50 Book Challenge 2019 Part Five

Terpsichore, indeed. Palace of Reason does a really great job at helping the reader understand Bach's primary motivation at a composer. I was really surprised to learn that he wasn’t composing to create beautiful music that people would like listening to, instead he was trying to reveal the divine via the discipline of counterpoint. That came as such a massive revelation to me. I mean, the Soviets would probably have banned his music for that (subversive) reason but to accuse his music of encouraging small minded middle class materialism, it’s kind of hilarious.

@bibliomania I'm also reading, and enjoying In the Days of Rain - it's really good so far.
However, I'm still struggling though Acceptance, the third book in the Annihilation trilogy. Lord knows what's going in. Seriously. I do.not.have.a.clue. Not sure the author does either!

Finished 64. My Sister the Serial Killer by Oyinkan Braithwaite and 65. The Woman Who Waited by Andre Makine. I agree with others upthread about My Sister - it was interesting and I enjoyed reading it, but it did peter out to an unsatisfactory conclusion to me.

The Makine is rather gorgeous and subtle fiction. A young man visits a remote village in the North of Russia during the 1970s or 80s and meets Vera, a middle aged woman who has spent her life waiting for her lover, reportedly killed in WW2. The young man, there to record traditional or lost cultural Russian activities gets to know Vera and speculates on her life, but is proved wrong at every turn. Not big on action but a gentle meditation on Russia, the legacy of the war and love.

I've requested it from the library - does that count?

41. The Song of Achilles by Madeline Miller. I didn't enjoy this quite as much as Circe, but did find it an enjoyable retelling of the myth - unfortunately I never felt I really got a clear sense of Patroclus as a person rather than a narrator -and I suppose I knew the story better! A good read though.

42. Thinking, Fast and Slow hy Daniel Kahnmann. This is a very good accessible book by the Nobel winner, about how we think. I really enjoyed this; and Richard Thaler's Nudge - is there anyone who knows about this area that could recommend anything else similar but not too technical - I don't have an economics background and suspect academic work might be beyond me! I'm pretty sure I first read this after a thread on here a few years back, so a belated thank you to past 50 bookers!

Damn you all, I've had to buy Evening in the Palace of Reason. I'm such a good little sheep.

Speaking of which (admire segue), I'm reading In the Days of Rain, by Rebecca Stott, a family memoir meditating on their experiences in a religious sect. Her writing is gorgeous. I love to read what women say about their lives, especially once they've lived a bit. Makes me think of that line by Muriel Rukeyser “What would happen if one woman told the truth about her life? The world would split open.”

Scribbly yes, quite. I'd imagine that having to compose a new cantata every week, in addition to all the other things you had to write/perform/conduct/organise, with a huge family to provide for - 10 surviving children out of 20 from 2 marriages - didn't feel particularly bourgeois to Bach. It probably felt like relentless bloody hard graft (as it would for his wives).

I must get round to Evening in the P of R, I bought it when it was in the Kindle sale

Pepe my standout book of the year so far has been Evening in the Palace of Reason. I think about it (well about the Bach bits) frequently.
I’m currently listening to The Traitor and the Spy about the rl KGB agent Oleg Gordievsky who became an agent for MI6. He was an ideological spy and one of the factors in his decision to betray his country was his love of the western canon of music and in particular Bach. In the Soviet Union Bach’s music was considered bourgeois and therefore banned. Having read Palace of Reason that really tickled me. I’d love to have been able to hear how Bach might have responded to that put-down

28. Never Mind by Edward St Aubyn (audiobook)

I only borrowed this because it was available on BorrowBox, and I needed a new audiobook to run with, It's the story of a weekend spent at the country house of David Melrose, a horribly abusive husband and father, with his gang if upper class twit hangers on. I feel bad saying this, as I'm aware that the novel is autobiographical, but for me the attempted contrast between the significance of Melrose's abusiveness with the fripperies of the rest of his posh lifestyle fell flat. I won't be finishing the series.

“Some mention of tits in Bird Therapy”

I really liked *Rush-Oh”.

I enjoyed Kelly Gang and was irritated by Rush Oh iirc.

Home Grown: How Domestic Violence Turns Men into Terrorists, by Joan Smith
Does what it says on the tin. I think it's an important perspective on terrorism - terrorism isn't just about the ideology, it's about the angry, desperate men who go in search of that ideology. Their partners and families are often their first victims. If the criminal justice system was better about responding to DV, that would be better both for the initial victims, obviously, but would also help the intelligence system identify individuals at higher risk of carrying out terrorist attacks later on. The author pokes into the background of those individuals responsible for attacks on the public (including mass shootings etc) and finds that a history of DV and misogyny is never very far away.

H(A)PPY by Nicola Barker

Set in a post-post-apocalyptic (whatever that might mean) future which has reached a sort of extreme state of mindfulness in which everyone is balanced and clean and new. This is a 1984 sort of dystopia in which Mila A starts becoming distinctly unbalanced and threatens to bring down the whole System with her stream of consciousness (or something like that).

I really only read this because I fancied something short and it was on borrowbox. I wanted to like it and I kind of did in places. It has some fun use of language and imagery which I liked in theory but I found as a whole it was rather unsatisfying. Maybe even a bit contrived. I did, however, zoom through it in a couple of days so it can't have been too bad.

72 Evening in the Palace of Reason by James Gaines

Bach and Frederick the Great met very briefly, but an extraordinary piece of music emerged as a result. This book (recommended here by, I think, Cote) is deeply unusual - it’s almost a biography of the two men plus a book about the early Enlightenment, baroque music, Luther, German history and military strategy. It’s funny and very erudite, and I felt smarter just reading it. Highly recommended, and no breasts in sight.

32. Bird Therapy by Joe Harkness Following a mental health crisis, Joe reconnects with the world through birdwatching. His no nonsense account of his own experiences in the Norfolk landscape, and his chapter by chapter exploration of the benefits are really uplifting and refreshing. A lovely book.

33. Never Go Back by Lee Child I needed a little bit of escapism, and although this is a later Reacher book, and therefore a bit Reacher by numbers, with slightly more emphasis on violence and less on morals, this is still a good one. Has the smalltown America plus Army vibes, which are always a winning combo in these books.

34. The True History of the Kelly Gang by Peter Carey The concept is that this is the transcript of various bundles of documents written by Ned Kelly himself and discovered concealed on his body after his death. I was engaged for about the first 10% and last 20% but the middle felt like a real slog, with Ned's voice becoming really samey and me getting past caring about characters or events. As an account of the hard scrabble life of immigrants in rural Australia in the 19th century, it was interesting, and made me think of Rush Oh! by Shirley Barrett which had a similar feel, but with more charm and whales.

35. The Dark Angel by Elly Griffiths Ruth Galloway #10. This series keeps delivering. Ruth and co had a little change of scenery to Italy for this one, and as it is so character driven, it was interesting to see how they all behaved and interacted in a different setting. The plot was a little bit silly but I'm just in for the characters now and they did not disappoint.

Boob Watch: Some mention of tits in Bird Therapy. Reacher observes that women have breasts but not obsessively so. Some weird breastfeeding scene in the Kelly Gang but I was past caring by that point. Boob mentions in The Dark Angel mostly restricted to Ruth typically comparing herself unfavourably to others.

The *book

Transcription by Kate Atkinson was disappointing. It's about a typist in WW2 who transcribes informants' interviews. There's also a timeline in 1950. It didn't grab my attention, I couldn't get into it at all.

The Lost Man by Jane Harper
A man is inexplicably found dead in the Australian outback. The noon tells of the week following his death. I really like Jane Harper, I recommend this one.

I listened to Big Sky on Audible and loved it. It was read by Jason Isaacs too!

1. The Baroness - Hannah Rothschild

Next up is Metroland by Julian Barnes, just a random pick from a library display as I enjoyed Sense of An Ending when I read it back when it won the Man Booker.

I can only see him as Jason too!

One thing I am finding mildly annoying is the constant references to previous books. I have read them all but details and characters haven't stuck in my mind as much as Kate wants them to have!

A lettuce joke eh? I do like Jackson Brodie especially now I picture him as Jason Isaacs.

It's got cheese jokes in it and a lettuce joke.

It's a typical Jackson Brodie so far but does deal with what is a somewhat overworked plotline imo.

120 pages in best.

Has anyone read Big Sky yet. Debating whether to shell out £9.99 or wait until the library queue dies down.

Pillars of the earth is awful. I never understood why it was always on those top 100 book things.

Read Professor Chandra .... not a bad read ...

Pillars of the Earth is the best of his of the ones I've read. But clearly written by a man, and often lacking in subtlety.

I forgot to say that I've given up on counting books. Have read a fair few, but some just not worth reviewing because they were re-reads, or because they left me totally unmoved either way. I'll keep reviewing anything that feels worth mentioning.