BTS Book Challenge 2016

[Seamus]

1. Beatlebone - Kevin Barry
2. How Music Works - David Byrne
3. Brooklyn - Colm Toibin
4. Super-Cannes - JG Ballard
5. Signs Preceding the End of the World - Yuri Herrera
6. The Invention of Morel - Adolfo Bioy Casares
7. A Wet Handle - Ivor Cutler
8. A Weekend with Claude - Beryl Bainbridge
9. The Slaves of Solitude - Patrick Hamilton
10. Heaven and Hell - Jón Kalman Stefansson
11. The Carpenter's Pencil - Manuel Rivas
12. The Rain Before it Falls - Jonathan Coe
13. Unfaithful Music & Disappearing Ink - Elvis Costello
14. Wide Sargasso Sea - Jean Rhys
15. Something Wicked This Way Comes - Ray Bradbury
16. Tres - Roberto Bolaño
17. The Literary Conference - César Aira
18. An Episode in the Life of a Landscape Painter - César Aira
19. The Return of the Soldier - Rebecca West
20. & 21. Two Spanish Picaresque Novels: Lazarillo De Tormes and The Swindler
22. Affections - Rodrigo Hasbún
23. Skerrett - Liam O'Flaherty
24. Fuente Ovejuna - Lope De Vega
25. The Knight from Olmedo - Lope De Vega
26. Punishment Without Revenge - Lope De Vega
27. Return Of The Brute - Liam O'Flaherty
28. Famine - Liam O'Flaherty
29. Insurrection - Liam O'Flaherty
30. Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte
31. A Dead Man in Deptford - Anthony Burgess
32. Silas Marner - George Eliot
33. Stoner - John Williams
34. The Chrysalids - John Wyndham
35. As I Lay Dying - William Faulkner
36. A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens

[Karin]

1. Room by Emma Donaghue started ☊ finished in print ★★★★
2. Winter by Marissa Meyer ★★★.5
3. England, England by Julian Barnes ★
4.Queen Lucia] by E.F. Benson ★★★.5
5. Paw and Order by Spencer Quinn ★★★.5
6. Morning Glory by Sarah Jio ★★★★.5
7. Major Pettigrew's Last Stand by Helen Simonson ★★★★.5
8. Into the Shadows by Harriet Parker and Glenn Beck ★★★.5
9. Faulty Predictions by Karin Lin-Greenberg 2 stars
10. Mariana by Monica Dickens ★★★
11. Me and Earl and the Dying Girl by Jesse Andrews ★★★
12. Probability for Kids by Scott A. Chamberlin ★★
13. Surprised by Joy by C.S. Lewis ★★
14. I am Malala by Malala Yousefzai ★★★
15. Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children Ransom Riggs ★★★
16. Fairest by Marissa Meyer ★★★
17. La’s Orchestra Saves the World by Alexander McCall Smith ★★★★

[mef]

So... in the old BTS, we could add to our lists, and people could see that there'd been an addition. Here...how do we do that? We can edit our lists, I guess (as long as there isn't atime limit on edits, as there is on, say, Quora).

1. The Girl in the Spider's Web by David Lagercrantz
2. 84, Charing Cross Road by Helene Hanff (re-read)
3. The Duchess of Bloomsbury Street by Helene Hanff (re-read)
4. The Emperor of Ocean Park by Stephen L Carter
5. Dawn by Octavia Butler
6. Sur la Route by Ceclia Wolloch
7. Conceived in Modernism by Aimee Armande Wilson
8. The Bone Clocks by David Mitchell

...and here I lost a bunch in the move, so I'll guess at the numbering...

10. Bettyville by George Hodgman
11. Dreamers of the Absolute by Anna Sun
12. Jam on the Vine by LaShinda Katice Barnett
13. Flashcards and the Curse of Ambrosia by Tracy Robert
14. Papa You're Crazy by William Saroyan
15. A Man Called Ove by Fredrik Backman
16. Burial Rites by Hannah Kent (unfinished; didn't like the writing)
17. House of Sand and Fog by Andre Dubus III
18. A Girl is a Half-Formed Thing by Eimear McBride (started and didn't finish. Just can't be dealing with an entire book written in sentence fragments. Yes, it's clever. No, I don't want books to be dumbed down -- I want them to be written in sentences I can love, admire, take home and keep as pets.)
19. The Fish Ladder -- Sounded like it could be good, but...the self-invovement without universality, and the sudden passages from tme to time that were Very Written...well, life is short
20. Uprooted by Naomi Novik -- fun take on fairy tales, but the character wasn't changing, didn't seem real -- I didn't finish that one, either. Please let me find a good book next time!
21. The Lie Tree by Francis Hardinge -- YA, but anybody could enjoy it. Inventive, bizarre story of a young lady who wants to be a scientists, and a mystery surrounding a family tragedy, which involves a secret and valuable specimen.
22. The Cuckoo's Calling by J K Rowling writing as Robert Galbraith -- okay so far, but nothing to write home about. Characters with potential. Descriptions are *dire*; most of them could be replaced with "about what you'd expect" and the reader would be no worse off (it was the lobby of a posh apartment building and looked about like what you'd expect; it was a restaurant, and looked about like what you'd expect; etc.) instead of reading a paragraph for each change of scene to a place we haven't been before in which we're given a bland listing of what you'd expect to find there. Pfui.

[Anthony, Administrator, Keeper of the Really Good Coffee]

Mef, I don't think there is

[Lara]

I never did this on Shelfari but I guess I'll try it now. Sometimes it just gets discouraging because so many things get in the way of my reading. I never finish as many books in a year as I want :(

1. Love, Lucy
2. The Price of Salt
3. Crimson Shore
4. A Home at the End of the World
5. And Then There Were None
6. As You Wish: Inconceivable Tales from the Making of The Princess Bride

[Jayati]

Hello, nice to see you here Lara. I am Mita from Shelfari.

[Lara]

Jayati wrote: "Hello, nice to see you here Lara. I am Mita from Shelfari."

Nice to see you too!

[Anthony, Administrator, Keeper of the Really Good Coffee]

So good to see you all

[Georgia]

1. The Storied Life of AJ Fikry, G Zevan
2. Mrs Lincolns Dressmaker, Jennifer Chiavenni
3. Girls Guide to Hunting and Fishing, Melissa Bank
4. Oluve Kitteridge, Elizabeth Sturgess
5. 11/22/63, Stephan King
6. Circling the Sun, Paula McLain
7. Why Be Happy when You Could be Normal, jeannette winterson
8. Gilead, Marilyn Robinson
9. Brooklyn, colm toibin
10. A Walk in the Woods, Bill Bryson
11. Neither Here Nor There, Bryson
12. Notes from a Small Island, Bryson
13. Midnight Sun, Jo Nesbo
14. The Kitchen House
15. At Large and at small, Anne Fadiman

[Seamus]

mef wrote: "18. A Girl is a Half-Formed Thing by Eimear McBride (started and didn't finish. Just can't be dealing with an entire book written in sentence fragments. Yes, it's clever. No, I don't want books to be dumbed down -- I want them to be written in sentences I can love, admire, take home and keep as pets.)..."
One of my favourite books of the last few years. Guess I'm kind of a fragments sort of person.

[mef]

Seamus wrote: "mef wrote: "18. A Girl is a Half-Formed Thing by Eimear McBride (started and didn't finish. Just can't be dealing with an entire book written in sentence fragments. Yes, it's clever. No, I don't wa..."
Maybe it's an Irish thing :-)