2018 50 Book Challenge

[clockwise]

Clockwise counting 13/50: Ross MacDonald - The Ivory Grin (1952)

A case of a lost person, the wayward son of a wealthy reclusive woman, and a number of dead people makes this an enigmatic case for uber-cool private investigator Lew Archer. People in the Archer books are essentially selfish and potentially dangerous but Archer both solves the mystery and establishes himself as the moral epicentre of a corrupt 1950s California. Very nice hard-boiled detective story in the tradition of Hammett / Chandler.

 

[clockwise]

Clockwise counting 14/50: C.J. Sansom - Revelation (2008)

It's 1543 and King Henry is courting Lady Catherine Parr to become his sixth wife. There is a fierce and violent struggle between religious reformists and traditionalists and hunchback lawyer Matthew Shardlake gets "drafted" by Archbishop Cranmer on the side of the moderate reformists. His quest is to identify, understand and catch a serial killer who is showing all signs of religious mania, staging his killings from descriptions picked out of the Book of Revelation.

The 4th book (out of 6 so far) in the Shardlake series is as good as its predecessors and it's another case of 600+ pages that are entertaining throughout.

 

[clockwise]

Clockwise counting 15/50: Friedrich Von Schirach - The Girl Who Wasn't There (2013)

This is really a brilliant and strange novel, one of those that keeps you guessing after you have finished the last page. It's on the surface about a murder case with a bit of a court drama in the end but it's actually much more about the human condition and life as art or art as life. The protagonist, Sebastian von Eschburg, is a famous art photographer with a disturbed childhood. He is accused of having committed a murder where no corpse is ever found. Thought provoking and highly recommended.

 

[Geoffrey Firmin]

43 Altered Pasts Counterfactuals in History by Richard J Evans after a discussion about the alternative reality Si Fi genre the other night I found this in the library CD if you want a good alternative take on the Christ story try Behold the Man by Michael Moorcock very bent.

 

[LonerMatt]

GF - would I dig that?

Also: I am equally clockwise at the moment. Wow.

 

[LonerMatt]

White Noise completely soured me on DeLillo.

Got a recommendation I should check out of his?

 

[Geoffrey Firmin]



GF - would I dig that?

Also: I am equally clockwise at the moment. Wow.

If you like bent alternative Si Fi then yes you would enjoy it read any Phillip K Dick?

I had to read White Noise as part of a undergraduate degree not overly impressed but did enjoy Underworld.

 

[LonerMatt]

PKD is so inconsistent. Androids is obviously amazing, but Ubik, Minority Report, Man in the High Castle, etc, never moved me.

 

[Geoffrey Firmin]



PKD is so inconsistent. Androids is obviously amazing, but Ubik, Minority Report, Man in the High Castle, etc, never moved me.

Time Out of Joint.

 

[Steve B.]



Got a recommendation I should check out of his?

It's the only one I read. GF liked Underworld.

I'm more of an Ian McEwan, Cormac McCarthy, Paulo Coelho, and J.R. Coetzee fan.

When I can squeeze them between Louis L'Amours of course.

 

[clockwise]

Don DeLillo - always excellent language, beautiful paragraph by paragraph.
His narratives are typically heavy-going and damn hard to understand.
I never dared to tackle Underworld, it's a thick beast, I guess it would be 1 book in 1 month.

 

[clockwise]



GF - would I dig that?

Also: I am equally clockwise at the moment. Wow.

You've been ahead of me until now. Just caught up with you in time for the Year of the Goat.

I am still kind of viewing the reasonable target of 100 in a year so need to do around 8.5. / month. Doubt I will repeat the 120 in a year. Would like to raise my quality a bit though, too many detective noirs and entertainment.

 

[Fueco]

I'm new to this thread, but read a fair amount.

Sorry, all non-fiction so far this year...

1. The Race Within: Passion, Courage and Sacrifice At The Ultraman Triathlon (Jim Gourley, 2015) -I'm biased towards this book because I'm mentioned in it, and I know the author. It's a pretty solid glimpse into the world of ultra distance triathlon...

2. Wild! -Cheryl Strayed -Yeah, it's an Oprah book club selection, and is clearly aimed at women, but I thoroughly enjoyed it. It probably helps that I've visited a number of the places she mentions in the books and can vividly imagine a lot of the scenes. I haven't seen the movie yet...



I'm currently working my way through the following books:

Let My People Go Surfing -Yvon Chouinard (founder of Patagonia)
A Fighting Chance -Elizabeth Warren
True Fit: A Collected History Of Denim
Unsurpassed: The Story Of Tommy Goodwin, The World's Greatest Distance Cyclist -Godfrey Barlow

 

[clockwise]



I'm new to this thread, but read a fair amount.

Spoiler: My Completed Books List So Far in 2015

Sorry, all non-fiction so far this year...
 
1. The Race Within: Passion, Courage and Sacrifice At The Ultraman Triathlon (Jim Gourley, 2015) -I'm biased towards this book because I'm mentioned in it, and I know the author. It's a pretty solid glimpse into the world of ultra distance triathlon...
 
2. Wild! -Cheryl Strayed -Yeah, it's an Oprah book club selection, and is clearly aimed at women, but I thoroughly enjoyed it. It probably helps that I've visited a number of the places she mentions in the books and can vividly imagine a lot of the scenes. I haven't seen the movie yet...
 

I'm currently working my way through the following books:

Let My People Go Surfing -Yvon Chouinard (founder of Patagonia)
A Fighting Chance -Elizabeth Warren
True Fit: A Collected History Of Denim
Unsurpassed: The Story Of Tommy Goodwin, The World's Greatest Distance Cyclist -Godfrey Barlow

Welcome to the thread.
2 books in close to 2 months makes the target of 50 look a bit hard. Quality is always good but quantity is mandatory here.

 

[Fueco]



Welcome to the thread.
2 books in close to 2 months makes the target of 50 look a bit hard. Quality is always good but quantity is mandatory here.

10 months is an awful long time... I've been known to put 800+ page books down in a single night. We shall see.