2018 50 Book Challenge

[clockwise]



I think that 1,000 pager would make a great 1st book of 2012. In fact-I'll read War and Peace first if you finish the marathon with me. (I have two friends who run marathons and they encourage each other all the time like that. )

Sounds good and reasonable. I've got very little left of another big book (a fat Steinbeck) and I am then lining up some shorter stuff to take me closer to the mark with minimum effort. Very excited about the new Murakami (I have read almost all his translated books) but I will keep it on the shelf until January.

 

[Steve B.]

43. All Quiet on the Western Front. Erich Maria Remarque

Has often been billed as THE ultimate war novel and I agree. The story of a fresh 18 yr old German recruit in WWI from his enlistment to his death just before Armistice. Perspective is different because he's one of the "bad guys"- but he rants against war and its horrors vs its purpose (this is in 1928 mind you). An EXCELLENT book. A must read. One of the top 5 I've read so far.

7 more to go- hope to make it.

 

[Steve B.]

44. Arthur C. Clarke- Childhood's End
The story of earth visited by and then ruled benevolently by aliens called the Overlords. They turn the place into Utopia, which is eventually fractured after a couple of generations or so. I won't tell you why or how; that would spoil the book. I liked every thing but the ending.

And I found Clarke's writing significantly inferior to Asimov's, Heinlein's, Herbert's and even Anne McCaffery's.

I have a couple of (I think) boring books scheduled for my next 2. Think I ought to replace them so it will be easier to finish.

Anyone read Henry and June or King Solomon's Mines?

 

[clockwise]

No but I read H. Rider Haggard's She and thought it was very decent entertainment. I don't think King Solomon's Mines will be boring, just slightly dated. I would read it.

 

[Saturdays]

The Gun Seller by Hugh Laurie is a fantastic read.

 

[Steve B.]

45. H. Rider Haggard- King Solomon's Mines
Story of quest for mythical diamonds in the African desert/mountains. Many obstacles are encountered on the quest, which ultimately proves successful. Simplistic, but a real page turner a la Dan Brown. I liked it.

 

[GoldenTribe]

"To make a poem of the human conscience, even in terms of a single man and the least of men, would be to merge all epics in a single epic transcending all. Conscience is the labyrinth of illusion, desire, and pursuit, the furnace of dreams, the repository of thoughts of which we are ashamed; it is the pandemonium of sophistry, the battlefield of passions. To peer at certain moments into the withdrawn face of a human being in the act of reflection, to see something of what lies beyond their outward silence, is to discern struggle on a Homeric scale, conflicts of dragons and hydras, aerial hosts as in Milton, towering vistas as in Dante. The infinite space that each man carries within himself, wherein despairingly he contrasts the movements of his spirit with the acts of his life, is an overpowering thing."

(From Les Miserables, by Victor Hugo)

 

[Steve B.]



Clockwise counting 37/50: Julian Barnes - The Sense of an Ending (2011)
A short and masterful novel about how we edit our memories over the course of a lifetime. The story of a 60 year old art administrator and the events, friendships and love interests of his study days and how these affect his life 40 years later. A great story with an unexpected twist on the last few pages. The Man Booker Prize winner of 2011. More of these short page turners and I might just make my fifty.

46. The novel was everything Clockwise advertised. It would be hard to improve on his summary, so I won't. I did find his fascination with his 40 yr. old love interest as odd and masochistic (maybe a strong word, but you get my drift).

 

[clockwise]

Clockwise counting 41/50: H.G. Wells - The Invisible Man (1897)

Everyone surely knows that if a person's refractive index is changed to exactly that of air and his body does not absorb or reflect light, then he will be invisible.

A brilliant scientist manages to become invisible but fails to return his body to normal. He plunges into madness and threatens to terrorize small town England. This was my 3rd Wells novel and I may also put War of the Worlds on my end-of-the-year  list. Wells does not disappoint. 

 

[clockwise]

Clockwise counting 42/50: Jon Nesbo - The Readbreast(2000)

Norway's current master of thriller writing had his breakthrough with this novel a decade ago. It's a fast paced story about the Norwegian WWII experience, treachery, insanity and an assassination plot which towards the exciting finale seems to borrow quite a bit from Fredrick Forsyth's The Day of the Jackal. Over 500 pages long but a real page turner.

 

[Steve B.]



The Gun Seller by Hugh Laurie is a fantastic read.

47. It is indeed. A British PI gets involved in a wild international adventure. The writing is extremely good, the characters are better, and the plot is excellent. A real page turner. Recommended HIGHLY.

 

[clockwise]

Clockwise counting 43/50: Julian Barnes - Flaubert's Parrot (1984)

Barnes had his literary breakthrough with this highly intellectual and unorthodox novel 27 years ago. It was the first of totally four Barnes novels (to date) which has been nominated for the Booker prize, an award he was eventually presented with for this year's excellent The Sense of an Ending. 

This is partly a biographical notebook of scattered bits and pieces about the great French novelist Gustave Flaubert, his life and his writing and partly a story about a fictitious elderly English medical doctor who is obsessed with Flaubert. This is not an easy book and it requires that you have at least read Flaubert's masterpiece Madame Bovary in advance.

From this book I learnt to appreciate that a net is a collection of holes tied together with a string.

 

[Steve B.]



Clockwise counting 41/50: H.G. Wells - The Invisible Man (1897)
Everyone surely knows that if a person's refractive index is changed to exactly that of air and his body does not absorb or reflect light, then he will be invisible.
A brilliant scientist manages to become invisible but fails to return his body to normal. He plunges into madness and threatens to terrorize small town England. This was my 3rd Wells novel and I may also put War of the Worlds on my end-of-the-year  list. Wells does not disappoint. 

48. See above. I don't want to appear I'm reading all the books that Clock is, although given his taste that certainly wouldn't be a bad thing.

I'm in a small town with no bookstore so was forced to go to the library. They didn't have any of the books on my list, so I chose this one and another. I doubt I will finish the second before I leave.

I also liked the book, and will read more Wells as well if we continue the challenge into 2012.

 

[clockwise]

48 by early November? You can start on War and Peace now.

 

[Steve B.]

49. Dragonsong- Anne McCaffery- only other bok I could find that I liked at the library. Adventures of a minstrel in the imaginary kingdom of Pern. She's a girl and all the minstrels aresupposed to be boys, but she becomes one anyway and is apprenticed by the MaterHarper himself. And so it goes. Everyone lives happily ever after.

On second thought Arthur C. Clarke is a better writer than McCaffery,

Magnum Opus for # 50.