50 Book Challenge 2020 Part One

[southeastdweller]

Welcome to the first thread of the 50 Book Challenge for this year.

The challenge is to read fifty books (or more!) in 2020, though reading fifty isn't mandatory. Any type of book can count, and please try to let us all know your thoughts on what you've read.

Who's in for this year?

3. The Stepford Wives by Ira Levin
Joanna moves with here family from the city to an upmarket suburb. She initially struggles to make friends, as most of the women are strangely obsessed with homemaking. One by one the friends she does make seem to change too, as their husbands become members of the Men's Association.

This is such a culturally iconic story that I'm sure everyone knows the plot. It's to Levin's credit that it's still a gripping read, managing to be both satire and thriller all at once. Good stuff. I wonder if it's even better if you don't know the plot direction, and may get my 13yo to read it and see.

Well, I did say Welsh should READ This Thing If Darkness and that everyone who READ it on previous 50 Book threads liked it.

My comment wasn't about those who just looked at it or skimmed through a couple of pages

"Not really read much SciFi though which seems to be a theme for positive reviews."

Yes. If you liked Station 11, you would love the better examples of the post-apocalyptic SF genre. Off the top of my head: The Passage and it's sequels, World War Z, Flood, Seveneves, and The Stand, for example.

"donor clones could work though couldn’t they? Hypothetically without a single scientific piece of knowledge to back it up. A few extra matching people ready to go for those rich enough?"

They would "work" as well as any old organ transplant works, which is not much. They all get rejected eventually and all you end up buying for your pain, misery, and lowered immune system is a few extra years that end in gruesome ways.

If we are actually going to invest the monumental sums of money, time. and effort into creating clones for eventual organ harvesting, at the very least you would make them out of a special (single) engineered DNA that doesn't cause tissue rejection. Recognizing them as clones everywhere they go would also help keep them in line and alienate them (us humans vs them clones) etc.

You would also need to keep them in safe, sterile conditions so they would not be ruined for organ transplant. What stops NLMG clones from smoking 2 packs a day to ruin their health, fucking like bunny rabbits to catch a million venereal diseases, or eating & drinking everything in sight and ballooning to 200 kg with cirrhosis? It's not like they are saving themselves for a happy retirement.

And what if they kill someone and their DNA implicates the person they were cloned from?

These are just a few examples of the myriad problems and issues that need to be addressed in such a scenario. NLMG doesn't address any of them. Readers who can "gloss over" this kind of crappy SF writing can only be those who don't normally read SF and so are not aware of how creative the better SF authors are in realistic world building.

Aha, I did read TTOD and very much enjoyed the first half. The second half I found more of a struggle but I think we can chalk that up as a qualified shared enjoyment!

Oh, and I loved The Stand!

Thinking about Never Let Me Go, I thought that the Ewan McGregor film The Island addressed a lot of the issues more plausibly.

The unfortunate donor clones are actually cloned from individual rich clients.
The clones are kept in a controlled environment, so reduced chances of accidents, infectious disease or bad lifestyle choices ruining them for organ transplant.
And the clones are told a load of lies intended to prevent them from ever realising that they’re eventually going to be murdered for their organs.

Stitches - I agree. The Island did a far better job of building a plausible story than NLMG.

I managed about 2/3 of TTOD before deciding it really wasn't for me.

Honestly, Cote, how can you describe The Passage as more scientifically plausible than Station Eleven? Spoiler alert, but the creation of vast vampire hordes? A raging flu epidemic is far more plausible - see the Spanish flu epidemic, which infected a third of the world's population and killed up to 50 million people.

I liked both, but Station Eleven was leaner than the Passage trilogy. And I still think about the scene in Station Eleven where the plane was grounded and sealed off so as not to spread the virus any further.

[Plants tattered standard, issues war cry]

Aah, sorry Cote, my mistake, I thought robust debate was when you critiqued a book, not when you insulted somebody else's choice. This is obviously the wrong book club for me; I'll get my coat.

I did critique the book and only the book

I'm not up for dying on the hill of NLMG but I thought the point was that they didn't offer any explanations of the Sci and focused more on the Fi. Maybe good for a particular type of fan that's not as interested in the whys.

All the things that would destroy the clones, they cover by saying they wouldn't do these things because they are so passive. Which brings me back to why I hated the book. I'm ok with the clone for organs concept, despite the lack of realism (I'm also ok with things like minority report) but not the passiveness.

having said that I think I do tend to question SciFi less than other genres. www.theguardian.com/books/2017/nov/23/science-fiction-triggers-poorer-reading-study-finds

Will check out some of the recommendations here.

@bibliomania yeah that's the other scene that got me too

Maybe the problem for some with Station Eleven is that it is played very realistically as near-future SF, rather than urban fantasy/dystopia.

So for example I enjoy the Rivers of London books because they really obviously need to you suspend disbelief and accept magic, river goddesses etc. So my reading brain basically says OK, this is how his world works, I'll run with it.

Whereas in Station Eleven because it is surface realistic, just for example my teenager read it and was all how come they're all so incompetent, surely people would jerry-rig off grid power systems with car batteries & PV panels, raid fuel dumps, etc etc.

My comparison would be the Day of the Triffids, where the big bad I find implausible, but that's OK, I can let that pass because people's actions are far more believable (if annoyingly sexist & 1950s).

I also thought the books Cote mentions were much better than Station Eleven and in fact that she had ripped many of them off.

In fact, The Passage is literally name checked in the novel in a cringy way.

biblio - Sorry, I guess that wasn't clear. I was referring to the implausibility of the execution in Station 11 and NLMG (what happens when society breaks down, or how people/clones would react when they know they will be killed for organs etc) not the probability of the initial idea (vampires, viral outbreak, etc) actually happening.

A SF book can be built on an incredibly low-probability event happening, but it can be amazing if the execution is plausible, with consistent details and proper world building. Like Dune (giant worms protecting a drug that gives woo abilities?), Seveneves (the moon suddenly breaking up for no apparent reason?), and The Tree Body Problem (aliens who later turn out to be an existential problem for the human race communicate through a video game?).

Sadik - "My comparison would be the Day of the Triffids, where the big bad I find implausible, but that's OK, I can let that pass because people's actions are far more believable"

Yes, exactly.

KnucklesMcGinty I took Cote's comments as a critique of the book, and perhaps also of my language skills, the latter probably justified (although thanks Piggy for your thoughts on other uses of fable!). People can get quite vocal in defending their views on a particular book in here, which I quite like as it's nice to see some passion about books! For me it's others' puzzling lack of regard for The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie that always pulls me out of the woodwork. Understand if that kind of debate is not for you but just wanted to let you know I wasn't offended by Cote's comments, whilst at the same time appreciating your readiness to leap to my defence. I hope you continue to contribute as it's a very broad church in here and I have found it invaluable in widening my reading horizons.

I've been on the forum a long time. I name change a lot but will keep this name for this thread.

I've always understood this thread as a friendly/fluffy one, with no neeerrrsneeer antagonism intended - just lots of people who are passionate about the books they love and equally passionate about those they hate.

I haven't read NLMG but reading your comments the thing I think would make it completely pointless for me would be if you can clone a whole human why don't you just clone the organs you need? Why bother making whole people? Unless that was addressed very early on I would chuck it straight out of my pile and out of my house. Is it addressed?

Cote, thank you for the c&p! Your reviews are great! So now, I have a quandary. Station 11 is in my pile, my friend will ask what I think of it; do I read it or not bother? (I read a lot of sci fi) Should I skip it, or go on to The Hoarder when I've finished Sinai Tapestry - nearly there.

I am also a lover of Baroque and, when I was a stage manager, pretty much lived in the world of musicians and actors; grew up surrounded by them too. I played violin and sang.

You should clearly read it, Jux, so you can choose a side in the wars!

On the bright side, when the apocalypse hits, I look forward to quietly assessing whose version of our dystopian future was closest to reality.

I see what you mean about plausibility, Cote, although chances are that I'll spend the apocalypse wafting about quoting Shakespeare rather than jerry-rigging power systems. I'll probably be extinguished in the first wave though.

I think the self-quarantined aircraft is nicely under-stated, palegreen - she lets your imagination do the work.

Oh shit, some one forgot The First Rule of Fight Club 50 Book Club again ....