2018 50 Book Challenge

[LonerMatt]

Spoiler: List

1. Kangaroo
2. South of the Border, West of the Sun
3. 19Q4
4. An Elegant Young Man
5. Throne of the Crescent Moon
6. When Gravity Fails
7. The Choke
8. Heat and Light
9. Who Owns the Future
10 Waking Gods
11. Wimmera
12. Artemis
13. Fire in the Sun
14. Exile Kiss
15. A Long Way to a Small Angry Planet
16 Prisoners of Geography
17. Nevermoor
18 La Bell Sauvage
19. Red Sister
20. Jade City
21. We Are Who We Pretend To Be
22. First Person
23. Too Like Lightning
24. Sea of Rust
25. Don't Skip Out on Me

23. Too Like Lightning

This novel is 50% 'incredible' and 50% 'I get it, you are really impressed with how clever you are Mr. Author'. This is a very dense story about a very simple event, and the world building is in no way direct (ie, I spent a lot of time confused). When the wiki entry for this novel has about 4 pages of notes about the world you know it's quite a complex situation.

Basically: the nation-state is dead, and 7-8 'hives' of humanity exist, each vying for influence and power, but also enjoying balance. The world has moved on technologically, but 18/19th century liberal philosophies are basically how people think and govern.

The writing is realllllly clunky, and the 4th wall is often broken in a way that disrupts the flow of the story. Many characters have multiple names, and many characters have nearly identical names, it's a bit of a Russian mess.

So why is it good? Basically because the story is so thoroughly thought out, it's just the execution that's a bit rough.

24. Sea of Rust

Humans are dead, machines exist. However, several large AIs are trying to absorb ALL machines into a One World Intelligence. The main character survives by running and being canny and having a knack for escape.

It's a bit like a Western and a heist story, no humans but the machines are essentially human.

Skips any decent commentary on machine/human interaction for a pretty cruisy and easy read.


25. Don't Skip Out on Me

An artist I like mentioned the author Willy Vlautin, so I picked this up at a bookstore on a whim and ******* hell I am glad I did. WHAT A NOVEL.

Somewhat like a Bruce Springsteen novel, essentially good, hardworking, kind but struggling working class people are constrained by their own pride and dignity. The main characters are Horace, an Indian teenager trying to make it as a pro boxer, but plauged with shame, self doubt and the need to prove himself and Mr. Reese his, more or less, father figure who runs a sheep ranch in the Nevada mountains.

Horace moves away to try and make it pro, Mr. Reese comes to term with his age. It's not always an uplifting story and the ending was devastating and almost made me cry.

Excellent and highly recommended.

 

[LonerMatt]

Spoiler: List

1. Kangaroo
2. South of the Border, West of the Sun
3. 19Q4
4. An Elegant Young Man
5. Throne of the Crescent Moon
6. When Gravity Fails
7. The Choke
8. Heat and Light
9. Who Owns the Future
10 Waking Gods
11. Wimmera
12. Artemis
13. Fire in the Sun
14. Exile Kiss
15. A Long Way to a Small Angry Planet
16 Prisoners of Geography
17. Nevermoor
18 La Bell Sauvage
19. Red Sister
20. Jade City
21. We Are Who We Pretend To Be
22. First Person
23. Too Like Lightning
24. Sea of Rust
25. Don't Skip Out on Me
26. Autonomous

26. Autonomous

Definitely falling within what's been dubbed the biopunk genre this novel is told from two different perspectives. The first is of the hacker/pirates who are a group of people hoping to bring open source, reverse engineered drugs to an increasing number of people in order to save lives. Except one drug they've reverse engineered is killing people.

The second is an AI/human detective duo with seemingly unlimited powers to search for who is stealing their company's IP. The narrative brings these two groups increasingly close together but also contains a lot of dialogue around autonomy, freedom, slavery and choice.

The novel had, I think, some untapped potential. There was so much possibility in terms of theoretical or philosophical nature of the story - the AI, for example, taste autonomy, for a moment. There is a human freed slave, etc.

It's a good read, not bad at all, but relies too much on the action rather than the more interesting under-pinnings.

 

[California Dreamer]

27. The Shadow Killer, by Arnaldur Indridason

* I would like to thank NetGalley and the publisher for the opportunity to review this book. *

Indridason returns to wartime Reykjavik with The Shadow Killer. An Icelandic salesman is found murdered in an apartment, shot by a US service weapon. This fact convinces detective Flovent to involve Thorsen, a Canadian member of the US military policy (whom we met in The Shadow District). While Thorsen is detailed to help with the investigation, his military superiors are also placing pressure on him.

The investigation soon turns up Nazi connections with the owner of the flat, who cannot be located. Another possible angle is the victim's girlfriend, who appears to be involved in The Situation. (This refers to the Icelandic women who took up with foreign soldiers during the war. It's made clearer in The Shadow District, but Indridason should have repeated that background here for people who have not read the first book).

As always, this is a good plot with a few surprises, but I felt that the pacing was a bit ordinary and the switching of viewpoints between the two investigators each chapter felt a bit routine. There is nobody in this book, or its predecessor, that is remotely as compelling as Indridason's great character, Erlendur. I don't think Indridason is at the top of his game here; there is so much more that he could be doing with this material.

 

[California Dreamer]

28. Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine, by Gail Honeyman

Thirty-year-old Eleanor Oliphant lives alone in a crappy flat, works in a nothing job where she is the butt of office humour and spends all her weekends getting blotto on vodka. Clearly, the title of this novel is ironic.

Eleanor develops a plan to resolve her problems: she will engineer a meeting with a local musician that she has a crush on, and he will then sweep her off her feet and change her life. The only problem is that she has no idea about men and no clue how to go about this. Her weekly conversations with her Mummy only serve to undermine her confidence further.

Eleanor is a wonderful creation: stilted, funny, awkward, resolute, and damaged all at once. Honeyman tells her story as she gradually learns to deal with other people such as her colleague Raymond and thereby comes to confront her own demons as well.

This book shows how small kindnesses can sometimes make a dramatic difference in people's lives. It's a fantastic read.

 

[wojt]

previous books:

Spoiler

1. Shaq Uncut: My Story
2. Meditations by Marcus Aurelius
3. The Evolution of Desire: Strategies of Human Mating by David M. Buss
4. Symposium - Plato

Had no time to read recently, I will be glad if I make it to 25 this year :|

5. God Is Not Great - Christopher Hitchens (audiobook read by the author)
Compelling case against organised religion and dogmatic beliefs in general. It's quite optional if you thought through these issues already but his and Dawkins books have been long on my list. It's also great to here the book read in author's own voice. Overall I think the main points of the book are well argued.

 

[Geoffrey Firmin]

24.War in 140 Characters;How Social Media Is Reshaping Conflict In The Twentyfirst Century by David Patrikarakos

War is the continuation of politics by other memes which leads to the medium being the messenger. Patrikarakos examines three site specific conflicts, Hamas V Israel, Russia V Ukraine and ISIS versus everyone. And the role that social media played in these conflicts.

He examines how the players, politicans, and state intelligence agencies act to shape a narrative which is embraced by the world at large. Fanboys, trolls and other fellow travellers then unfold an emerging counternarrative on a variety of social media platforms as a counter move. War has reached the realm of the virtual.

Of how image and text are employed to sway the court of public opinion and shift hearts and minds. How actors employ sophisticated brainwashing techniques on the target audience in an effort to both seize the moral high ground and redefine the perceived reality narrative so as to enusre that their broadcasted memes is a continuation of the political agenda beyond the physical space of war and into the realm of the virtual and legacy media.

Fascinating read.

 

[Geoffrey Firmin]

My copy of this arrived today saving it for the long weekend.

 

[California Dreamer]

29. Algeria is Beautiful Like America, by Olivia Burton

* I would like to thank NetGalley and the publishers for the opportunity to review this book. *

One thing that seems typical of the immigrant experience is that the next generation idealises the home country, based on the nostalgic memories of their parents. Olivia Burton, daughter of Algerian immigrants to France is one such person. Her parents were "black-foots": the French colonisers that had to rapidly leave the country as groups like the FLN and the OAS started to turn Algeria into a bloodbath.

Burton burns to see the place that she came from, even though her family used to live in the Aurès, one of the most dangerous parts of the country. She heads to Algiers on her own and, with the help of a few contacts, manages to make it into the Aurès and meet people who knew her family. It's an eye-opening and somewhat romantic story, with rather an ironic twist.

I couldn't help but feel that Burton glosses over a bit in her re-telling and that there is a grittier story here, Still, the account that she gives of connecting with and coming to understand her family's past is quite affecting and, at times, amusing.

 

[Geoffrey Firmin]

25

Soma anyone? First read this forty years ago still as interesting and this time around I did understand all the Shakespearen references. Interesting commentary on the idea of Utopia, love and the consumerism amongst other subjects.

 

[ilclassico]

Liar's Poker. Classic.

Another: Stochastic Simulation and Monte Carlo Methods: Mathematical Foundations of Stochastic Simulation

 

[LonerMatt]

Spoiler: List

1. Kangaroo
2. South of the Border, West of the Sun
3. 19Q4
4. An Elegant Young Man
5. Throne of the Crescent Moon
6. When Gravity Fails
7. The Choke
8. Heat and Light
9. Who Owns the Future
10 Waking Gods
11. Wimmera
12. Artemis
13. Fire in the Sun
14. Exile Kiss
15. A Long Way to a Small Angry Planet
16 Prisoners of Geography
17. Nevermoor
18 La Bell Sauvage
19. Red Sister
20. Jade City
21. We Are Who We Pretend To Be
22. First Person
23. Too Like Lightning
24. Sea of Rust
25. Don't Skip Out on Me
26. Autonomous
27. Grey Sister

27. Grey Sister

Yah the boys all girl adventure with some cool twists and political intrigue.

Nothing ground breaking just a lot of fun

 

[ilclassico]

I'm looking on next one after im done, Football Manager Stole My Life by Iain Macintosh.

 

[California Dreamer]

30. Sing Unburied, Sing, by Jesmyn Ward

Jojo is a mixed-race teenager living with his grandparents and his younger sister Kayla in the Mississippi back blocks. His grandmother is dying of cancer but, despite that, Jojo's mother Leonie insists that they leave and go on a road trip to pick up their father Michael, who has just been released from prison.

Leonie is a drug addict and, when she is high, she has visions of her murdered brother Given. Jojo, who is very close to his Pop, starts to have similar visions of a young boy that Pop was in the same prison with many years before. The road trip rapidly develops into a traumatic experience with Kayla becoming very ill and Leonie incapable of looking after her. Indeed Kayla prefers to seek out Jojo than her mother.

This is quite a touching story of a dysfunctional family haunted by their separate pasts and unable to deal with the harsh reality creeping up on them. I really detested Ward's Salvage the Bones, due to its explicit animal cruelty, but I thought this book was much better.

 

[Geoffrey Firmin]

26 The Dry by Jane Harper

For a debut police procedural this is quite a good story however I have only one complaint and that is with the ending.

Its set in rural Victoria during the millennial drought, which was something in its self. The narrative unfolds in a small town, in a tight time frame, which is a pressure cooker due to the drought, the financial hardship and the fact that a local farmer has taken his shotgun to his wife, son and himself. But why did he leave the baby alive?

Enter Federal Policeman Aaron Falk who had left town with his father under a cloud twenty years ago and finds himself not only caught in the present but in the tangled web of his past. To say anymore would be to give the game away. Highly recomended.

 

[California Dreamer]

26 The Dry by Jane Harper

For a debut police procedural this is quite a good story however I have only one complaint and that is with the ending.

Its set in rural Victoria during the millennial drought, which was something in its self. The narrative unfolds in a small town, in a tight time frame, which is a pressure cooker due to the drought, the financial hardship and the fact that a local farmer has taken his shotgun to his wife, son and himself. But why did he leave the baby alive?

Enter Federal Policeman Aaron Falk who had left town with his father under a cloud twenty years ago and finds himself not only caught in the present but in the tangled web of his past. To say anymore would be to give the game away. Highly recomended.

A very big global hit, this one. CWA Gold Dagger Award, Ned Kelly Award, ABIA Award, Victorian Premier's Award. Got to be somehow worth reading.