50 Book Challenge 2019 Part Four

I’m sorry to read that five, wishing you and your family lots of strength

Finished a couple more disappointing reads,

25. Season of Light Katherine McMahon
    My aunt pressed this on me and I read it despite having low expectations because of the no kindle on holiday issue I mentioned. Aunt also loved and gave me The Rose of Sebastapol by the same author a few years back and I wasn’t mad on that either. The heroine of this one was annoying and the whole thing just too implausible for me.

26. The Autograph Man Zadie Smith
    Hated this, hated it hated it hated it. Urgh.

15. Names for the sea: Strangers in Iceland by Sarah Moss

An academic's non fiction account of her sabbatical in Iceland for a year with her young family. I adored this book. Sarah Moss's writing is excellent and she really let you know all the interesting details about living in Iceland. Can anyone recommend more like this?*

Very sad Five

Five

five, I am so sorry to learn about your DH. I hope you have some comfort reads lined up for those moments when you have some time to yourself.

five

Five, I'm so very sorry. It's almost exactly 5 years since my last chemo but I do understand a small amount of what you are going through.
I'm enjoying the Trebizon books but I'm going to start looking for them second hand - or ban myself from buying anything on kindle till I read what's already sitting there!

Five that is terrible and of course your mind is everywhere. So sorry

5

Trying to get into house of leaves. Had anyone read it before? Meant to be a cult classic. I'm only around 50pages in and it's an absolute chore. Is it worth carrying on?

Five

So sorry to hear that Five. I retreat into comfort re-reads when terrible things are happening

So very sorry, Five.

I seem to have reader's block. Can't find a thing I fancy reading, that OI haven't read already.

Five

Oh five , so sorry to hear that

Five, so sorry to hear about your DH

Five, I am so very sorry to hear about your DH

Should have been 21

I managed to get And then there were none in Hatchards in January, I can't remember which publication it is but it is in hardback.

Weebarra how did the Trebizon books stand up. I loved these when I was at school, my favourite boarding school ones.

20 The Sisters Brothers by Patrick De Witt the has been sat on my bookshelf for a while since it was recommended for me on my rating spa at Mr B's Reading Emporium. It is the story of two brothers who are the henchmen of the Commodore and basically go around killing people on his orders. This story is them travelling from Oregon to California in search of their next target and how the people they meet on their way, all tragic in their different ways effects Eli the younger brother. It has some genuinely funny moments but at the heart of to is how tough it was in the West at that time and how many lives ended tragically.

My reading is stalling at the moment as my DH is has cancer and is not going to get better, and I am finding my attention is wondering a bit with him, DC's,work and my own business, and finding it difficult to focus on one book at a time.

32. Fire Sermon by Jamie Quatro

After twenty years of a stable and reasonably loving marriage Maggie begins corresponding via email with James, a fellow poet and academic, a man with whom she can for the first time relate to at an intellectual and spiritual level. What develops at first is a relationship of words and eventually leads to a short lived passionate physical affair.

This book covers familiar ground in terms of the personal costs to one's self and one's family of adultery, but with an additional layer of examining the burden that Maggie's Christian faith plays within her soul searching for understanding and redemption of her actions.

Quatro's writing is sparse, sharp, intelligent and hard hitting. I enjoyed this book very much despite it being a difficult and unhappy read. As a Christian myself it was refreshing to read a contemporary take of someone grappling at an intellectual and emotional level with their faith alongside the psychological fallout and rebuilding of human relationships following an affair.

27: Transcription - Kate Atkinson

I had a very pleasant, if idle, Easter Sunday reading most of this in between bouts of hacking back the garden. Having read some of the slightly equivocal reviews I wasn’t expecting much, and at first I thought it was a rather thin effort from Atkinson (sorry), but there came a point when it all came together and I was suddenly gripped. Ultimately I really enjoyed this and it’s much subtler and more layered than I initially gave it credit for.
(Coincidentally, I was also slightly spooked by the fact that literally every place mentioned in this novel is somewhere I’ve either lived or worked
)

32. Norse Mythology by Neil Gaiman

An entertaining retelling of selected stories from Norse Mythology, mostly featuring Thor and Loki.

It's been a rather slow reading month for me, but I have a few to add to my list:

18. Bitch in a Bonnet: Reclaiming Jane Austen From the Stiffs, the Snobs, the Simps and the Saps by Robert Rodi. This is the second volume, covering Emma, Northanger Abbey and Persuasion. I read the first volume (covering Pride and Prejudice, Sense and Sensibility and Mansfield Park) a couple of years ago, and this is more of the same. It's not a biography because it is focused very much on the books, with only passing mentions of the author. I'm not sure Rodi's sense of humour would appeal to everyone (subtle he is not), but I find him very amusing and this was a pleasant nostalgic stroll through Austen without actually re-reading her.

19. The Wife by Meg Wolitzer. I picked this up at the airport because my kindle was playing up (it seems to have sorted itself out now, touch wood) so I risked being bookless on holiday, and I have read and enjoyed two other books of Wolitzer's (The Interestings and The Position). This one is narrated by Joan Castleman, who is in her 60s and accompanying her husband to Helsinki where he has won a literary prize. She reflects over her life, her marriage and her own early dreams of becoming an author. I really like Wolitzer's style of writing and have added another of hers to my kindle.

20. Everything I Never Told You by Celeste Ng. This is the story of a mixed marriage between a Chinese man and an American woman. Deep down, James struggles to believe that Marilyn really wants to be married to him, while Marilyn sometimes finds it hard to understand why her life turned out so differently from how she pictured it. She never realised her dream of becoming a doctor, but perhaps her eldest daughter Lydia can do it for her. I enjoyed this, but I think that reading it straight after The Wife was to its detriment. There are some similarities between the two books (both are family dramas set in America in the second half of the 20th century and featuring a woman who did not fulfill her career potential), but Wolitzer is a better writer than Ng in my opinion. She lets her characters and plot develop naturally without having to explain them to you.

I'm another who was terrified by And Then They Were None when I first read it. In fact it is one of only two books I can think of that gave me nightmares as a child!

The other one was The Secret Garden btw. I was young when I read it, and the bit at the beginning when everyone dies of cholera was too much for me. I remember waking up and screaming and screaming! For years I re-read it and left out the first two chapters. Perhaps it's lucky I never read any Stephen King

stripyeyes You can't go wrong with any Anne Tyler IMO, but my favourite is Back When We Were Grown Ups.

21. A spool of blue thread by Anne Tyler A tale of an American family who rally round to look after their ageing parents. The story winds through the past and present, revealing the characters' pasts and secrets. There's no big twists or dramatics, but the beauty and torture of everyday life is captured perfectly.

I really enjoyed this. I loved how she builds the characters, how every gesture and look they share adds depth to their character until it feels like you really know them.

Can anyone else recommend any others by her they've enjoyed?