Nop's 50 Book Challenge!

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I started this a month early, I know!

1. An Education by Lynn Barber

Interesting memoir, journalistic style, now adapted into a movie by Nick Hornby which is, by all accounts, much more centered on a relationship in her teens with an older man. However it was facinating to trace how this relationship shaped her character from then on throughout her life and her relationship with her husband.

4/5

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2. The Colour Purple by Alice Walker

Tells the story of Celie, a black woman who lives in America around the 1930's. She is raped by her presumed father from a young age, married off, separated from her sister Nettie and so she writes letters to God as there is no one else left for her.
Many insightful descriptions of the complexities of relationships, and also deals with the themes of racism and sexism. Interesting ideas of her encouraging the behaviour she herself has dealt with on others, just because she cannot understand any other way to be until enlightened.

5/5

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Girl With a Pearl Earring - Tracy Chevalier

The captivating story of Griet, a girl who is transposed out of the life she has always known into service as a maid to a Catholic family. Here she becomes obsessed with the father of the house, the painter Vermeer, and he with her. Addresses issues to do with the treatment of her as a maid, and also is interesting from a historical perspective, being very strongly placed in 17th century Holland.

4/5

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4. Twilight - Stephanie Meyer

Distinctly unimpressed. A young teen novel which is a bit too soppy and romantic for anyone beyond that age, without enough actual character development for my liking (though I will admit that I may have been slightly slightly more impressed by it if not for the hype surrounding it in the first place).

2/5

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5. Rhino What You Did Last Summer - Paul Howard

Ross O-Carroll-Kelly goes stateside to try and win over Sorcha again and ends up tasting fame, the recession and the power of plastic surgery.
Classic Ross, but again I absolutely love Paul Howard. Not everyone's cup of tea but definitely worth a read if you're a fan.

4/5

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6. Breaking Dawn - Stephanie Meyer

Much as I think the Twilight books are too long drawn out, money-maximising books led by an annoying female protagonist, I couldn't help but fall for Bella once she stops complaining in this book and finally has something going for her. Ridiculously long and drawn out but good for an easy read and a feelgood end.

3.5/5

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7. The Book of Evidence - John Banville

It has been said that The Book of Evidence changed the face of fiction in the 80s. I am not sure it does quite that, but this Booker Prize shortlisted book is wordy to the point of poetry, as well as showing a deep analysis of a very amoral drifter and how he comes to commit the crime of the murder of a servant girl while robbing a painting. I certainly didn't find this a page-turner, but as I love Banville's language use I found I could pick up this book where I had left off even a week later and still enjoy it.

5/5

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8. The Diving Bell and the Butterfly - Jean-Dominique Bauby

Absolutely incredible book. Written by Bauby, former journalist and editor-in-chief of French Elle, in hospital where he is suffering Locked-In Syndrome, completely paralysed and can only communicate by the blink of his left eye. Details the common occurances and mundanities in the hospital, along with his previous life and the fantasies he resorts to to keep himself sane; "Today I visited Hong Kong". An amazing achievement touched with the tragedy that Bauby died of pneumonia two days after the publication of his work, and so never realised the astounding success of his book or the subsequent film.

Bauby was forced to completely compose and edit this in his head, with each word taking an average of two minutes to dictate, and yet it is truely an artistic work, and one which I would strongly recommend.

5/5

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9. The Good Man Jesus and the Scoundrel Christ - Philip Pullman

Stylistically very simple, this reworking of the gospels and reimagining of myths was one that I found both very realistic and poignant. In it Pullman looks at the dual personalities of Jesus and the Christ as twin brothers, each believing in the somewhat contradictory aims of a moral kingdom and a bureaucratic church, along with the unavoidable problems that, while with power undoubtedly comes evil, without an organised form of worship, fear and the need for miracles, morals be forgotten in people's minds.

Highly recommended for anyone with an interest in religion and an ability to question what is presented to us as truth and history. 5/5

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10. Picture Perfect - Jodi Picoult

Picoult here diverges from her usual formula of a crescendo of unusual events and extraordinary circumstance all leading up to a criminal trial. Unfortunately this is where she also goes wrong. Picture Perfect tells the story of a woman called Cassie who wakes up with amnesia only to discover that she is married to the most famous man in Hollywood, though her life is not as blissful as it originally seems. Without the climactic value of the trial and the question of how it will turn out this book drags on and eventually falls flat on its face.
Good if you want a mindless chick-lit type read but nowhere near her other works.

2/5

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11. A Brief History of Tractors in Ukrainian - Marina Lewycka

Lovely book. Easy to read. Touching and funny in all the right places. Gives an insight into the issues surround the Ukraine and its people and the difference a generation makes.

The main focus is the protagonist's old father who is marrying a woman in her 30s partly for love and partly to get her UK citizenship. Intermingled with this are exerpts of her fathers work on the history of tractors in the Ukraine.

5/5

Monkeybonkers

I've just finished Salmon Fishing in The Yemen and at the back this book (Brief.......Ukranian) was recommended. Your 5 out of 5 score has convinced me to give it a go. Thanks

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12. Small Wars Permitting - Christina Lamb

I could not idolise this woman more. She has lived an absolutely incredible life, starting as a foreign correspondant at the age of 21, and fearlessly travelling through wartorn countries. She shows empathy and a skill at making friends and contacts wherever she goes, which only makes for a better and better story. Definitely one for those who enjoy good journalism, travel writing or are interested in foreign affairs. Be warned though, it will make you want to travel.

5/5

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13. A Reliable Wife - Robert Goolrick

Apparently a number 1 New York Times Bestseller, this book promises to be a thriller, and certainly delivers if you want a pageturner to keep you interested. Possibly not as many twists and turns as promised, and a bit of an emphasis on the gothic, but all in all a good read.

3.5/5

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14. Suite Francaise - Irene Nemirovsky

I know it seems like I am overly complimentary about the books I've been reading but it's only because I'm choosy about picking them in the first place.

This book was originally planned to be a symphony of literature stretching over five interconnected parts. Set in second world war France, written in second world war France, this book is fiction but depicts the people and lives that Nemirovsky saw around her, and is amazing because, like its author, this book doesn't know what the outcome of the war will be. More damning to the French nobility than to the oncoming and invading German army, this book was cut tragically short when its author was caught and later killed in Auschwitz in 1942.

It includes brilliant character depiction and enthralling descriptions of the havok and confusion that the author saw around her. Discovered decades later in the scribbled writings that she had left behind, if anything it is more incredible for the lack of polishing it received.This woman was truely gifted, and the story of how this book came into being is as remarkable as the book is.

5/5

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15. Down Under - Bill Bryson

Classic Bryson, this follows him driving around Australia, eavesdropping on a few conversations, confusing locals with his particular brand of humour, making a token bit of social commentary and altogether being thoroughly amusing about a continent that facinates many and bores those who hate traveling the vast distances to get to the facinating parts.

4/5... 5/5 if you're traveling to Aus any time soon.

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16. Brideshead Revisited - Evelyn Waugh

Charles Ryder, a freshman at Oxford in the 1920s, becomes enamoured with Sebastian Flyte who he meets there, and his Catholic family at Brideshead, in a relationship that will last for over twenty years.
Well written, nice word usage. I found the plot continuation slightly unsatisfactory as it furthered on. The ongoing theme of religion and what it asks of you was an interesting one though. Waugh himself said that he wrote for beauty of words rather than character development and I think that perhaps this book felt a bit unresolved without a deeper look at some of the characters, but overall a very good read.

4/5

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17. The Tree of Man - Patrick White

White, winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature, follows the lives of Stan Parker and his new wife Amy as they set up a home in the middle of the outback in Australia. This novel dotes on the mundane happenings in life, lyricising them and providing an interesting study of the need of humans to find meaning in their lives.

4/5

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18. Washington Square - Henry James

One of James' earlier works. A simple novel that tells the story of a brilliant, wealthy doctor, his meddling and imaginative sister and his simple daughter Catherine, who has to deal with the advances of her first suitor, a man of whom her father doesn't approve.

4/5

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19. The Secret River - Kate Grenville

This tells the fictional story of William Thornhill, a poor man from London, who is sentenced in 1806 to life in the new colony of New South Wales. It follows the life that got him there, and once freed, how tries to make his fortune. If ultimately a timeless plot, it is a telling look at how Australia was founded, and the struggles that existed between the Aboriginals and the convict arrivals - one group to whom the idea of ownership of land was bewildering, the others who had never had the chance to own anything in their lives.

5/5

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20. Not Untrue and Not Unkind – Ed O’Loughlin

4/5

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21. The Great Gatsby – Fitzgearld

4.5/5

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22. The Thief of Time – John Boyne

3.5/5

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23. The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo - Stieg Larsson

Good for a crime novel.

4/5