few years back and yes you are right it did provoke lots of discussions with us as well. Great story.

I fell off the thread again. I wish I could say there was some work or personal crisis at play, but the reality is that every few months we'll get a month's Netflix/Amazon/NowTV membership and binge-watch shite like people who have never seen TV before. It'll expire soon.

In the meantime I did read 29.Rachel's Holiday by Marian Keyes. I'd not read any of her stuff before, but when I've seen her on telly Keys seems so warm and clever and likeable that when this was on Kindle Deal I though I should try it.

Twenty something Rachel parties that bit too hard when living in New York and ends up in residential drug rehab back home in Ireland. There are some half-decent jokes, and the serious subject matter is handled sensitively. However I was irritated enormously by the two romantic storylines and the cheesy happy ending, when something more nuanced would have felt more natural. I also think i would probably have liked this more had I read it in my twenties, rather than approaching it as the wizened old crone I am now.

I have added Evening in the Palace of Reason to my wish list following all the reviews.

Holes is great. The film is very good too.

@RemusLupinsBiggestGroupie I hope Father Christmas obliges and that you enjoy it. Been a while since I felt this evangelical about a book :)

Another thumbs up for Holes here. DD1 read it at school a couple of years back and I'd never heard of it at the time. Have since watched the film too. Great family entertainment!

Just thought of another book set in Cornwall Pepe. I'm quite a Jenny Colgan fan because I know her IRL and can just hear her voice coming through when I read her books. Little Beach Street Bakery is delightful and quite a perfect holiday read in my opinion.

32. Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallace. I listened to this as an audio book, and as it is a whopping 55 hours long and I only listen for a few hours a week it feels like I have been listening to it forever! (It has actually been since March!) It is written as a series of vignettes, some of which add to the plot or characterisation, some of which are completely random, and some of which appear to be the latter but do eventually end up contributing to the former. It is set mainly in an elite junior tennis academy in Boston and a nearby halfway house for recovering addicts, with an additional theme of Canadian separatism running through it. Wallace’s skill is in building up a scene with an incredible level of precision and detail, and I found myself completely entwined in the multiple strands of narrative. It’s also very funny at times. I loved it but would hesitate to recommend it widely - I can imagine some would hate it! Excellently read by Sean Pratt.

tara, you listened to the audiobook?? I'm in awe. How do the footnotes (and footnotes to the notes) work?
If I ever read it again I'm going to do the chronological version you can find online. I'm still unscrambling my brain after finishing it in May.

Belatedly thinking of Cornish books for you, @PepeLePew - have you read Summer in February by Jonathan Smith? It's set in the Lamorna artists' colony which included Alfred Munnings. They made a film of it, too.

Having said all of the above, I'm completely unable to vouch for it because, although our book club 'did' it, I had to give it a miss for various reasons, so I never read it! Reviews seemed to be generally positive. And it's possibly another to add to your list, if you haven't already read it.

Pepe the Audible version doesn't have the footnotes so I missed out on them! Do they add a lot to the main narrative?

I love Infinite Jest it's one of my favourite books. The footnotes are huge and wonderful.

Tara - they really do! Some just add to the general merriment but others are quite integral to the plot or important additional information (eg the one explaining subsidised time). And reading the book involves a lot of flipping back and forth which was initially annoying but ultimately part of the whole reading experience.

But that makes sense of the length - my first thought was "only 55 hours?"!

61. Uprooted by Naomi Novik I've read this previously, but listened to it as an audio book as it's available from the library online service & I think the updated fairy tale style works well read aloud.
    I enjoyed it, but of the two I liked Spinning Silver the better - both as an audio book (Uprooted is told in just one voice, and part of the pleasure of Silver was the different voices used by Katy Sobel for the different characters) and as a story. The women in Silver win out because of their cleverness, whereas in Uprooted everything gets solved by wavy-hand magic, which isn't quite as satisfying.

62. Hamlet, Revenge! by Michael Innes

1937 mystery novel, set in a grand Ducal house where a private production of Hamlet is taking place, with the cast and guests including various of the great and the good. Predictably, all does not go smoothly, and Inspector John Appleby is called in to resolve things.

There was lots to like about this - as might be expected, plenty of literary jokes & references, a suitably twisty mystery and decent characters. It was spoiled by (to my mind even for 1937) spectacularly racist portrayal of Mr Bose, an Indian academic. I find it hard to imagine that an academic who studied at Oxford and then worked in various universities had never met any Indian students or scholars, and was therefore completely unable to imagine them as actual people, but it seems like this must have been the case. I finished it because I was on the train (and annoyingly hadn't brought any of my paper books), but it really spoiled the book especially as his actions and supposed motivation were significant within the plot.

The October Man, by Ben Aaronovitch
A novella linked to The Rivers of London series, and the usual mash-up of police procedural and magical, although this time with a new set of characters and a move to Germany. I'm not sure the new setting and people brought much - it felt like a rehash of his normal schtick, and I initially missed a reference to a character who turned out to be important, so had to page back to find him. That said, I still enjoy spending some time in his world. Overall, one for the fans (not intended as damning with faint praise - I think authors should treat their fans!)

OK, I will track down the footnotes online!

New thread here!