50 Book Challenge - June & July

16. The Book of Joe - Jonathan Tropper
Highly readable but ultimately forgettable story of a guy who left his small town, wrote a snarky book about it, then has to return there when his father dies. If you've read any Jonathan Tropper before you're familiar with where this goes - dysfunctional family, thirtysomething unsettled Jewish guy learns things about himself, blah blah blah.

17. And When She Was Good - Laura Lippman
Suburban mom lives a double life as a high class hooker, then it all starts to come apart when people from her past begin to get killed off. Enjoyable enough crime novel.

18. Say You're Sorry - Michael Robotham
Every year I say I'm going to read 'quality' books for my 50 Book Challenge and every year I fall back on page-turning mysteries and crime stories. A present day murder ties in to the disappearance of two teenage girls several years earlier. It's a pretty gripping story but the reveal of the villain is kind of eh.

19. Mohawk - Richard Russo
I was mildly obsessed with Richard Russo in the 1990s and I remember reading this and loving it. Second time around - ehhhh, not so much. It's about several different people in a small town and it is mildly interesting, but very much a clunky first novel.

20. The Last Policeman - Ben H. Winters
Now this I liked. Set in a world where an asteroid is about to hit the earth in 6 months and destroy everything, most people have given up bothering about much. However, one policeman still does his job and sets out to prove that an apparent suicide was in fact murder. The crime and resolution is a bit hokey, but the premise is awesome and I really enjoyed it. Apparently it's the first of a trilogy so I'll be hunting down the next two.

21. Snowblind - Christopher Golden
Oogedy boogedy horror novel about creepy creatures who come out in two extreme blizzards years apart in a small town. It started off well but got really bogged down with all the different characters. Christopher Golden seems to have been going for a Stephen King everyone-has-a-POV kind of thing, but it doesn't really work.

22. All Fall Down - Jennifer Weiner
Incredibly tedious novel about a suburban mommy blogger with a secret (she thinks) pill addiction. It drags on and on forever with so much repetitive detail that I almost chucked it. Somehow I ploughed through to the end and then immediately wished I hadn't bothered. Avoid.

23. Cop Town - Karin Slaughter
Set in the 1970s in Atlanta, this is a novel about the attitudes of white male cops to their changing environment - a lot about women on the force, homosexuality, a half-arsed nod to racism, and a mildly interesting crime story of a serial cop killer. I found this book riveting while I was reading it, but after I felt a bit uncomfortable and I'm still not sure why.

Well over halfway through the year and I'm not even halfway through my 50 books yet. Must get cracking!

50 Book Challenge - May Books

I read nothing but magazines in April, but I had a spurt of book activity in May. Still pretty behind on the 50 Book Challenge, but I can catch up. My reading spurt is continuing - I've just finished my first June book and started another.

12. My Notorious Life - Kate Manning

This is a story about a midwife in New York in the 1800s, a woman who rises from extreme poverty to great wealth, but then comes unstuck by an infamous moral crusader. Loosely based on a real woman known as Madame X, this is what the kids call a ripping yarn, though it does start to drage a bit in the last third of the book. Overall, though, I really enjoyed it and it kickstarted a good spate of reading for the month.

13. Thirteen Reasons Why - Jay Asher

I didn’t realise this was a YA novel until I started reading it. I generally hate YA novels. However, I was curious enough about where this was going to keep reading, and it was very easy to read. It’s about a teenage boy who receives a series of cassette tapes from a girl who has recently committed suicide, where she names and shames every person who did anything to her that eventually led to her taking her own life. It’s kind of meh. I am sure it will be made into a movie with some pretty young people and a hip-but-angsty soundtrack and everyone will go bonkers for it. It’s that sort of story.

14. We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves - Karen Joy Fowler

I don’t want to say much about this – it’s one of those stories where it’s best to know as little as possible about going in. The most I will say is that it’s a dysfunctional family tale. I ploughed through the first half really quickly but the second half dragged and bored me a bit. It was a good story but just went on a bit too long.

15. What Came Before He Shot Her - Elizabeth George

I have had this on my ‘to read’ list for a really long time and I don’t remember why. In fact, I think having it on my list was what led me to read a couple of the Inspector Lynley novels last year (and then give up and just watch the TV show). Right, so. This isn’t about Inspector Lynley; instead it’s about a child who becomes involved in a crime in another Inspector Lynley novel (With No One As Witness), and how he got to that point. I haven’t read the other book, but I think I will. The story itself is really grim and says a lot about the plight of the disadvantaged. My problem with it was that it was relentlessly repetitive. I get that it was meant to show the endless grinding down of this kid and how it led him to the choices he eventually made, but the key word there is endless. Over and over again the same things happened and it just got a bit tedious after a while. The language was a bit twee too – the author is American, and it is fairly obvious she ‘researched’ how people of colour in London interact and speak to each other rather than ever actually being around any of them and hearing them for herself. It sounds real, but kind of ‘fake real’, you know?

Did Not Finish

One More Thing - BJ Novak

I read 5 stories and could not bear to go any further. I get the impression that B.J. Novak has deliberately written a bunch of pointless, meaningless pieces of garbage to see if everyone would pretend to get them, and then in a year or so he can smugly come out and say, ‘You idiots, they’re not meant to make sense! I’m so much smarter than everyone.’

50 Book Challenge 2014 - March Books

9. The Amazing Adventures of Dietgirl - Shauna Reid

This is basically a blog turned into a book, and that’s pretty much how it read. It was an easy read though, and I zipped through it pretty quickly. It’s written by a woman who grew up overweight and decided to lose weight in her early 20s, while simultaneously going to live overseas for a year, and it’s just about how she got slim and found a fella. Cute but forgettable.

10. Mothertime - Gillian White

I read this way back in the early 90s and didn’t remember much about it besides the bare bones. A group of children tired of dealing with their drunken mess of a mother decide to lock her in the basement until she turns into the mother they want. It sounds more sinister than it is. The story is actually a really interesting feminist text about the destructive effect that a selfish man who doesn’t like women has on the women in his life. It made me think a lot about Don Draper and his wives.

11. Missing You - Harlan Coben

Very typical Harlan Coben story about people from the past showing up suddenly and not being who they appear to be. There’s an internet money-fishing scam going on and a sub-plot about a murdered father, then a bit of a rubbish twist that is pretty obvious from early on in the novel. Definitely not one of his better ones, but it was a fast read – I cleaned it up in a day.

50 Book Challenge 2014 - February Books

Well, gosh. After a sparkling beginning in January, February fell in a bit of a heap. In my defence: WEATHER. For about half of February, I had no energy for anything beyond staring vacantly at a television screen. So I only ended up reading two books this month. I’m back into reading now after that heat-related slump, so hopefully my list will be more impressive at the end of March. 

7. The Breaker - Minette Walters

I read this a few years ago but because I have the memory of a goldfish I can read crime novels every couple of years and not remember the story. I wish I'd remembered this one though, because it was crap. This is probably her worst book - the obvious suspect at the beginning who seems way too obvious turns out to be the killer for a ridiculously convoluted reason that doesn't even really make sense. Spoiler alert: don't bother. 

8. The Alienist – Caleb Carr

This book is about 20 years old and crops up in ‘100 Best Blah Blah Books’ type lists all the time, but I never had any interest in it before, as the little I knew about it (old timey detective novel) didn’t appeal to me. Then a few weeks back I was reading an article about Lucien Carr (member of the Beat Generation and BFF of Jack Kerouac), in which it was mentioned that Caleb Carr is his son. I had a mild obsession with the Beat Generation as a teenager – I devoured biographies about all of them, and attempted (and failed – lord, a lot of it is garbage) to read their actual work, so anything related to this group of fascinating weirdos piques my interest. Hence my sudden decision to read The Alienist, a book which has nothing at all to do with the Beat Generation. But that’s just how my brain works.

The story is one of early forensics – Teddy Roosevelt, then the Police Commissioner of New York, asks two of his old college friends to discreetly investigate the murder of a child prostitute in 1896. The two men – a brilliant psychiatrist looked on with suspicion by the public for his innovative ideas, and the police reporter who is telling the story – realise very quickly that the murder is in fact one of a series, and off on the trail of a serial killer they go. The book is incredibly detailed about the methods of investigation they use – there are pages and pages outlining the brainstorming sessions the two have with the crew they have assembled to help catch their killer, along with long explanations of what were then virtually unknown forensic methods like fingerprinting and criminal profiling. In lesser hands it could have been a really boring book, but I found it fascinating – and not only am I not generally fascinated by anything to do with serial killers, but I side eye people who proudly state that they are (that’s a rant for another day). I think the distance of time helps – an olde worlde (fictional) crime – even one as shocking as this – is much more palatable to read about than a more recent one. But I also found the painstaking detail of how forensics came to be used in the solving of crimes back in ye olden days and how it was looked on with suspicion very interesting. Caleb Carr is a historian, and it shows – the man has obviously done his research.

The ending fell down a bit for me – I found it quite flat and in the vein of 90% of crime novels in that it all seemed to be tied up in a slightly ridiculous, slightly too quick, slightly unbelievable way. However, if I’ve enjoyed the majority of a novel, I can generally forgive a bit of a rubbish ending, especially when it comes to a mystery solved.

50 Book Challenge - 2014

I have slacked off on blogging for the past few weeks because it has been SO FREAKIN' HOT. The weather is doing me in, I'm not even kidding. There have been times when I've looked at the forecast and almost burst into tears. Why could I not have been born into a cold country? Or at least one that doesn't get to 'fried egg on a footpath' levels in the summer.

Anyway, because of that I have postponed everything - no weekly makeup baskets because it's too hot for makeup; it would just melt right off me. No new resolutions beyond 'try not to cry when you see the weather forecast'. No perfume testing because it's too hot for anything more than a quick spritz of Jovan White Musk, and man are those perfumes piling up. Eeek! No swatching the many eyeshadows and things I've been intending to get to because it's too hot to be outside dicking around with a camera. And so on and so forth.

However, what I have been doing is a lot of reading, because I have no energy to pull myself off the couch. Hopefully after last year's pathetic effort, I'm more on track to beat the 50 Book Challenge this year. I'm going to do a monthly update, which should hopefully encourage me to actually make an effort to have something to report.

1. Night Film - Marisha Pessl
There is a lot to like about this book. It sets up a creepy story about an elusive film-maker and a disgraced investigative journalist who tries to track his story. The book is full of cool gimmicks like photos and news articles. However, about a third of the way in it really started to feel bogged down and taking a huge amount of time to get anywhere, and the ending was a mess. That said, overall I enjoyed reading it, and it creeped me out in a fun way. I knew nothing at all about the story going in, and as with most books, I think it's one of those 'the less you know the better' ones.

2. Tell Me - Lisa Jackson
This book was so unmemorable I had to look up the plot, and I only read it a few weeks ago. One of a series of crime novels featuring a reporter and her police detective fiance. She wants the 'real story' of her childhood friend's murder as the ostensible murderer - the girl's own mother - is about to be released from prison. The solving of the mystery at the end is a dog's breakfast. Don't bother.

3. The All-Girl Filling Station's Last Reunion - Fannie Flagg
I loved Fried Green Tomatoes At The Whistle Stop Cafe back in the day, and the couple that came out after that, but when I tried to read some other Fannie Flagg book a few years ago I found it ridiculously twee and couldn't finish it, so I almost didn't bother with this. I'm glad I did though, as I really enjoyed it. It's FF all the way - a present day story and a past story that links together nicely in the end, lots of sassy girls with kooky names being useful and independent, a bit of a mild mystery referred to in an understated way and then casually solved at the end. In the present, perfect Southern WASP housewife Sookie discovers she is adopted and that her biological family are Polish Catholics. In the past, the story of her Polish family is told. It's an easy, page-turning read.

4. The Silent Wife - A.S.A. Harrison
This is being touted as 'this year's Gone Girl', and I can see why people are putting them in the same category, but I don't think it's on par with any of Gillian Flynn's novels, really. It's a page-turner though, and what more do you want in a mystery novel? It gets a bit bogged down and silly in the end, but I read this in one day and enjoyed it while I was reading it. It's about a couple who have been together for 20 years and what happens when - well, again, it's a story best read knowing little to nothing about it. If you want to while away the afternoon, you could do worse.

5. Before We Met - Lucie Whitehouse
Yet another domestic mystery with a twist, this one is about a woman whose husband is not where he said he was on a business trip, seems to have disappeared, and has told some weird, apparently pointless lies about his past. What could he be up to? Dun dun dun! A decent enough story, but took a heck of a long time to get where it was going - a more ruthless editor was needed here. As with so many of these kinds of books, the ending was a bit all over the place. Overall I quite liked it, though.

6. The Husband's Secret - Liane Moriarty
Oh, god. I don't like Australian books. I don't like Australian television. I don't like Australian movies. Of course there are exceptions, but as a rule - if it was made here I avoid it like the plague. They're all the same, these earnest, kitchen sink dramas where 30-something middle-class inner suburbanites spend a lot of time stressing out about their problems and coming to terms with things. I didn't know this book was Australian when I started it, and had I known I would never have picked it up. As it turns out, it was very readable, and I finished it within a day, but it was pretty much exactly as above. To the point where the whole time I was reading it I was mentally picturing who will be in the film/TV show version (and you know there will for sure be one). Justine Clarke, Robyn Nevin, Vince Colosimo, William McInnes, Asher Keddie - mark my words, they're all going to show up here.

Books I gave up on: 

Drinking: A Love Story - Caroline Knapp
I've had this for ages, and I can't remember why. I think I saw it mentioned favourably in an article or something. I read about a third and then couldn't stand anymore. It meanders all over the place, it's overly wordy, the stories are kind of nothing ('I drank too many cocktails at a wedding and my posh mother glared at me'), it's not linear - she constantly refers to these random stories that could be happening at any time. And for a memoir about a drunk it was just phenomenally boring. It was like a therapist told her to write it all down in a journal for her own catharsis and she went, 'Hey, I should publish this!'.

The Happiness Project - Gretchen Rubin
Insufferable. That's all I have to say about it.

Favourite Books for 2012

I did read a lot of books this year (and surpassed my 50 Book Challenge - woo), but most of them were pretty trashy, and not that many of them were much good. However, there was the occasional gem, so in no particular order, here are my favourites of the ones I read in 2012 (not necessarily released in 2012).

After The Wreck I Picked Myself Up, Spread My Wings and Flew Away - Joyce Carol Oates
I didn't actually realise that this was a YA novel until after I'd finished it and I was reading reviews (I never read reviews beforehand because there are always idiots out there who give away major spoilers). It's about a girl who wakes up in hospital at the beginning of the story, having been in a car accident that has killed her mother. She has little to no relationship with her father and goes to live with an aunt. It's a beautifully written story about how she deals with her grief, her guilt and her new surroundings. I think I'm going to get Noodles to read this one.

Shit My Dad Says - Justin Halpern
Considering this is based on a Twitter account, it's a surprisingly sweet, funny book of stories about the relationship between the author and his father. I laughed so much reading this, and there were times I found it quite touching.

The Middlesteins - Jami Attenberg
There is a certain genre of books that tend to just be a meandering story of a quirky, dysfunctional family who more often than not are Jewish. Not a lot usually happens in these stories, but I generally love them. This one is no exception. It's about a woman with an eating disorder whose obesity and food-hoarding worries her family, who fear she is heading to an early grave. The other family members all have their own issues going on as well.

Gone Girl - Gillian Flynn
I don't remember how I heard about this - I feel like maybe I just read a blurb about it in a Dymocks catalogue or something. I know that I knew nothing at all about it when I started it, and it's one of those books that definitely benefits from that. The less you know, the better it is. I loved it - it's twisty and turny and keeps you turning the pages to find out what's happening next. At first I didn't like the ending, but when I was explaining it aloud to Noodles I realised it was actually perfect for the story. I don't want to tell you anything more than that. Just read it.

Dark Places - Gillian Flynn
After devouring Gone Girl, I went back and dug up the author's earlier two novels. The first one, Sharp Objects, is a good story, but a little clunky and quite obviously a first novel, but this one is more accomplished. Again, it's best to not know much about it - the basic story is that of a woman whose mother and siblings were murdered by her brother when she was a child.