50 Book Challenge 2019 Part Six

[southeastdweller]

Welcome to the sixth 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, the fourth one here and the fifth one here.

Satsuki, our lives do seem to be spookily parallel
It's probably because we both have amazing taste and style.

57. This Thing of Darkness by Harry Thompson

Requires no introduction for regular readers of this thread, and you don't all need another detailed review from me. In brief - I loved the first half when FitzRoy was on the Beagle. Fantastic descriptions of life at sea and it bowled along. As FitzRoy lost his mojo during the second half, I felt the book did a little too. I was much less interested in Darwin tramping around the Andes, the politics back home, the tension over Darwin's increasing transmutational tendencies and FitzRoy's non-naval endeavours, and those bits dragged rather for me. An undeniable achievement, though, and for 50% of the novel, top notch writing and entertainment. I liked the postscript too.

For Simon Serrailler fans, The Comforts of Home is on the daily deal today.

I've been pawing desultorily through my pile of books, unable to find anything that felt worth the effort of reading - an armful of books went back to the library unread. But then - da dah! - the library yielded up Fierce Bad Rabbits, by Clare Pollard. It's a history of children's picture books and an absolute delight. Definitely not saccharine - the exchanges between Kate Greenaway and Ruskin are particularly uncomfortable. The author is a poet and a parent of young children and it's just delight. I was led to it by a mention on here - can't remember who, but my sincere thanks to you!

Might have been me biblio, I read it a month or so ago. Glad you enjoyed it!

Think it was you, Chessie - I've noticed our tastes overlapping before now! I'm very grateful for this recommendation.

I've just got a message that Fierce Bad Rabbits is available for me to collect from the library too.

What timing! Hope you enjoy it too, Fran

I haven't posted here in ages but I have had a run of really good books.

27. Curtain Call by Anthony Quinn
28. The Winter King by Bernard Cornwell
29. The Body in the Library by Agatha Christie
30. Cranford by Elizabeth Gaskell
31. Big Sky by Kate Atkinson
32. The Daughter of Time by Josephine Tey

51. Home Fire by Kamila Shamsie “The suspenseful and heartbreaking story of an immigrant family driven to pit love against loyalty, with devastating consequences” is the blurb. This was excellent, a real stand out read of the year for me.

I like the sound of Fierce Bad Rabbits, off to see if my library has it.

I've encountered the first hitch of the year in Milkman. I actually was quite interested in it, but I couldn't handle reading it at my "50booksinayear"pace. I've put it aside.

Since then, I've read

38 The Writer's Map by Huw Lewis-Jones.
This is a large and heavily illustrated hardback concerning the use of maps in literature. It is a collection of essays, but you could also just treat it as a collection of pictures. One of the things that has come of joining this thread for me is that I have actually read through a few books from beginning to end that I might otherwise just have browsed. In this case, not necessarily a good thing - the things that various writers have to say about the use of maps in literature are surprisingly similar... However - some interesting essays, stonking images, and a lovely book.

39 Less by Andrew Sean Greer
There was a lovely bit on Backlisted where they enthused about this Pullitzer winning comic novel about a writer taking up a bunch of invitations to lecture and network around the world in order to avoid his ex boyfriend's wedding. Like Andy and John, I thought it was very funny and humane.

40 A Mathematician's Apology G H Hardy
Superb. Picked this up in Blackwells in Oxford from a 100 years/100 books display. About the aesthetics of maths. There is a long introduction by CP Snow and at first I just wanted to push through that to get to the "actual book" but really, the two parts combine to make an satisfying whole, a portrait of a moment in the ivory towers as well as an exploration of the purpose and beauty of pure mathematics.

41 Democracy by Steven Beller
Just felt the need to read something on this topic. Not sure if this was better or worse than any other "short explainer" type book.

42 All the Hidden Truths Claire Askew

Read and loved the sample of Fierce Bad Rabbits which my spell checker wants to call Fierce Bad Rabbis. Somebody should definitely write the latter. Meanwhile I need the former to come down in price on Kindle.

I would definitely read Fierce Bad Rabbis.

I too love the sound of both Fierce Bad Rabbits and Fierce Bad Rabbis.

YesILikeItToo, how accessible is the Hardy book? It does seem very engaging from what you said and it’s something I’d be tempted to try but if it’s got lots and lots of maths, I’m going to struggle. Have you read Birth of a Theorem by Cedric Villani? I thought that was a terrific insight into the practice of doing maths, but treated the parts devoted to the theorem as mostly decorative!

I'm falling down a bit on the reading front as I'm so anxious about what's happening in the wider world, but I've managed to finish this:

64: Smoke and Whispers - Mick Herron

A non-Slough House book by this author - I've come to a temporary halt while I wait for a friend to lend me the next in the series - but I picked this one up in a charity shop to keep me going in the interim.

Interestingly, it's completely different and not for the better. In fact it's also part of a series but I think each is a stand-alone so that bit was OK; it was just.....very....very....slow. Protagonist Sarah Tucker comes to Newcastle when she's told that her friend, private investigator Zoe Böhm, has been found dead - fished out of the river Tyne. Sarah is not just shocked, but also deeply suspicious...and there's a reason why, when she sees the body, her doubts don't quite go away.

There was nothing wrong with this, and I like Herron's writing a lot, but there was none of the humour of the Slough House books, and it just felt incredibly static. I do have another in the series in my tbr pile, though, and I might give it a go.

Pepe, there’s very little maths in the book, it’s for non-mathematicians. He does set out two simple proofs, to talk about what qualities in them make them good ones, but in general his thesis is that pure maths has got very little to do with the maths a general reader would understand.

113. The Golden Notebook - Doris Lessing Anna is a single mother and author with writer's block. She has had one very successful novel and is now trying to balance her writing with being a mother, a political activist and having relationships. She keeps 4 notebooks of various colours to track the different threads of her life and eventually tries to pull them all together into one golden notebook as her life starts falling apart around her.

This is quite complicated to follow and jumps between a novel within a novel and non-chronological extracts from the four different diaries which go through her youth in Africa, her political thoughts, her day to day and her relationships. It is incredibly well written, with interesting characters, quite searing in the commentary and very frank in her opinions on sex and relationships. It does rattle along but as Anna's mental health devolves, so does the writing to go with it and I was willing it to end with about a quarter left to go. It is considered a feminist classic even though the author didn't intent it to be so. Overall well worth the read.

114. An American Marriage - Tayari Jones A young fairly newly married black couple's lives fall apart when he is accused of a crime he didn't commit and is sent to prison. Can the relationship survive?

Told from the POV of various characters and in the form of letters once he is imprisoned, this is a really interesting premise. Overall well written and I enjoyed it, but didn't quite get the hype about it. I can understand why it would be more hard hitting in the US, but it didn't have the same effect here to me.

115. Mythos - Stephen Fry Retelling of the Greek myths in Stephen's unmistakable style.

I should have loved this and just didn't and don't really understand why. It made the myths very accessible and they were told in a fairly tongue in cheek fashion. I abandoned this earlier in the year about half way through in print and was only tempted to go back to it when someone lent me the audiobook, which I found infinitely less annoying.

I have just abandoned Sea Monsters by Chloe Aridjis after only 50 pages. Set in the 80s in Mexico, a disillusioned teenager runs away to the coast with a slightly older boy she doesn't know in search of herself (and a troupe of Ukrainian dwarves who have escaped from a Russian circus).

At first I thought it read like a very clunky and clumsy translation, but then realised it is not a translated work. I think the author was trying way too hard to be literary and profound without actually having anything to say and it really showed. It didn't work for me. On reading the reviews, the consensus is split between gushing and WTAF.

78 Gilded Cage by KJ Charles
79 The Rat-Catchers Daughter by KJ Charles

Both Edwardian set romances featuring characters from various of KJCs other novels. Perfect distraction from stressful stuff happening IRL.

The Heart's Invisible Furies is on Kindle Daily Deals today, for those who haven't already read it.

61. Skint Estate: A memoir of poverty, motherhood and survival Cash Carraway.
    If you are looking for an antidote to the middle class yummy mummy influencers then this is it. That’s how I first came to know Carraway on social media anyway. I found her much more honest about the realities of motherhood than her privileged counterparts. However, this memoir is more than that. It’s shows the angry truth of what austerity has done to Britain and why it’s so important that we see more diversity in those that run the country. Her experience in the refuge and the class cleansing happening in London were devastating. It’s not for the faint hearted, it’s pretty grim (and a bit caps heavy) but absolutely necessary to give the victims of austerity their own voices.

Have fallen a little behind pace in September, but that is largely down to return to work and reading two volumes of War and Peace!

Nonetheless, this is a momentous day because, after 18 months obediently readalonging , I have finished Bleak House!

I am so glad I read it, and am not sure I could have managed it straight through as it is so intense. A brilliant book. I shall opine on the Bleak House thread on 1st October.

For anyone else planning to read it, the cheapo Wordsworth version has a really interesting introduction.

The marvellous Katherine Rundell has also written a book about Children's Books:

www.amazon.co.uk/Should-Read-Childrens-Books-Though/dp/1526610078/ref=pd_sbs_14_1/261-2284183-3300762?psc=1&pf_rd_p=2b420a2f-6593-478e-8b5f-cb43865ff16f&_encoding=UTF8&pd_rd_wg=h1Yst&pf_rd_r=RRX7G3JAJV702KSCVYJ9&pd_rd_i=1526610078&pd_rd_w=Cfq6M&tag=mumsnetforu03-21&refRID=RRX7G3JAJV702KSCVYJ9&pd_rd_r=0c755c42-2a5a-4f7a-8bab-b902aa619fee

Adding to my list with a few books I've read and others I Dnf and one brilliant book!!!

Dnf: The Girl Across The Bay by Emerald O' Brien
Too much exposition in conversation
72) Lion in the Valley by (Amelia Peabody#4)
I really enjoyed Peabody#1 where our Victorian (?) heroine throws off societal expectations and lives as she wants as an archaeologist in Egypt at the time of Howard Carter. But the subsequent ones are "just" detective/mystery novels set at that time
Dnf: Ancillary Justice by Ann Leckie
It didn't grab my attention. I gave it nearly 90 pages but no

73. The Kraken Wakes by John Wyndham
    Great sci fi from the 50s (?) Interesting take on an end of world scenario that we may in fact be facing

74. Incursion by Blake Crouch Brilliant!!; Brilliant, brilliant! Recommended here towards the start of the thread by CoteDAzure. A scientist invents a chair that can help people with Alzheimer's remember their lost memories but the unforseen consequences threaten humanity. Possibly the best book I've read this year. I read it so fast because it was great but now it's finished. The dilemma that always exists with a good book. It reminds me of Life After Life and 7 Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle to a certain extent

JuneSpoon Was the Blake Crouch Book called Recursion rather than Incursion?

Have been looking for it from your recommendation & can't find Incursion.

I am a real 'lurker' here but must just recommend A Treachery Of Spies by Manda Scott.

Read it on holiday & it is one of the best thrillers I have read in ages. Set in France where the body of an elderly woman is found. The story goes back & forth (well) between present day and the 1940's & SOE in UK & France.

Very gripping & so well written.

Yes, Recursion

There really needs to be an edit button